Cadence (Sex v Gender)

It is one thing to worry
about what kind of one
one is and it is

an other
thing to worry about what kind
of one one is in relation to
an other.

Leaves

Having never seen a woodpecker and hearing one
now, overhead. Knowing while leaves are brushed
under careless paws' flop and collared to jingle.
While basketballs are bounced downhard between Dad,
I wanna dog in back and on the side drive, behind the hedge
over a toy megaphone sound like a war radio some other, younger
affects a monotone. This is the day. I repeat
this is the best day ever. Over. Through static
echo, a plastic
bouncing.
The cough and stretch of drills.
The woodpecker's sound no longer selectable
there are only handfulls of nest cheeps and squirrels instead
to eye through the tangles, all the branches
half golden half grey against the blue's fast
bright falling.

Keepin On

Tanglewood

I am a greedy, carving, acquisitive thing, a small unmanned exploratory craft. Not just tunneling through but nourishing off of it, where that which I tunnel passes termite-like through me. To be collected classified and catalogued. Always carving but so inside of the solids their walls are all I have to peer at. The only want my instruments read accurately is getting out.

The only cue cards they ever hold up for me have one word each printed on them like flashcards. There are five of them. Flee. Next. Better. Hurry. There are no cards for Pause. Observe. Abide. Please. What is it to be sure of things in the positive? To only have the word Right illuminate in your brain, a soft white-yellow or blue-green which just comes on, with perhaps a dimmed whistling sound accompanying the light, like a tea kettle but far far in the distance, without any urgency. What it would be like to have only that light instead of the clarity of a red-orange Wrong buzzing raggedly to alert you to your problems before they've even had the opportunity to step fully into your path.

a reposting from ee's facebook

In “The Art of Comforting”, Miceli, Mancini, and Menna build on research and interviews to propose a conceptual framework for social comforting. They acknowledge that comforting one another can be a complex, sometimes clumsy business. They find that genuine, effective comforting is:

• a feeling: when we are comforted we feel better, and feel less distress (not the same as “knowing how we should feel”);
• intentional: comfort is no accident; when someone comforts us, we know they want to be there and their intention is clear;
• built on empathy: comfort means feeling understood, not alone, that someone close to us accepts our problems and distress, and even shares our suffering;
• embodied in non-verbal behavior: closeness, availability, listening, and touching signal “you can count on me.” Non-verbal behavior is crucial and signifies “truth” and commonly includes eye contact, proximity, forward body lean, and expressions of interest, acceptance, and concern;
• different from advice, material/tactical help, and emotional contagion: though the person providing comfort understands and shares our pain, comforting is not the same as offering material help, or giving advice. Our friend does not feel our stress so much that they amplify the distress or can no longer focus on being present and caring in the moment.
• tailored and caring: if you want to comfort someone, consider what they need and what makes them feel cared for – not what you would need or how you feel cared for when upset;
• safe: in addition to intentional, empathetic, tailored to the other, and caring, comfort happens when there is a clear distinction between self and other. When you comfort someone, you carry your love and good intentions in the same basket as your empathy for their pain. This demands clarity and self-awareness.

Holding the Space: Positive and Negative

Parker Palmer’s story, as well as the theoretic construct of social comfort, are grounded in empathy, somatic awareness, and the capacity to hold positive and negative emotions at once.

Research on empathy shows that the capacity we have for empathy correlates with our high positive emotion and our high abilities to regulate our emotions. People high in empathy can both feel pain and elation at the same time: they can flexibly negotiate feelings of negative emotions and positive emotions. They can distinguish between, and deal with, the painful emotions shared with loved-ones who are in pain, as well as painful feelings triggered in their own memory and experience. At the same time, empathetic people maintain positive emotions – feelings of concern, love, hope, and strength for the other.

[...]

Lewis and colleagues note, ” Our lovers, spouses, children, parents, and friends are our daily anodynes … potent magic indeed.”

http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/denise-clegg/200910214134

Additionally, Halloween Costume

I was going to be Gelosomina from La Strada but my hair is quickly becoming increasingly Leather Tuscadero.

