Updates:
1. I dyed my hair redder. My mom says I look "goth." I told her that "goth" isn't really a thing anymore...but I don't care if she thinks I'm a weirdo because I am quite odd.
2. I now have 2 jobs this summer.
3. I also have promised every single one of my friends to hang out constantly.
4. Basically, I'm going to be very busy.
5. But I have a good feeling about life right now.
6. Perhaps a more coherent blog post will follow this one shortly.
7. Right now I have to go clean my room, put on real clothes, and go to an interview. Then, later I have a family party to attend. And then after that I can finally watch the new Dr. Who episode.
8. Oh, and I've now moved onto reading The Iliad and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (a play by Tom Stoppard).
9. And I might be writing album/track reviews for a music blog.
10. When did my life become so eventful?
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Welcome to the family, Pearl.*
Thoughts on May 15, 2011:
1. Our new puppy won't be a puppy for long. I can't help but wonder at the meaning her arrival in my life. Pearl, who will only be a little girl for a few more weeks, comes to my family just as I, the baby of the family, is finally leaving. We call her our "little girl." The symbolism could not be more obvious. I'm not longer the little girl in this family. This metaphor is complicated by the fact that Pearly (as I affectionately call our new puppy) is Great Dane. She is relatively little now but in a few weeks time she will be double the size and she will continue to grow at an exponential rate so that by the time I leave the country Pearl will be in no way little. Poor little thing. She doesn't get to be little for 20 years as I did. She has to grow up in a matter of weeks.
2. I am watching Doctor Who as I write this. Specifically, the newest episode, "The Doctor's Wife." And we just passed the moment of Rory's weekly supposed death. How predictable. But otherwise this episode is rather awesome. Neil Gaiman is a boss.
3. The Orioles have won their past two series and it's reminding me of the importance of impossible hope. We are the underdogs, but we have heart. Summertime means baseball - going to Camden Yards for Friday home games, the familiar voices of the Orioles' radio announcers following me everywhere as they hum in the background, last night's game always the topic of conversation at the dinner table.
4. I have a Goodreads account now: www.goodreads.com/missrosepip
5. My brother and I have been bonding over Arrested Development marathons. Family.
*Edit: We changed the puppy's name!
1. Our new puppy won't be a puppy for long. I can't help but wonder at the meaning her arrival in my life. Pearl, who will only be a little girl for a few more weeks, comes to my family just as I, the baby of the family, is finally leaving. We call her our "little girl." The symbolism could not be more obvious. I'm not longer the little girl in this family. This metaphor is complicated by the fact that Pearly (as I affectionately call our new puppy) is Great Dane. She is relatively little now but in a few weeks time she will be double the size and she will continue to grow at an exponential rate so that by the time I leave the country Pearl will be in no way little. Poor little thing. She doesn't get to be little for 20 years as I did. She has to grow up in a matter of weeks.
2. I am watching Doctor Who as I write this. Specifically, the newest episode, "The Doctor's Wife." And we just passed the moment of Rory's weekly supposed death. How predictable. But otherwise this episode is rather awesome. Neil Gaiman is a boss.
3. The Orioles have won their past two series and it's reminding me of the importance of impossible hope. We are the underdogs, but we have heart. Summertime means baseball - going to Camden Yards for Friday home games, the familiar voices of the Orioles' radio announcers following me everywhere as they hum in the background, last night's game always the topic of conversation at the dinner table.
4. I have a Goodreads account now: www.goodreads.com/missrosepip
5. My brother and I have been bonding over Arrested Development marathons. Family.
*Edit: We changed the puppy's name!
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Yes, I am sitting on the purple couch watching America's Next Top Model. It's just like three years ago, except everything has changed.
My grandmother just came home with a chocolate milk shake for me. This is one of the many reasons I love being home. Living with your grandmother definitely makes summer much sweeter. One of the best things in the world - when you're feeling like crap, having a bad day, and Grandma is there to tell you that you're beautiful.
I spent the afternoon sitting outside with my dogs, listening to the birds chirping and soaking up as much sunlight as possible. Everything is green and alive and I just want to lie in the grass all day.
