Doesn’t anyone stay in one place, anymore (pt II)

9 04 2009

She grilled me for about 20 minutes, then requested—or was it offered?—to read my second novel.

I hesitated. She’s not sure if she buys the premise, namely, that of a young woman who leaves home and doesn’t look back, not once.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Really? She never gets in touch them?’

Nope.

‘I can’t believe that.’

At this point C. chimed up and said, Oh yeah, I could believe that. Who hasn’t dreamed about just walking away from everyone? (Besides this co-worker, apparently.)

Thus, part two of the whole social networking/past/new life gig. Only this time it’s about writing.

This second novel isn’t bad. My first novel wasn’t bad, but it has all the defects of a first novel, not least of which is too much explanation going on in the dialogue.

I’ve cut that back on this one, way back. I’m less interested in directing the reader in her interpretation of events; rather, I lay out a scene, let her eavesdrop, and then decide for herself what’s going on. There’s no ‘she retorted hotly’ or ‘he smiled in confidence at his abilities.’ Nope. ‘She responded.’ ‘He smiled.’ Plain text, with, perhaps, unplain meanings.

I’m still working out what I want to do in my novels, but the more I’ve written, the more adamant I’ve become in not poking into the characters’ minds and spilling it out on to the page. Yes, when a character is alone, the reader may have access to her thoughts, but I don’t, as the writer, tell you what she’s feeling. She has to decide for herself what she thinks and feels, and it’s up to the reader to decide if the character is right or is full of it or whatever. (And yeah, maybe you’re right or full of it or whatever, too.)

You, the reader, are the witness to the events, neither the confidant to a first-person narrator nor the one who apprehends her true self. The character is her own, and the only privilege granted to the reader is that of witnessing aspects of the story not always available to the other characters. That’s it.

But that’s not why I’m hesitant to show the novel to my co-worker; hell, either the style works or it doesn’t. I guess I’m protective as well of the undercurrent of the novel, which is that allegedly big things happen to ordinary people, and they deal with them.

A daughter leaves her family, and life goes on.

Someone has an abortion, and it’s not traumatic.

There’s a car accident, and marriage difficulties, and births and deaths, and none of it is epic. It’s all just. . . life, and the characters mourn and adjust and move on. That’s it: Here are these characters, and here are their lives.

The co-worker, at the mention of the abortion, reacted as if I’d outlined a ‘Lifetime Movie Event’ or set up some kind of schema of which buttons to push. As if abortions and car accidents and marriage difficulties never happened in real life.

I’m particularly touchy about this kind of reaction precisely because I don’t have any kind of outline for my stories. I set up a situation, and let it spin out. Did I know ahead of time that a character would have an abortion? Nope. Car accidents, marriage difficulties? Nope, nope. They come up, the characters deal with them.

Now, if the characters aren’t real to you, none of this will work. And that would bother me, but that would also seem like a legitimate criticism: I wanted to create real characters, and failed.

But the notion that if something big—out of the supposed ordinary—happens, then it’s not real, well, I disagree. Strongly.

Making all cuts clean and all memories unclouded, providing closure and wrapping everything up in a  nice psychologically-convenient bow—that’s what’s not real. Yes, there can be regrets and reconciliations, but the force of the regret can mutate and attempts at reconciliation can fail.

These characters have their own lives, their own integrity—at least, that’s what I want for them. And no, I don’t always understand what they do, either.

This is why I hesitate in sending my novel to my co-worker: There’s no agenda, and I don’t like the notion that there must be one, and that it must be ‘right’.

That’s the delight of the writing: Even as I lay down the words, they take off on their own.

And no, they don’t look back.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Musing

Doesn’t anyone stay in one place, anymore (pt I)

6 04 2009

‘Not all social networking stuff is bad, you know.’

C. may have even raised her eyebrows as she said it.

‘I know,’ I mumbled. ‘Hey, I blog, don’t I?’

Still.

