Live Lightly, Laugh Often

Come on, celebrities?

I am really, really sick of celebrity worship. Yes, it’s nice to have a favorite actor or actress and follow his or her career. It’s nice to care about the progression of an actor as he moves from bit parts to a leading role. It’s way too easy to slink into wearing the Shoes of Worship, though. I’ve been there. I totally had a thing for Heath Ledger. But I think his tragic death really woke me up to the reality that as much as I can care for someone who exists somewhere out there, elusive to an actual friendship, that person doesn’t know (and probably doesn’t care) who I am.

When (and if) I act crazy, Britney does not go grocery store shopping to find photos of me plastered to the cover of the Inquirer.

When I do something good (because in the past, all I have done is be selfish), Paris is not going to come across an article about me on cnn.com and feel better about me.

If I gain weight, get photographed on the beach looking horrendous, Nicole and Lindsay do not laugh at me on the cover of US Weekly. Maybe rumors will circulate that I am with child, but once it’s confirmed that, oh, I am just fat, maybe Kiersty Alley will call me up - but it’s not likely.

I just can’t find it in myself to continually care about these people. They are not my friends. They do not call to check up on me. They don’t send me Christmas cards or Google Map my house. They don’t search for my name online or look me up on imdb.com.

You may say I’m jealous. That I want to be famous. No, Not really. I just worry that worship these people who have an ability to get recognition because of other people we don’t know about - casters, promoters, agents, etc., their lives are no longer their own. Personally, I enjoy NOT being followed or photographed everywhere I go. I like the freedom of buying what I want, and that doesn’t have to include being fashionable, lest someone poke fun at me in writing. I like being able to travel down the road and not having to worry about getting into an accident because the paparazzi are in pursuit of an exorbitant magazine cover shot.

I also really like being friends with and caring about people I actually know. Friends that I think are just as beautiful, talented, and fashionable as any Hollywood starlet. I’m in love with the Leading Man of my life, and I will always be his Leading Lady. I love caring passionately about music, our marriage, our dog, our faith, our home - and I love that no one is documenting it other than us.

The last criticism I will offer is that caring about and spending time on celebrity worship is a distraction from the things in society that really matter, including a healthy self-image (duh, how many times have you heard that??). While I don’t oppose celebrity endorsement on the whole, I think it’s pretty sad when has-beens promote things on commercials because they need a paycheck, or when current celebrities (and that includes athletes) are paid to endorse a product that he or she might not necessarily like or use. In step with that is that focusing on materialism keeps us away from focusing on societal problems. More people my age can probably tell you more about Britney’s love life than they can about what their home state is doing through governmental agencies to help those who need aid to live their lives. We’ll complain about taxes, but then we’ll open up our latest People and forget about the homeless. We assume that when Brad and Angelina adopt another baby from overseas that they are able to do so because they are wealthy, so they took care of that to-do item for us.

I took a class in college that absolutely changed the way I see the world through the media - Media and Society. From the course book: “A course dealing with media history, uses and values. It will consider such media as newspapers, magazines, radio, television, recordings, motion pictures, theater, music and the visual arts in regard to how they affect society and the individual. Students will investigate these media and the social, economic, and historical milieu from which they emerge as well as the aesthetic and ethical values attributed to them. The course will use non-traditional approaches to the subject matter, and active participation by the students will be an essential element of the course. Enrollment limited. Students will be selected by GPA and faculty interview.”

Everything we do is connected to the media. How we get our information informs who we are, what we buy, what we think. While it’s easy to ride along with the current, I think it’s important to take time on the bank of the river and really see the world through your own eyes, not as through the eyes of a celebrity as translated through a photographer or reporter through a major news corporation through our email, television, or any other news product.

And now there’s a picture of myself looking like a real teacher.

