Anchester House

I like the idea of naming houses, the way they do in Anne of Green Gables. Growing up, I called my many houses by their street names: Otillia, Merit, Baker Park, Foxchase, Cornelius. The formulaic naming process served a functional purpose, so creativity and meaningfulness weren't factored in. But one day, when I buy a house, I'd like to name it based on its personality.

Tonight I'm going to Anchester House to visit three Grand Rapids Dominicans, and I'm curious to learn the origins of its name.

Unmotivated

By brain is mush.
There is mush sloshing around in my stomach.
The ground is covered with mush.

"Mush!" is a command for sled dogs to get going.

Screw Your Neighbor

Yesterday I beat four Sisters at the game "Screw Your Neighbor."

If you think you know nuns, come over to the Fort...

In Which a Daughter Abandons her Mother on Thanksgiving

I'm having Thanksgiving with the sisters today. My mom gave me a lot of guilt for this, maybe half-jokingly, but I can't help enjoying their company, even if they are always telling stories about people I don't know.

I've decided that key ingredients of community life are stories (repeatedly told...are they tapping into an oral tradition?) and traditions. Today, as a sort of belated initiation, I will experience two traditional rites to which Sister Kathi typically exposes newcomers.

The first is a movie called Brides of Christ, a six-part series about religious sisterhood that Sister Chris and Sister Kathi can recite by heart.

The second is the performance of poetry for multiple voices. (Yes, I'm getting it now...just like minstrels or tribal gatherings--spoken word and song!)

My mom and I always batter the ears of familial guests with a piano duet at holiday gatherings. Maybe this year I'll suggest that we perform a poem.

I tried to teach my mother how to read poetry once. We were in the kitchen, attempting lemon bars. My mom sprung upon the recipe as a found poem, and it was a good one, too. But she couldn't master the dreamy affect it required, the pacing, the flow. When I demonstrated, she grabbed the video camera and tried to tape me. Certain blackmail. We were so loopy that night. I think we ended up as heaps on the floor, sides splitting and the lemon bars unbaked.

Maybe I shouldn't have left her home alone today...

I Want a Velociraptor

Today I'm hunting for dinosaur tattoos.

I want a velociraptor on my left bicep.

TODAY

I am overwhelmed. A semester's worth of work--making miniscule changes to computer programs, running subjects eight hours a day in the frigid AB basement, crunching and recrunching numbers--will culminate next Monday.

But today, I did not add to my report, begin my powerpoint presentation, or prepare in any way.

Instead, I meditated, napped, and won a poetry slam.

Even if the rest of the week is killer, living in the present is sweet.

[When Monday, Dec. 1st becomes the present, you can hear about "The Role of Religious Orientation in Attitudes Toward Homosexuality" at 1:30 pm in the Donnelly Center!]

For Now

First real snowfall.
Yep, you're allowed to be excited.
For now.

Fakesgiving 2.0

Jon and his roommates are having Thanksgiving today. Last night, they covered the walls of apartment H1 with Pocahontases and pumpkins, hung autumn leaf tinsel from the ceilings. They worked on Tessie the turkey, making an emergency call to a friend to find out that the lump of flesh dangling from her body was a head, and that they would have to pull it off. At first, with rubber gloves, they looked like surgeons. Later, after they cocooned their heads in plastic wrap (a hole poked out for a mouth), it was hard to say.

Leggings

From age 6 to age 12, I wore leggings. Black, burgundy, stirrups or no, topped with a too-big t-shirt.

I remember waiting in line to leave the cafeteria once, when a boy in my class asked me (not unkindly), "How come you never wear jeans?"

Jeans were stiff and uncomfortable, too hard to unbutton. Leggings hugged me, moved with me, a soft safe feeling.

Yesterday, I wore leggings for the first time since sixth grade. I was going to a wedding and wanted to show off a dress I got this summer, but the 30 degree weather demanded additional fabric. Leggings were the answer.

