Fictional men

I should be reading Middlemarch. I am 300 pages behind and it really is fascinating. Whenever I am deeply appreciative of art of any kind, I find myself fleeing from it in an agony of creative restlessness. Thoughts beget thoughts and ideas, ideas. Wonderfully written descriptive passages make me want to draw and beautiful images make me want to sing, and wonderful music makes me want to write. Hurray for the liberal arts!
So here I am, typing away to try and alleviate the creative pressure that has built up as a result of George Eliot.
I am reading Eliot because Heidi invited me to join her college friends for a book club. Otherwise I would be much too distracted to get through any such literary work. I loved Silas Marner when I picked it up some times in high school, but I seem to have lost the stamina required for deep reading since my motivation became all entangled with that highly prized and practically useless black smudge on paper (or on my computer screen) known as a grade point average. Self motivation is a luxury of the home scholar and the exceptionally gifted. I'm slowly turning into a drone.

(A bottle of bright purple nail polish remover sits innocently on the desk next to me. I keep absently picking it up as if to drink it. When did my subconscious accept neon purple as an edible color? I'm starting to worry about myself.)

This book club, which has so advantageously saved my brain from the plague of summer idleness, is made up of five or six girls with bachelor's degrees and a female English professor. Perfect. Middlemarch involves several plots and subplots that can be more or less classified as romantic. At least they involve courtship and marriage. Naturally, we girls have more or less given our allegiance to one or the other (or several) of the young men in the story. I was surprised to find, on reflection, that I was actually rooting for two men who are seeking to marry the same woman. I see that both characters are not people I would want to have a relationship with in real life, but this doesn't keep me from kind of liking them. That seems to be true of many of the fictional men on whom I have had "crushes" in my career as a sappy romantic reader; I wouldn't actually like to know many of them in real life. What strange relationships we have with characters in books. That is the power of the author, I suppose. My class last semester in reader response theory has made me hyper aware of the author's power to shape my opinions of the fictional people I love. Sometimes they misjudge me and fail utterly to get the reaction they are attempting to prompt. Other times I find myself completely sucked in and there is nothing I can do about it. And this makes me want to write.

I find myself rather fascinated by those elusive personalities that may or may not be the voice or the author, known as "narrator." I really liked my reader response class, and not at all for the reasons I thought I would like it. Traditionally, if that word can be used in a free and developing form like fiction, the narrator is not strictly a person, and you can safely assume that he or she is the voice of the author giving you fact, impressions and whatever bias serves the purpose of the moment. Narrators who step out of these guidelines are an interesting breed. The impression they make is subtle. Jane Austen follows the rules and still manages to make you love her personally because of her wit and intimate tone. We get an impression of knowing Jane personally. I don't think I would like her. I seriously doubt that she would like me. But in any case, we assume that the narrators voice conveys something of the author's personality.

(Who decided that purple was a good color for nail polish remover?)

George Eliot is kind of interesting, first of all because she is not really George at all. The male pen name gives an aura of dishonesty to her writing. I can't help but wonder if she would have written some things a little differently if she was using her own name. Female authors always seem a bit self conscious. They have a distinctive voice, as they should, that is different from a male author. Some of them are preoccupied with giving special depth to female characters, as if to rectify the violence done to us by men who write about female symbols more than female characters.

("Dear Mr. Dickens, I hate your female characters... and most of your other characters too. But that's okay because you are amusing anyway and you certainly couldn't be expected to see the feminist movement coming.")


On top of that, she breaks the fourth wall. George, the narrator, speaks in the first person, talks about his opinions of the character he is creating for us, and tells us little anecdotes about his social life. These are all in the service of the story, or commentary on the story for the reader's benefit, but it is still remarkable. He is certainly not a character in his own story. But like Toni Morison's narrator (oh Queen of the post-modern novel), he questions his own conclusions and assumptions about his own characters. He stops in the middle of a description of one character's thoughts to question why he always tells the story from that character's point of view.

