The Scarlet Letter: Should Good Grades Sting?

I looked at the USC grad school webpage today (oh boy), and UCLA, and am beginning to weigh my options. USC would cost me roughly $45,000 for four semesters, and UCLA is about the same (I think; I couldn't find a straight answer to the question of tuition appropriate for the programs), so I'm trying to catch my breath as I consider that when I commit to graduate school I can't give up. I'm not the giving up kind, but since I'm plagued by feelings of low self-worth I kind of stammer at the thought of (and I know I shouldn't think of it this way, but I can't help it) my husband spending over $20,000 a year on my education. I'm just overwhelmed by the thought of this immense responsibility. Todd is not my parent, so it's not like he "owes" me, and as much as I would like to subscribe to the idea that "his" money is really "our" money, and that once we said "I do" we meant "I do share all my material wealth with you," I just get a little short-winded when I think of how much this is going to cost us. I know it's worth it, but I'm still afraid of the idea.

Mostly I'm scared to death that I will be judged by a panel of instructors as infuriating as my current American Literature professor, who seems to delight in (figuratively) slapping me around. I mean the guy is a real sadist. I mean a "real" sadist because he conceals his penchant for inflicting insults with a veneer of affable cameraderie. We have a fine relationship in class, but when writing to each other (like in essays/feedback and emails) we seem to live on other planets and I seem to be speaking a made-up language. I already wrote about my essay on modernism; heck, I even posted it for you. I got it back, and on the exam (which consists of the essay plus a 30 question test) I ended up earning an A- (27/30 on the multiple choice -- some of the assigned readings weren't in my edition of the anthology so I had to guess -- and a 3.66 GPA for essay) so the grade is not the problem; it's the comments on the paper.

I write:

William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway are two writers of this period whose fiction contains examples of modernist characteristics such as stream of consciousness narrative, multiple and unreliable narrators, as well as narrative and characters that use language to commute around a topic without discussing it directly; this commonly referred to as Hemingway’s theory of omission. These writers used their special ability with these techniques to promote ideas and experiences of alienation.

and he comments, "Is this another trait? If not, why discuss it? It's not true across the board."

I write:

However, it was unfamiliar territory for writers like Faulkner and Hemingway, who would come to master stream of consciousness writing in their careers. Modernists used stream of consciousness to alienate characters from their setting and the action occurring around them, and expose the rift in characters’ interrelatedness.

he comments, "Stream of consciousness is a technique -- it's a narrative technique if fiction, but not a way of writing. They don't use it to alienate characters -- I've got no clue why you're alluding to alienation here or trying to force this generaliztion, which isn't true..."

Me:

William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying is comprised amost fully of stream of consciousness writing and maintains the theme of isolation.

he comments, with lines drawn and words circled, "...not true...not writing -- "narration"...This statement isn't an answer to the questions why is here here?"

I write -- strictly from my notes this time, reciting almost VERBATIM what he told us in class:

In addition to stream of consciousness narrative and omission, “Snows” utilizes multiple narrators to add to the theme of separation. At the end of the story, when Harry is facing death, his narrative breaks off and a new one takes it place. This new narrative contains no stream of consciousness writing, and doesn’t appear to be in the cynical voice of Harry, the original narrator. It describes Harry being rescued by someone he knows, and being airlifted out of his camp

His note? "This is quite a stretch? Leave it at F's novel to exemplify what multiple narrators are?"

I simply cannot communicate with this instructor. I was at least attempting to frame modernist techniques with the (weak, but recommended) theme of alienation, and he comments that there was no need, when he had, in fact, emailed me that I would have to discuss how these techniques related to a modernist theme. Plus, the idea that these techniques explore the theme of alienation was taken directly from my notes of his lecture. We might as well be speaking a different language. I got an A- on the essay, but I actually feel ashamed of the grade, because his comments indicate that my paper is totally meaningless, and that I can't follow directions. Why would you give that kind of a paper an A? This has to have been the worst class I have ever taken. How can you get American lit wrong? I've heard that the instructor I'm taking for American Lit I in the Spring is an awesome teacher. I'm so glad to get this semester at DH over with I'm about to dissolve into a pile of ashes. Then it's onward to Syntax (a class I desperately need to take and inscribe every facet of into my brain), and the History Western Civilization, which is just going to make me mad. I mean what is it? Egyptians, Sumerians, Byzantines, Greeks, Romans, Britons, Americans? They're all a bunch of jerks. Whatever. I'm PMS -- some more scarlet letters to add to this depressing rant.

