June 13, 2005
The Sisterhood of the Ring
I gave my best friend a friendship ring last weekend, and myself a matching one--big, glorious plastic rings, painted with flowers. I didn't really think of the implications until later, for instance, the idea of renewing friendship ties and vowing never to part. (Oh, boy, I'll bet she's nervous now.) Anyway, it was great fun, and it made me think of the following:
Ever wonder what the Fellowship of the Ring would be like were it composed of women instead of men? Here are some thoughts.
1) Everyone in the fellowship would have her own (preferably matching) ring. Could the men not predict that there would be constant fighting with only one?
2) Women would not have let the nine rings be scattered in the first place. Nor would they have let the one true ring fall into the wrong hands. Anyone ever hear of a jewelry box?
3) Women would not be afraid to tell their friends to get their ring resized so they wouldn't have to wear it in a chain around their neck.
4) Women, unlike Frodo, would not shun other people trying to help them bear their burden. "Take it! Take the damn ring!" they'd cry, if it got too heavy.
And,
5) The women's rings would not reflect gruesome scenes of war and dismemberment, but the faces of their friends. They would be mirrors of solidarity.
I hope my friend will wear her plastic ring with pride. I will mine.
Posted by Lisa at 05:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 21, 2005
Ho-hum Pascal
Today I attended about half of our local University's law school graduation, where four of my friends received their degrees. Unfortunately, I had to leave before the acutal conferring of degrees since I was with a friend with a 2-year old who had a melt-down.
It was all worth it, though, just to hear the Distinguished Practitioner in Residence and Third-Year Class Adviser, during his remarks, call the French philosopher Pascal by the first name of Blase, with an accent over the "e" (as in yawn, ho-hum, you certainly are blase about this whole tragedy).
Sometime, life is just delicious.
Posted by Lisa at 01:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 19, 2005
A Lesson From America's Next Top Model
Well, Naima won America’s Next Top Model Wednesday night. Now that I’ve seen the finale, I can cancel my satellite TV subscription for the summer. Is there really anything else worth watching?
It seems to me that there’s a lot we can learn from ANTM. For one thing, we learn that the underdog wins. The last two cycles, it has been the “tough girl” that’s won over the more mainstream candidate (Naima over the blond “girl next door” and Eva over the college-educated dancer; note that “mainstream” is a relative term in the world of modeling). The judges, especially Tyra Banks, like seeing a candidate “evolve” from rough beginnings, self-doubt and bitter toughness into a confident superstar. There’s a meta-narrative going on that’s as much about self-acceptance as it is about winning. There’s a lot of “lesson learning,” in terms of the school of hard knocks, from week to week.
In fact, it’s beginning to seem that candidates have to have had a really rough life in order to succeed on ANTM. They have to have hated themselves or been raised in poverty or have had a bad family situation. They have to overcome. That’s good, that the judges reward overcoming, but it raises a few questions. In particular, what happens to the “good girl” that does consistently well and has less to overcome?
Wednesday night, the judges compared the two finalists,’ Naima’s and Kahlen’s, portfolios. Kahlen’s pictures were consistently rated better. From the beginning, she took outstanding pictures and she kept it up from week to week. She also did well in the final competition (the “final exam,” Tyra called it). The only criticism was that she might have held her neck a bit stiffly on the runway.
Naima, on the other hand, had a “solid” but not stellar portfolio. Some pictures were good, some not so great. Yet the judges, Tyra in particular, felt that she “rocked” on her final exam, both the fashion show and the commercial that all three finalists shot together.
“What do we do?” Tyra asked on Wednesday. Do we choose the candidate that’s had the consistently good performance, or the one that’s had the solid performance but skyrocketed on the finals?
I recall having a similar dilemma when I taught undergraduates. There were the students that plodded along, doing consistently well all the time, and then there were the students that either dramatically improved at the end of the semester or that showed occasional flashes of brilliance throughout an otherwise unexceptional performance. How do you grade such students? Do you reward improvement? If you do, you’re going to have to either fudge the grading scale or give a lot more weight to later assignments. If you didn’t decide to give more weight to later assignments *before* the semester begins, you’re screwed, because you’ve already announced the grading scale and you have to stick to it—or secretly fudge it.
That’s essentially what Tyra and the judges did Wednesday evening. They fudged the grading scale. They rewarded the student who came up from behind, even though they made a show of evaluating the entire “semester’s” work. Also note that both Naima and last cycle’s winner, Eva, are more exotic looking than most of the candidates. They stand out without having to do a single thing.
