how we live

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December 21, 2010

Christmas Memories

Posted by butterandtoast under Childhood, education, how we live, Reading and Writing, Uncategorized
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The headmaster at my high school would read “A Christmas Carol” every year. He was an older man with a beard like Santa Claus, who was quick to smile and compliment. When we were seniors, we were given the option of attending his reading (for the fourth time) or having the period free. We all attended. It was a tradition.

My parents would read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas to us every year. I still remember the droll little Santa, drawn by my favorite children’s illustrator, Gyo Fujikawa.

But this post is a holiday shout out to my very favorite Christmas story, Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory”. My colleague and friend, Joe Scotese, reads it in his English class every year, and dozens of his former students, squashed together with his current students, cram into his classroom to hear him read. This year was Joe’s last reading, which makes me sad: Joe is a gifted teacher who infuses his love of literature into everything he does. But if you’re in the mood for a little nostalgia and sentimentalism, you can read the story yourself. The full text is available here.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

 

July 27, 2010

The F Word

Posted by butterandtoast under feminism, how we live, parenting | Tags: , , , |
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My name is Sarah and I am a feminist.

I’ve tried to stop. I know it goes against today’s social norms. But I’ve come to terms with it. It’s not going away.

It started in college. Maybe with A Doll’s House. No, no. It started in high school. With The Yellow Wallpaper. Wait a minute, it must have been earlier than that: I remember being embarrassed by girls who spent all of recess watching the boys play ball instead of doing something fun for themselves. It must have started then.

It was a blessing that my high school did not have a cheerleading squad; I don’t think I would have been able to stomach it. Even now, watching cheerleaders at professional sports games makes me uncomfortable. I mean, what exactly is their purpose? Just to cheer for the men? What other sport is completely dependent on another for its existence?

When the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup this year, there was a little-run news story about how the “Blackhawks Girls” were snubbed from taking part in the rally in downtown Chicago. I saw the interviews on our local news station and the girls seemed genuinely disappointed. I felt bad for them. All I could think was, How are you not in on the joke? Because if they were under the impression that they were somehow integral in the Blackhawks regaining the Stanley Cup after 49 years, they were seriously misguided. But I felt sympathetic to these women because, from a very young age, most girls understand that they are being judged on their ability to appeal to others.  And it’s easy to confuse that ability with true, authentic ability.

True ability involves skill, expertise, and proficiency. Which leads to power of one kind or another. And the neat thing about true abilities–intellect, creativity, resourcefulness–is that they don’t need to be validated by another person in order to be legitimate. Added bonus: they don’t get old, gray, or go out of style.

I don’t watch TV unless it is something I have recorded. This was not a conscious decision; it just seemed like every time I tried to channel surf I became depressed about the state our society, and specifically, women. But, recently, when I was in a particularly boring mood, and my DVR was filled almost to capacity with only Nova and The Soup, I tried my luck and watched what I will now only refer to as Dante’s Inferno. Though some of you might know it better as Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

It’s the kind of show I wouldn’t mind, and could even laugh at, if it weren’t so freaking popular. It’s popularity means that there are people who take this show seriously. And many of those are likely young women. The episode I watched showed a very-scripted Khloe pursuing the challenging and elusive goal of getting a bikini wax before her basketball-star husband returns home. You’d think a woman who can buy her husband at $400,000 car could figure out how to get herself to a salon. But, then, what would E! fill its thirty-minute episode with?

I shouldn’t mock. Khloe and her sister, Kourtney, spent the episode doing things most sisters do all the time:

  • Talk to Tommy Lee about women. And bikini wax shapes. And keeping a man happy. Because, you know, his opinion matters on these things.
  • Try on lingerie together. Come one step away from a pillow-fight in their skivvies.
  • Decide that the best solution to the nagging bikini-wax issue is a sister-on-sister bikini-wax party. (It gets so wild and crazy that they actually move from the couch to the kitchen counter.)

The entire focus of the episode is Khloe’s husband. And what will he think! if she is not properly trimmed! when he arrives back from playing basketball! (Which, by the way, is a true ability. Like, an actual skill.)

