I have a little cat story in the latest incarnation of Robin's Sitting With Kitty page. Go on over and have a look at it. Take a look at my buddy Shadow, who appears in the cat gallery.
The link is http://www.Sittingwithkitty.com
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Jeremy and exams
My son is anxious, like his mom. He doesn't like to admit it, and last year took himself off all the medications he had been on since he was 8 years old. He has done quite well, and actually, the cognitive dulling the medications caused has lifted, so he has been doing very well in that department. However, sometimes he has a hard time, and exam season I'm afraid is conducive to this sort of problem.
He takes his philosophy exam tomorrow. He has studied a lot for it, but has failed every exam this semester, despite studying. He should probably not be taking regular timed exams because of his disabilities, but he refuses all assistance, although he is entitled to it. So he is not sleeping, is angry, feels helpless, and doesn't know if he'll ever make it through college. He failed most of his classes last year because of this very reason.
I told him he might think about going to Disabled Students, but that would require him to go back to a psychiatrist and probably on a few meds again, and I don't think he is willing to do that or even that it would be the best thing for him right now, in most ways.
He has done very well in English class, but then there are no exams in this English class, and he has two English professor/writer parents, so it's not a surprise. I feel for him, but I don't think there is anything else I can do for him.
He takes his philosophy exam tomorrow. He has studied a lot for it, but has failed every exam this semester, despite studying. He should probably not be taking regular timed exams because of his disabilities, but he refuses all assistance, although he is entitled to it. So he is not sleeping, is angry, feels helpless, and doesn't know if he'll ever make it through college. He failed most of his classes last year because of this very reason.
I told him he might think about going to Disabled Students, but that would require him to go back to a psychiatrist and probably on a few meds again, and I don't think he is willing to do that or even that it would be the best thing for him right now, in most ways.
He has done very well in English class, but then there are no exams in this English class, and he has two English professor/writer parents, so it's not a surprise. I feel for him, but I don't think there is anything else I can do for him.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Next semester's class
As I've said before, next semester I'll be teaching a class in lit to film adaptation. I had been thinking of having the students write about a text and film I chose first, using criticism I picked out and discussed in class, and then having them launch into their own choice of lit/film, with the help of the textbook and me, of course. It will be difficult, more difficult than the theme I've been doing (modern slavery) because the stuff they'll be reading will be written in jargon sometimes so thick they won't be able to understand it. I will have to help with the texts too, which means I will probably be spending a lot of time individually with the students.
I was going to do a Hitchcock film and the text it came from (The Birds or Strangers On A Train, but I found that not much is written about the adaptations, and that I really disliked Highsmith's novel, so I decided to do Oates' short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" with the movie Smooth Talk. I think they will really like both of these, and will be engaged in the process for that reason. Also, I have the story online to put on Blackboard and the movie was cheap on Amazon ($3.00). I bought two copies, one for the library, and there was a bibliography online too. Of course, lots of buyable papers are online, so I will have to watch out for that, but the assignments should be specific enough that they won't be able to use those papers, I hope.
I was going to do a Hitchcock film and the text it came from (The Birds or Strangers On A Train, but I found that not much is written about the adaptations, and that I really disliked Highsmith's novel, so I decided to do Oates' short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" with the movie Smooth Talk. I think they will really like both of these, and will be engaged in the process for that reason. Also, I have the story online to put on Blackboard and the movie was cheap on Amazon ($3.00). I bought two copies, one for the library, and there was a bibliography online too. Of course, lots of buyable papers are online, so I will have to watch out for that, but the assignments should be specific enough that they won't be able to use those papers, I hope.
Last Asana of the Sequence
Savasana--Corpse Pose
It is late night in the desert.
Miles of cool highway
slip by in the dark.
Thin saguaros, tall as a man,
stand guard by the roadside,
their arms full of blossoms
gathered in the night, haunted
by pale luna moths, the color
of twilight. In a sky deep
as breath, a circus of stars
tumbles and twirls, though no one
is watching, not even me.
All along the spine of the sleeping
mountains, the white line glows.
It is late night in the desert.
Miles of cool highway
slip by in the dark.
Thin saguaros, tall as a man,
stand guard by the roadside,
their arms full of blossoms
gathered in the night, haunted
by pale luna moths, the color
of twilight. In a sky deep
as breath, a circus of stars
tumbles and twirls, though no one
is watching, not even me.
All along the spine of the sleeping
mountains, the white line glows.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Why I Write
I spent a sleepless night last night, between the perceived snub of not being able to reach Mr. Iyengar directly to show some of my poems and thank him for creating this system of yoga that has given so much to my life and the pain in my hip/back. Richard and I sat up talking about this for quite a while, and he asked me why I wrote these poems. Were they, as he perceived them, works of art, written for their own sakes, ultimately, or were they emblems of hero worship? Since I had myself looked with great suspicion on the hero worship bestowed on Mr. Iyengar (or on anyone for that matter), refusing to think of him as anything but a human being--one who has achieved great things, but human for all of that--I had to stop and think hard about this question. Of course, the poems are poems, whatever they are about. I wrote them for whatever reason I write anything, no matter what their subject matter is, or the impetus that gave them birth.
