The things you learn...

I just returned from an outing with some people from the Tuesday night class and my advisor (I attended again this week because I wanted to be there for the conclusion of the Wallace Stevens discussion) and afterward, about four of us began a conversation that resumed at a neighborhood bar. It was fun and revealing. I hung back. I've never had an after class session with my advisor and others (in this case, all women), so I had to learn to negotiate the dynamic.

There was nothing unpleasant about it, but I sensed in myself that old thing that says "if there are other women here, I am the least interesting..." It happens in a variety of scenarios. In any case, one tidbit of the night. I learned that my advisor has played bass and guitar in rock bands. He just seemed like the type... I was in no way surprised.

I think it helps that I have been training myself not to shy away from scenarios in which I fear I have nothing to offer. It's all about perspective.

In other news, My smallish department at work today had a lot of fun dressing up as the president (my boss) and secret servicemen (me and my peers). The best part? Playing "Hail to the Chief" on a little boom box that we carried around whenever my boss had to go to the restroom.

Classic.

oh, and by the way... i heart this man.

What if I turned my attention only to what concerns me? To what I can actually do something about? How much more effective would I be?

Deletions

I decided to remove the essay from my thesis. Conceptually, it was fine, and to a degree, representative of my grad school career--but ultimately, not something I was willing to give the attention it needed. Sarah's counsel was clarifying. She expressed her opinion that the thesis should be what I've worked on. The product. The essay was something I turned in during the course of a class I took, but it's more of a comment on the work. I think the thesis will be cleaner, streamlined without this clunky thing and the end.

Initially, I hesitated because I wondered if I didn't want to cut it out of laziness or cowardice. But I'm sick of my own overly confessional bent in writing. That essay just gives away the milk and the cookies.

Fundamentally Alone

as i lay in bed last night, i realized i am alone. there was something powerful about it. grief is polarizing. it's more clarifying than i remembered. but this particular mourning is subtle. and more consuming than the violent despair i have experienced in the past.

my mother told me last night that my sister Crystal cries every day. i called her tonight--she said she's wanted to talk to me and Caryl, but couldn't bear the thought of the sadness that talking to us would bring--talking to people in as much pain as she is in.

but we all miss him differently. i cannot know, fully, the associations and implications of my sisters' collective and individual sadness. i can barely get my mind around my own.

sadness is the wrong word. melancholy is not it, either.

it's the whole world, all of a sudden.

Anxiety & Melancholy

Things have stepped up at work. I'm trying to get my bearings--I'm grateful for the challenge--but I'm nervous. And I think it's appropriate to feel that way. I've had to remember to pray, to ask God for help when I feel that I am out of my depth. That has been so good to remember. I can ask for help. Not only from my capable coworkers, but from my ultimate helper.

But I'm also nervous about the thesis. And the Independent Study. Last night I attended my advisor's Tuesday night class--the class I would have been in had the IS not been approved. It was refreshing to discuss a selected reading with other people again. I swear. I feel like Emily Dickinson tucked away at the homestead. An Ivory Tower Sylvia Plath writing in solitude. There is some romance to it--toiling away alone with only one voice (that of my advisor) directing my revisions...but it is not without its challenges.

I enjoyed the class; I'm going back next week so I can benefit from the conclusion of the discussion about Wallace Stevens (I've decided to make him part of my Independent Study since one aim of that course is to engage a poet with whom I'm not familiar). Solitary confinement aside, I'm glad I'm doing what I'm doing--on my own terms.

Now for the sadness. I am steeling myself against the encroachment of a real melancholy--my grief for my father a steady ache, and something else, too, something I don't understand, settling in.

Where the food is delicious, but the contempt for the customer is unpalatable...

V and I went to The Golden West Cafe for breakfast this morning. This place is a consistent favourite in Hampden and is famous for, along with its good food, its "absolutely no substitutions" policy. Fine. You are also forbidden to talk on your cell, for even a second, in the dining room. If you get a call you are expected to take it outside or into the restroom (per their Web site). Okay... a bold move in this day and age; I can respect it.

But I cannot respect what happened to V this morning when she asked about the pumpkin pancakes she saw advertised on their Web site. She was told that they were "part of a fall menu we haven't rolled out yet." So V jokingly replied "but it's almost November." At which point our server informed her that they start making items available when they "are ready and not before" and that it was "____'s restaurant, not mine, m'am."