I still have one last paper to write but being at home with the things that I love helps with the crippling stress that comes along with finals. At five o'clock I am going upstairs to write and by the time the sun comes up in the morning, it'll be summer.
I spent the afternoon sitting outside with my dogs, listening to the birds chirping and soaking up as much sunlight as possible. Everything is green and alive and I just want to lie in the grass all day.
I still have one last paper to write but being at home with the things that I love helps with the crippling stress that comes along with finals. At five o'clock I am going upstairs to write and by the time the sun comes up in the morning, it'll be summer.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Watching 'The Social Network' while laptop is open to Facebook.
There is power in leaving. I feel it as I consider these last few hours of my time here in Syracuse. These are my final hours of possibly one of the most important school years' of my life. If the human self is always changing and evolving, then the person I was in September at the start of the year is damn near unreckognizable now. That statement has power. A year has passed and I have changed.
By leaving, I am solidifying that person in my past. It is a rash move. All of my life I have been striving to maintain this illusion according to a false ideal. In the past nine months, you could say that I have grown up quite a bit. I do not want to simply say that I "grew up," because such a finite sentence suggests that "up" is something you can attain. In reality, there is no"up" except for the ideal we strive to attain. We are constantly growing toward this "up," moving in an upward direction. But we can never stop this motion. We never reach a state of "up." We can only reach higher.
.........and apparently on this night I begin my career as an inspirational speech writer.
By leaving, I am solidifying that person in my past. It is a rash move. All of my life I have been striving to maintain this illusion according to a false ideal. In the past nine months, you could say that I have grown up quite a bit. I do not want to simply say that I "grew up," because such a finite sentence suggests that "up" is something you can attain. In reality, there is no"up" except for the ideal we strive to attain. We are constantly growing toward this "up," moving in an upward direction. But we can never stop this motion. We never reach a state of "up." We can only reach higher.
.........and apparently on this night I begin my career as an inspirational speech writer.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
What is this place called Oxford? Will they let me bring my Justin Bieber poster?
Seriously. I'm concerned.
And also ridiculously excited. I'm going to Oxford!!!
And also ridiculously excited. I'm going to Oxford!!!
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
This is a true story about letters written in the dead of night.
(skip to paragraph 4, to get to the real point of this blog post)
The night of Sunday May 1 - Monday May 2, 2011 I didn't sleep very well. Who did? Everyone on my campus was celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden and the end of our annual spring weekend of alcoholism. Such an announcement couldn't have come at a time when the students at SU were in more of a party-mode. They would use any excuse to riot at midnight on a Sunday. I was not in a celebrating mood, however. In fact I was a little wary at the very idea of celebrating a death. Now a few days later I am reminded even more of how complex the situation is. I am reassured in my knowledge that to celebrate without considering these complexities is wrong. I can't even attempt to write about the complexities of the political situation because there are so many and they are so closely intertwined that I can't make sense of them. I suppose this is how you know some moments in history are important, because when they move from present to past you are left with more questions than answers.
This introduction did go a little off topic but I can still make it to the reason I took a break from writing my final papers. I came to the blog, once again in response to a video and also in response to the day of my life that I just began to describe. I will link to Rosianna's video at the end of this post*, but basically it is a thoughtful analysis of the worth of an unsent letter. A topic I've thought a lot about over this year.
On Monday morning, I woke up from very little sleep and somehow made it through my lecture presentation.** I was feeling stressed and zombie-like as I attended my last Shakespeare class of the semester. Now, I know there are a lot of English majors out there. And I know there are a lot of Shakespeare lovers out there. But sometimes people underestimate just how much I loved my Shakespeare class this semester. Last year I took the lower-division Shakespeare course with this professor and was inspired by her passion for early modern theater to take this advanced Shakespeare course with her. This was one of those classes that I didn't just look forward to going to, I took time away from my other classes to do extra reading and I went to my professor's office hours every week just to talk more about the plays (I'M A NERD). I've written multiple blog posts about topics discussed in the class. This single class took my love of Shakespeare and transformed it into an all-out passion (borderig on obsession). I'm the biggest Shakespeare nerd I know and I'm friends with a lot of English majors. It's not normal.
