Friday, May 30, 2008

More Death and Death Averted

One of our board members died over Memorial Day weekend, and his funeral and the crowd who attended it (me included) were some of the most bizarre people I've ever met. The poor man was very obese, and he had suffered from diabetes for a long time. His foot, for lack of a better explanation, simply exploded one day. He got so big he literally ripped open at the seams. He was in and out of the hospital for that problem for months. A heart attack finally did him in. He was only 62. He had few living family left, but he was very well known in the community, so his visitation was well attended. At the actual funeral, there were probably around 60 people.

I hate funerals. Especially the preachy kind. I always come away thinking "Now how, exactly, does this help comfort the family?" I'm not sure how to enforce what I want done with my own arrangements (and I guess I wouldn't know to care whether they were carried out anyway), but for the sake of everyone else sitting there, I don't want one of those. The older woman who preached the service was quite small. The microphone was above her head, and to have this tiny woman bellowing above a giant man laying open in his coffin...well, he really dwarfed her.

And I don't know what it is about these backwoods hellfire-&-brimstone preachers, but why the hell can't they read properly? It always sounds like they are struggling, and so the emphasis falls on all the wrong words. You can literally tell when they've reached the next line, because it sounds something like this: "Listen to the words of GOD: 'There is no condemnation now for...those who live in union with CHRIST!!!.....Jesus." The Jesus comes out almost as a muffled "Oops. I blew my load too quick." You can't even pretend to get caught up in the emotion of the sermon. She didn't even bother to mention Bob's son, who had died young, nor even his wife. She sucked. I'm sure she thought the same of us. More on her later.

Probably one of the most exciting and death defying moments came with the introduction to someone Director/Buddy had known for a long time. Let us call him Lieutenant Fred. The man lied about his age when he was a kid and went to World War II and ended up working as an MP. When you think about your old country boys, whatever image you conjure up for this man should suffice. Except that he's older than dirt. And majorly deaf--I had to shout in his hearing aids the whole time. Oh, and he's blind in one eye--his sister stabbed it out with a fork when they were kids. He spent the whole time talking D/B's ear off, telling her all his stories that he had saved up from 15 years ago when he saw her last. I wish I were kidding. I also wish I had brought BatMite!, as this old man would've really juiced his vegetables.

After the funeral, there was a celebratory dinner, a giant spread of food. Bob would've totally approved. I had chicken, ham, lasagne, green beans, baked beans, potato salad, pasta salad, tomatoes, rolls with jam, raisen cake, and several other things I've already forgotten about. I had these things twice, in honor of Bob. Lt. Fred hadn't known there would be a dinner, and was excessively delighted to find out about it, and as this seemed to be his first social outing in probably six months, he absolutely insisted we carpool to this little community settlement building. Back in the back of the backwoods. Oh, and he insisted on driving. I'll remind you that he is mostly deaf and blind in one eye.

Driving was an adventure. We had to back up twice, which turned into a community project, Lt. Fred being both deaf and partially blind. He wouldn't have heard the screeching brakes anyway. Twice he pulled onto a major intersection without even bothering to look for other cars. It takes the term "blind spot" to a whole new level. He also had the habit of looking for extended periods of time at D/B while he was driving, along the lines of, "Now, did you know that man?" ::prolonged stare--with the good eye:: I'm sure he could see absolutely nothing but her face for stretches of time that felt like eons. And then eventually, of course, he had to drive us back. While we were eating, he also had the habit of talking extraordinarily loudly (because he was mostly deaf) and also couldn't hear when the crowd had fallen quiet because there was, for example, the prayer over the food. So we were constantly shushing him before he bellowed his typically sarcastic comments over the whole crowd. Pretty funny, really. Especially since his favorite phrase seemed to be "So-n-so ain't worth the powder to blow him to hell!!"

So, apart from having known and cared about Bob, the atheist, the Harley riding hard drinker, and the crotchety old partially blind and mostly deaf SOB found themselves in a weird position at this church community building eating all the food. It sounds like the start of a joke, and it does have a punch line. The best moment came when one of those unforeseen and magic hushes fell over the crowd. One of us had her mouth crammed with chicken, ham, lasagne, etc. otherwise she probably would've been implicated as well. As if on cue, no one else was speaking except the other two, quite loudly as a matter of fact:

D/B: I'll be damned! There's that goddamn whore that Jake liked to fuck so much.
Lt. Fred: Ain't worth the powder to blow her to hell!!

