Personal and political

Thanksgiving. A time for gluttony and family. While I took it easy on the gluttony, I've had a double dose of family. I'm in Washington D.C. where Allison, my sister, lives. Tiffany and Rob, her husband, are here. Betty and Dorman just left this morning and Melissa is sitting right next to me. We're watching Dexter, our favorite T.V. show to watch--episode after episode. This is the Diller family. And I'm part of it.

I lived with the Dillers from the age of fifteen on. Since that time, I've been so lucky to have my family sphere expand to encompass new people and new roles for me. This expansion has completely altered the way that I conceive of the world and the definition of family under which I operate.

As our family has grown with Rob and his family, my red hair and facial structure make me stand out less. British accents and foreign vocabulary trump appearance. I have inside jokes, family photos, and long-standing "bickerings" between siblings on my side. When I was younger and insecure about my connection to the Diller family, this would have been my train of thought. Today, though, it's not a competition. It's a family with open arms. We have welcomed Rob into our fold. Just as I was once welcomed into the Diller fold. Just as I was born into a loving family.

Sometimes I get stressed around the Holidays because it means coordinating visits and finding flights. It means packing bags and leaving my dog and my home. I easily forget that my family (however defined) comprises such a huge part of who I am. My family--the Dillers, the Fleenors, the Jensens, and now the Howards--who would I be without them?

I've been reading a lot of Hannah Arendt for different projects and because, well. Simply put, I love her. She was a German Jew who fled during the Holocaust. After a short stint in France, where she was imprisoned for a short period of time, she moved to the U.S. with a visa that was falsified for her. Arendt went on to write some of the most provocative and compelling philosophy coming out of the Holocaust. She has written about violence, evil, and the human condition. Arendt's intellectual work is infused with her existential reality. Her encounters with the S.S. and the consequent events comprise the frame in which Arendt created her art--her philosophy. Her philosophy was grounded, powerful, and overtly political. Arendt did not obscure that fact.

Her life and her intellect were woven together. Her resistance was her work. To write was to live. To live was to write. I can't help but hope to embark on such a voyage some day--to write my life, but not in the sense of my "life story." I hope to write critical work a la Arendt. I am not someone who survived the Holocaust, but I am someone who has lived. My life and the people in it have shaped me in such a way that my life hangs in the balance of my work. Melodramatic, but true.

I hope to take this to heart as I write my final papers for my classes. Wish me the best of the personal and the political in this happiest of seasons--writing season! ;)

THE GAME and beyoooond

Tex and Hunter being adorable before the game.

The Game. Maybe you've heard of it. Maybe you haven't. This epic struggle of good and evil has raged on between Harvard and Yale since time immemorial (or since 1875). If you're wondering who is evil, the drunk Harvard grad from the seventies seated directly in front of my friends and I can clear that up for you. "If you go to Yale, you will fail. If you go to Yale, you are morally corrupt." Now, the people seated directly behind us, having driven up from Connecticut, might not agree. But, of course, they are patently wrong. They had probably just come from kicking puppies or something. Evil jerks...

Whoa. Let's just say I'm suddenly very proud of going to Harvard. And, in case you were still confused, we won the game with some surprisingly stellar ball playing. The running back from Harvard returned a kick from over 80 yards to score a lovely touchdown. Honestly, I screamed myself hoarse.

Let's not pretend like the whole thing was without a hitch. In fact, I felt suddenly strange. I hadn't attended a game since my time in Pagosa (except maybe one game at CC). As I tried to explain plays to Hunter, I kept looking to Tex to make sure I'd said the right thing. My play breakdowns wandered and often involved a juxtaposition of terms drawn from soccer and rugby alongside football. The most embarrassing moment fell about halfway through the final quarter. We were seated at the middle of the "coliseum" (what a name!), where the crowd was made up about 60/40 of Harvard/Yale fans respectively. Someone to my left started cheering "Defense, Defense". Elated that I knew the cheer, I joined in only to realize that they were Yale fans. I hoped against hope that our dear compatriot in front me had not noticed. The next play, he turned around.
"Are you cheering for Yale now?" he asked.
"Um...no...I just got confused. Uh...I mean...I," I mumbled and tried to find something to say. "I thought I was cheering for Harvard and...uh..."
"No. It's ok. I just want to know so I can keep it down."
"Never!" I replied emphatically. "I hate Yale, bunch a jerks." My reply appeased him.

