Musings: 2016

This year’s collection (as there were only two months of blogging in 2011, I combined it with 2012) speaks of a young woman still involved with schoolwork and comic books. I don’t disparage either of those things, of course; in fact I miss both of them. That girl was moderately self-aware, though frequently a bit dramatic and prone to purple prose. I also could make mistakes about myself, too; at one point I believed myself “cured” of anti-social tendencies, to which I’ve proven the lie in past years. Many things, however, remained the same. I still can’t cook, for example. I still love to play with words. I still keep my journals (currently I’m on volume 17). I still have doubts about the value of my work and whether anyone will ever want to read it. There are questions I still have not answered. And I still look forward to the best in others and in the world.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Five Years of Musing

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything for this blog. For most of October I have no excuse, just the usual inattention/laziness/procrastination. During November, however, I was otherwise occupied with another National Novel Writing Month, which I am not a little bit proud to say I aced with flying colors. Usually with NaNo, I finish on the very last day, with maybe fifty words to spare above the 50,000 mandated by the challenge. This year, I completed not only the challenge, but also my personal goal, with almost a week left in the month.

As with most of my past NaNo’s, I was working on my joy, my frustration, and my obsession, the Youngest series. It’s a sci-fi post-apocalyptic series based on a sentient machine that takes the form of a human to examine the species that created it. Release, the first, was completed a year and a half after my college graduation, with Renewal following soon after. I started the third, whose title I struggled with for ages, last year for NaNo, and this year my goal was to finish it. I have done so, with over a hundred single-spaced pages, not to mention 60,000 words. The book is a monster, sixty pages longer than its two predecessors, and I am well aware that it needs a lot of editing. But I’m very happy to have it completed, and happier to have decided on a title that might finally work: Revelation.

I’ve been writing in this form for many more years than I’ve been participating in NaNo, of course. Since I was in middle school and discovered all the uses of a word processor, I’ve been hammering out novels. Some of them I cringe to remember, of course, but some I still have and occasionally will go back through when I need a chuckle.

More of a novelty to me is this form of writing, that of documenting my life and my thoughts for others’ perusal. I have now been blogging for five years, which is somewhat shocking. I do have a tendency to start projects and never finish them. It’s taken a lot of self-discipline and elbow-grease to get three novels into a series, and I have my own fascination with the world and the characters to thank for that (and, maybe, three or four NaNo challenges). Many others of my ideas have not been so lucky.

Blogging is different. I kept a diary for a hot second when I was a kid, but the diary quickly morphed into something less straightforward, a ‘rambling journal’ in which I collected ideas, poems, drawings, and other scraps of information. This was easier to keep up with, and it was more interesting to me than my own life. I thought, who would ever want to read about me? Sometimes I still feel that way. But I’ve grown a lot since I was that little college senior, just beginning to wonder if writing really could be a thing for the rest of my life. And with my blog now, I can look back at that growth, see the ways my life has changed and remember things that happened along the way. For that reason, I’m glad I have it, even if no one else ever reads or cares. Writing for me is a good enough excuse.

That’s why I’ve decided to spend this week looking back at some of my work. Each day this week I will take a look at what I’ve written, looking at events in my personal life, passing thoughts I have discussed, and responses to real world events. I will try to see how I’ve evolved (or maybe devolved) and study my own voice. There will also, of course, be links to some of my favorites from each year, the ‘greatest hits,’ as it were. And on Saturday, I will discuss how I intend to continue.

For those of you who are reading—and here I address myself, too, in some future nostalgia—thank you for coming this way with me. Thank you for taking an interest, and for caring. And thank you for musing with me along the wandering way.

Thursday, October 6, 2016

You're Reading WHAT??

Last week was Banned Books Week, an annual celebration of books that are often prohibited by schools for various reasons. Books might be banned for profanity, sexuality, inaccuracy, religious viewpoints, violence, and really any other reason that persons in authority might come up with. The idea is that these books are inappropriate for young readers.

This idea has always seemed ridiculous to me. First of all, how can we define “inappropriate”? The very word summons up the idea of propriety, which wears a connotation of a stiff, narrow-minded, and boring way to live one’s life. (I can’t hear that word without remembering Barbara Streisand’s character smugly reciting its definition on an escalator in the movie What’s Up, Doc, which I highly recommend and would probably be banned by the persons in authority I cite above.) The problem with propriety is that life is not proper or appropriate. Our world is ugly and dirty and insane and sexual and profane. Personally, I think it’s a good idea to prepare young people for that sooner rather than later. All that muck will find them eventually, and if they have at least some idea what it’s like, they’ll be able to cope with it better.

Second of all, having been a teenager, I can tell you that forbidding something is the best way to be sure that they seek it out. Tell a teenager that they can’t read something and they will immediately wonder why, and try to find out. My first trashy romance was a dreadfully written time-travel story with cardboard characters (with perfect physiques, of course), full of purple prose and yes, lots and lots of sex. I thought it was the greatest thing ever, partly because I learned a lot from it, but mostly because my mother would have disapproved of my reading it. (Of course, knowing my mother much better now than I did when I was fifteen, I know she would probably have been very amused to know I’d read that particular book and would have made a few recommendations for better options.)

Thirdly, the whole point of education (or at least, what the point of education should be) is to teach people to think for themselves. Ragini Bhuyan, writing about a contested censorship in India, said it very well when he said, “The central premise of [the censors’] argument is that a student exposed to alternate ways of thinking will necessarily adopt them, instead of doing what is actually expected of students, which is to evaluate the information you are presented with.” Parents worry that students who read about violence will become violent, students who read about profanity will begin to speak that profanity, and students who read about homosexuality will become homosexual (the ensuing question “what the hell is wrong with that?” is a post for another day). But more often, a student reading about horrible, ugly things in a book will learn from that that these things are horrible and ugly and should be avoided. A student reading about profanity and homosexuality will have more information about these things with which to make their own opinions about these issues.