We were sitting next to the preacher. Cue hasty retreat, exit stage left.

-- Virgil

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

On Shouldering Through and Adopted Boys

Well, several days later and I'm back to feeling like blogging again.  Lots of things to blog about, really.

But mainly I'm happy that my student seems to be moving forward steadily.  I've spent several nights the past few weeks calling to check on him, trying to help how I can, making sure I give the advice I remember being important--mainly being his source to vent to.  He's pretty pissed at a few of his extended family members, and he has a right to be.  I helped him get the information he needed to refile his FAFSA, so hopefully he'll get more money this school year without having to take out loans.

I went to the visitation for his father--the service was right after, and I left before it started.  I don't do preachy funeral services very well.  I would've stayed if he needed me to, but he said he was fine, and he looked fine.  There were over 350 people who came through the doors.  It took me nearly 20 minutes just to get through the line to talk to him for three minutes.  It almost felt like a waste, but when I saw him smile I knew it wasn't.  Ironically, I ran into another student of mine at that visitation, but that's another story.  So many people came out to pay their respects, and I was glad for that, although it meant he had to do a lot of greeting.  Those kinds of services seem to be more about helping other people deal with your loss rather than the other way around.  At least my experience is that other people seemed to you to let them tell you how sorry they were and cry a bit, because it was appropriate.  They weren't really there to hold you and let you cry.  I remember feeling like I was a Grief Manager for the entire thing when it happened to me.  

When I got to him, I hugged him.  He looked a bit more grown up in his suit, a muscled up country boy cleaned up, really.  I told him I was proud of him, of the man he was becoming.  And after I left, I thought about what it meant to be able to tell someone that.  Someone who is not my blood son, I mean.  And I realized that I really care about what happens to him in a personal, family kind of way.  Quite a bit, actually.

I appreciate that he let me in on this experience.  I am learning more and more that the way you move past your own problems is by walking with someone else through theirs.  I had always thought that being a Virgil applied only to my Dante, and that I was to lead him through Hell's circles with my prior knowledge so that he could come through unscathed to the other side of such things.  I'm starting to realize that so many other times it means giving your shoulder to somebody else to lean on and walking through the pain right there with them.  Nobody ever comes through hellish things unscathed.  It just hurts a little less when you have somebody to share it with.

I'm proud of you, Drew.
--xo--  Virgil

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Echoes

I feel a bit of a wreck, but I'm sure it's nothing compared to my student. Dr. Ian had said that sometimes your body maintains memories of stressful events and repeats those patterns when certain other physical clues present themselves. In other words, sometimes your body thinks it's going through the event all over again and responds accordingly, which is why I got no sleep last night.

After I called him, it just felt like a bar bell was sitting on my heart; the same feeling I had when I had gone through that same tragedy, in much the same way at close to the same age. My body reacted accordingly, which I didn't expect. I was shaky--still am a little bit. I lost my appetite, I had that weird grief feeling in my body again. I had been cleaning the house at a good little clip and just lost the will to do much of anything. And I simply couldn't sleep--my brain was racing, it felt like I had a million things to do, and of course I couldn't come up with a single actual thing I was supposed to do. When the alarm went off this morning I felt like I had been beaten with a sock full of pennies. What disturbs me right now is how physically shaken up I am, just from the echo from my own past. It's not really mental, except for the anguish I feel for him; it's purely physical.

Part of it was remembering what those first hours after you know felt like. It was the very darkest side of experience, an absolute whirlpool of confusion. I understand how the world just splits open and presents concerns you'd never even imagined an hour ago. When you go through tragedy at a young age, you grow up quick. You have to inhabit a world where there aren't many others like you--too young to be taken seriously by older people, but likely with more experience than they have, but not enough resources to really tackle such things by yourself. People who know what that's like have an obligation to help the younger ones going through such things. At least that's my opinion. It's one of the main reasons I titled my blog what I did.

-- Virgil

Monday, May 19, 2008

Life Lessons

Something very tragic and traumatic happened to one of my former students this afternoon.

