Mom & Her Forwards

... and because I think it's a nice idea to blog once every - um - year or so...

Around the election my mom was emailing me all these Michelle Obama propaganda emails. You know the sort. They're half bolded, half italicized, largely underlined or in all CAPS. The authors favor red fonts and excessive exclamation marks!!!!!!

I started taking out all of the formatting, removing the extraneous punctuation, and sending them back to her with a "read it again" at the top. All the sudden things didn't seem so awful to her.

I feel proud of her because she's now stepping outside of her intellectual comfort zone a little. She's taken to sending me aggressive forwards with an adorable little note in her part of the email: "Is this true?". Haha. So, she's not exactly thinking for herself, but at least she's having me do her thinking for her. Here's the latest sample email and my response.

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THE LETTER: Had to remove some formatting, but imagine it mostly bolded AND underlined. Especially the first two paragraphs.

LETTER BY A FLORIDA TEACHER -- PLEASE READ

=0 A
When will the American People get fed up and do something, or is it too late...

Letter by a Florida teacher . . . A teacher speaks

This is a subject close to my heart. Do you know that we have adult students at the school where I teach who are not US citizens and who get the PELL Grant, which is a federal grant (no pay back required) plus other federal grants to go to school?

One student from the Dominican Republic told me that she didn't want me to find a job for her after she finished my program, because she was getting housing from our housing department and she was getting a PELL Grant which paid for her total tuition and books, plus money leftover.

She was looking into WAIT which gives students a CREDIT CARD for gas to come to school, and into CARIBE which is a special program (check it out - I did) for immigrants and it pays for child care and all sorts of needs while they go to school or training. The one student I just mentioned told me she was not going to be a US Citizen because she plans to return to the Dominican Republic someday and that she 'loves HER country.'

I asked her if she felt guilty taking what the US is giving her and then not even bothering to become a citizen and she told me that it doesn't bother her, because that is what the money is there for and if we are stupid enough to give it she is going to take it!

I asked the CARIBE administration at my school about their program and if you ARE a US citizen, you don't qualify for their program. And all the while, I am working a full day, my son-in-law works more than 60 hours a week, and everyone in my family works and pays for our education.

Something is wrong here. I am sorry but after hearing that they want to sing the National Anthem in Spanish - ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. That's a real slap in the face. Nowhere did they sing it in Italian, Polish, Irish (Celtic), German or any other language because of immigration. It was written by Francis Scott Key and should be sung word for word the way it was written without all the slurs by people who cant sing it well enough to sing it correctly. I don't care whether this offends anyone or not but this is MY COUNTRY. IF IT IS YOUR COUNTRY SPEAK UP -- please pass this along. I am not against immigration -- I just expect immigrants to come through like everyone else. Get a sponsor; have a place to lay your head; have a job; pay your taxes, live by the rules AND LEARN THE LANGUAGE as all other immigrants have in the past -- and GOD BLESS AMERICA!


PART OF THE PROBLEM -Think about this: If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending someone - YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM! It is Time for America to speak up. If you agree -- pass this along, if you don't agree -- delete it!




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MY RESPONSE:

Hi Mom,

Some of the programs she mentions do exist, but the situation she’s describing is one that seems highly unusual and very unfortunately from a strongly biased point of view.

The main thing that sticks out for me is how she describes her one student as being lazy and taking advantage of free money. While this may be the case with that one person, the immigrants I’ve known – particularly from latin American countries – are the hardest working individuals I know. They came here for a better life, because there’s really nowhere else to go. They work terrible jobs – jobs most Americans don’t want – and they work two and three shifts a day. They send half or more of what they earn back home. And many attend school and seek funding where they can. And why shouldn’t they?

I looked into some of the specific organizations that this person mentioned. The organizations that her student is looking into.

WAIT is an org that teaches working adults how to become educators. It teaches them how to become teachers. The classes are ALL at night to accommodate their students’ work schedules. So already the woman who wrote this letter is off base. And if they use the skills learned here to go home and teach in their communities – especially if those communities are rural or under-served, then it seems fine to me.