The point, to me, is that if we weren’t teaching our students to absorb opinions into themselves and vomit them out again at a later point—if we taught them instead to think for themselves—we wouldn’t have to worry about them reading anything.

Monday, September 5, 2016

September Scare

Sometimes I read things that frighten me.

I’m not talking about fiction—I avoid horror fiction, just as I avoid horror movies. Why frighten myself over something that doesn’t even exist? No, what sends a shiver down my spine are things that happen in the real world, things that people say or do that reveal to me a cold truth to which I have tried to stay blind.

In this case, it was just a short quote, not two lines long, and innocent enough out of context.

“The work that I’ve done…has been just as fulfilling as if I had played center field at Yankee Stadium.”

When I read that, it took me a moment to realize why my gut twisted at the words. Then I saw who had said it. It’s a quote from one of our senators, Harry Reid of the Democratic party, who is from Nevada and has served since 1987. Get it yet? That’s almost thirty years of service to our nation, thirty years in a position of leadership. And yet he compares his work to a man who stands in the back of a baseball field.

I’m not trying to put down baseball. Well, I am, a little, but only because our nation has elevated sports to a terrifying height. How many people, if asked, could name their state senator? Yet I would wager that three times as many has a favorite baseball player, or basketball team, or football mascot. We have whole channels that devote twenty-four hour coverage to sports alone, businesses who make a booming living selling nothing but sports merchandise, and movies that are devoted to the movement of a ball across a field or a court. And that would all be very well, but when one of the people responsible for the wellbeing of the American people can compare his work to catching and throwing a ball, what does that say about culture and our government?

Now I know that there are so many factors of politics and government that I don’t understand and that every possible complaint about the government—valid or not—has already been said. Even so, this hit me hard. Why is there more honor in playing at Yankee Stadium than in helping to run our country? Is it a sign that we take sports too seriously, or that we take politics not seriously enough? Probably a bit of both, I’d guess. If this scared you, maybe look up who your senator is, and wonder how fulfilling they find their work, or if they would rather be somewhere else entirely, playing a different game.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Planes in the Night

I was thinking the other day about someone I met the last time I was on a plane. I was on my way home from a family wedding, but though I was flying with my brother and sister, they were across the aisle from me, so I was sitting between two strangers. On my right was a young woman who kept her hood up and her headphones on the whole flight, adhering to the usual policy of ignoring your seatmate on a plane. On my left, however, was a man who apparently didn’t believe in that policy. He was tall, not a big man, but someone who seemed to take up a lot of space nonetheless. Some people are like that. He was in his thirties, I’d guess, wearing baggy clothes and a stiff-brimmed cap, but contrary to the conclusion I’d drawn from his clothing, he carried a stack of books onto the plane with him. One of them was a journal, which immediately caught my attention. Like me, he spent most of the flight writing. We talked a little bit about it, and it wasn’t the usual banal small talk that makes me cringe. I never learned his name, but I will always remember him.

There have been others I’ve met on planes who have stuck with me. On my very first flight, as a seven-year-old flying to Houston alone to visit my aunt and uncle, I sat next to a businessman—late forties, suit and tie, receding hairline. He played tic-tac-toe and hangman with me in his leather-bound notepad. On the way home a college student had the window seat, an Asian-American girl with sleek hair cut like a bell around her face. She talked to me about college, what she was doing, and what I liked to do or might want to be when I grew up. When I flew to (or from) Europe the first time (or the second time) there was a German family behind me, flying with their young baby. By now, that baby will be at least six, maybe eleven years old. I still remember the faces I made through the seats at him, a secret from his parents to make him laugh. Does he remember, too?

It’s strange to me to think about these people now. I’d like to thank them for their compassion and my memories, to express my appreciation that they let down their barriers for a while. I’d like to tell them that I’m grateful they didn’t pretend that we are all strangers, that they were willing to dive into the common ground we all share as human beings. I’d like to, but I don’t know any of their names, nor where they are now or what their lives are like. We crossed each other’s paths for the barest moment, and the chances we’ll get back are infinitesimal.

But this world has a lot more miracles than we think. Maybe one or all of these people will find this blog someday and remember the tiny girl with big hair and big eyes, talking about stories and dreams. Maybe they stop to think about me occasionally too, and wonder what I’m doing with my one life. Because at one point we flew together, and that should be something worth remembering.

Monday, August 22, 2016

Be Vewwy Quiet

Job hunting is hard.

For those of you who don’t know (which is probably most of you), I just recently lost my job. I was working for a corporate restaurant, and the corporation decided to close my restaurant. We didn’t have very much warning, which is sad, but that’s life, I suppose.

It’s not a crisis. I have a bit of money put away, enough to keep me fed and housed for a month or two at least. I’d like not to have to dip too much into my savings, though, and so I am on the hunt. Let me tell you something: as hunters go, I’m kind of at the bottom of the pile.

First of all, I haven’t done this very much. I’ve only had a handful of jobs, and most of them I got through people I know. My dad, a soccer coach, got me into refereeing for little kids’ soccer when I was sixteen or so. A year later, I took my first summer job babysitting for a lady at my church. Throughout college I had the same work-study position, and my summer camp jobs I got through a friend of mine. When I graduated, I got the job I’ve had for the past four years by going around to different restaurants and asking for applications.

In my opinion, the internet doesn’t make the search any easier. You tend to get lost in the sea of candidates and opportunities. And a job description only tells you so much about the job; usually it says nothing about the people who work there, the customers or clientele you might have to deal with, or whether your boss will be an asshole.

(Side note: I’ve either been very lucky or very unlucky with bosses, not much in between. I’ve had creepy no-idea-what-personal-space-is bosses, funny talk-in-bad-accents-and-give-everyone-a-nickname bosses, and then there was the one who used to come and have serious conversations with me while wearing a banana costume.)