And the girls’ abilities? Well, I suppose waxing, if mastered, would count. But they don’t ever seem to master it. They burn and botch and, truth be told, that is where I turned it off. I didn’t have the stomach for any more of it. I spent the next hour wishing I’d watched Nova, and been further bored, instead of watching Dante’s Third and Fourth Circles, and become newly depressed.

Going into seventh grade I was a summer TV glutton. During the school year, my sister and I weren’t allowed to watch TV during the week, so I tried to make up for that deficit on summer nights. Every week, in the flimsy newspaper-issued TV Guide, I would highlight–actually highlight– the programs I wanted to watch. They were all reruns: always Mama’s Family, sometimes MASH, often Alice. There’s really no accounting for taste.

I was forbidden from watching Married…With Children (I can’t imagine why). But there were times throughout the week when I could sneak in an episode here and there. I never highlighted it in the TV Guide; instead I would put a little yellow dot next to it, as a reminder to myself. I was crafty like that. One July evening,  I was watching an episode in which a beautiful woman comes to Al Bundy’s door. It’s clear to the viewer that she is meant to be the epitome of feminine beauty: Blonde, tall…oh, and wearing nothing but a trench coat. Obviously.

Somehow, in a sitcom turn of fate, Al ends up feeling the woman’s legs, and about four minutes (of the 22-minute episode) are devoted to how silky, smooth, and buttery her legs feel. I remember watching that episode, turning off the TV, going to my parent’s room and lathering my legs with my mom’s Jergen’s Body Lotion. In thirty minutes of TV-watching I had learned how important it was for me to appeal physically to others. How about that for feminine indoctrination?

Researching this post, I ran into a 2004 Ms. Magazine article. The author, Jennifer Pozner, eloquently articulates the impact of reality show’s sexist stereotyping:

Dangerous beauty myths are fundamental to the reality universe, where women are unworthy of love and happiness if they’re not stereotypical hot babes…They want women to think like June Cleaver, look like Miss America and — in a nod to modernity — have sex like Madonna. Hello, Stepford.

She’s right. Except that we’re not a country of Stepford Wives anymore. We’re a country of Blackhawk Girls, Kardashian Klans, and Housewives of Every County.

Al Bundy would be proud.

 

June 18, 2010

Intentional Parenting Tenant: Teaching Gratitude

Posted by butterandtoast under Childhood, how we live, kids, parenting, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , |
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I have been wanting to delineate a list of values that can direct my husband and me as we raise our child. It seems easy, but it’s really not if you want to be intentional and specific about it. When I was studying acting, there was a basic exercise in which an actor would have to sit in front of the class and mime an activity that she performed every day. For instance, I chose brushing my teeth. And the goal was to be as specific as possible in one’s actions so that the audience could understand, not just what you were doing, but how you did it.

Afterward, my professor would ask questions such as, What kind of toothpaste does she use? What kind of faucet handle does she have? and, depending on whether the actor was specific in her actions, the students could answer that she had a tube of toothpaste (because she had to roll up the bottom to get some out) or that she had round knobs on her sink (because she used all of her wrist and fingers in a twisting motion). What I took away from that exercise is that specificity leads to better communication, which leads to understanding, which (hopefully) leads to implementation.

So I want to be specific about what I want my child to learn and be. The first tenant I am tackling is gratitude.

Gratitude

Each of the tenants I will write about have two goals for my son: That he be content in his life and that he make others feel content in theirs. And gratitude is the first step in this direction. This week, in The Huffington Post, Dr. Jim Taylor discussed the emotional impact that gratitude has on oneself:

Gratitude is such a simple, yet powerful emotion. In fact, one of the most surprising and robust findings of the growing body of research on happiness is that expressing gratitude has on one’s basic level of happiness. In a nutshell, when people express gratitude, they feel happier for several days. And, not unexpectedly, the recipients of that gratitude feel pretty darned good too.

And the impact it has on others:

There are load of upsides to gratitude. Aside from the happiness boost you get, gratitude has also been related to higher energy, a more optimistic attitude, and greater empathy toward others. And you make the people to whom you express gratitude happy. Gratitude also has survival value. When you express gratitude toward others, they’re more likely to help you in the future, thereby increasing your chances of survival.

