This weekend was full of distractions, drinking, and sleep. Friday night crept into Sunday morning quickly. Home at 4:45 am. No reason for me to have been driving my car after all of the that vodka I drank. I was drinking because I was happy. This decision has brought with it a surge of powerful energy. I have felt dead since June 26th, 2004. Until last week, for the most part. Dead. Lifeless. Forcing most enthusiasm. Feeling little faith in my abilities. Having so little time to work to improve my personal essay writing (the academic shit I have down; informative, expository essays are no problem. It’s the personal that fucks with me.) But the energy is galloping back with a vengeance. In “Beyond Ecology” by Neil Evernden, he talks about “the individual as a component of, not something distinct from, the rest of the environment.” He also discusses this fish called the cichlid. The fish is small, but it’s a bad ass. It makes itself think it is as big as its territory so it can compete for sustenance; “the fish is no longer an organism bounded by skin--it is an organism-plus-environment bounded by an imaginary integument.” (An integument is, according to Definition Number 5 on www.dictionary.com, “an outer protective covering such as the skin of an animal or a cuticle or seed coat or rind or shell.”)

When I first read this essay, I was living in NYC. The essay emboldened me to lap up the energy the people on the subways and in the streets provide, to swim with the other sea creatures, as opposed to darting from them, letting them annoy me, wear me out.
Now, instead, my feeling recalls the essay (for the past two days, at least): I am the fish and I am part of the environment, my familial environment, my social environment. I do not feel outside of the happenings; I feel inside of them; I’m taking part. So often I feel so “distinct” from my surroundings. I am a petite, over excitable, 32 year old woman fighting to possess more confidence and drive, and I am making myself bigger, wrapping my arms around my grandmother’s home and its visitors, my family, and around the entire bar and everyone in it.

What I need to be watch out for is the little fish engulfing absolutely everything and leaving little room for others to breathe. Sometimes, though, it’ll be the others who need to become cichlids.

Friday. The vodka. The good new feeling. Super spazzy Jen in effect. Accompanying my friend M to a show so he could make contact with someone who was interested in him. He was unsure of his interest, but he not rash. He made an effort. He was smart about it. People always have their guards up because we’ve all been so burned by those we’ve dated, attempted to date. Those who like us but are afraid, and vice versa…But I was impressed at how rational he was about it. You have to at least try, sometimes, even if the person is not generally your “type.”

Back to the bar that is too comfortable to me. I am not going to meet new people in that bar. Just new acquaintances, maybe, but I keep going back. Happily, my friend and favorite bartender, WCZ, was still sitting where we had left him. The one who got shot in the ass by a thug the night before Thanksgiving hovered in the back. M and I “berated the pitfalls of the opposite sex” as my Maddog so aptly puts it. And we antagonized the one who got shot. A few people said it was kharma, but they also made clear they wouldn’t be joking if the victim had been seriously hurt.

Things get blurry with the fourth and fifth vodkas. (Milwaukee bartenders make such strong drinks!) My good feeling is transitioning into rowdy craziness. But that’s ok, because then my hot acquaintance Ms. S arrives and she can hardly stand. I grope her at the bar. T comes in moments later, smiley and looking dapper. WCZ hugs him, happy that the person he can so easily converse with has finally arrived. My feeling does good when I literally ensconce T in a little Jenny bear hug and pronounce that I never want us to fight again! He says all is ok, and a wave of relief overwhelms me briefly. I had been wanting to ensure that things were all right, but I hadn’t known how. Sometimes drunken, spur of the moment simplicity works best.

When last call rolls around, the owner is playing Thin Lizzy, three songs in a row, including “The Cowboy Song.” I grab my young acquaintance and attempt to dance in the aisle but we are so trashed we just fall around. T okays a small after bar at his place. I tell the bartender that he MUST come, and I convince WCZ by brazenly/obnoxiously trotting behind the bar and telling him passionately that he, too, has to come! Ms. S brings her hipster hairdresser friend who is moving to NYC and is talking about it in that naive, pretentious way that people who are about to move to NYC do. (I can talk shit because I'm sure I sounded the same way four years ago.)