I had some vague recollection that leggings were back in style, though my fashion sense is limited to my not-so-savvy observation skills and the accidental glance at Sunday ads for Kohls and Kmart.

So I hopped over to the mall and hit up TJ Maxx. Six bucks. 96% spandex.

Putting them on was like a blast from the past, an "aha" moment as I reunited with a former life, my younger self. No wonder I loved leggings so much. The sensory feedback--the pressure--is calming. They are like a second skin. Nothing like the flimsy itchiness of nylons. If it were socially acceptable to wear one of those full-body leotards--a whole suit of the stretchy stuff--I would.

Elements

As often as I can, I steel myself against the elements to travel by foot. So much of the world is lost when viewed through a car window: the smell of winter coming, the softness or hardness of the ground, the sounds of other life forms--mutterings of sparrows and squirrels, the click click click of a bicylcle chain, phrases of small children.

Today I took a different way home, a path through the MaryWoods behind the Mother House, which snaked along a creek and over a wooden bridge. Longer, but more interesting...papery layer of ice balanced on the water, frosted mud crunching under my feet like rice crispies.

When I came inside, I pressed my tongue between my teeth and the inside of my lower lip to find that the pocket had been refrigerated by the air outside. I am becoming the elements!

Twenty One

How do I explain why I won't be drinking on my 21st birthday?

It's not that I morally object to alcohol.

I'm not opposed to the consumption of the brain-altering barbiturate, in moderate doses.

I probably won't spend my whole life, or even my 21st year, abstaining from this substance.

But today, the day on which I have been offered free booze from basic strangers, I will not be drinking.

Call it a "sit-out," a sort of protest in objection to the way society pushes alcohol. It's a cure-all and an instant entertainer. It's a magical elixer that erases stress and manufactures happiness. It's a requirement for social interaction.

If I had to choose one person with whom to drink a birthday toast, I think it would be my friend Holly. She knows me well enough to grasp, intuitively, that getting trashed would not be exciting or enjoyable, and would not question or attempt to change my point of view. Instead, she would understand the significance of the drink--a symbol of the passage from one stage into another, the celebration of this continued journey to maturity.

But today, I will drink life as a toast. I will perceive with utmost alertness the surprise of streamers fluttering in my doorway, a rose floating on my windowsill, a room with filled with the glow of candles and celebration prayers.

Relaxed, happy, silly in my own skin. Sober.

Poetry Hall of Fame

Tomorrow, my birthday, I will be inducted into Lambda Iota Tau, or LIT, the national honors society for English majors and minors (or Writing Minors, in my case).

Sr. Kathi has dubbed this The Poetry Hall of Fame, which is deceiving, since I may be the only one out of the three inducted this month to read poetry at the event. And even if my poetry was really terrible (which some bigwig at the LIT office five states away might think it is), it wouldn't matter, because admission is based on GPA, not writing quality.

But "Poetry Hall of Fame" has a good ring to it, and Sr. Kathi's enthusiasm flatters me. I think I'll keep it.

First Flesh

After a solid six years, I have decided to start eating meat again.

Last night I ate three bites of chicken. My body seemed to tolerate this first flesh, although its texture was oddly foreign in my mouth.

It's not officially the first meat I've eaten after six purely meatless years. I've tolerated bits of pepperoni stuck under pizza cheese, sampled meat dishes served to me by well-meaning hosts, and surely consumed a large amount of beef fat and chicken base disguised in Taco Bell burritos and Wege soups.

But it was the first meat I ate intentionally--on purpose, for the sake of eating it. The first time I relinquished my self-specified identity as a Vegetarian.

And who am I now? An ordinary meat eater, I suppose, at least for the next few months. One Who Eats Turkey at Thanksgiving. One Who Seeks Not to Be Seen as a Picky Eater in Another Country.

As for this summer, when I return from Costa Rica?

It's probably back to the Boca burgers for me.

On the Desk of President Balog

Adam Hii and I wrote this yesterday, and today Adam got it into Balog's hands. It's on the agenda for his Cabinet meeting tomorrow.