Yet a growing number of people seem to view gratitude as a weak character trait. In sports, pop culture, and business, we increasingly value aggressiveness over politeness: I got mine, how are you doing?

When we get bad customer service, we are indignant (how dare he?) but when we get good customer service we are indifferent (that is his job, isn’t it?). I fall victim to this cycle of ingratitude all of the time. But it leads me to unhappiness, if only temporarily. And the higher road, the road of empathizing and respecting others, generally makes me feel happy when I choose to take it.

Dr. Taylor also discusses the role materialism and greed plays into the lack of gratitude we see so often:

The problem is that, by never being satisfied with what we have, we can never be grateful for what we have. And, by extension, in always wanting more, more, more, we feel unsatisfied and inadequate about who and where we are now. We need to step back and gain perspective on what we have. Compared to about 99% of the world, we have so much. We should feel fortunate, not wanting, for all that we have.

Source: ModernVintageHome

When I was growing up, my friends had to call my home phone in order to get in touch with me. There was something comforting about that for a parent–it allowed them to get to know their children’s friends and children had to learn to respect their friend’s parents. But it also made ownership of the phone crystal clear: To find me at my parent’s home you must call me on their phone. In other words, there was no misunderstanding about who was paying for the phone, and making my three-hour chat-marathons possible.  I am not saying that I realized this at thirteen years old, but there was a certain social construct in place that created clear roles between adults and children. And as a teenager, though I desperately wanted independence and autonomy from my parents, (the closest thing I ever got to having my own phone was a ten foot long chord that I could drag from the family room into my bedroom), in my heart I knew my limitations as a child and my parent’s responsibilities as adults. And with that understanding came an inherent gratitude.

source: Little Spring Design

Yet, today’s children have their own personal phones on which they can be reached whenever by whomever. They can personalize their home screen, download personalized ring tones, and fill the contact list with only their friends. And I’ve met and taught many of these kids who believe that a phone is their birthright. They believe that they need and deserve a phone, without much thought about the folks who make their texting and calling possible. The line between point A and point B isn’t as straight as it once was and therefore I don’t really blame the kids themselves. Besides, a teenager’s narrow worldview lends itself to a certain self-centeredness. It’s up to parents to teach them gratitude. It’s up to parents to limit the amount of “more, more, more” they seek. And it’s up to parents to remind ourselves that we are doing it for their long-term happiness.

I want my son to be as happy with a little as he is with a lot. There will be times in his life when he will have to make do with less money or possessions and my goal is that he can remain independent, good-natured, and confident during those times. On the flip side, I don’t want him to feel guilty when he is enjoying a fancy vacation or buying a brand-new suit–there is happiness in big rewards as well. Gratitude is contentedness, whatever the situation.

My friend, Leslie, made a CD of kids songs for her son’s first birthday. My little pal and I listen to it weekly, if not more (okay, much, much more). The last song is sung a cappella, and in a round, by a wonderful Chicago-based children’s singer named Susan Salidor. I don’t know if it is the simplicity of the presentation or the specificity of the message, but it sticks with me for days after I’ve listened to it. It’s now my version of a bedtime prayer with my son:

Every Moment, Every Day

It is possible to be thankful every moment, every day
It takes practice and humility
It takes vision and civility
It takes beauty and the wisdom
To see it every day.

I will likely post more on gratitude. It turns out to be the foundation of the values that I want my little pal to live with; yet it is also the most elusive. Gratitude doesn’t mean to just be thankful that you got a new shirt. It means to be accepting, empathetic, polite, satisfied, generous, and nearly everything else a person must be in order to be truly happy every moment, every day.

In an effort to help me sort out my own Intentional Parenting List, I’d love to hear from readers–what do you think are the most important values to teach children?

 

June 14, 2010

Good Day Sunshine

Posted by butterandtoast under food, home, how we live, kids, parenting | Tags: , , |
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Last week, Ain’t no Mom Jeans summed up the Environmental Working Group’s sunscreen research and recommendations. It was a lot to get through and a lot to understand. And, being a man of science, my husband was skeptical. He demanded to know the sources, methods, algorithms, and beaker size involved in EWG’s research. And to some extent, once I got to the punch line–that the only good sunscreens are upwards of $12 an ounce–I was skeptical too.

