Even when one’s day has made one want to jump off the bridge nearest to one’s house.
Playing Apples to Apples with a third grader named Kevin.
MS. IGR The word is “chewy.”
(Students put down cards.)
MS. IGR (flips one) “The Tooth Fairy.” Hm. Well, I guess I see how that could work, since the Tooth Fairy works with teeth.
KEVIN Also because she’s made of meat.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’m sorry for my continued absence, Brendan.
There’s a lot going on in the life of IGR right now, a lot of small things that add up. But instead of telling you about them, I’m going to let Bill Hicok (Bob Hicok? the internet is not clear) do it for me.
I can’t prove you’re a good person, but I suspect you’re a good person.
A History of Origami
two women in three days
cried on the green bench in the park
where i found a dollar
folded into a boat.
i thought it was the crying bench and cried
on the crying bench
when it became available.
i cried
by thinking of all the people
who’ve never broken a shop window, not the baker’s
window, the bead-seller’s,
who sells beads for purposes
i find hard to list: necklaces,
the hanging of strings of beads
in doorways, the owning of beads
just in case.
breaking a shop window with a piece of shale
the size of my heart, a piece of shale
on which i’ve drawn my heart, not my actual heart
but my feelings of my heart,
since i’ve never seen my heart,
would set something free.
i don’t know what that something is
but it would be free.
and my heart would have survived its travels
through glass, its jagged voyage
through my reflection.
you see now why i cried: none of this is real.
until i can answer yes to the cop who asks, is this your heart
among the ruins of your reflection?
i won’t be a man, despite what my anatomy
insists.
it insists
that i overcome a sense of resistance when i move,
that i move
as long as i am able to move, and when i am unable
to move, that i stop.
it would be free and look like a bird, an actual bird
or a dollar folded into a bird, a dollar bird
in a dollar boat.
which is to say
i believe origami arrives
when we need it most.
i can’t prove this but i can’t prove
you’re a good person though i suspect
you’re a good person.
you who opened the door.
you who tipped your hat.
you who ran into the fire and carried
the fire safely out.
The line between therapeutic and self-indulgent is often fuzzy. For example: I got the new Chuck Klosterman book for Christmas (ostensibly from my little brother, although I suspect he’d be hard-pressed to tell me the title), which is neurotic enough to make me feel not alone and not crazy, but at the same time prevents me from moving on to higher planes of thinking. I.e., not gazing at my own or someone else’s navel. By the same token: even if the Avett Brothers express exactly the sort of cranky anguish that I have returned to, intermittently, for the past few months and longer, is it really necessary for me to listen to such music when introspection might be the last thing I need? Shouldn’t I be listening to, I don’t know, Os Mutantes or something?
Unbelievably, it appears that I have failed to write on this blog about my favorite New Year’s song ever, Dan Wilson’s “What a Year for a New Year”; I feel like I have, so what probably happened is that I wrote about it on my old/current secret blog, likely multiple times. Yes, Dan Wilson is the guy from Semisonic (hi Brendan). I’ve been listening to it on or around December 31 since, I don’t know, probably high school – the Maybe This Christmas compilation came out in 2002, so that would be about right. Every year it feels more applicable than ever before, even if that’s not true. It probably was true, last year, which was spent more or less in a holding pattern. This year it probably feels like it fits solely because of the last two or three months, but to be fair, I have changed houses and jobs multiple times and gotten into and out of the realest relationship I’ve ever had, as well as, you know, paid bills and stuff. So maybe it qualifies.
I made a mind map and subsequent chart (using Curio, natch) of my resolutions and goals for the year. It’s a big chart, mostly because I have broken them into obstacles, solutions, next steps, etc. This both does and does not represent progress for me: the use of productivity tools shows that I am both wanting to and getting a better grasp on my life, but the extensiveness of what I’ve done shows that I retain the false belief that anything can be done with a plan, no matter how impossible it actually is. The summary of it all is that it’s probably going to be another year of changes; God willing, I’ll be going back to school, probably moving, definitely not getting married (unlike most of my high school and college classmates), etc. Having to shift from adult paradigm to student paradigm – which, in some ways, it feels like I’ve never left anyway. I guess the most important takeaway is how necessary it is for me to start being okay on my own: which means a) maintaining the relationships that contribute so greatly to my life, and b) doing things that make me happy – in which “happy” is not to be conflated with “I am depressed and this habit makes me feel less bad.” That is how people stay in bed until it is time to get ready for work. Which is fine, as long as your work doesn’t start at 11 AM, like mine does. Dwelling on the past essentially has the same effect as doing that – it feels okay for a while, but you’re not getting anything done, and it’s getting things done that makes you feel good. Where “you” is “me.”
