Monthly Archives

February 2012

I am an inconvenient woman…
songs/poetrythings I like

I am an inconvenient woman…

 

Lately I’ve been falling in love with Marge Piercy’s poems all over again…

An excerpt from “The nuisance”

I am an inconvenient woman.
I’d be more useful as a pencil sharpener or a cash register.
I do not love you the way I love Mother Jones or the surf coming in
or my pussycats or a good piece of steak.
I love the sun prickly on the black stubble of your cheek.
I love you wandering floppy making scarecrows of despair.
I love when you are discussing changes in the class structure
and it jams my ears and burns in the tips of my fingers…

I love you with my arms and my legs
and my brains and my cunt and my unseemly history.
I want to tell you about when I was ten and it thundered.
I want you to kiss the crosshatched remains of my burn.
I want to read you poems about drowning myself
laid like eggs without shells at fifteen under Shelley’s wings
I want you to read my old loverletters.

I want you to want me
as directly and simply and variously
as a cup of hot coffee.
To want to, to have to, to miss what can’t have room to happen.
I carry my love for you
around with me like my teeth
and I am starving.

February 28, 2012
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amputeebodydisability

doctor

One of the by-products of my recent-ish divorce is that I just barely got my own health insurance policy.  It’s the first time that I’ve had insurance on my own (not as the result of being a dependent of someone else), and seems a pretty big step for me in being financially and legally independent.

So recently I saw my new doctor for the first time.  I went specifically to get a prescription for some changes to my prosthesis.  When we met I explained to him exactly what I needed, gave him the contact info for my prosthetist, etc.  I didn’t expect for him to examine me, nor did I even sit on the exam table in the room.  Also, when he queried me about whether I was up to date on my vaccinations, I could tell that my reply left him a little bit speechless.

“How do you know so much about this stuff? He asked as he gestured to a screen on his computer showing checkboxes for my immunization record–just after I’d given him a 10-minute spiel about the Tdap vaccine.

“I’m a medical historian, with a strong research interest in resurgent disease.” I replied.

I must say, there’s something about going into a doc’s office with some confidence, knowing exactly what I need and how to get it, that tends to offset any anxiety that I feel from having had so much medical trauma in the past.  Perhaps it’s a bit intimidating for the physicians that I interact with–but I think they tend to find it rather refreshing among the garden-variety sore throats and coughs that they see all day long…

February 28, 2012
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things I like

Twitter Weekly Digest for @janaremy, 2012-02-24

February 24, 2012
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Random

it is your nature…

When I was active in the LDS church and trying to make sense of the challenges of my life, one talk by an Apostle resonated with me particularly deeply. It was by Hugh B. Brown and used a metaphor of a currant bush that was pruned so it might produce better fruit. In that talk Brown discussed some professional opportunities that he lost as a result of his adherence to the LDS church and praised God for not letting him be successful and affluent. He wrote:

I was so bitter that I threw my cap and my saddle brown belt on the cot. I clinched my fists and I shook them at heaven. I said, “How could you do this to me, God? I have done everything I could do to measure up. There is nothing that I could have done—that I should have done—that I haven’t done. How could you do this to me?” I was as bitter as gall.

And then I heard a voice, and I recognized the tone of this voice. It was my own voice, and the voice said, “I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to do.”…
And now, almost fifty years later, I look up to him and say, “Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.”

I was reminded of that talk as I read a Marge Piercy poem this morning…

A work of artifice

The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have gown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy.
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree.
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers.
the hands you
love to touch.

I wonder sometimes, if my life had held different contours and experiences, would I have been a statuesque tree on a hillside?

Or is there something more beautiful to a life where one’s branches have been clipped (over and over again), and yet there are blossoms every spring?

February 21, 2012
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bodyfood

when I was in college…

My kids love to hear the story of when I had scurvy in college–perhaps because it’s a story that doesn’t seem to jive so well with the health-conscious mother than they know now (or maybe, because they see it as a story of my experimentation and learning)…(or maybe it’s just funny for them to think of their Mom suffering from a pirate-disease)…

When I was in college I was frugal. I had enough money from what my parents gave me for school and what I earned from working as a cashier in the university bookstore to meet all of my daily needs, but I also loved watching the money accrue in my bank account so I was always challenging myself to cut corners and save more money.

At the time, I was renting a room from a family that I ate dinner with nightly, so I provided my own breakfast and lunch. As such, I learned that I could spend only $10/week on groceries if I ate toast for breakfast and baked potatoes for lunch. So that’s what I did everyday. Toast-potatoes-dinner. This family loved to cook Italian, so dinner was often pasta with a cheese sauce or a seafood sauce.