Anyway, in our last class we discussed the last act of The Tempest. I had never read the play before this semester and I can't say it's one of my favorites*** but after our final class discussion I went home and I wrote a letter.
I am a person who incessantly writes down her thoughts. I don't just keep this awkward and pointless blog. I also have a ridiculously narcisstic Tumblr and an even more pathetic Twitter. Then, of course, I keep the most private of all written journals, the kind of journal that you write in to unapologetically let loose the craziness of your uncensored mind. Despite all of that, however, I also write a lot of letters.
Some of the letters I do actually send. I try to keep up written correspondence with a few of my best friends who are away at different colleges. I've written here about my feelings on the worth of the written word. Well, writing letters is something I do to show my devotion to the power of words written by hand in pen and ink. And yet most of the letters I write are never sent.
And here is where I will attempt to tie the video, my Shakespeare class, and that letter all together.
The letter I wrote on Monday was addressed to a person who has been the intended recipient of several other unsent letters. This year there has been a lot I haven't been able to say and what I have said (in this blog, for example) has never been to the right people. Some of the letters I wrote in the dead of night over the course of the year I actually planned on sending at the time. I wrote them with impassioned abandon, unable to sleep until the words were out of my head. But whenever I finished the letter and signed my name, I would leave it sitting on my desk and go to sleep. And of course in the light of day those letters could never be sent. With those first letters I was unknowingly participating in a cathartic act even Shakespeare considered worthy of attention.
In Act 5 of The Tempest, Shakespeare's final play and certainly a very puzzling ending to his writing career, Prospero gathers the characters he has brought to the island and immobilizes them for an act of selfishness. For me, one of the troubling aspects of this play is that I didn't find the ending to be properly cathartic. As an audience we expect a certain kind of resolution to occur on stage. We want the bad guys to be punished**** and the good guys to be rewarded. This doesn't exactly happen. At the end of The Tempest, Prospero and his usurping brother make up and everyone goes back to Milan to live happily ever after. I don't know how Shakespeare's first audience reacted to this ending but especially since I know it to be his last play, I am somewhat unsatisfied with it (also, I didn't really like Prospero all that much?).
Before this scene of reconciliation occurs, though, Prospero takes the time to address his brother and the others while they are frozen by his magic. This is Prospero writing his unsent letter. He needs to freeze time and the complexities of life in order to have a cathartic release that is just his own. He does this for the same reason we don't send those letters we write in the middle of the night. If the letter is sent, if the addressee has a chance to respond, we will have to view the world more complexly and take into account the feelings of the other person. But we don't want to imagine the other person complexly. We just want to "get it out," say what we need to say because we need to say it. Those words, the ones spoken by Prospero in this scene and the ones written in a letter that is never sent, are selfish.
A play is supposed to be cathartic for the audience. A playwright is not supposed to be selfish. Why then does Shakespeare give us this ending? Prospero (the playwright/God figure) gets his cathartic release but the audience is left unsatisfied by an ending that seems too simple. And then in the epilogue we are asked to release Prospero by telling him how great his magic was? What the hell, Shakespeare?
I don't have an answer. But whatever else The Tempest makes us think about, it also beautifully captures the flawed, selfishness of the unsent letter. Of course, it is flawed. To the world, writing a letter in the dead of night and then never sending it seems pointless. If something is so important, say it! But sometimes it's not the reading of the letter that is important. It is the writing of the letter. Putting the words down on paper makes them real. It also makes them something that can be balled up and thrown in the waste basket. Those letters aren't written for the "Dear Whomever," they are written for the writer.
It becomes more complicated if you stop to think about whether or not this flawed sensibility is detrimental to the overall story of your life. In the same way that we're left puzzled by the ending of The Tempest.
Now, I have to go write 4 papers in 4 days. While listening to annoyingly upbead songs on repeat and stuffing my face with candy.