CARIBE is a program designed for legal, documented immigrants, refugees or assylee status foreigners. So when the author of the letter writes that you can’t get it if you’re a citizen, that’s true. It’s an immigrant program – just like the programs in the early 1900s for Eastern European immigrants that helped women find work, for example. They help people learn English, get their high school equivalence and get technical training. It’s a not for profit org that gets assistance from various US Depts as well as other benevolent organizations. Sounds pretty good to me… I’m really not sure what the teacher is so upset about. I, for one, am glad that there are organizations like this for temporary residents – to help them while they’re here.

As for not “bothering” to become a citizen – that remark is crazy. Or at least uninformed. It takes years of commitment to become a citizen. Students from the US travel to do work exchange programs in other countries all the time, or just to live and study somewhere else for a time. We call it “studying abroad”. Sounds far less egregious when you say it like that. Why would she try to become a citizen when she plans to return home?

Remember when I was applying to SCAD and you encouraged me to get federal aid from the state of Georgia because I’d been living in Georgia for two years? And I did. It went through and I got financial assistance to attend college in a state I ended up living in by accident, for a brief period, and where I added very little to the community. The idea of state financial aid is that people who live there for ages have paid taxes there, have contributed to the local economy, etc. I did not fit that bill as a Georgian, but I got the aid anyway. At the time, we figured… if they’ll give it to us, we’ll take it. Because we need it. That’s the exact same thing this Dominican woman is doing.

To me, it sounds like the teacher who wrote this letter is bitter. She works hard, her son in law works hard. Maybe they’ve just taken what the world has dealt them, and they resent it? And this woman, from a third world country, got herself here and found organizations that she can take advantage of to change the entire landscape of her life. And maybe that’s not an opportunity the teacher found for her own self… Her letter is more a reflection of her own intolerance, I think, than the “problem” of latin American immigrants in our country. The fact that she refers to a Spanish accent singing the national anthem as “slurs” is enough to make me ball up her letter and toss it in the trashcan.

Don’t buy it. And please send my response back to Helen.

LL

Why Can't I Just Kinda Want to Play The Guitar?

I've decided to take guitar lessons. It seems like almost everyone I tell asks me why. So I tell them I've kinda wanted to play since forever, and it just feels like something I should know how to do. I explain I don't really want to start a band, or cut an album. I'd just like to be the girl at the party who can pick up the guitar and get things going. Or show up with a guitar somewhere and jump into a jam session. The responses I'm getting?

Waste of time.

Doesn't seem like a good enough reason.

Shouldn't you be writing instead?

Why not just write a few songs and hire a guitarist?

Hey everyone. Fuck off! I'm insanely passionate about everything I do. I happen to think it's perfectly fine, and even a good idea, to have an interest that doesn't blow my brains right out of my head. A little balance is a good thing. I tend toward love and hate at their extremes. So if there's an interest I'd like to pursue as a nice little hobby than what is the big deal?

So what if ALL I want out of playing guitar is to be the girl at the party playing guitar? Isn't it enough I only want to write a novel if it's Pulitzer worthy? Or that I work to be an indispensable promotion-worthy employee? Or that I berate myself if I'm anything less than the most loving girlfriend or loyal friend anyone could ever possibly conceive of? Do I have to have rockstar aspirations, too, to justify an interest in the guitar?

Fuck off. And thanks for the support.

I'll see you at the party. I'll be the girl playing guitar.

Plotless

I spent much of today reading over my tome. You remember, the one I began writing in November in my writer's cottage? You remember November. Every post here began with NaNo something-or-other. NaNo Andiamo, for when I had arrived. NaNo Secludo, for when I was feeling secluded. And one of my current faves, Na No-Plot.

So, I re read all 157 pages today, and found that there is some good news (praise jah). My characters are dynamic, multi dimensional and interesting. My visuals are at once crisply literal and poetically abstract. There are some nuggets that are final-draft ready, where I'm actually moved by my own turn of phrase. I counted two Pulitzer worthy paragraphs. Can one win a Pulitzer for 188 words? The big worry here, my overarching concern (which by the way is not a new concern), is that my story entirely lacks a plot.

From a post on 11.27. I write:

But all the sudden, I have a story. A real story, with a hook and a plot and a viable "problem" to solve. There's mystery and things get worse before they get better and there are secrets the reader has to figure out.

What was I talking about? I have no memory of having these realizations. Or rather, I remember feeling this way, but I don't remember the actual details. In the very same post, though, I wrote:

I mean, I'm under no illusion that I'll go through another phase of thinking the story is crap, and being at a total loss for how to actually get these characters in a room together.

