Untitled (for now)

Wandering the now-empty
house searching for a lighter,
the air has lost its perfume
and the cat has given 
herself a pedicure
on the couch, leaving rags.
She rolls over for a belly
rub, but no one gives it.

It's started to rain outside,
cold for June, and the dark
wraps around the cigarette
like an old lover, cradling
the smoke and releasing.
As the patio begins to puddle
something dings in an adjacent
apartment; something finished.

Healing?

Sometimes things happen that shake us up, and make us question everything. We have to re-prioritize, make other plans, adjust our views of the world. There's pain, and there's confusion, and there's difficulty. Things aren't as they seemed, and the world turns topsy turvy. I promised I wouldn't talk about personal things in this blog, but I'm making one exception. I have had one of those things happen.

My girlfriend of almost a year (we would have had an anniversary in August) broke up with me over the weekend. It went VERY badly. I took it very badly. I was immature and stupid. I finally deleted her phone numbers from my phones last night and stopped calling. It's been really kind of pathetic. But it was a bad relationship – she had a lot of baggage, and she didn't treat me with much respect. She used me for my money and didn't really give me anything or respect my feelings. She's a very selfish, small person, and I overlooked all that to be her knight in shining armor, which I was. But I guess it got old, being taken care of.

I don't understand a lot of things still. I'm so upset I literally can't feel anything. I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't write except about this. I can kind of work, but I'm just treading water. I'm posting this because I know you've all been here at one time or another and that I'm touching on a common experience.

But can things like this be healthy? Even though it's going to be a long time before I come out of it, I think so. I think back to other breakups from equally toxic women (I have a very poor track record with women) and I see how I grew after I got over feeling betrayed and hurt. I see how I learned to be alone and rely on myself only – I've been alone most of my life, and I can do that. There's a certain comfort in being alone and taking care of yourself. Nobody's ever offered to take care of me, so I don't know anything else. I'm always the caretaker. I also see how smart and capable I am, and how I work very hard and do what I have to do, what needs to be done. I see my morality and ethics, and the way I treat other people. It's only through pain that I realize I'm actually a pretty good person. And I try to be a good person, so I'm accomplishing something.

Of course, I don't feel any of that now; it's all just a series of remote memories I can tap into intellectually but can't access emotionally. I feel dead inside, but it's only been a couple of days. I'm still in the self-abuse phase of things. I'm blaming myself, wondering what's wrong with me and what I did wrong, wishing I could just dry up and blow away. And I have to do that, I have to go through that to get to that good place.

Damn, life is complicated. J

Funny

I had a horrible weekend with devastating things happen, and in the process of trying to work through the emotions I decided to think about funny things. "Funny" is such a relative term; all the time online in the comment forums for blogs and news items, somebody like Conan O'Brien will be the subject and some people will say, "Well, he's not funny" while others talk about how funny this bit and that bit are. I think a sense of humor says a lot about a person; the way we develop that sense shapes what we will and will not accept into our laugh zone.

I remember first discovering Woody Allen's first books, and Steve Martin's early work like Cruel Shoes. They were simultaneously different and exotic and slapsticky and silly. In both cases, there was obviously an intellect working behind the yucks. Their movies, too, exhibited that same kind of thing; even though The Jerk's Navin Johnson is clearly an idiot, the film that features him is very clever. Allen's early films are very absurd and Jewish and intellectual in nature; it took me years to get some of the references, and there a few I still don't get. I used to get that same sense from Dennis Miller before he stopped being a comic and started being a political hack. He used to be mean-spirited about and to everybody, and I thought that was funny. Now he's picked a side, and he sounds like an erudite Rush Limbaugh. Not as purely funny.

I like intelligent humor that takes whole worlds into account. I can watch a Larry the Cable Guy concert, but I don't really laugh much. He's funny sometimes, but his schtick gets old for me. And his movies are awful, just one bodily function joke after another. I have known people who like that sort of thing, but I have very little in common with them.

