57 posts tagged “outbreath”

Feeling better, which is nice.

LS was a very, very kind human being. My friend SS's mom, I've known her since I was 5. I never knew her well in any adult sense, probably not in a kid sense either, really, but she was always very, very kind to me, very nice, and always very fierce on my behalf. This, even though I remember always knowing that she was in a struggle with a lot of pain, even when I was just little. I came to understand that pain way more fully as a teenager and an adult, when we wound up in the same 12-step meetings for child sexual abuse recovery.

For all her pain and darkness, she was a person with huge light and love. She made a genuine, positive difference in the lives of so many folks, and she raised one hell of an awesome fucking person in my friend SS. She grappled with a lot of sorrow and pain, and with a helluva fucking awful decision, and she made her choice. I'm glad I knew her.

1. I got the email today. It's official: I passed my Master's exam.
2. In the house tonight, we had: 2 babies, 1 four year-old, and 9 adults, every single one of them, cherished.
3. All the other people we love.
4. The party's just ended, and all the dishes are done.
5. We get to have more parties.
6. I've gotten to be married to SLP for two years, last Wednesday.
7. A full teaching schedule for fall: 2 Argumentative Writing sections at The Community College; 2 Research-Writing sections at My Institutions.
8. A home large enough to hold all the people who were here tonight, plus most of the ones who couldn't make it.
9. LMH is home from basic training and sleeping in the guest room.
10. Everything else...
    

The whole point of pain is the most wonderful appreciation for everything that comes when the pain recedes. I took the exam yesterday morning and, although I won't officially hear that I passed for a week or so, I really don't give two fucks about that verdict--I absolutely knocked that exam out.

Huge, huge thanks go to everyone for all the sweet encouragement and good thoughts. More posts to follow, posts about stuff other than the MA exam, but for now, I'm just going to enjoy the shit out of a weekend completely off.

Hope all is well with all...

And I'm feeling pretty better, now, which is nice. Kind of nuts to consider that grad school has only made me cry I think 3 or 4 times. Is that even possible? I don't know if it reflects good mental health and spiritual practice, or solid repression strategies.

SLP gets yet more props for listening and being very, very, very nice.

On the up side:

1. Everything's probably going to be fine, really
2. I'm going to respect being reasonably pre-menstrual and emotionally and intellectually exhausted by taking the rest of the night off studying
3. We're making pesto chicken pizza
4. Everything's probably going to be fine, and even if it isn't, the world is unlikely to end
5. I took some pretty sweet pix today:

cat, beautiful

cat, vamping

cat, taking it all in

break in the yard

look up

Reading that last post, I realize I'm not building in mental-health sustaining items to my lists. So:

Isn't that what Bill the Cat used to say? Hmmm...

Does it count as depression if you just don't care? If you just don't care, but you really probably should care, but you just cannot make yourself give a shit? That's what it's like trying to prep for this damned exam. I'm reading, I swear I am, and I'm writing mountains of notes, but my heart is just sooooo not in it.

I figure it'll all work out, really. I'll do enough work and I'll pass the exam. I'd say I'm about 90% sure of that. That other ten percent's a bitch to stare in the face--it is, I'm not gonna lie. But the way I see it, that 10% is going to be largely made of the stuff I simply do not end up having time to read--it'll mean that for the two random questions I have to answer, I'll get four choices that will all focus on the four texts I could not squeeze in. And what are the odds of that happening? Right--about 10%.

And if I don't pass, well, I'm really starting not to care about that either, which mostly feels awesome. I honestly have next to no respect for the actual assessment I'm doing as an assessment. I have huge respect for my faculty as scholars, and most of them as teachers, but I no longer give two figs what they think of me--all the therapy and meditation has paid off this time around, and I honestly no longer, or, should I say, for the moment, believe that my worth as a human being is caught up in this crap. So if I don't pass, I'll still have three, maybe four, part-time jobs in fall, just like I will if I do pass. If I don't pass, I'll either take it again in December, at which point I will so motherfucking pass, or I'll write my thesis, which is what I wanted to do in the first place anyway. And that will be that.

