I just started my workout today when a group of high schoolers who are (I assume) attending Governer's school at Lehigh came up to me and asked if I i knew of a building with a half number on it. They were doing a scavenger hunt. I had no idea what they were talking about. I said no. The guy who asked responded "actually?" in a tone that I found less than polite.
I continued on my way toward the first set of stairs where the hardcore workout begins and a group walked down the stairs, completely in my way, and one girl said something to the effect of "she's the one who wouldn't help us right?" Um, hello, I can hear you, and what is this King's Cross Station? How the hell am I supposed to know where the building with fractions for an address is? I responded "I didn't help you, because I didn't know what the hell you were talking about."
They went on there way, and I continued my workout. As I ran, I could feel my anger getting the better of me. I just hate when people are rude like that. Plus, all day I was being interrupted by people at work who had questions they could have answered for themselves. As I ran, I prayed and I wondered if perhaps I was being too critical of others and not critical enough of myself. Perhaps what I needed to be today, was patient.
I was reminded of the clip in Evan Almighty, where Morgan Freeman, playing God, tells Lauren Graham, Evan's wife, that when a person prays for courage...you know what, I won't do it justice...here's the clip.
The bottom line is, life is all about opportunities. Here I am, praying for the ability to be more patient, and at the same time, I am ignoring the opportunities to exercise patience. I let the actions of others dictate my mood, and worse than that, I allowed my actions and reactions to be filled with anger and with annoyance instead of with compassion and kindness.
Am I preaching? I like to think not. I think sometimes I find it difficult to know where the line between patient and annoyed should be. When does it stop becoming patience and start becoming self deprecating? When do I stop giving others unlimited chances and start recognizing the value of my own time and standards and start standing up for those values? These questions plagued me as I ran up stairs, walked hills, and just generally took in the coolness of the evening.
I guess my gut tells me that kindness is always the better way, I just don't always know how to exercise kindness, particularly in the face of ignorance, disrespect, and incompetence.
As I walked and thought of these things, I hoped I would run into some more students so I could practice the patience I lacked previously. A group did find me. They came up to the top of the stairs and a girl and I stared at each other from afar for a bit. Turns out, she was mesmerized by some dear that were close at hand, and I thought she might be someone I knew. She flagged me down and politely asked for help finding a building with a half number on it. I gave her group the best advice I could and moved on.
Later, Court, Britt and I walked down to the cup, where apparently all the governer's school kids who think they are cool go to hang out. I saw the people who were rude to me, and although at first we stared at each other awkwardly as we passed through the doorway, I stopped the first guy and asked if they found what they were looking for. He said they didn't but the person behind him did. That guy stepped forward and I asked where it was. He explained it and then said he took a picture, took out his phone, and showed us. It was actually a pleasant interaction.
I felt like, perhaps for the first time all day, I had finally seized an opportunity to be more patient and to put good out into the world instead of staining it with my lack of compassion.
Date Taken: 5/13/12
Setting: Philly
Thoughts: I went over to Rach and Dave's to walk Gypsy on this particular day. It was mother's day, which these days, is a day that is difficult to wrap my brain around. As I was walking on this beautiful morning, I thought about my mom, as I do every day. I thanked her for all of the things she has given me and taught me and lamented the fact that I don't get to ask her for all of the help that I desperately need from her. I sometimes get angry with myself for not having been more mature when she was alive. When she died, I think we were just entering a really interesting time in our relationship, one in which I finally started to understand what it means to be an adult and the kinds of sacrifices she has made for me all her life. In recent years, I have wished that I could have gotten to that place sooner, that I could have been more capable of sharing with her the kinds of things I wish I could now.
As I walked, I thought of all the conversations we will never get to have, of all the memories of her I have forgotten, of all the moments in my future that I wish she could be there for, and of the parts of me that may never make sense to Brian because he will never get to meet her. While Gyps and I explored the city, I came across these beautiful blooming flowers and some dead discarded ones dumped at the base of a tree. These two images together seem to perfectly encapsulate my feelings on this day and every day. There is so much of my mom in me, so much of her that I carry with me every day. I hear her in my laugh and I see her sensibility in the decisions I make. I remember her hugs and her smile, the way she knew how to take care of others and the way she loved to bring people together to share a meal and talk about life. Those are the good things, the good memories, the good moments in my day.