As a professor, I, too, always wanted to reward the Naimas of the world, and I agonized over trying to figure out how to make their final grade reflect their improvement, their flashes of chaotic brilliance.
But where does that leave Kahlen? Where does it leave the good girl that always does well? I myself sometimes had trouble with students like her. Indeed, the problem with rewarding consistent performers is that you sometimes feel as though they aren’t trying very hard. You miss the flashes of brilliance that come out of nowhere.
Yet for most of my life, I was like Kahlen. I was the consistent, reliable and commendable performer. I wasn’t ever exotic (although I was smart); I just plodded along. That part of me thinks it’s grossly unfair that Kahlen lost on Wednesday night.
Now, however, I may be more like Naima, at least in my newly chosen field of writing. In this field, I have little training, a lot of self-doubt and sometimes that bitter toughness that we initially saw in Naima and Eva.
Their success tells me that I can—and will!—come up from behind and sweep the competition away.
I’m ready to leave the good girl behind. Fair or not, it’s the underdog that wins.
Posted by Lisa at 03:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 12, 2005
Good Hair Day
I just got the ultimate compliment from another woman. One of my co-workers asked me where I get my hair cut. I think it's a compliment, anyway. There are only about 4 women in this office, so there's not that many people for her to ask. But I'll take it.
What struck me is the way I immediately warmed to this topic. My stance relaxed, I leaned jauntily on the copy machine, and I got downright chatty. I told her where I went, and that before this place I'd gone to another place that was just way too expensive. I also didn't like the way that at this other place you had to call at least two weeks in advance to be able to get an appointment--I never know what my hair is going to be doing, so I just can't give them that much lead time.
Anyway, this was all undoubtedly more than my co-worker needed to know. But I love talking about my hair--its current state, its evolution, my goals for it. I think this has to do with acceptance of myself. It's a way of saying that I worry about myself and my self-image, and do you really think that I'm OK? It also put me and my co-worker on a more even playing field. She's always been a little prickly, and talking hair made her seem more human.
Sometimes, the things I love talking about worry me. I have a Ph.D. in art history, but it's not art, generally, that I like talking about. It's dumb little things. Just ask my best friend what happens when you get me started on Duran Duran--especially if you say something bad about them or if they're not included on a show about top music videos of the eighties (this actually happened--I can't imagine what moron put this show together).
I think I might still be a teen inside. Hair and music videos. Geez.
On the other hand, maybe it's these little things that make us human. Or maybe I just want to go back to a simpler (?) time of life when it really was all about hair. I remember that before going into band practice in middle school, I'd lean over and then violently flip my head back in order to add volume to my hair. Do you remember this, M.?
Well, this is certainly not one of the more inspired posts I've ever written, but our minds can't always be trained on things exalted, can they? Sometimes, you just want to have a good hair day, and that's as good as it gets.
Posted by Lisa at 11:53 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 03, 2005
Oh Winter Sun
If I chase the light to find the heat
Will I feel the earth
Grow warm beneath my feet
Can I move beyond what you've begun
Oh winter sun...
--Out of the Grey
Posted by Lisa at 02:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 22, 2005
The Venerable Bede--now at a store near you
So I was doing the crossword puzzle at work today, and one of the clues was, "choice of soup." It had a lot of letters, and when I had a few strategic ones filled in--the "v," a few "e"'s, maybe the "ble"-- I really thought the answer was "Venerable Bede." You know, the church father from the 7th/8th century. I don't know how I could have thought that, it's just what sprang to mind given the letters I had. It turns out that the correct answer was "vegetable beef."
Should this bother me, that an obscure-ish church father would come to mind more readily than a popular kind of soup?
Posted by Lisa at 09:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 19, 2005
Traveling Mercenaries
Last Saturday, my friend Anne and I went to the Paperback Place, a used book and book exchange store here in town. Anne wanted to get some Anne Lamott, since we're reading Lamott's newest title, "Plan B," in our book group next month.
So the woman who owns the store looks up Lamott on her computer to see what she has in stock. Her father, meanwhile, is sitting a few feet behind the counter on a stool. The woman pulls up Lamott on her screen. "Here it is," she says. The woman's father leans forward, squints, and helpfully interprets the title.
"Oh," he says. "'Traveling Mercenaries?'"
I nearly fell over laughing from my perch in the "romance" aisle. Lamott's book, of course, is called "Traveling Mercies." Mercies, my friend, mercies. Not mercenaries. Important difference, no? Or maybe not. Somehow I think that Lamott wouldn't entirely mind this alternate title. I can see it now:
"Traveling Mercenaries: Some Kick-Ass Soldiers of Faith."
