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I’ve been thinking a lot about judgment lately. Judging. Don’t judge me. Judge not that ye be not judged. No judgment.
We all do it. We all do it fairly often, if we’re being honest here. We judge a person’s lifestyle, clothing, weight, behaviors, wealth or lack thereof, religion, sexual identity, sexual preference, comforts, entertainment, past, family, regional identity, ambitions, intelligence, etc. etc. etc. And it’s interesting because no one wants to be judged. To tell someone that they have no right to judge you is a pretty strong statement. It elevates the heat of everyone’s language. Depending on who you speak those words to, the person often has no response… it’s sends people reeling and searching for something to say. And perhaps we have nothing to say because we’ve been called out… caught judging. And judging seems to be a universally frowned-upon activity. When it’s called that.
As a kid I used to listen to this (cassette tape!) Christian comedian. She was addressing the “judge not” passage and she says that the Bible says don’t judge, but we are allowed to be “fruit pickers.” I think the context was about choosing what company you keep and she said “by your fruits you shall know them” so you can pick those with the best fruit. But in picking we are automatically judging… judging one fruit as inferior and another as superior.
I, personally, don’t want to be a judgmental person. But I can’t figure out how to get there. Perhaps learning not to judge others lies somewhere in the realm of compassion.
But that is tricky too. I think there is a kind of judgment that is guised in compassion, the difference being that true compassion is agenda-less. It doesn’t approach its subject with a mission of conversion, or a mission at all! It’s just there. And if it doesn’t have an agenda then it doesn’t have expectations, which means that true compassion will not be offended when its subject doesn’t respond in the way that it desires.
I don’t know if that is even possible. I have struggled long and hard with the concept of expectations. A question I have still not resolved is: where is the difference between expectation and hope? In our dealings with family specifically the idea of expectations is usually so loaded it seems impossible to know what is healthy and acceptable and what is damaging and love-less. Inevitably someone will bring up the argument about allowing people to remain in their addictions or destructive behaviors versus expecting more of them. I don’t have a good answer for you folks (except, maybe, that expecting more of someone is still not necessarily helpful and is there not a way to interact that is both fixed and stable and healthy but is not contingent on the behavior of the the other?). But for me I just want to know about more practical things… how do I operate in a relationship without expectations that (he) will call or surprise me with a small gift or be there when I need it? Maybe the key is to understand that your expectations are just that… and communicate those expectations. Certainly the quickest road to bitterness would be harboring unvoiced expectations only to be disappointed over and over and over when your non-psychic partner fails to meet them.
I feel like I am both 1) way off topic and 2) not saying anything new, but I wanted to grapple with this some. Will likely come back to it later.
Ok, so, having a blog is really weird. To be honest. I have compulsive feelings to overshare but then I “think about my readers” and readjust what I wanted to write. Right now I sit here with my fingers all frozen up because my brain is 100 miles away and overanalyzing everything I start. (Overanalyzing. It’s what I do best.)
And the funny thing… there aren’t THAT many of you…
More when I can unfreeze!
One of the tensions in the world of art is the involvement of audience… in fact, the questions exists somewhere (*nudge nudge wink wink to JC*) of whether or not art is even art without an audience.
I’ve been writing for some time now in many ways and forms, most of it never exposed to an audience. This won’t constitute anything like a Random House paperback, but I did want to share some of my creative stuff on this site.
Without further ado then are three poems. One of them I actually consider “finished” – the others I am not so sure about. I won’t tell you which one. Comments are MORE THAN welcome and appreciated… comments of any nature provided they are, ultimately, constructive.
Dec. 23rd
Up this path
is the old stone fireplace -
crumbling – its guts spilling
out in broken pieces
on a bed of skeletal straw
and yellow-gold weeds
that crunch were I walk.
Inside the hearth,
where its ancestors crumpled
into flecks of flaming dust,
a small tree is breaking
up into the thick matter -
sprawling green in
a pile of dark ash -
unaware of the meaning of the
blood that floats black
in the sky.
surprise
disconcerting, really,
to lay my head flat
against the earth’s curve -
eyes closed -
and
upon opening
find myself unflung -
moored, still, to
the bare core
despite the absence
of ropes and tethers
Feasting
I’d like to hold—
at the back of my mouth—
the clammy weight
of cold stone,
the aftertaste of copper
resin, settling;
the thick, crumbly fullness
of moss breaking apart
at my saliva,
to eat the forest in this way—
by handfuls
and sip the thirty shades of blue
with a straw
from the dawn sky.
-01.06
I left Madeleine with a friend while I was away in Orlando and ohhhh my has this been fun.
When I picked her up I harnessed her into the backseat (oh, I am trying to teach her how to ride in the car so I can take her home for Christmas). Normally she HATES the car and cries and cries and cries. It took her about two minutes to climb up into my lap in the front seat and start purring… a different purr from normal… sort of a hyperventilating purr along the lines of “purrr” “purrr” “purrr” “purrr” “purrr.”