I guess, in that sense, listening on repeat to Dan Wilson qualifies as self-indulgence, at least a little bit. It would be better for me to find something new, to quit dwelling on the idea that this new year has to be better PLEASE GOD and not giving thanks, because that’s the same idea I’ve had for the better part of this past decade. And yet I keep returning to him. I guess this is part of the human condition, this perpetual trying and having mixed feelings about it all?
What a year for a new year
We need it like we needed life I guess
Last one left us lying in a mess
What a year for a new year
What a night for a sunrise
And we thought the dark would never end
Reaching out to try to find a friend
What a night for a sunrise
Sunrise
What a day for new day
And our star shines like a miracle
And our world is almost beautiful again
What a day for a new day
New day
What a year for a new year
What a night for a sunrise
And we thought the dark would never end
Reaching out to try to find a friend
What a night for a sunrise
Sunrise
Soon we’ll be lying in our beds
And new dreams will fill our heads
And the old ones will be ended
Hope we’ll forget about this place
Let it go without a trace
Wipe the teardrops from our faces
Oh! What a year for a new year!
Filed under: actual transcripts
Dispatches from the Twitterverse.
- #in2010 Ima Stop Txting People Nd Im Only Gonna Email Or Fax..Or Might EVen Page U!
- #in2010 I will play Heavy Rain, Gran Turismo 5, God of War 3, and Final Fantasy 13
- …He got 10mins till I cut him off #in2010
- I need to #getalife #in2010 because the one I had in 2009 kinda blew
- #in2010 I’ll be more nice for sure XD
- if you wear baggy pants or skinny jeans n you not a teen, #getalife . how about #growup n get sum fitted clothing#in2010 . #grownManStatus
- #in2010 God will make my best wishes come true! Crossing my fingers!!
- #in2010 @satanlovesyouu and I are going to free animals from brookfield zoo…
- #in2010 I am going to be on your mind
- #In2010 I will take a trapeze class.
- #in2010 any negativity will receive a big “fuck you” from the door
- #in2010 i know love will set me free
- #in2010 im watching one show all the way thru – all episodes
- #in2010 that geek boy Better let me copy the hw!
- #in2010 I will do no more cussin!
- #in2010 I’m going to get my 2nd tattoo. Hey it’s been 8 years
- #in2010 Bret “Hitman” Hart makes his return to the WWE on January 4th. The first time he will have been seen in the WWE in over 12 years!!
- #in2010 Ima try ta get ova my fear of dogs!
- #in2010 I plan on being a slightly lesser bitch. But no promises.
Filed under: IGR Recommends
One of the perks of having a blog that gets double-digit daily readership* is the ability to spread the word about things you (where “you” is “the blogger”) believe should have more exposure. I have a lot of ground to cover, however. So, in no particular order: capsule reviews, where I’ve been, a fresh edition of IGR Recommends, meditations on sentimentality, et cetera.
WHERE I HAVE BEEN
Discretion requires that I don’t write about work, which is a pity, because it’s definitely the funniest part of my day, if not the funnest. (Heh.) I will share these stories eventually, probably, just not when I’m employed at this position.
CAPSULE REVIEWS
Avatar
The aliens all looked like they had spent their summer following a String Cheese Incident tour. Also, the fluctuation of the main character’s accent bothered me, and the acting was pretty uniformly terrible. On the upside, I finally know what it would be like to explore FernGully.
The Ocarina
Miguk Little Brother received one for Christmas. His enthusiasm for the instrument has the effect of making me feel as though I am constantly on some sort of Andean quest.
OTHER NEWS
Miguk Apa felt the need to transfer some old videos to DVD, over Miguk LB’s vigorous protests. I actually totally get why he did not want to revisit it – remembering how deeply uncomfortable I felt in my own skin for much of my childhood, it’s not something to which it’s easy to return. I think the hardest part for me and him both is when my father deliberately teases us about how adorable we were then and how sad he is that we are no longer children living with him – which would be ordinary and in good fun for some people, maybe, but because our family a) is v. tightly knit and b) is all sort of neurotic, esp. where guilt is concerned, this makes us feel sort of legitimately bad, even though it’s an unavoidable (and, quite frankly, healthy) part of growing up.