Dear Landlord, Continuing Saga

This summer I did a lot of house sitting and sometime in August probably, when I was in and out of the building, my landlord Gary was about the halls showing talking to a couple. I was already late to somewhere, which I can say with confidence because entering or exiting my apartment during working hours, I am always running late. Bewildered by the time/turf violation and my conflicting Methodist upbringing, I addressed them more than him, made conversation. He mentioned something to me directly about hopefully new/fixed/upgraded laundry facilities.

About a month later, between the 16th and 26th of September, when I was dog and house sitting, I arrived at my apartment to the following note:

HI JESSICA
THE LAUNDRY &
LAUNDRY ROOM IS BEING
CLOSED. IF YOU HAVE ANY
BELONGINGS THERE YOU
NEED TO GET THEM OUT
THANK YOU
GARY

Here, I made two false assumptions: 1) the laundry room, which was also our storage room, was being closed for repairs/renovations 2) the belongings referenced were those shelves, chairs, televisions, and fans which accumulate in the liminal, unclaimed, non-pad-locked storage locker areas of apartment building storage rooms.

On September 30th, between 7:00 and 8:00am, construction began in hallway. Completed before 3:00pm:

TO BE CONTINUED...

This is not a time when I am still awake when nothing is keeping me awake. This is not a time when specific concerns are occupying my nocturnal mammal mind. Nonetheless, something about tomorrow is keeping me awake. . I have another job interview in the morning, in the office of admissions, where I worked for two years in college. Discouragingly, it seems like each job I've interviewed for is less desirable--in terms of being along or at least within sight of my desired academic/artistic/career path--than the last. In the afternoon I have to call the lawyers and see if they need me, Columbus Day and all. If they don't I may nap. In the evening I pick up Sam in Omaha, having dropped him at the airport Friday, pre-dawn.

Today I got a lot done and probably could have fallen asleep around midnight when I got back home from doing laundry at my parents' house. I've been imbibing chamomile tea since then to no avail. I found a cigarette when I rearranged some furniture, and American Spirit with the menthol chamber in the filter. It is probably the last cigarette like this I will ever smoke as they no longer make them anymore and the gas stations where none of the other customers bought them have restocked. They were the last kind of cigarette which attracted me to smoking in a way beyond obligation, necessity and routine so, with the snow that fell this weekend, I've begun to wonder if this particular cold season will wean me off a habit that becomes as unappealing as the temperature outside. I want fewer clothes, fewer things occupying space in my apartment, and a functional kitchen and bathroom. There are other things I want. But I seem to want them as if without glasses. Some things seem vague, distant and so long on hold they've become difficult to distinguish. Some things seem so unexpectedly within reach they appear unfamiliar from this close range, patterns and pointillism mistook for solid color.

It's only in the bewildering present that we make any real choices about anything. I want to achieve a state where being present in the moment is not synonymous with utter unpreparedness, where letting go and loss of control are not the same choice. Blogging turns me into Rev Run.

Apparent Favorite Directors...

...By Which I Own More Than One Movie:
Don Bluth
Federico Fellini
John Ford
Jean-Luc Goddard
Gene Kelly
Sergio Leone
M. Night Shyamalan

Hair Customers in Order of Frequency, Then Recentness:
Me
Kenny
Rachael
Mom
Zoe
Walker
Eric
Jon
Kelly
Ellie

Apartment Things:
Leaky Sink
Leaky Fridge
No Oven
Stored Storage

Also:
Find Journal, Watch
Shelving, Organize Books

Not Facebook

...did not get the job x3. humane society today if my legs work.

...just had an awesome phone convo w/ her dad about rock docs and barbershop
geeks out

...is listening to a lot of _ lately
music talk magic talk music

...just realized something about yr planning. learned something over the phone.
about planning. relationships.

...slept like a rock. long a. three square meals on monday and a landlord hammer two mornings in a row.