Our friend can be seen here pointing to the sky,
I believe this gesture reflects joy.

He seemed to get over the incident rather quickly once we scored another touchdown. In fact, while Tex and Hunter got high fives, I got a bear hug. Awkward.

Tailgate before the game. Outside shot of the Coliseum

Before and after the game, Hunter, Tex, and I attended a few tailgates which were a ton of fun. Between the actual game and the hullabaloo surrounding the game, I couldn't have felt more like a real Harvard student. Go Crimson!

After the game, students flooded the field.

The man in the beanie on the edge is Hunter running to join the team on the field.

A couple of days later, I am staring at screens. Going back and forth between the t.v. screen and the computer screen, I write scene analysis and theory and anecdote and pun and so on, hoping something that makes sense will appear on the page. For the first time since graduating from high school, I have four papers due in the next two weeks. Part of me is terrified. The other part of me decided not to be hung up in fear. I have started all of my papers and plan on finishing the one I'm working on tonight. It's a lot to juggle, but now that I'm actually writing, I feel a lot calmer. I feel capable and confident. I just can't lose steam!

Reflecting on the past week, I can say only that I feel like I actually live here. I feel like I belong at Harvard in some way. I may not be the brightest and best student, but I'm keeping up. I feel good about what I have to contribute to my classes and my community here. I am looking forward to Thanksgiving in Washington D.C. and a few weeks away over winter break (California followed by the U.K.?!?!). Spending most of my break here will be a lovely respite as well. My time will be filled with working at the RSL office and reading independently. There are so many books on my list and I'll look forward to time to investigate some new work. Hannah Arendt, here I come!

But, before I can get to reading for fun, I have to be on task with my writing. Wish me lots of inspiration!

Existential Crises of Age and Understanding

Good Morning!!

Ace and I have been up for a while. However, we haven't accomplished much more than cuddling and a walk. As I start to write and watch some of my "sources" for my upcoming final projects (ie: the t.v. show Dexter), I have been reflecting on my little man's birthday, age (as a concept), and understanding.

Ace turned five this week. The lovely boy celebrated in style with a doggie cake, music videos, friends, and champagne. Well...Ace at least had a piece of the doggie cake. The rest of us took care of the remaining party accouterment.

Around the same time, actually while I was buying champagne for the party, a young cashier asked me if I was old enough to be buying alcohol. I'm 24. I wasn't offended, especially because he went to lengths to tell me how beautiful I am and that he hopes to see my "pretty face again soon," but it gave me pause. The next day, someone was talking about how he was turning 25 soon. I said, "Yeah! Me too...well, soon enough." He looked at me and said, "I would never have guessed." I didn't quite know what to think. He went on to explain that I looked like I was maybe 22 or 23. But, what did that even mean?

As my four legged soulmate gets markedly older, graying on his chin and lips, I somehow seem to be appearing younger. To me, this is a vicious reminder that if all goes the way of it "should," I will continue on in my "youth" after my dear boy fades into old age. I spent a lot of my summer reveling in the wonder of being a twenty something alongside Ace. Both full of energy, exploring a new city together, I could feel the youth pulsing through my veins. I could see it in the way he looked so alive running down the street on our daily run.

Months later, I am sitting here in my bedroom with my lovely boy, pondering the finite nature of our individual existences and our collective relationship. My own insecurities about being understood are drawn into the searing light of this constant existential reality. What does it even mean to be so afraid of being misunderstood when in reality understanding may be impossible? Why do these questions matter when my whole frame of reference (living) could be gone in an instant? And, surely, one day it will be. 

