doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
words
acceptance
0I took my blog from yesterday and turned it into an opportunity.
I decided to trust…not to just write about it…not to just think about it…but to actually do it.
I took a leap. I threw myself out there.
I took a deep breath and did something that I have never done.
I didn’t know what to expect. I had no idea what may be happen.
I will admit that I didn’t expect the best and I didn’t expect the worst but beyond that, I didn’t know what to expect.
I was met with kindness.
I was greeted with encouragement.
I was given good advice.
I was given a gift.
I don’t trust easily.
I took a chance on trust and I was not disappointed. I was not pushed away. I was not treated with disdain or disgust or ridicule.
While this person would probably never treat me like that anyway, it is what I’ve come to expect from people as a whole. And as I’ve been reminded, people cannot be lumped into a generalization. Each person is who she or he is and must be taken on her or his own merits…not on the basis of what I’ve experienced from a majority of people in the past.
It sounds easy. It’s not. Each time I speak, I have to remind myself that this is something new and I have to treat each person as if I don’t have a past to draw negative experience from to affect how I deal with this person.
Acceptance is a two-way street. I think it is similar to how I talked about trust yesterday. You give acceptance, it will come back to you. It blossoms from there.
I felt acceptance yesterday.
I feel that acceptance today.
My heart feels lighter today.
My spirit feels more free.
I feel open.
—
Maya Angelou wrote, “When we cast our bread upon the waters, we can presume that someone downstream whose face we will never know will benefit from our action, as we who are downstream from another will profit from that grantor’s gift.”
I have been gifted with bread cast upon the water and sent down the stream.
I am profiting from this gift.
As I toss my bread upon the waters, who knows who will profit downstream?
trust
0I am learning to trust.
I learned a lesson yesterday in a very gentle and affirming way.
I didn’t need to be hit over the head with this lesson. I didn’t need to hear that I’m being silly or that I’m being ridiculous or that I’m being stubborn. I’m dealing with some very real self-image issues that have barred me from living life to its fullest. I’m dealing with issues that are steeped in heavy baggage from the past.
I needed to hear the words, “I understand.”
I needed to hear the tone that was patient and kind.
I heard kindness. I heard patience and understanding.
I heard “trust me.”
Trust.
My hands start to shake. My stomach starts to churn. I’m thinking a mile a minute of how to get out of this situation. Normally.
You want me to do what?
Trust me.
It was implied. It wasn’t blatant.
I didn’t run. I didn’t shake.
I heard it. For the first time in a long time, I felt it. I can trust this person. I won’t be hurt.
The most profound thing I learned is that when someone reaches out in sincerity and asks you to trust, they are taking a chance, too. They are saying, “I believe in you. I trust you.” They are making themselves vulnerable. They are putting themselves on the line.
I can either take the hand offered to me and move forward or I can perpetuate the distrust and, perhaps, cause the other person to feel a little of that as well.
I would rather be someone who stops a cycle. I would rather move in a positive direction. Where there was one saying, “trust me,” now there can be two.
A strong hand reached out to me.
I chose to take it.
—
As I was writing this, I kept hearing a song in my head (which is not abnormal…music plays a big part in my life). While all of the lyrics may not match, it strikes me that much of this path of discovery is mirrored in this song.
The Power of Love
Indigo Girlsguess i wasn’t the best one to ask
me myself with my face pressed
up against love’s glass
to see the shiny toy i’ve been hoping for
the one i never can afford
the wide world spins and spits turmoil
and the nations toil for peace
but the paws of fear upon your chest
only love can soothe that beast
and my words are paper tigers
no match for the predators of pain inside heri say love will come to you
hoping just because i spoke the words that they’re true
as if i offered up a crystal ball to look through
where there’s now one there will be twoi was born under the sign of cancer
(love will come to you)
like brushing cloth i smooth the wrinkles for an answer
(love will come)
i’m always closing my eyes and wishing i’m fine
(i close my eyes and wish you fine)
even though i know i’m not this time
(even though i know your not this time)i say love will come to you
hoping just because i spoke the words that they’re true
as if i offered up a crystal ball to look through
where there’s now one there will be twododging your memories a field of knives
always on the outside looking in on other’s livesi say love will come to you
hoping just because i spoke the words that they’re true
as if i offered up a crystal ball to look through
(i have offered up to you)
where there’s now one there will be twoand i wish her insight to battle love’s blindness
strength from the milk of human kindness
a safe place for all the pieces that scattered
learn to pretend there’s more than love that matters
lullabye
0I love stories. I have loved stories my whole life. I’ve loved to be told stories, to have someone make something up and tell me some delicious tale or to read to me from a book. I sink into this place of security and comfort. I escape into the fantasy of the story. When I was in my 20s, my brother and I worked in merchandising together. We would have to travel hundreds of miles to various grocery stores around our state. Before we’d leave, we’d choose a book of short stories. As we drove, we’d read to one another, sharing in this experience of story and comraderie and a type of intimacy that only siblings can understand. One of our favorite authors to read on these trips was Raymond Carver. Perhaps it was because my brother had met him. Maybe it was because he speaks of themes we understand. Whatever it was, Raymond Carver became our shared experience.