At least I know myself.

I feel a bit strange having spent a day with my in-progress work. It's sort of shallow in parts. I guess that's allowed since I wouldn't even qualify the manuscript as a draft just yet. It's a mess, really, with too many spare parts. I need a crisis. I need to kill someone or blow something up or get someone in trouble. I like them all too much, though, to really harm them. And what if I kill someone and then find I need them later? I haven't even really considered killing anyone. As much as I like them, it would be better if I were more attached to them before I kill them. That way the reader will really feel the blow.

Speaking of blow, I wrote some pretty sexual scenes, and I found I wasn't terribly embarrassed going back to read those. I mean, I'm not hurrying the non-draft off to Dad or anything, but they weren't as vulgar as I originally thought they were. They get the point across without overdoing it.

So what's it about, people? We have Fantanelle, Bea, Arraua, Ridley and Hunter. Aldaine was invented in the middle and joined Fantanelle who's currently in Agraria with Ridley. We haven't heard from Arraua (Fantanelle's long lost mother) for 10 years or so. Hunter is about 180 years old but looks about 40. Fantanelle has left the institute and is comfortably hiding away. A next step will be her running away from Agraria for fear of infringing on Ridley and Aldaine's kindness.

What I need to do:

• I need to establish why R & A agreed to take F in in the first place. That part isn't clear.
• I also need to revisit Bea and Owen who met about 20 years ago. I need to make it clear that they met before Fantanelle was even born and finish defining the beginnings of their union.
• Was Arraua friends with Bea & Owen? Is that who told her about the hospital? Maybe Owen brings Bea to Arraua's cottage for dinner, and the cottage will give B & O some reference in time.
• What's the crisis Fantanelle faces? She has to get shitwrecked somehow. Maybe I should just expand on her time in the woods, which allowed for a lot of prose.
  

What now, what now...

I am currently away from the computer.

ravscallion: hello love....
*** Auto-response sent to ravscallion: I am currently away from the computer.
ravscallion: power's back on
ravscallion: freezer is freezing
ravscallion: what time do you come home, love?
ravscallion: text me...
ravscallion: love you...
ravscallion: seriously
ravscallion: not like a high school "I love her"
ravscallion: but like a Robert Browning/Elizabeth Barrett "I love you"...
ravscallion: just so you know

The Days Are Long

Last weekend was three days long. Two plus the Monday off for Dr. King day. Andrew and I stayed in and were together. It was phenomenal. It was a day like I wish we had all the time, but that we hardly ever have. Monday through Thursday I don't even see him. We get home from work and say hello and fall asleep. Or, we get home from work and I prattle to release the day's stresses and he listens patiently while he loads laundry and heats up our leftovers and I follow him around the house talking. Then he tells me a few details of his day, when he feels like it, and then we fall asleep. Or he falls asleep and I come to smoke cigarettes in my office and write, or try to write, or putter around.

The work days are so long and so tiring. I get so wrapped up in it when I'm working hard and I burn out. So I'll step back to catch my breath and I feel much more relaxed. Then I realize I've fallen behind and I scramble to catch up and then I'm back in the same rattled place. The office is such a strange place to be. I got to work this morning after my endless commute and sat down at my desk and took a deep breath and said to myself, well I'm here now. And then I dove in. Just like that. Well, I guess I'm here so I'll do what one does in the office. I'll work. And then I drag it all home with me. The office can be a fine place to be. My coworkers are funny and I like most of them. There's laughter and relating and many human moments. That's what makes it bearable, I suppose.

I want to write. I want to write so badly. But I'm tired. I come home and I just want to relax and do something to take myself out of my swarming head, and so I don't write. I don't write.

It's a strange thing to not know what's next in one's life. I've always been somewhat clear on what's next. When I was a kid, the next thing was getting out of my parent's house. When I was in boarding school the next thing was just getting the hell out of there. When I was out of there, my next thing was going to college. After college there was a period of I don't know, but that ended and I came back to New York. The next thing then was moving out of the Bronx and developing a career. Done and done. Now what?

Often all I want to do is lay in bed with Andrew and be near him and hear what he thinks about things. I want to do that and I want to write. And I don't get to do much of either. And I don't know how to make those things happen. I'm tired and the days are long and I'm bored. Someone said I seem flat. And that's exactly how I feel. Flat.

