I see you rolled your way into the semis. Dios mio, man.

I have a lot of catching up to do.

First, my excuse: As everyone sort-of knows, I had a bit of a health "issue" a little while back, and it got better, then it sort of got worse again- lots of really crappy and scary tests, and a really bad, misinformed and terrifying wrong diagnosis later, and I've finally got back on my game- in fact, right now I feel better than I did when this whole thing started.

As far as the topics go:

Rejection: Not much I can go into on this one- I've never been rejected in dating, as far as asking someone out. No one has ever said "no." However, I have been cheated on, which is a bit of a rejection. But that was a high-school relationship, so there's not much that I remember about it and I'm not sure how much I cared at the time. But I will say this about things like rejection: Everything happens for a reason. I can even say that about this health crisis I just went through: March and April of this year have probably been the worst of my entire life. Yet I came through this better, stronger and clearer than I was when I was "normal" and "happy" before it happened- and it's been reflected in other areas of my life: I was just promoted at work, for the 2nd time in a matter of months. So I look back at the rejection in my past as being necessary and that outlook seems to help. The worst rejection was probably a major breakup in my life: I dated this girl, the relationship got real serious, talk of marriage, I was in love, all the right things were happening, and then it turned the corner. She was the first girl to break up with me, and she was, at that point, the most serious relationship I'd even been in. It hurt worse than just about anything I'd been through up to that point. But, it was necessary: Before I met her, I was very unhappy in my hometown and was making plans to move out. Obviously, when I was with her, I then wanted to stay. Had that relationship gone how I had wanted it to at that time (I'm thankful now that it didn't!), who knows what would have happened. Very shortly after she broke up with me, I got a great opportunity to move to southwest Florida, and the rest is, well, history.

I have some professional rejections as well: I worked at the library in Lake City for close to five years. I worked my fucking ass off at that place. I made sure I knew everything. I read the stacks of books so I could answer any question I got. I asked my superiors to give me things to do, to teach me things that were well beyond my job position and job description. I took my job more seriously than almost everyone else I worked with- I approached it as more than just something I had to do to get a paycheck, and do just enough to stay employed and get paid (a work ethic I inherited from my father, which has since paid off for me). I worked the absolute crappiest schedule that was available there (every night until 9pm, every single fucking Saturday and almost every Sunday, split shifts, etc.), and every time a position came up that was one above where I was, the work of which I had been doing, I always applied and I always got turned down. This happened about three times I think. I deserved those promotions, and the superiors who turned me down knew it damn well- their excuses were EXTREMELY lame-- I mean, literally one time the excuse was that the person who got the job had better handwriting on their applications (my handwriting is not bad, apparently theirs was just fucking better- they must have used fucking calligraphy or something). The next time, I friggin typed the application. I never understood it. But looking back, I'd be miserable working at the library. Now, having got any of those promotions would not have kept me in Lake City when an opportunity arose. But it taught me something, and it did help the decision to move- and now, I took a job which made me realize what I wanted to do with my life and with my career, it's helped me work through school, the work ethic I cultivated there has paid off, and I've been promoted three times in the less than two years since I've started working there, with no real qualifications besides the fact that I do a good job, I've received and award from my employer, etc. Rejection is something that one can't always control, but how you approach it you CAN control, and that determines the outcome. At least that's what I believe and that's how I approach life.

Ghosts: I have to say something about beliefs here: many scientists and so-called "strong atheists" are JUST as dogmatic and closed off as fundamentalists of any religious stripe, whether it be Christian, Islamic, etc. Many scientists and atheists, in the face of anything that might conflict with their beliefs, are just as closed off as fundie Christians etc. There's a dogmatism present in scientific circles and with atheists etc. just as there is with the frequently reviled religious people. Me, I approach everything OPENLY. If there is something that I feel I know, that's fine. Otherwise, I am totally open to anything. Some things I have personally discounted: a personal God, for example- one that meddles in our lives, a la who wins football games and Grammy awards, etc. I don't believe in hell: it makes no rational sense to me- why would a God create something imperfect and then damn it for being imperfect? Wouldn't it be just as good for God to just do away with that individual? Why would He have to put him in a lake of fire for eternity, which in and of itself FAR outweighs any wrongdoing that could possibly be done in the physical realm. I don't believe in religious fairy tales- I feel that those can be reasonably and comfortably debunked and proven false. However, as far as ghosts, I am open: I've never seen a ghost, and I find things like haunted houses, exorcisms, etc. to be somewhat ridiculous and I personally lean towards disbelief, but I remain open and interested in EVERYTHING.