I struggle so hard to express myself clearly to others. The more I seek to explain with words, the less it seems to work. I am often afraid that people will misconstrue my actions and think me stupid, needy, or inept. That sort of pressure is impossible to live under. The more that I read and study here, the more I realize that misunderstanding is probably an existential reality. We are caught in discourses that determine us and bind us, even as we experience individual phenomena that defy or question these discourses. Somehow, though, even these words that I write miss the point. So what is the point? 

The point is that language is useless when it comes to really expressing the essence or the experience of a person. Philosophers and poets spend their lives throwing themselves against this notion, generally only to learn to appreciate the places words cannot touch. So, maybe my own frustrations with being misunderstood are actually a realization of my existential limitations. Maybe the greatest thing I fear is that to not be understood is to not be alive. Let's just tilt our heads a little to the left and look at that again. Maybe the thing we should fear most is not to be misunderstood. Maybe misunderstanding is the real seed of understanding. Maybe by accepting that no one will really ever get me I can accept that I can be "not gotten." And that mercy, that love, that whatever, is more important than being understood. Instead of wanting to know the "truth" of one another, we are seeking to experience the existence of one another. Instead of understanding one another, we look to touch one another in some honest way. Now that is an existential crisis I can live with.

Two Quacks

As I sit on my couch before the world has really rubbed the sleep from her eyes writing, I cannot help but feel older, more genuinely in control, happier, and freer. In some ways it feels like the only way I have been able to really grow up (even after two years of working full-time and a lifetime of taking care of myself) has been to revisit this primal scene (forgive me, Freud, for not making this about sex) where I was most powerless and from which I have to regain power.
My primal scene is academia. When I went to college, I felt totally lost and totally alive for the first time. My peers were markedly more intelligent than I. They knew who Heidegger was, could describe the intricacies of the Spanish Civil War, and most importantly, they were confident. They knew that they belonged in the halls of my undergraduate college. They knew that they had every right to ask for more, to challenge their professors, and to write the papers they wanted to write. For a long time, I mimicked them. Thinking back on it now, it reminds me of a duckling trying to imitate a chicken. Sticking my head out, puffing out my chest, bobbing my head back and forth--I looked almost like an academic. To the untrained eye, I was all I needed to be. But if you looked closer, I didn't have the right feathers. In undergrad, I waited until the last minute to write every single paper I ever turned in. I will blame a bit of that on the block plan, but I will place a lot more blame on me. There was this sense that if I didn't really give my all, if I didn't really spend a lot of time on my work, then no matter what the grade or feedback, it couldn't really speak to my experience. I hadn't really tried, so I couldn't really be hurt. Call it self-preservation. Call it immaturity. Call it what you will, but this was my primal scene.
Years later, I am back in that milieu--the place where I was least qualified and most scared. I still have moments where I am terrified, but not like before. I am re-playing my primal scene and things are going differently. Instead of waiting until the last moment, I have already started my final papers (which are due in December). Instead of giving 70%, I am giving one hundred. And the most surprising thing of all is that I'm still alive. I'm risking everything. I am going for broke and I'm ok! The comments that come back on my papers, proposals, or presentations are reflecting that. It's as if I'm really showing up for the first time, and with all the risk that entails, it also offers a huge pay-off. Maybe I couldn't really understand the gambling metaphor before visiting Vegas, but I'm not folding. I belong here. And if I'm not smart enough, if my ideas aren't good enough for me to be a professor and an academic, I am sure as hell gonna find out. Hiding from the truth has never served me personally.
Forgive me the double metaphor, but it seems to work in my mind. This primal scene is playing out differently because I want it to do so. I am not a duckling imitating a chicken. I am a duck. I can't crow and I don't know how to scratch the ground the right way. But, I can swim. And I've never seen a chicken swim.