While we don’t travel together anymore, we still tell stories. We make up stories to tell to his two kids. We share our histories and embellish and make our childhood memories sound exciting and fun.
One of the greatest delights in my lifetime is sharing a story with a partner. Curled up in bed, we read to one another from books we’ve chosen to share. Bodies wrapped around one another, comfortable and safe, we tell one another stories under the cover of darkness before slipping off to sleep.
Storytelling is incredibly intimate. Even if I’m being read to from a book, it is a sharing of one’s loves, passions, and joys. We share a piece of ourselves when we read or tell stories.
Late night stories are, for me, a lullabye. They comfort me. They make me feel special. They wrap me in a cocoon and surround me completely. I’m being sung to sleep by the voice of a lover. I’m being cradled in his voice. I’m being rocked by the cadence of words.
—
Lullabye
Concrete Blonde
When the sky has fallen
like a blanket on your shoulder
and the moon is like a mother
looking over you forever
and the dawn is so familiar
you were meant to be together
like a fog around a mountain-forever
Chorus:
so softly-so sweetly
surrounding you completely
sing you a lullabye-a lullabye to you
when your breathing is the wind
and your crying is the rain
well I know you will remember
because the music is forever
the living of a lover-
and the loving of another
like a sister to a brother
like a father to a mother
(Chorus)
secret life
0I’m feeling a little quiet today. I have a lot on my mind, a lot to write about, but I’m just not sure how to go about it.
I have another blog. In it, I wrote something to the effect that I feel like I’m cheating on the people who read it because I have another blog, a secret life blog, where I post things I’m really thinking about.
This is my secret life blog. This is where we get to the heart of the matter.
This is where I open myself, bare myself, and share my thoughts, fears, hopes, and realizations with the world.
This is my secret life.
—
A Secret Life
Stephen DunnWhy you need to have one
is not much more mysterious than
why you don’t say what you think
at the birth of an ugly baby.
Or, you’ve just made love
and feel you’d rather have been
in a dark booth where your partner
was nodding, whispering yes, yes,
you’re brilliant. The secret life
begins early, is kept alive
by all that’s unpopular
in you, all that you know
a Baptist, say, or some other
accountant would object to.
It becomes what you’d most protect
if the government said you can protect
one thing, all else is ours.
When you write late at night
it’s like a small fire
in a clearing, it’s what
radiates and what can hurt
if you get too close to it.
It’s why your silence is a kind of truth.
Even when you speak to your best friend,
the one who’ll never betray you,
you always leave out one thing;
a secret life is that important.
can you hear me now?
0A good word is like a good tree whose root is firmly fixed and whose top is in the sky.
~ The Koran
I want to learn how weave words that draw people in time and time again. I want you to keep returning because it’s like a story that entices you back.
What will Dawn say next? Where will she go? I want to hear this.
*laughing*
Is that narcissitic of me? It feels that way. I don’t normally say things like that but I thought I’d put myself out there and tell you what I want. Where I wish to go.
I want to use the powerful words at my fingertips to weave you a web that you don’t want to leave.
“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly, ”
~ Mary Howett
love letters
0I want to write my lover letters. I’m not talking about post-it notes strategically placed here and there to remind him of me throughout the day. I’m not talking about short postcards to tell him that I’m thinking of him. I want to write him love letters in the grand spirit of the Adamses, the Brownings, and Keats.
I want to use superfluous language, grandiose concepts, and poetic verse to tell him that he is loved. I fancy telling him that the way he hurt me last night made me love him more, ache for more, hunger for more. I desire to dance with him in the world of words, to float upon the euphoric clouds of adoration.
I want to remind him that I’m smitten with him. I hope he knows that every day brings a new experience to be treasured because it includes him.
Writing good love letters seems to be a lost art. Writing them in long hand, with the perfect pen and good paper seems to be passé. I want my lover to know that each sweeping motion of my hand to paper has a thought, a glimmer, a piece of him woven into it.