Part of the work I am helping with this summer in the technology department is capturing images of the different technological capabilities our school offers. This picture we staged in the art room. We needed something pretty up there, so I said, “let’s get some perspective going,” and then drew this street scene. It was great fun. It confirmed my need to get a painting going this weekend. We passed an art store on the way home last night from dinner and I noticed it said things are 75% off there. Ker-Ching! I think I am good on paint, but I need a big ol’ canvas. I have a blank one that’s probably 36″ by 24″ but I want to go bigger.

Side note: We ate at a really good place last night called Bone Garden Cantina. It’s a new Mexican (not as in the state, but never existed before + the country) restaurant here in Atlanta. It was started a little over a month ago by the owners of The Vortex, a wonderful restaurant also here in Atlanta. The owners did most (if not all) of the artwork in the new restaurant, which has a Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) theme. Fun place! If you live in Atlanta, give it a try! I had a lovely veggie taco that was beautifully presented. There’s a mural of theirs that Josef and I are in love with. I know I won’t do anything that big or detailed, but the colors are exactly right for the painting I want to do.

Drawing on the sympodium today was great fun. It was soothing and it also was cool to show my ideas so easily. I felt like I could have easily been teaching an actual class on perspective. I also went into some basic shading. Oh, did that ever feel good. It’s like stretching after sitting still too long.

Twice now (yesterday and further down the blog line) I have written about “neeeeeeed”ing something.

I neeeeeeed to paint something, soon. I hope to start something this weekend. We need artwork above our couch, and I’ve been pulled like a magnet toward all kinds of bright pictures as of late that fit my parameters of what I want to do. I am thinking something landscape-ish, folk art style, with maybe some dancing people or animals in it. Maybe a seascape will be involved. Maybe some fruit, too. I know that’s vague, but that’s my starting point of inspiration. Everything in the downstairs of our house is vibrant, which is intentional, and this wall is so, so lonely. The wall is a lovely shade of deep purple blue that changes with the lighting. I thought it would be pretty to put up a white shelf and put some white ceramic pieces on it, but I am leaning more toward a big ol’ loud painting. Plus, of course, I am really feeling the need to have some art self-therapy.

A while ago, I went on a book hunt and said I’ll tell you about my reads. At the time I said:

“Solely based on covers alone, I decided quickly (deftly, if truth has it) on the following:

Ann Brashares’s The Last Summer (of You and Me). I actually read a review of this one. Should be interesting.

Also:

Eli Gottlieb’s Now You See Him

Tracy Chevalier’s The Lady and the Unicorn”

I read The Lady and the Unicorn first. It was pretty good. Typical Chevalier, meaning the characters were complex enough to be reminiscent of someone you know, maybe even yourself. You can sense her painstaking research no matter what book of hers you’re currently spending time with, and she does it in a way that doesn’t put the story on hold to explain. While the story was plausible and entertaining, I just didn’t feel as good reading this novel as when I read Girl With a Pearl Earring. I think it had to do with the shifting narration, but maybe I just didn’t like the characters as much from the 3rd person perspective. Shortly after finishing this novel, I also checked out Burning Bright from our school library, also by Chevalier. Reading this book was like watching a film - in a very cool way! Even though the novel was centered around a family, the perspective changed unpredictably from page to page, as Chevalier changed viewpoints to guide the reader through the story. Set in London around the time of the French Revolution, this story captures the convergence of town people in the city (the Kellaway Family), radical idealist in Chevalier’s dreamed-up account of William Blake, and the reaction of Londoners who are dependent on the local circus and their loyalty to their king. I think I was responding a bit to my own interest in this time period, but even so, of the two novels, Burning Bright came out on top for me.

Next: Gottlieb’s Now You See Him. Although this novel was really well-written and had a humorous wind-up, I had a very hard time attaching myself to the main character, Nick, who is dealing with the death of his childhood friend. Turns out I don’t think Gottlieb intended for his reader to get attached to the main character - and frankly, I was pretty sick of him partway through. The dude has issues! I’m not upset that I perhaps wasted my time with this book; I just thought I’d find it more endearing.

