For Claudia, Against Narrowness
From Loveroot
Narrowing life because of the fears,
narrowing it between the dust motes,
narrowing the pink baby
between the green-limbed monsters,
& the drooling idiots,
& the ghosts of the Thalidomide infants,
narrowing hope,
always narrowing hope.
Mother sits on one shoulder hissing:
Life is dangerous.
Father sits on the other sighing:
Lucky you.
Grandmother, grandfather, big sister:
You'll die if you leave us,
you'll die if you ever leave us.
Sweetheart, baby sister,
you'll die anyway
& so will I.
Even if you walk the wide greensward,
even if you
& your beautiful big belly
embrace the world of men & trees,
even if you moan with pleasure,
& smoke the sweet grass
& feast on strawberries in bed,
you'll die anyway--
wide or narrow,
you're going to die.
As long as you're at it,
die wide.
Follow your belly to the green pasture.
Lie down in the sun's dapple.
Life is not as dangerous
as mother said.
It is more dangerous,
more wide.
© Erica Mann Jong
Breathe & Live Wide
I have always wanted to
"live wide" and be free
to breathe
but
the world is so dangerous
and it only seems to get
more so as I age
inevitably
for it's a thin and narrow life
that finds me going from
home-to-work to-grocery-store
for beer & cigarettes, back to this balcony
where I'm putting the damage on
and don't breathe, at all, or just barely
it's a thin and narrow line
I walk, from here to the
fear, guilt & shame I feel, almost daily
that my mother
taught me, so eloquently
my father too
they sat there saying
"we can't control you"
but what did they try to do?
my 21 year old boyfriend
when I was 16, was only going to
help me live more wide (I thought)
they tried the priest, one time
but he didn't know what to do, or understand
a teenage girl and her parents begging for help
and then, when I confessed
to my mother that
I was having sex
she merely said
"you're going to do what you want
but I can't condone it"
my father just raged
and felt helpless
as fathers do
but if he had only looked me
in the eyes and said
Sweetheart, baby girl
that I love - I can't stand to see you hurting yourself
I'm so worried about you
maybe I could have come
to my senses, made different choices and
not be where I am now
but that's all in the past and
I'll die anyway, as we all do
I never did get pregnant, as they probably feared
I went to college, kept playing soccer somehow
was a "good girl" and graduated, so they did a
"good job" and everything is fine
actually, now
it's just that I'm going to die
much faster, with more fear, guilt & shame
and way less "wide" than I could do
otherwise
Friday, May 13, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
My Own "Daddy"
Best read alongside Syliva Plath's original, which I tried to model, rather strenuously at times!
http://www.internal.org/Sylvia_Plath/Daddy
My Own "Daddy"
You do not do, you do not see through
any more, black goo
in which I have lived like a shrew
for thirty years, over-educated and white,
barely daring to contradict or say this will not do!
Daddy, I have had to learn to hate you
You died before I got there
Coffin full of bear and bluster
Ghastly monument with makeup made you unrecognizable
But still big as a mountain
And a head yet stuck in socialism
Where countries you admired fell into chaos and ruin
In the waters off beautiful coastal Africa
I used to pray to be as interesting to you
Damn you.
In the 50s language, in the LA landscape
Scraped flat by the roller
of movies, movies, movies.
But the name of sad need is common
My Marilyn Monroe
Says there are many orphans.
So I never could tell for sure where you
Came from, no solid root
I never could ask you
The thought stuck in my mind.
It stuck in celluloid snare and wine&beer
Rage, rage, rage, rage
I could barely speak in my own house
I thought every authority-figure was you
And the language was fear
A power, a power
Taking me off like a Gypsy
A Gypsy to a concentration camp
I began to talk like a displaced person before I ever ran away from you
I think I may well be a Gypsy too.
The palm trees of Sepulveda Blvd, the stars of Hollywood
are not what they seem, are not what they do
With my bastard inheritance and my good luck
And all my new age leanings
I may be a bit of a Gypsy-Jew.
I have always been scared of you
With your belt, your fist on the wall
And your black beard
And your squinty dark eyes
Nightmare-Man, how you held us in thrall
Not God but close enough
So fire&brimstone that no dis-obediance could slip through
Every woman marries her father
And gets the boot on her chin, gets controlled again
Booted heart of a brute like you.
You stand beyond the mountains, daddy
that you died on, in the photo I have of you
A dent in your forehead instead of your backpack
But no less the fool for that fall, no not
Any less the hurried man who
Bit my pretty little life in two.
I was twenty-four when they buried you.
At fifteen I tried to die with alcohol
And get your attention back, and get back to you
I thought even a boyfriend 5 years older would do
But they pulled me on to a bright future
And they stuck me together with SATs and college glue
And then I knew I had to go to graduate school
I met&married a man, on model of you
A man in bad clothes with a grumpy look
And a love of the lawyerly argument and the kinky screw.
And I said I will, I admit, I do.
So daddy, I'm now through.
The computer's completely shut down,
The FaceBook-photo memories can't feed through.
If I've killed one illusion of love - I've killed two
The dream of love who said he was you
And took my energy for a year, or two,
Eleven years, if you want to understand.
(But that was a long time ago.)
Daddy, I'm safe, you can rest now.
There's a flower on your grave
And the world respects you.
They are still giving awards in your name to honor you.
They always knew you were a good man.
Daddy, daddy, you asshole, I love you.
http://www.internal.org/Sylvia_Plath/Daddy
My Own "Daddy"
You do not do, you do not see through
any more, black goo
in which I have lived like a shrew
for thirty years, over-educated and white,
barely daring to contradict or say this will not do!
Daddy, I have had to learn to hate you
You died before I got there
Coffin full of bear and bluster
Ghastly monument with makeup made you unrecognizable
But still big as a mountain
And a head yet stuck in socialism
Where countries you admired fell into chaos and ruin
In the waters off beautiful coastal Africa
I used to pray to be as interesting to you
Damn you.
In the 50s language, in the LA landscape
Scraped flat by the roller
of movies, movies, movies.
But the name of sad need is common
My Marilyn Monroe
Says there are many orphans.