Two things lead me to this point. One was this post by Meghan O’Rourke at XX Factor, how those of us old enough to have a past can be thrown off by the jumbling of time when one is friended by a memory. Sometimes I find it reassuring; at other times, extremely destabilizing, a vortex forcing me to contemplate years gone by, loves lost, friends I let go of without fully intending to. Sure, there are class reunions and gossip through whatever thin vines are left connecting one back to the old days, but reunions are fixed in time, recognizable as the artifacts they are.

But a poke from the past? As cool as I find quantum mechanics (what I can understand of it, I mean), I am utterly turned-off by the wormhole aspect of Facebook. It’s not that I hate everyone, or even anyone, from my past; it is that I am content for the past to remain so.

Yes, I rootch around in it, and sometimes memories come, unbidden, but I am ever aware of that distance between then and now—and of the panoply of feelings around that distance. Sometimes I am sad, sometimes relieved, or confused, or embarassed, remorseful, and sometimes I feel nothing other than I am not who I was.

There can be a poignance to this recognition. I am mortal, and will lose and gain and change as I move through this life, until there is nothing left of me at all. I can’t gather all my life in, live simultaneously as the happy third-grader or shattered teenager or tentative new adult. There are people I knew then who I don’t know now; what would it be to have them here, with me, now?

It’s not that there must have been a Reason for us to have parted; time and physical distance are as good an explanation as anything. We simply lost touch with one another, that’s all.

So why not get back in touch? I am, after all, still friends with two women who I’ve known since kindergarten, some others from high school, college, grad school, post-grad. . . if I can hang on to these people, why not throw another knotted rope to the past, in hopes of enticing the others to grab on?

I don’t know, really, that I have a good answer to that; I think it’s a why/why not choice, that is, one made less through reason than a shrug.

Perhaps I can only justify my choice after-the-fact, to say that this is what seems appropriate to me, what works for me. I need to have a sense of time, and to remind myself of the inevitability of loss inherent in time. It’s not about despair—some of what was lost deserved to be shed, and I am the stronger and saner for it—but about understanding, making sense of the trajectory of my life.

Would friending someone I knew in, say, 10th grade foul up that sense? I do wonder about some people, about KB and CM and SP and how and who they are, today, and have even thought about trying to get in touch with them.

But then what? We were tight then, and now we’re not. I am curious, but do I miss them? I miss what we had, but would we have it again? I don’t think so.

So why not take the chance, track down the old running buddies and confidants to see if there is still something there?  Am I afraid?

Again, I don’t think so. It’s more that my life is here, today, in New York City in 2009, and I need to make my life stick here, today, in New York City in 2009. Time spent with those I’ve lost is time not spent with those I’ve hung on to (and who’ve hung on to me), and those I’ve found.

And the people here matter. I like them and getting to know them, and letting them getting to know me. We can’t take anything for granted, can’t call up a shared past or a ‘remember when’ as we huddle over our beers. I have that with some people, but with these new friends, there is the frisson of wondering what to reveal and what will be revealed, of risk and anxiety and the delight in discovering that, yes, there is more than mere proximity to our relationships, that we are, in fact, friends.

O’Rourke noted that Sometimes I have an almost physical need to touch the screen and get past the pixels. I understand that longing, I do. I also understand the necessity of bearing such longing, and remembering that not all can be reconciled.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Categories : Musing

Ain’t no cure for the summertime blues

5 04 2009

Spring is here. Crap.

I have nothing against spring, save that it presages summer—and I don’t like summer.

Let me rephrase that: I hate summer.

Actually, many summer days are fine. Warm, sunny, blah blah. Inoffensive and manageable.

But then there are the days—and weeks—when weather turns vicious, the sun baleful and the air viscuous. I feel hunted by the sun and trapped by humidity, darting from one shadowed space to another, trying and always failing to avoid the heat rays from above.

Plus, I don’t like sticky.

And no, I don’t own an air conditioner, although every year I think, Hm, maybe this year. Now that I’m finally settled in to my own apartment, I think, Hm, maybe this year.