Look, I think it is obvious that there is more to life than what we see: science basically proves this. Whether or not it proves that souls exist, the afterlife exists, which in turn would mean ghosts could possibly exist (if they do, I would posit that they are spirits who have had some trouble making the transition into the spirit realm for whatever reason, or who can't accept they are dead, etc.), and maybe some sort of "God" exists- who knows. Some of it might be unprovable. Some things seem like we could actually prove them- could quantum physics seems to possibly prove weird things like parallel universes and time travel. I have about a dozen books by very well credentialed physicists who claim that some science seems to point to the existence of a "soul" and possibly an "afterlife" (as in a realm that exists in a different level of reality of our own). Certainly there have been enough people in the world over time who have had experiences (NDEs, OBEs, etc.) which suggest certain things, and there's been lots of scientific experiments that seem to suggest, if not prove, that consciousness is not completely confined to the brain and mind. Things like that force one who is open minded to think that there is more to life than just what we see, feel and hear- that we're not just meat machines, animals, accidents, etc. So I suppose I'm an open-minded agnostic. I usually prefer to not use the label "agnostic," for what it suggests, but that might be closest. I don't believe in a personal Islamic-Christian-Jewish God. I do believe there is a LOT more to life than we know. I believe that a soul exists, and I believe something similar to a "spirit world" exists (though my belief in that is NOWHERE NEAR what many would think when thinking of the phrase "spirit world"). Beyond that, I believe nothing, but am open minded and I *consider everything.* As one of my favorite physicists says, "be in the mystery."

I'm not sure that addresses the ghost question. I don't particularly find haunted houses, exorcisms, seyances, ouiji, etc. to be convincing or believable. But, I do believe that ghosts *could* exist.

One word on skeptics: I am a big fan of skeptics, from Penn & Teller to Michael Shermer to Richard Dawkins to The Amazing Randi, etc. But they have to be taken with as much of a grain of salt as anyone else. As I said in the beginning about scientists and religious nuts. I'll use Penn & Teller as an example. I am a HUGE fan of their show "Bullshit." Their Bible episode is absolutely brilliant and hilarious ("Elvis didn't do no drugs!"). They are regarded as expert debunkers. But they did an episode on cigarette smoking, and the episode strongly asserted that second hand smoke posed no harm whatsoever (or that it was hardly harmful, etc.). Obviously that's wrong- there was an agenda there, being that these guys are hugely libertarian, against smoking bans, etc. I believe they subsequently had to come out and say that they were wrong about that. Also one starts to notice when watching their show, as well as reading some of the other very prominent skeptics, that they will usually pick the biggest fringe wackos to represent the other side of the argument, as opposed to someone as thoughtful as the one representing their side of the argument, which hardly seems "balanced."

I usually fall on the side of the skeptic- but I always remain open minded, I NEVER knee-jerk, and I always consider everything.

As far as aliens, it seems reasonable that aliens might exist somewhere. But what if we are the only sentient life in the universe? Is that a bad thing? I was reading something recently that was mathematically trying to prove (pretty convincingly, actually) that the universe seems to be "tweaked" for consciousness to exist- that, as quantum physics seems to point to the fact that all possibilities exist simultaneously until observed, and the universe needed consciousness so that it could be observed. Does this point to a self-aware universe? (NOT a "God") What about those parts of the universe and reality that we don't observe- does that suggest that there is an "ultimate observer" or some sort? That's interesting stuff to think about, right? What about aliens- would they be "conscious"? How would they define consciousness? What role would they play in a quantum universe? Interesting thoughts, none of which I have any clue about. So the short of it is, I'm not sure how I feel about aliens. Until they land in South Florida, they don't impact my life.

