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! ;)