Some Not-So-Structured Thoughts on Theory

 "I learned to read and to love books much as I learned to know and to love Rome: not only by intuiting undisclosed passageways everywhere but also by seeing more of me in books than there probably was, because everything I read seemed more in me already than on the pages themselves."  --Andre Aciman from "Intimacy" in Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere


I was recently struck by yet another author profile in Poets&Writers.  Aciman is not only a writer who had a previous career in advertising but also an executive officer of a prominent comparative literature program, which makes his take on literary theory even more surprising. 

 Speaking of his graduate studies, Aciman says that he "was enthralled" by literary and cultural theory (Derrida, Foucault, Todorov, etc.) and "loved the idea of theory becoming so important."  However, with experience, Aciman eventually changes his mind.  Instead, Aciman sees theory as something of a threat to intellectual pursuits: "I think there's a lot of nonsense going on [in universities]...It's okay to be an academic.  It's okay to be a scholar.  But you also have to be an intellectual, and intellectuals have a different mission.  They need a commitment to the excellence of the life of the mind, which I don't think has much to do with body politics.  There are far more important issues that exist and need to be discussed.  What is a human being?  What is life?  I think most literature is about that in one way or another and it transcends identity politics...What passes for intellectual engagement today is just an interest in current affairs."

I know that's a lot of quoting.  And I don't even agree with Aciman entirely.  But this section of the article strikes me because it seems as though Aciman is articulating my very own struggle with wedding creative and beautiful work with the stark outlines of literary theory.  As Aciman says, "There's something about beauty that is difficult to talk about, so people talk about structure."

This is precisely the problem.  How does one define beauty?  How can we answer those questions about the nature of life and humanity?  Art has been striving to do these things for literal ages.  Aciman posits that to be a true intellectual, one most not focus only on societal structures but also see a deeper, more spiritual, and more elusive side of literature.  Though I am still enthralled by my own theory love-affair, finding theory both interesting and useful, it is true that the cultural concepts and social aspects are not what "stick with me" when I am finished reading a book.  The ending of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay does not bring tears to my eyes (every time I read it) because it makes a statement on what it meant to be homosexual in mid-20th century America.  The Elegance of the Hedgehog does not cause me to quiet myself into contemplating the simple beauty of life and question structured religion because loosely Buddhist characters cross socioeconomic boundaries.  No, these books have something more that strikes the soul and not just the mind.  It is this "something" that first drew me (and many others) to not just appreciate but literally fall in love with the art of stories.   



In my mind, I think I secretly see this "something" as a sort of "literary divine."  It can be felt and, to some extent, understood but not necessarily firmly grasped.  This, in turn, leads me to another thought that I only wish to touch upon briefly as it is newly conceived in my process.  I wonder if maybe Christians embrace theory (which is not always true if those theories contradict "Faith") even more readily than seeing a "self," or "divine," if you will, in literature--specifically secular literature (or art in general for that matter).   We can better explain more concrete political and social theories about the world; sometimes we are even lucky enough to be able to fit them into our own "Christian narrative."  But how dare we use art to tap into a deeper meaning that (though often unspoken) is only found in Christ and the Gospel.

Why are we so afraid of trying to answer questions like "What is it to be human?" and "What is life?" using literature? 

Perhaps I venture too far.  It is true, Scripture provides relevant answers to these questions.  But does this mean we should stop short at a 2000+ year old text without seeking more understanding that comes out of our very own culture?

I fear that I'm not being very clear as I try to disentangle this thread of thought to weave together my own theory of art and literature.  I have the haunting suspicion that this is something I will always be working on and, for now at least, my musings are far from fluid.  Somewhere there are loose ends of physical and spiritual beauty embodied in art tied with cultural and religious narratives knotted together into a big mess of theoretical misunderstanding.  But we'll get there.  And if we don't, the process must count for something.

'Til Death

Until lately, I never realized how much I am affected by "divorce culture" for lack of a better term.  My parents, grandparents, and stories of great-grandparents have a history of loving or at least constant marriages.  A few months ago I repeated that fateful line "til death do we part," the same line that I have heard so often, believing and trusting, and rarely actually see in the wider world that surrounds me and my marriage.

