The Puberty Chronicles

In the spirit of Get Mortified (worth the click), I have decided to do a series known as The Puberty Chronicles, for airing out some of the mortifying aspects of becoming an adult. If you would like to do a Puberty Chronicle of your own, please do. Or, if you would rather have me post it anonymously for you, I would be most happy to. (After I call all my friends and read it to them)


Part I: Middle School Moments
When I was in elementary school, I used to bite my fingernails. My mom painted my nails with some sort of stuff that tastes bad and is supposed to deter you from biting. The problem was, I used to like the taste, so when I was home I would suck the acrid-tasting stuff off my fingers, paint them again, and then suck them some more.

Just another saga in my endless stream of oral fixations.

Then came middle school and I had bigger problems. I forgot all about my nails and looking for pleasantly salty things to munch (I rediscovered this quest in college -- a tale for another day).

In middle school, among the mortification of budding puffies and glasses and waiting to menstruate, there were perms. Numerous perms. Once, my bangs were so hyper that I had to go in the girls’ room and wet them down. After I finished climbing the stall door a few times (for exercise, you know), I soaked my bangs completely and then headed over to the dryer to blow them dry. Alas, the dryer was not working, so I returned to class with soaking wet bangs, which I covered for the entire period with one flat hand. I’m sure nobody noticed.

Another thing I remember from middle school is that the basement level was called The Dungeon, and I never ever wanted to go down there. In fact, I’m rather certain I never did. My twin sister Twirling Girl had a class down in The Dungeon and that made her so very cool. And brave, too. She had all the cool stuff—classes in the scary part of the building, and a class trip to the World’s Fair in Tennessee! What did I have? An oversized dickie, a clog sprain, and an eraser I stole from Mr. Shaw.
I do recall that one of the somewhat exciting things about middle school, grade six, was that there were two eighth graders who would kiss (!) before they got on their respective school buses and went home. They were practically grown up, by the looks of them, and they would actually kiss goodbye just like adults! Wow! I used to time my bus platform arrival to try to catch this magical moment. More often than not, I missed the kiss and also my bus.

The low point of my middle school career was when I got caught throwing toilet paper at the girls’ room ceiling. I feel I have told this before … But anyhow, I had just discovered the joy of ceiling art via papier mache, when in walked the principal and caught me … wet-handed. There was no getting out of this one! Oh, the shame! The shame!!!!!!!!!!! I had to serve a school detention, and I was in this room with all these derelicts, people I had never seen before. Smokers, to be sure. AND the proctor read my offense out loud: Spinnerina M. Girl, throwing toilet paper at the ceiling. Vandalizing the school. Ah ha! Young lady, you may sit right here while you do your time. My red-hot face burned and my ears buzzed with the blood-rush of embarrassment and shame. I was one of them! These ... these animals! These bad, bad boys! I was deeply mortified.

But not as mortified as the time I heard that Beth, an eighth grader in my class, had gone to the movies with a 9th grade boy and he had stuck his finger in her hoo-hah! His finger. Fingers! Plural! Like you could even fit more than one up there, duh! EW! Why would anybody do that? Ever?!?!?!? Luckily, I was on to high school and I never had to hear the answer to that one.

10 Years Today

This is a repost, marking 10 years since I decided to give up my little alcohol habit.

Disclaimer: This post isn’t meant to be funny. These things are only funny to me because they are all true, because I did them, and because I salvaged my poor gin-soaked soul on August 6, 2003. If you think you might have a problem, consider these points or take this quiz. I took it 14 times before I realized that cheating on the answers didn’t make them any less true.

