quilts

am just trying to get prepped for the semester -- the front burner flame is on high -- but I'm excited about the flames (a switch from last semester).

Have been really enjoying hearing from old friends. Marcaus' voice returned to his blog, and I happened to stumble across a number of old pictures and emails when i cleaned my old computer up -- its good to have old friends who remain true and connected. I have a deep sense of that.

My mentor from my MA at Andrews, Bev, sent me a handwritten letter. She often does. It's SO good to get a real live LETTER. And so good to feel that someone from the past who invested in you still cares. She'd never know how deeply appreciative I continue to be of her voice in my life from the lack of my correspondence, but I am (deeply appreciative).

We spent new years eve with Greg, Andrea & tribe. It was warm, honest, caring, delicious, rich, heady time. Its amazing when you are friends with people from a long time and you start to recognize how much you've changed individually, but how the arcs and rhythms and patterns of your lives continue to be so intersected...

Have I mentioned that I'm obsessed by quilts these days. Not making them or even looking at them, just wrapping them around me and doing whatever -- reading, movies, writing, talking....

My wife's family has made billions of amazing quilts and they're draped all over this house, but they seem to me to be the perfect object -- an INCARNATION of all that I'm feeling about me and the world right now.

I'm feeling bolstered, secured, warmed, kept and loved by these meaningful connections with people who have loved me for a long time and in really unique ways...The patterns that are emerging in these long-time friendships are unexpected -- they stitch together different parts to the fabric of my life that I couldn't have expected to work together in the ways that they do...

But I feel warmed, filled, re-membered.

peace~.

the semester looms

1. jaelyn's tooth is still just wobbly. i forgot how long it took for a loose tooth to fall out.

2. my office looks like a war zone.

3. the logo (above) will be offline for a day or two...feels kind of like writing in a strange place....

t.v.

honoring a long-standing obsession (which i've grown very weary of) i watched the premiere last night of the Real World San Diego.

the obvious critique to offer is: could this "real" world *be* more about sex?

but i'm bored by that critique (much like i was bored with the sex storylines in the show last night), it seems to me that most of the time when people are freaking out about the amount of sex in the media -- they're kind of freaking out because they're so scared of it. like it (sex) has this amazing amount of importance and sway over them.

which it does.

for me too.

but the objection against showing it -- when its clearly so much a part of the human psyche? c'mon.

anyway. the thing which I DID find really interesting was this quote (which i'm only kind of getting right) by the character Frankie (STEREOTYPE: highschool geek, openminded piercer-tattoo-esque, porn-shop working, but i have a boyfriend back home + INTERESTING TWIST: has cystic fibrosis):

"I've always had this dream of moving to a new city and getting to reinvent myself completely."

The world went into slow motion for me. It seemed SO right on.

This is TOTALLY the mythos of most emerging Reality Programming, isn't it?

and its such a particular now kind of fantasy / dream / myth too, eh?

premised upon a globalizing culture and a leisure class whose identity is formulated primarily by consumption habits...

i know that this blog hovers dangerously close to my front burner, and don't you worry, i'll definitely be ranting about it in my Mass Media class this semester. If anyone sees any writing (articles, essays, blogs, books) about this emerging fantasy -- i'd be grateful...

more theory

i have a theory, but its just as much a question as it is a belief (at least at this stage).

why do people care? about anything? why do they lend their lives to certain jobs or institutions or places or groups?

that's the question my theory answers.

here's the theory:

everyone has -- at their core some kind of deeply embedded conflict. This conflict may have caused them a great deal of pain in their youth, or it may have just been a fear that's been simmering forever unsaid.

so everyone does -- something that addresses that pain or that fear. What people do with their lives offers themselves the best reassurance that they are solving the problem, addressing the problem or facing the problem.

and i mean *everyone* (remember its a theory and a question). so i don't believe that there are people who do things because its the easy way out or because its what was expected of them or because its the only model they ever saw.

I think all those factors focus and direct the kinds of choices we make, but ultimately, i'm suggesting that everyone's life should be read as: motivated action.

(i'm not saying that people have as many choices as they want to have or that they have concious control over most of their choices.)

so what?

hmm. i don't know? its a therapeutic model for me. i gradually recognize more and more how everything i choose in life is organized across the same fault lines.

~peace.

....shhh.....

my office is completely quiet right now. (which never happens.)

i realize that i haven't had many minutes of completely quiet during this entire break.

two days in pajamas after new years with the fam -- were very sabbath-y, but not quiet.

Jaelyn got new braids today -- her stylist is named Whisper. It was a tragic, tender-headed experience in the downtown mall, J.C.Penney salon. The only moments of joy were when I invented a story in which Addison and I had ridden a runaway escalator up, up, up through the roof of the mall, past the clouds only to be rescued at the last possible minute by a recurring character in my stories -- Mortimer the seagull. Mort also perches on the dock in front of the family cottage in while we eat dinner in the summertime, looking out over Mackinac Bay.

Outside I think that the (newly) freezing temperature has frozen the entire world in a grey cloudy, leave-less, snow-less funk.

On a whim on Saturday morning I made pomengranate sauce (remember my dream from over a month ago). It turned out beautifully. I'm a happy man.

My grandma Marge sent me a draft of her story -- Through the Register -- I'm living in the pools of my grandparents stories thinking about what they mean to me / about me.

Jodi breezed through town last night and we loved looking @ pictures of her trip to Egypt.

Watched SPIDER this weekend. VERY provocative film. I liked it a lot, but don't count that as a recommendation until we have a conversation about it...

~peace.