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df77_6CiRZU&feature=feedu
**I had to give a 3 minutes speech in front of a 100 person lecture
***Othello and King Lear. Cliched perhaps but for good reason. I mean, come on. I'm a tragedy kinda girl.
****Interesting that I read this play just as the ultimate 21st century bad guy was given a final punishment.
*****Had this part in the blog post proper but decided to move it down here. Kinda off topic: We re-read the ending of the Book of Jonah in class as we discussed Act 5. It was very interesting to read the actual text (St. James' Bible, I believe?) from the perspective of a student of literature instead of from the perspective of student being taught a religion. I went to 12 years of Catholic school. When we talked about Bible stories, it was to teach us how to be good Catholics. Reading the Bible as a piece of literature is a completely different experience, and not necessarily one that eliminates all spirituality from the text. At the end of the Book of Jonah, the language particularly causes the reader to question the lesson of the story. The meaning we were given in our elementary school religion classes was flat and flimsy. There's mystery in the story of Jonah. I still don't totally understand it and it was intensely interesting to consider this particular Bible story in relation to the themes of The Tempest.
The night of Sunday May 1 - Monday May 2, 2011 I didn't sleep very well. Who did? Everyone on my campus was celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden and the end of our annual spring weekend of alcoholism. Such an announcement couldn't have come at a time when the students at SU were in more of a party-mode. They would use any excuse to riot at midnight on a Sunday. I was not in a celebrating mood, however. In fact I was a little wary at the very idea of celebrating a death. Now a few days later I am reminded even more of how complex the situation is. I am reassured in my knowledge that to celebrate without considering these complexities is wrong. I can't even attempt to write about the complexities of the political situation because there are so many and they are so closely intertwined that I can't make sense of them. I suppose this is how you know some moments in history are important, because when they move from present to past you are left with more questions than answers.
This introduction did go a little off topic but I can still make it to the reason I took a break from writing my final papers. I came to the blog, once again in response to a video and also in response to the day of my life that I just began to describe. I will link to Rosianna's video at the end of this post*, but basically it is a thoughtful analysis of the worth of an unsent letter. A topic I've thought a lot about over this year.
On Monday morning, I woke up from very little sleep and somehow made it through my lecture presentation.** I was feeling stressed and zombie-like as I attended my last Shakespeare class of the semester. Now, I know there are a lot of English majors out there. And I know there are a lot of Shakespeare lovers out there. But sometimes people underestimate just how much I loved my Shakespeare class this semester. Last year I took the lower-division Shakespeare course with this professor and was inspired by her passion for early modern theater to take this advanced Shakespeare course with her. This was one of those classes that I didn't just look forward to going to, I took time away from my other classes to do extra reading and I went to my professor's office hours every week just to talk more about the plays (I'M A NERD). I've written multiple blog posts about topics discussed in the class. This single class took my love of Shakespeare and transformed it into an all-out passion (borderig on obsession). I'm the biggest Shakespeare nerd I know and I'm friends with a lot of English majors. It's not normal.
Anyway, in our last class we discussed the last act of The Tempest. I had never read the play before this semester and I can't say it's one of my favorites*** but after our final class discussion I went home and I wrote a letter.
I am a person who incessantly writes down her thoughts. I don't just keep this awkward and pointless blog. I also have a ridiculously narcisstic Tumblr and an even more pathetic Twitter. Then, of course, I keep the most private of all written journals, the kind of journal that you write in to unapologetically let loose the craziness of your uncensored mind. Despite all of that, however, I also write a lot of letters.
Some of the letters I do actually send. I try to keep up written correspondence with a few of my best friends who are away at different colleges. I've written here about my feelings on the worth of the written word. Well, writing letters is something I do to show my devotion to the power of words written by hand in pen and ink. And yet most of the letters I write are never sent.
And here is where I will attempt to tie the video, my Shakespeare class, and that letter all together.