That's when I started to think about how I began writing, and why. I apparently began making things out of words long before I could write. My parents' friend, Vivien, told me that when I was barely big enough to talk, I began telling her a story I had made up and asked her to write it down. I always loved books, and one of my early memories is seeing things written and being frustrated at not being able to make them out. I tried and tried, but it eluded me. When I studied foreign languages, this feeling again reemerged, particularly languages like Russian, with its script entirely unlike ours.
In middle school, where I was entirely out of place, I used storytelling as a way in to the society of my peers, who adopted me as an unofficial entertainer, rather like the artists who hung about the medieval courts. And, I realized, I have never entirely given up this role, though in college I found a group of people like myself. But, as John Sayles realized and ironically reflected, an anarchist's convention is a paradoxical thing, a group of people who never quite fit in still is not quite a group.
As I grew, I learned to hold these writerly impulses a little closer to the chest, because there were others who would steal them, or because, more often, they would not be understood or respected. This happened to me anyway, since, out of impulses I could not control, I wrote poems to celebrate various things, such as Jewish holidays, people, general feelings of unfocused joy, only to get in return a shrug of incomprehension.
Once, as a college student, to merge my love of poetry and tropical fish, I wrote some poems and sent them to Tropical Fish Hobbyist. I knew they did not belong there, but still was a bit put out when I got in return a note instructing me on how to write limericks.
So the poems in my yoga series are poems, and I guess I knew when I wrote them that it was likely that people who don't read poems, don't get them, would not be likely to see these poems as what they are: a gift I give in the only way I can, because I cannot express my feelings in the way others can, directly, anywhere near as well as I can in writing.
That's when I started to think about how I began writing, and why. I apparently began making things out of words long before I could write. My parents' friend, Vivien, told me that when I was barely big enough to talk, I began telling her a story I had made up and asked her to write it down. I always loved books, and one of my early memories is seeing things written and being frustrated at not being able to make them out. I tried and tried, but it eluded me. When I studied foreign languages, this feeling again reemerged, particularly languages like Russian, with its script entirely unlike ours.
In middle school, where I was entirely out of place, I used storytelling as a way in to the society of my peers, who adopted me as an unofficial entertainer, rather like the artists who hung about the medieval courts. And, I realized, I have never entirely given up this role, though in college I found a group of people like myself. But, as John Sayles realized and ironically reflected, an anarchist's convention is a paradoxical thing, a group of people who never quite fit in still is not quite a group.
As I grew, I learned to hold these writerly impulses a little closer to the chest, because there were others who would steal them, or because, more often, they would not be understood or respected. This happened to me anyway, since, out of impulses I could not control, I wrote poems to celebrate various things, such as Jewish holidays, people, general feelings of unfocused joy, only to get in return a shrug of incomprehension.
Once, as a college student, to merge my love of poetry and tropical fish, I wrote some poems and sent them to Tropical Fish Hobbyist. I knew they did not belong there, but still was a bit put out when I got in return a note instructing me on how to write limericks.
So the poems in my yoga series are poems, and I guess I knew when I wrote them that it was likely that people who don't read poems, don't get them, would not be likely to see these poems as what they are: a gift I give in the only way I can, because I cannot express my feelings in the way others can, directly, anywhere near as well as I can in writing.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Dreaming
Last night, or probably early this morning, I had an alarming dream, though somewhat silly as well. I dreamed I was wearing a ridiculous vintage mink or muskrat cape (something I used to own, actually, back in the late 60s, in my pseudo-hippie days). It had really broad shoulders, and looked as though the cat had been chewing on it. Probably it was some other, more distasteful animal, actually. I was wheeling the box I use for classes, to put papers in, and in the hustle and bustle, had lost my purse, which I found, with the wallet gone, of course, open on the stairs. As I woke, I felt violated and afraid. Probably I am telling myself of the dangers implicit in putting up drafts of poems I am working on here, exposing myself.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Not resisting rhyme
Today I could not help feeling that the last poem needed to rhyme. It was wrong of me not to let it.
So here's a revision:
Viloma Pranayama
In the quiet darkness, the stately
planets prance, wheeling in their
orbits, like partners in a dance.
The sun inspects its minions,
reclining on its throne. Mars, then Venus
passes, until Earth stands alone.
It bows before his majesty, low,
then lower, lowest. Then seems to
bite off brightness, in incrimental bits,
so that the sun shrinks to one line
and finally disappears. For me,
beneath the coral tree, a thousand
shadows mass, ghostly-green
coronas, wavering on the path.
So here's a revision:
Viloma Pranayama
In the quiet darkness, the stately
planets prance, wheeling in their
orbits, like partners in a dance.
The sun inspects its minions,
reclining on its throne. Mars, then Venus
passes, until Earth stands alone.
It bows before his majesty, low,
then lower, lowest. Then seems to
bite off brightness, in incrimental bits,
so that the sun shrinks to one line
and finally disappears. For me,
beneath the coral tree, a thousand
shadows mass, ghostly-green
coronas, wavering on the path.
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