As much as I despair of the heat, I don’t like air conditioning. I appreciate AC, am grateful for it in the workplace, but I tend to think of it as wasteful for my home. And even though air conditioners today are much more energy efficient, and the units themselves fairly small, when I think of a box AC I think of the behemoths of old, rattling away as they suck electricity from the socket and money from my pocket.

When friends from the south would tell me they didn’t like indoor heat, I thought What?!!! How could you NOT like central heating? It’s what makes winter worthwhile: coming in from the cold, face chapped from the wind, and the reassuring hiss of the radiator letting me know I’m home.

I was less summer-phobic (and winter-philic) as a kid, but I like to remember a particular tradition from those winters: My parents’ house had forced-air heating, so in the mornings my sister and I would fight over who would fit her nightgown over the heat vents, the flannel billowing out with rush of warm air. Some mornings we’d rush my brother’s room and all three of us would crowd around his (more powerful) vent until the furnace had had enough.

And no, we did not have AC in the house.

Perhaps my southern friends had their own, fond, memories of coming in from the heat, faces red from the sun, and cooling themselves down in front of AC or vents. I remember comfort; they remember relief.

But as much as the weather can affect the temperature inside, it’s really an outdoors phenomenon. Crazy cold temps are tough to manage, but they are, in the end, manageable. Long underwear, heavy boots, heavy coats, scarves, hats, mittens—they’re the armor one wears to battle the cold, to move through the streets and one’s own life. (And winters in New York City rarely require heavy defense: a decent jacket, hat, and gloves will usually do. In fact, winters here are sufficiently mild that I kind of miss the intensity of the cold of Grad- and FelineCities, tho’ not its duration.)

How can one protect oneself against the heat? Sunglasses, sunscreen, but most hats will simply leave one sweatier than before. And while I can load up against the cold, there’s a limit to how far I can strip down. Naked in New York? No thank you.

I do like the sun. That’s why I hate the summer. In the fall, sun sneaks through the trees and leaves and dapples the ground; in the winter, it coaxes faces skyward, to catch a bit of warmth. But she turns mean in the summer, even sadistic. As much as I welcome her into my home during the other seasons, I avoid her June-August, cursing her relentlessness, her omnipresence.

Leave me alone! I have actually whimpered at the forecast of sunny summer days.

Trapped. Even if I do get AC this summer, saving myself from the oppression of humidity, I’ll still feel trapped, restricted to an oasis of cool.

Summer is my enemy. I dread its approach.


Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Musing

Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short

30 03 2009

Even he—‘I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death’—thought torture useless:

Also accusations upon torture are not to be reputed as testimonies. For torture is to be used but as means of conjecture and light in the futher examination and search of truth; and what is in that case confessed tendeth to the ease of him that is tortured, not to the informing of the torturers, and therefore ought not to have the credit of sufficient testimony; for whether he deliver himself by true or false accusation, he does it by the right of preserving his own life.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

Although he shrugged off much conventional 17th-century morality, Hobbes was convinced of the necessity of the person to preserve himself. Thus even the overwhelming and legitimate authority of the sovereign was not enough to render torture of use to that sovereign.

Is this a ringing defense of the dignity of the person or a denunciation of the horrors of state-sponsored terror?

No. And yes.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , ,
Categories : Politics

Thinking like a mountain and wishing like the sea

22 03 2009

My t.v. sits there, mute and uncomplaining. Or mute and seething. If a t.v. could, you know, uncomplain or seethe.

Do I liberate it?

I’ve watched t.v. twice since I’ve moved in, and both times it was chore: I don’t have cable, so the reception was more snow than picture. I’ve thought about getting the Roku box and streaming movies through Netflix, but beyond my initial research, I’ve done nothing about it.

So do I sell or give away the t.v.?

It’s in decent shape, but it’s also a few years old, and the big ol’ console type—not a sleek, new flatscreen.

I dunno. If someone would offer me 25 bucks, I’d probably unload it.

A plant would fit nicely in its spot.