Then there’s the whole etiquette issue. What am I supposed to wear to a meet-and-greet that might be an interview and might not? If my handshake is weak, does that mean I won’t get hired? Everyone says a potential employer decides whether or not to hire you based on the first thirty seconds, which strikes me as very unfair, honestly. What if I trip and fall on the way into the room? Do I try to be polite and professional, or is it more important to seem friendly and genuine? What is the balance? It’s a social nightmare of reading half a dozen cues a minute, trying to figure out how to say what the interviewer wants to hear without lying. Good thing I have a BA in BS—all those papers in college taught me how to put the right spin on anything.

All in all, I feel that I make a good impression, but nothing is certain. It’s hard to find the right fit with the right atmosphere, hours, salary, and benefits. And while I maintain that money is not the most important thing, it is pretty important, and it starts to seem more so after a few weeks of paying bills out of a diminishing savings account. The only advice I have to people who might be in the same boat is: hang in there. Keep trying. Don’t take the first thing that comes up if you know you’re going to hate it—the stress and anxiety of a job you dread going to isn’t worth the money. But don’t hold out for something perfect, because let’s face it, your chances of finding perfection are never good. Try new things, because you never know what you might enjoy. And if you do spot a good opportunity, don’t wait! Positions don’t stay open forever.

One more thing that I wish someone had told me when I was a kid: you don’t have to find all of your happiness in your job. It’s important to be comfortable, but it's impossible for everyone who works to find soul food and spiritual fulfillment in their 9 to 5. So do what you love, even if it’s only in your hours off the clock. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past four years, and what I will probably doing for the next four. And that’s okay with me. When you really love something, you make time for it. You make it work.

Friday, August 5, 2016

The Right to Question Everything, Even Rights

I rather like to be challenged. Opposition brings strength to my character and my beliefs. I learn more about myself and about what I believe in when someone else questions either one, or else they express a belief that is different from my own. Often, I take for granted that what I know about the world is all there is to know, and so it’s enlightening and exciting to learn otherwise.

I’m being challenged a bit right now in reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. It’s a fascinating book that looks at the biological and evolutionary history of our species, trying to explain in purely scientific terms why we humans—and not any other kind of humans—have made it to the top of the food chain. I’m enjoying it immensely, but frequently the author will express opinions that run counter to my own viewpoint. One of the things that jars me is the fact that Harari writes from an atheist viewpoint. It makes sense for a scholar, but it makes me realize just how much my Christian background informs my worldview. I would bet that it informs your worldview, as well, even if you’re not a Christian.

Take, for example, the passage that I just read this morning, which explores the Christian influence on the Declaration of Independence. Harari takes a look at the first line, that famous “We hold these truths” quote. Many of us who went to school in the United States will know that one by heart. But Harari’s take on it is a bit different. Try “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure” (110).

Huh? What is that all about? Well, Harari points out that in the version we know, there are many phrases that have nothing to do with biological reality. He claims that without a Creator to demand equality, equality itself is a myth. And in biological terms, he’s right—survival of the fittest means that there are those who are more fit to live, and those who are less. That is how our race has come to this point. Equality and liberty, says Harari, are created realities to help our society function in the way that we want it to, much like religion, politics, and economics.

I can see where he’s coming from, but I have to admit, it’s a little depressing to think about. We already are having enough trouble holding to those “self-evident” truths. If the myth of equality fades away, the structure of our society could crumble away into chaos. But then, Harari talks about how powerful myths are, changing the form and scope of society across thousands of years. Myths—or in other words, ideas that we can believe in—are what have brought us together, made it possible for thousands or even millions of people to work towards the same goals. It’s going to take a little bit more than a single scientific mind to change the subjective reality of equality.

I would submit to you, and to Harari, that humans have evolved beyond the purely biological. We have created, if you will, a new reality of the mind. So many people have put so much energy into ideals and dreams over the centuries, and energy cannot be created or destroyed, can it? Even though things like love and faith and peace cannot be touched, does that really mean they aren’t real? I think—I know—that there are things in the world that science cannot explain.

There is something else that Harari said that intrigues me. In his dissection of the Declaration’s first line, he denies the existence of rights, saying that biology has no room for such things. “Birds fly not because they have a right to fly, but because they have wings” (109). Now, despite the fact that this line was used in a critique of ideas that have informed my life and education, reading it gave me something of a thrill, because I took it an entirely different way. It points out that no one gave permission for birds to fly; they were made for it—or else they became what they needed to be in order to do it. Within the analogy Harari has constructed, what does that mean for humans? It means we don’t have a right to equality or freedom—that’s what we were made for. That’s what we have become. And that, I think, is more true and real than anything Harari is criticizing. The evolution of our minds, the thoughts and ideas that we have created over the centuries, are not a prison of false realities. Rather, they are little by little setting us free, as we were meant to be.

All of my thoughts today are based on chapter six, "Building Pyramids". Don't be surprised if I bring more of my interpretations to this blog as I continue my reading. I would very much encourage you to read the book yourself and would love to hear what you have to think. Find it on Amazon here.

Friday, July 15, 2016

Keep the Receipt for that Pity

Today, I am going to my very first birthday party. For the purposes of this post, I define ‘birthday party’ as a premeditated gathering of friends for the sole purpose of celebrating my birthday. That this is my first may not seem strange to most of you, unless you figure out somehow that I am well into my twenties. I myself am aware that it might seem surprising. I’ve told a few friends that I never had a party for my birthday when I was a kid, and they were shocked. “Not even once?” they asked. “That sucks.”

Well, I am writing this post to reply to that righteous outrage. Gratefully, kindly, lovingly, I have only two words to say: Stop that.

