I am realizing that my prayers don’t seem as charmed as they once did.
For instance, tonight I went to hear Anne Lamott speak and prayed audaciously for my Midas touch encounter. I was needing to convince this ridiculously busy and accomplished women why she should write a review for an upcoming anthology I am part of (more on that project another time). I just knew of the hundreds of people there that I would get the up close encounter.
Turns out I did in fact get the premier up close encounter. I walked in on her in the bathroom- I mean I walked right into her stall. It was a very brief meeting and not terribly opportune for pitching the anthology.
I think my prayers use to be a bit more successful.
Anyways, at the very end of the night I went up to her, apologized for the mishap, talked about the anthology, invited her interest, and got rejected- all in about 7 seconds. My second encounter left me even more sheepish than the first.
But on a redeeming note, tonight I have decided it might be good for me to chronicle all such rejections. Then, over time, I will realize I can indeed survive those moments of feeling really dumb. I am actually going to start a scrapbook to document the time and place and keep the mementos. Any perceived failure/rejection gets to be celebrated. That means rejection slips from editors, dissapointing papers, flopped encounters- all now worthy of documentation in my celebrated chronicles.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Cherry Trees and D.W. Winnicott
It is spring, which inspires me to do crazy things like start running again. I don’t know that I actually like running, but this season of the year I decide it’s time to remember trees and fresh air and flowers- that real, budding life exists outside textbooks.
There is this one glorious cherry tree I get to run under on Wallingford Avenue. She is dressed up like a bride. I had a lovely cherry tree in my backyard growing up; the sweet scents today make me remember being a little girl and jumping on our big trampoline near the blooming tree, so that blossoms would float down on my head as I somersaulted. Running down Wallingford Ave, life moments 20 years apart seem to intersect.
I keep being visited by that little girl- fresh moments of the past arriving rather unannounced. Such visitations, of course, are the symptom of a mind rather saturated with psychology classes, where I am consistently asked to consider my own "story" and wonder about who I am- and who I was. Where are the links between my present self and how I first experienced the world? This is the question that seems to beckon the visitations. I have seen her alot lately, sort of hovering in the moment. When she is not jumping on trampolines, she is writing children's stories or reading novels or worrying about her grades or waiting to be loved or wondering who she will become. She says hello in unexpected places. I sat in a coffee shop this afternoon, and the dry, technical pages of my textbook succeeded in evoking her. She arrived with salted drops. I am not really a public crier, but there was something so bittersweet. I know her too well. This deep integration of my studies and my introspection leaves me never quite knowing when my brain decides to surrender to my heart and I am emotional in a coffee shop over D.W. Winnicott’s waxing on about "object relations" and “transitional phenomena."
Goodness, perhaps, I should have elected a career in engineering? (But then I would most certainly be crying over my calculus problems.)
There is this one glorious cherry tree I get to run under on Wallingford Avenue. She is dressed up like a bride. I had a lovely cherry tree in my backyard growing up; the sweet scents today make me remember being a little girl and jumping on our big trampoline near the blooming tree, so that blossoms would float down on my head as I somersaulted. Running down Wallingford Ave, life moments 20 years apart seem to intersect.
I keep being visited by that little girl- fresh moments of the past arriving rather unannounced. Such visitations, of course, are the symptom of a mind rather saturated with psychology classes, where I am consistently asked to consider my own "story" and wonder about who I am- and who I was. Where are the links between my present self and how I first experienced the world? This is the question that seems to beckon the visitations. I have seen her alot lately, sort of hovering in the moment. When she is not jumping on trampolines, she is writing children's stories or reading novels or worrying about her grades or waiting to be loved or wondering who she will become. She says hello in unexpected places. I sat in a coffee shop this afternoon, and the dry, technical pages of my textbook succeeded in evoking her. She arrived with salted drops. I am not really a public crier, but there was something so bittersweet. I know her too well. This deep integration of my studies and my introspection leaves me never quite knowing when my brain decides to surrender to my heart and I am emotional in a coffee shop over D.W. Winnicott’s waxing on about "object relations" and “transitional phenomena."
Goodness, perhaps, I should have elected a career in engineering? (But then I would most certainly be crying over my calculus problems.)
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Anne of Green Gables
The past two weekends I have allowed an old childhood splurge: a marathon of watching a passionate, idealistic red-headed girl. I sipped framboise beer (the closest thing we could find to Anne’s raspberry cordial!) and remembered childhood ideals shaped by L.M. Montgomery’s heroine. Here were my realizations:
1. You cannot go through life breaking slates over boys’ heads. However, it seems a small tragedy to go through life without the spunk to ever do so.
2. Decorum in most of our lives gets too much privilege- and honesty not enough.
3. When you are in the depths of despair, feel it with passion, but remember that plum puffs will help.
4. Gilbert Blythe, tragically, is a fictional character.
5. However, this ought not to dash all dreams of rain-drenched gazebos.
6. Read and think and love with vital imagination.
7. When you want to pray, sometimes it is best to leave your words, look up to heaven, and feel the overflow of your own soul.
8. There are Katherine Brooks in your life to love, and Josie Pyes to not take too seriously.
9. You cannot seek your ideals outside of yourself, but you may have to leave Avonlea to discover this.
10. There is a “book of revelation” in everyone’s life- when the love that has abided is seen.
In the midst of studying all my stacks of psychology books, I am pretty sure “Anne” was my heart’s necessary therapy. I walked down 3rd Avenue yesterday a bit more alive to cherry blossoms and raindrops and strangers’ faces and my own brewing soul.
1. You cannot go through life breaking slates over boys’ heads. However, it seems a small tragedy to go through life without the spunk to ever do so.
2. Decorum in most of our lives gets too much privilege- and honesty not enough.
3. When you are in the depths of despair, feel it with passion, but remember that plum puffs will help.
4. Gilbert Blythe, tragically, is a fictional character.
5. However, this ought not to dash all dreams of rain-drenched gazebos.
6. Read and think and love with vital imagination.
7. When you want to pray, sometimes it is best to leave your words, look up to heaven, and feel the overflow of your own soul.
8. There are Katherine Brooks in your life to love, and Josie Pyes to not take too seriously.
9. You cannot seek your ideals outside of yourself, but you may have to leave Avonlea to discover this.
10. There is a “book of revelation” in everyone’s life- when the love that has abided is seen.
In the midst of studying all my stacks of psychology books, I am pretty sure “Anne” was my heart’s necessary therapy. I walked down 3rd Avenue yesterday a bit more alive to cherry blossoms and raindrops and strangers’ faces and my own brewing soul.
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