I will keep my expectations low. It's something to do, to console myself I'm not just sitting on my hands. I will not let my voice be silenced, even if I must speak the red tape language of bureaucratic institutions.

But when I'm 90 and this finally goes through, I'm throwing a party.

Proposal to enhance the Aquinas College non-discrimination policy:

Aquinas College, a community rooted in the Catholic commitment to human dignity, embodies a diverse population of students and staff. Currently, the Aquinas College non-discrimination policy appearing in the student handbook and the Course Catalog does not protect against all forms of discrimination. In order to demonstrate value for all those who attend, live, and work at Aquinas, we encourage the expansion of the current non-discrimination policy to address gender, gender identity and sexual orientation. The changes we propose aim to promote a more inclusive and safe environment for all members of this community. Many other Catholic universities acknowledge the importance of protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students and staff. The three colleges collaborating with Aquinas through the Dominican exchange program—Barry University, St. Thomas Aquinas College, and Dominican University—include gender, gender identity and sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policies. Adopting these changes, in keeping with the example set by our partner schools, will solidify Aquinas' commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Megachurch Mystic

Who knew my latest prayer practice, an ancient no-frills form of meditation, would be touted by Modern Megachurch Mars Hill?

Centering prayer is a form of imageless, nearly wordless focus. Breathing slowly, per meditative practice, one silently repeats a name of God (or a phrase, such as "Be still"), examines distractions that arise, and then releases them. The practice can be simultaneously calming and energizing.

Although Rob Bell did not lead his hundreds of followers in centering prayer, he mentioned it several times and opened the sermon with an exercise that scraped its surface, a high-tech multi-media introduction to the rudiments of meditation. Using a "breathing belt" to track the rate of his breaths on a video screen, Bell reduced his audience's breathing pace from the typical American's 20 breaths per minute to 6.

Breathe in.

Wait.

Breathe out.

Alive

Last night, the rain softened the silver bark of the beech trees to brown skin.

This morning, I saw three live giants bending and stretching outside AB--like humans, only more alive.

"a moment so long-drawn-out all time pauses"

When you take a minute--five, ten, twenty minutes--to stop everything and become connected with yourself, with God, with the universe, Time stretches out and expands.

When I use those twenty minutes I might spend aimlessly wandering Facebook or staring at my books thinking, "I should start that paper," to focus, really focus--everything else becomes easier to focus on.

When I center myself, things tend to fall into place.

Cento: A Poetry Experiment

The Cento is an ancient form of poetry collage in which one selects lines from existing poems and cobbles them together to create a whole new poem.

I admit, my poet ego was a tiny bit offended at the idea of writing a poem without any of my own words in it. Plus, after years of anti-plagiarism propaganda pounded into my head by various teachers, it was weird to be handed an assignment actually encouraging me to rip off other writers.

But it was a fun experiment, and all you English geeks out there should give it a go.

Here's what I came up with:

The Meaning of Life (our assigned topic)

A favorite child:
a kid skipping rope
in the sun,
singing out within the passing crash of the sun.

Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
potatoes for breakfast,
ten cents.

Pillowcases and blue jeans,
that red shirt,
that printed dress you had,
those glowing socks.

The same person in two places,
two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

The very rare green deer,
the horses who moaned like oceans,
a kind lion,
flank of a tiger in mid-leap.

The black birds at gravesites,
one black-haired tree
talking in the wind,
a hundred wheels tearing like time.
The words broken bones,
jagged stories of storms—
our common fear.

A diamond blind in the black belly of coal,
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame.

The ongoing drone of a star—
blue-white delight—
sacred and anonymous.
Tidal creeks sweeping out to sea,
this old, beautiful ritual,
a moment so long-drawn-out all time pauses.

Your breath inside its own hollows,
full of vaporous hope.



