That Chevy Wagon and Three Meetings: Not Just another Donut Story

I was pulling into the campus parking lot, weaving through the maze of construction that blocks most of the ways I’m used to navigating campus. After I pulled into the messiness of T-Lot, I started following an old Chevy wagon. You know the ones with the pseudo-wood panel sides? It’s probably from the 80’s. Not sure. But it’s a brownish tan color and you could tell it’s seen a lot of miles. Dents and missing parts of the moldings and side panels. As I continued following it, I tried to see who was driving, but I couldn’t see the person. S/he must be short because his/her head did not make it over the seat back. Finally, as I crossed 12th Avenue to get to my parking lot, I saw a little man with white hair trimming the edges of his head. I couldn’t help but fall in love with the wagon and man. I don’t know him. I don’t even know what he really looks like, but there was something about the combination of him driving that wagon that consumed my attention. I was no longer focused on the meeting that was the main reason I was going to campus that day.

As I was heading to that meeting, I could feel the lessons of my teacher training becoming a fainter and fainter memory. I was trying to remember the important points. I was trying to remember how empowered I felt when I went into the meetings last week: clean, devoid of expectations. I wasn't over-investing myself emotionally in the outcomes. I wasn't worrying about what the men in the room thought of me. This is what was spinning in my head when I became sidetracked by that Chevy wagon. And it was the perfect distraction, because it reminded me that my work upon returning home from my teacher training has been to let go of that damned donut.

But I’m sure most of you are wondering what the hell I’m talking about. Donut? Do you mean those sweet fried treats? What could that have to do with meetings and work and Chevy wagons? Well, I sort of mean those sweet treats. But only because of their shape.



In the context of my teacher training it was more about the shape. It was—or is the shape of our preconceived notions that come in the form of the stories we tell ourselves. Stories that help us keep recreating a small, comfortable, familiar way of knowing ourselves. It’s hard to describe succinctly. There is the donut. And the hole in the center of the donut is our self. And the matter in the donut (the sprinkles, pink icing, etc.) includes all that we know. Our personality and limits that enable us to define what we are--and what we're not…. The outside, beyond the donut and the sprinkles and the icing, consists of that great unknown. All the things we could be; everything that our donut stories keep us from recognizing as possible in ourselves. The donut contains the narratives we create about how we have been hurt, how we have suffered, how we have been mistreated. The deeper those donut stories go, the harder it can be for us to permeate the false boundaries they (we) create. The stories are safe. They give us a nicely defined line that comfort us into believing we know all we need to about what is out there—and who we are. That we already know what is possible in ourselves. But we don't know.

I think the metaphor of the donut story is perfect and silly. Perfect because it is silly. How a person can trap themselves into a limited life because of silly stories. But stories (silly and otherwise) are powerful. They have the power to shape our actions, reactions, choices. Silly donut stories weigh on us.

One of the stories that I found hidden deeply within in me was linked to the feeling of not being safe. I mentioned this before, but it is such a deep story for me. So deeply ground into my psyche that even though I recognize it as a story and have experienced the empowerment of letting that story go in a variety of different interactions, it creeps back in. My fear of not being safe—that story I told in response to the very real experiences I had as a girl, returns in moments of stress. And I could feel it creeping in as I drove to my meeting. Seeing that old Chevy helped me let go of the donut—at least for a moment.

And as I sat at the table before the meeting started, I was ready. I felt good. I knew it would be a stressful meeting, but I also knew I could rise to the occasion. But as the meeting progressed the fear moved in and out like the ocean. Big waves. Strong undertow, dragging me out to sea. But I knew I had to speak and I had to be the person I knew I was—knew I could be. I couldn’t hide anymore. And I said a lot of things I needed to say. And I was in the moment. Of course, the fear returned. I stumbled through my words at certain points. That story kept trying to convince me to hide again. Pull back. See the men around the table as threats. And when I went home, I did hide. I first tried to call a few friends to get them to support me. To make me feel like it was okay to say what I said. But, thankfully, nobody answered their phones and I had to sit with it. I had to come to terms with the fact that I didn’t need to have others tell me it was okay to stand up for myself. To stand up for my values and beliefs. I could be awake (and I don’t mean the opposite of sleeping here. I mean awake) and okay. I didn’t need to dissociate. I could be present and alive. And I managed. Although, as the evening progressed, it all wore on me. It was emotionally taxing.

As the evening wore on, that meeting (added to the two other meetings from last week) grew heavier and heavier on my emotions and I just collapsed. I sat for a moment to watch a television show and didn’t remember anything until about 2am— 6 hours later. I wish I could say this work is easy, but it’s not. I felt good about what I did. But I realized that what I was really working through was that I no longer had that old story as a safe retreat. I felt at some points over the days that followed lost, unsure what story to tell. Unsure where to go--emotionally speaking.

And then I was rereading something by Judith Butler that I was teaching this week. I had read it prior to the meeting on Monday, but it was when I went back over it on Wednesday that I started feeling it. Really feeling it.

“I have tried here to argue that our very sense of personhood is linked to the desire for recognition, and that desire places us outside ourselves, in a realm of social norms that we do not fully choose, but that provides the horizon and the resource for any sense of choice that we have.” --Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

The quandary that Butler sets up between living our lives among others (to belong in a community) and not being constrained by the limitations we often create around our interpretations of the norms and values within those communities is a fine line. Often, as we try to become a coherent subject (self), we see the boundaries of our bodies and selves as finite, static, unchangeable. That donut is a solid force to be reckoned with. To see out of those stories takes continual work. Donut stories can dominate us to such a degree that we no longer know why we do what we do, nor do we see how much those stories are limiting our possibilities. Yet, that social world is out there. It is part of us. It is significant. Our communities can be tremendous resources to help us see what else is out there for us. To see possibilities. To see something… else.

“To assume responsibility for a future, however, is not to know its direction fully in advance, since the future, especially the future with and for others, requires a certain openness and unknowingness; it implies becoming part of a process the outcome of which no one subject can surely predict. It also implies that a certain agonism and contestation over the course of direction will and must be in play.” --Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

Yet, we do not know exactly what possibilities are out there for us. We can imagine beyond, but we do not know for certain how a community will emerge, how a movement (both within ourselves and with others) will emerge. The dynamics of many voices and bodies coming together means that there is a degree of unknown that has to be allowed in. I had to wake up to that during my teacher training. Learn to rely on others. To let others into my world. To step into their worlds. To let go of some of those fears I have of other people. Nonsensical fears in the context of my life now, but very real and rational in the context of the life I was living when the seeds of those fears were planted. We have to start to understand how our way is not the only way. And when we allow ourselves to grow and build something with others, we have to let ourselves enter into something bigger. That we cannot fully control.

“Contestation must be in play for politics to become democratic. Democracy does not speak in unison; its tunes are dissonant, and necessarily so. It is not a predictable process; it must be undergone, like a passion must be undergone. It may also be that life itself becomes foreclosed when the right way is decided in advance, when we impose what is right for everyone and without finding a way to enter into community, and to discover the ‘right’ in the midst of cultural translation.” --Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

Chautauqua, Part 2: Being With--Seeing, Really Seeing

“So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings.”
–Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Being in the moment, with my surroundings, is yet another lesson to cultivate in my world here and now. Pirsig’s statement stood out to me upon my return home for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is the work and cultivation of being with—an exercise from my training. Moving through this Chautauqua, being with appears as a long thread linking together the world of training with the present world in which I now sit.