I am very humbled that he contacted me to tell me about it. I'm even more humbled by the fact that he thinks talking to me about it is helpful somehow to him. Sigh. Those sorts of things are hard lessons to guide someone through. Getting to know some of my university people, especially people like him, means more to me than shuffling somebody through a class and hoping they learned a thing or two. To me it means we're connected, if they want to be, for the rest of their lives. I can't help it; it's the social worker gene in me. But I do get quite attached to some of them, and he was (is) one of the best. I'm here for more things than just advice on papers, and I'm always surprised at the number of people who continue to take me up on it. Everybody needs a Virgil sometimes, and I've been down that particular hellmouth before. I'm still here.

Sigh. Social Justice would have my ass, but really all I want to do is giving him a hug.

-- Virgil

Friday, May 16, 2008

Leisure = Expensive

The only question Dr. Ian ever asked me that I didn't have an answer for was, "What do you do for leisure?" I stared at him blankly for a minute. "What's that?" I asked him. The look on his face was great. "I'm kidding," I had told him. "But the answer is still 'I don't know.'" I've never really had free time before. I don't quite know what to do with it. Half the time I feel like I wasting energy, and it doesn't do anything for me.

And I need to figure it out, because playing around with it cost me a bit.

El Hijo's sneakers curled up and died on him that morning, and he needed a new pair to make Tai Chi class the next night. That's right, he could totally kick your ass in a controlled and pacifist kind of way. So we headed out to the local consumer center that passes for a mall in this town. He went off in search of his shoes, and Dante and I poked around elsewhere, looking first to see if they had put in a new toy store to replace the Kay-bee Toy Store they took out. Nope.

On our trot back, I notice one of the jewelry stores is going out of business. I like taking the occasional lap through a jewelry store, but I usually never find anything I like. I have odd taste, I suppose. I'm also pretty specific. Most of my jewelry, what little there is of it, is symbolic in some way. I guess that's also a leftover symptom of growing up in a doomsday cult--the love of metaphor. I like amber. The last birthday present I bought for myself was a ring made out of recycled stuff. It was really neat. I have an Italian coin made in my birth year that came to me in a weird way that El Hijo had put in a bezel on a necklace, which I wear pretty much all of the time. I sleep in it. Well, except for the past few nights.

Everything in that jewelry store was incredibly expensive to start with, but it was down to 80% off on some things. I was almost ready to go when I spotted a necklace that I'd wanted since it came out. I don't normally buy diamonds. I don't even have an engagement ring. There's too much ethical stuff all bound up in diamonds for me. But this necklace, when I had first seen it, just hit me the right way. The stones are graduated, meaning they get bigger as the necklace goes on, and it curves in an "S" shape, and is supposed to stand for a journey and growing stronger with each passing year. So, yeah, it got me. The guy whipped out his calculator and told me the original price. That made me suck a breath in hard like a punch in the gut. Then he told me what it was with a discount. That was more like a sharp slap across the face, but with none of the nausea afterwards. I said thank you and turned and walked away.

I got about twelve feet away before I turned quite literally on my heel and marched back and slapped down my credit card. My ten year old son was laughing at me. All his life for unknown reasons, he's insisted that women want jewelry as the highest form of present, and because I wear very little of it, I've always been puzzled by that. I've even argued with him about it. Five years of serious argument on my part just went up in smoke with the smacking sound of that credit card on the counter. I'm sure that's what he was laughing at. He just said, "I'll meet you in the book store." Which is obviously where I'm headed next. He knows me too well. I bought the necklace as my combination graduation--new job victory--upcoming birthday--present. And I'm wearing it all the time because now I feel like I have to get my money's worth out of it. I am absolutely not buying another thing.

I really wanted the earings, but that would be like getting a black eye. I'm not buying anything else.

Not even that dress I saw in the store after I plunked down money for two more Dresden Files books (Book 3 & 4--seriously, where was I when these came out??). I resisted the dress even though I still very much want it and bought face stuff instead. I have rather expensive taste when it comes to face stuff. I don't know why. I don't even wear makeup 99% of the time. But I wear a very expensive face lotion. So after the sound of "da-da-da-DA-da-DAAA-CHARGE!" I walked out with another bag. And have spent a day or two since trying to decode what just happened.

I came to the conclusion that I need to get a hobby. Because I think part of the problem is that I don't have a real hobby. My hobby is aesthetics. I have interests that really just make more work for me in the long run--when I put food on a plate, for instance, ideally I care about what sort of plate it goes on, the colors involved in the food, the texture, and of course the drink that goes with it. I like cloth napkins at dinner. I like music. I like a certain lighting. Those things are just as important to me as the meal itself. No one else seems to care, which is probably a very good thing. They're just hungry. I won't even get into the displeasure I experience in not being able to order the food to come out of the oven in the way I want it to because I have no time--and I doubt my family would have the patience anyway. Same with cooking. I get just as big a charge out of breaking eggs into my grandmother's beautiful, old mixing bowls as I get from eating whatever comes as the result of that. Probably more than the eating part. I float around art museums. It's all I can do to keep from touching Van Gogh's stuff to see if it smears and be a part of it somehow. When I get into the art thing myself, I like the kinds of mediums that go directly onto your hands--charcoal is my favorite, followed by those little pastel sticks. The stuff that gets all over your hands while it gets on the paper. I don't like something that interferes with that experience, like paintbrushes. Van Gogh's art looks like he smeared it on with a butterknife (I looked as close as I could get without committing a felony--I'm pretty sure it's a butterknife). Thick layers of globby paint that turn into something else. That's another part of why I think I like things to have multiple meanings. The jewelry is pretty, but its meaning is layered. I get to know/experience all of that at once. It's quite a thrill. I like music that asserts a meaning without lyrics (like Amon Tobin's stuff) or lyrics that create lots of mental pictures (like John Lennon's stuff). I like things like breezes in my hair and I absolutely love rain for unkown reasons. It's just all the feelings it creates at once, I guess--sound, texture, sight, smell, all at once. I guess I'm a sensualist in a lot of ways. That's what I like about the face lotion. It feels incredible, it smells good, it lasts all day--I care less about what it actually does rather than how it makes me feel, and I pick my formula based on that.

There are really only two things I personally like doing: work and experience. I don't want to really do a lot else except feel. I like reading, but that also sets off a lot of other feelings--pictures, ideas, emotions. I like writing, but it's a very agonizing process for me. I actually have a whole short story collection that I need to go back to and edit. But I can see the picture so clearly in my head, it has to come out just right on the page or it's very frustrating. I actually need to go back through them for the sense details. Maybe that's where I'll start.

Maybe I just need to spend some time out in the sun and close my eyes.

I need something that doesn't cost so damned much.

-- Virgil

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Hate It Or Love It

Replace "Rap's" with "English Department" and I claim this song as my own. I always liked it anyway.

Hate it or love it the underdog's on top
And I'm gonna shine, homie 'til my heart stop
Go'head'n envy me
I'm Rap's MVP
And I ain't going nowhere
So you can get to know me

Of course, I guess that means that I'm not the underdog anymore? This is a totally new feeling, and one I'm not sure I have the skill set yet to master. I know how to play the underdog. I don't know how to run with the big ones. But run with them I shall, as the leader of the pack has just invited me to participate in a panel with them at the biggest composition conference in our country representing our university. She even took one of my papers as source material to boost our odds of getting accepted. If we got accepted, I'd be there with the head of our writing program, the head of our editing program and somebody I totally don't respect, but that's neither here nor there. Other than the guy I don't respect, the rest of them have light years of experience in teaching and writing. It would be rather intimidating to try and hold my own against them, so for now I guess I'll be the pup that runs around with the big dogs until I get some bite of my own. The projects I'm doing are pretty unique, so that's probably how I got my invite, in spite of my lack of experience and lack of a PhD.

That and my iron skirt, I guess. For those of you unfamiliar with the term "skirt", I borrowed it from Bitch PhD, who uses the phrase "get some skirt" like other people use "grow a pair". :p

If we are accepted, I'm going to have to present my work so that it sounds up to par with that of the people I'm going with. No pressure or anything. I'm still amazed they asked me to go.

-- Virgil

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Did You Know

That 99% of the world's species have died out because of failure to adapt?

I am not one of them.

-- Virgil

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Dear Dr. Ian,

Thanks for not making me feel like I was crazy for coming in to see a therapist. Even when I started giggling maniacally after saying, "I know you hear this all the time, but I'm not crazy." It was just funny after I thought about it for a second. Thanks for laughing with me and not at me. Thank you also for not pushing pills on me, to which I am diabolically opposed. Thanks for having chairs in your office instead of a couch--the stereotypical nature of the whole thing would've probably sent me back out the door.