Image respectfully borrowed from BeerStuff

You Might Have a Teensy Weensy Problem With Alcohol If…

• You make three separate trips to the recycling center because you don’t want anyone to see how many bottles you have, but you still care about the earth.
• You carry your trash really carefully when your landlord is around, so he doesn't hear the clinking.
• You remember drinking 1 bottle of chardonnay, but in the morning you see 3 empty ones.
• You go to at least 3 different liquor stores because you don't want to be seen going so often; nevertheless, all the owners cheerfully greet you by name.
• You drunk-dial your friends and then tell them the same story several times, in almost the exact same words. When they call you on it, you say, "oh, I've told this story so many times I don't remember who I told it to." (this doesn't work very well when it's the same person, in the same phone call)
• You make elaborate plans with friends and family, and then don’t remember a word. The next day, when your friend says, “so what time should I come over?” you pretend you know all about it to cover your ass. Later, when your other friend calls (with whom you also made plans), you cancel because of an “appointment you forgot you had”.
• Your first words in the morning, every morning for 2+ years, are “Oh, shit ... not again.”
• Your coworkers ask you why you look so tired, or if you are sick (answer: both). Your answer: trouble sleeping (also true).
• You wake up at 3 AM every night in a shame spiral, and wonder how & when you got to this point. You’re an intelligent, beautiful, self-aware woman, dammit—you can’t be a drunk! (you can be both; nobody sets out to have this affliction on purpose, ya know. Duh.) (By the way I sometimes dream that I went on a drinking binge & wake up feeling utter despair at having failed, then relief that I’m still OK. And if I did fail, I hope I’d have the strength to pick up where I left off).
• You bring your own magnum of chardonnay to the party because they probably don’t have what you want (or enough of it); you offer to open it for the hostess. You drink most of it.
• You order a whole bottle of wine at a bar and the bartendress keeps it on ice for you and all the friends you intend to share it with. Most of them don’t have any.
• You decide that a mandarin Absolut & tonic (m.a.t.) is OK at 10 AM; it’s citrusy, like orange juice. That's breakfast, right?
• You decide that grocery shopping is so much more fun with a buzz on, so you have one m.a.t. for breakfast & then put one in a sippy cup for the road.
• The following activities are drinking triggers: talking on the phone, sitting at the computer, watching TV, driving home from work. Also breathing, eating, sleeping.
• You’ve rationalized that you’d better switch to vodka since it doesn’t smell (as much—enough of anything and your sweat still smells like skid row).
• You lie to your best friend on the phone that the reason your speech is slurred is because you are wearing a Crest White Strips on your teeth.
• You decide to drink only on weekends, then drink on a Thursday because that’s close.
• You decide to drink every other day, and then fail after 2 days.
• You decide not to drink one morning, and then change your mind on the drive home. You haven’t done it yet, you could still stop it, but having made the decision in your mind it is already too late. This yet-unacted-upon weakness fills you with despair.
• You decide to drink just 2 glasses of wine, but glass 3.5 kills the bottle (you have biiiig glasses), so why stop? Wine goes bad if it sits.
• Wine never goes bad in your house.
• You wonder aloud about your drinking habits with all of your drinking friends, and say things like, “it’s not as if I’d drink something else if there were no wine in the house” (this was before I discovered the m.a.t. and the no-smell-vodka secret)
• There is always wine in the house.
• You actually think to yourself, who needs friends when I have this?
• You choose a night home with a DVD and 2 bottles of wine over a night out with friends (rationalization: cheaper, and then I don't have to drive drunk).
• You wonder aloud whether a life without wine in it is even possible. All those dinners out, and no wine? (it is possible, and the peace of mind that comes from a sober life far exceeds the enjoyment of a fine chardonnay. Although sometimes I still imagine the molten-gold flavor of it going down my throat, and I feel a lust unlike anything I’ve ever felt).
• You finally resolve to quit drinking, but you can’t “officially” quit until all the booze in the house is gone, so you make a list of everything you need to consume, including that nasty bottle of Pimm's and the Smuggler whiskey your dad brought over for a party once (happy ending: upon realizing the huge volumes I’d have to consume, I gave all my top-shelf vodkas, gins, scotches & rums to a friend for her huge summer bash, and poured the rest of it down the toilet on August 7, 2003. Funny, I didn’t feel bad about wasting it, even though I was raised not to waste nutrients. I figured those kids in Africa didn’t need to become boozehounds).
• You check out the AA website, just to see what it’s all about.
• [UPDATE] You taste a tiny tiny sip of your husband's drink sometimes, mostly to remind yourself that you can't have it, you are never safe around it.  When you taste, it flows into you like a river of golden lava and awakes a craving so deep and complete that you know, really know, that you are only well because you are not having it and oh, what a slippery slope this is ... truly, in one day it could all be undone by going down this path.  So you just touch the path with your toe for the reminder, and then pull it back to safety. Tickle the sleeping tiger, then pull your hand back to watch it very closely, lest it fix its gaze upon you.