How do I even begin to explain the exercise of being with? I could say that we spent a late evening standing in small groups before the rest of the community. We stood there and looked at the people in the audience. We were not allowed to fade our gaze off in the distance or mentally escape from the room. It was a meditation that required our full attention to those in the audience. We couldn’t speak, nor move around. I could also say that after we stood there for about 10 minutes—maybe more—we then had a second group walk up to us and stand about an inch away from us and we had to look into each other’s eyes. We stood there for about 10 minutes. We weren’t allowed to look away. We had to keep looking. I could say that some people tried to laugh away their discomfort, other people cried in a swell of emotion. But none of these things speak to the emotions swirling in me—and the room—that night. The room was thick and full of intensity and compassion.

It was an exercise in allowing others in as we really looked at and saw each other. I thought I would have a more difficult time than I did, but I realized that I valued the permission to really look at the people with whom I was building a community. I’m not claiming it was an easy exercise for me. I struggled. I wanted to mentally transport myself out of my skin. A typical response I have to stress and discomfort. Dissociation. It’s way too easy for me. But as I moved through the exercise, I approached it as I approach meditation and I let myself sit with the discomfort. How often do we have the opportunity to be in a safe space that allows us to work through some of our biggest obstacles?

We came back to this exercise on the last day of training when we stood before each person in the training (about 100 people) and looked each person in the eye for about a minute. We stood there for over an hour and half, looking at each other in silence. It was like nothing I have ever experienced and it was amazing.

But the thread that was knotted and sewn into me during those exercises traversed through my flight home to Fargo. It has spanned space and time. In the airport, I found it easier to look people in the eye and not immediately turn away. I was talking with people and not being uneasy looking at them as I spoke. Practicing really looking at people on the way home was exciting. To see it as a practice and not something that was a measure of how much I did or did not get out of the training opened me up in ways I could not have anticipated. Normally, I would pressure myself, judge myself in what I was able to do ‘right’ or what I had ‘failed’ at. That hasn’t even been an issue for me. I see—and feel—it as a practice. Similar to how I see myself on my yoga mat. Each pose is a practice. Some days I can go through Sun Salutations powerfully and openly, other days it feels like I’m doing them in mud. But that is not a reflection on my person. It is a reflection of the moment. It is a reflection of what I need to attune to in my body. So as I looked at my fellow travelers in the airport, I could see some of them stressed out. I could see some enjoying themselves with the people they were with. I could see myriad emotions running through them all and they ceased looking like distant threats circulating in the same physical space, and became human beings with worries and concerns and joys not that different from me. So looking at them was not scary and troubling. It was an exercise in exchanging and sharing a moment. No matter how brief it may have been.

Then when I came home and entered my work life again, I only opened more. In a meeting I had on Monday, I felt myself picking up the tools from the training and utilizing them. I looked at my colleagues when I spoke. I did not worry about how they would perceive me for having my own point of view that may depart from theirs. I allowed myself to speak and listen, openly. I didn’t get attached to my point of view. I had things I wanted to say, but I did not need the reinforcement of my colleagues to feel safe in articulating my perspective. I did not feel threatened or scared, so I did not speak from a place of defensiveness and fear. Rather, I spoke from a place of dialogue and exchange.

Normally after a meeting like that I feel my energy depleted. I’m emotionally taxed and frustrated. I just want to complain about what happened or what I didn’t do or say. I want to go home and stew and hide. Instead, I felt energized and hopeful. I felt excited to work on the items we discussed in the meeting. I then took a lot of that into a meeting on Wednesday, which was more stressful, more political. But I again felt amazingly uplifted after. And it wasn’t because the outcome was better than in the past. It was because I was different. My approach was different. The meeting was still full of problems and stress that will need to be dealt with for quite some time, but I felt like I had been able to say things that I had never been brave enough to say. And I didn’t state my positions in a way I would have in the past. I said them with less judgment and defensiveness. I stayed true to myself, yet open to the dialogue.

The way I felt this week has given me the encouragement to keep at this way of interacting and being with others. I know it will not always be easy, but the outcome is so much healthier for me. It is a practice that is one of the healthiest I have had in quite some time.

Starting the Chautauqua: Lessons from an Unconventional Teacher Training

“What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua…like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer.” –Robert Pirsig


Serendipity is never coincidence. My life is a series of accidental and intuited links. I was rereading Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on my way to the teacher training. I had been thinking a lot about the way he used Chautauquas to frame his story. Well, I guess his book is more of an exploration than a story. It’s hard to explain if you haven’t read the book, but so is my 8 day journey of teacher training.

As I thought about my experiences over the week, I kept coming back to the Chautauquas. Traveling shows that enlightened and spoke to people about the world before the ubiquity of radio, television, internet. An oral tradition of communication. More like communion. I do not mean communion in the Christian sense, but in the idea of a shared space of community dialogues. These dialogues symbolize much of my experience of this teacher training. The community that we created in 7 days. I need to tell this Chautauqua to remember it. No, use it. Embody it. To help me bring this community into my life here, now, in Fargo.

“Every Chautauqua should have a list somewhere of valuable things to remember that can be kept in some safe place for times of future need and inspiration. Details.” –Robert Pirsig

What is the essential list of valuable things for this Chautauqua of mine? My journey on this blog now shifts again to the dialogues encountered in my teacher training. The dialogues are the valuable things. So the list. What must I include in this Chautauqua?

FROG
HOLDING THE SPACE
BEING SAFE
DONUT STORIES
BEING WITH
LISTENING AND FEELING
WHISPERS
CRACKED PHONE CONVERSATION
IF YOU CAN, YOU MUST



Frog: Lessons in Holding and Releasing

There I am, laying in frog pose. We’re concluding the end of a couple hour yoga session. It’s the second day of training. I’m hot and sweaty. It’s been a tough day. The kind of day in which you feel the shittiness just pouring out of you from all different places. Pores, cells, eyes, mouth. Emotions spilling and running through my body. Frog symbolized the week. The ups, the downs. The jumps out into the open. The camouflaging back into my surroundings. The pose was more than metaphor, though. It was the embodied practice of holding and releasing. I’m not sure how long Baron kept us in this pose, but I went through the gamut of fighting against the release of my hips and all the emotions they contain. The hips really are the epicenter of holding. And when we finally allow the release it is a powerful experience of vulnerability and exuberance.

But that night I mostly felt the vulnerability. I fought against the release. The day was stuck in my mind. My practice teaching session weighed heavily upon me, as did the day of dialogue that required us to look--really look-- at our personal demons in ways I usually prefer to avoid. I was fighting and holding. I wanted to jump out of my body and the room. I wanted to hightail it home. But I couldn’t and on some level, I knew I didn’t really want to leave. I wanted to feel myself in that moment. Feel the struggle. The turmoil. I knew I needed to confront the emotions locking up in my body. Emotions that were manifesting in my body as tightness, hardness. So I stayed. Tears welled up and soon there was some release, but it would take several more days before the release truly came to fruition in my body.

The next morning, in meditation, my body felt heavy. Not just heavy, but it felt like I had a 1,000 pound weight on top of my head and it was pushing me into the ground. The pushes and pulls from releasing and holding continued throughout the week. Baron exhausted us to the point that it left me unable to hold on any longer. I just had to let go. There was nowhere to retreat. Fourteen-hour days of emotional and physical pushing and pulling did not leave me anywhere to go. All my hiding places were lit up, exposed. And it scared the shit out of me. Without a place to hide, the resistance melted. But the process was far from a linear progression. It was jagged. Just as you think you have worked through one thing, it comes back in other forms. You may have felt it release in a dialogue session only to resurface in a yoga asana. Or you might find release in a yoga asana only to have the resistance bubble up during teaching practice. It was a true working-through.

