OleopteneA blog for Mara Collins

Hypographia

August 29th, 2007

So some days writing seems like something I cannot help doing, something as natural as breathing, something I wake up looking forward to doing, the daily opportunity to capture some of the words and thoughts that have been drifting around in my head. And some days it feels like torture.

The blog seems like an additional pressure, I don’t want to disappoint anyone, I am sure that anyone reading is going to get sick of it and stop reading entirely, and of course, I have the stats chart conveniently provided by WordPress to back me up (would I be happier with it disabled?). Or I open the computer and read a dozen other blogs and either dismayed at how brilliant the brilliant ones are, or at how the ones that are more like social connection-points for groups of friends seem completely alien to me, in-jokes and empathy and support, how BAD bad blogs can be, how I feel boxed in to this tone, this voice, of having a thesis sentence, elaborating, commentating, and it’s as bad as hearing my own voice recorded, as bad as seeing a photograph of myself on one of my picky days when all I can see is blemishes and hair sticking out funny or not liking the way that shirt fits — a photo, that left for a year or two I might pick up and notice how happy we all look in it.

And I am still here trying. I do know that it’s a cyclical thing, too, that rough spots are followed by easier ones, that on the days when I cannot get a sound I like out of the violin or viola, I still practice, though I might work on just the most basic stuff, saving the expressive bits for another day. I also am willing to experiment a bit with tone, and keep pondering appropriate blog-fodder: I surprised myself writing “the most personal writing is not about our medical histories or our sex lives, the things that would hurt other people to read, but the stuff that tells you what it feels like to be me” in a comment-conversation and I am still pondering that.

What has it felt like to be me today? I guess I am muddling through the “doing it imperfectly because there aren’t any do-overs” with parenting — my kids deserve someone more patient and perhaps willing to spend more hours coloring and playing board (bored?) games and go on nature walks and, and, and… well all the things I wasn’t doing when I was reading this great “Reader’s Manifesto” in the Atlantic Monthly, an attack on the pretentiousness of American literary prose that makes me feel better about the books that have left me cold. But it’s a long article and the kids were pretty much playing video games while I read it and I wasn’t thinking about them at all. And they were playing video games while I wrote my morning pages. And while I sorted through the papers on my desk for any important back to school notices and answered emails that date back to when we were camping. And talked on the phone with my best friend. And I wonder if I’ve crossed the line from “valuing self-sufficiency” to mostly-benign neglect. And I know that once school starts we’ll be back to virtually no screen time Monday - Friday, that I still read to them, with them every day, practice with them happily, that they are, fundamentally ok, but it still feels like I ought to do better.

Being me today involved going to the back-to-school picnic potluck (are potlucks going to be obsolete when everybody’s dietary restrictions finally explode into our consciousness?) and after going through the line to get my food sitting down at on of the only spots open, at the end of a table next to two women who clearly knew each other and were gossiping about who was there and who had just gotten married and whose daughter was starting high school… and Raven put down his plate and popped back into line to get some food for the shorter members of our family, and I sat there and ate and these women didn’t acknowledge my existence and I didn’t see any easy opening there. So when I looked over and noticed my oldest son sitting by himself eating, I jumped up and ran to him. And he really didn’t seem able to go up to any of the kids from his class and start a conversation, or maybe just wasn’t that interested, and I didn’t want to pressure or push, but I worried a little when he describes himself as a “loner” because really, he’s also a kid who knows how to be a great friend, has these leadership-y abilities to come up with cool games and organize the kids around him, has this lovely moral reasoning ability and personal code of conduct. But, ack, what was the model I was providing him? I couldn’t bring myself to talk to anyone there. Actually, the population of parents of gifted kids that this was, seems a bit introverted and eccentric generally, anyway. But we ate as a family except for the second-born who was joyfully greeted by all of his friends, and after eating Raven decided this was boring and not a good use of our time. And the oldest son and I didn’t argue.

Being me today felt like Portland hitting 95 degrees after yesterday’s was 85 and the day before 76, was just uncomfortable and cross and sticky, and after the fiasco of the picnic we couldn’t stand coming home to the house without air conditioning, and since it was going to have to be done at some point we might as well go get school supplies at Target. Which was air conditioned. But out of pencils. And pink erasers. And the little personal pencil sharpeners on all three boys’ lists. The denuded bins, the pawed-through stacks, misplaced crayons in the spot where pencils ought to have been, cardboard displays falling apart, and empty shelves seemed to be echoing with contempt for people who put this off to the last minute. Like, a week before school begins. Or maybe it was just making more room for Halloween candy.

Being me today felt like the only real redemption was to cross the parking lot and go into Barnes and Noble where Raven and I could switch off turns in the children’s section: I found Wislawa Szymborska’s Poems New and Collected, and Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale, he got Twyla Tharp’s Creative Habit and Madeline Bruser’s The Art of Practicing. And being me today felt like that redeemed the whole rest of the day.

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