[note: I am not made uncomfortable in any way by the mention of alcohol, the presence of it, or when my friends around me order it at the dinner table. I am happy to discuss it and proud of my sobriety. It’s not a word that needs to be whispered, like cancer or prison. I am not offended by anyone’s drunken audio post, or mention of drunkenness in this virtual (or any other) world. The only thing that upsets me is when I meet/see people who are obvious alcoholics; not because I judge them but because I know the place they are in, and it is not a good place. I questioned my drinking for 8 years, and experienced out-of-control drinking for about a year and a half before I stopped. I still question exactly how I got to that point. I can only hope that suffering alcoholics find solid ground, as I did. Thank you for reading.]

Fairly Amused [repost]

Butchie's trip to the fair made me think about my happy day with the county's largest ball of yarn. Here's how it all went down ... ah, memories!:

I Am Fairly Amused [originally posted 9/17/06]

Sunday I went to the Countryishville Fair right in the heart of beautiful Countryishville, Connecticut. It was like most country fairs, with a 3-ride midway, livestock, games, fried food, and sad children. Here are some of the high points:

THE PIGEON TENT

Right next to the livestock, camel, and ostrich tent was the tent of pigeons of extraordinary plumage! It is fair to say that most of these pigeons were shitting at the time my friends and I went in the tent. I would also offer that they were pretty angry/mentally ill, judging from the erect state of some plumage, and the complete (torn out by one's own beak) absence of it in others. Above we see what I would call a typical pigeon.


... and here are the refreshments that were being offered:


Needless to say, I did not eat a cookie. Nor did I see anyone else eat a cookie, despite the come-hither appearance of the dining table.

Avian flu, anyone?

Next stop:

THE SCENIC VISTA

There wasn't any seating left because these two elderly folks had taken the primo seats with their umbrella chairs. We moved on, seeking vistas of our own.


I wish I had brought my shovel and wee pail, for next on the agenda was the ...

GIANT VAT OF CORN

I thought the kids were playing in a sandbox (or, as it is known in these parts, "giant neighborhood kitty litter"). Upon closer examination I discovered that the grains of sand they were so gleefully tossing at each other were actually kernels of dry corn! My bad.


Inside the reptile tent, our breath was taken away by this ...

DISPLAY OF RATTLERS

hyuck, hyuck. That's farm humor for ya.

Last but certainly not least, the award-winning ...

GIANT BALL OF TWINE

You could guess how much twine was actually in this ball, and win a prize. I gave up my spot in line to go to the Port-O-Let instead. What is it about people and giant balls of stuff? In 3rd grade, Ted Siversten had a booger-ball he used to show his friends on the bus (he carried it in his lunch box, in a baggie). And then Quilting Girl told me she kept (and added to) a giant jar of chewed chewing gum on her dresser when she was in middle school. I guess twine is a step up from bodily secretions and slimy offal, but still, what's with the giant balls? (That's your opening, honey.)

I sure learned a lot on my big day at the fair.

Join us again next week when we tell you about our tour of the local water treatment plant. Talk about slimy offal (I just wanted to use that phrase one more time)!

Googling for God

I've been feeling spiritually bereft,

so I did a Google search to try to find the following:

The one thing that is truly lacking in my life,

on a very deep level.