On that DVD there was an old science video of myself and two people who were once very good friends of mine – although this was in high school, and it is fair to say that none of us are in high school anymore. One of my old high school classmates (who is not in this video) is now a relatively famous player in the NBA, and I’ve been thinking about what, if anything, this means – what common points we have/would have, were we ever to meet (because it’s not like we ever hung out back then). How much shared experience you need to have it mean something. But with these two – and we’re all very different people now – it almost doesn’t matter that they’re not in my life anymore; they were once, and that is enough. Weirdly enough, this sort of helps me consider my relationships now with some sanity.
Also, I am at home for another week while my car gets fixed, as I am more or less stranded here. It works out fairly well, I suppose – more time to finish the last of the grad school apps, recover from a rather unpleasant cold, etc. I got Miguk Momma’s old iPod, which is larger and in better shape than mine, and I have been reorganizing all of my music and sorting it by genre. It’s satisfying in a sick sort of way. Maybe this is a small step towards being a grown-up. Or, uh, maybe not.
IGR RECOMMENDS
This is my new favorite song, and for a song so pretty, it’s inexplicably unavailable anywhere except, uh, via purchase. Even the lyrics required extensive Googling, which is unusual for an album that is readily available from iTunes. It’s such a lovely and sad song, almost uncomfortably so; an artist like Elliott Smith, for example, can get so despairing that he seems almost distant – IGRB used to say that whenever he felt like being sad he just let Elliott Smith do it for him. This is a much more relatable kind of downtrodden aesthetic. But the way it soars, it almost doesn’t matter. There are some reviews describing it as “lazy” and/or “breezy,” but those reviews are wrong, and those people clearly haven’t read the lyrics.
The Court and Spark – We Were All Uptown Rulers
IGR also recommends the filesharing service used for that file, Droplr. It is very convenient, especially for Mac users. IGR does NOT recommend the beer referenced in the abovementioned song, however. A bartender in DC once tried to tell IGR that it was, quote, “a flat beer.” Whatever, it was gross.
Continuing on with the recommendations, IGR has fallen in love all over again with the following song, which is not the best Pretenders song ever but is certainly a good one. I suspect that there is very little Chrissie Hynde could do to remove herself from the top of my list of Coolest Musicians Ever.
I think that’s all I’ve got. I’ll try to return here with more frequency.
*thanks Google searches
Filed under: poetry
Generally, when I find a poem that I like – especially if it is a) by someone famous and b) about some sort of neurotic female figure – what I learn is that it has already been discovered a thousand times before, its pithiest quotes appropriated by girls for their LiveJournal headings in 2002.
As the woman who is probably my favorite author forever once said:
I know now that almost everyone wonders something like that, sooner or later and no matter what he or she is doing, but one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.
Remarkably, however, a Google search for the complete text of Anne Sexton’s “Love Song” reveals only two pages of results – this amid the fact that Madonna (Madonna!) apparently cribbed from it for a poem she “wrote” for her bodyguard. (Despite that, I still like it.)
Here is my attempt to add one more source to the mix.
LOVE SONG
I was
the girl of the chain letter,
the girl full of talk of coffins and keyholes,
the one of the telephone bills,
the wrinkled photo and the lost connections,
the one who kept saying–
Listen! Listen!
We must never! We must never!
and all those things…
the one
with her eyes half under her coat,
with her large gun-metal blue eyes,
with the thin vein at the bend of her neck
that hummed like a tuning fork,
with her shoulders as bare as a building,
with her thin foot and her thin toes,
with an old red hook in her mouth,
the mouth that kept bleeding
in the terrible fields of her soul…
the one
who kept dropping off to sleep,
as old as a stone she was,
each hand like a piece of cement,
for hours and hours
and then she’d wake,
after the small death,
and then she’d be as soft as,
as delicate as…
as soft and delicate as
an excess of light,
with nothing dangerous at all,
like a beggar who eats
or a mouse on a rooftop
with no trap doors,
with nothing more honest
than your hand in her hand–
with nobody, nobody but you!
and all those things.
nobody, nobody but you!
Oh! There is no translating
that ocean,
that music,
that theater,
that field of ponies.
- Anne Sexton
Filed under: actual transcripts
Like, for the rest of my life.