—
Abigail Adams to John Adams, her husband, December 23, 1782
My Dearest Friend,
…should I draw you the picture of my heart it would be what I hope you would still love though it contained nothing new. The early possession you obtained there, and the absolute power you have obtained over it, leaves not the smallest space unoccupied.
I look back to the early days of our acquaintance and friendship as to the days of love and innocence, and, with an indescribable pleasure, I have seen near a score of years roll over our heads with an affection heightened and improved by time, nor have the dreary years of absence in the smallest degree effaced from my mind the image of the dear untitled man to whom I gave my heart.
—
To Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
…would I, if I could, supplant one of any of the affections that I know to have taken root in you – that great and solemn one, for instance. I feel that if I could get myself remade, as if turned to gold, I WOULD not even then desire to become more than the mere setting to that diamond you must always wear.
The regard and esteem you now give me, in this letter, and which I press to my heart and bow my head upon, is all I can take and all too embarrassing, using all my gratitude.
- Robert Browning
(1812-1889)
—
Wednesday Morng. [Kentish Town, 1820]
My Dearest Girl,
I have been a walk this morning with a book in my hand, but as usual I have been occupied with nothing but you: I wish I could say in an agreeable manner. I am tormented day and night. They talk of my going to Italy. ‘Tis certain I shall never recover if I am to be so long separate from you: yet with all this devotion to you I cannot persuade myself into any confidence of you….
You are to me an object intensely desirable — the air I breathe in a room empty of you in unhealthy. I am not the same to you — no — you can wait — you have a thousand activities — you can be happy without me. Any party, anything to fill up the day has been enough.
How have you pass’d this month? Who have you smil’d with? All this may seem savage in me. You do no feel as I do — you do not know what it is to love — one day you may — your time is not come….
I cannot live without you, and not only you but chaste you; virtuous you. The Sun rises and sets, the day passes, and you follow the bent of your inclination to a certain extent — you have no conception of the quantity of miserable feeling that passes through me in a day — Be serious! Love is not a plaything — and again do not write unless you can do it with a crystal conscience. I would sooner die for want of you than —
Yours for ever
J. Keats
isms
0I’ve been thinking about “-isms” lately (Which, in and of itself, is a bizarre thing to contemplate, don’t you think?). Our lives are ruled by these: conservativism, liberalism, conservationism, environmentalism, atheisim, and on and on. We’ve attached this to almost anything we deal with these days.
Webster.com defines -ism as:
Main Entry: -ism
Function: noun suffix
Etymology: Middle English -isme, from Middle French & Latin; Middle French, partly from Latin -isma (from Greek) & partly from Latin -ismus, from Greek -ismos; Greek -isma & -ismos, from verbs in -izein -ize
1 a : act : practice : process <criticism> <plagiarism>
b : manner of action or behavior characteristic of a (specified) person or thing <animalism>
c : prejudice or discrimination on the basis of a (specified) attribute <racism> <sexism>
2 a : state : condition : property <barbarianism>
b : abnormal state or condition resulting from excess of a (specified) thing <alcoholism> or marked by resemblance to (such) a person or thing <giantism>
3 a : doctrine : theory : cult <Buddhism>
b : adherence to a system or a class of principles <stoicism>
4 : characteristic or peculiar feature or trait <colloquialism>
Main Entry: ism
Pronunciation: 'i-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: -ism
: a distinctive doctrine, cause, or theory
Really, by reading the definitions, an -ism can be just about anything. We can attach it anything and it can become a condition, a property, an act, a practice, a theory. Anything in the world can be an -ism. The possibilities are endless.
Doesn’t that make your head spin?
So, in the grand spirit of sharing the weird happenings in my brain, I will share a few “-ism” websites with you:
Glossary of Philosophical Isms
Word List: Isms
The Institute of Silly and Meaningless Sayings (ISMS)
Go out, spread your isms. Be free with them.
abandonment
0I have issues with abandonment. It’s not that I was abandoned as a child…not physically, anyway. My parents were always around. Emotionally, however, abandonment began early. I was told that I was too precocious, too smart for my own good. I would be ignored. Silence was used as punishment for everything.
To this day, when someone is angry, I fear their silence more than anything. I can take anything but that.It hurts me more than anything else ever will. I don’t understand it, I can’t read it, and I don’t know how to respond to it except to wonder what I’ve done wrong.
Silence is golden…but only when it’s a comfortable silence.
—
The Fury Of Abandonment
Anne Sexton
Someone lives in a cave
eating his toes,
I know that much.