After all, it took me three years, three long years to pass Intermediate Beginners at swim class when I was a kid, in the days when I thought Bill the Cat was the coolest dude in the world. Sometimes it just takes a few tries, right?

Yeah, so this all feels really great, and mentally healthy, and all that. But then I wonder, does it count as depression if you just don't care?

;)

Well, I'm holding on and hanging in. Hope all is well with all.

Exam Prep Progress:

1. Have read about half--maybe just more than half--of the theory
2. Have read about a third of the literary texts
3. Have made a bunch of notes--in a notebook, on notecards
4. Have created some charts to think about the relationships between texts with the lovely Heartswater
5. Have come to some pretty good perspective on the exam overall
1. Having remembered that the statistical odds are pretty much equally high that I would have been dead by now as that I would be finishing a master's degree, in a healthy relationship, and generally experiencing an unprecedented level of mental and financial health, I realized that this damned exam really doesn't matter much. It clearly doesn't assess anything significant about me, or my intellectual ability/worth, or my teaching talent, or my adulthood or maturity. It mostly assesses how well I take the exam.
   
6. Have therefore cut down on the amount of time I spend hating my faculty, whining about my suffering, etc. (Remember, the significant phrase here is "cut down on." I don't mean to imply that I've cut these practices out, or that I wasn't, for instance, curled in a moaning, self-pitying, other-hating ball on Heartswater's floor over the weekend. Honesty, always.)

Hope all is well with all!

Show us a reason to get off the computer and go outside.
Submitted by Elisheva Chana.

Well, I don't actually have a picture, but a nice memory, instead.

We went to a wedding this past weekend, on the banks of the local river. Our friends chose the spot, because the groom is a mad fisherman and he spends many happy hours on that river with his kids, his friends, and his new bride.

The weather was something else during the ceremony. We were in the midst of a 24 hour tornado watch, and according to my computer, thunderstorms had been forecast to begin promptly at 5:30, the same time as the wedding. Instead, we were treated to gorgeous sunshine pouring through the most amazing cloudscapes that kept rushing and morphing across the sky. What could have been a scorching hot evening was cooled by the constant breezes blowing back and forth.

Things stilled beautifully as the bride read her vows--a few short, very sweet, very personal lines. Then, as my friend the groom took his turn, in an uncharacteristically low voice, the wind picked back up, and we couldn't hear word one of his vows, which I am positive were just as warm and loving as were hers. Rather than feeling disappointed that I couldn't hear, though, I was moved perhaps more than I would have been by actually hearing the words.

Wedding vows are a hugely over-determined genre, yes? Even for those of us who write our own, who put in specific details and jokes that arise from our specific experiences, the wedding vow always says the same thing: "Aren't we incredibly lucky? And aren't the odds long? And even though the odds are that long, I promise to try my absolute best." When the wind picked up and scattered the groom's words across his river, I was reminded of the universality of our vows, of their fragility, of the way nature is woven all the way through all our best laid plans, with all her unpredictability and beauty.

Outside is good. Weddings outside are very, very good. After months and months of careful planning, of budgeting and spending, of wrangling with family, of crying and despairing of ever getting the seating chart right, we take that whole huge, precious project and put it outside, put our best dreams and best work at the mercy of rain and wind. Sometimes everyone winds up wet and sopping; sometimes it goes unseasonably cold or waxes unreasonably hot.

And sometimes it's gorgeous when it's supposed to tornado all over the place. And that is pretty much how being married and being alive both go.

First, I'd just like to say thanks to my neighbors here on Vox. Having this place to come and lay it out, and getting all sorts of encouraging words all the time, well, man, that just keeps me going. Thanks for taking the time to read and leave all the advice, cheers, and sympathy.

B offers a bristling intellectuality combined with passion, good humor, and even sweetness. There is, in the words of one of her professors, 'a decency about how she reads texts, a decency that serves as a positive reminder of what it means to be a scholar and teacher of the humanities, what it means to be a 'humanist.'''

She handles difficulty with wisdom and grace. She regards texts as a path to enlightenment. She regards students as ever perfectible. She is the student we all want to have; she likely will become the teacher we all want to be.