It's not that everyone I know is divorced--quite the opposite in fact.  But I know very few who are not in some way affected.
For the sake of my particular discussion, let's say that this pervasive presence of divorce comes from a cultural "attitude" that only seems to be growing.  I have spent my whole life hearing divorce, and even this attitude, preached against from the pulpit.  However, I rarely noticed the implications of this "attitude" in even my own thinking until my own recent vows.  I have watched my friends and family members pledge their lives to another for a number of years, but I don't remember hearing one of them utter a word about a vague and creeping sense of voluntary entrapment that I occasionally struggled (and still fight) with.

Please don't misunderstand me.  I would not part with my Ben for all the chocolate and coffee in the world, or even for a paying job.  But there is a mentality of flippancy that has secret power to inundate even the most moral lives and marriages (which I certainly do not claim for myself) unless we are intentional about noticing its impact.

Recently I have come across some powerful and touching articles.  One described a military widow who requested to sleep next to her husband's coffin for one last night rather than leave him truly alone.  Another was the story of a couple in their 80s who died holding hands in a hospital and were buried in a custom-built double-coffin, not even to be parted by death.  Yet another essay described a man who wrote a letter of faithfulness to his wife, dead two years. 

The problem: these articles are tweeted and shared on facebook maybe because they are encouraging but also because they are anomalies.  Today's "norm" is not life-long love and commitment beyond death.  Today's "til death do we part" seems to be until the roses die and one can afford another dress.

Yes, I exaggerate.  But I recently read another article about a man's life that mentioned his marriages in passing.  This article's main focus was his success as a published writer late in life, but his background of lauded artistic dissatisfaction included two marriages that each lasted less than one year.  Still being in what is probably considered the "honeymoon phase" myself, I might have found these short marriages incomprehensible if not for the cold and trivial statements as historic fact.

But if you have continued with me this far, we are probably both finding that I digress.  I believe I was saying that this attitude of divorce has affected my view of my own marriage on a surprising and disturbing level.  It seems that when I allow my thoughts to dwell too closely on the thought of "life" rather than "tomorrow" in terms of marriage, I sometimes find the deeper and usually repressed recesses of my mind paralyzed by fear.  I find that I am not left unscarred by a culture that says to date, love, and marry only one man is the exception and not the rule.  When I imagine "til death" my mind hits a mental wall and my thoughts scuttle back to the leftovers in the freezer or who needs the car tomorrow.  I admittedly struggle to imagine my marriage in old age, or even with children.  I can usually manage to envision our next move, and I can almost make it to thinking of married and in grad school, but to think in two unbroken lines braided together for years upon years is beyond my powers of cognizance.

But don't think, please, that I am dissatisfied or even lack an encouraging stability in the future of my marriage and my love.  It is something I have heard often and is one of those truths that is dismissed until it is lived: take marriage, like everything else, one week, one day, one hour at a time.  "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of it's own" (Matt. 6:34).

So break out those leftovers and make sure there's enough for two.  Finish that grocery list for your next week of sustenance.  Order next month's Netflix.  Look for that next apartment.  Buy furniture.  Take a walk and talk about your life for the next 24 hours because until death do we part, tomorrow together is what we can count on.

Falling Through Words

I have many excuses for many things. One of those things is my constant hesitancy to write--write fiction, write in my journal, even write emails. I want words to be perfect. I don't have time. (I have time to read War and Peace in three weeks but not to write). I have nothing to write about. Since I have excused myself from writing for the past six months with relative consistency, I am out of practice and therefore getting back into practice is a betrayal of this guilt of laziness. I never said that my excuses are valid or even make sense.

However, one justification that I rarely verbalize, but often feel, is simply fear--not the fear of having written that so often comes with letting others see your thoughts. Even when I think that no one will see my work, I fear the very process of writing and the feelings that come along with that action that I love, need, and carefully avoid.

When I allow myself to enter that "writing attitude," I automatically disengage myself from my "reality." Like most who consider themselves "writers" or even "artists," I feel disconnected from all of the "normal" people. When I am in story-mode, my senses are heightened. People are not parts of relationships but rather pieces of dialogue, character, or situation. Or worse, they are a stumbling-block to be quickly dealt with and passed over so I can get to the "real" stories that actually only exist inside my own head. Something is being developed and born through the thought and act of writing. Something is coming into my personal cognitive and emotional world that was not there before because I am figuring something out that, momentarily anyway, it seems no one else will ever realize or care about.

I have successfully excused and repressed those awkward stages before; but, when that sudden awareness comes upon me about what I am doing, a similar yet opposite terror remains. I murdered an idea. I could have let that story or essay out, that thought that was itching to get onto paper and into order, even if no one else ever saw it. I strangled a small part of my memory and what might have been a deeper understanding of the world or myself.