("Warning: ...Harmful if ingested. In case of accidental ingestion, give fluids liberally and consult with local POISON CONTROL CENTER..." see Zita, no drinking the nail polish remover unless you want to spend the night in the ER)

I was paying so much attention to the narrator of Middlemarch that for a while I wasn't really paying attention to the characters and the plot. They are all very engaging and everything, but I just got done with Dickens and Stoker who pretty much beat you over the head with clues as to who are the "good guys." Eliot gives her characters enough depth and realism that they have as many obvious flaws and inconsistencies as they have lovable traits. She allows readers to suspend judgment, or make up their own minds, more or less, at least for a while. Slowly it becomes clear who the virtuous characters are that she is upholding and prompting her reader to fall in love with. They are not without their flaws, but we see that they are generally a good sort of people with the important things set straight. And one odd consequence of this subtlety is that I like Fred (who is what we call a Loser) and Will as much as Mr. Stuffy-Procrastinating-Scholar and whatever that other curate's name was. I certainly would not want to be the object of their affection - any of them - but I find them equally interesting as characters and I hope they all end happily. I remember my reaction was similar with Silas Marner. The characters were painted so vividly that I could not fully approve of any of them, but I was interested in all of them.

("Strengthening Nail Polish Remover is formulated to help soften cuticles and add strngeth and resiliency for more beautiful nails" and drive dehydrated writers to violent distraction by it's unnaturally bright and appetizing color.)

I begin to wonder about my previous book crushes. The next time I manage to get through The Lord of the Rings without running away to draw a picture, I will have to pay attention how Tolkien sets me up to be hopelessly in love with Faramir. I'm pretty sure he doesn't do it on purpose, while some of my favorite female authors are obviously trying to get me fall in love in order to create sympathy for her female characters. Eliot is doing her best to dissuade me by making flaws obvious. This makes me wonder if I only fall in love with flat, unrealistic characters. Vices are hard to live with, but sometimes a charming demeanor can cover them in real life. They are harder to ignore when they are printed in black and white.

(The smell of nail polish remover is especially unappetizing. Gives me a head ache.)

However, I can never allow that. First of all, because I have an inflated opinion of my own ability to resist the charms of characters designed to be too perfect for real life. Secondly, I would never let anyone say that Faramir is a flat character.

I'm not sure what I wanted to say with this post. The goal was something between intellectual reflections on my reading experience and how it has changed since I pretended to be an English major, and a humorous exploration of the cultural phenomenon of book crushes. (By the way, I am pleased to hear rumors that boys have book crushes too.) I guess I pretty much failed on both counts. I'm blaming the nail polish remover.

It's because I'm an Art Major

The Acrobat

From trapeze to
to trapeze, in the hush that
that follows the drum roll's sudden pause, through
through the startled air, more swiftly than
than his body's weight, which once again
again is late for its own fall

Solo. Or even less than solo,
less, because he's crippled, missing
missing wings, missing them so much
that he can't miss the chance
to soar on shamefully unfeathered
naked vigilance alone.

Arduous ease,
watchful ability,
and calculated inspiration. Do you see
how he waits to punce in flight; do you know
how he plots from head to toe
against his very being; do you know, do you see
how cunningly he weaves himself through his own former shape
and works to seize this swaying world
by stretching out the arms he has conceived -

beautiful beyond belief at this passing
at this very passing moment that's just passed

~ Wislawa Szymborska

The very first quarter of Community college, almost three years ago, I took Intro to Lit, Music Theory 1 and Drawing Technique... I think... anyway it was a 100 level drawing class.
I reflected that first day that I knew I would like my Lit class. The teacher seemed pretty cool. The worst part was going to be the other students who were taking it just to fulfill a requirement. I was going to be one of the geeky ones who actually enjoyed the coursework. But I knew I would fit in with the other geeks, so it was all cool.
I discovered that music theory is my favorite language. It came more naturally to me than learning to read words or numbers. And I love music people.
The art class was a puzzling phenomenon. I didn't have a lot of experience in formal education, but anyone who has taken a studio art class knows that they are a little different, just by their nature and structure. But I was okay with that after the initial scary plunge of having to actually draw in front of a teacher and ten or fifteen other persons who are "the artistic one" in their family or school. The really difficult part is that art students are weird.

