As a sixteen-year-old, this was terrifying to me.
I mentioned a couple of days ago that I’m concerned about the Fairfield University student reading that’s happening this evening.
It’ll most definitely go well, but I’m gonna worry a little anyhow, ’cause that’s how I roll. I’m a world-class fretter. I worry about ridiculous things.
Here’s an example. When I was a teenager, I thought the Immaculate Conception was the most terrifying thing in the world. Read more
I wanted to be an astronaut, an archaeologist and a paleobotanist. Because Dr. O'Connell has a nice ring to it.
Last week I was hanging out with a friend and she told me something I couldn’t believe: In an effort to protect the self-esteem of children, some communities are introducing team sports without winners and losers.
This baffles me. How is a person supposed to know what he or she is good at if she doesn’t fail at something? If you really want to play baseball, and you’re not much good at it, isn’t it better for you to know early on? That way you can start working to get better at baseball, or you can decide that all the practice isn’t worth it to you and turn to something else. But failure is very useful because it forces us to confront our weaknesses.
I never really played team sports, but I can clearly remember a time when failure forced me to reevaluate my own aspirations. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. Or any kind of scientist, really. I thought I’d be a good archaeologist. I thought about going into geology, or marine biology, or paleobotany, or anything that required a white lab coat.
This Wednesday brings the fall semester student reading for my MFA program. I’m one of the readers, which is very cool, because I’m going to be trotting out my new novel. Still it’s terrifying, because I never know how I’m going to react when I get to that podium.
As I was explaining to a fellow student over the weekend, it all depends on the space.
I once did a reading with such a loud rushing in my ears that I couldn’t even hear my own voice. I was so relieved to get away from the podium that I left a pile of important papers on it, and only remembered them hours later. But then again, I did a reading this summer and I was fine. Granted, I had a drink in me before I got up to read, but I don’t actually think I needed the drink. That reading was in a smallish crowded room. The first, terrifying reading? That was done from the pulpit of a church.
Wednesday’s reading is being held in a Borders. And while I’ve spent many hours happily shopping in that space, I don’t know how I’ll feel reading there. I guess we will see.
Today I got myself all worked up about going to confession, only to get to the church and find that a wedding had spilled over into the confession time slot. Where usually there were a handful of penitents, there were instead bridesmaids, bagpipers and a band of chilly-looking well-wishers. It was like a sacramental take-over (or, as I like to think of it, a sacra-jacking.)
This is just a ridiculous bit of musing I did the other day when I was wandering down the beach, lugging half my weight in rocks in a bright pink Victoria’s Secret bag. I’m tempted to justify my behavior by explaining what I was doing, but I’ll just leave you with that bizarre visual. Read more
It's so good for a marriage when both partners share a common goal, isn't it?
I finally got to see the Patrick Stewart Macbeth this week. On Monday, I watched it with a friend, who was nice enough to record it and invite me over. We were very excited about this. Being the fancy ladies we are, we snacked on raspberry wine, cheese and crackers while watching Sir Patrick Stewart usurp the throne of Scotland. And while we were watching, there was a thunderstorm. How awesome is that? I felt like we were on a blasted heath! Well, if blasted heaths had wine and cheese and crackers, that is.
In fact, our plans for Monday were doubly awesome, because our husbands have band practice at my friend’s house on Mondays. So the plan was rehearsal/football game for them, Shakespeare for us.
Seemed like a good strategy too, but there were a few bumps in the road.
The boys were asked to keep it down, and they did. For a while. Read more
I quoted him for years, but I never knew who Baldwin was until last fall.
It came as a complete surprise to me that James Baldwin wrote fiction. I had it in my mind that he was an educator, an essayist and an activist. It just hadn’t occurred to me that did all that and wrote fiction.
I first became aware of Baldwin when I was working as an education reporter for the Stamford Times. As part of my duties I had to cover several graduations every spring, three of them in Stamford. The superintendent there was fond of quoting Baldwin’s paradox of education from the writer’s 1963 A Talk to Teachers. The super included the exact same quote from Baldwin at each of the graduations every single year. I must have heard it 15 times.
I got hip to the super’s graduation speech tricks by the second year. Rather than look up the paradox of education again and again and again, and rather than try to take down the whole, lengthy quote during the graduation speech, I simply printed out the quote and kept it in my desk at work:
The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish.
I grew pretty familiar with the paradox of education as I tried to gracefully work it into three separate graduation stories every June. So last year, when a professor, Kim McLarin, mentioned Baldwin during the first workshop for my MFA program, I snapped to attention. James Baldwin? A-talk-to-teachers Baldwin? Paradox-of-education Baldwin? We couldn’t be talking about the same Baldwin, could we?
Now, after having read Another Country and read more about Baldwin, I’m impressed by all the things Baldwin did. He was an activist for civil rights, he wrote fervently about racial and sexual issues and he was a prolific and eloquent author.
Below the break is the craft essay I wrote for Kim about plot in Another Country.