Brashares’s The Last Summer (of You and Me) was pretty light reading, but I am not sure it was intended to be. Maybe I was in the wrong mindset to read this book. It was a bit too predictable. I couldn’t make myself fall in love with the characters. They seemed too distant, even with Brashares hitting me over the head with lovable character traits, including flaws. I knew which pairing she intended me to think would be experiencing their last summer together and which pair I thought it would actually be pretty early into the novel. It wasn’t horrible, but didn’t resound with me. I put it down a lot.

The last book I’ve read is Nancy Lieberman’s Admissions. Ultimate fun fluff. I picked it up at the bookstore because it was $4 and I work in admissions. It doesn’t pretend to be serious literature, but it does put a magnifying lens to the application process to private schools everywhere - not just in Manhattan. What she also does is scrutinize the activities of folks who are already in the private school world, including the fund raising efforts. It was pretty weird that reading this novel coincided with my conference on diversity, as the topic of admissions did come up a bit in the conference, and the topic of diversity came up in this novel. The topic of fund raising also came up in the conference. It was the light fluff I needed at the end of the day during this heavy (but entirely worthwhile) conference. I’d caution anyone who reads this novel to take it as entertainment, not a guide to getting into the school of your choice; all the same, I thought the message about finding the right school for your child is a truth that should be heeded (even if it means a public school, of which I am a product).

Took a walk this evening with my sweetie and our dog, chatted with a few lovely neighbors, got back, checked email, and found some positive responses to my inquiries with a few folks to talk about diversity at school. I feel awesome now! Good night! I doubt I’ll write three times tomorrow, but I think I am making up for my absence pretty well so far.

I know it’s counter-positivity to record angry thoughts, but I got ‘em right now.

Whereas I have some great ideas that might shape my career right now, no one is really around to share with right now. Yes, I was able to share with my husband and some colleagues my reactions to the conference, but the physical unavailability of those who could help me with my search that mention in my other post is frustrating me at the moment. I will take deep breaths and try to chill out - their absences are not intentional on their part.

I’ve been part of an email chain today in which two different people misconstrued two different things that I said. Both instances seem extremely petty and in both cases I was trying to clear up a misunderstanding and make things better for the whole group. Apparently my communication skills beg me to improve them.

I’m feeling overwhelmed again by stupid things: I feel bloated. I feel tired. I don’t feel like cleaning the kitchen or taking out the stinky trash. The stupid printer says that there are two magenta cartridges installed so it won’t print out something that I very much need to print out. I don’t know when my husband’s coming home from work, so I went ahead and snacked on some stuff and am now full (back to the first complaint). I called several friends this afternoon, including my sister, only to get voicemail. One of my friends did call back! That’s a happy thought! I felt all distracted when I talked to her, though. My attention span’s been short all day. Maybe I should meditate. Or go on a walk. I tried to work on some solo audition stuff for Octave, but that couldn’t hold my attention, either. Ergh.

Better luck tomorrow, I suppose.

That’s how I feel right now. After being gone on vacation for a few days and then going to the most intense conference of all time, it’s pretty hard to be back at a desk. I can’t sit still, I keep thinking about people I met last week, keep wondering what I was doing at my desk two weeks ago because none of my notes make any sense. At this point in the summer, there’s nothing to eat in the cafeteria, but I do appreciate that they had some fruit.

So, yes, the conference was awesome-amazing-dazzling-powerful-stunning. Or, SuperMegaAwesome as my friend Bea would put it. I knew it was a Diversity Conference and that it was good. That was all I knew. It was great to relieve that ache in my heart that is caused by not being in Boston (if you’ve ever lived there and don’t anymore, you know what I mean). It was wonderful to meet a bunch of new people and find out about their schools. We watched some really good films about students dealing with (or not dealing with) different cultural backgrounds and experiences. I get it now that we have to talk about these matters in our schools and get other white people (as that’s my personal vantage point) versed in the appropriate language to do this work. My mind is aflame with questions I have for my school’s diversity groups and practices. I’m not leading my search to answer these questions with skepticism; I simply aim to know what we have in place that’s good and what areas there might be for improvement. I’m very interested in this type of work now, but I am not sure where to start - this will also be a focus of my search.