I wish I could be more specific, but the experience is beyond words. Metaphors, like the frog, become the only way to try to articulate a week of highs and lows. This is not a typical teacher training that goes over pedagogy and concepts as something apart from you to simply be learned intellectually, mentally. Baron does not train by handing you an object of knowledge to hold on to. No. It is a program that teaches you to be what you teach so as to inspire others to be empowered with knowledge and practice. I experienced the pedagogy and concepts through action. Through practice teaching, dialogue and yoga practice. It is a lesson in enactment, not memorization. This was a challenge for me. Me. A person who finds safety in knowing before doing. A person who separates knowing and doing into a protective analytical binary shell that often limits my ability to explore deeper and beyond what I think is possible.

Not Being Safe (or How I Take My Stories With Me)

In this week of training I had an epiphany. I would not have come to it without the coaching of Baron. I’m sure I was afraid to admit what was driving the story of me. To have to see it so clearly was both amazing and terrifying. Sort of an ongoing theme of the week. Acting from within spaces of contradiction. Doesn't seem so enlightening, but it is a consciousness of those spaces of contradiction. Spaces you must function within, not analytically observe. It's not just thinking about yourself this way, but being forced to stay in it and respond to others from that position. I was unable to find an exit route through my analysis and the over-intellectualization of my experiences. Frog was only the beginning of having to experience myself as both/and. Like a lotus. Being born out of that dark murkiness of the pond and expanding into the light and air. Both are always present. Often I try to hold onto one feeling at the expense of the other. But at this training, I could not do that. I was continuously experiencing myself as dark and light. I never just felt the exuberant highs or the earthy dark lows. They were both hitting me at once. I never just felt empowered and free. It always came with waves of fear and containment. Over the week, though, the judgment started to evaporate and I could catch glimpses of each moment as simply experiences that one goes through. They do not have to define me with permanence. The best way I can explain is that I started to see life moments as yoga practice. In yoga practice your body is different every day and one day does not define your total yoga abilities. In fact, yoga is practice. It is not a thing. This training made me see my teaching and my life as practice. Wait. Not see, but experience my teaching and life as practice. Not a static set of experiences that defined me. This was a shift. The stuff I intellectually understood was dissolving into lived practice.

But back to the epiphany. In one of the dialogue sessions, I saw how my feeling of not being safe, which emerged early in my life, has defined much of my life since I was a young girl. My responses to people and situations are the direct result of how I felt unsafe in my childhood. I don’t want to tell this story to hold on to it, but to provide context to how I have been and from where my practice is now emerging.

One of the exercises we did that week was to tell a story from our early years that we identified as defining how we saw our current sense of self. The story I intuited as significant was when my father, in one of his drunken rages, pointed his shotgun at me, my sister, my mom, and himself. I vividly remember the terror and the physical responses. I remember my mother standing there helpless as my sister and I sat on the bed. The story I created of this event included my mom’s reaction to my dad’s actions. She did not do much when he pointed the gun at me and Penny (my sister), but when he pointed it at himself, she screamed. I had trouble articulating how that shaped me and my way of acting in the world, but as I told this story to the group, Baron helped me work through the impact of what happened. How what happened shaped my story. My life. I could see how my body would react to moments when I felt unsafe-- even though I was no longer in the same kind of danger I had lived through as a little girl. As I started to file through the various events in my adult life, I could see how I construct things around being safe. Avoiding those physical responses of fear. I so pride myself in taking leaps of faith and doing things that propel me beyond my comfort zone, but they are always calculated. Calculated risks. I keep a safety net around. I often hide it from people (and myself), but it’s there for me. Just in case. I've done it so often. It was a powerful moment for me. To see that story traveling through my relationships, my friendships, my jobs, my journeys. It was startling and freeing.

Seeing it was important. Not to render it bad or good, but to understand how I react to people and situations. Seeing it is helping me to work through changing that story. Well, not changing, more like letting it go. It is important to let those stories go. We will always have stories. They make us who we are. But what I could see as the week progressed was that story not having such a hold over me. I had the story, it did not have me. But I need to work those muscles—so to speak. Muscles that help me to respond from a bigger place. A place that is me, but a me that is beyond the stories. To respond from the me that is unknown, rather than the known. ‘

I’m not sure if this makes sense to those of you reading this. It’s hard to explain the feelings and how they link to the actual things I did during this training. But I will keep working at it as I develop my Chautauqua of this past week. I will keep working on it as I teach my classes and strengthen my relationships with those around me. I will keep working on it as I develop a community, actually allow myself to be part of a community. I hope those of you reading have patience with my limited expressions. I know they will become clearer as I keep working on enacting the things I learned in my life here and now.

I suppose this Chautauqua is a practice, so I will keep returning to shape it in the moment. Taking that week and making it present. If an oral tradition is to do anything it is to remain dynamic in the face of presence.

Backspacer... Backtracing Mental Landscape with Pearl Jam

Rewind....

So, I’m listening to Pearl Jam's Vitalogy. I remember buying this album right around my birthday—on cassette. I remember so vividly. I loved (and still do) this album and defended it from its many critics. I believed (and still do) that it was a critical album in the career of Pearl Jam. It was December of 1994. I turned 23 that year. I was living in Santa Cruz and going to night school at Cabrillo Community College. I remember listening to the tape as I walked home from school. Just like the early Ani albums, Pearl Jam’s albums take me back to that time. Those years in Santa Cruz… I keep going back there with my music. There is a strong link between that time and what I’m feeling now.

“Don’t mean to push…but I’m being shoved!
I’m just like you, think we’ve had enough…

“I don’t believe a thing they want us to…
Oh, we all got our scars, they should have ‘em too...”
--“Whipping"

Except Pearl Jam takes me a bit further back. I started listening to them on the cusp of one of my first shifts in consciousness as a young adult. It was a big shift that can be told through the music I listened to during that time. I was a huge fan of heavy metal—cock rock—until right around 1990-1991. Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Skid Row, Guns ‘n’ Roses…. Hair bands. But it took my fortuitous exposure to Mother Love Bone and Soundgarden to start to make me hear new things at a time when I was needing new answers to questions I had been asking my whole life. Soon after, Nirvana and Pearl Jam would make a tiny splash that would quickly make intense waves and undercurrents in my life—and in music.

Music is more than entertainment for me. It is a marker in my intellectual, emotional, and spiritual journeys. As a young child, my parents were huge music fans. They have a great album collection that provided me with eclectic tastes. Everything from Bob Dylan to Led Zepplin to War to Fleetwood Mac to Cream. Yet, as I grew up, music in my house generated intense anxiety and fear for me. When my dad cranked the music at home, it was nearly always followed by drunken violence of some sort. It would set a mood that would always start with frenetic fun and would eventually end in frenetic, chaotic, brutality. So, I tried to counter that by making my music an ordered part of my imagination. To fade out the bad stuff in the house. Like books, I would use music to construct my own little world, apart from my parents, my sister—everybody. It was my world and I would create it the way I wanted to. Music has the capacity to carry darkness and lightness within a single chord progression or chorus. It carries emotion in ways that words alone cannot. It gives me the space to contemplate the world in which I live. And at the time, it gave me the space to hide from the parts of the world that terrified and controlled me.

At age 16, I read No One Here Gets Out Alive, a biography of Jim Morrison and The Doors. I read it after I found out that I shared my birthday with Jim Morrison and that he died the year I was born. I convinced myself that it was fate. I became obsessed with Jim Morrison. I listened to all of his music with The Doors and read all the poetry he wrote. I read the authors who influenced him: Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley. I tried to revisit the places that influenced him when he was a young man living in the Bay Area. It was like I was trying to find my life in his.