Whenever I want to fail at finding you, all I have to do, is dream.

I saw a show on the discovery channel about dreaming. It showed, rather fabulously, how dreams work. It had this badical rendering of a person sleeping, and you could see how their eyes looked while they were sleeping, roving about -- ohh it was eerie. It revealed to me how I have such a distinct emotional impression of how a person looks with their eye(lids) closed, and how it's really such a silly thought, that it means anything, cause under those lids we are really an unflinching lot. The program explained that dreaming is where we go over the events of the day and sort through information and decide whether or not to store it in our deep memory or not. This explains why there are so many disjointed aspects of our dream narratives. But what it doesn't explain is why my dream-T. S. Eliot was trying to attack me with an axe -- and was actually hacking me with it (although I couldn't feel any pain), or why I constantly have a dream in which I'm looking for a very specific person and I can never find them. I have recurring dreams (the plot recurs, although sometimes the images and characters change), and every so often I have lucid dreams where I try out flying and stuff. So while I get that the brain is sorting during these experiences, it doesn't explain why the brain gives us a virtual reality to sort them in.

A dream can set the tone for the whole day. If it is an especially haunting dream, I often won't feel like I can function in the "real" world until I have written something for the day. I think it's so interesting that scripture contains sacred dreams. The idea of dream as communication is so appealing to me, even if I'm only communicating with myself.

To completely digress, I watched Death of Salesman, the Hoffman/Malkovitch version, yesterday, and it is quite a disturbing play. All the characters are disturbing. The mother is fascinating. I think the most interesting thing is the end, when Biff has completely broken down and confessed to his father that he is a 'nobody' and that he is not 'a magnificent' boy like his father has always dreamed, and right after this magnificent display of emotion, the family goes back to their old ways. Immediately. Hap tells them he's going to get married, the mother is back to being loving, and the father says something like, 'that boy's really going to be something.' I like how the only thing missing from this family is honesty. I like the idea that wanting to be well liked is an agenda of dishonesty that eventually self-destructs. In wanting your children to be liked you sacrifice your own honest relationship with them. I still think that I like The Crucible better -- a far as the text goes (Daniel Day-Lewis might have a little something to do with it).