So I never could tell for sure where you
Came from, no solid root
I never could ask you
The thought stuck in my mind.
It stuck in celluloid snare and wine&beer
Rage, rage, rage, rage
I could barely speak in my own house
I thought every authority-figure was you
And the language was fear
A power, a power
Taking me off like a Gypsy
A Gypsy to a concentration camp
I began to talk like a displaced person before I ever ran away from you
I think I may well be a Gypsy too.
The palm trees of Sepulveda Blvd, the stars of Hollywood
are not what they seem, are not what they do
With my bastard inheritance and my good luck
And all my new age leanings
I may be a bit of a Gypsy-Jew.
I have always been scared of you
With your belt, your fist on the wall
And your black beard
And your squinty dark eyes
Nightmare-Man, how you held us in thrall
Not God but close enough
So fire&brimstone that no dis-obediance could slip through
Every woman marries her father
And gets the boot on her chin, gets controlled again
Booted heart of a brute like you.
You stand beyond the mountains, daddy
that you died on, in the photo I have of you
A dent in your forehead instead of your backpack
But no less the fool for that fall, no not
Any less the hurried man who
Bit my pretty little life in two.
I was twenty-four when they buried you.
At fifteen I tried to die with alcohol
And get your attention back, and get back to you
I thought even a boyfriend 5 years older would do
But they pulled me on to a bright future
And they stuck me together with SATs and college glue
And then I knew I had to go to graduate school
I met&married a man, on model of you
A man in bad clothes with a grumpy look
And a love of the lawyerly argument and the kinky screw.
And I said I will, I admit, I do.
So daddy, I'm now through.
The computer's completely shut down,
The FaceBook-photo memories can't feed through.
If I've killed one illusion of love - I've killed two
The dream of love who said he was you
And took my energy for a year, or two,
Eleven years, if you want to understand.
(But that was a long time ago.)
Daddy, I'm safe, you can rest now.
There's a flower on your grave
And the world respects you.
They are still giving awards in your name to honor you.
They always knew you were a good man.
Daddy, daddy, you asshole, I love you.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Battle of the Body
"Nothing tastes as good as thin feels" ~ source unknown
When I was 9 or 10 - I can't remember exactly how old but I'm pretty sure it was well before my teenage years, in other words much too young - I marched down the stairs on a weekend morning and announced importantly to my parents that I was going on a diet. My grand plan? I was only going to eat carrots.
I can't recall how they reacted but I do remember my Dad saying something like "I guess you won't be wanting any of these delicious pancakes I'm making then." And I - flush with my new commitment to what I perceived as a much-needed weight loss - merely hesitated for one moment and then plopped down in a chair at the table to dig in. "Oh well, I'll start eating carrots tomorrow."
And so began a life-long ambivalence towards dieting - something I've not been much good at. Though I've never been a "skinny minny" as I like to say, I was lucky enough that I didn't really have to worry about my weight for many years of my life.
Playing soccer from a young age all the way through college, I was always very active and therefore able to eat pretty much whatever I wanted without undue consequence. And, whatever issues my parents saddled me with that I have to take responsibility for and deal with now, a problem with food or full-blown eating disorder is, fortunately, not one of them. In fact, I hated the way women seemed so preoccupied with weight and found it tiresome, trite & boring.
In my early days of awakening to the injustices of socialization I basically took it on as a feminist issue and tried to get my friends to realize that dieting was a form of sexist oppression. I still remember hanging out in the hallways of our freshman(woman!) dorm one evening and my friends engaging in that particularly female routine ritual of communal self-loathing which consisted of picking apart every self-perceived imperfection possible.
And me exclaiming in sudden frustration "Let's talk about what we like about our bodies for a change. For instance, I just love this little freckle on my right thigh, it's so dang cute!" The silence was probably deafening but I only remember feeling how certain I was that we were not meant to hate ourselves like that, and wanting them to understand that it was possible to feel better.
Yet I was obviously under the influence of some degree of "body dysmorphia" that as a pre-adolescent I was convinced that there was something about my body that was wrong and needed fixing -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_dysmorphic_disorder
I look at photos of me from that time and laugh at the notion that I needed to lose weight back then - especially now that I've gone through several rounds of gaining and losing weight since.
Because, fast forward a couple decades and given many a year since college logged at sedentary desk jobs, like most people, I found myself needing to lose weight for real. And to "just eat carrots" was not a sane, healthy or realistic option. So, the first time in my life that I actually lost weight I did it with lots of exercise and cutting back on calories.
Real simple. And, as I recall, not all that hard. But I was in my 20s yet and had a worthy goal: my "carrot on a stick" - yes, pun intended - was my 5 year college reunion, back in Spring of 1998. It was great and I felt powerful: it was the first time in my life I had gone on a diet plan and it had worked!
But it didn't last - fast forward to 2006, past buying a house, getting married and even more years spent at a desk, I had even more weight to lose. 60 pounds in fact, and that time I did it with Weight Watchers. Slow and steady and harder than the first time but I did it, again. (Meanwhile my husband David was effortlessly losing weight by doing something called The Paleolithic Diet, but that's his story to tell, not mine. But link included for those who want to know - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet)
After that I gained some back, lost it again with Weight Watchers and almost got back to what I weighed when I was 18 years old going off to college (back when I, despite my feminist aspirations, still thought I was probably a little bit "fat"). Then we turned our lives upside down & moved to Florida and before I knew it I was back AGAIN well beyond the healthy range of the BMI calculators you can easily find on the internet. How I hate them, even when I think I'm good I always end up too heavy to qualify as "normal" - ugh
http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/
It's all so tedious and I find me boring myself with my own blog post. But I have to admit that my most recent weight gain coupled with impatience and some amount of desperation (I just couldn't stand to do Weight Watchers again!) and the testimony of several people I know convinced me to embark on the HCG diet plan which I've been doing now for 24 straight days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chorionic_gonadotropin
http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/weight-loss/hcg-diet.htm
It's been hard but I've been determined and it has worked, I almost immediately lost about 14 pounds. More than that, I've been eating way more fruit than ever before, getting tons more sleep, going to the gym regularly and David tells me I've been much happier since I started so....