Here is what the ominpotent Google gave me. Somehow, I see The Great Unknowable in each of them:
















I feel better now.

Our Morning Cups: A Documentary

I thought it would be marvelous to see what each of us drinks in the morning. So I put out a request for photos, and received quite a hearty response! Here they are, for your viewing pleasure. I, myself, like to start the day with a squirt, followed by a venti chai or half-caf. I think this says that I am ridiculous, yet pretentious. And oh-so-hip. Let's see what the residents of Blogland have in their Morning Cup, and ponder what it says about them. The Bloggers' own words are in italics. My assessment of what this says about them is in small plain text.

Sleep Goblin

Morning Chocolate Milk!

Sleepy G is chaste and unimpeachable, with a decadent and playful side. Also, unrelated, she was the most beautiful bride.

JLee

I HEART my sugar free caramel latte, drunk from my heart mug I made myself. It makes me feel all warm and gooey.

JLee has expensive tastes and appreciates the finer things in life. She is cosmopolitan, yet parochial. She has an eye for art. She is warm and gooey.

sleepydog

I Love Pepsi -- by sleepydog

I do not drink coffee
I do not drink tea
My beloved Pepsi
Is the only drink for me

Sometimes I like chocolate milk
Or spicy hot V-8
But Pepsi comes first
All those other drinks can wait

Sleepydog is highly energized and practices good oral hygiene. He grabs life by the ears and punts it in the crotch. His tastes fluctuate between the radical and the debonair. His mustache taunts me and begs to be stroked.

Jane
oh my dad, I love her so much I can hardly stand it!!!

This was Jane's best shot. She's drinking her favorite: tall water with extra water, non-fat, no whip, extra cold.

Madge said that on the first attempt, Jane "pulled a diva moment on me and refused to be photographed drinking anything." But on the second attempt, total compliance.

I think Jane's choice of beverage and mug show that she is indeed a diva. She was born to reign our hearts with her seemingly innocent charms. Underneath that purr is an uncannily wise being.

Madge

oh my dad, I love her so much I can hardly stand it!!!

Drinking peppermint tea.

Madge's choice shows us her vigorous, strong-willed nature. At the same time, she has an enormous capacity for love. Her towel jauntily informs us of its ability to snap at our rears if we misbehave.

Lee Ann

My first sip of my drink in the morning .... a hot cup of Maxwell House, a little creamer and Splenda. It is not what I would be drinking if I had a choice. That would be a Starbucks Caramel Macchiato, but this is the coffee we have at work and it's free!

Lee Ann shows us that she is a survivor. She waits for the splurges of life, knowing that the waiting makes the prize all the sweeter. Also, she is a chemist at heart.

Bill

OK ... so here are two because I believe in options. First, the groggy, dishevelled yet honest portrayal of morning and coffee in my world.

... and then there's the mise en scène shot.

Bill's portrayal shows us that, like most of us, he really has two sides: the posed, calculated window-dressing, and the undisguised, lived-in back rooms that only the closest can see. Thank you for showing us both, for you tell a deeper and more beautiful story than you intend.

Freewheel

It was really hard finding someone to take my picture. Here I am enjoying Caribou’s dark roast of the day.

By sending in this [possibly] posed shot, Freewheel is telling the world that he is a man in motion. Growing up, he didn't see the writing on the wall. Passing by, moving straight ahead he knew it all. But maybe sometime if he feels the pain, he'll find he's all alone, everything has changed. But play the game! You know you can't quit until it's won! Soldier on! Only you can do what must be done! You know in some way, you're a lot like me. You're just a prisoner, and you're trying to break free.

Brian

Nothing too exciting, and a shameless commercial for Fourbucks.

Brian is under the employ of the coffee behemoth. But I jest! Look at that wonderful coat. You just know that this man is who coffee-on-the-go was designed for. He is going someplace important, to do big things. I think Brian's tongue-in-cheek comment tells us that, despite his ultra-professional appearance, he doesn't take himself too seriously.