But the research is good research as far as either of us can tell. When I started reading nanotechnology statistics to my husband (Herzog method, anyone?) we both sort of called a truce. Because the real story seems to be that a lot of the risks are simply unknown. And, though I am a bargain-hunter at heart, reading evidence such as the following was disturbing enough to make me proud to plunk down a cool $20 for a tube so small it can fit in my back pocket:

In FDA’s one-year study, tumors and lesions developed up to 21 percent sooner in lab animals coated in a vitamin A-laced cream (at a concentration of 0.5%) than animals treated with a vitamin-free cream. Both groups were exposed to the equivalent of just nine minutes of maximum intensity sunlight each day (Environmental Working Group).

In this case, Vitamin A is in 41% of sunscreens, so a buyer has to be pretty diligent to avoid it. And how about this Fun Fact:

The Environmental Working Group tested more than 780 sunscreen products currently on the market, and found many contain potentially harmful chemicals which could be bad for your children. Among them: something called oxybenzone that the group fears could act as a hormone disruptor for your kids. At least 95 percent of the girls they tested who used sunscreen had the substance in their urine (City News Canada).

Great.

I can’t claim to understand the real and long-term impact of these chemicals. But I do know that cancer continues to be pervasive and proliferate, and rates of early puberty are also on the rise. It might not be the oxybenzone in my sunscreen, nor the pesticides on our fruit, nor the hormones in our milk. But it has to be something. That’s about as far as I’ve gotten. And that’s good enough for me.

Right now we are trying out California Baby simply because it is available at Target, making it one of the only convenient choices recommended by EWG. Expensive, but convenient. But, after buying California Baby in a panic, I looked up Neutrogena Pure & Free on EWG’s website and it seems to be a good choice too. It’s half the price of California Baby, so we’ll likely go with that in the future.

Below is a list from EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Safer Sunscreens. Just be aware that many still have chemicals you may not want in your sunscreen. (Blue Lizard, for instance, has many parabens listed as ingredients, which seem no better than oxybenzone). I guess they like to keep us on our toes…our sun-burnt, chemical-covered toes.

BEST EASY-TO-FIND SUNSCREENS

California Baby – any sunscreen
Mustela – “Sun Cream” or “Sun Lotion, Bebe”
Mission Skincare – “Face Stick”
Neutrogena – “Pure & Free” or “Sensitive Skin”
Blue Lizard – “Face”, “Baby”, or “Sensitive”
Jason Natural or Earth’s Best – “Mineral Based”
Solar Sense – “Clear Zinc Sport Stick”
CVS – “Sport Sunstick”
Coppertone Water BABIES – “Pure & Simple”

 

May 18, 2010

The Babysitter Chronicles, part 2

Posted by butterandtoast under how we live, kids, post-30, relationships | Tags: , , |
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The thing about having a baby is you can’t avoid using babysitters. And the thing with babysitters is that they are almost always younger. Which means they have fewer responsibilities. Which means they are still wide-eyed and indiscriminately excited and happy. Which means they have great, shiny skin.

But the other night I was talking to my (other) babysitter, a twenty-something woman who is pursuing her dream of professional acting, and I remembered the not-so-shiny side of being right out of college with only opportunity in front of you.

It was as if I was talking to myself ten years ago. See, I, fresh with a theatre degree and Chekhov and Shakespeare roles under my belt, set off to become an actor, too. First in New York City and then in Chicago. My career included an extra role on Law & Order (impressive to my family; available to most NYC actors), an off-off-Broadway play (performed on 42nd Street; but really, really far west), and a national tour of a bilingual, musical version of The Little Prince (need I say more? Oh, wait, yes: it was performed for cranky highschoolers).

You could say it was a varied career. I spent most of the first three years I was in New York interning at my manager’s office in the hopes that she would sent me out on auditions. Instead, realizing I was over-qualified for stuffing envelopes and weighing for postage, my manager strung me along as an actor and used my office talents (I am a wiz at coffee orders) for as long as she could, until I grew up and grew wise(er).