First of all, there is that stereotype. Walk through my community college art department and there is no denying that this exists. It is a very diverse look, but in a way they are also all the same. There are the angry looking ones with eyes that have no light or sparkle in them. They look a little hunted, solitary. In other classes, they sit in the back, don't talk to anyone, and make fabulous doodles all over their notebooks instead of taking notes. (Have to admit, I am guilty of that last one, except I keep mine in the margins and they are far from fabulous.) They are the kids who can't major in anything else because everything else is too objective. They can't deal with anything that has right or wrong answers. They don't know what to do with their lives. Losers, back sliders and renegades major in art.
Of course, that is only a stereotype. You see a lot less of them at AQ. But there is always that loneliness in art. You may create with the whole history of society and culture behind you, but ultimately, you create alone. Most art students I know prefer to work alone. It's a very personal battle with whatever you are creating. There are no study groups. It takes us a long time to learn how to talk about each other work or even our own. In many ways, as with all art forms, there simply is no language.

There is a poem about an acrobat that I studied in that first Lit Class. The acrobat almost kills himself because he is seeking a beauty he is incapable of achieving. He is missing wings. The best he can do is "falling with style," like Buz Lightyear. Art is like that. Sometimes you are just trying to translate what you see, in life or in your head, into something else on the outside world, paper or clay or paint. Everything is against you. You are not God. You just can't will things into being. Even when you have the skills necessary, something is always missing: that part of myself that I can't quite make present: The acrobat's wings. And this makes art students retreat into themselves. No one else can do this for us, tell us how to do it, or even tell us when we have done it. Out in the big scary world, people like us starve because we have to create, and no one understands. The people who make money at it are not necessarily the ones who have wings. There really is no measuring stick. They are haunted and they are hunters. It's a little scary.
I walked away from that first art class thinking, "I can never fit into this group of people. I could never be an art major. It's a good thing I'm majoring in music."
Two years later, one morning towards the end of last semester I realized that I was wrong. I woke up and realized I am an art major.

I've been trying to avoid it for years. Please, no! Anything but that! I knew I was going to study art in some capacity. But even when I was thinking of double majoring, I would say English and Music, even though music was going to be my minor. I still referred to myself as an English major for some of this last semester. English may be the perfectly useless degree, but statistically, English majors get jobs. Music may be a similar dead end as far as money goes. But Music majors can at least commiserate with each other. They are all singing the same songs! And we all wish we could pay them a little more.
Art is so lonely. I have bounced between the three most pathetic majors a college can offer and landed at last on the most disturbing of the bunch.

But hiding it does no good. I should just get over the fact that eight out of ten people are not going to understand; probably nine our of ten. People are going to worry about me. People I meet are going to make assumptions about me. I'll be plagued with all sorts of comments that are akin to racism in their ignorance and obnoxiousness, and yet the speaker is almost always completely unconscious of having said anything annoying. It doesn't matter. I'm going to fly. So I'm not going to have an identity crisis about it anymore.

Being away from Not-Home.

Here I am trying to remember what it is like to live in my family. It is SO good to have the noise and activity back. Really. I have played a lot with David and Maleny, who have both grown and changed while I was gone. Especially David. It's been great. I hope that they will let me get a conversation or two in with my other siblings and parents.

When I got to school, I realized that I had nothing to say for the first few weeks. I was lucky when someone was being nice and asked about me, because that was really the only topic on which I was a knowledgeable source. I found myself telling people all about my family with very little provocation. After a while I realized that people didn't care. And I don't do a very good job of describing my family. They are a little odd; you kind of have to meet them to understand.

So here I am, back in the nut house. I have mentioned on this blog how close I am to my family. When I make a friend, they get the rest of the family in the deal. There is no getting away from it. That's kind of the definition of a friend; someone I can take home who will put up with my family and even enjoy it a little.

I really want to take my new friends home with me. I can feel a long ramble of descriptions and anecdotes with no punch lines coming on. The thing is, my family is still steadily living the everyday and have generously made room for me again. They are no more interested in my friends than my friends were in my family in those first few weeks of school. I knew it would be hard to reintegrate myself into my family when I came back. I guess I didn't expect that I would have so much to catch them up on, and then not be able to. Oh, wow. I am having trouble writing sentences that make sense. And my teachers say I write so clearly...
*Banghead*

Maybe Love

Jesus was nailed to a Maybe.
He opened his arms,
committed to welcoming Anyone,
Anyone who would come.
We put nails through His hands
to keep them that way,
in case we need them that way
later,
maybe.