Good City People Who Find the Gold at the End of the Reading Rainbow

Did I tell you I loved this show as a kid? The places you could go in books! We would read a story together, LaVar Burton and I, and he would teach me about race relations and growing up poor in Brooklyn, and I would bask in the glory of reading, reading, reading...I adored that show, and between it and Sesame Street, I feel like I kind of grew up with Brooklyn. When I went to NYC for the first time two years ago, it was so strange because it felt so familiar. Los Angeles is so detached from what I feel must be the American Experience. When I went on my road trip last summer I really felt like for the first time I was connecting with a lot of literature that I had been reading my whole life (and a lot of TV I had been raised by...um, I mean exposed to) -- and it's funny, but living in Long Beach, a quite historic city for Los Angeles, I realize that I don't think I will be able to live in an unhistorical neighborhood again, by choice. I love, of course, Downtown LA, but it's not quite ideal...yet. I love Old Town Orange, and Uptown Whittier (where I was raised), and obviously I love Fullerton, and the Hollywood Hills are super, and I like Silver Lake and Los Feliz and Pasadena... I mean, it's funny, but you couldn't really pay me to live in one of those fabricated Orange County neighborhoods ever again. And I hope this doesn't sound weird -- but I don't know if I'm going to ever feel that comfortable not living in an ethnically diverse neighborhood again. My in-laws live in a fabricated community in Orange County called Rancho Santa Maragrita, and when we get together with friends who live there they all ask us with this infuriating knowingish concern, "So HOW is it living in Long Beach?" Like we've moved next door to VIP Records and have Snoop Dogg over for BBQ every night. Several people, SEVERAL, have commented that it was probably a good idea that I grew my natural hair color out and got rid of that white blonde, you know, living in Long Beach. Several. It's strange what Long Beach does to you. It puts some reality into your life, some grit under your nails (acutally that's probably true, what with the port and all), and although there are gangs and thugs and overcrowded tenements, and dozens of homeless and loonies, dirty streets and trash clogged drains and bar after bar after bar after bar, and historical buildings that become gentrified and disrespected (goodbye Acres of Books; I understand why you had to sell out, but it still broke my heart; goodbye cool building at 7th and Pine; you had those awesome windows and unzoned lofts that you let people live in anyway; be careful Hotel America, with your secret society basement and 1900s building date; watch out Jergins Tunnel, I imagine the Long Beach Historical Preservation Society will not be able to salvage your art deco loveliness and treat you with even shred of respect given to the Flight of Angels; and farewell all that's left of Long Beach -- you live precariously on the razor's edge), well, I love this town. It gets into you. I like going home. I'm home now, here in Long Beach. Of course I'm an Angeleno - I'll move if I need/have/want to, but I love this city. You know, people here talk to each other. All the time. We pet eachother's dogs, I even hi-fived a guy the other day, a guy I didn't even know. They opened another teller to alleviate the line at the Washington Mutual, and we expressed our approval by slapping hands in the air. We do our share of muttering, too, but we aren't afraid to say hi or acknowledge that we exist. That's why I'm always so surprised to learn how violent Long Beach is -- I mean, we communicate! But then I remember how over crowded it is here, and I understand. I may love it here, high above the ground, with one of the best views (I think) in the whole city, and I have the privilege of observation and whatnot...I'm not so spoiled that I fail to see how spoiled I am.

All this just to talk about Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People." The first time I read this was in Blythe's American Lit II class, and Blythe was so excited about it this story, while I wondered what all the fuss was about -- wait! Don't get me wrong, I thought it was a clever story, and immensely humorous, but I didn't feel I "learned anything" from this story, and I kind of glossed over it. Well, boys and girls, I read the story again for, well, American Lit II II, and had a whole different experience. What a brilliant story. I had this emotional experience reading the play, and I think I had this experience because I recently read and analyzed Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, and focused on how repressed and tortured artists feel, especially when their art is subversive or goes against the ideals of the culture that feeds it. There's a sort of prophet archetype that the artist, especially in what I'm hoping I'm accurate in describing as Southern Renaissance Literature, fulfills. We are so proud in America, so invested in our ability to absolve ourselves of our sins, that when artists come along and show us our immorality, we expel. I'm really into this issue of Discipline and Punish that Foucault brought up, this leper thing vs the plague thing and the Panopticon -- seriously, I'm seeing it everywhere (even if I can't explain exactly what I see) -- but back to O'Connor, she ties all these things together AND MAKES IT FUNNY, I MEAN AS FUNNY AS IT REALLY IS!! I actually felt the horror this time as Hulga loses her grasp on reality, as she literally loses the one thing that makes her feel whole -- the line where she she imagines a life with the con man, a life in which he takes her leg on and off everyday, I mean, I felt so much empathy for this character who had everything figured out -- but only figured out with her leg on, when she was whole. Once you lose control over the part of yourself that you feel defines you -- or you realize exactly what it is that makes you vulnerable -- or you become aware that someone can disarm you without your consent -- it's really painful, and hit me much harder this time. Of course it's so funny. When he tells her that he was born not believing in anything and that he wasn't born yesterday...oh it's priceless.

I bought a the complete short stories of Flannery O'Connor at the bookstore in the square at Oxford, Mississippi, and I'm hoping to get more acquainted with this writer...and that maybe I'm meant to be a Southern Renaissance scholar. I'm certainly drawn to these writers. I've got the 19th century New England guys (Hawthorne and Melville) and these southern misfits. Somehow I feel right at home -- take a look, it's in book, a reading rainbow.