Here's a theory about ghosts, before I stop writing (sorry this is so interminable): The new physics posits that all possibilities exist until observed, and that possibly all possibilities exists until a choice is made. These possibilities might exist as "parallel universes" that exist simultaneously, maybe "side-by-side" for lack of better understanding, that don't "collapse" until an observation/measurement is made or a choice is made. What if some ghosts of ghostly experiences are pieces or reflections of these parallel realities? Food for thought.

Oh, one thing I've noticed in my studies: The East is WAY more advanced than we are when it comes to spirituality and in many cases social values. I've read some Hindu, Buddhist and Zen stuff lately that is so, so far beyond the shit that we get for spirituality in America. In fact, I was reading a book that showed that some Hindu philosophies about the nature of reality and the universe that goes back literally thousands of years are just now being proven by science, namely physics and quantum physics. That's amazing to me. Am I the only one that seems to think that America, as wonderful as it is and as much as I love my country, is way behind, especially when it comes to spirituality and social mores? And I mean WAY behind.

I'd say this makes up for my lack of presence here for the past few weeks.

Belief in the Unbelievable

During this week's discussion of ghosts and hauntings, we've talked a little about the willingness of people to believe in the unprovable... and I did mention aliens in passing. In many ways the willingness to believe in extraterrestrial visitors is similar to the willingness to believe in ghosts. And I do love me some Carl Sagan.

I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost!

Well I hate to admit it, but I do believe in ghosts. However rather than giving you some bizarre story about how I was in a cemetery, or an abandoned mental hospital or the like, mine all take place within my home(s).

My only encounters with ghosts have been with relatives that have died. I don't remember this first one, but I've heard about it numerous times from my mother. I was really young, and my great-grandmother had just died the night before. The following morning I came out and told my mom that a woman had come and sat at the end of my bed last night. She asked what she did and I told her that she just smiled at me. So my mom got out the family album and told me to point to who it was, and I pointed to the same great-grandmother who had died. Now, there are several things wrong with this. First of all, I have no idea whether they had already told me that Grandma Gigi died. Second, she took out a family album - there are only so many people in those pics, so odds are I'd pick the right one, however, its not the only story.

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, my great-great-grandmother died. (On my father's side - the other one was my great-grandmother on my mother's). The night she died my parents were out and we had a babysitter. My sister and I shared the whole upstairs of the house - it was all one room (about 35 ft long), and she had a bed on one end, and I had a bed on the other by the stairs. That night, or maybe the next (its been 15 yrs+ now) I heard footsteps headed toward the stairs in the middle of the night. I figured they were Kellie, and told her to get back into bed. They kept going, and when I sat up to tell her again, I didn't see anyone, but the footsteps continued and went down the stairs. I told my dad about it the next morning and he said he had heard them too, and had stopped outside their bedroom.

The final one was when my grandfather (dad's side) died. (This one didn't happen to me, but to my mom - kinda). Anyways, again, about a day or so after his death, my mother awoke to find the candle moved from her bedside table (her room was right next to the kitchen), and all the cabinets and the refrigerator were left open. She then told me about how he would always check the fridge and the pantry when he came over, and if he wasn't satisfied with what he saw, would take them to the store and buy them more groceries.

All of these can be explained away - however they do all take place in the same time period - about a day or two after a death. My mother used to hold the belief that your soul was on earth for a few days before you went on. With her newly found zealousness, I don't know if she still believes it. Whether they were ghosts, or just our overactive imaginations, I suppose they brought us comfort after the loss. To think that you are so dear to someone that they visit you after death is - OK probably heart-warming and sappy, but pretty cool too.

I want to believe.

I want to believe in ghosts. Really and truly I do. I also really want to believe that aliens are out there monitoring us. The problem is that there isn’t any proof. I’m a big fan of proof when if comes to believing in things – this is one of the biggest reasons why I am not a believer of any religion. As Rachel Weisz’s character in The Mummy says, I believe if I can see it, and I can touch it, then it's real. That's what I believe. That being said, I am very open to the idea of ghosts and if I ever see one, then I’ll be a complete convert. Of course, just because I’m a skeptic doesn’t mean I haven’t had a couple of Really Creepy Experiences myself. I had two in particular when I was younger.