Someone little lives under a bush
pressing an empty Coca-Cola can against
his starving bloated stomac,
I know that much.
A monkey had his hands cut off
for a medical experiment
and his claws wept.
I know tht much.
I know that it is all
a matter of hands.
Out of the mournful sweetness of touching
comes love
like breakfast.
Out of the many houses come the hands
before the abandonment of the city,
out of hte bars and shops,
a thin file of ants.
I’ve been abandoned out here
under the dry stars
with no shoes, no belt
and I’ve called Rescue Inc. -
that old-fashioned hot line -
no voice.
Left to my own lips, touch them,
my own nostrils, shoulders, breasts,
navel, stomach, mound, kneebone, ankle,
touch them.
It makes me laugh
to see a woman in this condition.
It makes me laugh for America and New York city
when your hands are cut off
and no one answers the phone.
bravery
0“Be brave,” he said. “Be brave with your words. Toss them out there, raw, aching, calling out to the world.”
“You will know freedom only then.”
I am brave. Sometimes.
I will write to write, not worrying about form, function, syntax, grammar…
Rules.
I will write to write, not worrying about offending, interrupting, angering, softening…
People.
I will write to write…
but only to myself.
I am not brave with my words when I write to others.
I hold back. I am careful. I think too much. I care too much.
Will these hurt? Will they anger? Will they…?
You do not see me.
I do not see me.
Because I’m not brave.
But I want to be…
Brave.
Free.
—
Medusa
Amy Clampitt
The tentacles, the brazen phiz whose glare
stands every fibril on the mind on end –
lust looked at backward as it were,
an antique scare tactic, either self-protection
or a libel on the sex whose periodic
blossom hangs its ungathered garland
from the horned clockwork of the moon:
as cause or consequence, or both, hysteric
symptoms no doubt figure here. She’d been
a beauty til Poseidon in a flagrant
trespass, closed with her on Athena’s temple floor.
The tide-up torrents in the blood, the dark
gods not to be denied — or a mere indiscretion?
Athena had no time at all for talk like this.
The sea-god might be her old rival, but the woman
he’d gone to bed with was the one who paid.
A virginal revenge at one remove — there’s none more
sordid or more apt to ramify, as this one did:
the fulgent tresses roiled to water-snake-
like writhe, and for long lashes’
come-hither flutterings, the stare
that hardens the psyche’s soft parts to rock.
The female ogre, for the Puritan
revisionists who took her over, had a new
and siren sliminess. John Milton
put her at the gate of hell, a woman to
the waist, and fair; but ended foul, in
many a scaly fold, voluminous and vast –
whose name indeed was Sin. And in the den
of doctrine run amok, the armored glister
of a plodding Holiness revealed her
as likewise divided but, all told, most
loathsome, filthy, foul, and full of vile disdain.
The Gorgon, though, is no such Manichean tease,
no mantrap caterer of forbidden dishes,
whose lewd stews keep transgression warm.
The stinging jellyfish, the tubeworm,
the tunicate, the sea anemone’s
whorled comb are privier to her mysteries:
her salts are cold, her home-
land Hyperborean (the realm that gave us
the Snow Queen and the English gentleman),
her mask the ravening aspect of the moon,
her theater a threshing floor that terror froze.
Terror of origins: the sea’s heave, the cold mother
of us all; disdain of the allure that draws us in,
that stifles as it nurtures, that feeds on
what it feeds, on what it comforts, whether male
or female: ay, in the very tissue of desire
lodge viscid barbs that turn the blood to coral,
the heartbeat to a bed of silicates. What surgeon
can unthread those muliplicities of cause
of hurt from its effect; dislodge, spicule by spicule,
the fearful armories within; unclench the airless
petrifaction towared the core, the geode’s rigor?
honestly…
0Honesty is important to me. It’s important to me to the point that it sometimes hurts. I’m the world’s worst liar so I don’t even try to do that. But when you have to tell someone something that you wish you didn’t, that honesty can hurt. It may hurt the other person. It definitely can hurt me.
I don’t like upsetting other people. I don’t like causing drama or anger or upset feelings. It’s upsetting to me. Sometimes, when you have to be honest about something, this can happen. It’s not intentional. It’s not desired. But it happens.
I could wail to the gods that I wish I didn’t have to be this honest, that why is it up to me to share this information. It wouldn’t help, though. It won’t change anything.
So I shed my tears that come from as deep within as there is, straight from the belly of my soul.
And then I dry my face and I try to get past the situation that hurts.
Because, to me, there is little as important as my integrity. And that comes from honesty.