Stop feeling sorry for me because I never had something you took for granted. When someone feels sorry for me, I tend to take on that emotion and start feeling sorry for myself. And I don’t like feeling sorry for myself, because I am not a sorry person and my life is not a sad one. Yes, maybe I did have four brothers and sisters and we couldn’t all have yearly birthday parties. Yes, maybe my birthday was in summer and it was hard to get all of my friends together for a celebration while they were out and about on vacation. (This was the pre-facebook era; invites would have needed to go out by phone or by mail.)

But I remember every birthday growing up having been a wonderful one. I always got great presents, and I can’t even remember whether they were expensive or not. My siblings were nice to me on my birthdays (or at least they tried to be), and I had great cakes. For a few years, when my dad was working at the local public library, he brought home specialty cakes made by a coworker, beautifully decorated on request. Then there was the year I made my own, a mound of crumbs with frosting dripped on top—I still laugh when I think of that one. And I did have a few birthday sleepovers, which were that much more fun because they were reserved for a few true friends. Even as a child, I never felt deprived because I didn’t have raucous, chaotic gatherings of kids I wasn’t related to and didn’t really know.

And now that I’m an adult, I’m realizing that I don’t much like parties anyway. My actual birthday passed earlier this week with no more notice except a few good wishes and a day of taking care of myself. The “party” tonight is really just a gathering of a handful of my very best friends. Do I appreciate their desire to celebrate me? With all of my heart. But I refuse to let the thought that this is the first time be anything but joy.

I have no complaints about my life thus far, and if I don’t choose to remember the things that might have been lacking, don’t point them out. Everyone has different ideas about what makes happiness, and if they can find it, great. Don’t feel sorry for me; be happy with me. It’s much better that way, trust me.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Lucky Number 26

I had a birthday this week, meaning a part of the way I define myself has changed. I am no longer 25, but 26, which one of my friends pointed out in mock horror is now my late twenties. Gasp! I don’t mind, however. For one thing, I don’t ever want to be afraid of aging. The way I see it, making it this far in a crazy world is something I can be proud of. For another, 26 is my lucky number, so I have high hopes for this coming year.

I’ve told a few people this, and they’re usually surprised. Apparently 26 is a strange number to consider lucky. This in turn surprised me, because I was unaware that there are standards that judge the luckiness of numbers. Isn’t it a decision based on personal observation? For example, my father’s lucky number is 5, because he was born in 1955. Mine is 26 because I was rookie number 26 in marching band years ago, and it’s stuck with me.

But I’m willing to play along. What makes a number lucky? I googled it, and most of the results involved number games—“add up the numbers in your birthdate to get your lucky number”. Well, I tried it, minus the zeroes: 7 + 1 + 1 + 9 + 9 is 27, and 2 + 7 is 9. Okay. As far as I can tell, though, 9 hasn’t ever done me any good. I tried a second generator which asked me to put in a set of numbers, from which the lucky number would be chosen based on my first name and my birth date. I gave the generator 2, 6, 8, 12, 13, 14, 16, 26, 48, and 52. Guess what it gave me? 26. Of course, it may be biased, because all of my choices were somehow derived from 26 to begin with. Still, isn’t it interesting that it picked the one that I was going for?

Then I polled Facebook to see what others had to say. Three different friends told me their choices were arbitrary, while several others had choices based on their birthdays. One friend chose 9 because she liked the shape of it; another picked 3 because it groups well. Everyone seems to make different associations with certain numbers and gravitate towards the positive associations.

Of course, there are certain associations that we share. The first number to spring to mind when we ask about lucky numbers is 7. Makes sense—7 days in a week, 7 seas, 7 continents, 007. As a fantasy writer, I can tell you that that genre loves 7: the 7^th son of a 7^th son is always imbued with magic, not to mention the 7 dwarves. What makes 7 so special? Coming from my own Judeo-Christian education, I remember once being told that traditionally, biblical scholar associated 7 with perfection, as 3 was heavenly (the holy Trinity) while 4 represented earth (4 corners, right?). Maybe that has something to do with it. (There’s an article about 7 here which offers a few more theories). Conversely, 6 is considered unlucky in the same tradition—almost perfect, but not quite. I remember when I was a kid being told that I couldn’t have 6 as my favorite number because it was the devil’s number—666. Maybe the inclusion of a 6 in my current favorite is a kind of perverseness. Finally, there’s that most famous of the unlucky numbers, 13, which has its own word to describe the fear of it—triskaidekaphobia. Try spelling that without spell check, I dare you. What’s wrong with 13? Is it because Death is the 13^th card in the Tarot deck, or because Judas was the 13^th apostle? Does it have to do with knights Templar, or can we just credit it with 13 not being 12—again, almost perfect, but not quite? Probably all of these things have contributed to it. (And it hasn’t escaped my notice that 26 is two 13s. I continue to be perverse even without realizing it. For more about 13, check this out.)

In the end, what does luck really mean? I think luck comes from the energy that we put into it. We associate certain things with certain numbers, and so we notice more when those associations turn out to be true. Does that mean that luck is all in our heads? Well, yes, but isn’t everything else? It’s comforting to have something to fall back on to help us make decisions. Humans are subjective thinkers; we can’t help it. So we adopt favorites—numbers, colors, songs, quotes—and use them to help guide us through this crazy world. It makes the chaos of the many choices before us a little bit easier to navigate.

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Don't Say It if You Don't Mean It

The radio was telling me a few days ago about an attack on an Istanbul airport. So many dead, so many injured, so many in serious condition—I don’t remember the details, and I don’t particularly want to, because we are so inured to wanton devastation these days that those details may not mean as much as they should. What stands out in my memory is one fact: that at the time, no one had “claimed responsibility” for the attack.

I hate that phrase. It’s used nearly every time something horrible happens: who will “claim responsibility” for this new nightmare? Clearly, these violent people have a different idea of responsibility than I do. To me, “responsibility” involves some idea of the consequences of your actions. Are these terrorists going to pay for the damages to buildings and infrastructure? Will they pay for those put out of work by their actions? Will they provide medical care to those injured? Will they acknowledge in any way the lives that were destroyed?