____

On my continuing inability to write that elegant piece on abortion, or to patch together anything coherent on Israel and Palestine: why oh why?

It’s not as if I don’t have well-formed ideas on either issue. On abortion, for example, I think that it’s a no-brainer that it remain legal, but that morally, it’s murky. And that it’s murky means that, for some people, it’s not a no-brainer that it remain legal. I think it’s silly to expect all women to feel guilt or shame or regret for terminating a pregnancy, and silly to expect that no woman would feel guilt or shame or regret for terminating a pregnancy.

But wait! There’s more! There’s freedom and equality and sex and contraception and men and motherhood and meaning and. . . all that.

So much to write.

Similarly with Israel and Palestine. Why should I take side other than that of peace and pluralism? Why would I support a two-state solution, one which implies—no, practically requires—a single-identity set of states, which in turns would necessarily involve some version of ‘transfer.’

As in ‘ethnic cleansing’. As in a crime against humanity.

Hannah Arendt (who was and is not beloved in Israel) made the argument in favor of a Jewish homeland—but not a Jewish state. Edward Said (who has his own unbeloveds) ended up supporting the goal of a single state as the most just solution.

The current situation is unjust. A two-state solution would simply reify this injustice, and in so doing, make such reification irresistible. In other words, the injustice involved in bringing reality to the two states would itself become an argument in favor of the process of states-making itself.

Perversity. The entire damned situation abounds in perversity. Again, so much to say.

Too much to say, perhaps. Perhaps that’s why I am unable to say it.

____

I am temporarily working three jobs again, but the third job will soon go away for the spring and probably the summer.

The second job (teaching) is secure through December, and probably the following spring.

Job1 is the current angst-generator. It’s a retail position, not difficult, but low-paying and irritating in the usual way of retail positions. It sucks up time, both on the job and in travel. And did I mention the customers?

But it has had one great benefit, however: benefits. Most part-time jobs do not offer health or other benefits, but this one does.

This has kept me working there even when I thought AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH! That, and the need to pay rent.

But I now qualify for health care through Job2, and am in the process of switching my coverage. Wrinkle one.

Wrinkle two: My store is in the midst of a shake-up, and not all of us currently employed will be offered jobs past June. I went through the process to keep my job, but I’m not at all sure that I do want to continue working there.

This is different from the AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH reaction. I’m getting more courses, and while the pay for adjunct teaching is lousy compared to a tenure-track job, it’s great compared to retail. And there’s a good chance I’ll be able to continue working off-and-on at Job3—a job which also pays more than Job1, and is closer to home.

The big reason to leave, however, is that I have no damned time to write. I wrecked my life to leave academia, and wrecked my finances to move to New York to write—which I have, in my first two years here, managed to do. In the midst of my third year, however, I haven’t been able to grab those chunks of time necessary for writing.

Yeah, I have time to blog and to web-surf and to play spider solitaire, but none of these activities requires the particular kind of concentration I engage in while writing. These are filler activities, wind-downs—only now I’m winding down from my commute or course prep, not from cranking out a crucial scene.

And I have a new idea. I have characters and a rough sense of where I want to begin. I want to find out what happens. And I don’t have time to write to find out what happens.

The economy? Oh, yeah, that. How could I give up a job in this economy? Is wanting or needing to write enough? Yeah, the check’s small, but it’s not nothing; how could I give that up?

Perhaps I won’t make the cut, which means the decision is out of my hands. But this is my life, and it should be in my hands. I should have to figure out what to do.

Should. Not that I have, yet.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : Musing

Karma police

20 03 2009

Every time.

You’d think I’d learn, but nope, I keep doing it: I need a day off Job1 (a need  which arises after the schedule has been set) and think, ‘I’ll just call in sick. A migraine.’

A migraine works better than a cold, because I don’t have to explain why I couldn’t come in Day X, but am fine on Day X+1.

At least that’s the idea.

So, on Thursday, and after I was unable to reach my manager about taking a personal day, I thought, Hm, I’ll just call out Friday with a migraine.