Then again, I've never cared for Jerry Seinfeld. His whole "observational" thing is very 70s to me. I watched his show a few times and had the same reaction I had to Friends: "OK. Next!" I do, however, love Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm. I know it's the same guy producing both shows, but Curb just does it for me. The show where he goes to heaven and meets his dead mother (played by the wonderful, late Bea Arthur) is hysterical.

I think standup comedy has gotten old and overexposed. There's just too much of it on TV anymore, and they all sound alike. Unless it's somebody like Lewis Black, who is unique and fresh, I'm more than likely bored. Do we really want to watch somebody stand there and tell jokes? I don't think I really like jokes very much. Situations, maybe. Stories. Things with layers.

“Time Heals” by Todd Rundgren

If you're bleeding,
Then everyone can see you're bleeding
They can call for the doctor,
Who'll provide what the diagnosis says you're needing
Then he'll take away your pain
But if your heart,
Your heart has been broken
And you don't wear it on your sleeve
No one can tell,
Your hell goes unspoken
But there's one thing you must believe

Time heals the wounds no one can see
Time heals the wounds that no one can see

If you're crying
Then everyone can see you crying
And they all sympathize
But it just doesn't matter
Though they may be trying,
They can't feel the hurt inside
You can't go on,
You've gone to the limit
And your life seems to slip away
You're on your own
Alone you must face it
And tomorrow's so far away

You got to hold on baby
Got to give it time to heal
Time heals the wounds that no one can see
You must believe what they say is true
It do's wonders for ya, yeah, yeah

A Linguistic Pet Peeve

You know what bugs me? People who use the word "fail" as a noun, as in "Obama? FAIL." How cliquish and cutesy and "nettish" can you get? It's started popping up all over the place (on the internet, of course), and I hope it doesn't extend far beyond it. Those kinds of deformations are really, really annoying because they mean absolutely nothing and they're just insulting. You can't just say, "That sucks?" I am NOT in favor of the "movement" that says language has to get more and more compact until it barely exists anymore. Words are beautiful things, and cramming them into tiny little electronic containers so they'll fit on a text messaging screen or whatever is just ridiculous. It takes me hours to send a text message, and my system doesn't have all the punctuation I need. It's like censorship!

It's a very frat boy kind of thing to do, that kind of mentality where everything has to be cute and uniform and everybody has to be alike. I've never lived that way, and never will. Well, I play a corporate cog at work…

More on Whole Language

Here's a very flawed treatise on how Whole Language doesn't "work," based on the writer's biases against new ideas and techniques: http://www.halcyon.org/wholelan.html

 

Here's a more unbiased view that just lays out the theories and doesn't take a position. Wouldn't it be nice to have more articles like this? http://www.funderstanding.com/content/whole-language

One quote from this article that I have to share; it sums up my whole concept of teaching writing:

"We learn language cumulatively by using it. Each language encounter, whether oral or written, builds more knowledge about the world, the function of symbols, and communication strategies. Consequently, each language transaction helps us perform the next one, whether it be oral, written, or mental. A whole language curriculum immerses students in situations requiring open-ended, complex language use."

This goes back to my baseball/cooking/instrument analogy cluster.

 

And finally, some mythbusting from the Center for Expansion of Language and Thinking (and how can you argue with a name like that?):

http://www.celtlink.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52:what-whole-language-is-not-common-myths-and-misunderstandings&catid=34:fact-sheets&Itemid=57

Anybody Remember Ebonics?

I remember Ebonics extremely well. For those of you who don't know, Ebonics was a movement in the early-to-mid 90s that encouraged African Americans to use their "native language," i.e. the language of rap and "the street." It was briefly studied in universities, and some school curriculums were changed to reflect the non-standard use of English in the name of freedom or something like that. I was teaching at a historically black college at the time, and we had many discussions about Ebonics. Some of my students, who already spoke this way, championed their right of refusal to use proper grammar, syntax or any other facet of the language. A few faculty members thought it was a decent idea, but most were horrified (and I was the only white male at the school at the time). Why? Because language is about MAKING YOURSELF UNDERSTOOD.

As someone who grew up in the south, I remember both blacks and whites who butchered the language on a regular basis. They were all very difficult to understand, and they didn't get very far in life. Communication is one of the most important gifts we have as humans; we are able to make ourselves understood and share ideas and dreams and information. I believed then, as I believe now, that deliberately teaching to a faddish proto-language that very few people speak and that has no relation to communicating with others is a mistake. Yes, it might have been empowering for a while, but if I'm right, Ebonics died because nobody had any idea what these people were saying.

It's not a racial thing, at its core; it's a social thing. Some people are trying very hard to make the over-abbreviated, barely coherent mess that constitutes text messaging and twittering an "official language." I've had students who use net abbreviations (and even smileys!) in their papers. The honestly think that's acceptable language when you're trying to communicate with a broader segment of society. I'm hardly a conservative (for the record, since I get asked, I'm best described as a left-leaning Libertarian who sometimes thinks anarchy might not be a bad idea), but I do believe in proper English. Our teachers should be skilled in using the language (including writing, of course), and they should convey a love for our native language to their students. It's not about tradition; it's about communication. Our children should be prepared for the world they're going to go into, and a large part of that preparation is being able to present themselves intelligently in both spoken and written language. I read letters to my local newspaper online that are barely intelligible, and these are the people who ask why kids today don't get "the great educashun they done got."

Ignorance is never an excuse; it's sad, and it's preventable. I have a quote I attribute to myself, because I can't find anybody who's said it (please let me know if I'm stealing): "The minute you claim you know everything you need to know is the moment in which you know nothing." It's truly sad to me that today's kids are more concerned with choosing the right verb tense on a standardized test multiple-guess question than in writing an effective, logical paragraph. I see those kids every semester, and they struggle, not because they don't have writers in them, but because they have been taught to fill in little circles with number two pencils instead of USE the language. You don't learn to throw a baseball by taking a test on the way a baseball is made; you don't learn to cook by reading a cookbook. You don't learn to play a musical instrument by listening to music (and don't get me started on Guitar Hero). You learn these things by doing them, over and over again until you get them right. Writing is the same way. A grammar worksheet doesn't teach you how to write a grammatically correct sentence; at best, it shows you what to look for. But in my experience, very few students make that connection.

Speaking of movements, there was/is a movement in kindergartens called "Whole Language." It involves/d (among other things) letting the children write stories on big sheets of paper using whatever they want – some scribble, some draw pictures, some just sort of do whatever…but what they "write" is their story. When prompted, most children will "read" the same story virtually verbatim every single time. They are, for all intents and purposes, reading. The idea is to get them ready for the mental operation of writing, of creating, before they're ready to form letters and words and sentences. Then they can build upon that foundation by learning those very things, including (yes, critics…you're WRONG) phonics. The "Whole Language" classrooms I've observed were fascinating; the kids were so into their own little "writing styles," and they were exercising their creativity in a variety of ways. But as I think I've said before, creativity is a dirty word in today's America. We don't want our children to be "creative"; we want them to "practical." Look at any wealthy or famous person and you'll see somebody who did something creative that paid off. Nobody wins by being "practical." That just makes us sheep. We should be encouraged to be creative within reason, within the rules that have been set forth for us, and we should look for ways to bend those rules. Bend them, not break them…Ebonics, and other "movements" like it, sought to change the rules by ignoring them. The only way to change the system is from within, and if we encourage our children to be creative and think critically and question the world around them rather than letting others do their thinking for them, they'll be successful. I believe that passionately.

The Wonderful Catherine Keener

Catherine Keener is one of Hollywood's best kept secrets. She's been in so many films it's staggering, yet she's not the star she deserves to be. She's been involved in almost every aspect of the film industry, yet she's not a mover or a shaker. She is absolutely gorgeous, but she's not spoken of in hushed tones like a Nicole Kidman. She's a brilliant actor, but she's not held in the kind of esteem of a Meryl Streep, who wouldn't play some of the roles she's played.

I remember Catherine best for two roles: Nicole Springer in Living in Oblivion (with a great star turn by Steve Buscemi) and Trish in The 40 Year Old Virgin. In both films, she's the stabilizing influence in the main male character's life; she keeps him going; she gives him a reason to live. It's that strength that comes through the readily in her performances. She's not afraid to be strong, to not be the ingenue, to be a real, living, breathing woman in an industry that expects waifs. She's not afraid to be vulnerable, either, to show her weaknesses and work through them the way real people have to. She's very much a real person in her performances, and that's what I love about her. A good writer and a good director know how to work Catherine; they let her live her character and show that strength and that weakness all at once, to let her be a real person and let us live with it. She's so incredibly real. I, of course, don't know her personally (although I wish I did), but I would imagine she's just as real in person, no pretensions, no BS, just a person who does a job and does it well. Kind of like most of us.

I would seek out films with Catherine Keener in them. She's long been considered "The queen of the indies," but The 40 Year Old Virgin showed she can carry a major film. I'm waiting for her to star in a serious, big Hollywood film and burst into flame like nobody ever has before. She's earned it; anybody who works that hard for that long with that kind of talent is going to get their moment eventually.

Links

Laura Miller has an article in Salon.com about the way we use links in blogs. It's an interesting read, and she proposes (as I think others have before her) using endlinks, or endnotes if you will. As a former academic and current part-time teacher, I certainly recognize the MLA/APA influence, and the sense in it. What do you think? Does it make more sense to put links within the body of a blog, where they might be a distraction, or to place them separately at the end so they're all in one place and unobtrusive? Of course, I'm just throwing my link out, so there…

 

http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/06/09/links

What Is The Writing Process?

We talk a lot about the "Writing Process" in freshman composition and creative writing classes (and some other classes, too), yet it always seems to be something abstract, a remnant of the 1970s mentality that discovered it. Yet do we really think about our own process? In today's individualized, "me first" society, the Writing Process should be a perfect fit. But my students don't seem willing or interested in exploring the way they write, not just their content. It's not unexpected, at least not by me; we also live in a society that expects instant results, and generating a bunch of ideas that we may throw away and not use just seems inefficient and wasteful.

The use of computers has changed the way we view writing as well – why take the time to do a bunch of stuff by hand when you can just key it in all at once? The logical sense of the wired world seems to fly in the face of the messiness of the human mind. Yet our minds are every bit as messy as they've always been – we don't think in a linear, robotic fashion. We have thoughts and ideas floating or flying by all the time (some of us more than others). Applications like Microsoft's OneNote (which I've only just started playing with) seem to be designed to cater to our messy, pigeonholed natures. I would love to do an extended study on using OneNote as a prewriting tool, in an electronic classroom with real students. Hopefully, Holmes will have a Writing Lab before too long and I'll be able to get a grant for that or something.

But there's still a use for the Writing Process, and maybe somebody is working on adapting it for the internet age (although the "internet age" has been around for a while).

OK, now I'm Googling it; here are some choice returns:

http://www.ldonline.org/firstperson/How_Computers_Change_the_Writing_Process_for_People_with_Learning_Disabilities

http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec596r/students/Marushige/Marushige.html

http://www.edtechleaders.org/Resources/Readings/UpperElemLiteracy/Wood_ComputersWriting.htm

http://technologysource.org/article/writing_process_in_a_multimedia_environment/

http://www.tojet.net/articles/548.pdf

…just a few examples. Looks like a lot has been done on this. That's nice. I'm actually going to study this stuff. If you're one of my students, get ready for some computer-oriented "stuff."

But at its base, the Writing Process is just that – the way we write as individuals. Everybody's process is different. The "steps" are just basic categories the researchers came up with to describe the general work writers do. Each writer approaches his or her tasks uniquely, and the process can change depending on the nature of the task.

For instance, I am a technical writer for a living. My process for creating and maintaining Help and other software-related documents is different than that I use for other types of writing. I do a lot of prewriting – when a new feature comes up or something is changed in the software, I take a lot of notes in meetings where they tell us about what's being done. I draw screens where necessary and diagrams and whatever else I need so I'll understand what's being done. Then I draft based on those notes; I pick and choose the things my users need to know and take out the stuff that's for internal use only, or which they just don't need to know for whatever reason. I will often draft in my release notes, then transfer that draft (marking an additional revision, based on the fact that Help and release notes are aimed at different audiences) into the Help. My documents change form (and sometimes format) numerous times as the documents are revised and improved via meetings with my collaborators and the people who are doing the programming and testing. Quite often something will be rewritten in a grammatically incorrect way, so I have to fix it; that's always fun. It's constant revision and editing, and multiple drafts.