I often rediscover the truth of this give and take in autumn. Fall is a drowsy and dreamy season as the world sinks into hibernation. We are alert enough to take note of a sunny but frost-bitten morning. We unknowingly take in the leaves that drip with a cold moisture or burst with dry crunch in a way we have not seen since the last time the summer died. But also in autumn, we slow down while our more internal memories are stimulated.

For me, developing story is not so different from remembering. It is something that takes place within myself--people and events that I replay in my head and rework on the page until they make some sense of my own life or this world I inhabit. Perhaps writing sometimes does make me, as well as others, feel like a sort of ghost in our own world. But when that ghost can observe and think in order to understand and once again interact in a new and changed way, perhaps that fear of leaving momentarily is more than worth overcoming.

A Blessing

A couple of evenings ago my husband and I set out after my first long weekend of an audited class for a late birthday dinner, compliments of his father.  We set out upon the winding Kentucky road a little after 7:00.  Since our usual dinner plans start no later than 5pm, I had no idea that the trip would be such remarkable timing for an increasingly early autumn sunset.

I first noticed the clouds that had piled on the horizon in front of us leaving the open sky a clear blue after a wet morning.  These dark mounds were laced in pale pink against the azure and emerald of the coming evening.  When I couldn't find the sun, I remembered that our noses were pointed east and twisted around to find an even more stunning sight. 

Forgive me for touching upon the indescribable. 

The streaks of clouds in the west were tinged with one of the most brilliant fuchsias I have ever had the opportunity to behold.  The glowing sun lit the clouds so radiantly that the rest of the sky also blushed pink and orange.  Not only were these colors painted across the sky a rare sight to behold, but they hung softly over rolling fields squared over with wooden fences containing the majestic beauty of the ever-present equine herds.  I am accustomed to sunsets over fields of corn and forests of pines, but there was something so elevated in these elegant animals grazing in the last glow of the daylight.

This new sight brought to mind a favorite poem of mine as I again faced forward in my seat to gaze at the darkening fields lit by the glow now sinking behind us.  Truly, the picture in the poem has little in common with the scene I have described other than the horses and the evening.  However, the beautiful and inexplicable last few lines came somewhere from the recesses of my mind as I achingly longed for I-know-not-what.

Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

James Wright, A Blessing

Unemployed and Academically Homeless

Yes, I have spent the last month getting married, leaving my hometown, moving to another state into a tiny apartment to live with a boy and that being a boy who has existed in an entirely different world than mine for over a year.  I packed my books and my bags and some more books and literally wept in dismay at the sight of what was to be my home after two men had trashed it for three full months.  But all such trivialities are part of life; they have been dealt with, are being dealt with, maybe even will be dealt with someday when I really get my act together.

Here are the two things that really scare me:

1)      For the first time since 10^th grade, I have officially spent at least 3 weeks as an unemployed individual.

2)      For the first time in my conscious life, September has come and I am not buying books (well, textbooks anyway) or organizing syllabi.

I spent today doing dishes, cursing some floor lamps (some assembly required), shopping for light bulbs (and you thought one buys bulbs when one buys the lamps), doing dishes, reading, wandering aimlessly to the local University library, wandering more aimlessly around the local University campus and wishing

I was in a classroom, crossing the street to the other library and wishing more of the same, making a (darn good) pot of chili, and doing more dishes. 

However, in spite of my longing for discussion and academic stimulation, I am oddly enjoying the role of “homemaker” after strong reactions against such “feminine” stereotypes.  I like making a (to me) unlivable space into a cozy home.  I enjoy throwing vegetables into a pot and seeing what comes out.  Having time to bake one’s own bread is, in fact, a luxury.  Reading without the goal of crafting a 30-page paper is nice.  Granted, I feel a little slower, a little dimmer, maybe just kind of sleepy, but staying home has its perks (time for French pressed coffee at least once a day being a favorite "perk" of my own…HA).

---

Of course, then ensues the following conversation:

Me: (sigh) I fail at writing a blog entry.

Ben: Well, dear, I guess you are just better bred for having babies.

I cannot wait for grad school.