The letter I wrote on Monday was addressed to a person who has been the intended recipient of several other unsent letters. This year there has been a lot I haven't been able to say and what I have said (in this blog, for example) has never been to the right people. Some of the letters I wrote in the dead of night over the course of the year I actually planned on sending at the time. I wrote them with impassioned abandon, unable to sleep until the words were out of my head. But whenever I finished the letter and signed my name, I would leave it sitting on my desk and go to sleep. And of course in the light of day those letters could never be sent. With those first letters I was unknowingly participating in a cathartic act even Shakespeare considered worthy of attention.
In Act 5 of The Tempest, Shakespeare's final play and certainly a very puzzling ending to his writing career, Prospero gathers the characters he has brought to the island and immobilizes them for an act of selfishness. For me, one of the troubling aspects of this play is that I didn't find the ending to be properly cathartic. As an audience we expect a certain kind of resolution to occur on stage. We want the bad guys to be punished**** and the good guys to be rewarded. This doesn't exactly happen. At the end of The Tempest, Prospero and his usurping brother make up and everyone goes back to Milan to live happily ever after. I don't know how Shakespeare's first audience reacted to this ending but especially since I know it to be his last play, I am somewhat unsatisfied with it (also, I didn't really like Prospero all that much?).
Before this scene of reconciliation occurs, though, Prospero takes the time to address his brother and the others while they are frozen by his magic. This is Prospero writing his unsent letter. He needs to freeze time and the complexities of life in order to have a cathartic release that is just his own. He does this for the same reason we don't send those letters we write in the middle of the night. If the letter is sent, if the addressee has a chance to respond, we will have to view the world more complexly and take into account the feelings of the other person. But we don't want to imagine the other person complexly. We just want to "get it out," say what we need to say because we need to say it. Those words, the ones spoken by Prospero in this scene and the ones written in a letter that is never sent, are selfish.
A play is supposed to be cathartic for the audience. A playwright is not supposed to be selfish. Why then does Shakespeare give us this ending? Prospero (the playwright/God figure) gets his cathartic release but the audience is left unsatisfied by an ending that seems too simple. And then in the epilogue we are asked to release Prospero by telling him how great his magic was? What the hell, Shakespeare?
I don't have an answer. But whatever else The Tempest makes us think about, it also beautifully captures the flawed, selfishness of the unsent letter. Of course, it is flawed. To the world, writing a letter in the dead of night and then never sending it seems pointless. If something is so important, say it! But sometimes it's not the reading of the letter that is important. It is the writing of the letter. Putting the words down on paper makes them real. It also makes them something that can be balled up and thrown in the waste basket. Those letters aren't written for the "Dear Whomever," they are written for the writer.
It becomes more complicated if you stop to think about whether or not this flawed sensibility is detrimental to the overall story of your life. In the same way that we're left puzzled by the ending of The Tempest.
Now, I have to go write 4 papers in 4 days. While listening to annoyingly upbead songs on repeat and stuffing my face with candy.
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df77_6CiRZU&feature=feedu
**I had to give a 3 minutes speech in front of a 100 person lecture
***Othello and King Lear. Cliched perhaps but for good reason. I mean, come on. I'm a tragedy kinda girl.
****Interesting that I read this play just as the ultimate 21st century bad guy was given a final punishment.
*****Had this part in the blog post proper but decided to move it down here. Kinda off topic: We re-read the ending of the Book of Jonah in class as we discussed Act 5. It was very interesting to read the actual text (St. James' Bible, I believe?) from the perspective of a student of literature instead of from the perspective of student being taught a religion. I went to 12 years of Catholic school. When we talked about Bible stories, it was to teach us how to be good Catholics. Reading the Bible as a piece of literature is a completely different experience, and not necessarily one that eliminates all spirituality from the text. At the end of the Book of Jonah, the language particularly causes the reader to question the lesson of the story. The meaning we were given in our elementary school religion classes was flat and flimsy. There's mystery in the story of Jonah. I still don't totally understand it and it was intensely interesting to consider this particular Bible story in relation to the themes of The Tempest.
Monday, May 2, 2011
What does it say that this post has been re-titled 3 times now?