One thing we did on the conference was a walking tour of Boston African=American National Historic Sites, which anyone can do as it’s provided by The National Park Service. The tour begins across the street from the Massachusetts State House with a close look at the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, which depicts the 54th regiment of Massachusetts, the first regiment of all-black men who fought in the Civil War, leaving Boston with their young commander, Robert Shaw. This story is readily available to you in the movie Glory, starring Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, and more. I hadn’t seen this movie. I had heard about it and had meant to watch it, but with all life has to offer, I hadn’t understood the importance of this story until seeing this memorial. Fortunately, yesterday afternoon, while in a state of nostalgia for the conference, I looked at the on-demand movies available to watch on our cable, and there it was: Glory. 1989. Sweet! So I watched it and boohooed. I didn’t fastforward through war scenes like I usually do. I didn’t look away when Denzel W’s character was whipped for leaving camp - when he was only trying to find some decent shoes to wear, not desert his men. I don’t think I was ready for this film before last week as I am now. I don’t mean that I had inferior teachers or didn’t care about history; I just didn’t really get just HOW big this time in history was. I am deeply grateful to have had that tour around Beacon Hill and having folks tie the events of that time with issues that are present today.

Thanks to this conference, I view the struggle - yes, it’s still a struggle - people of color face in our nation through a different lens. I think I’ll spend more time writing about it after today, but for now, I am still decompressing all the new info and new vocabulary in my head as well as organizing how I want to run my search that I mentioned above.

I haven’t written in a couple of days for several reasons, including the reason that I came over here to write and found myself with nothing to say. Which is weird since I’m the biggest chatterbox I know besides this one girl who was in my sorority and could out-talk pretty much anyone I’ve ever met. It was impressive. Anyway, I always have SOMEthing to say.

So, here I am now to complain about how I won’t be able to blog much for the next week and a half because we’re going to the mountains and then I’m going on a conference. I am delighted to be going on a conference because I neeeeeeeed it. I need to think. I think to have new ideas flung at me by people who know what they’re talking about and I need these thoughts to be flung at me in person, not through a book. I need to meet strangers and test myself against them. Is that weird? It never fails. No matter where I go, people that I meet think one thing of me and I slowly prove them wrong the entire week (or whatever span of time).

A few years ago, I went to a conference with our youth at church, Montreat. (Montreat is so special. It’s where my husband and I met and where we’re going tomorrow for the weekend. Can’t wait!) They also have conferences there almost all year and I’d never been to the youth conference before, so I tagged along as an adult adviser. In our small group, I knew no one. A few of the other adults who were there seemed okay, and the high school-aged youth were fun to watch as they decided who they wanted to get to know. After almost four days of hanging out with this crowd, one girl confessed to me, “You are way cooler than I thought you were. I mean, you showed up here with your preppy clothes and you just rubbed me the wrong way for some reason.” Ouch. Yeah, me, preppy? I shudder to think that! I’d gained a bunch of weight between the summers of 2005 and 2006, so I had bought some stuff at Target to go wear in the mountains since the clothes from the year before would have ripped apart if I had tried to wear them. My new clothes were shroud-like, but colorful enough. I basically aimed to not be naked, and maybe to blend in. Anyway, this girl had judged me one way and was now verifying that her impression of me had been way off. Looking at her was like watching myself when I was her age. She’d just graduated high school, was clearly independent in her thoughts, and dressed to the beat of her own drum, just as I had. I went to a mega-Presbyterian conference when I was a recent high school grad called Triennium, and this girl and I would have been instant best friends if we had met there. I had long curly (permed, I must admit) hair, a heck of a lot of confidence, and I was fiercely committed to having the time of my life and meeting everyone in our 60+ member small group. I love that I had this experience with her though, because it made me consider whether or not I had become someone that my 18-year-old self would like, not just inside, but outwardly, too. I still don’t know, but it’s good to compare yourself to yourself at times. I realized I wasn’t thrilled with who I was at the time. Mid-20s were a rough time, full of awkward experiences such as weight gain, lowered self-esteem, unclarity about my career moves. I think I experienced a good dose of rejuvenation as a result.