Fiction and Movie Break

There are only a couple movies that I want to see right now. Smart People is one, and there is another, I forget the name of, but it's by the same director who did In the Mood For Love, which I adored. But since it seems like I have no time for movies -- sob! -- I will just sit here and try to remember to add them to my que, which is already full of John Houston and Tennessee Williams (sometimes at the same time, obviously!), and I am just so behind. I wish I could just take the summer off and watch movies. Since I'll only be taking one class for each of the brief sessions this summer I can get some good viewing in.

Okay, I know the title of this post suggested fiction, so here is a little something that I cooked up for a future novel I would like to write that uses as letter format. I really don't have any original ideas for fiction, but sometimes it's just there and you just have to do it.

The world turned to grey and black and our bodies became the only reminder of what light can do, or did. It's looming again, this threat of aloneness. Where will you be, and will you grieve, again? Is there someone else that has used her magic beans and sprouted new feelings in you; green reminders of emotions and painful thrusts of saplings that sway and flicker with promise?

I suppose I could be satisfied with a memory: it isn't enough. I find I don't want this brain this heart this blood. I don't want it. You have been the stronger man; you have been man enough. You have been smart and calculating and most important -- unfeeling. I don't have the tool, the stick of dynamite that would blow your stubborn stump from the earth of my soul. The roots are so tangled, so enmeshed with all else I claim to be me; so much that I purport to be my essense; it is not. When I am not even I it is because I purchase a voucher in the face of a whisper of the divine. I profess faith and hold ever more tightly to my bludgeoning weapon.

I took sides; I pointed fingers. I went my merry way; I took opportunities, but I forgot the heart -- the tissue -- the cells -- frantically reproducing and sustaining -- remembering for me, rocking away on a porch with knee-grazers gathered soaking up and in the tale, tale, tale of pride and disloyalty, of weakness and abandonment. It was a guilty machinery I allowed myself in place of awareness. Now I just have this dreaming, this beating that furthers the echoes of the past, propels them forward, oscilating in their intense flashback of feeling --

Your words: i love you...i know i say it too much...i'm sorry i can't help it... I know you had to let it go. I know. I forgive you entirely for everything. Even if you were at this moment cutting lines onto a jewel case I would forgive you as you break into a sea of copy-bliss of faux-rapture, and I would feel your skin, the cells that contain the pillars of dashes that make you the only one and I would press into the skull that contains the grey matter where maybe I truly exist, purely, for certainly, here, with me, in the pulsing and sparks, you dwell, untainted, innocent, joyful, hopefull, and free from decay.

Then perhaps it is better, with no deeds and no proof. We could grieve the old us and the current us and just fall into the ideas, to the synapses, to the pounding along with the heart that won't forget -- to just worship the idea of the you I hold out of space -- out of body --

Let me know what you think. (Too chaotic? To post-modern?)

Back to School

Since I really didn't want to invite anyone to my Fullerton Graduation Ceremony, due to the fact that I will graduate from DH next spring, I invited some close friends and family to the Humanities Tea, instead. To my surprise, quite a few are planning on coming! So that should be nice. It's nice to have a little posse every once in a while.

Blythe informed me that her colleagues thought my paper belonged in 102. (I'm sincerely hoping, since I took that class, that the writing was really good, and that it was only the argument that was 102-ish.) So, I'm very curious as to how my instructor will grade it. I have a feeling that he is the type that doesn't really care about students. Poor fragile thing. It's so wimpy not to care. But, as Todd says, "Babe, he's just a state guy. I work with these guys all the time. He's in a structure with all work and no pay and he's trying to assert himself by making you squirm." And I went, "Oh, yeah. He's like Addie....you know, 'Now you will be aware of me!'" Todd didn't get that part. I don't think I'll be blowing off the handle about it again anytime soon. I'm not that upset anymore.