Dear Reader, whoever You may be:

If you are a more observant person than I, you may have noticed a rather significant lapse of time between this blog post and the last; and the last was, quite frankly, a cop-out.  Although I have a number of at least somewhat valid excuses for such neglect on my part (two jobs, planning a wedding, moving, maintaining a fiancé, etc, etc, etc), I know deep in my heart that these things are, well, bull.  After all, have I not found time to read the entire Harry Potter series in less than two month’s time since I missed it in childhood?

So, sir or madam reader, allow me to be perfectly frank with you.  Spare me a moment to be open in a way that only the disconnected cyber-reality of the blogosphere can offer as I easily avoid your face-to-face interference reaction.

The answer to my absence is mainly this: fear.  (Okay, okay…if we’re really being honest, my essential laziness may also play a role).

I recently recounted the same excuse and source of fear to two very dear friends of mine.  I discovered that my mother reads my blog.  Faithfully.

Nothing against you, Mom, I promise.

But remember that face-to-face interaction that the internet so conveniently avoids?  Somehow this seems to be lost when someone on the other end of the couch reads your heart 15 minutes after you post it.  I have nearly trained my fiancé to never, ever, under any circumstances ask me about the personal writing I allow him to read.  My explanation?  Everything you need is already there.  I pour more of myself into the keyboard at my fingertips than to any other source.  If you need more information, I have failed. 

If you are fortunate (or foolish) enough to glimpse the words I place on a page you are probably a) a professor or classmate, b) a complete stranger, or c) going to get your head bitten off by yours truly if you ever mention the specific of a piece again.  Perhaps I exaggerate (although, as Benjamin could attest to, perhaps not).  But the main point being, as much as I desire to publish, to write, to be known, at times I find it is only in the most indirect and disestablished manner.

Of course, there are other fears involved as well.  Professors who will discover the more trite side of my writing (not to mention imperfect and unchecked grammer).  Anyone who might ever take personal offense to anything I say (people-pleasers unite…as long as it’s okay with everyone else).  People judging me harshly for my out-of-control use of parenthetical remarks. 

However, one of those same friends, though understanding, challenged my tendency to dig in my heels at the first sign of confrontation, as she so often does.  She reminded me that leaving my mother’s house will not leave the fear of being known.  She brought to my attention that my esteemed professors are no longer grading my words.  She re-emphasized that to become a good writer, I must let people see my crappy work.  She challenged/ordered me to post by the end of the weekend.

So here’s to you, Kate.  Although, thanks to you, Mom, I still couldn’t bring myself to publish without at least one perfunctory proofread.  ;-)

Hunting Groceries...A creative piece

Ok, this is a long one.

This is a piece that I wrote a few months ago as part of a creative writing class.  It’s not very good but I'm rather fond of it.  Though written in the first person, this is actually me trying to enter the thought process of a very dear friend of mine as I struggled to watch her deal with her own trials where I was utterly helpless.

Hunting Groceries

I step onto the black striated pad and the doors swing open at my unspoken bidding.  I briefly consider the use of the manual doors to my left.  What kind of genuine American would ever open a door himself when two steps away a system of lasers and pulleys are perfectly willing and capable? 

This is the fifth grocery store in two days.  I hardly dare hope as florescent lights race through the metal latticework of pipes and beams painted white, over the endless shelves and out of sight before crashing into the plaster wall at the limits of the warehouse-like store.  I am exhausted, my body fatigued from its constant beleaguering. It sent me on a rushed trip to the bathroom midsentence just this afternoon because how dare I try to leave the apartment and socialize after being confined to bed for days.  When the white-painted walls started to undulate and close in, staying was no better or worse than puking in a public toilet. 

I search the shelves for fifteen minutes before making my half-hearted selection.  As I traverse the shining white tiles back to the front of the store, I feel a burning in my throat and a lightness behind my eyes.  I am not in a hurry so I stroll past three identical crates of produce except for the color of the mounds rising from their surface; ruby tomatoes contrast with green peppers and bright oranges.  A tallish man in a grey sweatshirt browses the deli as an advertisement blasts over the quiet hum of coke machines and air vents.  A man garbles and gasps over the loud speakers until he confidently spits out some numbers: “only 9.99 (mumble, mumble) 12.99” he concludes in a cheerful voice, seeming pleased with the obvious success of his effort.  The man in the sweatshirt is nervous.  He picks various things from the shelves lining the front of the deli and sets them back down; kicking the floor with his sneaker as the man behind the counter quietly slices his selections.