But I've plateaued big time since my initial weight loss and been frustrated in the last couple weeks so tonight I snapped & splurged on fried fish&chips and beer. Maybe I'll get back on tomorrow but either way, the battle of the body, which I so reluctantly participate in, continues despite my best intentions, aged feminist convictions and inherent intelligence....
I have one more month before we go to the island of St.Martin (our first real vacation since 2009!) and maybe at some point I'll "just eat carrots" if that's what it takes to feel good in that mythical bikini on the beach. :)
When I was 9 or 10 - I can't remember exactly how old but I'm pretty sure it was well before my teenage years, in other words much too young - I marched down the stairs on a weekend morning and announced importantly to my parents that I was going on a diet. My grand plan? I was only going to eat carrots.
I can't recall how they reacted but I do remember my Dad saying something like "I guess you won't be wanting any of these delicious pancakes I'm making then." And I - flush with my new commitment to what I perceived as a much-needed weight loss - merely hesitated for one moment and then plopped down in a chair at the table to dig in. "Oh well, I'll start eating carrots tomorrow."
And so began a life-long ambivalence towards dieting - something I've not been much good at. Though I've never been a "skinny minny" as I like to say, I was lucky enough that I didn't really have to worry about my weight for many years of my life.
Playing soccer from a young age all the way through college, I was always very active and therefore able to eat pretty much whatever I wanted without undue consequence. And, whatever issues my parents saddled me with that I have to take responsibility for and deal with now, a problem with food or full-blown eating disorder is, fortunately, not one of them. In fact, I hated the way women seemed so preoccupied with weight and found it tiresome, trite & boring.
In my early days of awakening to the injustices of socialization I basically took it on as a feminist issue and tried to get my friends to realize that dieting was a form of sexist oppression. I still remember hanging out in the hallways of our freshman(woman!) dorm one evening and my friends engaging in that particularly female routine ritual of communal self-loathing which consisted of picking apart every self-perceived imperfection possible.
And me exclaiming in sudden frustration "Let's talk about what we like about our bodies for a change. For instance, I just love this little freckle on my right thigh, it's so dang cute!" The silence was probably deafening but I only remember feeling how certain I was that we were not meant to hate ourselves like that, and wanting them to understand that it was possible to feel better.
Yet I was obviously under the influence of some degree of "body dysmorphia" that as a pre-adolescent I was convinced that there was something about my body that was wrong and needed fixing -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_dysmorphic_disorder
I look at photos of me from that time and laugh at the notion that I needed to lose weight back then - especially now that I've gone through several rounds of gaining and losing weight since.
Because, fast forward a couple decades and given many a year since college logged at sedentary desk jobs, like most people, I found myself needing to lose weight for real. And to "just eat carrots" was not a sane, healthy or realistic option. So, the first time in my life that I actually lost weight I did it with lots of exercise and cutting back on calories.
Real simple. And, as I recall, not all that hard. But I was in my 20s yet and had a worthy goal: my "carrot on a stick" - yes, pun intended - was my 5 year college reunion, back in Spring of 1998. It was great and I felt powerful: it was the first time in my life I had gone on a diet plan and it had worked!
But it didn't last - fast forward to 2006, past buying a house, getting married and even more years spent at a desk, I had even more weight to lose. 60 pounds in fact, and that time I did it with Weight Watchers. Slow and steady and harder than the first time but I did it, again. (Meanwhile my husband David was effortlessly losing weight by doing something called The Paleolithic Diet, but that's his story to tell, not mine. But link included for those who want to know - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet)
After that I gained some back, lost it again with Weight Watchers and almost got back to what I weighed when I was 18 years old going off to college (back when I, despite my feminist aspirations, still thought I was probably a little bit "fat"). Then we turned our lives upside down & moved to Florida and before I knew it I was back AGAIN well beyond the healthy range of the BMI calculators you can easily find on the internet. How I hate them, even when I think I'm good I always end up too heavy to qualify as "normal" - ugh
http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/
It's all so tedious and I find me boring myself with my own blog post. But I have to admit that my most recent weight gain coupled with impatience and some amount of desperation (I just couldn't stand to do Weight Watchers again!) and the testimony of several people I know convinced me to embark on the HCG diet plan which I've been doing now for 24 straight days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chorionic_gonadotropin
http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/weight-loss/hcg-diet.htm
It's been hard but I've been determined and it has worked, I almost immediately lost about 14 pounds. More than that, I've been eating way more fruit than ever before, getting tons more sleep, going to the gym regularly and David tells me I've been much happier since I started so....
But I've plateaued big time since my initial weight loss and been frustrated in the last couple weeks so tonight I snapped & splurged on fried fish&chips and beer. Maybe I'll get back on tomorrow but either way, the battle of the body, which I so reluctantly participate in, continues despite my best intentions, aged feminist convictions and inherent intelligence....
I have one more month before we go to the island of St.Martin (our first real vacation since 2009!) and maybe at some point I'll "just eat carrots" if that's what it takes to feel good in that mythical bikini on the beach. :)
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Adrenal gland poem
Turns out
It was my ADRENAL GLAND all along
That FEAR spot, somewhere near my stomach
pumping too much
FIGHT or FLIGHT problem-juice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenal_gland
I've had all my life
this problem
I'd like to blame my parents but they are gone
and empty
so it doesn't matter anymore
it's still this problem
I have to solve
I'm too excited (FEAR) about
life and find myself killing it
on a daily basis because
it's also LIFE that I find so hard
to take, find it hard to live
I guess
it's an old slow way to DIE
that many have done before me
family members included
*sigh*
but I may be quicker
because I do it more intensely
and there is this known fact about how
women metabolize alcohol differently
I used to think that was about me
being bleery-eyed at midnight and others still
standing
but now as I get older I think
it could be about long-term effects
and how we handle it in
our bodies
Oh God, I'm so afraid
I just want peace and safety
and to be home finally
It was my ADRENAL GLAND all along
That FEAR spot, somewhere near my stomach
pumping too much
FIGHT or FLIGHT problem-juice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenal_gland
I've had all my life
this problem
I'd like to blame my parents but they are gone
and empty
so it doesn't matter anymore
it's still this problem
I have to solve
I'm too excited (FEAR) about
life and find myself killing it
on a daily basis because
it's also LIFE that I find so hard
to take, find it hard to live
I guess
it's an old slow way to DIE
that many have done before me
family members included
*sigh*
but I may be quicker
because I do it more intensely
and there is this known fact about how
women metabolize alcohol differently
I used to think that was about me
being bleery-eyed at midnight and others still
standing
but now as I get older I think
it could be about long-term effects
and how we handle it in
our bodies
Oh God, I'm so afraid
I just want peace and safety
and to be home finally
Friday, January 14, 2011
New Idea For a New Year - Feeling Goood
Nina Simone - all hats off!