From there, I detoured off into cock rock. It was heavy, loud, and nothing like anything my friends at school listened to. That was important. My friends were listening to Fine Young Cannibals and INXS. At the time, I think it was my way of revolting against the upper middle-class clicks I often belonged to…marginally. It was the way I asserted my identity as a girl from a poor working class family. I did like some of the bands my school friends liked, but I fell under the spell of big hair, spandex, heavy guitars, and pyrotechnics. I didn’t want the life that some of my friends were moving toward in their AP classes and drama club plays and parties. I dreamed of being the girlfriend of Jon Bon Jovi and Nikki Sixx. I knitted fairy tale yarns in my head that constructed these men as sensitive artists who would talk all night with me about music, books, and the meaning of life. My own talents would bloom in their presence and I would become an amazing songwriter and author. I would not be their muse; I would be their co-creator of music and art. We would be artistic power couples. I was so naïve. I blinded myself to the reality of who these men were/are and the ways in which they treated women.

[The CD changer just moved to Pearl Jam’s first album. Perfect timing.]

It was as I was waking from that cock rock dream that I tripped over Mother Love Bone and some other predecessors of grunge. It was a happy accident that I ran into these bands. I was working at one of my earliest dead end jobs right after high school—clerk at The Warehouse [a record store for those who may be too young to know]. And I stocked music and interacted with music geeks. It was my first step into the labyrinth of music freaks and geeks. But most importantly, it led to my early discovery of Pearl Jam. I think I liked the fact that they were still rockin’, but there was a different vibe to them. Their music meant something real at a time when I could no longer dream past the sheen of hair bands’ spandex tights. Pearl Jam’s lyrics addressed emotions I could identify with. The days in which I contorted myself into songs such as “She Goes Down” and “Lay Your Hands on Me” were gone.

I wasn’t just waking up from my fantasy about heavy metal musicians; I was waking up to my own life and the numerous disconnects between me and the life I wanted to live. I guess it makes sense. Eighteen or so years old and you start to realize that this is now your life—not your parents’, not your friends’. It was my life. Don’t get me wrong. I straddled between my grunge love and heavy metal fantasies for quite some time, but within a year or so after I first heard Pearl Jam’s album—I believe I first heard it the spring of 1991—I would disown my association with heavy metal. I would throw away the cassettes, hide all my concert t-shirts, and recreate myself.

When I hear songs from that first Pearl Jam album, I’m immediately transported to my black Jeep Wrangler. With the top off, that Jeep took me many places. It took me to beaches all along the California coast. Half Moon Bay, San Gregorio Beach, Santa Cruz, Pismo Beach. It was during that summer of 1991 that I started to see myself living near the ocean, getting out of Redwood City.

For me all of those songs represented freedom. It represented another layer peeling off of my skin and psyche. I could take deep clear breaths in that music. I could see miles beyond my windshield in that music. The world didn’t look so blurry and two-dimensional. I didn’t feel trapped.

“Maybe someday
another child
won’t feel as alone as she does…

“She seems to be stronger
but what they want her to be is weak…

"She could just pretend
She could play the game
She could be another clone
Why go home?”
--"Why Go"

I often think that Pearl Jam’s first album tells the story of my transitions between high school and working and then working and deciding to go to college. It helps me tell the story of a person who had to take a detour through some unexcavated mental landscape. I had to pull off the scabs of my childhood and let the wounds bleed. Just bleed without trying to stop the flow. Only then could the dirt wash out of those wounds, giving them a real chance to heal. Those years were raw. I was convinced I had it together. I had a good paying job, a new Jeep Wrangler, and other stuff. I also had a small mound of debt to show for my efforts. Material things weren’t helping me. During that period, I learned that I didn’t have anything I really wanted. In fact, I had a bunch of junk that meant nothing to me. Absolutely nothing. All it did was tie me down to a place I didn’t belong.

So, I had a small mental breakdown and then moved to Santa Cruz. I sold my Wrangler. I quit my job and enrolled in junior college. I got a temp job, filed bankruptcy, and started walking and/or riding my bike everywhere. In other words, I took the leap. I followed my gut. The first temp job I had turned into a permanent job. A job I would have until I moved to Seattle. I was incredibly lucky. I never had money, because rent was expensive. But I was going to school and I found a place that I fit into. I’d be lying if I said it all just came together. As with most things in my life, transitions are jagged. I struggled. But I felt like I was struggling for the right things, which is what made me feel I made the right decision to let go of the things that bogged me down.

**********
It was as I was listening to Vitalogy that December in 1994 that I was still trying to figure many things out. But I felt unattached to anything. Free to make decisions. That I had control over my own life. But, obviously, I had much more to learn. The process of letting go of one location and jumping into a new one in search for something better is still with me. Fleeing as a (fleeting) form of freedom. I did it in 1991 and again in 1996 and again in 1999 and again in 2005; the pattern starts to be its own prison. It’s not the way to find true freedom. I’m still learning that lesson.

Fast Forward.... Backspacer

“Practiced are my sins,
never gonna let me win
under everything, just another human being
Yeh, I don’t wanna hurt, there’s so much in this world
To make me bleed”
--"Just Breathe"

So now the cd player shifts to Pearl Jam’s newest album, Backspacer. I am looking at my lifetime through the long career of a band that has been sewn into most of my adult memories. My adult mistakes. My adult triumphs. The theme of the album is love. Not romantic love, as I dreamed about in those imaginary conversations with rockers, but that deeper love that comes from a life that learns running away or retaliating with unbridled anger is not always an effective way to evoke change and hope in the world. It is a love that takes practice. But I still fail at it. I still scream and scratch and claw to get out of a system that is unfair. That hurts. I still have that uncontrollable urge to run. That animalistic fight or flight reaction is still deeply ground inside of me. But it is through the practice of this other kind of love that I have learned to stay present through that initial reaction to high tail it out of dodge. It is not a passive staying that means you just lay down and take it or bend to the powers that be. Instead, it is an active stillness—like a yoga asana—that enables you to work through the desire to give up and run. It makes you stay in order to think about what fine tuning can be done to change your relationship to the situation—and then change the situation. Diffuse it. It means letting go of that rawness that was so much a part of my life when I put that first Pearl Jam tape in my cassette player. It feels more like the passionate echoes I hear in Backspacer.

“When somethings dark
lemme shed a little light on it

“When somethings cold
Lemme put a little fire on it…

“When somethings gone
I wanna fight to get it back again

“When somethings broke
I wanna put a bit of fixing on it…

“When somethings low
I wanna put a little high on it

“When somethings lost
I wanna fight to get it back again…

“If there’s no love
I wanna try to get it back again”

--"The Fixer"

Catching Up... Picking Up Where I Left Off

So, school started for me and I quickly became wrapped up in the emotional and intellectual work it entails. This is my excuse for not writing since mid August when I made the promise that I would daily write through my music collection. It took a friend coming to me last night (at the Ani DiFranco concert, which will figure into this again in a moment), asking me why I hadn't written anything since that last entry. As I was explaining that school had been consuming my entire existence, I started to think about what I have been telling myself and others over the past few weeks: I need more in my life than work.

As I was watching and listening to Ani play, I meandered through a triptych of my life. The detours, the contradictions, the hopes, the failures, the enlightening moments and the humiliating ones. They were all there with me last night in the Fargo Theater. As I was leaving the theater I knew it was time to make my life more than my job. More than the university campus. More than the politics and the pent up frustration that has been consuming me. It is time to rethink the promise I made to myself in August. It is time to pick up where I left off. So, here I am, writing. Now I can’t promise I’ll do this every day, but I will delve into my music collection at least once a week.