Yes, Thanks to a lovely video by a certain English major who makes lovely videos, today* I am thinking about "imagined communities." Of course, now the book she mentioned by Benedict Anderson is now going on my reading list for the summer**.
I am about to leave some very important communities. In a few days, I will be leaving the community I have made for myself at Syracuse University. And while I've posted here about my complicated relationship with the school, it is a community that I chose for myself. It has meaning in my identity. I will be away from the physical space but I'll still hold the Orange community with me as I go abroad and I'll be back in Fall 2012 (to graduate, how weird is that?!). Syracuse University is a "real" community, so in that way it's not completely "imagined." But it is also a community that I chose for myself, and I kept choosing for myself despite doubts. That's why I think my ties to this school are just as important as the inherent ties I have to other communities.
For example, in a few months I will be leaving my family and my nation. These are two communities that I was born into, and they are very, very much a part of my identity. I didn't choose them but they are a part of my selfhood. And I'll also be bringing them with me as I travel. So once again I hope the ties will not be weakened because of physical distance. One of the scary things about travel and changes is that it threatens the strengths of the bonds you've made and kept up over the years. It's a test.
There are also other communities (whether "natural" or "constructed") that are important to me: friends from school and home, various communities I've been a part of through the internet***, my hometown community of Baltimore, etc.
Perhaps this adventure of studying abroad that I am about to embark on will show the real strengths of my natural and constructed communities and identities of myself. Basically, what has more power over my identity: where I come from or who I choose to become? It's a balance, of course. Identity is a complex thing, made up of millions of bits of a person, i.e. these words that I'm writing, what I ate for breakfast, as well as what sports teams I support and my political beliefs. It's all part of an identity. Whether a certain aspect is natural or constructed does not change the overall identity****.
[EDIT, 5/2/2011 10am: I am astounded by the changes that can occur in 48 hours. There are thoughts expressed in this blog post that need to be reassessed. I'm not sure how my thoughts are changing in response to life events. As I post this, I still haven't made sense of how I'm feeling.]
Links to vides mentioned in this post:
Rosianna's video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJAouxYY4tg&feature=feedu
*This was written on Saturday, April 30. For some reason I have an overflow of blogs at the end of this month. Once again makes me wonder about the worth of this ritual. See my most recent posts for that discussion.
**It's beginning to get impossibly long. The curse of an English major - you can never conquer an ever-growing reading list.
***Harry Potter fandom, YouTube, etc.
****Obviously, I'm feeling very existential today.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Staying Awake.
After these last few posts I was drawn here again to say something, even though I don't know the real worth of these words.
At the beginning of the month I said I wasn't going to acknowledge the absence I took from this blog and from writing in general. That was probably a mistake, because I've known all along that one of the hazards of taking on this writing-everyday-endeavor was that it would force me to acknowledge what exactly had changed since before April 1.
This is on my mind because, before this month, I wasn't just absent from writing or keeping a personal blog (keyword: personal, for my benefit, and completely selfish), I was also absent from my life. In the time between consistent stretches of my regular writing, aka BEDAugust and BEDAPRIL, I disappeared because I needed to ignore what my life and what I had become.
But now, at the close of this month and at the end of the semester, I am faced with the knowledge that 7 months of my life actually occurred. They are in the past now. And I don't have any record of them except for painful memories. I don't even have many photographic records, i.e. pictures taken with friends for no other reason than to record memories for ourselves and no one else. And I don't even have private writings of my thoughts from that time. All I have are a few (fleeting and empty) images and snapshots of myself during that time, none of which I remember. Because I was living between blackouts*.
I can't say that I'm a different person now. Remember when I said I could only handle filling up this blog with knick-knacks of my life? Well, I'm still unsure about whether or not this is the proper way for me to record life and myself. But the truth is I can't live my life with just knick-knacks and I can't become a writer by only writing about knick-knacks. The reality is that half a year went by and I didn't notice. I have to live with the knowledge that I can slip back into that state of ignorant-living-sleep very easily. And it's no one's business except my own**.