Birds flying high you know how I feel
Sun in the sky you know how I feel
Breeze driftin' on by you know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good
Fish in the sea you know how I feel
River running free you know how I feel
Blossom on the tree you know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good
Dragonfly out in the sun you know what I mean, don't you know
Butterflies all havin' fun you know what I mean
Sleep in peace when day is done
That's what I mean
And this old world is a new world
And a bold world
For me
Stars when you shine you know how I feel
Scent of the pine you know how I feel
Oh freedom is mine
And I know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good
I'm feeling good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8tuTSi6Sck
Birds flying high you know how I feel
Sun in the sky you know how I feel
Breeze driftin' on by you know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good
Fish in the sea you know how I feel
River running free you know how I feel
Blossom on the tree you know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good
Dragonfly out in the sun you know what I mean, don't you know
Butterflies all havin' fun you know what I mean
Sleep in peace when day is done
That's what I mean
And this old world is a new world
And a bold world
For me
Stars when you shine you know how I feel
Scent of the pine you know how I feel
Oh freedom is mine
And I know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good
I'm feeling good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8tuTSi6Sck
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
New Idea For a New Year
God, thank you
for this
amazing life
and please
forgive me when
I fail to be completely
grateful for it.
For acoustic version, click on this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPlgf6GqLQ4
for this
amazing life
and please
forgive me when
I fail to be completely
grateful for it.
For acoustic version, click on this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPlgf6GqLQ4
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Fear & Loathing on FaceBook Etc.
I've had the opportunity recently to reconnect with an old friend, with whom I had a terrible break back right around the time we moved to Florida. This was late-Summer of 2009. Seems like a long time ago right?
But it's fresh in my mind because it was a most intense time, there was a lot going on for me personally and for her too, I think & we were both super-stressed for our own individual reasons. But still I wonder sometimes, if it would have happened differently, if she or I could have handled it better, if the conflict hadn't taken place via email and other electronic communication media....and that is the alleged impetus for this here blog post.
You know, I'm the last thing from a Luddite but there is no TONE on these "social networking" sites we use & so much gets lost in the mix. So much can be misunderstood, misapprehended and just plain f-ed up.
And communication is hard enough as it is. I ought to know - I make my bread and butter by communicating (or trying to) within the wild and wacky world of technology/computer systems.
Witness this recent comment of mine on LinkedIn, for the thread called "Word of the Day: As BA's (Business Analysts) are expected to have excellent communication skills, I request all to post one challenging, meaningful, relevant WORD per BA per day for all to share and digest."
OK maybe I'm a little bit of a hypocrite, blogging about the evils of social media, then posting my own comments but anyways - here's my (slightly abridged) contribution -
Maybe not PARSING the thread properly, but whatevs. I'm tired, after a long day of being a BA, trying to PARSE requirements in the world of chaotic competing demands called the software-development-life-cycle (SDLC).
PARSING–verb (used with object) 1. to analyze (a sentence) in terms of grammatical constituents, identifying the parts of speech, syntactic relations, etc. 1. to describe (a word in a sentence) grammatically, identifying the part of speech, inflectional form, syntactic function, etc. 1. Computers . to analyze (a string of characters) in order to associate groups of characters with the syntactic units of the underlying grammar. Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/parsing
There's no elegant (or any) transition here but....I just finished watching the movie "The Yearling" made in 1946, based on the 1938 Pulitzer Prize winning book written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Starring a yummy young Gregory Peck and washed-out worried (on purpose) Jane Wyman, as his wife. And, of course, Claude Jarman Jr. as young Jody Baxter -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yearling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Jarman,_Jr.
This family living in the backwoods central Florida "scrub" at the start of the twentieth century had much to worry about, but it centered on REAL things: it was about hunting and crops and livestock and hunger, if there was a flood and the food (crops) was washed out. Or if a pet deer "et it" - as they would say, in old-agey lingo, lost long ago but captured in this wonderful book & movie.
It wasn't this...have I been de-friended on FaceBook (FB) and what does so-and-so think about my latest status/video posted, am I making the "right" connections on LinkedIn, have I gotten any "hits" on whatever dating site, and shall I Tweet my location when I go out to dinner with friends?
I don't mean to ridicule people looking for a mate on any online dating service though. I'm more making a general statement about something going on that I see...and it amounts sometimes to these shallow connections and ridiculous things that preoccupy our attention today. And, trust me, it's ALL about attention; our quality of it - or lack thereof - is reflected in the quality of our lives, I do believe.
I could barely stomach the playing of "Farmville" games on FB even before watching this movie, but now it's even more aggravating because I think about how people once had (and, of course, still do) actual REAL farms, from which they made money and subsisted. For the sweet family in "The Yearling" that farm meant life or death to them! And it occurs to me that people even 10 years ago - urban or rural - could turn off their cell phones and computers and actually pay attention to those they loved.
And not be concerned that work was trying to get ahold of them or they might be missing out on some FB status, post or newsfeed. As I tweeted, for the first time the other day, admittedly boring and ridiculous nonsense and then emailed my older brother this comment:
I think this social media shit's gone too far. How does anyone SLEEP?! :)
Maybe that's just me, projecting all over the place as I am wont to do, cuz I have definite sleep issues (among others), and maybe not everyone else does? Maybe everyone else sleeps just fine, like babies - as the saying goes. But, seriously, who does that these days? (Serious question.)