The other side, the discarded dead flowers on the ground part, well that's all the times I told her I would rather watch TV than go to the grocery store with her. Those dead flowers are all of the times I argued with her for no reason, the times I talked to her without the reverence she deserved. They are my graduation days, my boyfriend, my future family, my career; they are all of the things that I want to share with her but can't. Those dead discarded flowers are all of the pictures of her and me where all she sees is me, and her whole face glows with her love for me, the pictures it hurts the most to look at because I can see so clearly how much she loved me and exactly what I am missing.
I think about my mom every single day. I miss her. I love her. I wonder what she might say to me in any given situation. I ask her to watch over people I care about who need help. I wish that she would be there when I pull into the driveway. The funny thing about missing her is that it hasn't gotten any easier. People always say that time heals all wounds, but really, it just makes you forget things. The pain, that's still there. I feel it every time I see a mother with her daughter or see someone that resembles her or smell her perfume in the air. I feel it every time I walk through our house or feel overwhelmed or see something I think she would have liked. It isn't getting any easier to have her gone, it is getting harder, I think mostly because I am realizing how much she won't be there for and how lost I am as an adult sometimes. It gets harder because the new people that come into my life don't know her. They don't know she is dead. They don't see in me all of her good qualities.
And as time goes on, and the days turn into months and years since she last existed on this earth, I grow more and more anxious about the prospect of losing more people that I love. I worry every day that the next phone call will be a bad one, one that informs me of another loss that will make me want to curl up in bed and never leave. Whenever I think this way, I try to shake off the feeling of utter helplessness. I do something else, I try to see the beauty around me, I try to focus on a task and get something done, but the bottom line is, I'm scared. I'm sacred of losing more people and I am emotionally exhausted from missing my mom. Donald Hall wrote a book about the slow and painful death of his wife. In one poem he quotes his late wife:
"Dying is simple," she said. "What’s worst is . . . the separation."
She was right. There is no mystery to death, there is nothing complicated about it. The worst part about death is that it permanently separates us from the people we love and care about. I still feel my mom's presence. I still love her and ask her for help. I still talk to her. Only now, I have to look for her answers, her voice, her smile in the steady flapping of a bird's wings, or the wind rustling through treetops, or the edges of light that peak around clouds when the sun is behind them. I suppose I am learning to read nature in a new way, a way that brings me closer to her, and while I know I can never be as close as I want, I can still see her and hear her and feel her if only for small isolated moments.
Taryn sent me this text the other day:
"Devil bird on my car! Scratched up the paint with its talons!"
This picture accompanied the text.
To which I replied:
"I think the universe keeps trying to tell you that car isn't right for you...also he's quite stalwart...he reminds me of another bird you've encountered...a certain protective rooster" No, but seriously, that car has been through so much crap since Taryn and her dad bought it. I caused Taryn to run up over a curb (more on that in a bit) with it, the freshman borrowed it and got into an accident smashing one of the taillights, the horn/security system wasn't working, during a routine oil change the mechanic neglected to put the cap back on causing the hood to start billowing smoke, at which point we pulled into a restaurant parking lot and the horn started going off, which we couldn't stop because it was disconnected and we had to get it towed back to the mechanic. So. many. disasters. The best/worst part of that last episode was that the people dining outside at this particular restaurant kept coming over to try to help us since they were irritated by the noise. They kept looking at me, Taryn, and Mendy and saying, did you try to push the button, you know the one that turns the horn off.
We would look at them quizzically and be like...yeah...we sure did. Dear men, please stop coming over and trying to "help" us poor, pathetic young women...not only did you suggest the most obvious solution, which we had already tried, and the same solution that we tried to explain wasn't going to work, but you also assumed that we were completely inept. Thanks men, we appreciate that one.