Osbasso

[I] am not a morning person. I was fortunate enough to not get sucked into the coffee routine. I think my parents equated it with cigarettes -- just don't start. So I didn't. I have no desire to start, nor do I salivate while passing a Starbucks. But I do need my morning caffeine, so I get that from a 20 oz Diet Coke (usually w/lime). In general, I've had at least one by 8:30-9:00 in the morning. Doesn't help my morning look, but I'm usually just surfing from my laptop, long before the morning shower.

This is a favorite shot of mine, because Osbasso makes no excuses for who he is. I admire that. Osbasso's choice of beverage reveals that he likes to get a good buzz on, albeit safely. Osbasso is semi-law-abiding. He tries to look at the brighter side of most things. His mood needs a boost now and then.

Jamwall

You and I are lovely happy shiny people who happen to bathe in ketchup ... it's like a vinegary-tomatoey explosion of sexiness.

Jamwall is referring, of course, to our mutual love of condiments, an unholy bond that ties us together, probably for life. I think his choice shows that he is depraved, yet a copycat. He also guzzles olive oil in the late evenings, which probably explains the need for a zesty system clean-out in the mornings.

In truth, I believe this picture is perfect for showing Jamwall's legendary sense of humor, and the little bit of sickness that lies beneath his jovial exterior. He will always take an idea, expand on it, put a bizarre twist on it, and push it to the very edge. He is frighteningly silly, my muse, my long-lost soultwin, and an ally in this painful world. I crave him.

Thus ends our documentary. Do you feel that my assessment of these characters was spot-on, or off the mark? Please feel free to share your own insights as you comment, or link to an uploaded photo of yourself cupping something, to add to our study. Thank you for participating everyone, and bottoms up!

There was a life.

Peter
February 13, 1960 - January 23, 2007

This amazing man has left us. He was diagnosed with germ cell cancer in September. He had gone through chemotherapy to the end of December, and was doing well. Unfortunately, the treatment also affected the healthy cells in his lungs. He was admitted back to the hospital last week with respiratory difficulties that progressively worsened. He was put on a ventilator Monday night to give him some rest from the labored breathing. His heart stopped 5 times that night, but each time they were able to revive him. On Tuesday morning, his heart just wouldn't respond anymore.

He leaves a beautiful wife and two small boys, and an enormously expansive Estonian community.

My two abiding memories of him are from the woods of the Muskoka region of Ontario; my first encounter was in 1984, when I was on a hike with 14 other teenagers and we got lost in the woods for 10 hours. He came barging out of the trees, a picture of vigor and strength in full fatigues, to rescue us (he didn't; we lost all faith when he started blowing his whistle and yelling for help). He was part of that ordeal, and having survived it binds all sixteen of us for life. It is a famous tale that still gets told every time this group gets together.

The second memory is from five years ago, when he taught me something wondrous. We were in the Muskoka sauna, at midnight, and we went swimming. A small group of us swam out to the middle of the lake and slowed our breathing down and then submerged ourselves completely into the cool, dark water and just hovered there, listening to the deep water sounds. There were stars and northern lights and dark, dark skies. There was only dark, and water, and breathing, and celestial oneness. It was a meditative, hypnotic moment.

This was a man who had an enormous life-force and whose joy filled a room. He embraced the sounds of wind and rainfall. He lived in the desert of Saudi Arabia for 8 years and was able to articulate what he learned there with poetic respect. He was fully alive, and such a person does not deserve to be taken from us.

What I will take away is the knowledge that each life touches another life. What do I want my touch to be?

Peter's life has taught me to be mindful of that.

Tits, Teachers, Tendons, & Turkey Chili

[*A highly caffeinated post]

So it's colder than a witch's tit out there--I actually had to wear a hat today! For the first time since last winter! Luckily, it is an especially fabu piece of knit-on-the-Fritz, so I felt extra purty.