Granted I watch "The Yearling", and don't want to be a woman who has to wash the family's clothes by the creek and who yearns for a well right in her own front yard, to make a hard-scrabble life just a "mite" easier. I wash a couple of dishes, usually ungratefully grumbling, in my stainless steel sink - in my nice heated apartment - while we make dinner on an ultra-modern electric stove-range and am glad I don't live in those times. (Also glad we didn't move to Alaska as originally planned, and tried to live off the land, but that's another blog post!)
Nor do I want to go back to when women (mostly) didn't work outside the home and were - literally - property of their husbands, if they were married, and property of their fathers' if they were too young to be married yet. I work now with a few brothers who are from a very "old school" Christian faith where the women wear head-scarves (cuz hair tempts men, I guess, whatevs) and long skirts and are rarely in the work-place, and men are the without-a-doubt "Providers."
They are sweet, good men and so, despite their anti-homosexual views and a lot of other beliefs I basically find fault with, I have befriended them at work. With some of them, I have honest, self-revealing conversations in which I state my piece and we may disagree but they seem to respect me, even if they still believe that I am a "sinner" and my younger brother, especially, is going to hell.
I let them be and it doesn't really bother me. It's the work-place, whadaya gonna do? One of them said, about our very wonderful gay-friendly company, that he thought he couldn't have worked there even 5 years ago.
Meaning that he couldn't have dealt with the lesbian co-worker who actually talked openly about her partner and then "claimed" to be Christian - and also working for a gay boss. I thought about it a good long while and came back with this zinger, which actually made him laugh: "You know, I couldn't have worked with YOU even 10 years ago!" Meaning that in my more politically fervent days I would have just destroyed him. With my logical arguments that is, not like going postal or anything, don't worry. :)
I would have felt compelled to argue against his anti-lotsa stuff rhetoric and also pro-things I don't believe in - like no real "dating" in their church and what sounds like practically arranged marriages - and I would NOT have tolerated much of what he professes to be his belief, his certainty. And let's don't even open up the abortion-debate (I haven't, at work, I know that much at my old/young age). It would have been brutal - and probably destructive of work relationships - 10 years ago that is. Now I'm like "meh" - you have your beliefs, I have mine and as long as we can respect each other and get work done...
And today I truly understand that for them, their way of life makes sense. There are fewer choices for them, in a way, and it is simpler (more simple?). I only wish life could be more peaceful and simple, for all of us, and I guess what I am saying is that this social media stuff isn't making life any simpler. How are we really reaching each other? How are we connecting, really?!?
But still, I do like me some FaceBook. I caint help it (to quote "The Yearling").
Just help me with this - does anyone feel the same? Like something has gone terribly wrong, somewhere along the way? I'm not talking about our current economic slump that never seems to end, I'm talking about something's gone wrong with our food, with our families, our communities, our relationships, with one another, with our...everything.
No matter what your political orientation, or your degree of fervor. Something's gone wrong, hasn't it? We are not seeing or reaching each other. And can we make it better or do more? Maybe the challenge is met every day that we really look at and hear each other...but it's rare, you know?
But it's fresh in my mind because it was a most intense time, there was a lot going on for me personally and for her too, I think & we were both super-stressed for our own individual reasons. But still I wonder sometimes, if it would have happened differently, if she or I could have handled it better, if the conflict hadn't taken place via email and other electronic communication media....and that is the alleged impetus for this here blog post.
You know, I'm the last thing from a Luddite but there is no TONE on these "social networking" sites we use & so much gets lost in the mix. So much can be misunderstood, misapprehended and just plain f-ed up.
And communication is hard enough as it is. I ought to know - I make my bread and butter by communicating (or trying to) within the wild and wacky world of technology/computer systems.
Witness this recent comment of mine on LinkedIn, for the thread called "Word of the Day: As BA's (Business Analysts) are expected to have excellent communication skills, I request all to post one challenging, meaningful, relevant WORD per BA per day for all to share and digest."
OK maybe I'm a little bit of a hypocrite, blogging about the evils of social media, then posting my own comments but anyways - here's my (slightly abridged) contribution -
Maybe not PARSING the thread properly, but whatevs. I'm tired, after a long day of being a BA, trying to PARSE requirements in the world of chaotic competing demands called the software-development-life-cycle (SDLC).
PARSING–verb (used with object) 1. to analyze (a sentence) in terms of grammatical constituents, identifying the parts of speech, syntactic relations, etc. 1. to describe (a word in a sentence) grammatically, identifying the part of speech, inflectional form, syntactic function, etc. 1. Computers . to analyze (a string of characters) in order to associate groups of characters with the syntactic units of the underlying grammar. Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/parsing
There's no elegant (or any) transition here but....I just finished watching the movie "The Yearling" made in 1946, based on the 1938 Pulitzer Prize winning book written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Starring a yummy young Gregory Peck and washed-out worried (on purpose) Jane Wyman, as his wife. And, of course, Claude Jarman Jr. as young Jody Baxter -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yearling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Jarman,_Jr.
This family living in the backwoods central Florida "scrub" at the start of the twentieth century had much to worry about, but it centered on REAL things: it was about hunting and crops and livestock and hunger, if there was a flood and the food (crops) was washed out. Or if a pet deer "et it" - as they would say, in old-agey lingo, lost long ago but captured in this wonderful book & movie.
It wasn't this...have I been de-friended on FaceBook (FB) and what does so-and-so think about my latest status/video posted, am I making the "right" connections on LinkedIn, have I gotten any "hits" on whatever dating site, and shall I Tweet my location when I go out to dinner with friends?
I don't mean to ridicule people looking for a mate on any online dating service though. I'm more making a general statement about something going on that I see...and it amounts sometimes to these shallow connections and ridiculous things that preoccupy our attention today. And, trust me, it's ALL about attention; our quality of it - or lack thereof - is reflected in the quality of our lives, I do believe.
I could barely stomach the playing of "Farmville" games on FB even before watching this movie, but now it's even more aggravating because I think about how people once had (and, of course, still do) actual REAL farms, from which they made money and subsisted. For the sweet family in "The Yearling" that farm meant life or death to them! And it occurs to me that people even 10 years ago - urban or rural - could turn off their cell phones and computers and actually pay attention to those they loved.