I am at my limit now and should not be drinking anymore. The little fish is in everyone’s lap. Everything is drunkenly surreal and crazy, and I hate that I not be able to accurately convey the scenes and the feeling. So hard for me describe feelings. At the end of the night, when T becomes weary and politely lets me know, the guys separate from the ladies. They walk while we carry on, all a little too much to handle at this point, and I end up at the hipster’s house briefly. I shouldn’t be there, but I want to make sure Ms. S is okay, and she is, she has her friend. I go home shortly after, falling in the slush as I try to open my car door.

The next morning, I awake hungover and paranoid. What did I do? Did I make a foolish spectacle of myself? The feeling can’t push through the hangover. I make some calls and discover all is well. This time.

I have to make some food now. I have to read that fucking theory. I could just stop now, I suppose. Don’t turn in the projects, maybe even stop going. Does it matter that I paid over $3200 for these classes? I’ve never given up on school though, and in 26 days, I will forever retire my role as full-time student in a formal academic setting. More time to be spent writing. Good shit, better than what is written here. (I hate how this writing reads, looks, feels.) Writing that doesn't center so often on bartime shenanigans and neurouses. Writing that better resembles that of Katha Pollitt, bell hooks.

I want to be a cichlid, albeit one who imbibes a little less vodka, swimming amongst the other urchin.

An American cliché that I really wouldn’t trade.

Thanksgiving Day, 2005, begins with a phone call to my parents around 12:15pm.
My step dad answers.
“Do you guys have Cool Whip ™?”
“Well lemme see…no Cool Whip.”
“Ask Mom if Grandma has it.”
“Helen, does your mother have Cool Whip?”
My mom, in the background announces that [my aunt] “Mary is bringing the Cool Whip and the buns.”
I get ready to hang up the phone but then hear my mom making exaggerated, shrieky complaining sounds. She yells, “Come save me Jenny!”
“What is wrong with her?! She sounds nuts again!” I say to my step dad.
He says something about oysters that I can’t completely understand, and I tell him to tell her to calm down, I’ll be there in 45 minutes.
***
I arrive in Oak Creek with my pumpkin pie an hour later. Their townhome smells like turkey, as my mom bakes it now and we transport it to my grandma’s. We are also bringing an Apple Pie in the Bag ™. As usual, my mom is in the half bath that is off of the kitchen, teasing and mercilessly hairspraying her hair. My step dad is getting anxious to leave. He has to pass the time somehow, so he is up in the den. He runs downstairs to ask her a question about the Christmas gift is ordering for online from Macy’s; he wants to know if she prefers the tote bag or the cosmetics bag as the free gift that will accompany the perfume purchase. She goes upstairs to make her selection. Oddly, I forget to ask her what she chose, but I was more curious to know why my mother was behaving like a tard earlier, so I ask:
“What was the deal with the oysters earlier, Mom?”
We both hover around the kitchen island.
“My house smelled like Thanksgiving and he opened a can of oysters!”
I just smiled. That is so my mom to protest the slightest infringement on her delicate constitution. And that is so my step dad to eat something quick and disgusting for lunch instead of taking the time to heat up a can of soup or scramble some eggs.
***
We arrive to my grandmother’s house in Kenosha, near the Steam Baths, my former elementary and junior high schools, and Tenuta’s Italian grocery and spirits around 2:15. My uncle, aunt and my aunt’s mother will be arriving within the hour. Grandma has not put out her vegetable snack tray this year, but we make do with some Claussen’s garlic pickles, my favorite kind. They, too, offend my mother.
My mom and I help my grandma with various kitchen tasks like baking the rolls, making the gravy, setting the table, scooping out the store-bought jello (we didn’t even have cranberry sauce this year!) The turkey is a fifteen pounder, a Butterball, of course. It is the moistest turkey I remember having in years (even though for the previous 10 or so years, I didn’t always eat turkey or, like the time two years ago in NYC during our Friendsgiving feast and Judi the food stylist’s turkey dinner, I snuck pieces of it and ate it guiltily because I was “mostly vegetarian”).
Our dinner went on as it usually does. People ate greedily, although we generally added “please” or “thank you” when commanding someone to pass the stuffing, gravy, butter, or salt. It is slightly tense at times when my working class, pizzeria owning aunt fed the dog she cares for with my uncle, named JD (for Jack Dudeck), carrot chunks from the table. My step dad can not STAND having an animal lurking near the table. I don’t blame him, but I always worry he is going to go off on her about the dog like he did that one year, which resulted in her leaving in a huff.
Always during our family gatherings, crass jokes are made. People cuss, and fart, and then make fart jokes. (My uncle, who I refer to as a “Harlier” due to his penchant for buying brand new, shiny, Harley Davidson motorcycles every other year, is the premier farter, but I believe he did not fart at the table this year.)
The crass talk was surprisingly scarce this year. However, my aunt’s mother, sporting a blue fleece sweatshirt splashed with tie-dyed smiley faces, made one attempt. She began to make a comment but then switched gears because “it was too nasty.” My mother, looking to avoid conflict when there isn’t any, and also knowing full well anything goes, said not to say it, then. Meanwhile, I’m shrieking that it being nasty has never stopped anyone before, and my cute, sassy 82-year-old grandma, clad in a pink sweater, gray slacks, and the pink and gray socks adorned with an image of a deer on them that I bought her for Christmas last year, yells, “If it’s nasty, I wanna hear it!”
My aunt’s mother makes some comment about how men walk off kilter because they have three legs (I have no idea what prompts her to bring this up).
My grandma, unimpressed, aptly notes that “Well, we’ve heard worse!” and I turn to her and say, “I’ve heard you say worse!” We all laugh.
Later, we all consume too much pie, and my uncle, who outweighs my little step dad by 100 pounds, sits next to him on the couch, both of their bellies flopping out over their waistbands as they stare at the football game that’s on TV while my mom, Aunt and I wash, dry, and put away the dishes and I pack up bags of leftovers.