Speaking of gifts, a most wonderful package arrived in the mail yesterday, from the Long Beach Sea Hag. There are so many delights within, that I must write a whole separate post about it, and as soon as my camera and my ass thaw out, I will do this. There are tufts of fur. (That's what we in the biz call a teaser)

I do believe I was a very cute child.

Quote of the day: A student told me I looked different today. I said, "Do I look tired and fat? 'Cause that's how I feel." This scored major laugh points, and we are now bonded forever. She'll have to make room though, because all my teats are full with the other 95 needy souls who are sucking me dry.

I love my job! You too can be a teacher, and fill young minds with your neuroses! I'd like to welcome Miss Tits to the ranks -- please do congratulate her.

Where is Monkey? Do you think someone forgot to set his alarm? Do you think he has enough nuts and berries to sustain him through these cold cold days? Do you think his cubs have been born, and have they learned to suckle?

Today I made an enemy at the grocery store. (I say this as if it were a rare occurrence). This lady was behind me, running me down with her cart, and I kept looking over my shoulder at her cart, and I finally stopped and moved over and let her pass. She looked at me as if I had just had a gastrointestinal blowout in church, and said, "Sor-REE!" with this gigantic sarcastic eyebrow. But you see, ever since Twirling Girl rammed my Achilles Tendon with a cart (circa 1975), I cannot have a grocery cart that close behind me. So it wasn't you, per se, whorebag. It was your whoring tendon-seeking cart and its warp speed that irked me.

Speaking of enemies, should I feel guilty about the homeless guy I pass every day standing at my exit off the interstate, holding a sign and staring into the distance as car after car passes him by? What would you do in this situation?

Lastly, I feel that my dad's chili is really the perfect food, and if I could only eat one food every day for the rest of my life, this would be it. Yum.

Trickle, Torrent, Tidal Wave

a.k.a. My Screaming Meltdown at CVS, followed by Spiritual Crisis, Redemption, and Ultimately, Salvation for Myself and All of Mankind

I ran out of all the medicine cabinet essentials this week (cold medicine, Imodium, tampons ... it was a really great week, but that tale is for another day, or never.), so I went to CVS this morning to replenish. Lo and holy fuck, but what am I facing … an Easter display. An EASTER DISPLAY ON JANUARY 6th. Already I am having the most surreal and somewhat fear-filled day on this 72-degree spring January day, and now I am looking at Marshmallow Peeps and Cadbury Fucking Cream Eggs.

So I turn back to my line and try not to let this depress me, because as you know from my last shopping trip I tend to get a little bit suicidal when I do errands. Then I see all the people standing in line, nobody talking to each other, two screaming into their cell phones, and one rocking out in silence, plugged into his mp3 world.

I pay, get in the car, drive home to spend my own afternoon in silence and then suddenly, like a bolt form the blue, I decide that I am done.

I am done.

I am so, so very done.

I know that I am somewhat influenced by the article I read the other day (2 posts ago), but this does not change the impact of the revelation. I am done with this whole consuming, consuming, consuming thing. The commercialism, the cram-it-down-your-throat mentality that we all buy into (sometimes). Eat this! Swallow this! Listen to this Christmas crap music starting in October and 24 hours a day until Christmas! Buy these Valentine’s goodies the day after Christmas and these Easter goodies six days into the New Year! Dress like this! Use this shampoo! Drive this car! Read this book!

So we all run around, buying all this crap, and nobody talks to anybody. We’re just stuffing and stuffing and stuffing the void and nothing will ever fill it. I can’t take it anymore.

I’m done.

Obviously, I still need to consume. But the only thing that will ever fill my soul -- our souls -- is the knowledge that we are part of some gigantic intangible.

