Even though I click on the "add link" button and get some funny sequence of symbols around my link, I can't get this blog to actually add a link. Once I fixed my parents TV/VCR by manually coaxing the stuck open/close shelf back into place. It was one of the proudest moments of my life.
This "link" is worth copying and pasting. It's the Nietzsche Family Circus. Refresh again and again.
http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/perm.php?c=69&q=259
http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/perm.php?c=14&q=34
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Repulsive Yet Fascinating
Saturday, March 21, 2009
At what point is it no longer okay to talk about your students' asses?
I've recently started substitute teaching in the state of New York. A few years ago I worked for a half year as a substitute teacher in my hometown in California, where I have some fond memories (a whole gamut--high school agriculture, special ed P.E., remedial math, ESL, art history) and some not-so-fond memories (junior high school anything, especially woodshop). Because you have to have teacher certification to sub at public schools in NY, I've been going through an agency that deals with private and charter schools. Since there are more charter schools for elementary students, I've been called in primarily to work with the little ones. This week was exclusively kindergarten and first grade. Not my forte. I don't know how to speak to them. I'm getting over it, but after sexual harassment fears, I was really uncomfortable repeating phrases like, "put your bottoms in your chairs"--a necessary mantra, I've learned. We do NOT share the same sense of humor. I'm used to handling kids twelve and up by wielding sarcasm instead of detention. But try using sarcasm on a first grader? S/he will retort with a fart joke and send the classroom into stitches.
However, I do feel lucky to have these privileged glimpses into what must be the essentials of human nature, unmitigated by social pressure.
Little kids are uninhibited. One moment, they're hugging you--the next, they're bawling. They are completely unabashed in their pursuit of attention. Talk about wearing your heart on your sleeve. Six-year-olds, by and large, are incapable of concealing their true emotions. At what point did we all learn how to hide our feelings? Okay, sure, maybe having a temper tantrum gets in the way of some notion of "productivity," but why do we encourage kids to "express themselves" and then punish them for doing just that, whenever their expressions are excessive?
However, I do feel lucky to have these privileged glimpses into what must be the essentials of human nature, unmitigated by social pressure.
Little kids are uninhibited. One moment, they're hugging you--the next, they're bawling. They are completely unabashed in their pursuit of attention. Talk about wearing your heart on your sleeve. Six-year-olds, by and large, are incapable of concealing their true emotions. At what point did we all learn how to hide our feelings? Okay, sure, maybe having a temper tantrum gets in the way of some notion of "productivity," but why do we encourage kids to "express themselves" and then punish them for doing just that, whenever their expressions are excessive?
Friday, March 6, 2009
Where do I come from? Who am I? Where am I going?
Lately I've been wondering if writing has been a phase of my life. I went to get my MFA in creative writing from 2005-2008 at the University of Idaho, where we practiced the craft of writing, where we all were writers, where we prepared for a life of writing. I've hardly written anything since I turned in my thesis precisely a year ago. I don't feel like writing. Sure, I've had some other necessary projects keeping me busy--moving to California, then moving to New York, finding an apartment, an internship, a job, looking for a "real" job, trying to solve the enigma of my health. For a while, I was depressed because I couldn't get anything published...but now, successes are trickling in: two stories have been accepted for publication, at a lit mag run by people I truly admire as well as the anthology Best New American Voices 2010. Each time, I feel inspired to write. I think about writing, and I don't write. I think about other things I want to do: take an art class, take a trip. I'm tired of imaginary people; I can't fall in love with my characters. I just want to live.
Sometimes the other parts of my life feel like phases, too. Until I was eighteen, I was the dork. Then for four years I was an Ivy Leaguer, of the variety that was proud of my academic prowess but later ashamed of the wealth and privilege that was associated with such an institution (I was, after all, just a hardworking, glorified dork). Subdivded, my freshman year in college, I was a rower, and the rest of college I was a singer. The year after college I was the expatriate, the world traveler--I taught in Morocco, traveled Europe and West Africa. The year after was my year of odd jobs, in and around Boston, MA, everything from tour guiding to dog walking. Then followed the summer of wilderness, working at a camp in the woods, in a canvas-covered shelter, where I learned (but maybe not well enough, because I still feel the urge to leave civilization behind sometimes), that I am not a nature girl. Then followed the month of trying to write in New Orleans followed by the near-year of trying-not-to-be-ashamed at moving back home with the parents. I applied for MFA programs partly because I thought literature was noble, partly because I didn't know what else to do.
Do all these phases make up in integrated whole? Who is Claire O'Connor, really? I recently read an article in the New Yorker about David Foster Wallace, who was many people's favorite living author until he committed suicide last fall. DFW was not my favorite author, and I was touched to see that he feared "that he had been driven by a 'basically vapid urge to be avant-garde . . . and linguistically calisthenic.' " As I read the article, I became more and more entranced with DFW's life. His biography is amazing...to be cont...
Sometimes the other parts of my life feel like phases, too. Until I was eighteen, I was the dork. Then for four years I was an Ivy Leaguer, of the variety that was proud of my academic prowess but later ashamed of the wealth and privilege that was associated with such an institution (I was, after all, just a hardworking, glorified dork). Subdivded, my freshman year in college, I was a rower, and the rest of college I was a singer. The year after college I was the expatriate, the world traveler--I taught in Morocco, traveled Europe and West Africa. The year after was my year of odd jobs, in and around Boston, MA, everything from tour guiding to dog walking. Then followed the summer of wilderness, working at a camp in the woods, in a canvas-covered shelter, where I learned (but maybe not well enough, because I still feel the urge to leave civilization behind sometimes), that I am not a nature girl. Then followed the month of trying to write in New Orleans followed by the near-year of trying-not-to-be-ashamed at moving back home with the parents. I applied for MFA programs partly because I thought literature was noble, partly because I didn't know what else to do.
Do all these phases make up in integrated whole? Who is Claire O'Connor, really? I recently read an article in the New Yorker about David Foster Wallace, who was many people's favorite living author until he committed suicide last fall. DFW was not my favorite author, and I was touched to see that he feared "that he had been driven by a 'basically vapid urge to be avant-garde . . . and linguistically calisthenic.' " As I read the article, I became more and more entranced with DFW's life. His biography is amazing...to be cont...
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