“Will that be all for you?”  The man shuffles past neatly stacked rows of colorful chip bags topped with a marching row of red salsa in green metal caps.  I step forward and ask for a cup, indicating the soda-fountain to my left.  “Just water.” 

I sink down at one of the tables to re-read my box.  Bread mix.  A blue box with yellow lettering screams, “Gluten-free!  Wheat-free!”  I can see it already…shaping the jell-o-y mass of dough to bread-like shape.  The lump won’t change in the oven any more than to restructure the invisible molecules and turn an unappetizing brown.  Six dollars for a box of eatable play-dough.  I sip my water slowly, dreading the drive back to my lonely apartment through the freezing rain.

A man in a blue cap and red polo works a few feet away.  A name tag dangles from his jacket as he scrapes open cardboard boxes and replenishes the stacks of bananas on shelves of grey felt.  He carefully separates the yellow bananas from the green and places the bunches shoulder to shoulder like an oblong army.  He wanders away out of sight and returns seconds later.  He removes his glasses to wipe them, holding them up to his face three times before settling the thick rims back onto his nose.  He is methodical but unconcerned as a worn and simple wedding band glints in the light and colors of the produce section.  I look away momentarily as a man not much older than myself strolls through the oranges, trailed by three boys, two in matching sweatshirts.  The boys chase each other, yelling; their voices breaking the otherwise steady ripples of a relatively calm evening in the store.  When I return to the banana-man, I find he has quietly disappeared without any of my further scrutiny.

As I ready myself to stand, a middle-aged manager approaches the soda fountain juggling his pre-packaged dinner on one arm as he holds a cell phone to his shoulder.  He croons into the phone; “It’s going to be what’s best for everybody.”

Another employee approaches the banana stand.  At first I think maybe she is inspecting the other man’s work, until I realize that she is picking over and messing his carefully arranged piles.  She pulls apart two bunches to shove five bananas total into a rustling green bag.  I smile (just a little) as a crazy thought half forms in my head.  I know just how those bananas feel, being inspected, prodded, pulled apart, only to be peeled, smashed, maybe rot.  By selecting perfection she has only delayed the inevitable.

Finally I get up.  Kelly Sweet croons softly over the PA system, “Gonna go find me a rainbow / Hang it up in the sky…”  I snort as the rest of the lyrics rush unbidden to my consciousness.  I kick the chair back to the table, tennis shoes squeaking on the shiny floor tiles.  I push hastily through the automatic doors, shoving them open before the sensor registers my movement.  Behind me sits a blue box of six-dollar, gluten-free, wheat-free bread mix on a sticky table next to a Styrofoam cup of tepid water, lost under banners of happy people sinking their teeth into bright colors of spuriousness.

Stick a Fork in Me...

I love food.

But there is something that goes beyond sopping up that last bit of marinara with a fresh crust of French bread. Deeper than smackingly tasting each finger after pulling apart a succulent chicken-wing (partly to drive Mom crazy but mostly not to miss any of that greasy, spicy goodness).  Nearer and dearer to my heart, even, than slicing into that perfectly medium, melt-in-your-mouth steak after month upon month of living vegetarian-style in the school cafeteria. 

Two words: Baked goods.

The first week home from school I decided to experiment as my parents didn’t think it prudent to invite me to accompany them to California upon graduation (no, I’m not bitter).  When my foray into Asian cuisine totally flopped (who knew rice and curry could burn like that?!), I immediately turned to brownies.  What could be easier for dinner than dropping a couple of eggs and some oil into a soft pile of chocolatey powder?  Forty-five minutes and half a pint of vanilla ice cream later and the rice glued to the bottom of the pot soaking in the bottom of the sink couldn’t have been further from my mind.

Homemade English muffins were fun and pretty tasty, but I can see why Thomas still has a job.

And of course, number one reason to make a rare trip to the store and confiscate someone’s apartment: cupcakes.  It’s just one of those things.  See them in ad or here someone mention a party and I’m craving fluffy white cake and gobs of vanilla frosting for days.  I’m drooling just writing this, despite the canoli still resting comfortably in my gut.  Here’s the catch: I don’t even like cake.  Birthday cake?  Forget about it.  Give me a peach pie or a mound of ice cream.  Wedding cake?  I fought it for a while.  But wrap it in some colorful paper to keep it moist and make 30% of the dessert whipped frosting…I am so there. 

So what’s the point?  Well, there is none.  Except that you are now forewarned of my rapturous relationship with my taste buds.  Stay tuned for my existential struggle with what will hopefully be a new hobby (i.e. cooking) following my recent frightening screening of the extraordinary documentary, Food Inc.