I am going to make a conscious effort to be more connected to the humanity around me. Whether it’s a conversation in the grocery line, a note to a distant friend, a phone call I’ve been putting off, I need to connect more. I’m going to strive every day to have conversations with my students, and not just throw information at them. I’m going to go to an AA meeting, not so much because I need it (though I do, and it saved my life), but because someone else might benefit from something I say. If I'm feeling brave, I might even talk to my neighbors.

I’m thinking that maybe if each of us would try, in our small way, to connect more, and plug into our electronics less, together we might just change the world.

The Capital-T Truth ... Worth reading again, if you have the time to improve how you see your life.

Since The Queen featured it again recently, I thought I'd post it -- David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon. It helped me.


Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.

Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.

Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education -- least in my own case -- is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.
This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.

By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera. Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.

Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.

You get the idea.

If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.

Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.

But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck.

I Might Be Am White Trash.

Back in the fall of 2005, I posted a favorite series of mine entitled I Might Be White Trash (IMBWT); I took it down, because it contained too many photos of me (see 2006 Blogging Crisis). But I loved it, I miss it. I'd like to post it here for just a few days for you all to enjoy a second (or first!) time. This opportunity to mock/rub one out will only last for a short while, so please take advantage!

IMBWT I

Pass the Pipe Around!

Circa 1988

Ahhh yes ... a proud moment. SG tokes up before the formal. Check out the big hair. And what's with the paw on my shoulder? (The identity of my date is masked because I fucked him and don't remember his name he is now the CEO of a major corporation [click photo to reveal].)

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IMBWT II

Possums for pets.

circa 1990

The mother opossum was struck by a car; I was student teaching, and my supervising teacher rescued the babies that had been riding on her back. There were 6 total. We bottle-raised them on kitten formula. I used to walk around the dorm with 3 hanging from each finger, by their tails. They smelled. My sister (roommate) loved that. Almost as much as when I kept my boyfriend's rifle hidden under my bed for him.

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IMBWT III

Bunnies

Circa 1987

My friend Emme (3rd from left) was babysitting her roommate's 2 rabbits for the summer. SG, her sister, and her friends thought it was sooooo funny to put the 2 bunnies together and watch them go at it. At the end of the summer, Emme returned 17 rabbits to her roommate. What we learned: Bunnies always do what bunnies do best, when given the slightest opportunity!

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IMBWT IV

Celebrating in Style

circa 2005

I tied two beautiful balloons to my hoopty and drove it all over town.

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IMBWT V

Dinner is Served

circa 1984

Only a true back-woods gal like 15-year-old Spinning Girl could catch, clean, & cook a carp ... all while rockin' this lovely tube top unitard!

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IMBWT VI

Ready to Party Hearty

circa 1987

18-year-old SG thinks she's going out to party at the bar known as Ted's on the UConn campus. Ted's serves draft beer in plastic cups, lays plastic tarps on its floors on weekends, and checks ID's rigorously. She hopes she impresses the bouncer with this big hair and drinking-age-ish eyeliner (she does indeed, and stays 'til last call, winning 3 games of darts and losing her shoes somewhere). All that's missing is a tube top!

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IMBWT VII

Tire Fire

circa 1986

When SG and her college dorm-pals went camping, they sometimes didn't have wood to burn, or the wood was too wet. Solution?: Burn old tires! Yes. Do you think there may have been any carcinogens in that smoke?

SG and her friend smile, oblivious that the insides of their lungs are coated with the same burnt-rubber soot that coats their skin. Smart move! (The identity of my friend is masked because I fucked her and I don't remember her name she is still my friend, and I don't know if she'd like her picture up on the web. Especially after we fooled around.)

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IMBWT VIII

Lock & Load!

circa 1989

Instead of fixing the mass spectrophotometer and getting to work analyzing samples, SG and her professor spent hours at the gun club, where he taught her how to fire several different types of revolvers, a shotgun, and a few semi-automatic pistols. Why, you ask? Because that is what you do in a chemistry independent study!!! Our targets were person-shaped bullseyes of paper; unfortunately, none of them remained in pieces larger than a square centimeter, so no photos available.