And soon enough I started having nosebleeds. The nosebleeds eventually got so persistent that it was difficult for me to attend my college lectures, because my nose would start bleeding and I’d have to walk out of class to take care of it. And often the bleeding would take so long to cease that class would be over by the time I could return.

So I asked a friend that was doing a medical internship for some advice about the nosebleeds, and he consulted a doctor that he worked with and that doctor suggested that I was probably suffering from scurvy, or at least a vitamin deficiency of some sort due to my cheap diet.

And of course once I began eating some fruits and veggies again, the nosebleeds cleared up.

Since then I’ve tried some pretty strange dietary experiments. I’ve fasted for healing, I’ve gone vegan, and I’ve beefed up my protein intake for body-sculpting. I’ve also gone through periods with so little money that I’ve eaten mostly cheap starches for a few days until there was another paycheck in the bank. But even with all of that, I’ve managed to steer clear of another bout with scurvy. Once was enough for me.

February 19, 2012
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let’s set the world on fire….
songs/poetrythings I like

let’s set the world on fire….

Loving the acoustic rendition of this song (I do love me some piano), and the refrain…celebrating the warmth and brightness of my life.

Tonight
We are young
So let’s the set the world on fire
We can burn brighter
Than the sun

Carry me home tonight
Just carry me home tonight
Carry me home tonight
Just carry me home tonight

The world is on my side
I have no reason to run
So will someone come and carry me home tonight
The angels never arrived
But I can hear the choir
So will someone come and carry me home

Tonight
We are young
So let’s set the world on fire
We can burn brighter
Than the sun

So if by the time the bar closes
And you feel like falling down
I’ll carry you home tonight

February 17, 2012
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things I like

Twitter Weekly Digest for @janaremy, 2012-02-17

February 17, 2012
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wearing my heart on my sleeve (or not)…
deep thoughts

wearing my heart on my sleeve (or not)…

photoFor a good long time (most of the life of this blog), I wrote a lot of super-gooey happy stuff about my spouse and my kids and and my canoeing and my schooling and just about everything else wonderful I could think to write about.  Of course there’ve been some hard times, but the balance has been tilted towards the joyful/remarkable/magical.

I think, since my divorce, it’s been a bit harder for me to be so celebratory in this space.  It’s true that I still tend to post a lot of happiness here, but I think it’s toned down a bit.

Now it seems a bit harder for me to celebrate my own successes or happinesses, because I fear it would hurt those of my friends who aren’t experiencing those themselves.  When there is so much unemployment in my social circle, it’s hard to feel joy in having job security.  When a friend’s car is becoming unreliable and they don’t have the resources to fix it, I’m a bit embarrassed by the two new-ish cars in my driveway.  When I hear of a health diagnosis that’s the worst-case-scenario rather than the best-one, it’s hard to find pleasure in my own health.  When others have lost love in their lives, I don’t want to cause pain by speaking about my own romantic adventures.  Perhaps a lot of that sort of feeling comes to a head on a day like today, where half of my friends are celebrating their relationships and the other half are decrying a holiday that’s so overwrought/commercialized/saccharine…

Maybe it’s because I know (all too well) what it’s like to be alone on a special holiday, to face financial uncertainty, to get bad results from the lab tests, and to have news that wounds so deep inside that it takes days for the sun to shine again, that I’m feeling for friends who are experiencing those now.  And I wish I could find a way to salve the hurts and difficulties and make things easier again…

On Sunday at sunset I stood at the top of Griffith Park and looked over the whole huge city of Los Angeles and saw more stories and people and places than I could hardly process in a glance.  I’m sure there was all kinds of horror and heartbreak out there in the city, but I couldn’t see it in that moment.  For me, it was simply beautiful.

But…I wouldn’t know how beautiful it was to be there and to see that if I hadn’t also had days where I couldn’t ambulate well enough to get out of the house, or times when I didn’t have the resources to travel across the city, or moments when I didn’t have a person to share it with walking at my side.

February 14, 2012
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what love…
songs/poetry

what love…

pink lisanthus

I’ve posted this poem before, but it seemed apropos for today, too  :)

If they come in the night

by Marge Piercy

Long ago on a night of danger and vigil
a friend said, Why are you happy?
He explained (we lay together
on a hard cold floor) what prison
meant because he had done
time, and I talked of the death
of friends. Why are you happy
then, he asked, close to
angry.

I said, I like my life. If I
have to give it back, if they
take it from me, let me only
not feel I wasted any, let me
not feel I forgot to love anyone
I meant to love, that I forgot
to give what I held in my hands,
that I forgot to do some little
piece of the work that wanted
to come through.

Sun and moonshine, starshine,
the muted grey light off the waters of the bay at night, the white
light of the fog stealing in,
the first spears of the morning
touching a face
I love. We all lose
everything. We lose
ourselves. We are lost.