Jane’s Ghost Story #1

This story occurred when I was in fifth grade. My parents and I were taking a springtime vacation with our camper. We had originally planned to camp in Torreya State Park, located in the Florida panhandle (south of I-10, about halfway between Tallahassee and Marianna). My father happened to mention our vacation plans to his coworkers. It turned out that one of them owned property only a few miles from Torreya State Park. This property was a large, wooded tract of land containing an old, empty farmhouse. (The owner of this property would apparently go there periodically to go hunting in the woods.) This coworker said that since there was electricity and running water available on the property, we should simply park the camper there – that way we could camp for free and still be close enough to the park to spend our days there.

To us, this seemed like an excellent arrangement. We arrived at the property, and it seemed perfect. There was a nice shady spot under a tree, with both a grounded electrical outlet and a water-spigot: the perfect place to set up the camper. Except that it wasn’t. From the start we had trouble getting things to work. The electricity was turned on, and the camper was plugged in, but nothing was getting through. Then, despite the fact that the camper’s battery was fully charged, nothing would run off it either. I also seem to remember that we had trouble getting the gas to work, too. (My memory is vague on specifically all that went wrong – it’s been roughly 17 years, after all!) What I do remember clearly is that my parents and I got really freaked out. At first it was just stress – along the lines of: why won’t this thing work properly? But the longer we were there, the weirder things got.

We decided to give the camper a break and go for a walk to explore the property. It was at least ten acres, although it might have been considerably bigger. Most of it was wooded, and the woods were crisscrossed with a few sandy-dirt tracks (made, one assumed, by the hunters). We walked for a good distance down one of these tracks before heading back to camp. As we approached camp, we found something really strange: someone had written the word Phillips in the sand, twice. This writing was over top of our footprints, and there were no footprints in the sand other than ours.

At this point, the three of us started feeling really creeped out, as if something were watching us… and as if that something were malevolent. This feeling continued for the rest of the day – as did the problems we were having with the camper. We all felt so uncomfortable on that property that first thing the next morning we packed up and moved to the State Park campground. As soon as we left, we all felt a great feeling of relief. Everything in the camper worked perfectly once in the State Park campground.

Jane’s Ghost Story #2

This story took place when I was in either sixth or seventh grade. My friend Melissa G (not the Melissa who frequently comments here) was visiting me. I lived in the boonies, at the end of a dirt road in a very rural area, ten miles south of Lake City, FL (which is like saying ten miles south of nowhere). As a child I was constantly exploring the various woodlands near my house, and whenever friends came over to visit, I dragged them along on these explorations. Melissa and I had found a patch of swampy woodland near Rose Creek which had obviously once been a favorite play-spot of the then-grownup child of that property’s owner (I hope that makes sense). There were still a few toys strewn here and there, and best of all… we found the remains of a small wooden footbridge. It had been dislodged, and nestled in some brush near the bank of Rose Creek. We carried it downstream to a place with an island and placed it across. We busied ourselves clearing our island and nearby bank of brush and debris, with plans to turn it into our own private park.

Then I felt the incredibly strong sensation of someone watching me. I was about twenty feet away from Melissa. She wasn’t looking at me. I looked around and saw no one, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling. The Melissa turned to me and said, “Jane, I feel like someone’s watching us.” I said, “Me too!” and we immediately dropped what we were doing and RAN. We ran all the way to the bridge. (For those of you who never went to my old Lake City abode, the road to my house crossed a bridge over Rose Creek about a mile from my house. The place where we were creating “our park” was about half a mile from the bridge on the opposite side from my house.) We had reached the bridge, panting and out of breath, and were sitting down, laughing nervously and wondering if we had simply imagined things, when suddenly I felt IT again. Melissa and I looked at each other and simultaneously said, “I feel it again!” and we flat out ran the mile to my house. We locked ourselves in my bedroom, where we remained pretty freaked out until it was time for her to go home.

I never had any other spooky experiences in my neighborhood, and I certainly continued to traipse through the woods near my home for years afterwards. I never went back to that one spot though.

