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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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