And not be concerned that work was trying to get ahold of them or they might be missing out on some FB status, post or newsfeed. As I tweeted, for the first time the other day, admittedly boring and ridiculous nonsense and then emailed my older brother this comment:
I think this social media shit's gone too far. How does anyone SLEEP?! :)
Maybe that's just me, projecting all over the place as I am wont to do, cuz I have definite sleep issues (among others), and maybe not everyone else does? Maybe everyone else sleeps just fine, like babies - as the saying goes. But, seriously, who does that these days? (Serious question.)
Granted I watch "The Yearling", and don't want to be a woman who has to wash the family's clothes by the creek and who yearns for a well right in her own front yard, to make a hard-scrabble life just a "mite" easier. I wash a couple of dishes, usually ungratefully grumbling, in my stainless steel sink - in my nice heated apartment - while we make dinner on an ultra-modern electric stove-range and am glad I don't live in those times. (Also glad we didn't move to Alaska as originally planned, and tried to live off the land, but that's another blog post!)
Nor do I want to go back to when women (mostly) didn't work outside the home and were - literally - property of their husbands, if they were married, and property of their fathers' if they were too young to be married yet. I work now with a few brothers who are from a very "old school" Christian faith where the women wear head-scarves (cuz hair tempts men, I guess, whatevs) and long skirts and are rarely in the work-place, and men are the without-a-doubt "Providers."
They are sweet, good men and so, despite their anti-homosexual views and a lot of other beliefs I basically find fault with, I have befriended them at work. With some of them, I have honest, self-revealing conversations in which I state my piece and we may disagree but they seem to respect me, even if they still believe that I am a "sinner" and my younger brother, especially, is going to hell.
I let them be and it doesn't really bother me. It's the work-place, whadaya gonna do? One of them said, about our very wonderful gay-friendly company, that he thought he couldn't have worked there even 5 years ago.
Meaning that he couldn't have dealt with the lesbian co-worker who actually talked openly about her partner and then "claimed" to be Christian - and also working for a gay boss. I thought about it a good long while and came back with this zinger, which actually made him laugh: "You know, I couldn't have worked with YOU even 10 years ago!" Meaning that in my more politically fervent days I would have just destroyed him. With my logical arguments that is, not like going postal or anything, don't worry.
I would have felt compelled to argue against his anti-lotsa stuff rhetoric and also pro-things I don't believe in - like no real "dating" in their church and what sounds like practically arranged marriages - and I would NOT have tolerated much of what he professes to be his belief, his certainty. And let's don't even open up the abortion-debate (I haven't, at work, I know that much at my old/young age). It would have been brutal - and probably destructive of work relationships - 10 years ago that is. Now I'm like "meh" - you have your beliefs, I have mine and as long as we can respect each other and get work done...
And today I truly understand that for them, their way of life makes sense. There are fewer choices for them, in a way, and it is simpler (more simple?). I only wish life could be more peaceful and simple, for all of us, and I guess what I am saying is that this social media stuff isn't making life any simpler. How are we really reaching each other? How are we connecting, really?!?
But still, I do like me some FaceBook. I caint help it (to quote "The Yearling").
Just help me with this - does anyone feel the same? Like something has gone terribly wrong, somewhere along the way? I'm not talking about our current economic slump that never seems to end, I'm talking about something's gone wrong with our food, with our families, our communities, our relationships, with one another, with our...everything.
No matter what your political orientation, or your degree of fervor. Something's gone wrong, hasn't it? We are not seeing or reaching each other. And can we make it better or do more? Maybe the challenge is met every day that we really look at and hear each other...but it's rare, you know?
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Ten Reasons That I'm Grateful This Thanksgiving....
OK, I'll no longer pretend that lots of people are reading this blog and it's any kind of serious writing project, so let me subside into senseless navel-gazing like I've maybe always wanted to (if haven't done so, already, in the estimation of some).
I'll just do this list like it's a FaceBook post or my own online journal...on the eve of Thanksgiving 2010. The following Ten Reasons That I'm Grateful This Thanksgiving....
1) Not traveling during this holiday season - HELLO full body scanners and the ongoing cluster at airports! (see links below, some of them tragic video)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/23/fear_pays_chertoff_n_787711.html
http://homelandsecurityus.com/archives/4249
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFoa0LsqVbQ&feature=player_embedded#!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b_glTGOhaA&feature=fvsr
2) Whole Foods turkey - pre-cooked so all we gotta do is put it in the oven tomorrow for a bit - and all the trimmings...it was expensive, but will (hopefully) be worth it. Just the two of us, but we wouldn't have it any other way!
3) Now old (not so new) job at UNI/CARE Systems and how well it's treating me; new job for David at Nelson Publishing and how well he's doing there already -
http://www.nelsonpub.com/
4) Four days off! From both jobs...and we are so grateful for the chance to relax, to sleep in, to dream, talk, and reflect. Remember those days of mine (last year - this time) when not-working. But I was no-wheres near this happy, so god bless the good life-changes since then - and working! (never thought I would say that, but there it is...)
5) Family (mine and David's) is safe, warm, well-fed, and mostly OK, in Seattle and Milwaukee, respectively. And we'll have requisite phone calls with them tomorrow, at some point. Thankful we're all still alive to see another Holiday season, and enjoy each others' company, no matter how far away.
6) Friends: I've actually re-connected (in October, during visit to Milwaukee), with a very close friend with whom I flamed out in a spectacular way during life transitions, already well-documented here. I'm just so glad to have her back, in whatever kind of new post-break-up shape our friendship takes. As clearly told in a recent email exchange, I'd been missing a friend like her, who always has challenged me to see things in new and different ways:
Oh Christie, I just knew you would have some things to tell me about the post [my most recent blog post] that I needed to hear, that would be powerful and insightful, and this is probably why I spontaneously sent it to you. I so crave that kind of interaction, with someone thoughtful and intelligent like you! It just makes me miss your friendship all the more :)
7) Starting to plan a trip to Key West via ferry for NY's eve -
http://ferryservicestokeywest.com/?gclid=CK-4osP7uqUCFU1m7Aodn0bEbQ
If all the hotels aren't already booked. We'll find out this weekend!