To be responsible is not just to know one’s fault, but to do what one can to correct it. There’s no responsibility after these events, only a careless boasting that grinds salt into our wounds. Bad enough that we have suffered; now the guilty want to pretend that there is a good reason for our suffering. It all makes me see red. It’s not responsibility; it’s guilt. And the least we can do is call it what it is.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Without a Sound

The world is not quiet. Even on a day when nothing much is happening, like today, I can hear the clock ticking, and birds singing, and down the street that kid playing with his model airplane yet again, and the air conditioning kicking in, and my cat’s stomach rumbling.

But sometimes, when I’m not paying such close attention, all that fades into the background and the silence wraps around me like a blanket knitted by a friend. Time doesn’t stop, of course—it never does—but it stops glaring at me for a little while. And I sink into the silence and rest in the absolute peace of it.

Sometimes, silence grates, like a noise that won’t stop, making me need to get out, to do something, to fill it with words or music or nonsense. But sometimes silence is exactly what I need, and at those times it is more beautiful than music.

Sunday, June 12, 2016

In Memoriam, Orlando: A Poem for Pulse

My heart is broken for Orlando, for the LGBTQ community, for the Islamic community who will take the brunt for this. For all of us who have to live in such a violent world.

Of all that I have seen about this gruesome attack—and it is more than enough—this story strikes me most of all. I am praying for all of those families whose frightened calls will never be answered, and for those who will never be able to forget the scene with all those phones ringing next to the bodies of their owners.

I wrote this as tribute and wanted to share it. I know it can’t bring any sense to this awful event, but I hope that my prayers and thoughts will put a little bit of good back into the world.

OMG; what a Bulletin.

Did you hear?

The Slow Rise of hatred in the world,

ringing out in Chimes and Ripples,

Radiating in a haunting Signal.

I can imagine it—a dark room, its Pure Tones

silenced. Blood on Silk,

a Wine Bottle smashed.

And the Sniper, looking for a Desert Sunrise,

his Playtime.

Oh, my Night Owls—

you followed a sweet Beacon

to Uplift one another on Waves of love.

Instead, your Radar was shut off.

Do you Stargaze now?

Are you in a new Constellation?

May peace now be your Cosmic right,

Over the Horizon where you are.

Meanwhile our hearts Faint

as the pleading tones ring out

from what you are not anymore,

a Circuit of hope against hope.

When they fall silent,

that will be the Apex of despair.

"Stop the Ringing" by Eileen O'Connor, June 12, 2016.

Friday, June 10, 2016

Throwback to Tears

Sometimes I go back through my journals for inspiration, or even just for curiosity. I was doing that today, looking for an idea for this post, and I ran across something I wrote when I was home from college on a Thanksgiving break. I know this because it was during that holiday that my computer crashed without warning, and that day stands out in my memory.

I live in fear of computer failure. When I was thirteen, I lost a novel and a half when our family computer shut down and the hard drive was wiped almost clean. My own precious first work, gone like smoke in the air—I cried for days. I cried in the second instance, too, though I didn’t end up losing very much. I can still remember struggling frantically with the computer, turning it on for the few moments it would allow to try and save my documents. Though this time I was a so-called adult, old enough to have my priorities in order, I sobbed for hours in fear, anger, and shame.

It’s this last that gave me the spark I needed to start writing this morning. I’ve spoken about crying on this blog before (see this post) and there is a good bit of embarrassment that goes along with it. It should have been less so in this instance, as I was safe at home, no one but my family to see me. But I made note in my journal of someone—I can’t remember who now—laughing at my copious tears. I’m sure it wasn’t malicious—they just thought that I was overreacting. It was just a computer, and the important things were saved. What’s the big deal?

The big deal, of course, was the scare I received. I live a large part of my life in my imagination, and my writing represents long hours of my life. Some of my projects have received months of work, and far more time when you consider how much time I spent thinking about them. More practically, I hope that these projects will someday be my career. I know that most people wouldn’t think much of it, but it hurt when others couldn’t see how much it meant to me.

I don’t write this as an accusation to whoever it was that laughed. I forgave them for that a long time ago. Instead I want to use it as a teaching moment for myself. When something is so important to someone that they are upset at the thought of losing it, it deserves my respect, too. However trivial it may seem to me, if someone else puts significance in it, then it is significant. I hope to remember that in the future.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and make sure all of my work is backed up.

Friday, June 3, 2016

Ideas for Sale: Cheap!

I do not approve of mass production.

Those words, to me, summon up an image of running conveyor belts and cheap plastic parts. It makes me think of someone who is making as many of something as possible to make the most money possible. It makes me think of the videos we used to see in middle school social studies with factory workers turning knobs and pushing buttons in factories. Maybe that’s a stereotypical reaction. Mass production is a large part of our economy, enabling us to get things that we would never be able to afford otherwise. As I write this, I’m sitting at a desk from Ikea that has numerous clones all across the world. I’m typing on a keyboard that was mass-produced, looking at a monitor that was mass-produced, sipping from a mug that was mass-produced. Maybe I don’t have any right to complain. But I don’t like it. Is it wrong of me to think that there should be some care placed into the things that we make? Is it wrong of me to want some originality, some uniqueness, something that no one else has? That’s the writer talking, the artist, that part of me that has to assign meaning to everything.

I suppose mass-production is here to stay, no matter what one irritated blogger with fewer than ten followers has to say. But do we really have to follow the example of mass-production when we make rules for ourselves? You know you’ve seen it. “All abortions should be illegal.” “All illegals should be deported.” “Real marriage can only happen between a man and a woman.”

Let’s face it: humans are different from one another. All of us have different beliefs, different cultures, different values, different motivations, clashing together in the soul to make immensely complex organisms that no other human can ever fully understand. How can we all be expected to follow the same rules? How can what is right for me be right for everyone else on the planet? One would think that by now we should have a small understanding of this. Yet we lay down laws that are supposed to rule over everyone, and we are surprised when there are loopholes and exceptions. Wouldn’t it be better to address conflicts with an open-minded consideration for both parties, to hear them with compassion and decide what is right for them, not what is right for everyone?