Uncalled for. Absolutely rude, esp. since V was a) joking, and b) made an entirely credible point. It is almost November. By my likes (and most other people's) you start rolling out your fall wares in late september when fall begins, so that you can maximize the potential in October, which is decidely fall. November is a no man's land, practically winter, for goodness' sake.

And c) it was on their Web site.

This place is the kind where you don't even have the recourse of complaining to the management because it is clear that the management supports this attitude. It practically requires it of its staff. The message is this: If you're eating at the Golden West Cafe, you are lucky to be there.

No thanks.

Rewarding

My Advisor came over to my place this evening to discuss the revisions I poured my little heart into all week. The verdict? Categorical success. It seems that allowing myself to get a little unhinged--to leverage images more and weed out the tendency toward exposition made everything better.

I had been feeling daunted all week. I was convinced that all my efforts were tantamount to failure--that the University was absolutely going to reject my thesis. I worried that I had just gone off in an equally bad direction with the changes I made.

This is not to say that there isn't more work to do; there is. But we had an excellent, incredibly helpful discussion. I can see where to go and how to get there. Oh, I am so so glad that I have this man's sensibilities working for me and shaping this collection of work that summarizes the last two years of my life.

So, now here I am. Just me in front of the page again.... suddenly reminded of an Adrienne Rich poem (and I am not a fan of Adrienne Rich) in which she wrote I dreamed you were a poem I wanted to show someone.

Just Call Me A Revising Fool...

Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody" blaring, and me just unlocking the inner core of what I really mean. Sans decorum. Makes for good poetry.

Fits and Starts

I have managed to get some revising done this weekend in addition to sending my advisor two replacement poems for the ones I decided earlier in the week to eliminate. I actually have some more time now anyway, though. We are not getting together afer my class on Monday, but later in the week, as it turns out. I envision that meeting going something like this:

I will furnish several, versioned copies of about 5 poems and I'll be prepared to carry much more of the conversation this time around as he did the lion's share of the talking last Monday. We'll compare the revisions to the copy of the thesis I gave him a month ago and make hard copy edits to them, while we talk.

Also, I'll propose a new arrangement that makes sense, thematically. Right now the order is totally arbitrary.

Slightly under the weather, so maybe by mid-week, I'll be sailing on the high seas of literary effort.

Jung

My youngest sister called me last night at about 12:30. She needed to talk. Our grandfather (my father's father), I learned earlier yesterday, passed. Even after the hopeful sign of his waking up from his unconscious state a week ago, he did not survive.

We talked for about an hour and 20 minutes about this new onslaught of sadness. She was the closest to him of the three of us girls. They were buddies. She called him all the time.They laughed together and had a bond that I certainly never approached with him. This is not to say that I am not sad, but I also know that I am not experiencing the same grief as my sister. My middle sister's emotions are opaque. I know she grieves for my father--I have no doubt she registers, significantly, the loss of our grandfather. But she is so even-tempered.

When the doctor told us that my father was brain dead, Crystal began to cry immediately. But she never made a sound. Caryl and my mother sounded like wounded wolves. My own tears were those of someone prepared for the worst news. They were acquiescent. Not all together muffled, but not overwrought.

I'm glad she called. I was having trouble sleeping, though I had been in bed for 2 hours by that time. Even if I had been in the grips of R.E.M., I would have wanted her voice intruding. I told her when our father died to always call me if she felt untethered. To not worry about any ridiculous notion of time or convenience.

We lost both of the last men in our lives, just a day apart really. My grandfather fell, and in effect was lost to us the day after we lost my father. I am not worried about myself. I am 33. But my sisters are 21 and 23, which is very very young, it occurs to me just now.

So now I have moved on to Jung. The animus. The anima. The shadow and the conscious self.

Talking with Devika Keral is one of the best experiences in the world. The woman just gets it, gives the best feedback around, and is incredibly solid--both in grasping the nuances of what is being said as well as understanding all the practical implications. It was so good for my soul to hear her voice.