Yep. Friday I wake up and call out with a migraine—because I actually had a migraine.

This is what you get/when you mess with us.

Indeed.


Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Musing

You can hear the sound of the underground train

19 03 2009

The window was full of words.

I looked up from my magazine and saw the cascade on the tunnel walls.

The tunnels are usually dark; there’s no point in looking.  But the line is under construction, so banks of lights were strung along the length of this run, illuminating the hidden markings.

It was too much. The walls were pages, filled with painted words, page after page after page.

We were on an underground ship, charting its own course: The slow sway of the train as it crept along the tracks, horn blowing ahead to warn the workers, and the lights—oh! the lights! constant and warm and bowing toward us, beckoning us through this secret passageway—did anyone else notice this?

What were those words? Yes, we all know that someone has been here, before. But still, all those words? What had happened, before?


Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Musing

It’s all the same: dead is dead

16 03 2009

‘Drill Babies, Drill’?

Ah, yes. Another stunning allegory from William Saletan. He’s just discovered that scientists find fetal tissue useful, and wonders why arguments in favor of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research aren’t similarly applied to research on fetuses.

What he neglects is that federal guidelines on fetal research have long been in place (here’s the relevant statute, revised in 2005; see subpart B), as well as being subject to ethical and political skirmishes (regarding, for example, the admissibility of transplants of fetal material; cf. then-Secretary of HHS Sullivan’s rulings in the late 1980s).

So what’s new in what Saletan has to say? Not much.

I guess he’s going after the rhetoric: Those in favor of hESC research tend to argue for the urgency of such research: It’ll save lives! It’ll improve quality of life! We’ll learn so much more about human development. . . which will help us save lives and improve the quality of life!

If this is the case for hESC research, he wonders, why aren’t those in favor of research on fetuses making similar claims?

Well, in some cases, they have (I’ll have to dig out the cites), but these were arguments made years and decades ago. More to the point, perhaps, is precisely what Saletan both highlights and elides: Partisans in the hESC debate deploy rhetoric strategically (disassembling a blastocyst versus dismembering a human being), such that those who favor fetal research are likely not to want to trumpet a line of research which would create rhetorical openings to those opponents.

After all, many people distinguish between the status of an embryo and that of the fetus, such that most folks (if you trust poll data) don’t see embryo destruction as equivalent to dismemberment, while harvesting tissue from a fetus might seem, mm, grotesque.

Thus the reaction of Rod Dreher at Crunchy Con, who theorizes that fetal research will lead to the mining and cannibalization of babies.

As I point out in the comments to his initial post, however, I question the logic which links the harvesting of cadaveric fetal tissue to cannibalization—not least because he doesn’t consider how this situation is any different from the harvesting of adult cadaveric tissue for research and transplantation.

In other words, as grotesque as research on cadaveric fetal tissue may appear, it’s not clear to me that it is in kind any different from research on any other cadaver-derived tissue. The only difference is what led to the availability of that tissue: Abortion, in the first case, and death caused by accident or disease.

I have my own questions regarding transplantation and the pressures to donate (or create a market for)  tissues and organs, and generally think skepticism ought to be applied to any claims of Imminent Medical Breakthroughs! That said, I think that those who criticize fetal-tissue research exclusively are unwilling to allow that there could be any medical-social benefits from abortion.

They might truly be appalled by research on fetuses. I simply wonder why they are not similarly appalled by research on adults.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Categories : Musing

Indict! Indict! Indict!

11 03 2009

Tenured radical, indeed: former Office of Legal Council/current professor of law John Yoo.

Ap photo/Susan Walsh (via Salon)

Ap photo/Susan Walsh (via Salon)

Here’s a link to Yoo’s infamous torture memo; a key argument regarding the lawfulness of various forms of ‘aggressive interrogation’ can be found on pp. 26-31. The most famous excerpt can be found at the bottom of p. 27:

In defining substantial bodily injury, for example, the statute speaks in terms of disfigurement, or loss of function of some bodily member or organ. In case of serious bodily injury, the statute reaches more serious injuries to include those injuries that bear a substantial risk of death, result in extreme pain, as well as protacted  disfigurement or the impairment of a bodily member or organ.