I see a book in which Anne Lamott meets "Dogs of War." I envision, as the main premis, a band of hired thugs assigned to accompany each of us to our battlefield of faith. When we get out of hand, they'd nudge us with the butts of their guns and put their slimy faces up to ours.
"You! Drop and give me twenty Hail Marys! Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, maggot!"
"I wanna see some kick-butt acceptance of God's grace around here, and I wanna see it now! Capiche?" Nudge, nudge.
Ah, to be kicked into accepting mercy from the soldiers of God.
Posted by Lisa at 05:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 18, 2005
I breathe in, I breathe out...
If you've ever had a job, been a student or, heck, had a stint as a human being, you know the perils of well-meaning but maddeningly obnoxious questions about your career, your next move, your life. I myself have been through several phases of these questions, each more grueling than the last. In college, there was the ubiquitous, "So, what are your plans after you graduate?" When I was a Ph.D. student, I grooved to the oh-so-endearing, "When are you going to finish your dissertation?" (This question was asked over a period of eight years, repeating itself like a broken record you want to slam over the head of the next asker.) Having been married for over twelve years but remaining childless (by choice, more or less), I've also gotten the, "Aren't Lisa and E. *ever* going to have kids?"
Those questions are certainly fun, but the topper came after my...what shall I call it...quasi-breakdown, when I realized that I simply could not teach a roomful of beady-eyed undergraduates for another second and abruptly quit my career. (The smoke and embers from the crash and burn site could be seen over my house for weeks.) As I rested, recovered and slowly, slowly began to patch together some semblance of a life over the next few years, I began to dread the moment when a well-meaning acquaintance or family member looked me in the eye, paused, and said, "So...". I knew what was coming next. I knew it, I could see it, and yet it was as unpreventable and well-aimed as a search-and-destroy missile. "So...what have you been doing these days?", asked with a mixture of trepidation, curiosity and sometimes even disgust (if, for example, the asker happened to be my mother).
Unbelievably, I never had an answer to that question, even though I should have. I certainly had the time to come up with one. What was I *doing* all those hours I spent on the couch, gazing out the window like a prisoner? (Oops. There I am, asking myself the dreaded question.) Anyway, I should have made up an answer, the way we were taught to come up with a sixty-second description (the "elevator speech") of our dissertation topics in grad school. Instead, I hemmed and hawed, tried to change the subject, hoped the asker would die before I had to come up with an answer, etc.
Why couldn't anyone ever ask, "Who are you?" or "Why are you?" instead? Those are the questions I was actually wrestling with. I couldn't have given a rat's ass what I was or wasn't doing, but I was really interested in why the fuck I was put on this earth. There's nothing like crashing, burning and just utterly failing in general to take you to the core of things. There've been times (like now) when I've had to face the possibility that I'll never find meaningful work, let alone a "career," again. If I may never "do" anything worthwhile, I darned well better "be" someone worthwhile. At least inside. At least to me. But no. No one ever asked those questions. I seemed to be surrounded by the world's most productive people, spitting their productivity questions at me like that machine that blasts out tennis balls when you want to practice your backhand.
But now, thanks to one of those calendars with a noxiously cute quotation for every week of the year, I think I've found the answer. Listen and be soothed by the words of Emily Dickinson:
"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."
How perfectly wonderful! How absolutely true! I think that the next time some well-meaning person asks me what I've been doing with myself these days, I'll smile sweetly and just a little bit patronizingly, sigh, and say, "To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else." I'll pause for a moment, then finish with, "Don't you agree?"
I'll let you know how that little experiment goes. I've no doubt I'll have plenty of opportunity to practice it, since I'm still on that slow road to building what some people call a life. I have, as Anne Lamott puts it, "accidentally" become a Kelly Girl for a while. In other words, I still don't have a good answer to that "what've you been doing" question. In fact, perhaps the Dickinson quote would be a good way to account to my supervisor for the way I spend my time at work. (Hey, at least I'm not photocopying my butt or anything.)
Anyway, I think that the moral (or morale) here is this: Hey people, I'm not what I do (or conspiculously fail to do). I just am. I am. I am...a patch of sunshine in the winter woods. Upheld in the arms of the Father. A child of the light. I've decided that it's kind of good to be able to define yourself in terms of the one who was the first to declare, "I AM."
Posted by Lisa at 03:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack