I’m a huge fan of Quaker songwriter Jon Watt’s and his latest (above) resonated with me even though I haven’t been too active in the “Occupy” movement. For me, I’m occupying my life rather than participating in a protest. Being fully present to my own experiences and to the economic choices that I’m making is what I can do right now.
Author Archives: janaremy@gmail.com
how to charm me…
Build a wee cabin in the Concord woods near Walden Pond and then write a book about your experience living in said cabin.
Swoon!
Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves,
dispel the clouds which hang over our brows,
and take up a little life into our pores.
Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor,
but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world.
from the chapter “Economy” in WaldenIf a woman does not keep pace with her companions,
perhaps it is because she hears a different drummer.
from the “Conclusion” to Walden
(Back in high school I developed such a mad crush on Henry. And the years haven’t dimmed my ardor much at all…)
I go and lie down…
A colleague recently turned me in the direction of Wendell Berry’s writings, so I’ve been reading Hannah Coulter on my
And now that I’m knee-deep in his novel-writing, I’m also exploring Berry’s poetry:
The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
not on Wall Street
Although I was just in New York City, I didn’t visit the “Occupy Wall Street” camp. While it was a popular topic of conversation with lots of the locals that I met, I didn’t have much to say about it, not having read too deeply on the goals of the protesters. I’m incredibly sympathetic to the problems of inequity in our current financial system (I have far too many friends who are feeling an economic pinch) and I wholeheartedly support people who are willing to protest and act on their political feelings. However, it’s not my battle right now. Instead, I’m concentrating on holding my family together in the midst of so much change, I’m trying to fulfill my obligations to work and school, and I’m doing my best to be a good friend and mother and partner (and writer and cook and photographer and cat-lover and outrigger paddler) despite all of my other busy-nesses.
So instead of sitting with the crowd holding a sign, I sat in conference sessions and on public transport and in cafes. For awhile I even sat on the beach and contemplated the larger-scheme-of-things.
I don’t want to seem insensitive, but is it sometimes okay to just be doing my own thing instead of fighting the world’s battles? To read some poetry and think some deep thoughts and do a bit of sightseeing instead?
There’s a part of me that’s disgusted with my complacency/ apathy, as well as with my current level of economic security. Knowing all too well what it means if I’m not part of the solution in this equation…
Article 25, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (with gender pronouns altered from male to female):
Everyone has a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of herself and of her family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond her control.
Ocean water
Some sounds of New York…
My posting has been a bit thin this week because I didn’t schedule anything beforehand to go up while I’m on this trip to New York City for the Mobility Shifts Summit. Because I’ve been experimenting with blogposting from my phone, I intended to be doing some on-the-spot blogging as I travel–but that simply hasn’t worked out as well as I’d hoped. First of all, I don’t find it easy to write blogposts from my phone, even though I have a groovy WordPress app for doing so. Second, I’m simply being in the moment at this conference, so much so that I’m moving from thing to thing too quickly to write as I go along.
However, the other night as we headed back from a late evening in the East Village, I did pull out my phone and record a few of my favorite sounds on this trip. The first is a saxophone player in the subway, and the second is the train as it pulled up to the platform (as said saxophonist played on). My fondness for the NY subway system has grown on this trip, as has my enjoyment of being able to hang my arm out into traffic at any given moment and hail a cab (that would just never happen in LA). This is only my third-ever trip to NY and I will admit that I wasn’t all that eager to return–I found NY just too large and incomprehensible when I came before. This time, though, it’s been quite different. Although I’ve been frustrated (and lost) several times, I’ve learned a lot about myself and about traveling since I was last here. I’m not afraid to wander streets by myself or to walk a few blocks to get my bearings. And…this city is really starting to grow on me. 🙂
les roses de la vie
Two lines from a favorite poem:
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez a demain:
Cuillez des aujourd’hui les roses de la vie
Trans by Anthony Wier:
Heed me, and live for now: this time won’t come again.
Come, pluck now–today–life’s so quickly-fading rose.
memories apart…
The first experience can never be repeated. The first love, the first sunrise, the first South Sea island, are memories apart and touched with a virginity of sense.
-Robert Louis Stevenson
I think it was about a decade ago, that first night that I ever spent alone (and actually it was not really alone because I still had my kids with me). I checked and re-checked the locks, I called to my spouse on the phone several times, I had a weapon near the bed (just in case). I didn’t sleep well at all–every little noise was some bogeyman coming to get me.
I think it was about five years ago that I first slept in a hotel alone. It was just about the same routine as above.
It was about three years ago that I first took a ride in a taxi by myself.