Well, let's go work out and write a paper for British Lit, eat eggs and read the rest of the Glass Menagerie. There's always Tennessee Williams. Sigh.

My First Attempt at A Decent Analysis of American Lit

I know some of you have heard about my struggle with this latest paper. Here's how it turned out:

Traits of Modernist Fiction: How to Be Alone

The tumultuous period in American History from 1914 – 1945, marked by events like World War I and the Great Depression, gave rise to writers using non-traditional literary techniques that they felt captured the isolation and alienation of the period. Modernist fiction, influenced by the Great War and unstable economy, uses techniques that mirror the effect on individuals as the world made and broke alliances, and leapt away from centuries-old traditions in art and economy. William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway are two writers of this period whose fiction contains examples of modernist characteristics such as stream of consciousness narrative, multiple and unreliable narrators, as well as narrative and characters that use language to commute around a topic without discussing it directly; this commonly referred to as Hemingway’s theory of omission. These writers used their special ability with these techniques to promote ideas and experiences of alienation.

Although this was a time of unprecedented change in American culture, something like stream of consciousness writing was not new entirely. However, it was unfamiliar territory for writers like Faulkner and Hemingway, who would come to master stream of consciousness writing in their careers. Modernists used stream of consciousness to alienate characters from their setting and the action occurring around them, and expose the rift in characters’ interrelatedness. It is difficult to make sense of a character’s fragmentary thoughts, due to the abrupt way that stream of consciousness writing starts and stops, often with no guiding demarcation in the text.

William Faulkner’s 1930 novel As I Lay Dying is comprised almost fully of stream of consciousness writing, and maintains the theme of isolation through the many characters unique perspectives. For instance, Dewey Dell’s narrative sharply transitions from describing the land presently around her, to an interior monologue about her dead mother, which leads up to the phrase, “It is because in the wild and outraged earth too soon too soon too soon” (1736). The text moves from a traditional style of narrative to the disjointed form that commonly comprises stream of consciousness writing. Faulkner manipulates the free form of stream of consciousness writing to include dense prose that may not show any similarity to their voice. This happens when Dewey Dell’s chapter begins to weave in and out of her inner thoughts into philosophical imagery and metaphor concerning the “womb of time” and “bones, the hard girdle in which lie in outraged entrails of events” (1736). These disconnections are flanked by lines of text that imply where the character is and what they are looking at, “The sign board comes in sight” and “We turn into Tulls lane” (1736, 37). By presenting Dewey Dell both in a distinct setting and within her own thoughts Faulkner presents a character able to move through space and time without entirely coherent transition; she is a character that is present in the plot, but also does not belong there, for in her mind she is isolated from the purpose and obvious meaning of the journey to Jefferson. Thus, the theme of isolation is served; the broken thoughts and actions alienate the reader form the plot or point of the novel.

Hemingway also used stream of consciousness narrative in his story “The Snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro,” but in his story passages that use this effect are italicized and introduced by statements that inform the reader the character is remembering a past event. More importantly, the stream of consciousness writing, which frequently interrupts the plot, defers the reader from the disaster at hand, Harry’s imminent death. The characters in “Snows” avoid much direct talk about Harry dying, and word death is mostly omitted from their dialogue. This also happens in Dying, especially when the characters are discussing Addie’s death. As Cash saws planks for her coffin outside of the room she is dying in, other characters in the novel can’t even bring themselves to use the word coffin. Early in the novel Jewel thinks of her coffin as “that goddamn box” (1699), and according to Darl, when Jewel talks about the coffin, “does not even say the word” (1700). The characters are separated from the reality of the plot through the removal of direct language to communicate about it. By not even allowing Jewel to use the word coffin in either his thoughts or dialogue, Faulkner stresses the idea of individuals detached from reality.