11-14-2005

I really enjoyed hearing Jonathan Kozol speak tonight. He’s written several books--or narratives, as he terms them, about the plight of inner city schools in America. He was also fired from teaching 4th grade once in the 1960s, I believe, because he taught a Langston Hughes poem, which wasn’t part of the curriculum. I have only read Savage Inequalities.
*****
It was an assigned text in my English 112 class. I took that class in 1993 and I still remember that book and how its stark depiction of the differences between the inner city school and the affluent school across the way--literally just across the state line, I believe. I recently read the excerpt from his new book Shame of the Nation that is featured in the September issue of Harper’s. I want to read it in its entirety when it becomes available in paperback. Even though I’m a college teacher, issues of inequality in our schools affect me because they have affected many students I have taught and will teach. And these inequalities simply piss me off. It’s fucking 2005. “Minorities” aren’t really minority now are they? Blacks make up almost half of Milwaukee’s population. Hispanics follow them, and Hmongs follow them. So probably at least half or God no more than half of Milwaukee’s population are “minorities.” It’s so ridiculous that we--mostly, but not solely, middle class, educated whites--have to keep theorizing about “minorities” like they are some alien species that needs to be examined, especially when it comes to children. It seems like such common sense. Treat all children of all race and class backgrounds equally.
*****
But Kozol reports that in America, there’s a form of apartheid occurring--his term. Most inner city/urban schools are composed around 90% if not more of Latino and African American students. Most of these schools have much less financing than other schools in the suburbs or wealthier urban areas. For example, Kozol recounted that the school system spends $11,000 per child in The Bronx, but in its northern suburb, which is a ten minute train ride away, the school system spends $19,000 per child and there is a 0% child poverty rate, which is unheard of in urban areas. Kozol talked about schools where the children/teens tell him to come in see their cafeterias, many of which are housed in dank basements. Their schools often have failing plumbing, so sometimes even the bathroom facilities are beyond sub-par, and/or the building’s roof leaks. If you think I’m exaggerating, just find that Harper’s article or his book. It’s all there. At one school he mentioned, there are 7 lunch periods because there are so many students. SEVEN LUNCH PERIODS. The first one starts at around 9:30am! Nonsensical! This may be the school in LA that houses 5000 students. And I thought there were a lot of kids at my high school (around 2700). We had a huge cafeteria, pretty small class sizes (around 20, if not less--some of these urban schools pack in 40 students per class.) We had the nice salad bar that also worked as a taco salad bar and baked potato bar. We were able to purchase ice cream cones and other sweets for desserts. Upper classmen/women could leave campus. I can’t imagine what’s available at some of these schools, and it’s so strange to think that in a way I was blessed by being able to go to that suburban school that I detested.