I love to shop. Love to shop. For clothing, for shoes, for hats, for accessories – I love it. But here’s the thing. I don’t like to spend money, and going to the mall bums me out. It could be the canned air, or all the people, or the cheaply made merchandise, offered in every size and color for too much money so that for the right price, every girl can look the same this season.
This hat makes the wearer look like an angler fish.
So I do the bulk of my shopping at discount stores, consignment places, tag sales, and Goodwills. I love the hunt, and I love the prices, and I love the fact that I experience no guilt whatsoever after a shopping trip. A trip to the mall will put me in a funk for a few hours, but a good vintage buying jag? That will put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. The act of buying a 50-year-old hat in good condition for less than $3 gives me chills, even if I hate the hat
Here’s another weird thing. While I love to buy and wear clothing, I hate storing it. I ruthlessly clear my closet out twice a year. Haven’t worn it in a year? It’s out of here. Doesn’t fit? Gone. Don’t like it? Well, what the heck is it doing in there anyhow? I can’t stand clutter. I hate it. It hurts my soul. I like to know what’s in my closet. If it’s packed with things I don’t wear, well then, I won’t be able to find anything.
So I don’t know why this idea didn’t occur to me earlier: I’m goin’ on eBay! Read more
I teach at the local community college. But one day a year, at my department head’s behest, I teach three workshops of high school students at the college’s high school journalism symposium. This is my fourth year of teaching the workshop, and every year I kind of dread it.
I have to get up earlier than usual, I’m not used to dealing with high school students, and I never know what kinds of kids are going to be walking into my workshop. Plus, despite the fact that I’ve been standing in front of a class twice a week for the last few years, teaching gives me a wicked case of stage fright. Even if I’m teaching kids I’ve been working with for years.
So needless to say, the high school journalism symposium gives me palpitations. Every year, I’m awake all night before the event. I worry about everything. I’m not sure if what I say will be interesting to the students, I’m not sure if I’m going to make myself look like an idiot and I don’t know if I’m going to have a disciplinary problem on my hands.
But you know, it’s never as bad as I’m afraid it’s going to be. I think I’ve only had two belligerent high schoolers in twice as many years. For the most part, they’re respectful, cooperative and fun. I’m almost always sad to see them leave at the end of my workshop. They ask good questions. One of the best ones I heard today came from a student who has been on her high school newspaper a month. We were talking about interviews, and she asked me if I’m ever scared when I’m about to interview someone.
Yes, I told her. I’m always scared before an interview. Without exception. I get butterflies before I make a phone call. I have to take a deep breath before I go into someone’s office to ask them a few questions. I am always, always nervous. Because you never know what that interview might turn into.
It’s kind of like teaching, actually. And usually – like teaching – the interview goes way better than I thought it would.
I’m sort of annoyed with myself about this. Last night, I spent money I don’t have on this dress.
Why? Because it wasn’t too expensive and the site offered free shipping, sure. But mostly because it recalled the mid-’90s. It looks like a costume from “My So-Called Life,” or something that the lead singer of the Cranberries would have worn.
That’s ridiculous, because I didn’t even like “My So-Called Life” or the Cranberries in the ’90s. In fact, I didn’t really enjoy the mid-’90s at all.
I was in high school, and I was so very, very bad at high school. I was awkward, I was sheltered, and I was just becoming aware that there was a world outside my own small life.
That world was both terrifying and intriguing. It was like Shakespeare’s Green World, a land of fairies, magic and danger As a teen, I had no idea how to get out of my own world and into that one, and I was keenly aware that I was missing out. Things were happening out there. Things I would have enjoyed.
In short, I felt the way our poor neutered cat does when we don’t let him outside.
Yet I’m always drawn back to that era. I love the music. I love the flat hairstyles. I love the slouchy hobo-chic clothes. I love the ugly, ugly shoes. I remember, in 1993, looking at an ad in Vogue Magazine. Featured was an anorexic-looking model wearing a shapeless gray dress and unlaced combat boots. Her only accessory was a plastic barrette, which was sliding out of her limp bob toward the floor. And my 15-year-old self thought, “That is so classic. It will never go out of style.”
Dear God. I just bought a dress that recalls that ad.
Chris Rock had a theory about this. He said that we all have a soft spot for the music (or fashion, or whatever) that emerged when we were first getting laid. That exact explanation doesn’t apply to me. I spent my high school years doing homework, chores, working at a vacuum shop and attending CCD. Still, Rock is onto something. Maybe people are always nostalgic for the era when they first became aware of the world.
Maybe when people try to bring back the fashions and music of their youth , they’re actually looking for a do-over of sorts. Maybe they are trying – as adults – to get a taste of an era they couldn’t quite grasp when they were teenagers.
Maybe, on some level, I believe that this dress is my do-over.
It’s still ridiculous. I have no idea where I’m going to wear the thing. But maybe I’ll at least get some sweet combat boots to wear with it. I always wanted a pair of those.