But the thing I hate most is the mass production of ideas. When someone says something and suddenly it is springing out of the mouths of everyone else around me, it infuriates me. When my coworker rolls out these ridiculous theories about the way of the world with all the confidence of reciting gospel, because he has never had to think for himself: he has simply downloaded it into his brain. When no one questions the things our leaders say, when we just echo what the media has interpreted for us, when we take any opportunity not to think for ourselves—that is when I want to tear down the assembly line, destroy the factory, and start teaching people how to make their own stuff again. It might make things a little more expensive, a little more difficult, but I think that’s what we need right now. Because if we don’t, we will end up with every house the same, every face the same, and every misery the same, all trapped together in an easy, lifeless existence.

Saturday, May 21, 2016

How to Enjoy Learning: Do It Your Way

Studying is hard for anyone—all you need to do to be convinced of that is log on to Pinterest or Tumblr for a while, to see what students have to say about the process. (Personally I find Tumblr’s assessment of the subject more interesting than Pinterest’s offerings of ways to optimize study time; to the left is one of my favorites, borrowed from user the-dutch-student.) I myself have never been very good at studying, which may surprise those of you who know me as a conscientious student. The thing is, my high school never challenged me enough to elicit much studying, and by the time I had made it into college my habits were set. I would often tell myself the night before a big test that if I didn’t already know the material, I wasn’t going to learn it in a few hours.

But now I’m running into a problem. I am a Christian, and the past few years I’ve been trying to get deeper into my faith, to understand its history and culture so that I can enrich my own beliefs. The natural starting point for this is to read the Bible, but I am coming to understand that it isn’t quite so simple. You don’t get very much out of the Bible if you just read it; it requires study and interpretation. Different passages in the Bible can interpret one another, while there are several hundred years of history behind the stories and laws. Unless you really take the time to study and pay attention, you miss a lot.

Hence my problem. I want to get everything I can get out of the Bible, but it’s hard to persuade myself to sit down and put the necessary effort into it. However enjoyable and fulfilling this text may be, studying is studying, and I find myself immediately transported back into the mindset of a student not wanting to do homework simply because it is homework.

I had to make the task more agreeable somehow. How can I bully myself into getting the work done? Well, to take a new perspective, of course. What if I had the Bible in an electronic format, where I could search for certain names and place, keep track of my own opinions and interpretations alongside those of eminent biblical scholars, and color-code trouble spots and favorite verses? That thought appealed to the bespectacled little person in my self-image who thinks it’s fun to organize things. But, I thought to myself, I don’t know where I could find such a thing. Ergo, I’ll have to make it myself. So here I am, engaged in a project that will probably take me several years: typing up the Bible into a computer document.

“Wait, what? But Eileen, why would you do such a dumb thing? It’s twice as much work as just studying.” Yes, you’re quite right, my imaginary critic. But funnily enough, this project suits me. I type very quickly, and so it isn’t hard to get through a few chapters a week—I’m in Leviticus right now. And the act of copying makes me pay more attention to the text than I would if I were simply speed-reading my way through. I make footnotes of my own assessments and questions, to which I can refer back when something new reminds me of something I read a few weeks ago. And sometimes I find myself spending extra time researching a particular passage or verse, trying to find something that will make it more clear.

The point I’m trying to make is that however silly this idea may seem to many of you, it works for me. I’m not only learning, I am retaining what I’ve learned, which is the whole point of studying. And I’m enjoying the process, which is definitely not the point of studying, but maybe it should be. So the next time you’re having trouble on a test or wanting to educate yourself about something new, maybe don’t bother with those tips and tricks on Pinterest. Think about the way you learn best, and come up with an idea that works for you. Everyone is different, but we should all be able to enjoy learning, and the only person who can make that happen, really, is you.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

It's My Party, But I Don't Want to Cry

Like most people, I like to think that I’m in control of myself. And most of the time, I am. (Of course that’s me saying it; there might be others in my acquaintance who’d disagree from time to time. But this is my blog, so I get the final say on what’s true and what’s not.) But there are moments when I lose control, and those moments are always very uncomfortable to me. This week, I’m talking specifically about crying.

I spent a good amount of time on Thursday night in tears. Now you might say that there is nothing wrong with a good cry, but I would have to say that yes, there is, especially when you are expected to take charge of a situation. This was definitely the case—I was on the clock at my job, and the problem that was upsetting me was something I had to take care of as the manager on duty. But there I was, hiding in the office and trying to stop crying long enough for my eyes to not be red anymore. Any expression of sympathy set me off again.

I wanted to be reasonable and firm, to be able to talk about the problem and come to an acceptable solution. Failing that, I at least wanted to be angry and put the offending party in their place. I don’t even really understand why I was crying—up until that point, it had been a good night, and I can only remember one other slightly stressful encounter that might have contributed to the problem. But wherever they were coming from, the tears just keep coming.

When you’re alone and having that good, cleansing cry that I mentioned earlier, you don’t care much about what you look like. Not so in this situation—I was deeply aware of my shaking voice, my swollen eyes, and my trembling mouth and chin. Plus, this was the first time I’ve ever really had to worry about streaks of mascara. I went into the office and closed the door, sitting in the dark and covering my mouth to muffle the sobs. I don’t tell you this to elicit sympathy (although we are always accepting donations) but to give you an idea about how humiliating I found it. The tears made me feel weak, and I was worried that my coworkers would consider me to be using them as manipulation to get what I wanted. It wasn’t the case—all I wanted was to mop myself up and get my work done so I could go home.