This month was a really difficult task for me, to return to daily writing. There's been a lot of talk about the worth of BEDA recently. I think in my case, it's a little different. I needed to realize that I was actually living a life and I suppose now I can see that, almost directly as a result of forcing myself to start writing again.
At one point in the month, I said the worth of these words was that they were words, not that they were mine. I think that's wrong. I have to acknowledge the fact that there is value in the bits of myself I put into these words. They are my thoughts made tangible. My thoughts. My life. And that gives them meaning that is a lot scarier than just ignoring my authorial power as the writer.
*Literally. In my very first post from this month I discussed the process of healing beginning with acknowledgement. I was flippant about it. I still am. I'm not a particularly optimistic person. But it's important to note that I can put a name on the issues. It's not just important to acknowledge problems, it's important to call them by their proper names and confess to them fully. I'm not sure how long it will take me to learn to cope with these issues, but it's much easier for me to admit to them.
**Interesting to see how ambiguous I was at the beginning of the month, vague references to "issues" that I wouldn't talk about. Now, a month later here I am really analyzing the worth in awareness and sharing and acknowledging. This is an important process for me. I'm still trying to decide if it's worth keeping public or not. I don't want to hide from who I am but I don't want to feel as though I am being judged unfairly (because of course these short blog posts can't represent a fully complex version of who I am as a person).
At the beginning of the month I said I wasn't going to acknowledge the absence I took from this blog and from writing in general. That was probably a mistake, because I've known all along that one of the hazards of taking on this writing-everyday-endeavor was that it would force me to acknowledge what exactly had changed since before April 1.
This is on my mind because, before this month, I wasn't just absent from writing or keeping a personal blog (keyword: personal, for my benefit, and completely selfish), I was also absent from my life. In the time between consistent stretches of my regular writing, aka BEDAugust and BEDAPRIL, I disappeared because I needed to ignore what my life and what I had become.
But now, at the close of this month and at the end of the semester, I am faced with the knowledge that 7 months of my life actually occurred. They are in the past now. And I don't have any record of them except for painful memories. I don't even have many photographic records, i.e. pictures taken with friends for no other reason than to record memories for ourselves and no one else. And I don't even have private writings of my thoughts from that time. All I have are a few (fleeting and empty) images and snapshots of myself during that time, none of which I remember. Because I was living between blackouts*.
I can't say that I'm a different person now. Remember when I said I could only handle filling up this blog with knick-knacks of my life? Well, I'm still unsure about whether or not this is the proper way for me to record life and myself. But the truth is I can't live my life with just knick-knacks and I can't become a writer by only writing about knick-knacks. The reality is that half a year went by and I didn't notice. I have to live with the knowledge that I can slip back into that state of ignorant-living-sleep very easily. And it's no one's business except my own**.
This month was a really difficult task for me, to return to daily writing. There's been a lot of talk about the worth of BEDA recently. I think in my case, it's a little different. I needed to realize that I was actually living a life and I suppose now I can see that, almost directly as a result of forcing myself to start writing again.
At one point in the month, I said the worth of these words was that they were words, not that they were mine. I think that's wrong. I have to acknowledge the fact that there is value in the bits of myself I put into these words. They are my thoughts made tangible. My thoughts. My life. And that gives them meaning that is a lot scarier than just ignoring my authorial power as the writer.
*Literally. In my very first post from this month I discussed the process of healing beginning with acknowledgement. I was flippant about it. I still am. I'm not a particularly optimistic person. But it's important to note that I can put a name on the issues. It's not just important to acknowledge problems, it's important to call them by their proper names and confess to them fully. I'm not sure how long it will take me to learn to cope with these issues, but it's much easier for me to admit to them.
**Interesting to see how ambiguous I was at the beginning of the month, vague references to "issues" that I wouldn't talk about. Now, a month later here I am really analyzing the worth in awareness and sharing and acknowledging. This is an important process for me. I'm still trying to decide if it's worth keeping public or not. I don't want to hide from who I am but I don't want to feel as though I am being judged unfairly (because of course these short blog posts can't represent a fully complex version of who I am as a person).
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