(Each line comes from a different poem. In order, they are: "The Earth is a Living Thing"-Lucille Clifton, "The Base Stealer"-Robert Francis, "Beer Bottle"-Ted Kooser, "Coal"-Audre Lorde, "The God Who Loves You"-Carl Dennis, "Green Chile"-Jimmy Santiago Baca, "Small Wire"-Anne Sexton, "After Polio"-Scott Hightower, "Power"-Corrine Hales, "On the Table"-Andrew Motion, "Ode to My Socks"-Pablo Neruda/tr. Robert Bly, "Explaining a Husband"-Alberto Ross, "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter-Rihaku/tr. Ezra Pound, "Ode to My Socks" again, "Ice Horses"-Joy Harjo, "Sekhmet, the Lion-headed Goddess of War"-Margaret Atwood, "Green Chile" again, "Relations"-?, "The Starry Night"-Anne Sexton, ?, "Power" again, "Heft"-Richard Jones, "IX, part 6"-Jimmy Santiago Baca, "Theology"-Tara Bray, "The Earth is a Living Thing" again, "Coal" again, "The Deaf Dancing to Rock"-Liesel Mueller, "Silenced"-Tara Bray, "Unholy Sonnet"-Mark Jarman, "If Only"-John Balaban, "Green Chile" again, "The Bay at West Falmouth"-Barbara Howes, "Portrait"-Pattiann Rogers, "The Best Cigarette"-Billy Collins).

PMS: Pretty Much Stressed

Major upset: I misplaced my mitten.

During a day packed with classes, I found myself racing back and forth between campus and the Fort...no time for lunch, late to class, forgot to save a file on my flash drive.

Then, as I was about to head home for the final time, I reached my hand into my righthand pocket and found it empty of the righthand mitten that resides there.

Panic.

Why is it that I can't keep track of my belongings? It should be simple thing. Mittens, for instance: most people graduate from their mom clipping mittens to their sleeves after age eight.

But there I was at 5:45 pm, late for dinner at the Fort, frantically retracing the last three hours of my steps. Classroom, hallway, stairwell, lobby, classroom, stairwell, classroom. After the fourth time I obsessively scrutinized the floor of my Journalism classroom, eyeballs ricocheting like pinballs at a speed too frenzied to register any coherent object, I was nearly in tears.

Why cry over a mitten?

First of all, because it's not just any mitten. It's MY mitten, my toasty warm beautiful mitten, and part of the only pair I have aside from a some well-loved gloves with holes growing in the fingertips. Second, because it's part of the recently-cursed winter ensemble I meticulously assembled before my first year of college: high tech brands at brilliant clearance prices. Now, the hat and coat have disappeared in a manner of weeks, and all I have left are the mittens.

By the time I made it to the third floor of the Academic Building, I was nearly hyperventilating (granted, this may have been more a product of running up three flights of stairs than of my increasing anxiety and frustration). But when I stormed into the Computer Lab, coming unglued, there it lay, limply upturned where it had fallen from my pocket, illuminated by a pool of light from heaven.

I snatched it up, pulled it on, chastised my mitten and myself, and headed back to the Fort for a drink.

My beverage of choice in times of stress?

Chocolate milk.

We never buy it--I'm sure no one else in the house is that keen on it, and I believe it too frivolous to request on the shopping list. But there in the refrigerator when I finally reached home, was a half-gallon on the first shelf, waiting for me.

Unprepared

My shoes--Merrells I got for $8 at Mel Trotter five years ago--have holes in them.

I lost my waterproof coat.

And my warm winter hat.

Oh, snow.

No.

Where's the logic behind this one?

Fun fact of the day: 64% of Republicans polled Friday say they would support Sarah Palin for President in 2012.

Although I could probably come up with some psychological justifications for this overwhelmingly odd response, I am still left with one question:

What?

I Helped a Ham Hank

Helped out at the YWCA crisis center today. After getting a tour of the house and learning everything there is to know about the domestic violence shelter there, we got to work. We were, of course, behind the scenes: sorting clothes, breaking down boxes, and organizing the freezer. I helped coral ham hanks from chicken chunks and ice cream bars. All the pork steaks are piled in one area now. I think they'll be happy together.