Taryn and I had so many wonderful adventures, especially when she was a senior and I was a first year grad student. My class had graduated and it was quite lonely despite the good number of younger friends I had at school still. It just wasn't the same without my classmates. Taryn and I became even closer that year. There were however, four instances in which our friendship almost ended. We always joke about them because they were so absurd, but they happened at such odd or tense moments that it just nearly derailed us.
The four things that almost ended our friendship:
1. A balloon hat:
As Lehigh women's basketball superfans (replete with cardboard and feathered hawk wings and capes), we attended many a game. At one particular home game, Tootsie the clown was there making balloon animals. We approached Tootsie, and as she made us some elaborate and lavish balloon hats, we asked if she knew anything about the mascot basketball challenge. One year, I had witnessed a bunch of student athletes dressed up in character/mascot outfits playing basketball. It. was. awesome. They could barely move in those huge suits and I just remember Mel in a spongebob suit hurling a ball directly up into the bottom rim of a basket. Tootsie told us they would be there to play that exact day. Tootsie...is a liar. Not only that, but her balloon hats caused a great bit of tension between us. I was wearing mine and apparently, was inadvertently nailing Taryn in the face with the back of it every time I turned around. She tolerated it several times, but after a while I believe she grabbed the hat off my head and threw it. I stared at her wide eyed and sat down. So. frightened.
2. Christian CD
We were in Taryn's devil car trying to pull out onto 378 at a rather scary intersection that often requires you to wait for a number of minutes before traffic clears up enough to go. I looked up at her CD rack and pulled down a CD labeled FUN. I inquired and she simple grabbed it and said, oh this is a good one. She put it in and to my surprise, it was a CD full of only Christian rock music. I am not a big fan, and on this particular day, we had been waiting at this light for at least 10 minutes. It seemed like we were never going to get the hell out of there. Then, Taryn started singing. I freaked out, screamed and turned it off violently. She had much the same look I did when she threw my balloon hat.
3. Parallel parking disaster
Taryn lived in what we called the Lakehouse her senior year. It was a last minute house arrangement since we realized at a party that their landlord had rented it to a friend of my without telling Taryn and her roommates. This house is located on the top part of Montclair, which is a giant hill. Taryn made me get out to help her parallel park in the middle of this hill. I still maintain that she had a ridiculous amount of room to pull off the park job, but she was wary. Turns out, she sucks at parallel parking. She jammed on the gas and flew up over a section of curb that was partially broken. Her tire got caught on the lip of the curb and it took quite a while to extricate the car from the curb. I laughed and laughed. She was not amused.
4. Funky bucket water
This one is our favorite. We were setting up for a rave in the Lakehouse basement. We painted the walls, filled empty bottles with highlighter water and we cleaned out the entire basement. During the cleaning, I inadvertently smashed our entire stock of expensive black lights by hucking a crate into the dark cavelike room where they were sitting on the floor. I still think it was stupid to put them there. Taryn and I were bringing a chest of drawers up the cellar stairs that led outside. They were steep and full of cobwebs. (sidenote, Taryn is terrified of spiders and I also dislike them very very much) I was at the top, gripping the top of the chest, which had no good way to grab it. It was cheaply made and in the middle of the stairs, the top layer that had been glued to the top as a finish started ripping off. I was losing my grip, causing me to pause. Taryn started freaking out "The spiders! The spiders! Go! Go!" I couldn't go, I couldn't get a grip!
When we finally got it outside, she was visibly irritated. Then, we looked over at their fence and there was a decapitated bird hanging on the fence. It was very strange. We headed back inside for the last thing to clean - a keg bucket. The bucket was filled with a fowl smelling funky water. Before we picked it up, Taryn looked me right in the eyes and said "if you get this on my I swear to God I am never talking to you again." "Yeah yeah yeah, let's do this." We got it all the way upstairs and just before we set it down, my attention shifted and I let go just before it had reached the ground.
One single splash looped up out of the bucket and landed on Taryn. Without any hesitation, she punched me as hard as she could in the arm and stormed back downstairs and slammed the door. I stood in the yard laughing then just walked up the hill to my house. She called hours later and was like, ok we're friends again, I just needed some time.