I’ve done a bit of research on crying. Tears are always an emotional response, but not just to sadness or hurt. Everyone knows that sometimes people respond to beautiful things with tears, and then there are “angry tears” which occur when you believe you’ve been treated unfairly. I think this last was the primary motivation to my own breakdown. I don’t often cry—I get teary fairly often, when I am watching a sad movie or recalling a touching memory, but the out-and-out crinkly-faced tear fest is something I rarely indulge in. Before this, I don’t think I’ve really cried since last year. That being said, I usually feel much better after I have cried. Well, maybe the next day.

I think what bothered me most about this instance was that it happened in public. I didn’t like others to see me that way, and that embarrassment contributed to the problem. Is that vain of me? Maybe. But I think it’s natural to want others to see you a certain way, and when your own actions might diminish the image you’ve built for yourself, it can be upsetting.

My solution? I’m falling back on one of the mottos of my childhood: “get over it.” It may sound harsh, but it works. Once I’d calmed down that night—and yes, I did get all my work done—I realized it wasn’t all that big of a deal. Yes, I was hurt by someone else’s actions, and those feelings were and are valid, but I know now that the insult wasn’t intentional or personal. It was just a mess, and messes are common when you’re human. All I can do is take my short end of the stick and run with it, and eventually things will look better. That is something else that I’ve learned—that messes do tend to get cleaned up over time. Just look at me—dry-eyed and streak-free. That being said, I might in future be investing in a better waterproof mascara.

If you're interested in reading the articles about crying that I looked at, you can find them here:

Angry Tears

Why We Cry: The Truth About Tearing Up

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Cute is Not What I Want

As a writer, I tend to collect bits of advice on writing. Some of it is good; some of it is not. (I’m sure you’ve noticed that people like to give advice, even when they don’t really know what they are talking about.) Those of you who are writers are probably familiar with some of the things I have heard. “Show, don’t tell.” “Write every day.” “Expect rejection.” And, the subject of today’s post, “You are your own worst critic.”

Things like this wouldn’t be repeated so often if they didn’t have some truth to them. I’ll be the first to admit that I can be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my work. I remember the long period before I judged my sci-fi novel to be “finished”. Every time I spoke to my mother, who had read the draft, she would demand that I just send it to a publisher already. She judged it to be just fine the way it was, but I wasn’t satisfied. I still get ideas on how to improve it and have to stop myself from going back and tinkering with it.

But where my writing in general is concerned, I’m not entirely sure that I am a harsh critic. Rather, I wonder sometimes if my work can ever be fully appreciated by anyone but me.

That sounds a bit big-headed of me, doesn’t it? Let me clarify. I am currently working on a fictional blog written from the viewpoint of an angel. After a few weeks and ten posts, I have three followers, one of whom is myself, and I average a whopping one view a day. That’s all right; I know how big a place the internet is, and how easy it is for something to get lost there. What does bother me is the feedback I am getting. Friends and family call it “cute” and “charming”; they say that it makes them smile. That’s nice, but it does have the kind of undertone of someone looking for something nice to say. And I can see where they’re coming from. It’s still early days for the story, and what I’ve posted so far does not have much depth.

The problem is the whole story is based on an idea that I don’t know how to explain. If my narrator knows how the world works, and supposedly his readers know how it works, why would he tell them what they already know? I have a deep hatred of info-dumps, and I’m not Disney; I can’t put all my exposition into a charming song. So I’m left with passing references to the big questions of what angels are, why they do what they do, how they are divided and structured. Someday I will get to that, but I’m not sure my readers will hang around that long. It’s frustrating, because I have this beautiful idea that speaks to human nature and the moral evolution of our race, a story about a war fought in the souls of women and men, an intricate tale of free will and choices that can change the world. And readers call it “cute”.

I live with my stories every day, and not just with the events and the timeline, but with the backstory, the history, the culture. I have entire worlds living and breathing in my head, and my writing is a constant struggle to put everything into order. But it’s a task at which I could spend my entire life, and short of unhinging my skull and turning my brain inside out, I’m not certain I will ever be able to show everything. There will always be some crucial detail left out, or else the words will be wrong and my readers will not understand.

Maybe this whole post is a self-indulgent wallow that proves more than ever that I am my own worst critic. Maybe I’m on to something here, and if so I might as well never bother to share my work again. But despite everything, despite my struggles and my failures and my perfectionism and the banal compliments, I do believe that I have something to say that the world might want to hear. So I will keep posting my work into the echoing silence, hoping someday I might get a blip in reply.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Gun Control Means Using Both Hands

Today, while driving to work, I glanced at one of the cars passing me on the highway. The license plate and model made me think that it was a young mom behind the wheel, one of those cool moms who always keeps her hair styled and always wears shoes that are both sensible and attractive. Yes, I do spend much of my time imagining such things while driving.

Then I saw the bumper sticker on the back of the car: “Gun control means using both hands.”

This disturbed me. I am decidedly anti-gun, and so the addition of an AK-47 to my pleasant image of the soccer mom in khakis and sweater vest was jarring. It made me wonder about all of those who insist, in the face of all the gun violence that happens and keeps happening in the United States, that owning guns—and not having that ownership restricted in any way—is a basic human right. Why does it make so much sense to them, when it makes so little to me?

Comic borrowed from the Baylor Lariat

Well, I’m beginning to see their point. With all the violence in the world right now, it’s common sense to have a plan as to how to protect oneself and one’s family. You only have to watch some of the many videos from Trump rallies to see exactly how vicious humans can be to one another. I understand that, and I sympathize. But does your self-defense plan really require a weapon that will allow you to end a human life from far away, with just a twitch of your finger? To me, that is drastic and horrifying, and it should be to you, too.

But then I had an epiphany, and not a very pleasant one. The people who resist gun control are afraid. They are terrified by what is out there in the world, by the cruelty and violence that still run rampant throughout this world. They have no trust in the human race in general, and so they close themselves into little mental bunkers, armed and alarmed and ready for any twitch of movement on their grounds. I doubt even with all these defenses that they would feel truly safe, because it’s not something external that they’re afraid of. The capacity for violence is in everyone, and they not only see that, they feel it. Kind of makes me feel sorry for them, to be honest.