When I moved to Chicago I thought a new city and a clean slate would help my career, but every show I booked (barring my last show at The Royal George) didn’t pay a dime. I found myself acting little and temping lots. It got old. I got older. And I switched careers (from acting to teaching) when I was twenty-five.

So, as I changed my son’s diaper and talked to my babysitter about her reservations about acting as a long-term career, I felt like I was talking to my twenty-five-year-old self. And I sort of started to. Which might have been awkward for her, but was pretty cathartic for me.

I wanted to tell her everything that I had done so she would know she was not alone in her struggle. I wanted to tell her everything I wished I’d done so maybe she would have more of an edge than I did. But, most of all, I wanted to tell her that, in many ways, life isn’t short. Life is long. And the decisions you make in your twenties do, in fact, shape a how long your life actually feels.

Maybe young babysitters have been sent to help me reflect on my twenties. Maybe babysitters are there to hold the mirror up to nature so I see myself more clearly and can then go on to be a better parent, partner, and person.

Or maybe I just need a night out without my kid.

 

May 11, 2010

The Babysitter Chronicles, part 1

Posted by butterandtoast under how we live, kids, post-30 | Tags: , , , |
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Recently I woke up earlier than usual to actually style my hair before my son woke up. I even put on foundation, which I really only do a few times a year. I can’t say why I did it; I just felt that I wanted to look put together. I had a dental appointment: I would be interacting with people other than moms and one-and-a-half year-olds, and I thought I should join the adult table with a little extra matte on my face and shine in my hair.

So, when I was judged based on how I looked, I took it a little personally.

I know I am not 20 anymore. I mean, I get it. Bars where I once used to have a few drinks now make me feel like I am a teacher, and the girls in the bathroom (reapplying cat eyes and texting from stall to stall) are  my students. This feeling is compounded by the fact that I actually am a teacher. And, as a rule, I don’t like to mix business with pleasure.

So, after my dental appointment, I met up with my twenty-one year old babysitter, who was watching my son at a nearby Starbucks. When I arrived, half of my face was numb from the Novocaine, and I was weighed down like a Sherpa with groceries. It wasn’t my finest moment but I can’t say it was anomalous as far as my stay-at-home days go.

When I arrived, two women, in their mid-thirties, came over and smilingly said to me, “You’re the mother? Oh, thank God! We were over there having our coffee and hating your babysitter because we thought she was the mother! She’s so perfectly put together and your son is so cute…we just hated her!”

Now, I almost let them off the hook when they brought up how cute my son is, but then the other woman had to go and say, “No offense.”

And that is when you know you should be insulted. It’s like a canary in the coalmine–no mistaking it now. No offense means I am saying something to your face that I shouldn’t be saying but now I regret it a little bit. It’s a backpedal.

I took offense.

When I was eighteen I played Heidi in The Heidi Chronicles (a better irony I do not now know) and I remember at the end of Heidi’s monologue, as she tries to make sense of the pressures women face in a lecture titled “Women: Where Are We Going”, she says, “We’re all concerned, intelligent, good women. It’s just that I feel stranded. And I thought the whole point was that we wouldn’t feel stranded. I thought the point was that we were all in this together.” Even at eighteen, I understood that feeling. And on this day I understood it in a different way, though likely closer to the way in which Wasserstein intended it. And it made me feel better, actually.

Because here’s the worst part–I understood what these Starbucks women were saying. For three reasons:

One, my babysitter is adorable. She wears skinny jeans with trendy boat shoes and doesn’t look like a homeless hipster. She has golden blonde hair and tosses it back in a ponytail straight out of bed and it doesn’t look like she should be committed. And she’s twenty-one. Period. Twenty-One is a good look on nearly everyone.