Listening to Ani: Live and Electronically
Ani’s music has meant so much to me over the years. It was about 16 years ago that she entered my life. It was some time between 1993 and 1994, I think, that I bought my first cassette of Imperfectly. I was living in Santa Cruz and my roommate at the time had that album in her collection. It took one listen and I was hooked. I had to have my own copy. I could not stop listening to it. So I bought it. On cassette. It lived in my headset (one of those clunky cassette headsets that seemed so high-tech at the time). I then bought everything she had out at that point in her career, which included her first album, Ani DiFranco and Not So Soft. Those albums became my new best friends. I didn’t listen to much else for months.

So, I decided to start this dialogue with that holy trinity: Ani DiFranco, Not So Soft, Imperfectly. Seems fitting. Currently, I’m listening to Ani DiFranco. The album takes me immediately back to my time in Santa Cruz. I can smell the ocean as I trace my path home from night school at the local community college. I would take a bus from Aptos (where the community college was located) to my home, which rested a little north of downtown Santa Cruz. The night bus ended its route at the downtown terminal, so I would have to walk the rest of the way. I normally took the route nearest to the ocean. It would be dark and I could smell the ocean as I listened to Ani sing to me about so many things I understood, but didn’t know anybody could say out loud with such conviction.

“i am determined to survive on these shores
i don’t avert my eyes anymore
in a man’s world
i am a woman by birth
and after nineteen times around i have found
they will stop at nothing once they know what you are worth” --Talk to Me Now

I was so timid, so unsure of what I was and what I thought. It was a different time for me. At that point in my life, I rarely felt justified to be… me. I rarely had confidence to stand up for who I was and what I believed. I was only just beginning to understand who I was and what I wanted out of life. And that I could be and do more than even I expected.

That was the beginning for me. The beginning of many things. The world started to look different. I was no longer simply my parents' child. I was this person who could control the life I lived. And it was at that time I was determined to experience as much as I could possibly experience in a lifetime.

So here I sit, sixteen years later, listening to music on a computer and an ipod. My cassette headset is a dinosaur from a strange past. I remember constantly scraping together cash to buy AA batteries to feed my energy hungry cassette player. Now I just connect my ipod to my computer and recharge. Strange. I know this sounds like a silly point, but the technological changes provide a context for the internal changes I have experienced.

I mean, I’m listening to these albums now as a 37-year old sociology professor. I teach about gender and inequality. I do research on trauma and war. I get paid to read and write and talk about things most passionate to my humanity. I have driven and lived all over this country. I have flown to amazing places and met incredible people. I can stand in front of a group of students and talk about ideas and research and my life. When I was that 21-year old girl walking along the ocean with my cumbersome cassette player, I couldn’t imagine being in front of anybody talking about the things in my head or the things that I cared about so dearly.

“i am singing now
because my tear ducts are too tired
and my mind is disconnected
but my heart is wired” --Fire Door

It was about a year after I was introduced to Ani that I was working on the poetry journal published by my community college. One of my poems was accepted. Maybe some day I’ll post it and embarrass myself, but anyway, the point here is that as part of being included in the journal, I had to read my poem at a social event. I was physically sick for days before. I was scared. But I made myself do it. I had to prove to myself that I could get past my fears. As I walked up to read my poem, I was trembling. My mouth was pasty and my heart was about to leap out of my mouth. But after a few words, I felt the rest of the room growing dark and my mind finally returning back into my body. I didn't think about people staring at me. I thought about what I was saying and how important it was for me to speak those words at that moment. With an audience. Even if the poem was not fantastic (as I recall, it was filled with the melodrama and angst of youth). And even though my voice was small and timid.

“i make a good statistic
somebody should study me now
someone’s got to be interested in how i feel
just because i’m here and i’m real” --Fire Door

But as different as I am today, I am still very much the same person. I think of the anxiety in my body that rises with new stressors. I realize how much I have turned silent in this place in which I live and work. As I have gained more responsibility and reached more of my goals, I fall back into fear--the fear of losing all that I gained. Yet that fear is actually keeping me from going further. And I need to go further. I realize how much I am disempowering myself as I try to hold on to something that turns hollow in my compromises. And like the moment when I walked up to that podium to read my poem so many years ago, I need to realize that I have much to gain by moving beyond the corners and crevices in which I hide. I do put myself out there in front of my students, but I can go further. And with more conviction. I have to remember that even at 37 there is still so much out there for me. There is so much left. And I can’t do it silently. Or half-assed.

“I know that it’s not all that it’s made out to be
Let’s show them all how it’s done.
Let’s do it all imperfectly.” --Imperfectly

Music to Write To….

I have been searching for something to motivate my blogging efforts. As I was looking up ways to transfer my vinyl to digital format, I started to look through my music collection (in all its forms) and realized I have not listened to many of my albums for quite some time. I spend most of my time listening to music in digital form. This means I almost exclusively listen to the albums I have put into my itunes collection. Blowing off the dust that was settling on some of my albums, I realized how much I needed to revisit each one. I want to remind myself how they came into my collection. What they mean to me. So many of my albums desperately need to be heard. So, I decided that I will write my music collection. Trace the artists, the gaps, the outliers. Everything. And I will do it in my living room. Not on my ipod. Not in the gym. Not while driving my car or riding my bike. The music will fill the spaces of my apartment. And I will write. I will listen and write.

I counted (roughly) 400 cds, vinyl, tapes, music videos, and downloads in my collection. I will delve into each of these for the remainder of this calendar year. That gives me about 137 days to complete this task. And it is my goal to do this each and every day. By December 31, 2009, I will have heard my whole collection and written about each item. And I will have proven to myself that I can write this blog every day for 137 days.

Joseph Weber: Scattered Memories of My Grandpa

I so often construct narratives of my life around movies and music. A child of popular culture, these things mark everything. My grandpa, Joseph Weber, died a little after midnight at the start of Saturday, August 1st. He was 94 years old. I missed the initial call because in my typical fashion, I forgot to turn my cell phone back on after being at a movie theater earlier that night. Instead of hearing my phone and learning the news, I was finishing watching The Savages.

Now if you do not know what this movie is about, I should give a little insight because for me it conveys some of the issues threading through my grief for my grandpa. Roughly, without embellishment, it is a movie about a brother and sister who must deal with putting their father in a nursing home. The children are estranged from their father due to a painful past—a past that includes abuse. Yet they are alone, together, and must deal with the reality of their father’s dementia and his inevitable death. The movie is more about characters than plots, so it’s impossible to explain the subtleties at work in the film. It has to be watched. So as I laid on my couch watching, my mind wandered off to thoughts about how my sister and I would handle the inevitabilities of our aging parents.

As I was watching the movie and thinking my thoughts, my grandfather was struggling with his last few breaths of life. And then he passed away. What does that really mean? Passed away?

I had a major existential crisis when my other grandpa died nine years ago. Passed away became an expression that haunted me. All the yoga spirituality I embrace does not make the meaning any less jagged in my mind. Although, I am better able to handle death, I am no less better able to understand what happens. I can’t believe we just evaporate into nothing, but nor can I believe that we spend eternity some kind of heaven or hell. I am dreading going to the wake because I know I will again stand there, staring at the body, wondering what happened to that life force that made my grandpa, my grandpa. The body is just an artifact of him. So I need to provide a pastiche of memories to grasp what it was that made my grandpa who he was—is. A fallible human being.

The Importance of Being Outdoors

It's a brisk autumn day. The smell of dried leaves and wood chips permeate the air. My cousins are there, so is my sister, my dad, and my grandpa. I think there are some others but I can’t remember. It's some time in the early 1970s. The frame of the house my grandparents will live in when they retire is just taking form. It’s in a place called Bonne Terre--beautiful earth. A small resort type of town in eastern Missouri—sort of mid-way between St. Louis and the boot heel. The town is filled with man-made lakes and golf courses. My memory is a bit fuzzy. I was still pretty young, but I vividly remember the cool fall air and goofing around with my sister and cousins as my grandpa and dad sorta surveyed the area, visualizing the finished house. My grandparents had a trailer there already in another part of the town and we were living in it. They bought it years ago to have a place to get away from the city (St. Louis) on the weekends. We lived in that trailer off and on in my early years when we had no other living options.