So, next week I’ll be meeting new people. I love meeting new people and finding out their stories and what made them want to go on this conference. It’s a diversity conference for independent schools, so all I will have in common with them from the outset is that I work at an independent school. I might be on the young end of the age spectrum, judging by the appearance of the people in the few last years’ photos. It’s in the Boston area, so I’m going to have to work hard to focus on being part of the conference and not thinking about all the people I want to see there. I am sure that I’ll have some good memories to record here, no matter what.

Personally, I am seeking something pretty major right now. I know I love working in a school. I know I’ve toyed quite a bit about the idea of teaching. Maybe I’ll get either some inspiration for another direction, impetus for following my dream about becoming a teacher, or maybe I’ll find out that I am good as I am now. Part of me wants to live somewhere else, be someone else - even though I am married and now own a home with my husband, I feel the call to see new things, hear new ideas, meet new people. Just as I longed for a new book to read (and have read 4 books since I wrote that post), I see these needs in myself and struggle with the most appropriate ways to satisfy them. Of course I love my husband and our home - that’s a huge part of who I am and I don’t want to give that up. I guess I just sense a conflict with my inner nature to grow and change, or to grow and continue becoming who I am. I guess a bite-sized adventure, like a conference in a semi-familiar place with 99% strangers, without my husband is a safe way to explore these feelings and then return home to what I love and know.

I’m thinking of a song that is off of the Trio album that Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emilou Harris recorded in the 80s:

“The hills were alive with wild flowers and I was a wild, even wilder than they. For at least I could run; they just died in the sun, and I refused to just wither and wait. So I uprooted myself from my homeground and left, took my dreams and I took to the road. When a flower grows wild, it can always survive. Wild flowers don’t care where they grow.”

It’s just been in my head so much lately, and it really captures my emotional state right now. Nothing normal seems enough for me right now. The future feels overwhelming, even though the actual plans we’ve made are really fun things. I feel impatient and a little reckless, but I am steady enough to control myself.

Maybe it’s just hormones.

So early this morning, during what had been a pretty peaceful sleep, aside from 2 bathroom breaks I woke up to take, I had a real winner of a dream. I mean, it was actually really creepy.

We were in our house (which wasn’t the same house that we actually live in, but suspension of disbelief is pretty strong, in my dreams at least), and it was night time turning into day. My husband and I were about to leave to go somewhere, and I was worried about needing to take Hunter out before we left (all quite plausible). I think I was putting on shoes or something, and I looked down at my knees. I had what looked like spiderwebs or cotton puffs in little mounds on my knee caps and the surrounding area - there were two on each leg. I thought it was just some fuzz or something else that was easily removable, so I wiped at them. Turns out the mounds were the protrusion of something sinister going on inside my leg, and the removal of the white wispy material produced hollowed out sacks within my knee area (like how your eyeball is only partly visible, and if it were removed, the whole eye socket would be visible). Oh, it was so gross. The one on my right knee cap was the worst: when I removed the fuzz mound, it produced a huge cavern within my knee, and I could see only what was left of my knee’s insides (even in my dream I had to look away!). The fuzzy stuff had been a fungus that was eating me alive and I hadn’t even noticed. I called to my husband and he picked me up to carry me to the car and he called 911. As he carried me away, I could tell how fearful he was about what was happening to me. I worried for Hunter, as it was definitely time for him to go to the bathroom and I wasn’t sure when we’d be back.

I woke and immediately felt for my knees, which were, thankfully, intact. Phew. Safe again from the stuff of nightmares.