8) STILL not wearing pantyhose! And no dry cleaning bills either, despite corporate jobs resumed. And jeans day every Friday...things are just way more relaxed here, dress-code wise. We love it!
9) Tomorrow's weather - 82 degrees high with 0% chance of Precipitation in Sarasota, FL
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/wxdetail/34231?dayNum=1
35 degrees high with Rain/Snow Showers in Milwaukee -
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/wxdetail/53211?dayNum=1
40 degrees high with Rain/Snow Showers in Seattle -
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/wxdetail/98112?dayNum=1
10) Jonathan Franzen - he is my favorite author EVER! (or maybe just at the moment)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129799680
I'll just do this list like it's a FaceBook post or my own online journal...on the eve of Thanksgiving 2010. The following Ten Reasons That I'm Grateful This Thanksgiving....
1) Not traveling during this holiday season - HELLO full body scanners and the ongoing cluster at airports! (see links below, some of them tragic video)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/23/fear_pays_chertoff_n_787711.html
http://homelandsecurityus.com/archives/4249
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFoa0LsqVbQ&feature=player_embedded#!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b_glTGOhaA&feature=fvsr
2) Whole Foods turkey - pre-cooked so all we gotta do is put it in the oven tomorrow for a bit - and all the trimmings...it was expensive, but will (hopefully) be worth it. Just the two of us, but we wouldn't have it any other way!
3) Now old (not so new) job at UNI/CARE Systems and how well it's treating me; new job for David at Nelson Publishing and how well he's doing there already -
http://www.nelsonpub.com/
4) Four days off! From both jobs...and we are so grateful for the chance to relax, to sleep in, to dream, talk, and reflect. Remember those days of mine (last year - this time) when not-working. But I was no-wheres near this happy, so god bless the good life-changes since then - and working! (never thought I would say that, but there it is...)
5) Family (mine and David's) is safe, warm, well-fed, and mostly OK, in Seattle and Milwaukee, respectively. And we'll have requisite phone calls with them tomorrow, at some point. Thankful we're all still alive to see another Holiday season, and enjoy each others' company, no matter how far away.
6) Friends: I've actually re-connected (in October, during visit to Milwaukee), with a very close friend with whom I flamed out in a spectacular way during life transitions, already well-documented here. I'm just so glad to have her back, in whatever kind of new post-break-up shape our friendship takes. As clearly told in a recent email exchange, I'd been missing a friend like her, who always has challenged me to see things in new and different ways:
Oh Christie, I just knew you would have some things to tell me about the post [my most recent blog post] that I needed to hear, that would be powerful and insightful, and this is probably why I spontaneously sent it to you. I so crave that kind of interaction, with someone thoughtful and intelligent like you! It just makes me miss your friendship all the more :)
7) Starting to plan a trip to Key West via ferry for NY's eve -
http://ferryservicestokeywest.com/?gclid=CK-4osP7uqUCFU1m7Aodn0bEbQ
If all the hotels aren't already booked. We'll find out this weekend!
8) STILL not wearing pantyhose! And no dry cleaning bills either, despite corporate jobs resumed. And jeans day every Friday...things are just way more relaxed here, dress-code wise. We love it!
9) Tomorrow's weather - 82 degrees high with 0% chance of Precipitation in Sarasota, FL
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/wxdetail/34231?dayNum=1
35 degrees high with Rain/Snow Showers in Milwaukee -
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/wxdetail/53211?dayNum=1
40 degrees high with Rain/Snow Showers in Seattle -
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/wxdetail/98112?dayNum=1
10) Jonathan Franzen - he is my favorite author EVER! (or maybe just at the moment)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129799680
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Seattle Visit - Post-Op
David & I went "home" to Seattle recently for a short visit. As my friend Sara said in her lovely loopy way "why are you here now?" meaning, why then and not one of the two major Holidays that are currently bearing down on us with every available resource, including my paper Starbucks coffee cup suddenly red and festooned with snowflakes, even though X-mas is still over a month away. Gah!!
And the answer was um, frequent flier miles that we couldn't use during black-out dates, and just wanting to avoid the whole holiday travel-cluster. Or something like that. Maybe I just wanted to get it over with?
The visit was hard and in the aftermath I'm trying to understand why exactly. As a default, I suspect it was probably all my fault. I was in an almost continual state of mild to high anxiety, not unlike when we visited last time, but for wholly different reasons. That last visit, back in August of 2009, I was on the brink of moving away from Milwaukee and changing my life entirely. Since then, despite some struggles along the way, it's been working out really well here in Florida. But I didn't know then how it would all go down and I was terrified by the unknown.
During this visit, it felt strange to be back, on the other side of the unknown, having survived that jump off a cliff but not being so much different or better because of it. I guess I thought or had hoped that we could leave our old lives and transcend the limitations and trivialities involved, inventing something completely brand-new & wonderful. Something I almost couldn't imagine (part of the fear), but definitely more interesting (and peaceful, I think that was the word) than what we had known.
So, this visit I think I felt like a little bit of a let-down, to myself & to others. And my anxiety seemed to be all about the trivial - worry about my still-new job, not being sure of myself there yet, the bonus of David starting a new job as soon as we got back to Sarasota, and basically just wanting to be in a better space when seeing friends & family for the first time in over a year.
Thinking about how they perceived me/us, especially after all our grand pronouncements last visit, about moving to Panama and the new life we were starting, when all we've done so far is land in the sunshine state and get jobs very similar to those we had in Milwaukee, we're just a lot warmer and I don't have to wear pantyhose to work (not a small thing, mind you).
Being somewhat vain, those extra 20 pounds I put on in the interval didn't help. What I felt, on the deepest level, was was something like "am I ok, am I really OK, please tell me I'm ok?!" And something more - about my mother's house, and my family, how well or not well we are all doing, at this stage in our lives, and how it looks to others.
But I'm also newly grasping that this has always been my disease, my problem, and part of the darkness in my soul: anxiety. Worrying WAY too much about what other people think, wanting some kind of approval to bolster my sense of sort-of security. Maybe we all do it, to some extent, maybe I'm not the only one? I thought I sensed a bit of this in my Seattle friends too, but it's sometimes hard to tell: what's the reality and what's the negative/depressive/anxiety-ridden lens through which I am realizing I tend to see the things around me? What is true?