Put Another Dime in the Jukebox, Baby

I’ve recently discovered something interesting about my music tastes – they change.

Well, duh.

But I’m not talking about just changing with age, maturity, popularity, rebellious natures, etc.  This manna for my ears seems to fluctuate according to location.  I first began to notice this phenomenon as I made solitary trips home from school.  At first, I blamed it on cornhole-Ohio’s terrible lack of decent radio stations.  I mean, really, with only four good country songs in the world, those poor dozens of DJs must be bored senseless.  And clearly this senselessness must be where the rest of the country music comes from.

But I digress (in a ranting diatribe kind of way).  As the flatlands of Southern Ohio stretched into the slightly less flat curves of western Pennsylvania, I would always find my attention straying away from my half dozen CDs that rotate on a (maybe) monthly cycle through the disc player.  Somewhere around Erie I would always begin to long for something different from the Indie tunes I had come to appreciate.

At first the stations would center on catchy and upbeat pop, right around that same time that I would desperately begin to seek the nearest exit for a cold one (coffee, that is).  But seeing as these stations could only boast about a dozen more songs than the country DJs I had left behind, that would quickly become old news.

By the time the odd smells of the greater Buffalo area would come rolling through my open windows or the unsealed corner of the windshield (no worries, the paper towel stuffed in the crack is generally quite effective), I was always searching for the familiar sounds of Brother Wease or the songs my parents grew up on.

I’m not sure what it is about home that makes Pat Benatar and Aerosmith more appealing than Mumford and Sons or Adele.  Maybe I’m regressing into the music that I forced myself to enjoy, partly to rebel and partly to impress my older brother with my new tastes.  Maybe it’s me taking a full mental break from everything school.  Perhaps it’s the cultural difference between “Midwest” and “Northeast.”  (It really exists.)  Or maybe it’s just the same inexplicable separation from my “other” self that I always feel when I cross that seven-hour time warp between my home of adulthood and independence to that of my childhood and insecurities.

A Clichéd Analogy

I am relatively new to this whole blogging thing.  But due to the encouragement of some well-meaning (but perhaps ambitious) people and a promise to myself that I should, would, must continue to write upon graduation, here I am.  Based purely on instinct, I feel that the first thing to be done is to explain a well-intentioned but of course cheesy blog title.

Let’s just be honest here: choosing a title for a blog could be the number one reason that I did not start writing one three months ago.  Well, that and about 250 pages worth of papers to write that would actually matter for something.  But here we are sticking with a name that popped into my befuddled head just this afternoon-- Experiments in Breathing.

I know, weird, right?  But let’s take a peek at my thought process.  (Lucky you!)

As I sit and actually get a chance to think about this new phase (meaning post-graduation), it seems as though my life will continue to change at a pace so rapid, I’ll barely have time to breathe.  At least, that is how any big life change makes me feel.  If I may be so cliché, it is a little bit like a roller-coaster, or rather, waiting in line for a roller-coaster at this point.  It’s exciting, and terrifying.  You’re among friends, and of course you are all pretending confidence like it is your job (even though none of you actually have a job yet).  You sort of know what is coming because you read the description and hear other people screaming.  You laugh and joke about that last corn dog you probably shouldn’t have eaten (as if eating a corndog could ever be a good idea).  And if you think too hard, you might find that you have to recalibrate your breathing.

That fear, that excitement, that falsely bold anticipation is wonderfully choking.  That heart-in-your-throat feeling, the I-might-wet-myself anxiety (TMI?) pressing on your chest and lungs with the weight of a small elephant. Well, you get the picture.  Sometimes, it’s difficult to breathe. 

And this is where the name comes from.  I am charging at full speed around a blind corner with my life-source trapped in those spongy bags encased in my ribs.  There is a new diploma featuring the seemingly unattainable bachelor’s degree under the clutter on my dresser.  A wedding gown drapes the mirror, frustrating the glass’s attempts to reflect the unfinished childhood memories piled on my floor awaiting a trip to Goodwill.  My wonderful fiancé is spending this weekend moving furniture into a tiny apartment four states southwest.  I browse web sites with recipes and pillowcases to procrastinate the necessary research on grad programs. 

So here it comes.  Here I sit in the home of my “childhood” working myself up to strap myself in and learn how to breathe over and over again.