Thanks for just listening to me for the first few sessions until you got most of my background. I have a lot of it, and it takes a while. Thanks also for not looking too shocked. Thanks for pointing out that the methods I'd put in place for dealing with things were quite effective for the time, that made me look back on my difficult past with a real sense of pride. I had always been too busy surviving to realize how well I'd done so. But thanks, too, for showing me how my methodology was now obsolete in light of my changed circumstances. When you said I had "failed to adapt", even though I came back with a rather sarcastic, "So you're saying I'm going extinct because I'm choosing not to evolve," thanks for laughing. And then confirming.

I appreciate how even though I had a rough patch right around the middle of the semester, you helped me work through what, exactly, was so bad about it. And that's where I learned about toxic environments and not tilting at windmills. And I trusted you enough to make a plan to get out of said toxic environments. I also learned that as remarkable as my life has been, it has not truly been a case of Virgil versus Everything Else. That while I have done an amazing amount of work, there have been key people along the way who saw me and appreciated me and who helped propel me forward into that next thing that was always at least slightly better than where I had been before. You taught me that I need to keep looking for these kinds of people in order to build up a network of people who are interested in my welfare. That was a tough one to get, because my last "group" experience was pretty disastrous. But I'm working on it.

Thanks for showing me my own confirmation bias, and for immediately challenging my predictions of gloom and doom with "Hm. What's the evidence for that?" It showed me how often I overlooked what I did right in favor of confirming where something had gone wrong. I'm not perfect at it now by any stretch--and I still get that old wary feeling. But at least I'm asking what the evidence is for it. I'm trying. Thanks for helping me deal with how I was going to cope without therapy.

I had no idea how physically stressed I had been. I'm eating everything in the house; it seems I've dropped ten pounds from last semester. I can breath to the bottom of my lungs again. I didn't know I wasn't until it just happened the way it was supposed to a few days ago. I can sleep through the night (most of the time). I don't wake up with that awful cramp that bends me in half. My shoulder muscles hurt like hell, but after all, I was carrying quite a bit on them. You helped me realize that I need to feel proud of myself, and that I find most of that in work, as my Dad linked the two things years ago. You've showed me how to find the right kind of people to say "I'm proud of you" so that it feels more or less the same as when he said it. And maybe even better, you showed me how I was more or less copying that with my teaching, and how I could sort of feed off of that.

You've helped me realize where my power comes from and what saps it away. You've made me better, faster, stronger. Thanks for helping me realize at that very last session that the thing that scared me the most was having run out of answers when everything had previously depended on me having all the answers. That I was able to experience someone else helping me find new ways to get answers that didn't entirely depend on me was incredible. It may have been the most important thing of all. Thanks, dude.

-- Virgil

Friday, May 09, 2008

Catch Up

Wow, has it ever been busy.

Quick update before I provide more detailed info later. Probably Sunday or so.

I interviewed with the deans, and I got an offer less than an hour later. I took it. Turns out it's much more significant than I thought it would be, and I have more responsibility than I thought I did. They even offered me a little more money. Director/Buddy seems to be taking it well so far, but I think she's putting up a front. I have to quit my literacy job in order to work that one, which she knew from the outset, so I'll be transitioning somebody new in by the end of July.

The Derby was OK. I had a good time, and I really enjoyed hanging out with Sister and her boyfriend. But Derby itself was pretty windy and cold--we wore jeans, sweatshirts, sneakers and our Derby hats. Pictures aren't back yet--I really need to go digital. The whole thing was marred by that poor little filly who died just after she crossed the finish line in second place. She wasn't stopped/didn't stop properly, and she broke both her front ankles. She was immediately euthanized. I feel very sorry for animals who die for our entertainment--she ran a hell of a race. But people also die for our entertainment. There just seems to be something less voluntary about an animal, I guess.

Had a good 80s party, and I hope JP or Batmite! will post the absolutely hilarious pics soon. It was a good time. I'm pretty sure I pissed Batmite! off. But I don't think it's anything a few beers somewhere else won't solve.

Details later. Tired now.

-- Virgil

Friday, May 02, 2008

And They're Off!

Had my last class ever last night. Woot. No more late night classes and crammed readings.

I'm getting ready to head off to the final classes of the ones I teach and give evaluations and collect their portfolios. Five minutes later, I'm on the road to the Derby. Whee! I so need a break right now, but I don't feel 100% comfortable taking it just yet. But I can't help when the Derby falls. We'll be staying with Sister, so that will be helpful as well. I'm hoping I can relax once I get on the road and away from this town.

Oh, I made it through to the second round. Here's a toast to seeing Deans on Monday.

-- Virgil


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