Secondly, I used to be my babysitter. Jeans and a t-shirt was a cute look, not a painting uniform. Shorts were short and didn’t make me look like a phys. ed. teacher. And now? It’s more work. Especially post-baby, post-thirty. I have to shop with my age in mind.  A horrible phrase, but it’s true. I need shirts with a bit of length to them (a strange phenomenon post-pregnancy: every shirt is shorter on me). I’ve put away anything with the word Lycra on the label. Makeup is not really optional, gray hairs need hiding… No need to list everything; what I do still have is my pride.

www.wordsaboutthings.wordpress.com

credit: www.wordsaboutthings.wordpress.com

And, finally,  I have had the exact same experience from their side of Starbucks. Sipping a non-fat latte, while watching a woman who is way too put together, and wondering, What the hell does she know that I don’t?

But the bright side is that if the woman I watched from behind my latte was in her twenties, she doesn’t know anything that I don’t. In fact, I am pretty sure I know a lot more. And I am happier now that I ever was when I was twenty-anything.

Cause here’s the thing–my babysitter doesn’t even have a real job yet. She’s graduated from a good college and is still trying to figure out what she’ll do and who she’ll be. And I don’t envy her. I’m not searching anymore, wondering about what my life will be like. That was stressful and scary and I am glad that chapter has ended. In an interview, the actress Julianne Moore once said that she would describe her twenties as “a puddle”, and I agree. It’s when you stare at a blank sheet of paper and can’t decide what to write. Sometimes you don’t write anything. Sometimes you write embarrassing, humiliating things. And sometimes you write things that don’t make sense later. And that is what your twenties are for.

So, I cut the Starbucks women some slack. We’re all in this together I guess.

 

May 8, 2010

Learning to Fly

Posted by butterandtoast under Childhood, growing up, how we live, post-30, To Do | Tags: , , , |
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When I was in high school, my best friend and I sneaked out of her house at night and walked around the golf course, looking at the stars (we were bad-ass like that). We were deep into Seal at the time and we sang the lyrics to “Crazy” at the top of our lungs as we waded through the damp, tall summer grass: In a world full of people, only some want to fly, isn’t that crazy? In a sky full of people only some want to fly, isn’t that crazy? Crazy…


Seal really knows how to drive home a point.

As we sang the words, my friend and I had a teenage epiphany–it is crazy, we thought, that we can all fly but don’t. We should get our pilot licenses this summer.  And fly to Hollywood. And see if The Peach Pit really exists.

Though our goals were a little ambitious, the nugget of truth, encased in solid ’90s pop lyrics, is an important idea that I still think about: There are plans we make when we are young with every possibility in front of us, but then we start making other plans along the way and all of the sudden flying seems dangerous,  The Peach Pit seems silly, and Hollywood seems cliche. We become more risk averse and more cynical.

For my 29th birthday I asked my husband for a flying lesson. Thirty was looming before me and we were talking about having a baby in the near future, and I thought, It’s now or never.

And then Chicago’s fall was too blustery to go up in the plane. And then it was winter storm season. And then I got pregnant.

So I guess it’s never. On the flying thing anyway. I knew the moment I saw the positive pregnancy test that my days of risk-taking-that-could-end-in-physical-harm days were over. I had a clear responsibility to my child that, first and foremost, involved being alive.

www.agdesktop.com

(I’ll admit that I entertained the idea again recently. But, being heavily influenced by fictional characters, I put my wings away forever when I saw Lost‘s John Locke had put his father and himself in a wheelchair on his first solo flight. I mean, John Locke is man of faith, so if he couldn’t make it past lift-off, my chances seemed slim).

However, there is a difference between physical challenges and mental challenges. I can’t say I’ve dabbled much in the former–a belly button ring at age eighteen…pregnancy…one time in NYC I moved an air conditioner across town by myself–but I’ve never been the marathon-running, mountain-climbing, master-cleanse-drinking kinda gal. I dislike feeling chilly, let alone physical pain.

But mental challenges I can do. Auditioning as an actor in New York City was as cruel and unusual as it gets in that department. Or, day after day, week after week,  standing in front of 34 eighteen-year-olds who’d rather be anywhere but my class, trying to connect Beowolf to their difficult, stressful urban lives. (I get sweaty just thinking about some of my first classes in the large urban school system where I taught).