(in the hall, during school)
FOUR-YEAR-OLD Ms. IGR! You look pretty!
(one hour later, in the hall)
FOUR-YEAR-OLD Look! Ms. IGR still looks pretty!
Filed under: Uncategorized
It feels like the accumulated stress of the past two months or so has settled into my bones, weighing me down. It’s difficult to explain this feeling of emotional and mental fatigue – as though all the crying and yelling has actually drained the energy from me, like a long run, but without the ensuing endorphin rush. I should probably start running again.* I don’t sleep a lot in an escapist manner, but when I sleep I sleep longer and harder, my dreams more surreal, waking more difficult. These are not real stresses, not stresses like having to provide for a family or going hungry, but nobody told my subconscious.
I spent today drafting my policy memo, which was satisfying but not as much as I would have liked it to be, and came back and found the apples IGRB and I picked. I should not have been surprised that they smelt of rot.
As I mentioned a few days ago, we spent the last JF meeting discussing charity vs. justice – charity is palliative, whereas justice involves fighting for deeper, structural change. And when I am lost in my own self-centered miasma of negativity, I wonder what needs address with me: the symptoms or the person, myself. Something usually comes along, however, to remind me that there’s a world beyond my navel; in the case of today, I wrote a paper about the need for economic justice in addressing the spread of HIV/AIDS, because most funding in the particular area I’m covering is focused on treatment of the symptoms and not the larger problem. And then I spoke – briefly, via the written word – with a friend who means a lot to me, and who is facing loss right now in a way that dwarfs me. Which is a reminder that some justice can be fought for and attained, and some things are unfair by their very nature, but that all of them extend beyond my own petty concerns.
One of the great pleasures of my line of work is seeing movie cliches come true. Because, as they say, such tired tropes have to get their start somewhere.
DC has a geography competition called GeoPlunge, a team-based contest that hybridizes knowledge of US state facts with the competitive edge of a good game of Spoons. You can probably guess from the beginning of this post, Best Beloved, that we won. I went to watch the competition yesterday at the Museum of American History.
In the best tradition of scholastic competition, my kids – coached by our fantastic fifth grade teacher – found themselves facing off against a number of schools that are near my house, i.e. in the furthest reaches of the bourgeois wilderness. It was exactly the sort of sight one might imagine: both of our teams, entirely African-American and largely from struggling families, against wealthy kids wearing Gap. One school we played had two tiny white kids, both with long, skateboarder/hipster hair, and a black kid who was dressed like Twofer from 30 Rock. One of our girls, a miniscule fourth grader, had her “Are you GeoPlunging?” hat perched atop a high, puffy ponytail. I could not have written this stuff to be more cinematic if I tried.
What really astonished me, however, was the degree to which our kids did not notice any of this. While I mentally added the soundtrack from every educational movie and every inspirational sports film I’ve ever seen, I heard not a word – not an indication from either side – that the players were observant of any distinctions vis-a-vis class or race. Seriously, nothing. My school did not enter with an underdog mentality; rather, we were the defending champions from last year (and the year before, not to brag or anything). All the trash talk was reserved for disparaging one’s knowledge of which state had the American goldfinch as its state bird (Washington State, in case you were wondering). In short, the competition – to our students – seemed to be so purely about academic excellence that other considerations had finally been erased from their minds.
Am I sure about this? Of course not. But I think I would have noticed something. The real moral of the movie, which I am not expressing very well, appears to have something to do with the degree to which adults project their own concerns, and their own narratives, on kids who, ultimately, want to just be kids without regard to other issues. And, in the words of one of our girls, who wrote this on her GeoPlunge survey: “To bring back the trofy to our school.” (Trofy brought.)
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’m going to try and keep this blog a work-free zone with the exception of child-related matters. Suffice it to say that my lack of posting here can be traced in large part to work-related matters that make me feel like my brain is leaking out my ears. Also, that I am not wanted. I have a drawing of six boxes on a Post-it note that I stuck on my computer in my (still very hot) office to remind me to compartmentalize. I still feel like I’m going to get an ulcer.
Things I have eaten for breakfast lately that are not actually breakfast foods:
Godiva macaroons
gum
We talked a lot tonight in JustFaith about the difference between charity and justice, and it really struck a chord with me, and I was going to write about it, but I’ve realized now that all I really want to do is go to bed and silence the thoughts thundering around in my head. So I guess I’ll talk about it some other time here.