It was about two years ago that I crossed an international border on my own for the first time (but that was into Canada–does that even count?).
I’ve got (yet) another trip happening in three days, this time to an academic conference that promises to be a path-breaking event. I’m a little nervous–as I always am just a few days before cross-country travel. There are many things that could go wrong (and there are some that will go wrong, and there’s not much at all that I can do about that). But I am expecting that far more will go just right. And I can’t wait!
Pictures above from my solo trip to Cape Cod three years ago (still one of my favorite adventures ever) and my summer trip to Europe.
under arrest?
Not too long ago I was being teased a bit, by someone who knows how different my “in real life” persona can be from my blog persona:
“The blog police are going to come and arrest you one of these days,” he said.
I’ve thought a lot about that since then, and I don’t think I’m violating any fundamental laws by what I write here–I mean, it is a space where I play with language and storytelling and is, therefore, fundamentally different from how I relate an event if we were chatting over teacups in my living room. But the accusation was less about that, and more about how romantic and starry-eyed I sound in blogland, versus my quite practical, straightforward, get-things-done, everyday self.
I’ve already written about how I tend to have a macro view of the world and how this has gotten me into a bit of trouble in the past (for literally not seeing a greater perspective on things). I continue to worry about that, and feel an ongoing tension between focusing on what I want to see, and truly seeing what is right in front of me.
But perhaps what is more misleading is that my blog is all soft-focus and flowers and tea-with-doilies and my real life is administrative meetings and debugging software and caring for two teenagers. There isn’t actually much space in my life for flowers these days. Even the ocean is taking second (or, third) position to my research and my caregiving role.
It reminds me of a funny conversation I had with some friends in the hot tub a few months ago. We were talking about dreams (big life-changing dreams) and I mentioned that I don’t believe in making huge life choices unless there’s a practical element to them (i.e. a plan for how to support the dream financially). I want to see a spreadsheet along with that plan to quit your job and become a full-time artist. So while I believe in the allure of the open road and wide open vistas that lie ahead, I also believe in tanks full of gas and a healthy retirement account.
So, if anything, this blog is a space where I can dream and imagine and discuss what’s happening in my head, but that’s mostly a counterpoint to my lived experience that’s all checklists and laundry and who’s picking up who after art class.
” If you built castles in the sky ; your work need not be lost ; that is where they should be. Now, put the foundations under them. ”
– Henry David Thoreau
assertive
One of the biggest compliments that I received recently was from someone that I know professionally, who just learned that I’d been practicing LDS for most of my life. She was shocked, only because she said that I didn’t behave like any of the LDS women that she knew–who she said were all the kind of women who had no opinions and who weren’t educated or assertive. Of course she was painting LDS women with too broad a brush with her stereotypes, but it did stick with me–if only because I marvel a bit at how much I’ve changed, personality-wise, in the past few years.
Another connected experience occurred when I was at dinner with some liberal LDS women not too long ago and we were discussing passive-aggressiveness. Our conclusion was that passive-aggressive behavior is more common among LDS women because they’re disenfranchised by their faith tradition, and have to find subversive ways of expressing themselves because of their lack of institutional power.
These experiences both came to mind when I read mraynes post about Speaking Truth. She writes:
Women in the Mormon Church also belong to a patriarchal culture where they have very little institutional power. We women are taught from toddlerhood that we are to be wives and mothers and devote ourselves fully to our families. It is easy to see how some women can interpret this socialization to believe that their personal feelings or needs are irrelevant.[…]
LDS women must tell their stories. A majority of these stories are positive but there are also stories that tell of the hurt that our institutional practices and culture create. All deserve to be told. All deserve to be heard. Those in power in this church—men—must begin to know what it feels like to be a Mormon woman. They must hear what it feels like to only have the role of wife and mother presented to you.
In my life I’ve experimented a bit with this lately, and have found it quite liberating to say what I think about things, or to reveal my inner feelings in situations where I would have just kept quiet before. For me much of this has been about speaking the truth of what happened in my marriage (secrets that I kept for many years), but it’s also a large part of trying to figure out what I want now–in personal relationships, in my professional future, and in my family. There have been times that I’ve probably said a bit too much in my quest to ‘speak truth,’ but for the most part this has been a highly-positive experiment. I’m weary of pretending to not have an opinion because it would be ‘unfeminine’ or saying only what I think the other person wants to hear, rather than saying how I really feel. I’m no longer ‘going with the flow’ unless I really want to–I don’t have to pretend to want to do something and then secretly resent it. Instead, I can be honest and either choose not to do something or find a compromise. There’s simply no space for passive-aggressiveness in my life now. I’m not living to please anyone else anymore.