Updated on The Mood

I left the house. Everything was fine, as it turns out.

The Mood

Andrew's nephews came to visit last night. They brought their girlfriends with them. We ordered barbeque and the girls ordered salads that they barely touched. Then we walked down to the beach. Andrew and I watched the kids throw the football around. They played a game like monkey in the middle where the boys tried to keep the ball away from the girls and the girls used all their might, to no avail, to try to get the ball from the boys. Then I lay in the sand in my giant puffy winter coat and looked at the stars. We came back to the house with a 36 pack of beer and they set up for beer pong. I just didn't have it in me. I wanted to be alone. So I went into the bedroom and went to sleep.

The girls are sweet. I guess that's how they can be described. They're nice and they're pretty and they're both thin as rails with big boobs. It's a little disheartening for me to see young girls who are sweet and nice and who don't seem to have much of an opinion about anything. The younger of the two seems like she has more in there, but if anyone contradicts her, even in the slightest, she goes back on the point she was trying to make. Maybe she'll grow out of that. She's only eighteen or so. She needs a little more confidence and with that she could be a pistol, I'll bet. Let's hope she finds the confidence she needs.

I feel badly about excusing myself. The kids probably thought it was them. I don't think they have a frame of reference for what goes on with me. I'm sure they're not able to guess that sometimes my mood just plummets irretrievably and that it has nothing to do with who's around me.

Today Andrew and I have tickets to see Avenue Q. I've been wanting to see that show for years. I should be looking forward to it, but I'm not. Still, I just want to be alone. I want some quiet.

A friend is in town this weekend, and we were supposed to see her last night but we couldn't because the boys were coming. I never made other arrangements to see her and now I might miss her, and while I feel badly that I may have hurt her feelings, I'm just not compelled to fix it and to try to see her tonight. There's a surprise birthday party tonight as well, and since we're already going to be in the city it will be easy to kill time between the show and the party to go to that as well. It's right on the west side, right on seventh avenue, so it will be easy to get to. Again, there's very little compelling me beyond obligation to attend. I don't know why this happens really, but I get into this crawl-under-a-rock and hide mood and then, eventually, I get out of the mood.

Andrew doesn't know what to do with me. He searches my face and asks, "Did something happen?" I keep trying to tell him that nothing has to happen. I happen. It just happens. He tries to figure it out like something that makes sense so he can help fix it, and he never will because there isn't anything to put your finger on. There's nothing I can say that would help him make some actionable decision. He does well with it. With me. Better than most. Better than anyone ever has, actually. I can see that it pains him, though, when I get like this. In some ways, it's probably worse for him than it is for me. He's probably wondering when I'll completely crack up and what he'll do then.

I warned him, though. I told him about this from the very beginning. Right when we began to fall in love, I told him I was crazy. He asked how and I said it's not the sort of crazy women are. I have that too. That irrational frustration that women experience that men tap dance around trying to avoid. I have that normal kind of female behavior, sure. I tried to explain to him, though, that I have a different malady. One that's much more persistent, much more present, much less tangible and much more scary than what he may be expecting. I told him that it's why I'm scared to have kids because I'm afraid I'll give it to them. Or that I won't be able to mother because I'll be too busy crying alone in the bathroom for no reason at all. I told him I'm out of my fucking bag, and that it just happens sometimes, and there won't be anything he can do, and that when it's over it just goes away as mysteriously as it arrived, and there's nothing he can do. I think he thought it would go away if he gave me enough love. I guess I thought that too.

It's funny how so few people know me. I would guess that just about no one who I come into contact with on a daily basis would guess this about me. I'm generally playful and silly, and anyone would qualify me as a happy person. As much as I hate to admit it, I think my mother is the only person who really knows this about me and isn't scared shitless of it. She just takes it as a part of who I am and doesn't really treat me any differently when it's happening.

I wish I could just be a normal partner to Andrew. He's so fucking loving and so fair and so patient. I wish I could be the sort of girl for him who didn't need to be coaxed out of the car when we go to a party. The sort of girl who will just suck it up and play beer pong with his nephews. The sort of girl who can wake up on a Saturday and not feel the need to hide away in her study to spew secrets into the blogosphere. I just can't shake it when it's on me. And I can't explain why, at this moment, I'm terrified by everything that exists beyond the door to this room.