What they don’t realize is that violence is not the answer to the problem of violence. I spoke to one of my coworkers about the subject today, and his justification for keeping guns was that he had been threatened by a gun once, and it was scary enough that he got one of his own. But then he became that frightening figure for someone else, who probably went on to arm himself and threaten others, and so on and so on. It’s a vicious cycle, one that could continue in a downward spiral until no one feels safe enough to leave their house without a 9mm tucked into their belt.

The only solution I see to this problem is not to allow yourself to live in fear. I have lived most of my life in rural Virginia and never once laid a finger on a gun. What’s more, I’ve never felt the need. My family didn’t lock our house at night, and we were never robbed. More recently, my roommate left her wallet in her car for a night and a day, sitting clearly on the front seat, and it was still there when she returned for it. I’m well aware that there are dangers out there, that I may one day be threatened or hurt or even killed, but I've never felt that fear. Even if I did, I would never want to save my own life at the expense of someone else’s. That would only make me the aggressor in a crime I did not want or choose, and that would be harder on me than being the victim.

I choose instead to put my faith in humankind, knowing that while there is risk in this choice, there is also hope. If more and more people make this choice, then the dangers that we see in one another will grow less and less, until maybe someday, no one will be so afraid that they need to keep a murderous weapon behind the front door. Maybe someday, we will be brave, and those around us will look less like targets and more like people.

Monday, March 28, 2016

Nonviolence Just Got Harder

Among the many things that have kept me busy the past few weeks—including something resembling a social life, which is very strange for me—I have been working on an online class in religious literacy. (I highly recommend it; it is out of Harvard and free to audit; see here for details.) The first module is an introduction to the method that will be used to explore the five major world religions in more detail in the following months. Part of that method is Johan Galtung’s typology of violence, which describes three kinds of violence found in society today. There is direct violence, which is the kind we think of when we hear that term: behaviors that threaten life or safety, or else deny or restrict basic human needs. Murder, assault, rape, bullying, and emotional manipulation all fall into this category.

There’s more, though. The second form of violence Galtung lays out is structural violence, which is violence of a different kind, enacted on people by the systems of authority in the world. These can include legal strictures such as apartheid or the Jim Crow laws, or they can be less official, such as the restriction of healthcare for certain groups. Galtung submits that these laws are an act of violence in that they keep certain people from meeting their most basic needs.

Most worrying for me, though, is the third form of violence: cultural violence. This is the most subtle and most pervasive form. It is defined as social norms that make structural or direct violence seem acceptable. My reading for the class lists the old belief that Africans were intellectually inferior to Caucasians as its example, and it’s a good example—even Abolitionists used this thinking in trying to help slaves, saying terrible things and thinking them nothing but the truth. But I can name a few more examples, most of them coming from an outspoken man behind a campaign podium. He’s not prejudiced against immigrants or refugees, he’s just trying to protect the American people. This kind of excusing cruelty is, in itself, a form of violence.

I’m not trying to make a political statement here; I just want us to take a look around and see whether we’re guilty of violence more often than we realize. Sure, you may have never hit someone in the face or harassed them into tears, but have you ever supported a law that might hurt someone else? Do your own opinions narrow your views so that you might not see how much someone near you is hurt by what you say? When you tell your children your thoughts on what is happening in the world, are your ideas really worth passing on? Or might they be taken in a way that you don’t intend, a way that might make something wrong seem normal and fine?

This is a hard, violent world, and cruelty is spread in many different ways. It will take many open-minded and careful people to change that, and I hope I am always one of those people. I hope you are, too.

Monday, February 29, 2016

A New Endeavor Coming Soon

Happy Leap Day, everyone! This is a day for making up lost time, for taking chances that don’t come around very often. In that light, I am very pleased to announce a new project to be launched on March 21: my very first online publication of fiction, “Tales of Love from the Stolen Earth.” The website may look like an ordinary blog, but don’t be fooled. I am running it entirely in the persona of a very special entity: Asa’el, principality cupid, probationary first wing, north-west quadrant. That’s right—in just a few weeks, I will be getting my wings.

Asa’el lives in a world where angels are not the primary warriors in the battle against the Enemy. Angels, having no free will of their own, no uniqueness, do not have the same power that humans do. With that power invested in us comes risk, however, as we can choose to use it wrongly. Angels, then, serve as guides in everything we do. There are Fortunes who guide the good and back luck in our lives, Justices who watch out for right versus wrong, Guardians who protect us from physical and spiritual dangers, and yes, Cupids, whose role it is to protect love in all its forms.

A new cupid, Asa’el is journeying to the Stolen Earth—the Garden claimed by the Enemy in the Fall—to begin his first assignment with a human couple. He is a great lover of stories and information, and believes that he must contribute to the Repository—the heavenly collection of universal knowledge. For this, he has chosen a human method, and thus, his blog recounting his work to his fellow angels.

I’ve been very interested lately in viewpoints of humanity from outside of humanity. The main character of my science fiction novel, Youngest, is one of those; now Asa’el is another. It’s been refreshing to work in his voice, which is much more cheerful and humorous than Youngest’s. Trust me, though, it isn’t going to be all hearts and roses for our newest Cupid friend. He will face discrimination, miscommunication, sin and pain, disappointment, and a very challenging redheaded woman.

I’m very excited about this project, and I hope you will be, too. The first post will go up on the first day of spring when a new year of love begins. Stolen Earth is my first foray into the world of online publication, and I’m leaping in. Here’s hoping my Guardian is with me!

Note: I owe thanks to Rob Mening for assistance in setting up the blog site. If you’re also looking into starting something new online, definitely check out his free online guide at http://websitesetup.org/. It was an enormous help for me!