When I write for myself, my process is different. I don't have any collaborators, and I have nobody to please but myself (I do believe in an audience for poetry and fiction, but that's another blog). I tend to prewrite in form, meaning I don't freewrite or list or draw circles or any of that stuff; if I'm drafting a poem, I do it with linebreaks and a structure that finds itself as I write. Now, I have published poems that were first drafts, and I've done hundreds of drafts of poems nobody wants and everything in between, so I don't claim any success with any number of drafts. It all depends on the piece. I've even published a few short stories and magazine articles that were first drafts. If I'm "in the zone," I let it carry me. This, by the way, has not happened in a long time. When I was writing every day, it was much easier to get "in the zone." Now it's very difficult. I haven't written much of anything since I moved into my apartment. But I am inspired and energized by diving in and playing around with form from the get go. Mark Cox used to fuss at me about not prewriting properly, because he does; all I could say was that I found meaning in the form as well as the content, and they evolved together. If I'm going to freewrite, what comes out of that freewrite is likely to be prose. I'm not going to shove linebreaks into it for the sake of making a poem.

This is getting long. I could talk about the Writing Process all day; it's fascinating to think about the way you write, or the way you do anything and why. Think about the way you write, and why you do it that way. A few minor adjustments can make your writing more efficient and more effective in the long run as you find yourself not having to start from scratch when you need new information.

The Nature of Blogging

I had a blog for a few years; very few people saw it, I don't think. It got very political and very personal, and it just wasn't very nice or productive. Several weeks ago, a student in one of my University of Phoenix Creative Writing classes asked if I had a blog, because she wanted to read more of my writing. I was ashamed of the blog I had, so I couldn't give her a link.

That experience got me thinking: Why not have a blog where I use my real name and talk about the things I'm passionate about (besides politics and personal issues)? I teach composition (and sometimes English Lit and Creative Writing) at Holmes Community College – Ridgeland, and I teach Creative Writing and Film along with a couple of other courses for the University of Phoenix Online. Even though I gave up the majority of my instruments to move into my new apartment, I still consider myself a musician (definitely a fan, if not "practicing"). And I write as often as I can given the fact that I have 3 jobs that take up a lot of my time. I really do have a lot to say, and I can be much more constructive than to complain about online dating sites (which I did a lot before I got a girlfriend, and thanks, that's going well) or "out" hateful people or talk about conservatives when I really couldn't care less what they do as long as they leave me alone.

So this is my experiment, and I'm going to post a link to this blog for my students in case they're curious; isn't that the thing to do these days? I will be more careful with my language to engage a broader audience, and I'll talk about things I know and think about regarding all the stuff I do. So we'll have some writing stuff and some film stuff and maybe even some stuff on ethics (I teach a "capstone" course for the UOP on ethics and critical thinking). Will I get political? Occasionally, I'm sure; somebody is bound to have said "Everything is political" (although I can't find a quote). I won't fall for the standard "left-right" politics, though. More sexual politics or personal politics or academic politics or office politics. My new favorite quote:

"How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?" - Charles De Gaulle

I did find an interesting article by Stanley Fish in the Chronicle of Higher Education (which I'm going to start reading again) about the notion that "Everything is political":

http://chronicle.com/article/Is-Everything-Political-/45993

Stanley Fish is like Noam Chomsky to me; you don't have to agree with him, but you have to admit he's done his homework.

This is my "adult blog." I had to go through a few years of posting on and off and really bottoming out on what I had to say before I realized I have more responsibility than that. And I might just make somebody think, or respond and start a great dialogue. This, hopefully, will be the blog people will read.

And oh, the title? I didn't know what to call it, so I typed something random, thinking it would be taken. It wasn't, so I'm sticking with it. I'm not nearly that arrogant. I hope if you know me you already know that. J