Some of us decide to say No.
But He waits anyway,
with His hands nailed far apart,
reaching,
because maybe
we will turn back.

It’s hard, this love –
this Love
that gives us a choice,
this hard choice.
Most of us are not strong enough
to say anything but
maybe.

To say Yes
would mean committing,
opening up my arms
to welcome all these creatures
like me, imperfect and selfish.
Maybe they will support and bless me.
But Maybe they will betray me,
fail and wound me
as I hang there, vulnerable.
And I would have to say “yes” anyway.
That’s not a kind of love
that comes easily to
Gods or mortals.

So most of us say
maybe.
And we come back now and then
to ask this man - bloody, nailed to a piece of wood -
why people die and why people kill.

This Love longs, dreams,
aches to welcome us until He needs
nails to hold His arms open wide enough
to let in everyone who might deserve it,
or want it, somehow, sometime,
maybe.

Oh, may it be!
This maybe is a prayer.
Pray that it might be!
Pray that those arms are wide enough
for me.

Hands take two

Remember how I have a thing about hands? I don't think I ever posted this bowl, but I made it in ceramics last spring and it was by far my favorite piece. I have made other hand things in ceramics.
This cover jar looks down right creepy. Or at least I was trying to make it look creepy. It was a wonky assignment to begin with.

Anyway, I am always drawing them and recently I found myself writing about them. In the margins of my notebook I found a description of my math teacher's hands. I took math last year at SFCC. This image of his hands lingered in my mind. Quick reflection showed that I have lingering images of several other sets of hands. So I started exploring more and thinking about my teachers in terms of their hands. If I was a poetry person, I would write a poem for each of them. But I'm not. So I have these almost poems... For your enjoyment.

My teacher’s hands are covered in chalk. Strong, thick brown fingers grip the tinny white chalk and make swift marks on the green board. Click-sch click-sch tap tap-sch, little white marks. Math for the liberal arts.

Magister has touched bright coral; living jewels under waters on the other side of the world. He has run his fingers over old tomes in a Catholic school, raising dust that smells like incense but is only academia. His silver hair slips through his fingers like so many other ancient, venerable things. He points at me and, in a voice like God’s, commands me to parse a verb. “Amo is the first person, singular, present tense, active voice, of the verb amo, amare, amavi, amatus; I love, to love, I have loved, Beloved.”

Dr. Peters could not understand why her fingers were so long. The only thing she wanted to do with them was hold a pen. All that length for no purpose but to curl around the narrow shaft of a writing tool seemed cumbersome. But she clutched at it and scribbled. Out poured all her thoughts and feelings, bursting at last through their imperfect channel. And her knuckles are swollen, as if they can no longer straighten and make her fingers long. A confused, knobby jumble.

The thumb-nail of Clair’s right hand has rested and struggled, wedged in the frog of her bow for so many years that it has flattened and concaved to fit the wooden nook. All her fingertips are shaggy and gray, like her. But they move so quickly, fitted to the strings, fingerboard and the shaft of the bow. Music, she says, is made by the tension and release of finer and finer muscles.

Breath of Life

My Lenten reflection on living on purpose has had some interesting repercussions. I'm in a creative writing class this semester (Very Happy), and it's the sort of class that prompts me to spill whatever is in my head. My poor teacher has had to read some rambles that might even rival the ones I post here. I was brainstorming, prompted by an assignment from my text book, about all the things I would like to learn. My greatest frustration and challenge this semester has been to own and invest myself in my work as an art major.

(Oh My Gosh, I Just Admitted To Being An Art Major On My Blog Where Anyone And Everyone Might See It! AAAAHHHH!!!)

*cough*
I have begun to realize that my eagerness to try new things and be open to the direction of my teachers has sacrificed my investment in my art work. I am going through the motions of creating art with little intellect and no heart involvement. Nothing I have made thus far merits posting on this blog or even bringing home. I would like to learn to try new things and follow directions while still making the work mine, and taking pride in it. Things I do for my own amusement are done too cautiously and carefully. They become too precious too fast. My class work never becomes precious.
The following is the result of my brain storm. I wrote out lots of key words that were relevant, but when I shifted to actually writing, the first thing out of my pen was some advise my dad once gave me about our lawn mower.