Had an awesome exchange with C, of poetry group/grad school affiliation, as well. We went to Pazo for a much-belated birthday drinks and desserts celebration. A great talk (of course)--and she got hit on by a gentleman (sadly not one she found attractive) as we were leaving the establishment. Me he gave a business card about his concierge service. That's fine... he won't be getting a call from either of us, for business or pleasure, in all likelihood.

Still need to get down to the business of some solid revisions. Hasn't happened yet. That's okay. I suspect there will be a windfall of activity tomorrow after work and on Saturday.

The latest development? My sudden overwhelming desire to have a child. Classic grief response.

feeling like i'm developing a little touch of something. well, i'm not giving in to it. this is just not a good time to be coming down with anything. so there.

feeling less powerless about the thesis today. i made some decisions then took actions based on those decisions. i'm eliminating, altogether, a couple of problematic poems and only giving energy to those that i think are worth working on. i'm also adding a piece that really should have been included from the beginning. the page requirement won't be affected by the deletions, and it will just be better all the way around if i can just cut the crap. literally.

after work i headed to the library in search of a few Wallace Stevens essays. No such luck, but i did find a pretty exhaustive volume of his verse. in addition to reading Jung for my Independent Study, I'm brushing up on Stevens so i'll be in the loop when I visit my advisor's class next week (the classI would have been in had the I S not been approved).

listening to the dave matthews band's "let you down." i still love his plaintive forgive me... oh, oh forgive me...

Objective Correlative

"The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." --T. S. Eliot

I have been tasked with finding the objective correlative for several poems and I don't know if I can do it. I suddenly feel very discouraged. I don't think I can get these poems where they need to go.

I know one thing. I am sick. and tired. of the message I keep getting. I'm sick of putting a lid on the most primitive, basic parts of myself. I can't stuff those things in anymore. I think my art is locked up because I'm locked up. The writing is so... sublimated...it's boring. It's wearying. I can't get at what I want to say because like all my deepest longings, it's locked behind glass for some other time.

I'm going to bed.

Met for two hours with my advisor last night after Thesis class and as a result got home at about 11. He confirmed my instincts where the writing is concerned--that is to say we agree about which pieces work less well (or not at all) and why. We will meet again in a week. Same deal, after class. Then our gatherings will become a bit more pointed. In a couple of weeks we'll meet at my place, per my suggestion (going out for coffee and/or drinks is starting to add up), and have a long work meeting in which we not only discuss poems, but talk about what's beyond the thesis process. I figure there'll be no time limit (except the one we impose on ourselves) and no tab to settle. We can drink what I've already bought! Between now and next Monday, though, I need to pull a rabbit out of my hat. I have so much revising to do.

It was good to be back in the swing of things at work yesterday. My department contributed to a very thoughtful gift and a couple of cards for me. Such gestures of sympathy and support. I got a few lovely e-mails too--one or two from people outside my department. Everyone in my life has just been so great, I don't know if I'll ever be able to fully express my gratitude.

Well. The Banana-Flax and Machta Green Tea cereal I've been eating is nearly gone so I think that means it's time to head out... Have a tremendous day, everyone.

I didn't have the energy to post about this before, but the day after my father passed, his father fell down some stairs, was taken to the hospital where he was assessed to be in critical condition, and put on life support. He had a very bad gash to the head and as a result has been unconscious for several days. Needless to say, he missed my father's funeral. No one could really guess at his chances for survival; things didn't look good. I prepared myself for the worst.

Today he woke up. My sisters went to see him, and though he couldn't talk back to them, he was alert and able to communicate through hand squeezes and with his eyes that he understood them.

In other news, I went shopping at my beloved Whole Foods (the first time in nearly 2 months) and got two varieties of leafy kale (since I'm not doing spinach right now), butternut squash, a red yam, strawberries, and papaya, along with some other goodies.

Heard back from my advisor, who had been in and out of town, and essentially hadn't gotten most of my messages. We meet on Monday after my Thesis class. I'm incredibly relieved. On so many levels.

When I returned home, somewhat late last night, I was wrung out. So tired that sleep came easily and fast. Sarah's post about the funeral is a beautiful chronicle of the day, so I won't duplicate the effort. I couldn't anyway.

My sisters and mother and I pored over countless pictures of my dad the night before, and I saw him again, as a younger man, before he was sick at all--and then later, pictures of him when he began to be ill--he looked like a different man. His diabetes and renal failure (he was on dialysis) ravaged his body and weathered his face. He looked so small the last 7 years of his life.