Kozol also threw in several barbs at George W. and the rest of the “arrogant politicians,” which the packed crowd of Milwaukee area teachers appreciated. He staunchly critiqued Bush for feeling that he is calling for something new when he says teachers must “strive for excellence.” Kozol commented something like, “Does he think we [teachers] are somehow innately programmed to strive for mediocrity?” and went on to lambaste Bush for calling for high stakes testing but not even providing all schools equal materials and means to go about achieving such “high standards” (not that Kozol is in favor of such standardized tests.) He also asserted that the politicians who criticize teachers so easily should try to teach a class one full day in our shoes, although he then admitted that Bush should not be allowed to enter a classroom! He sadly reminded me that in schools these days, there is no room for the children’s (or the teacher’s!) “tears,” “laughter,” or “joy,” something bell hooks writes about passionately in Teaching to Transgress. There has to be room for students, especially little ones, especially teens grappling with hormones, especially teenagers wondering what to do with their lives, to experience openly emotion in classrooms and not just be dictated to in order to do well on some stupid tests that hardly measure a student’s capabilities. I think teachers across America would have to collectively revolt to achieve a major change, but then George W would just replace them all with robots. It’s a very fucked up state of affairs. I feel limited enough teaching First Year Composition; I can not imagine how these public school teachers get through the day. As he concluded (after an audience member had to be removed out of the bookshop by paramedics!), he said he was passing on the torch to all the young teachers he saw in the audience and that he was counting on us. That inspired me; gave me a bit of validation that is hard for me to find these days.

Tutoring yesterday. One of the students taking the class I SHOULD be teaching next year comes in, completely overwhelmed, eyes blood shot, just worn down. He is making himself crazy trying to make sense of an essay about the discourse of gene action and trying to figure out how it relates to this other difficult essay about scientific discovery. He at first resists using the dictionary but by the end of the session he grabs for it. I help him make sense of the text, a little, show him how to break down a difficult passage (well, they all are). But mostly I advise him to stop being so hard on himself, to give himself a break--take the night off from this essay--and to just work with the few passages he can actually understand. I can relate to feeling so frustrated, on a student level, but on a teacher level I start to get mad. I understand the purpose of assigning difficult, theoretical readings to students right off the bat; they need to be challenged, especially at my school, which does call for academic rigor. Their readings aren’t going to get much easier as they move on, so they should learn how to work with difficult texts and how to make connections between seemingly disparate topics. But when choosing such difficult texts, it would seem to make sense to concentrate on subject matter that is more general. In the lower level classes, their readings are about affirmative action and teaching middle class values. The readings are lengthy and complex, but they’re about stuff students have heard about to some degree (and I guess some of those essays don’t need to be SO complex; they are graduate level readings). Gene action, however, is not something people outside of the sciences have general knowledge about. Seeing this student and others so frustrated is not easy. I know I am going to get mad next year WHEN I teach, even though I understand the departmental rationale.

You've got to me kidding me. This WI rep (Mark someone from New Berlin) is on NPR defending his stance against gay marriage by saying that allowing it will make the institution less "unique." He seriously compared marriage to something that is "rarely given out" like a "gold medal." Granting marriages is rare?!? He's saying marriage is the "cornerstone of society" and that the "man-woman marriage has worked great!" Marriage needs "mean something." Now he's saying that yeah, there are problems within straight marriages and they need to treat their marriages more like "gold medals" that are special. Fucking hypocrite. If these people were so concerned about the state of marriage in general they would be enacting legislation that affects straight people who want to marry also. He is also admittedly worried about "maintaining the status quo." There. At least he said it. When are these goddamn fools going to wake up and walk out of their bubble and realize no matter what discriminatory laws they pass that people will be diverse in their actions, thoughts, beliefs...and that that is okay. We don't all have to be THE SAME in order for society to be productive. So frustrating. People and their fear. FRUSTRATING!