Here’s the DOJ site which lists the nine recently released Bush-era memos on presidential power; these were apparently written by Yoo and now federal judge (!) Jay Bybee.

Photo via Slate

Photo via Slate

Impeach, then indict, this moral and political cretin, as well.

And all the rest of those who enabled this evisceration of the Constitution and the brutalization of human beings: Indict! Indict! Indict!


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Politics, Rant

Ain’t nobody’s business if I do

9 03 2009

I’ve started and stopped posts on abortion mebbe half-a-dozen times, wanting to craft an elegant justification of leaving the decision of whether or not to terminate a pregnancy to the woman herself.

Well, fuck that. I won’t give up on that elegant argument, but I won’t let it get in the way of writing anything about abortion, either.

Y’all have read about the nine-year-old rape victim, and the Catholic Church’s chilling response to her pregnancy and its subsequent termination. The Church says it won’t excommunicate her, but out are her mother and doctors. As C. noted, ‘Fuck them.’

(And yes, this is the same Church which could be partially shamed about the anti-semitism of schismatic Bishop Williamson, but didn’t give a shit about the misogyny of Williamson and his cohort and their denunciations of women wearing pants and, oh yeah, getting university educations.)

But they’re hardly the only ones who dismiss the risks of pregnancy to girls and women. Remember John McCain and his famous mockery of any health exceptions to laws outlawing abortion? He used scare quotes around ‘health’, as if it were some kind of game or dodge.

Scare quotes. Now THERE’S an argument.

Or what about the groups, like the Family Research Council, which reacted to the good news of an effective HPV vaccine by worrying that taking away the risk of sexually transmitted disease would make girls promiscuous?

Kinda like making contraception widely available would lead to promiscuity and general mayhem. Nope, let ’em get pregnant or an STD—that’ll show ’em!

This is of a piece with the argument of those who consider pregnancy a just punishment to promiscuoussex—because all sex which leads to an unwanted pregnancy must of course be promiscuous. No, no married women ever want an abortion,  nor women in stable relationships. Just those whores who get knocked up just to knock off the fetus, or those poor, poor victims of the abortion industry, seeking to turn those poor, poor women into barren dykes.

Got that?

Yes, this is a rant, which means there ain’t no elegance and not much argument, either. This is just me screaming at the notion that any woman who chooses to live her life, to assert her ability and liberty to live her life, is somehow a morally depraved human being. Or too stupid to recognize that this is a decision with consequences (until it hits her at some unspecified point in the future, at which point she’ll collapse in a heap of regret).

Even those mildly pro-choice can take a mild version of this line. As any number of bloggers at Feministing, Pandagon, and the Pursuit of Harpyness, among others, have pointed out, William Saletan of Slate is willing to extend to women the right to terminate their pregnancies only if they’re really really sorry for it. Rights in exchange for shame.

Well, to repeat: fuck that.

Abortion is morally complex—and so are women. No, not every woman who decides to terminate (or carry the pregnancy to term, for that matter) engages in Properly Certified Reflection, but when have we required such certification for the legalization of any number of other complex moral activities?

Or is the problem that to state the complexity of pregnancy is to admit that there is more than one morally justified decision?

Or or or is it more basic than that: That to leave the decision to the woman is to. . . leave the decision to a woman?

‘My Body, My Choice’ has long seemed too reductive a slogan to me, but I don’t suppose ‘My life, My life’ has quite the same zing to it.

*UPDATE*

The righteous women at Pandagon have a post on this very issue, along with an embedded vid of three men (including Saletan) talking about abortion and women’s sexuality. Haven’t yet watched the vid—and given my mood tonight, may wait.

On the other hand, since I’m already pissed off, what’s another increment of outrage?


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : Politics, Rant

« Previous Entries Next Entries »