I had a hard time seeing what was true, in Seattle at my mother's house, with the clutter & chaos (and all that it signifies) that I can't even begin to describe because you wouldn't believe me, and her deteriorating health and she's still so young, she could be making so much more of her retirement!
She is my "model of womanhood," as all mothers are to their daughters (not to sound too psychobabbley), and I don't want to end up like that. It makes me sad, and I worry about her, but I feel I can't really do anything to help and there's also a selfish part of me that just doesn't want to. I flee back to Florida, leaving my brothers to deal with it.
My older brother Dave commented upon how strange it is that my sister Stephanie and I both live so far away - she in Texas, me in Florida, which is about as far away from Seattle as you can get in the continental U.S. in case you haven't noticed - and said that he couldn't imagine living anywhere else besides Seattle. Maybe Portland, at a stretch. I sat there in his car speeding to the airport for our flight back to Sarasota and thought/voiced that I was trying to imagine feeling that way. I just couldn't.
I can't relate to feeling like Seattle is my Home anymore, which is somehow strange to say. And I don't know anymore if that's because of the places life has taken me, or my choices, or just the fact that Seattle felt so very cold, dark, damp and muddy to me during this visit; we usually visit during summer, when the weather is better, but I think we've also become rather thin-blooded from living in a much warmer climate.
All I know is that in thinking about this visit, my mother, her house, my whole family and how I breathed a huge sigh of relief upon returning to my mostly clean and definitely uncluttered apartment, I feel guilty.
I watched Grey's Anatomy the other night and totally identified with Alex Karev, when he talked about going home to Iowa and dealing with the chaos of his family. He felt like he didn't do anything - or he didn't do enough - to help them and, worst of all, he didn't stay. If you missed the episode or just for commentary on Alex's situation, you can check out the post on the Grey's Anatomy writers' blog (always a great read) -
http://www.greyswriters.com/2010/11/bill-harper-on-somethings-gotta-give.html
Near the end of the episode, Alex confesses: "I'm the ass who can't stand to be there." That's me too I guess - or that's what I feel like, on a bad day, when the lens of depression/anxiety is sharpened. OK. So. Now you know.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Horse Camp!
This is one of my husband David's favorite stories of all the childhood stories I tell, from time to time. And, like the best of jokes, he never gets tired of the punch line.
The story came to mind one night recently when I was lying there in bed, the clock telling me it was almost 12am on a work night, and I was trying to will myself to sleep. Among all the random things that came to my still not-sleepy-yet mind was the thought about how great it was that I remember the lyrics to all these old camp fire songs. Who remembers this one?
Oh, Mr. Moon, moon
Bright and shiney moon
Won’t you please shine down on me?
Oh, Mr. Moon, moon
Bright and shiney moon
Won't you come out from behind that tree?
Right over there there's a man with a gun -
Dananana - he's gonna shoot you if you try to run
so Mr. Moon, moon
Bright and shiney moon
Won’t you please shine down on
Talk about your shine on
Please shine down on me
(for the both of us - yeah!)
Maybe it's the implied jazz-hands at the end or the fact that you've got to pretend to swing a rifle for the "Dananana" moment, but I still love this song, will sometimes sing it to David, if he gets enough drinks in me and the mood strikes.
This other one came to mind - specific to a certain Pacific Northwest camp*
We're out at Camp Sealth
the campfire of our dreams
where the ocean just ripples
and sparkles and gleams
so come on and join us
for we are never blue
be a member of our happy laughing crew
- you too!
At night round the campfire
we laugh and we sing
give a cheer for Camp Sealth
and make the echoes ring
we'll cheer for our leaders
our counselors campers, too
we'll cheer for you and you and you
we do.
Are there any memories quite like the ones of camp?
For horse camp, at Camp Sealth, I was probably all of nine years old, and I just had no idea of what I was getting into. Enamored of horses since reading Black Beauty and seeing "The Black Stallion" movie, like a lot of girls my age I had those glass or plastic figurines adorning my windowsill or bureau like a badge of belonging to that secret tribe of girlhood. But, as a city kid, I had rarely been subjected to the harsh reality of these actual living breathing huge animals.
When I was finally faced with real horses, embarrassingly, I completely froze. They were so big and scary! We were expected to groom the horses, including picking their hooves! Which involved going around the back of these great big beasts which was a sure invitation for getting kicked, in my fearful opinion. There was a girl - I still remember her name, it was Shane, a strange name for a girl - who did get kicked by a horse, and she STILL wasn't afraid of them. But I was, from the get-go and never got over it. (That's the punch line, in case you missed it.)
I did enjoy parts of horse camp, but the memory I have is mostly of how I was traumatized by not quite being up to the reality of the experience and that it failed to match my expectations of how great it was going to be, that I formulated beforehand, while reading the camp brochures and talking my parents into it. (Thanks mom and dad! And sorry it didn't work out so well, I know that was hard-earned money you spent on spoiled little me.)
It's a really good life lesson, actually. Had I only internalized that lesson then, I hazard to guess I could have saved myself a lot of suffering since, around expectations, knowing your limits, how to handle fear, being in the present etc. But who becomes so sage at the age of nine? Maybe that's expecting too much again. Hmmmm.
At the end of my horse camp experience, I got a patch like everyone else (it being a Camp Fire camp and me being a Camp Fire Girl, it was all about the patches back then). The patch was ocher-yellow with a horse head emblazoned on it, but other campers had ones with a rope around the horse head and mine had none.
I noticed this and it bothered me. Talk about a kick in the self-esteem! I had always done well at most everything...but knew that in this case I didn't deserve much more. I had failed at being a true horse-girl, despite my fantasies and my ambitions. But I did the best that I could with what I had in me at that time. And what a great story it has given me to tell years later!
*It's so cool to see that my very first summer camp is still in operation. See hyperlink below and note the Specialty Programs section which mentions Horse Camp! (in its sugar-coated version)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Sealth
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