In addition to stream of consciousness narrative and omission, “Snows” utilizes multiple narrators to add to the theme of separation. At the end of the story, when Harry is facing death, his narrative breaks off and a new one takes it place. This new narrative contains no stream of consciousness writing, and doesn’t appear to be in the cynical voice of Harry, the original narrator. It describes Harry being rescued by someone he knows, and being airlifted out of his camp. This narrative begins to reveal a happy ending for Harry, who has been facing destruction for the entire piece. Yet something is awry, for the action dissolves into a view of the “great, high, and unbelievably white…square top of Kilimanjaro” where Harry “knew…he was going” (1863, 64). This is where the passage abruptly ends, and then returns to the African camp where Helen discovers Harry dead on the cot. The insertion of a new narrative in a different voice is disconcerting, and presents a narrator that is unreliable and deceptive. It is the phantom of the familiar convention of the happy ending, and Hemingway implies that happy endings are not the stuff of the Modernist era, and smack of the quickly fading glory of the past. The juxtaposition of the new narrator against the old also highlights Helen’s uncertain future. He confidently returns to the despair of Harry’s death and Helen’s isolation in Africa, an unfamiliar country where she will continue on alone.

Utilizing an unreliable narrator is an achievement in “Snows,” but it is Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying that provides a superlative example of using multiple narrators to tell a story. There are fifteen different narrative voices in the novel, all of which weave in and out of their thoughts and the action of the novel. In this way the same event in the plot can be retold by different narrators having a different experience of the same event, as well as prohibiting an event from having any single significance; meaning is endlessly deferred through the host of narrators. A good example of this is when Darl and Jewel must take the wagon to procure three dollars. The decision to take the wagon and get the money is told through three different perspectives, Darl’s narration has him conversing with Anse pragmatically; he reminds Anse that the trip “means three dollars” and that Anse needs to make a decision quickly, so that they “can get there and get a load on before dark” (1700). Darl describes Jewel as emotionally distraught by the thought of leaving Addie at death’s door, and upset by the events that are surrounding her death, such as Cash’s obnoxious construction of Addie’s coffin. In Darl’s narrative Jewel declares that Addie wouldn’t be declining so rapidly to her death if “everybody wasn’t burning hell to get her there” (1701). When they decide to go ahead with the trip to get the three dollars, Darl tells that “Jewel…goes on around the house” while Darl proceeds to “enter the hall” (1701). So according to Darl, he himself convinces Anse that they should make the trip to get the money while Jewel protests, and that Darl enters the house before they leave.

The story changes significantly when retold by Cora. Cora’s narration tells that the event is Jewel’s idea, and that Jewel leaves Addie behind because he is not going to “miss a chance to make that extra three dollars” (1702). She goes on to explain that “Mr. Tull says that Darl asked them to wait” and that “Darl almost begged them on his hands and knees not to force him to leave her in her condition” (1702). This is a drastic difference in perspective, as Darl mentions none of this in his previous narrative. Cora justifies Darl’s actions by saying he’s unlike his lazy, money-grubbing father and brother, and perceiving that there is “true love” between Darl and Addie (1703). Cora explains that Darl came to the house to say goodbye to Addie with a “heart too full for words” (1703). Darl’s narrative mentions nothing of his having an understanding with his mother, or of his feeling true love for her, and it certainly doesn’t include him begging Jewel and Anse to let him stay behind.

Dewey Dell’s narrative concerning this event confounds the story further. She concurs with Cora’s story that Darl came to the house, but that he simply said, “she is going to die” (1704). Dewey Dell and Darl have an exchange of words, but this dialogue is questionable because just before this Dewey Dell confesses that she and Darl communicate “without the words” (1704). This implies that the conversation narrated by Dewey Dell may not have occurred at all. This conversation is left out of Darl and Cora’s chapters, but all three have discrepancies, so the validity of the plot presented is compromised.

By using three different narrators to convey the particulars of this brief event, three different stories emerge, all of which can’t be true, or have occurred in the unstable reality of the plot. Faulkner never deviates from character narrative, but leaves it up to the reader to decide which narrator to trust. Thus the characters are alienated from reality by their different perspectives, and the reader is alienated from the story, because it lacks a narrator that who tells the truth of the story. The reader can only vaguely assert that this is a novel about a family who takes a wagon trip to a neighboring city to bury their mother. Other facts of the plot hold temporary and shifting meanings, undulating as they pass through the mind of multiple narrators. When they tell their stories through an internalized stream of consciousness, they present a subjective reality that lies outside of time and coherent connection. The impression this conveys is that reality is ultimately subjective, and that individual perspectives do not make up a collective experience of verifiable truth, but form a disjointed and fragmented experience of reality which can not be relied on for accuracy, for the characters are only true to themselves.