Dream Journal

Last night I dreampt an image of lots of spider webbing occupying the right-angle intersection of a porch or porch-window ledge with the vertical side of its entryway. The walls were yellow or thickly sunlit through leaves much less green than the ones occupying the trees as I remember them, greener than the coniferous shrubbery acting as the visual second step from the wide, sturdy darkly painted porch railing. Sturdy enough to sit on but much too tall. On or inside the porch everything was much more yellow than the green outside, increasingly approaching blue as the light traveled like neon through the flat canopy, shot up the grass and prickled up through roots, dryly and darkly and trimmed squares against the house. None of this could be seen from my perspective in the dream, which remained a magnification of the right angle there, following the 1/3 with mundane precision. It was all the webbing, thread from the flat plateaus of hedge outside through to the innermost inside, conceivably back against the wall behind me. It was as if all to my right I could sense a delicate filigre seeping, weaving it's way into the frame like the three dimensions it now articulated in the very corner-most corner where five fat spiders rested, seemingly sealed in 360 degrees of hammock. They were not of course, the mass there was more like the porous surface of coral than of an encapsulating glacier, this much became apparent when they began to move. Scuttling around, coming to life as if electronically phasing through their systems-check. Not unlike real spiders. Eventually they were scuttling around, trading porus caves in this valley of the web's mountainside. Their shiftings and swappings became increasingly frantic, with less and less turn-around time. The whole dream was cast in a sense of wonder, countered only by the fragile, unstable threat of the cloud sculpture of webwork I could sense to my right. I cannot remember ever actually confirming this threat. I couldn't take my eyes off the spiders. They seemed to be calming down now. I felt safe again, comfortably removed from their doings and near enough to their installation to feel as though i stood next to an electrified fence that could, at any moment, conduct the full power and ability of these spiders. As long as I chose to stay there and observe it would have to remain at their pleasure, I was certain that they, each individually, or more likely collectively with a swift web-hammock mummification. They went on like this forever. They'd ebb and flow and with every wave of busyness I could swear, like possibly hearing a subtle swelling of an increasing number of low strings, that the web was accumulating (it did seem to grow larger in a glacier-like way). With every settling down, it was no longer a concern. I'd feel safe again. There were five spiders. They were very large, though I never got close to them with any sense but sight, each about the size of a small pine cone. All of them were black-bodied, and appeared fuzzy but only on the opisthosoma. Four of them had brown hairs and the other either had black or possibly none. I remember speculating they could be different species or different genders but when I looked closer at the browns they all appeared different too, the way horses and foxes and apes all have fur, yes, but very different coats.

Interview Hype

I have a phone interview at 1:30ish. I woke up "early" at 10:00 (still working on putting my sleep schedule back on track). Since noon, I've received three calls, one voicemail and one text message from my parents, none of which I've ignored. I already feel a little exhausted with the phone. Gonna walk to Juice Stop to get more than four cupsa green tea in my belly. At least I don't have to shave my legs.

These Days

I feel like Nico and Aimee Mann and ladies who sing the blues. I am not a very good daughter--familial closeness should temper rather than exacerbate my social/interpersonal problems, but it's more like all the trouble I have feeling, expressing, controlling, communicating emotion in the present is only amplified by my conflicting wants, fears and obligations to myself and to my parents. I wish I had a sibling, any sibling, to over or underachieve, just generally be different than me, to divide my parents' attention, release pressure, know them differently and demonstrate a different style. If wishes were fishes.

Might be time for a pre-work bike ride to pick up my diploma and my prescriptions, the only things still waiting for me on campus.

Vote Me Hot!

Contest Entry 5132616

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28.

You are interested in talking to people and solving problems immediately.

Vs.

You are interested in discussing ways of improving the present course design.

Survey

I'm filling out a job diagnosis instrument for a site to which I submitted my resume. The quiz is like 50 questions which all present you with two statements and you pick one. For example:

27.
You are interested in making objects out of clay.
You are interested in taking on more responsibilities.

It's a tough one, I know.

My single favorite item has probably been: "You are interested in analyzing different reactions of the results made by you."