2 November 2005

Today:

Work. Interspersed with naps and several pooping adventures. I have to wonder if it’s the vitamins.

Tutoring (paid). 2 hours. 3 students. One is slightly resistant and impatient each week, but he is not confrontational. Another is one of my classmates. No difficulties arise; I have no afterthoughts, unlike yesterday. The student wasn’t really articulating what she wanted help with and I wasn’t really getting that she was being passive and deferring to my “authority” as the tutor who “knows best” in this really timid, girly, middle class way until near the end. We did get something accomplished, but it made me a bit more aware of the different communication styles students have (and I can’t be bitchy and judgmental about the fact that she was passive and girly and middle class. Not when tutoring or reflecting upon it).

Why does my left eye keep twitching?

Food. Chili hummos red bean chicken wrap from the union. Not bad.

Class. Discourse Analysis. Topic: Discursive Psychology. Interesting to me because the were was talk of “the self” and the measurement of peoples’ attitudes. I am obsessed with theories about the formation/construction of the self because my self is especially fractured (all of our selves are constantly in flux due to postmodern schizophrenia and/or other factors, supposedly [convincingly to me] but I do feel that some people are somewhat more stable than others)…
Forum: It’s about bilingual education and breaking new ground, building bridges, forging new pathways…something like that. Hoped for some impassioned words, some idea of how to help with the change. But her talk was mostly just history and she was tired. Maybe the question and answer session would have actually been the worthwhile part this time, but I had to get up. I went with a classmate, and another classmate showed up, and a crackpot acquaintance was there also, so it was slightly social. But what to do about this language issue. So hard to penetrate the societal views. Language is power, it’s a social construction, we form ourselves in part (or wholly, some would argue) through our speech acts. It’s so complicated. Standard English : yes. Room for “other” dialects/ways of speaking (thinking) also: Yes.

Library: Return books I checked out this morning about feminism and discourse, feminist linguistics. Poop. (4 hours later! Not 10 minutes or a half an hour later!). Find an additional article about the discourse/construction of women’s glossy magazines in Australia. Run into another classmate, chat lengthily, share some concerns. I explain that I am “bitchy” in class but “a lot of fun” outside of class and invite him for a beer sometime. Not to flirt but to reach out. He’s not from here. I feel alienated enough, and I have friends and family here…

Home. Haven’t pooped yet. Water the cat. Check the email. Need to exercise but am feeling really lackadaisical. Thinking about politics. Judge Alito and the Christian right and Guantanamo bay prisoners (sp). The closed session the Democrats finally called and Bill Frist’s reactionary outburst. Yeah, Reid challenged you. Finally someone grew some balls. Get over it. Damn it’s about time though. Come on get stronger Democrats. I don’t have a lot of faith in them but they are the lesser of the two evils. There are some pretty cool reps too: Kohl and Feingold are pretty progressive, that Nancy lady from CA is cool, Maxine Waters rules although I haven’t heard much about her in a long time. There is so much shit happening; it’s tough to process it all. I am listening to the news a lot more now while I work and I’m working, and checking email, so sometimes crucial tidbits fly past me. That’s why it’s better when I read about the news, but I don’t have a lot of time. NPR is allright. It doesn’t annoy me as much as it used to when I was younger. I listen to Democracy Now too and I found these half hour shows connected to the leftbusinessobserver web site, so I got to hear an interview with this woman who wrote a book called Female Chauvinist Pigs which I am very interested in reading. And the editor of the Progressive magazine also does interviews that he pod casts. That access is cool.
I am very afraid about this Alito thing. Fuck that guy, fuck Bush. I need to work to retain a woman’s right to reproductive freedom, but why is that one of the main issues all these crazies continually focus on? Why do they have to work so hard to tear that law down when people are starving and the poverty rate is soaring? They believe the bootstraps myth obviously, but they must not understand that it’s simply not possible for everyone to become middle/upper class. There aren’t enough jobs, even if many more people were better educated, etc. That’s complicated, I need to research that idea but man. I can’t believe we have 2 more years of him. But Kerry was so wishy washy…something. If Gore runs again I may really have to move to Canada….