I'm a believer

I get made fun of for this often enough, but I DO believe in ghosts. I'm sayin' it loud and proud: I do believe, I do! (I can't remember what I just quoted... Peter Pan maybe? or Wizard of Oz?)

I watch every ghost show I find on TV, and they're always scary. Well, almost every show. I don't like the ones where the 'psychics' go into a house with the lights off and close their eyes and fall over and say, 'oh my! there is a disturbed spirit here!' C'mon, I could do that. (Psychic Detectives, however, is pretty awesome).

Has anyone seen TAPS? Actually, it's called Ghost Hunters, but that name is unoriginal. These two real-life Roto Rooter guys in (I think) Rhode Island get calls to come investigate hauntings, and they run around at night with all sorts of crazy video and sound equipment trying to capture proof of the ghosts. Now that I put that into words, I just realized that it's my dream job.

I was big into ghosts and ghost hunting as a kid and was always convinced that I was surrounded by ghosts, although most of them were benevolent. But I've only had one ghost experience that really shook me up. I'm really into cemeteries, which I know is a little weird. It's not a morbid thing, really, I just love the quiet calmness, the interesting stones, the idea of connecting with a very personal history of the area. Most of the people in cemeteries you'll never find in history books, so you're free to imagine who they were, what they were like, and how they ended up with a tiny memorial right there in the midst of a bunch of other memorials for people they may or may not have ever met. There are plenty more reasons I like visiting cemeteries, but, as this is just background info, I'll skip ahead.

A friend and I are driving around southern Georgia one day in college looking for little, forgotten cemeteries to wander through. Around dusk we decide to head back to Tallahassee, but then decide to make just one more stop (isn't this the way horror movies start?). We find a cemetery that's a ways back off the main road and surrounded by woods. It's small and unlit and we're the only people there. The stones are mostly new, which usually means there's not as much 'atmosphere' (for lack of a better word) or that the 'vibe' is fainter. But as I'm walking around, the vibe is quite strong, and it's not happy. As I approach one corner, the air feels more and more dangerous. I look up, and my friend, who was in another section, was looking at me at the same time, and we both knew it was time to leave.

As I turned back to the car, though, there was a small rustling in the woods behind me. I glanced back and a beautiful white horse was leaning its head over the fence and into the cemetery. I have never been more drawn to a creature than I was to that horse who apparently came out of no where because dead leaves covered the ground in the woods and it didn't make a sound until I turned my back. As I started to walk back towards it with my hand outstretched, my friend literally had to PULL me back to the car. As we drove away, though, we both felt something with us, something in the car. I even put the window down a little as if I could chase it out like a fly or bee. Finally, we drove within the warm light of the Waffle House and gas station signs and it seemed to disperse.

In retrospect, I wonder what the intent of that encounter was. I wonder if it was a ghost or maybe some other type of spirit. I wonder if that negative feeling was coming from the burial ground or if it wasn't from that friend who, it turned out, was an absolutely repulsive human being who put me in a lot of bad situtaions. I'm surprised I got out of that alive, sometimes, and I wonder how or if anything would have changed if I had pet that horse like I so wanted to.

G-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-ghost!

Well, I'm still busy, but I feel like I need to post something. So this week's topic is ghostly encounters, or spooky experiences anybody might have had. I think everybody, even people who don't believe in ghosts, have probably had one or two unexplained experiences. For instance, my friend Dimitri, who repeatedly swore he didn't believe in ghosts at all, still told me about a time when he went to get a drink in the night (he was 18 or 19) and there was an old lady knitting in his living room rocking chair. The lady looked like the woman who died in the house before his family moved in. Anyway, whenever he told this story, he would say that he knew it was a ghost, but whenever I asked him if he believed in ghosts, he would say no. I'm not telling this story well. Maybe I'll give him the heads up that he made a cameo in this blog and he can retell it in the comments.

My ghost story isn't as weird. When I was a kid, I thought I saw car lights through my bedroom window. When I looked outside, there was just this orange ball of light moving down the street. It turned into our driveway, and then it vanished.

That story sucks.