This scene comes to me as I ride my bike along the Paul Bunyan trail near Bemidji, Minnesota. It's cool out for August 1st. I got the news of my grandpa’s death that morning. I missed my mom’s call at midnight and then my aunt’s call later that morning. I was on my way to the trail when I found out. I decided to still go on my bike trip. I needed to be outside, because I think better when I’m outside and active.

I thought it was a fitting way to remember my grandpa because he was always active and always enjoyed being outdoors. I remember him being strong and quiet. I remember how hard he worked on that house and how proud he was of it. He sold it in 2001 after my grandma died. It had to be hard leaving a home he built and that held memories of the life he had.

Hearing Aids and other Memories

My grandma was the one who talked; my grandpa was the one who did. My grandma always called my grandpa, Weber when she was frustrated with him or wanted something. That is how I knew him for a long time. It was affectionate but she would yell the name. My grandma yelled often. “Weber, you need to get me this!” or “Weber, let the dogs out!” She called him Joe in calmer moments.

My grandpa hummed this little tune whenever he was working. It wasn’t anything I recognized. Doo-dee-doo type of thing. I heard it often because he was always working on something. He was raking the backyard or fixing the patio or vacuuming or mowing the lawn. The man was in his 70s and not only mowing his lawn but he would mow his neighbors’ yards.

When I was little I would often follow him in his work and try to help. One time I remember sweeping the garage for him. I was excited to help him with something. When I had it all in a neat little pile, I searched all over for a dustpan. I couldn’t find one. And my grandpa was somewhere, but I was afraid to leave the pile and somewhat afraid to seek him out and ask for a dustpan. His silence always intimidated me. So, I just shuffled the dust pile around, not sure what to do. I wanted to look busy. When he returned and saw what I was doing, he chastised me for making a bigger mess and wasting my time (playing, as he called it). This is the first real conversation I remember having with my grandpa that wasn’t mediated by my grandma. I remember it well because it made me realize he not only worked hard, but worked smart too. There was more to him that just the quiet man who was dominated by my grandma.

My grandpa also had a hearing problem. His hearing started to go pretty early and he never heard anything I said. My voice was small and quiet and I wasn’t a yeller. So, oftentimes, I would try to say something to him and he would just keep staring at the television or continue doing whatever he was doing. That was one reason why I was afraid to seek him out for a dustpan. I worried he wouldn’t hear me. So, normally, our conversations were mediated by my grandma yelling at him. “Weber! Crissy’s asking you something!”

One of the more amusing memories of my grandpa’s hearing was the ongoing saga of his hearing aids. His hearing aids never seemed to work very well and I remember on one occasion my grandma found all his batteries buried in one of his drawers. My sister, cousins, and I were sure my grandpa sabotaged the effectiveness of his hearing aids in order to mute the screams of my grandma. It continued over the years. I think the more my grandma screamed the more often his batteries wouldn’t work, so the higher her screams would go, and so on and so forth.

Not Just a Grandpa

Fast forward (or maybe rewind) to the early 1990s. I visited my grandparents for the first time since my parents, sister, and I left Missouri for California in 1986 (I was about 15 at the time). During that visit I started to see my grandpa outside his role as grandpa. Entering my early 20s, the fuzziness of my childhood lens was burning off and suddenly my grandpa took on a different hue.

My grandpa and I would sit up late watching television after my grandma would go to bed. One night on the news there was a story about the crime or something in St. Louis. After the story ended, he got up and looked at the TV and made a comment about how the city was going to waste because of the…. Well, I can’t even say the word he used. It was the derogatory word for African-Americans.

I couldn’t believe my sweet, quiet grandpa used the ‘n’ word. I was horrified and unable to respond. Not only because he wouldn’t really hear me but also because I wouldn’t know how to approach the topic with him. I was still young and just coming to consciousness about many things. At that moment, I started to understand that my grandpa wasn’t just this creation in my head, but he was fallible with prejudices, biases, and all the experiences that make him a living breathing human.

Growing up in the shadows of the first wave of immigrants in St. Louis (he was born in 1915), my grandpa lived in a German enclave and it was a city largely filled with European immigrants. The city would change over the years with the northern migration of African-Americans from the south. My grandpa was a working-class man. His father was born in Austria, his mother in Hungary. His father owned a tailor shop. My grandpa served in World War II and he would go on to work in a blue-collar job until he retired. He watched the changes in his city, and I’m sure that created a variety of prejudices. Not to excuse his comments, but after I heard my grandpa say that to me, I wanted to understand him better. He became a more complicated figure in my mind and I thought knowing him better would help me better understand my father, and by extension, myself.

During that visit, I learned a lot about him in our quiet way. One night after my grandma had gone to bed, I was in the guest room, reading. I came out to join my grandpa in the living room. He was sitting as he always sat on the couch. He was leaning back and had his fingers cupped around the back of his head. That image is burned in my brain. In fact, he leaned back so often on that green couch that my grandma yelled at him that his hair oil was ruining it.

Anyway, when I came out and sat down to join him, I realized he was watching one of those beach movies. You know those B movies with all the T & A? Cable had changed the face of my grandpa’s television viewing! He seemed unconcerned that I came out to watch it with him. It was an odd moment. He would occasionally laugh and tell me how crazy the stuff on TV was these days. I didn’t realize that my grandpa could have a sense of humor—and a raunchy one at that!

Late January 2001

My maternal grandpa—Grandpa Pribbenow—died in July of 2000. Six months later I found myself driving from Buffalo to St. Louis to go to my paternal grandma’s funeral. It was a different funeral for me. I was distraught when Grandpa Pribbenow had died. Part of my distress was that I knew things were about to change. Since then I have watched the way grief and depression indelibly mark an entire family. Growing up, my maternal grandparents were the ones we were closest to. Mainly because they more often helped when my parents were in crisis—and that was often. Not that I loved my paternal grandparents less, it’s just that my relationship with them was different. My life was less visibly tangled into theirs. There was more space and distance.

After Grandpa Pribbenow died, I also started to realize that I was growing up and life was changing. I was no longer a kid and soon I would be the one others would look to for stability, rather than me seeking out others for stability. It also forced me to come to terms with death in a way that I hadn’t had to until that point. So, when my paternal grandma died, those blows were already moving through me and I was better able to handle her death.

As a result, I was more aware of what was going on around me at Grandma Weber’s funeral. I watched my grandpa and for the first time ever, I saw him interacting with his friends and family in a communicative way. He was talking—really talking. It was amazing to see.

You have to understand, my grandpa took care of grandma. And before he took care of my grandma, he took care of my grandma’s sister and my grandma’s mother when they were ailing. My grandma came from a woman-dominated family and home and that continued into her own family. My grandpa did so much. I think when she died, his life changed dramatically. He loved her dearly, but the years of caretaking could not have been easy on him. When I listened to him talk at her funeral, there was an ease in the interaction. My grandma was no longer there to mediate. His hearing no longer was an issue. His hearing aids seemed to be doing their job.

I remember him talking about his war experiences, saying what a waste war was. That statement is vivid in my memory. Up until then, I never heard him talk about the war. Later, I learned that his job in the war was difficult. I believe he spent a lot of time on the ground, cleaning up the messes after bombs. He spoke German, so I also think he served on the frontlines. It was an interesting moment, because I could already see him changing.