I unloaded the car when we got home and as soon as everything was out I sat down with her on the couch… she IMMEDIATELY started looking for her special spot.
Have I told you guys about the spot? I don’t think I have. My kitten uses my shoulder as a pacifier. Literally. She nuzzles around on my shoulders until she finds out a suitable piece of cotton and then she sucks on my shirt for 10 minutes or so. It’s quite adorable but I do think we’ll have to start growing out of this before too long? The vet says this is not abnormal in cats who are taken from their moms too soon, its called woolsucking, and my kitty woolsucks with the best of them.
So anyway! Madeleine is pacifying herself for about ten minutes after I sat down with her and then she CRASHED. I have never seen her sleep this hard or this much. She has slept hard the past twenty-four hours. Tonight she was playing with one of her favorite toys and running allllll around the house…she chased the toy up onto the couch and I turned around and there she was fallen right asleep! When she is not sleeping she has been following me around and purring away. It’s lovely.
Long overdue for the post I promised long ago…
The best definition I have ever heard of the different between introvert and extrovert… the definition I will swear by and offer up at any available opportunity… that definition is this:
An introvert will gain energy from being alone and lose energy when around other people. An extrovert will gain energy when around other people and lose energy when alone.
While we all fall somewhere along the spectrum – some of us along the middle, dipping into both characteristics and some of us deeply into the extreme ends recognized immediately as one or the other – but I think the definition works for everyone. And I, obviously, am an introvert.
The problem for me has been learning how to manage my own tendencies, and in that managing to include the expectations of others. For example, when I work a wedding I am not only spending eight hours with lots of strangers… but I am spending eight hours with lots of strangers on “the most important day of their lives.” About the time the ceremony is over I have to enter some kind of dualist zen-state where I am not quite myself any longer and actively putting from my mind, minute by minute, where I am and how long I have been there. But not only do I have to mange my own state of mind in that whole “I cannot yet collapse I cannot yet run away I cannot yet relax” but I also have to pretend that I am NOT doing just that. I have to be happy and excited and “at the ready” to jump in and take another photo, laugh with the bride and groom, and give compliments to the mother of the bride. It’s exhausting! So I spend that last three hours making a conscious and concentrated effort to be excited and pretend that I am still just as happy to be there. And it’s not easy, but I try… I guess sometimes I succeed more than others.
Holidays! Holidays are another example. I need my down time in order to function as a civil human being. But I can’t have it. So again, if I work hard enough I can create the dual mental-state of coping. I should patent that, and I might think about it if I had any assurance that I am actual successful at it. It’s one of those things where you can never be sure how well you are pulling something off because you’re biased from the beginning about how to interpret your own behavior.
One of the complications of being an introvert is that it seems to have an unnatural hold on my life. But I wonder if it only seems unnatural… and if the rest of the world is as actively conscious of their state as I am. Or maybe it is only as dramatic for those of us on an extreme end? In many ways I have to really pay attention to this aspect of my personality… Of course this showed up fairly obviously when I moved and didn’t know anyone. The only way to make a life in Raleigh was to constantly put myself out there in active social situations. Two years later I have a very small handful of good friends: Jessica, Lyndsay, and Holly in particular. These are my people! And really, they have been enough. I have not wanted much more. Unfortunately one of those wonderful ladies is moving far far away very soon. We are not thinking about that though, right Holly?
I am not sure what point I really had in mind when I started all of this… maybe I am just wanting to find out how weird I actually am and if any of the rest of the world actually thinks about these things or feels like their life is, in part, impacted by their spot on the spectrum.
Anyone?
I am out of wine so I’m sure this post will be less than spectacular. Great writers are always drunk right? Maybe I just heard that somewhere…
There is so much to be done before I leave for Orlando. Tonight I am cleaning and catching up on important emails I owe people, a well as gathering all the paperwork for filing my claim tomorrow (AAAAAAA!!!). Tomorrow I have to pack me, pack Madeleine, finish cleaning, do my homework that is due on Wednesday, and I think a lot more things but for some reason I can’t be persuaded to get off the couch and go back to scrubbing the toilet. Oh! Make cupcakes! I have to bring cupcakes for Thanksgiving. Pumpkin cupcakes. Yummmm.
I thought I really did have something to say, but apparently I don’t. Maybe I should go back to toilets.
All for now. I’ll update later.
Really quickly I just felt the need to go ahead and get Haven Kimmel out on the table. I read hundreds of books a year people and if I had to pick 5 authors that the world cannot endure without, here they would be:
1) Madeleine L’Engle: known for her young adult science fiction, but changed my life through her adult non-fiction. L’Engle was the pick that broke the first chip off the iceberg of a fundamentalist upbringing. Her book Walking on Water began my journey out of that type of faith and into something (so far nameless) that is not afraid to question and reason. L’Engle passed away the week before I got my kitten, and so I named her Madeleine.