The pictures of him, my mother, and my sisters at Crystal's graduation in May break my heart. These are the pictures I would not be in because I was so upset about other things that were going on that day. I remember walking away and my father calling out to me to come and be in them, to stand with the family, and me calling back no, that I didn't want to. It reminds me of a John Mayer lyric ...should have smiled in that picture if it's the last that I'll see of you...
Given his health, it was a miracle that my dad even made it to Vermont. He looks so old in the photos from that weekend. He was only 55.

We decided, as a family, to donate his organs for transplant and medical research. His liver came at just the right time to save someone else's life. I know he would have wanted us to make that choice. I know he would be pleased. And even though my parents' marriage was dissolved, my mother arranged everything for him as a wife would have. God had done such a healing work in their relationship--they had become friends and were closer and more emotionally intimate than they had been when they were married. My mother told me that he'd shared with her, not that long ago, that he missed her. I know what he meant--I understand the nuances of the word missed he implied.

My mother's tears for him were the tears a woman cries when she has lost the man she loves. They had been together for nearly 30 years. When she wept over him in the hospital, her sobs were guttural, unhinged... and what she told us she remembered in that moment is how they would hold hands when they first met. I saw everything so differently. She had been in love with him for so long, and part of her always would be. The passion of their early courtship was still something she could feel. I realized. She had this man's children--this man who has died, and it humanized them both to me. I understood that my grief, however deep, however real, is completely different from hers.

He still loved her. She knew that. What was between them is something only they understood.

So when the soldiers at Quantico handed my mother my dad's flag and thanked her for his faithful service, I saw that this was exactly as it should be. She deserved his flag. No other person had the claim on him that she did. Before we left him, she put her hands on his coffin, her tears unchecked. It was so hard to leave him there like that--under the pavillion, waiting to be put into the earth, with our last letters to him tucked into his casket.

Exceedingly, Abundantly

"In that day I will restore David's fallen tent. I will repair its broken places, restore its ruins,
and build it as it used to be, so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name," declares the LORD, who will do these things.

"The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when the reaper will overtake the plowman and the planter by the one treading the grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills. I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine. they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them," says the LORD your God.

Amos 9:11-15

It's the night before the funeral and I am frustrated. Posting from my mom's house, which is just such a chaotic space. She's been on the phone for at least an hour while at the same time trying to make a photo collage to display at the church tomorrow. Meanwhile, both of my sisters are also on the phone. It's just too much talking all at once. There's hardly any place to sit down in peace. I just wish I could disengage a little, but I can only achieve that kind of thing in my own space.

I continue to feel stressed because I've sent my advisor several e-mails over the last week, all of which are program-related, and I'm just not getting any type of response. I don't get it. I don't understand this blatant refusal to answer direct questions. I'm trying not to let it mess with my head too much, but it's getting hard not to take it personally.

I sent off the Nietzsche response paper to my advisor (who has been M.I.A. for days now) and I have moved on to Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving. I engaged Thus Spake Zarathustra from the vantage point of N's rejection of the doctrine of sublimation as I mentioned I would. It turned out okay, I think.

Fromm's contention is that the theory and the practice of love, and the necessity to be a master of each of these realms is what prevents most people from ever reaching their full capacity to love another. Who has time? Oh, and drug addiction and the obssesive quest for an orgasm? One in the same. It makes sense. The man is not anti-sex or pro drugs, he's simply pointing out that all forms of release and high are our attempts to stave off isolation.

Speaking of wonderful books, Catchka's birthday presents [to me] arrived today. Emerson's Collected Journals and Jane Austen's last completed work, Sandition. I could not be more thrilled... now I just have to make time to read them!

After I got home tonight I set about putting some things away on my bookshelf and I came across the birthday card my father sent me this year, written in his shaky script. I had been looking for it for days, so of course I found it in an unguarded moment, when it was the last thing on my mind. In it, he said he loved me and signed it as he did every card, with the year in quotes "06."

I attended the wedding of a friend on Saturday. A sacrament of hope. The ceremony was appropriately sombre (it rained tears outside). The reception was crowned by sunlight. Everything is burial and resurrection.