Oh life, you are so good and yet so dang tricky. I hate not seeing Taryn every day. She has been abroad so much during the last two years, and I have seen her so little. It sucks. I worry about her. She is working in dangerous places, places of war. I know she finds it exhilarating and she feels a deep and profound sense of purpose, but I can't help but worry about her and wish she wouldn't go. In the back of my mind, I know Taryn will probably never be satisfied living in one place for too long. She has an unbridled sense of adventure and her spirit is far to beautiful to trap in one place for too long. It reminds me of Shawshank Redemption when Red says:
"Sometimes it makes me sad, though... Andy being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend."
I don't want to cage her, but I miss her and it makes me sad to look at the hole that is left when she is not around. She is one of my closest friends, yet she is always so far away, across the country, across the world. I try not to think about it too much, but when I do, I wonder if we will ever get to be in the same place again, if our lives will be more intertwined than the simple meeting of two paths every once in a while. We will honor our day o fun every year, of that I am sure, but one day a year is not nearly enough.
It has been a difficult transition from being an athlete to...well, not being one. So much of my personality, my identity, my work ethic, everything about me comes from a lifetime of participating in team sports. I learned how to talk with all different kinds of people, how to make friends easily, how to rely on myself, how to set goals and work towards them. I learned so many life lessons.
It is strange to go from being surround by people who have a similar mentality to people who have no idea what that world is like or what it means to me. I see most things in terms of wins or losses, quitting or pushing through, being the best or not being good enough, accomplishing a goal or failure. I find that most people do not have this mentality. It has been frustrating to navigate the world outside of the Lehigh bubble, and the Lehigh athletics bubble in particular. I felt validated in this frustration and in my own mindset when I walked into the field hockey/women's lax locker room and found these sayings tacked up all over the bathroom among a myriad of other encouragements.
Even though this is an advertisement that tries to appear like it isn't so much an advertisement as a rebellious life changing once in a lifetime adventure, I still think that it is an exciting video full of some amazing images and thought provoking ideas. It's worth a watch.
This morning, when I got to the subway station, I was tired. It was early. I had been grading early in the morning. I knew I had a lot to accomplish in the lone hour before class. Needless to say, I was not projecting an aura like a sunset. I happened to glance up at the information scroll board and caught the tail end of what I thought was a very positive saying. I stared at the scroll until another one came up. I was only able to film two before the train came. I have never seen anything like this before on the scroll. Usually, I just check it for the time, or stare at it, disgruntled, because it is announcing a train delay. Today, I was pleasantly surprised by these messages and wondered how many peoples' lives would be better if these messages were everywhere. When I returned to the subway station this afternoon, I noticed a haggard looking man with a cane and a pretty beat up rolly back pack. I watched a group of about 10 people rush right past him, and initially, I did the same. About halfway up the stairs, I turned to see how he was making out. He appeared to be struggling, so I went back down the stairs and asked if I could help him. He told me that it was pretty heavy, but I assured him that I was pretty strong and took the bag up the stairs. He made his way to the top and we walked the short distance out into the corridor. He stopped me and the following dialog took place:
Man: Because you helped me, I'm going to help you. Maybe you will be able to make a profit off this. [coughs on his hand]Me: [looking at him quizzically, then looking at the hand he just coughed in and hoping he doesn't try to shake my hand]Man: I bet I can tell you where you got those shoes [pointing down at my feet]Me: [looking down at my feet] I don't know, I don't think you can tell me where I bought these [thinking to myself that I bought them about 7 years ago in an outlet store in Florida]Man: I bet you I can tell you where you got them from. [Puts his hand on my shoulder, touching it very lightly. Leans his head in uncomfortably close to my ear and whispers] You got them on your feet!Me: [genuine laughter] That's pretty good, I might have to use that one.
We chatted a bit more as we exited the corridor. He remarked in a joking tone that people always think he is going to guess where they bought the shoes. He noted "people don't listen." I had to admit he was correct. "It's all about language" I said. I wished him and good day and he did the same as we went in separate directions and exited out into the sunlight.