When you start this stubborn old lawn mower -- the kind with the cord you yank on -- you have to pull as if you would pull your arm right off. It’s the only way to get the darn thing going. You look kind of foolish, standing there giving your all to a lawn mower, but it just won’t settle for anything less than your whole arm, from the shoulder down. See, the more power something has, the more of yourself you have to give it before it will move. If you think a lawn mower is hard, try moving a human heart.

Learn to give everything, if you are going to create. That’s why you create, isn’t it; to move human hearts? It’s going to take a lot. Everything. Bleed all over the stage, smash yourself against your sculpture, spill your guts all over the page. Does that scare you? It should, but not more than the less dramatic giving. It doesn’t have to be violent. It can be the delicate touch of your fingertips on a spinning lump of clay; as gentle and steady as the rise and fall of your chest as you sleep. Even when you hold yourself still, to let the air move with the last fading overtones in the wood and strings of your cello, be still and will those vibrations as if your life depended on their echo.

Nothing exists without God willing it into being. He can do that all at once. But if you, mere mortal, want to make something beautiful, you’d better concentrate your whole life on that piece of silver you are beating into shape. You have to give it some of your life because, after all, it doesn’t have any life of its own. How will it move hearts if it has no heart of it’s own, beating life through it? It must use life borrowed from its maker, just like you do. You know, these are just black smudges on paper. You are the one that makes them mean something. You are the one that makes the air vibrate.

You have to give everything. No, more than that. Don’t just do it. Embody it. Be Giving! And when you want to start a lawn mower…

Lent again

Hi, all you imaginary people who read this blog. I haven't posted in... a long time, so I thought it was high time to give an update on life, specifically mine.

It's Lent again. For the first time in many years, I am giving up a food for Lent. Now that I am at school and have a magical (and very expensive) thing called a meal plan, I have the option of eating all sorts of tasty things without having to cook them myself, or wash any dishes. There is something inherently dangerous in this on some level. What it means for me, however, is that I can eat french fries at every meal. I hear about people who eat like that and it totally grosses me out. I feel really sick when I eat fries. Seriously unhealthy on Many levels. But I love french fries. I really like potatoes in general. I also love ice cream: another thing that is available at every meal. Luckily I don't like pop and their pizza and hamburgers are not worth my time. Now don't worry, I usually only eat french fries a few times a week, or when there are curly fries, which are an extra temptation. But I'm giving them up, along with ice cream. The ice cream is the thing that's going to be really hard, because I don't feel sick after ice cream the way I do when I have eaten fries.

The biggest challenge for me in Lent is always to remember it after the first week. I bought myself a book of prayers by St. Tomas Aquinas at the end of last quarter. I've really been enjoying them. I'm trying to deepen my prayer life this Lent. When I am busy with school I find myself getting into a rut a lot. My schedule is dictated to me and my grades and other things depend on me being in the same place at the same time every week. I can end up on auto pilot pretty easily. Maybe it's because it we have had a few beautiful sunny days in a row here, or maybe it's because I am missing my friends and family a little more than usual lately, but I feel like I need to live on purpose a little more. Yeah, it takes some will power to do my homework (speaking of which...) and I have to make good choices which can be easier said than done. It's the things that I really love to do and no one is demanding of me that get forgotten. I don't spend nearly enough time outside. And I spend way too much time doing pointless things on the internet. It's not that I really want to be playing mindless games on facebook, it's just that it's halfway between what I really want to be doing and my homework. It's a will-less cop-out. So I resolve to jog to the other side of the convent building and play on the swings at the day care center, after the kids have gone home. If I'm going to be doing something pointless, it may as well be something I actually enjoy. I want to read out loud with some friends, draw and paint for pleasure. Read for pleasure! Work on my long neglected stories and explore some of the things I'm learning in creative writing. We shall see if I end up giving up being an A student for Lend. Hopefully not.
I want to spend some quality time with Christ in the chapel and other quiet places. Mostly, I want to slow down and thank Him.

So, that wasn't really an update. No boring facts about school or my social life or anything. Here is the usual evasive answer: I am well. School is fine.