Only what we manage to do
lasts, what love sculps from us;
but what I count, my rubies, my
children, are those moments
wide open when I know clearly
who I am, who you are, what we
do, a marigold, an oakleaf, a meteor,
with all my senses hungry and filled
at once like a pitcher with light.

February 14, 2012
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standing
deep thoughts

standing

For the past few weeks I’ve been sitting in a chair at a computer for so many hours a day that my body started rebelling. I knew I couldn’t keep it up–it was getting too hard to stay in the same position for so many hours straight. So I decided maybe it was time to experiment with a standing desk.

I decided that I shouldn’t buy a standing desk if I wasn’t sure whether I would use it, so I kluged together a desk at about the right height with a milk crate and a few other odd-n-ends from around my office. The first few days of standing went really well–I liked how it felt to get out of my chair and the change kept me focused and productive.

But I noticed one major problem. I do a lot of one-on-one meetings with faculty, and they became awkward if I was standing at my desk instead of sitting. But I needed to stand to work at my computer (usually I’m demo-ing some software with faculty during our meetings, so I turn my big iMac screen so we can both see it as I’m talking with them). The person I was meeting with invariably felt like they needed to stand up, too. It made our interactions less personable and chatty. I noticed that they apologized often about ‘interrupting me,’ even if we had an appointment to meet together.

On Day four of my standing desk my left knee began to bother me, an IT-band issue, apparently. By Day 5 it pushed me into a chair more often–the tightness in my knee becoming more unbearable as the day wore on.

So the upshot of the experience is that I’m still unsure whether I’ll invest in a standing desk. I think it feels good to have a different workspace, especially one that gets me out of my desk chair. But I think the same types of problems that I have with sitting all day will also happen if I stand all day (perhaps even more so, since I’m standing on one organic leg and one bionic one).

What about you, have you experimented with a standing desk? If so, did you find that it worked well, or did you lose interest in it once the novelty wore off?

February 12, 2012
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deep thoughtslove

because it’s that time of year…

Since it’s almost V-Day, I’ve got romance on the brain…

Last year around this time, my friends helped me to create a list of criteria for a future partner.  It was a fun exercise to see what they hoped for me, to add a few of my own desires, and to comment when I think they missed the mark.

Based on my dating experiences since then, I’ve added a few things to my list:

  • I’d like my partner to be flexible and adaptable.  To be the kind of person that when you take a wrong turn when you’re heading somewhere, doesn’t panic or get angsty.  But who sees it as an opportunity to explore somewhere that neither of you had anticipated.
  • Enjoying good food is a must.  Having an adventurous palate and knowing one’s way around the kitchen is also pretty important.  Because I get so much pleasure from creating and eating food, I want a partner who can appreciate the effort that goes into preparing a meal, and who enjoys the subtleties of spice and fresh ingredients.
  • I’d like for my partner to be a naturally happy person, whose default mood tends toward the positive and who radiates enthusiasm.  While we all have our down days, I like being around people who feel hopeful, and for whom negative experiences are an exception rather than the norm.  They should smile often and easily, and even be prone to fits of occasional giggling.
  • I also want my partner to be passionate.  About their life, their work, their hobbies, their goals, and their future.  Ok, and a little passion for me should be somewhere in there, too  :)

One thing that was a surprise to me this past year, was the realization that dating inside of the ivory tower isn’t a necessity–because for a long time I only imagined myself with another professor-type.  Since then I’ve learned that I spend so much time with other academics, it’s actually quite refreshing to get outside of that bubble.  But…on the flip side, I’ve found that some of the non-academic people that I’ve dated don’t like hanging out with intellectuals, or are intimidated by a group of friends who all have advanced degrees.  So I’d have to say that anyone I date that’s from outside that world, needs to also appreciate that my social circle tends to revolve around the university, and not find that too daunting.

This dating stuff has been quite a wild ride.  I’ve found some people who were “right” in all of my categories but for whom I had zero romantic attraction.  And then there were those who were so different from me that I didn’t even know what we find to talk about, but who made me so weak in the knees that I didn’t care much at all about the conversation.  And of course, I have found those that I was attracted to both mind and body (and what a delight).

I never expected to go through dating or courtship again after I settled on marrying John, so this has been totally unexpected phase of life…but also one that’s both more exciting and more satisfying than I could have ever imagined.

While I’m still not thrilled that my ex left me, I am glad that I get to choose a new partner now.  Especially being so much wiser and more practical than I was at age 18 when what was paramount in my future husband was that he was a faithful Mormon.

Previous Valentine’s Day posts

 

 

February 10, 2012
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