After that, he moved in with my aunt and over the years they built a great life together. They went on a couple of cruises and he was able to go to a reunion with his war buddies. He would still go out and mow lawns until he physically could not. He stayed active and was able to thrive for over eight years after his love left this world.

March 2008—One Last Time

The last time I saw my grandpa was when I attended a conference in St. Louis in March 2008. I spent an evening and day with both him and my aunt. On our evening trip, we went to Union Station and we had dinner and walked around the stores that now inhabit this old train station. My grandpa looked frail. The most frail I had ever seen him. His big glasses seemed to take over his gaunt face. His shoulder bones pressed through his sweatshirt. He had to be pushed in a wheelchair. It was a startling sight for me to see. He was always so active. It was hard to see him so dependent. But he was alert—as alert as ever. In fact, we talked about how when he returned from the war, this was where he arrived. In this train station that is now a mall.

The next day, we went to lunch and I spent time with them at my aunt’s house. At least I had those moments. As we sat in the living room, my grandpa was surrounded by their dogs. The little Chihuahua owned his lap. My aunt and I talked about family and she caught me up on my cousins. I’m not sure what he heard, but my aunt would occasionally yell to him about something they had done and he would nod and giggle.

Most of all I remember the hug I got from him. It was a good hug. Not superficial or hurried as so often has passed in our family. I could feel his thin body and I told him I loved him right in his ear. I think he heard me.

We would talk again later in the year—well I would try to talk to him as I screamed into the phone. It was a typical conversation and went something like this:

Aunt Carol: Dad! This is Christina, she wants to say hi!
Me: HI GRANDPA!!!!!
Grandpa: Hi there. How’s it going?
Me: GOOD!!! HOW ARE THINGS GOING FOR YOU??!!!!
Grandpa: Good.
Me: SO THE WEATHER IS CRAZY THERE?!!???
Grandpa: Good, good.
Aunt Carol [in background]: She asked about the storm!!!!!
Grandpa: Oh, oh, yeah. It’s a big storm. The electricity went out.
Me: I HOPE YOU’RE STAYING WARM!!!
Grandpa: Yeah. So, I better get going.
Me: BYE. LOVE YOU!!
Grandpa: Good, good. Bye.

I had hoped to visit them this spring, but that never worked out. Flooding and life got in the way. I do regret not getting there now. Instead, I’m making the trip tomorrow. I drove 12 hours southwest to go to my grandma’s funeral and now I will drive 12 hours southeast to go to my grandpa’s funeral. I’m a bit older now and no longer in grad school. Life is so very different, yet I feel the journeys parallel one another. With every death I seem to mourn not only the loss of my loved one, but also the shifts and changes taking place within my own life. The ripples of life take us on many journeys—mental and geographical. I feel this trip rounds out a summer of transitions within my emotional landscape. I just hope I can face the transitions directly and not turn my head and look away out of fear.

In that way, I hope to live up to the Weber name. Weaving a life out of tattered and scarred memories and dreams.

Seeking the Right Side of Truth

Juan Manuel Gerónimo’s Testimony:
“We won’t be afraid. We will do this together. Because if we say that one person is in charge of this work, then we are just giving them a new martyr. But if we are all together, we can do this work. What we are doing is legal and the law isn’t going to put all of us in jail.” [from Sanford, pg. 39]

Over the past few weeks we have witnessed a variety of upheavals across the globe. Places like Iran and Honduras gaining attention for political turmoil. Over the past month or so, I have been pouring over books recounting the Guatemalan history of violence and civil war. It’s an uncanny experience to watch the present through the ghosts of political past. It is in regard to Honduras that I’m most tentative in my reactions—less so with the events in Iran.

My unease reached its peak as I read a response to an article I linked to my Facebook page. I posted the link because for me it represented the challenges of trying to understand what is going on in Honduras. The response only confirmed my feelings of caution. I feel that recent history has taught us that the only way to respond to these situations is with aggressive rhetoric. But is that the best route to handling global crises? It becomes a battle of who is right and who is wrong (in the most simplistic sense of the word). Ultimately it turns into a desire to lay blame completely on one side in order to feel morally, dare I say, righteous, about taking the other side. But the history in Central America is terribly complicated and to try to make black and white distinctions is utterly impossible for me. The back and forth battle for power seems to swing wildly in nations struggling for political and democratic stability. Fragile governments struggling to gain autonomous momentum after years of colonization, political meddling, and economic turmoil. These battles do not erupt out of nowhere. There is a deep history and the U.S. is not an innocent bystander in all of this, which I believe raises the stakes of our response to these global events.


Buried Secrets: This brings me back to my research on the history of the civil war in Guatemala. That past is fraught with uncertainty about the truth of La Violencia—the genocide that was wielded upon the Mayan people in the 1980s and through the early 1990s. There are debates about whether or not the guerrillas were responsible for provoking the massacres committed by the army across numerous villages. There is a perspective, perpetuated by Robert Stoll (1998) and his critique of Rigoberta Menchú’s narrative of the civil war, which asserts that the Mayan people were victims in the middle of a battle between the government’s army and the guerrilla army. That both armies used the people for their own selfish ends and the people became victims of power plays.

Victoria Sanford, in her book, Buried Secrets, recounts the excavation of clandestine cemeteries from the civil war and the Commission for Historical Clarification’s (Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico) search for who was responsible for the mass killings that took place in Guatemala during the civil war. The stakes of the right side of truth are high and can dictate public policy, political process, individual and community healing, and a host of issues for the nation. Because the stakes for truth are so high, it’s understandable that people would fight for their truth to be the truth of an event.

In their search for truth, the commission determined that the ‘two armies explanation’ asserted by Stoll for La Violencia is an inaccurate and incomplete explanation. In her book, Sanford provides a comprehensive explanation of the way in which the army enacted its terror of the Mayan people. She identifies seven phases of violence that constitute the “phenomenology of terror” (pg. 123) that occurred in Guatemala. These are: 1) premassacre community organizing and experiences with violence; 2) the massacre; 3) postmassacre life in flight in the mountains; 4) army captures and community surrenders; 5) model villages; 6) ongoing militarization of community life; and 7) living memory of terror (pg. 123). Within the phases of community surrender and the development of model villages, the army undermined the actions of the guerrillas and many innocent people, calling anybody who questioned the authority of the army ‘subversive’ and ‘guerrillas,’ which would lead to violent responses and fear among the people. As Sanford explains,

Social justice organizing was always met with accusations of leaders being ‘subversive’ or ‘guerrilla.’ These accusations heightened community fears of the army ‘ punishing’ them for these activities. Threats from military commissioners, sporadic army occupations of villages, and assemblies of civil patrollers at local army bases to denounce human rights activities reinforced ambient fear of the living memory of terror. It is within this memory that courageous community leaders came forward in the 1990s to demand justice. (pg. 144)

Ghosts of Coups Past: Military coups dominate the history of Central and South America, so it makes sense that to have the military forcibly remove President Zelaya from his home in the early morning of June 28 in his pajamas would bring back fears of that past. I can’t help but be reminded of President Arbenz in Guatemala being strip-searched in the airport before being sent off to Mexico. In the wake of his expulsion, Castillo Armas took control of the country and began the string of dictatorships that would rule over the country for decades.

Regardless of whether or not the military in Honduras was simply carrying out the orders of the Supreme Court and Congress, the image of that past cannot leave my mind. I wonder, even if they were trying to prevent Zelaya from democratically planting the seeds of a dictatorship, was it the best way to remove him? I can’t say, because I am not there and I only know what I’ve read on the situation. But I can’t help but feel the sharp pain of the deeper past in Central America and then the more recent 2002 Chávez debacle. And so I ask again, is aggressive rhetoric the best route to handling global crises such as these?