Significant modernist writers like Faulkner and Hemingway were able to reflect the experience of estrangement and detachment in their fiction, and characters in “Snows” and Dying are left to trudge on alone in a world of deferred meaning and unreliable truth. Harry realizes, as do many characters in modern literature when they find themselves in tragic situations, that “the people are all gone” (1862); by the end of Dying Darl has been institutionalized and abandoned. Those who remain exist disaffected by their losses, and their loyalties to conventions are shaken. By using these techniques modernist writers were able to preserve the spirit of the modernist age in literature that continues to invoke a spirit of change in direction away from literary convention, and explore the outer reaches of cultural uncertainty.

Learning

Yeah, this is a "life has taught me something" kind of post. The first thing life has taught me today is that your body and mind cannot be separated. If you are upset in your mind, your body will follow, and vice versa, and so on, and so what? Really. Well, sometimes I feel like my body is reacting to something, and then my mind gets in a very reactive mode. I find something out, and I respond like, well, a small inept axe murderer. All swipes; no hits; annoyed and annoying. I am not alone when I give in to reactionary behavior -- I see the dogs on the The Dog Whisperer do this kind of thing all the time. They get tense, then aggressive, sometimes they bite, and sometimes they get hurt. A tense dog will escalate into aggression easily, especially if another dog reacts to this tension. Sometimes I feel like in my college experience I have been thrust into a pack of diverse dogs, and I'm kind of an unstable one. I'm a kind of runt, a kind of stray (oh dear, I'm just remembering that Blythe posted a blog about us all being dogs, and she categorized me as a guide dog. I'm afraid I see myself more like an unstable Border Collie -- lots of potential, but easily distracted), a kind of moderately successful head case.

And sometimes I will go into a situation, and I won't have realized that I needed to bring some sort of protective armor. Actually, that's not true, although I'd like to think it is. I really don't want to have to wear armor. I'm not going to school because I want to wear the armor of academia. I'm in love with literature, and it seems like I could make a career out of it. So when I'm poked by someone who is in this business because they like the security and helmet that art can provide, I get outraged. I totally overreact. I behave like a tense, threatened doggie -- ears down, tail tucked, teeth bared, ready to snap. I actually feel like I experience an out of control panic or something. It's nuts.

Now I'm not the kind of girl who gets road rage, or assaults people, but I can get into a mode where I won't back down, and that reminds me of canine behavior, too. Dogs struggle for one thing, and that's dominance. If a dog is tense, it's because they are scared that they do not know where they stand in the pack. When I get tense and aggressive, it's usually because I have assumed that someone has questioned my "place" in life. It's rather immature.

So what is the lesson, you wonder? Well, I don't know if the lesson is one that I can easily implement, but in order to experience more balance in my life, I have to practice balance. I have to devote time to meditation. I have to take care of body to take care of mind. I have to breathe. I have to thank God that I have instructors that don't laugh at me when I come running to them panicked that I'm not good enough -- I can imagine they are sick of hearing it. Sometimes I feel like I'm experiencing puberty all over again in college -- am I good enough? Smart enough? Quick enough? Can I really handle this? I know, it's ludicrous.

So thanks for always helping me take my lumps. I will learn from this. Discipline is necessary for any...well, any disciple. I remember when I was learning handwriting, and I had a little book that I was supposed to practice in and would go through it as fast as I could, imagining that if I just got through it fast enough I would improve. I think at some point an aide actually held my hand as I wrote the letters, pressuring me to slow down. It was almost painful -- she wasn't hurting me, of course, but sometimes it's painful for me to slow down and refine my technique. Well, I'm still learning.