2) Haven Kimmel: known for her funny memoirs (A Girl Named Zippy) but will be known in literature years from now, and well into the cannon, for her novels. Truly the most human, most compassionate, most fundamentally beautiful works I’ve read maybe ever. The Used World, her new book out this fall, I have read twice and am still not recovered from. Her novels represent all that I wish I were as a human in this world.
3) Annie Dillard: Pulitizer prize winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Too many young adults were forced into hating her due to poor planning by Jr. High English teachers. If you were one of those… please… I beg you… read the book. The entire book. It’s stunning.
4) Rosmarie Waldrop: If I could explain Rosmarie Waldrop in three sentences I would not be writing my thesis on her! Waldrop is the reason for the blog title and I will most assuredly post quotes from her very soon.
5) To Be Determined…
A few Haven Kimmel quotes before I go to bed. Just to make you salivate:
Had there been a moment of suspension in her life when all that was actual, tangible, had fallen away and she had seen something in the remaining darkness? And what would one see in that instant anyway? What had it felt like to believe in Santa Claus or an imaginary friend? Claudia tapped her foot on the floor of Amos’s office, tried to remember not Christmas morning itself, but the feeling of belief. It had been… it had felt as if a wide array of needs were about to be met all at once, this desire, that emptiness, all swept away by wrapped packages and plates of cookies. And when the belief was gone, what was left—what seemed to be left for most adults —was the unending labor of re-creating the myth.
- Haven Kimmel, The Used World
Loneliness is nothing compared to compassion.
- Haven Kimmel on The State of Things
I tend to object when people refer to blogs as online “journals” or diaries, but I guess I am about to prove them all right and get all self-relevatory on your ass…
Tonight is not turning out to be a good night.
A good friend recently asked me… “is there any part of your life that is actually going well???” With rare exceptions the answer is “well, not really.” Let me begin with the exceptions:
1) I have a very small handful of true friends. You know who you are and you are each a part of what gives me hope on nights like tonight… and always for that matter.
2) I really love this cat! Madeleine and I have actually had a bad night… she bit me… I had to trim her nails… she’s pissed… etc. But most days I can’t get over how much I love having her. She’s even started to greet me LITERALLY at the door when I get home at nights.
3) I feel like I have a really good relationship with my brother and his family and with my sister.
Those are the exceptions. The difficulties of late are (to me) numerous. I’m not even going to give the usual spiel about how I know most of the world has it harder because I ALSO know that I am not most of the world.
Let’s see if I can add anything to Things Going Well list:
1) I like my class and professor this semester. Hating it would really be awful at this point. Yay for liking school!
2) Wine.
3) I have a fireplace.
4) It’s fall, which is my favorite season of all and there are 3 gorgeous trees that line my way into and out of the apartment complex every day.
5) I have been buying Christmas presents these two weeks and that makes me really happy. I love giving gifts.
6) Wine.
7) My brother and sister-in-law are pregnant and past the 12 week mark.
I have two new audio-books to “read” on the 9-hour drive to Orlando next week.
9) I got new purple sheets last week without spending a DIME!!!
10) Wine.
11) Books.
12) Audiobooks.
13) Cookies.
15) Wine.
I’m done. Forgive my blabbering. This post stands a very good chance of being “ripped from the headlines” harharhar, so read it while you can.
I didn’t want to leave things on too horrible a note, so here, for your viewing pleasure, are kitty pictures. Also I will try to think of a funny story to add.
Ohhhhhhhh she was sooo tiny! Sniffle.
A smart kitty. A reader already.
Home sweet home.
I didn’t write enough about how much the Catholic church has done to evade authorities, hush up victims, fail to remove priests from office, and generally turn a blind eye to the countless abuse cases that we even know about. The NPR program I listened to and the documentary Deliver Us from Evil each focused on a single priest… and each priest was responsible for roughly a dozen or so victims. In a report commissioned by the church itself 4,392 priests were found to have been accused of sexual abuse (John Jay Report). Consider with that number the number of victims to afraid to speak out, and then consider that the recidivism rate for sexual offenders of boys is 56%.
That number makes me sick to my stomach.
I know this is terribly depressing and that most people don’t want to think about these things, but… this may sound harsh… burying our heads in the sand and saying we don’t want to think about these things only helps to perpetuate the problem. Ignoring crimes and victims benefits no one. I know so many women who were abused by male relatives, and I think our culture as a whole has done a better (not great) job of addressing this type of abuse. Abuse by a religious authority is a violation on so many more levels. These victims need even more help and support and counseling. I think part of the squeamishness we feel is partly our own sense of helplessness. I know that just writing this makes me feel… cheap… on some level. What good is this really doing anyone? Perhaps it isn’t doing any good, but if we can at all raise the collective awareness of these crimes… maybe it’ll do something.