As I walked away, still smiling from the interaction, I had to chastise myself for being a little frightened of this man at the outset of our conversation. I wondered, was it because he was black, or because the state of his health and his clothes made it appear that he might possibly be homeless? Was it because he was a man, an older man, a stranger? If I am going to be honest with myself, it was probably a little bit of all of these things. I'm certainly not proud of these assumptions. As a media and feminist scholar, I want to explain away my guilt by reasoning that our culture perpetuates stereotypes based on these kinds of categories, and that media representations of black men and homeless people are few and far between and usually less than flattering.
On the other hand, there is a real danger in interacting with strangers. It would be utterly unwise to trust any stranger - it is what I learned as a child, and more than that, as a woman. I know that I didn't want that man to touch me, and that when he leaned into my personal space bubble it made me intensely uneasy, yet I also know that he made me smile and he was simply engaging me in conversation, returning the kindness I had shown him.
Now, as I write this post, I am realizing that perhaps those sayings that scrolled briefly across the board just before I got on the train earlier today influenced me more than I first realized.
- "Today is a good day to show respect to one another. Work to be positive in your encounters with others."
- "If you choose to make your environment better, no one can stop you once you decide."
The first saying was right in directly passersby to work to be positive in encounters with others. Being positive, showing other people respect, giving people a chance, and showing a little compassion is work. It is work to confront or ignore or grapple with the cultural images and ideas and conventions that might have kept me from interacting with this man. It is work to share bits of yourself with people whether they are people you love and are close to or complete strangers.
The scroll was also right in talking about choice. We can choose to ignore each other, deny one another's humanity. We can make assumptions and never bother to see if they are true or not, never bother to confront them or the source from which they originated.
Lately, I find myself grappling with a lack of control over so many parts of my life. Perhaps these sayings and this encounter were are way for me to remember that I have agency, I have choice, I can influence people in positive ways - the only catch, no one else will do this work for me, I must protect my right to choice and exercise it frequently and with great diligence and caution.
"Reality has disappeared from the modern world" - Movies in the Age of TV
"You don't get to be good-hearted by accident. You get kicked around long enough, you become a professor of pain." - Marty (1955)
Today, in a class I TA, we screened the film, Good Night and Good Luck. There were some incredibly insightful quotes that came from the movie, which was portraying real life footage from the McCarthy era.
Quotes:
"No one familiar with the history of this country, can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating. But the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the Junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always, that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to associate, to speak, and to defend the causes that were for the moment unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Sen. McCarthy's methods to keep silent or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. We proclaim ourselves as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom wherever it continues to exist in the world. But we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the Junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his, he didn't create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right, the fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Good night, and good luck."
- Edward Morrow - Good Night and Good Luck
"It is my desire if not my duty to try to talk to you journeymen with some candor about what is happening in radio and television, and if what I say is responsible, I alone am responsible for the saying of it. Our history will be what we make of it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred year from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes of one week of all three networks, they will there find, recorded in black and white and in color, evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. We are are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable, and complacent. We have a built in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information; our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses, and recognize that television, in the main, is being use to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture, too late." - Edward Morrow - Good Night and Good Luck
Questions
The Truman Show
- How can we use media and technology to empower us?
- Can we be entertained and enlightened at the same time?
- What is genuine? What is normal? What is real? Who gets to decide the way each of these concepts is constructed and understood?
Quotes- "We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented” - The Truman Show
- "For in a general manner madness here is not linked to the world and its subterranean forms, but rather to man and his frailties, his dreams and illusions…Madness no longer lies in wait for man at every crossroads; rather, it slips into him, or is in fact a subtle relationship that man has with himself…Madness is only in each man, as it lies in the attachments that men have to themselves, and the illusions that they entertain about themselves…an attachment to oneself is the first sign of madness, and it is through that attachment to oneself that man takes error for truth, lies for reality, violence and ugliness for beauty and justice” - Foucault - History of Madness
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