Besides, physical challenges are so 2004, when Gwyneth was still macrobiotic and people still cared if David Blaine survived in his stupid Plexiglass box above the River Thames. If it weren’t for my husband’s obsession with reading the Patagonia Catalog like it were a lost book from the Bible, I would toss it into the recycling bin faster than I do my mutual fund’s annual report (am I seriously supposed to read that? it’s a phone book).

Physical risks out, mental risks in.

So I am starting a To Do list. The goals are mine, for myself or my family. It would be way too easy at this point in my life, with a lot of big details settled, to forget to set any new goals unless I write them down, get them out there, and think about them every now and then. Just like everything else, it’s a work in progress.

 

April 30, 2010

Sidewalk Philosophies

Posted by butterandtoast under City Life, how we live | Tags: , , |
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http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c233/adamslifeblog/delavega.jpg

My block is covered in trash (largely by virtue of living off of a major avenue where styrofoam cups and cigarette packs seem to consistently redirect themselves onto my quiet(er) street), and it’s a good thing my little pal and I have suspension on our stroller or we would sometimes have a hard time getting to the park between the empty milk cartons and (bizarrely) full, yet abandoned, gallons of laundry detergent.

Yesterday I found a quarter pound of deli-sliced turkey outside my doorstep. The mind reels.

And while the trash bothers me, I have to admit, the graffiti covering most of my neighborhood does not, in fact, bother me as much as it sort of amazes me: Where do they find the time?

The most popular tagger is a guy who writes Oh Shit on everything from mailboxes to doorways; fire escapes to picket fences. Oh Shit is relentless. It seems he either has a very flexible work schedule or simply no other hobbies, because I find his tags covering every immovable object within a four mile radius. I really don’t know how he keeps up, what with all of the pre- and post-gentrified businesses going in and out of storefronts, and the city’s Graffiti Busters making the rounds.

And what does he mean when he writes Oh Shit? His inflection isn’t clear and I run the phrase in my head countless times a day as I pass his tags:

Oh Shit, I did it again!
Oh Shit, my rent is due!
Oh Shit, I look good!
Oh Shit, my hairline is receding!

Less proliferate, but more intriguing, is a tagger whose message is more clear: Forgive Yourself. I love this guy. I fancy him to be some sort of street philosopher in the tradition of De La Vega.

When I lived on the Upper East Side, De La Vega was everywhere, especially on sunny spring days. Considering his method of delivery was sidewalk chalk, the weather had a lot to do with how often I ran into his work. But when I did (and sometimes it could be ten encounters in one walk from the train) I always smiled and slowed down and felt happy that someone in New York City was self-possessed enough to take entire afternoons to write messages of hope and intrigue from 52nd to 96th Streets: Become Your Dream, Enjoy Today As If It Were Your Last, You Can Sell Your Soul and Not Even Know It, and, one of my favorites:

Imagine running into that on the sidewalk?

It always felt like De La Vega was talking directly to me, but I felt it most strongly when I read this bit of advice, walking home from a temp job in my Payless shoes. At the time I was a struggling actress, keeping the tags on  clothes in my closet in case I needed to return them for extra cash come the first of the month. And this was before iPods or cell phones, when there were few ways to shut out the crowds of people and really think about your life and the choices you were making. When I ran into De La Vegaisms, I always felt singled out for serendipity; I walked away more hopeful, peaceful, and re-focused.

And the real beauty of his words is that they are universal, like a chalk fortune cookie. It was an obvious connection for me–I was an actress in New York City, looking for encouragement that I should continue to pursue my dream. But others–social workers, lawyers, garbage collectors–had dreams, too. Dreams of being of service to his clients, of paying off her debt, of sending his kids to college. And those people needed some reminding of the value and legitimacy of those goals. I always felt that De La Vega was generous to provide that for so many people.

And now, as I walk past foreclosed houses on my street, boarded up, with bright neon stickers on the door (Scarlet Orange Letters) I am comforted by the Forgive Yourself that has been sprayed onto the plywood door that now bars the owner from entering his home…Or what was his future home…Or his dream home. And with such a simple phrase, this nighttime philosopher seems to give both the owner and neighborhood a chance at rebirth.