XO: Hugs and Kisses to a Lovely Friday Out

Jon and I went to XO Asian Cuisine yesterday after hearing it mentioned all around. I was very pleased with the ambiance and, more so, with the green curry, which Audria suggested in Journalism. Nice and spicy, sweet and coconuty, and I enjoyed mushrooms for the first time (shitake!).

We hopped into Little Bohemia after dinner to visit Clark, their cash register cat. As usual, I only allowed myself to eyeball the fun shoes and hats and other artsy things...easier on the budget.

Overall, it was a charming evening on Monroe Center.

Dangling Modifiers

We saw two rattlesnakes driving through the desert.

(The adaptive vehicle allowed them to steer with their tails.)

Election Logic

If McCain / Palin wins = Kyla moves to Canada,
then does Obama / Biden wins = Rush Limbaugh moves to Canada?

No...the equation does not seem so tightly parallel. Sister Kathi suggests a modification:
Obama / Biden wins = Rush Limbaugh moves to Iran.

She's getting him a one-way ticket for Christmas, before he can make any comments that might get her golden boy pres elect assassinated.

Besides, she says, he'll be more comfortable there.

Dwain Reynolds the Third

A kid from my hometown is running for State Board of Ed. Qualifications? Day care teacher, and a degree in progress at Western.

But I voted for him. For old times sake. For the times he jacked off in Intro Spanish and theater rehearsal. For the day he pronouced the word epitome "ep-i-tohm."

Because he's running with the Green Party and probably won't make it anyway. Because I wasn't brave enough to write in a candidate for the Big Shot spot. Because I voted even though I have no faith in the governmental system.

What the hell. Go Dwain.

Advertising Ethics

"Attend one of the most open-hearted, open-minded colleges in America."

This is the slogan that greeted me on the Aquinas website when I logged out of my school e-mail account today...

...plastered, no less, next to Jeeps' sunbathed face, a guy who still couldn't get my name right after we both worked as RAs for a year. And I'm pretty sure this whitebread kid is not the shining example of open-mindedness.

I know, I know--tell that to the webpage designer or the marketing specialist. Who cares about Jeeps' personal diversity ethic.

But what about Aquinas?

Maybe if the tagline read, "one of the most open-minded private colleges in West Michigan"...

But in America?

Sure, one could amass a list of institutions that are far more snobbish, bigoted, and single-minded. Just look up any Ivy League school, or take a drive down the East Beltline, for that matter.

And I did originally come to Aquinas because it seemed so much more welcoming than some of these.

But in light of recent events, a new policy, and a diversity statement with glaring silences, I'm not so sure. This statement, with which I once might have mildly agreed, now seems to whitewash the truth, to carry a hidden seed of hypocrisy I find unsettling.

Philanthropy

Today I sat in a room with a twelve year old and made silly faces at her for an hour.

Yes, my volunteer hours will change the world.

Fatalistic

Talking to people in the army about our country's wars always makes me wonder whether we really live in a democracy or are just very well brainwashed.

My friend tells me his unit is packing up and pulling out of Iraq in the next two months. He also is certain his next deployment, within the next few years, will be to Afghanistan.

If the military is already planning the course of these never ending wars, how meaningful is all this debate about it? How much of a mystery is it, really?

I have a feeling that people in politics, when they are debating something like diplomatic strategy, already know how it's going to go down. They may make it seem like they're not sure what will happen--they say they'll do this or that if such and such does end up happening--and then, when that day comes: oops, Iran DID move its left pinky finger; guess we'll have to bomb everyone to hell. Surprise! But that was the plan all along.

So what's the use? We The People don't really have any say, unless you count Big Business as a people. Maybe the only reason Bush was such a bad president is that his disguise slipped and we realized what government has been all along.

Voting pacifies the masses.

And will I vote?

Yes. God bless Democracy.