Reading academic books on Guatemala as I pour over news reports and blogs about the events in Honduras I find my skepticism grow. The search for truth is a process, especially when confronted with the histories and stories of people living through (or who have lived through) social upheaval and trauma. But people must decide on the truth after reading and researching events going on around them. Something I am working on at the moment. I just find in these moments that I’m unable to complete my thoughts. I’m unable to come to a final decision. Perhaps because so much is still unfolding—both in the news on Honduras and my research on Guatemala. This is particularly true with today's outbreak of violence as a result of Zelaya’s attempted return to Honduras. The one thing I am certain of is that we cannot be too hasty with our judgments and that in moments such as these I’m better at asking questions than coming to clear resolutions.


Works Cited:

• Sanford, Victoria. Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
• Stoll, Robert. Rigobera Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Boulder: Westview Press, 1998.

Remembering and Misremembering: Marking Time with Michael Jackson and Crissy

Fall of 1983: We were running out to the playground. Crissy had her boom box in her hand and we scoured the playground for a place to ourselves—but not too far away from others. We did want to be noticed. So we found a place on the jungle gym. She balanced the boom box on the top of the bars and pressed play. There was the music and then that voice to remember. “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” waved through the air. We laughed and jumped around to the music. The warm fall air, filled with the smell of dried leaves, lingered around us as we danced and played.

June 25-6, 2009: When I heard that Michael Jackson was dead, I was sitting at Atomic with Angela. We were talking about our research on Guatemala. I didn’t believe it at first. I looked at the CNN headline and just sort of thought it was a joke. I still don’t really believe it’s true to be honest with you. Part of me wants it to be a big publicity stunt for his great comeback. As I write this, though, it brings back lots of memories of growing up. I’ve been in an '80s nostalgia mode these days, so this just tipped me over the edge.

Remembering December 2, 1983: Crissy, and I eagerly awaited the world premiere of the “Thriller” video. Crissy was my best friend in the 5th and 6th grade. She was my first best friend. I remember being excited that the video would premiere on Friday Night Videos because my family did not have cable. Having it on Friday Night Videos meant that I could actually see the video for the first time when the rest of the country saw it for the first time. It was a time to celebrate, because not only was the video premiering, it was also less than a week before my birthday. For the occasion my parents let me invite Crissy over to spend the night.

That night has been significant for me—and not just because we watched “Thriller” for the first time. I was in the sixth grade and my family and I were living in the farmhouse in Defiance, Missouri. It is a house full of terrible memories, but that night—that night was one of the best nights I had in that house. I had a wood stove in my room and I remember that it was nice and warm—so toasty. Our firewood supply was often touch and go and luckily we had enough before our next trip into the woods. (Yeah, it was the sole source of heat for us.) So Crissy and I spent the evening doing all those things girls typically do. It was rare for me, because I almost never invited friends over to my house. My father was just too unpredictable with his drinking to trust bringing friends over. But this was an exception. It was near my birthday and it was Michael Jackson. I took the risk.

We had so much fun that night. Crissy and I played games, did each other’s make-up and hair, gossiped about the boys we liked at school, and, of course, talked about how awesome the video was going to be. By the time Friday Night Videos came on, we were poised with our popcorn—nearly ready to jump out of our skin with excitement. We watched it on the small tv in my room, because we wanted to digest it by ourselves, without parents. Crissy loved Michael Jackson. It was on the playground out school that I first heard Thriller. We were in our own little world when we listed to it at recess. When I would go to her house, she would pull out her album, opening it up to look at the full-length photo of Jackson that lay within it. White suit, cool hair. As the album played on her turntable, we would read the sleeve over and over again—memorizing the lyrics and all the acknowledgments.

June 25-26, 2009: So I’m sitting here listening to Larry King Live with all the famous people talking about the life of Jackson and their experiences with him. It’s strange, but I get frustrated with these obsessive tributes to famous people who die. It makes me feel disconnected from my own emotional responses to those figures. It becomes less and less meaningful as the news shows try to capture the moment as it is happening. There is no time to mull things over, to let yourself digest, not only the person’s death, but what such an event means to your own life. And it is an event. Michael Jackson was not just another person, his image was no longer his own. And if any of you are like me, you build your memories around those images, those events. Like it or not, popular culture is a marker for all of us. It reminds us of our immortality. It provides a way for us to remember events in our own lives—events that might otherwise melt away into the recesses of our minds. Oh, how I am a product of the 1970s and 1980s.

Without the marker of Thriller and the video’s premiere, I might not still remember the deeper things that were going on in my life in that period between 1982 and 1984. Or at least I would never be able to remember that time with the mixture of joy, bitterness, dark humor, and hope that currently defines those years for me. At same time, I find myself creating a narrative around big events, even if they don’t exactly align in real time.

Misremembering December 8, 1980: Here is how I always tell the story of what happened the day that John Lennon died: It was my birthday and we were living in the farmhouse. I threw a big birthday party with most of the girls from my class. I remember my mom glued to the television that evening, crying. I felt sad for my mom and sad that Lennon was dead. I just knew something big was happening even if at that moment I was more consumed with my friends and the drama of being a young girl than the news reports.

But that story is now all mixed up for me. The timing is all wrong. As I was reflecting on the date of when I watched “Thriller” with Crissy, it didn’t jibe with my memory of events during our time living in the farmhouse. If it was 1983 when I was sitting there with Crissy, watching “Thriller” and John Lennon died in 1980—the day of my 9th birthday, then that means we were not living in the farmhouse. We were living in the mobile home in Bonne Terre, Missouri. But that memory is so vivid. So clear. I see my mom on the couch in the living room in the farmhouse, crying and pacing. I see myself watching her from the doorway leading into the living room, leaving my friends in the back rooms on occasion in order to check in on her. It is so tangible, so real.

It was one of those dependable memories—until today, June 25-26, 2009. The story is no longer possible and it blurs into the many memories of that time in my life. Those memories are like helium balloons floating in the sky. They float and fluctuate, some fly away out of sight, some bump into other memories. Most are not attached to solid ground and I try to catch their strings to grasp onto something—anything that has coherency. But I find myself making and remaking those stories. Clumping events together that I know did not happen together in real time. All those memories of moving back and forth between California and Missouri are one big streak of movement with anecdotes making pock marks along Interstate 70. And then the years between the trailer in Bonne Terre and the farmhouse in Defiance merge, conflate, and push there way in and out of my consciousness.

Remembering December 2, 1983: After watching the video and talking about the dancing, the storyline—just completely dissecting each moment of the video, we got ready for bed. We stayed up, talking into the night about almost everything. It was the first time I felt I had a real friendship, that I had let the walls of my secret world down to share with somebody. Up until that time, I never really had a close friend. I just lived in my own world, which consisted largely of books. That night was the first time I ever told anybody that my dad was an alcoholic and that he was prone to fits of rage. She, then, shared with me her own struggles at home. I do not feel comfortable revealing those struggles, but suffice it to say, it made me realize that I was not alone. Although I would retreat into my shell about a year later when our friendship dissolved (it just couldn’t survive the transition from grade school to junior high), that moment was an awakening. It opened up something inside of me. It is a soft memory that rests outside of the many jagged and sharp memories that define that time in my life.

June 26, 2009: I keep looking at the dates of my life in Missouri, calculating the years and where I was living and when. It is messy. My memory of that time is full of mistakes and errors. I keep leaping for a string to attach at least one memory to solid ground. I’d like to think that the “Thriller” night is one such memory, but who knows. Right now, though, I don’t care. It is real. And it is me. It is how I can (and want to) mark the trajectory of my life. And I will take Crissy and Michael Jackson with me in this memory journey.