Sometimes he only writes Forgive–I wonder if he ran out of paint, was caught by the police mid-spray, or just wanted to expand his message a little–in any case, I like it equally well; it seems to say, others need forgiveness and you are the one standing in the way. After seeing this word, I often think about how I have to forgive someone important in my life–my spouse, a family member–but sometimes I just have to forgive the cashier at the grocery store whose idea of customer service was a snarl and an eye roll. Forgive her; who knows what kind of day she’s having. (And then, Forgive Yourself for thinking you are better than she is.)

I wonder if Oh Shit and Forgive Yourself ever meet, walking the streets late at night with spray paint cans rattling in their pockets. Do they know of each other’s existence? If so, are they annoyed when one has stolen prime real estate from the other?

Are they friends? Enemies? Are they strangers? Are they childhood acquaintances? Or, maybe, serendipitously, are they the same person?

Oh, Shit.

 

April 13, 2010

The Antedote to Watching Hardball

Posted by butterandtoast under education, how we live, Reading and Writing | Tags: , , |
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The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm

by Wallace Stevens

 The house was quiet and the world was calm.
 The reader became the book; and summer night
 Was like the conscious being of the book.
 The house was quiet and the world was calm.
 The words were spoken as if there was no book,
 Except that the reader leaned above the page,
 Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
 The scholar to whom the book is true, to whom
 The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
 The house was quiet because it had to be.
 The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
 The access of perfection to the page.
 And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
 In which there is no other meaning, itself
 Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
 Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

I love this poem. I wanted to paint it as a border along my son’s room when I was decorating his nursery, but it wouldn’t have fit in the space. It is the kind of poem that seems onomatopoeiatic: As you read you become more calm, and figuring out the sense in who is reading, and who is leaning, and what “perfection to the page” means, simply falls away by the end of the read. Who cares? It feels so good just to hear the words.

It’s nice to have a cup of tea and read a good poem, but I don’t do it very often–and I am an English teacher. What is it about poetry that we love and hate at the same time, with the same forcefulness? A poem I give to one student might make his head want to ooze. And the same poem can create calm or comfort for another student in a way she’s never had before.

And the world was calm…

There is a great non-profit called The Favorite Poem Project. They interview regular people (and famous people) about a poem that has meant something to them. Lots of the responses are surprising. And, though one of my all-time favorite poems, “At the Fishhouses” by Elizabeth Bishop, is featured by a professor of law, my favorite video is of  a retired anthropologist in his eighties who describes the comfort Shakespeare’s Sonnet #29 gave him while patrolling the night shift in the Navy. I had to memorize #29, in an acting class in college, and its surprising optimism and honesty has always stuck with me:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Shakespeare knew what he was talking about. Who hasn’t wished to be more hopeful and easy-going? Or looked at another person who seems to have more–more friends, a more exciting career, more talents and abilities? The narrator touches on a feeling everyone has had over centuries and centuries…I love that. It’s comforting.

And what’s more comforting is the turn in the Sonnet #29: Yet. You can’t beat that word when things are looking bad:Yet. Yet gives us hope that things can go a different way.

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
…that then I scorn to change my state with kings.

And thee’s not a bad close second as far as good words go. Haply I think on thee. And it’s so true. Right when we feel like someone else has more, more of something we desperately want, then we remember someone that we have that no one else does–our spouse, our kids–and we can say, So What. I’m happy.

There’s something so awesome about the timelessness of a poem, relatable to many people over many generations; we have such a lack of history in our culture these days. I am a Lost fan, and there is a reoccurring idea on the show that if you are traveling through time, the only chance you have at enduring the transitions is to have A Constant–a person or thing that will be there as a stabilizer through the changes. On the show, Desmond has Penny, the love of his life and his best friend. Her companionship is stabilizing for him as he travels back and forth over decades.

In such changing times, it might be nice to have a constant like a poem. A stabilizer in a very unstable world. So, I say, if you don’t like poetry, give it second chance. Think of it like Match.com: Keep looking until you’ve met the one for you. You’ll find it. And, if you do, you will always have the comfort of a companion.

Even if it’s a paper-thin one.

 

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