When we were kids, my friends and I used to have an elaborate, imaginary group of ghosts we said lived in the woods behind my house. (The head ghost was named Evil Ghost [clever], then there was the Red Lady, the Dead Lady, and some others I forget). Although I think we all knew it was just make believe, there were still places in that forest that freaked me out. For instance, there was this place in the woods that always just felt kind of weird, and one day all of the trees had their bark ripped off. Which I guess could have been done by an animal. But you know.

Anyway, my post sucks. Maybe others will have better ghost stories to tell?

Sorry

But I'm totally swamped. I'll either come up with a topic tomorrow, or somebody can pinch hit for me. Whichever happens first.

Reject!

Jen already took my best idea for this post... although I do have a short story to share with you along the same lines. When I was a LOT younger, I used to wonder how people could end up unemployed. I mean, if you don't have a job, just go get one, right? This belief was reinforced by the fact that I got the very first job I ever applied for. Granted, that job was manning the front register at a Burger King, but hey, a job's a job.

A couple of years later, my friends Melissa, Tina and I spent the summer after our Freshman year of college living together in Gainesville, FL. We had planned to rent an apartment, get part-time jobs, and spend the summer having fun. For the first month of the summer, we spent every day searching for jobs. I applied for office jobs, retail jobs, waitress jobs, fast food jobs... any jobs I could find. I'd worked office jobs and fast food jobs before, so I thought that surely I'd get picked up for something like that, but as the weeks went by and my bank account dwindled, I seriously began to worry. I applied to all sorts of low-level jobs and nobody wanted me. I even applied to work at Wal-Mart and was rejected!

Eventually, I was hired as a waitress for the graveyard shift at a brand-new Steak-n-Shake just off I-75. Tina got a job working the night shift at Waffle House. Melissa wasn't as lucky. She too had applied at both Waffle House and Steak-n-Shake, but was not hired. Eventually she did get a "job" - as a door-to-door vaccuum cleaner salesman! At first she was told that she'd be paid commission per-sale... then a short while later, she was told they'd give her a free vaccuum cleaner for every one she sold. Yep, they were going to pay her in vaccuum cleaners. And then she quit.

(Melissa, I hope you don't mind me sharing this story; it was either that or ex-boyfriend tales, and I figured this was better...)

Cue: Bitterness

Ah, rejection. There are few things I try harder to avoid thinking about than rejection. Ugh.

I guess I've mostly experienced rejection through job applications. It takes a freaking long time to find a job, especially if you're just out of college or don't live in the city where you want to work. No one's going to count on you to fly up for an interview for an entry level position. When I lived in Florida, I probably applied to 4,736,395 jobs throughout the country without hearing a peep. But when I came up to DC for a few weeks, I applied to a bunch more jobs and finally got one out of the newspaper. And when that one turned out to be intolerable, it took another 349,234 applications before I found the one I currently have (and like!! yes, those of you finding me by searching for my company's name, I do like my job!). And really, I only got this one because I had a friend who worked here and recommended me.

I keep telling myself that these are not personal rejections. I'm not still naive enough to think things like good jobs and fancy schools come to people based solely on merit. Obviously, it has a lot more to do with who you know and how much money you or your parents have. But it's still frustrating. Very personally frustrating. To know that you're ready to move on to a new phase of your life, to know that you're capable of performing well in a situation, to be nearly certain that this is what you want to make your career in, to come to all those big decisions and be stuck because you can't find someone to give you that first chance... that's what hurts.

I must have applied 50 times to Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice and the Guttmacher Institute, even after I moved to DC, and never even got an email response. I've supported Planned Parenthood and NARAL for years through money and time, so it really surprised and frustrated me that I couldn't even get a call back. And I have to admit, even knowing that this is the wrong way to express dissatisfaction but not knowing what is correct, that I'm a lot less inclined to offer my money or time to them any more because of that. I'll participate in online petitions I find in the multiple emails I get every day from each of them, but I've let my membership lapse in both groups, despite their urgent reminders.

But how do you respond to rejection? The only advice is to move on, right? Forget about it, don't take it personally, assume that you're better off this way or something like that. It still sucks, and, I'll admit here, it still makes me a little bitter.

I hope the rest of you are more mature about this than me. This isn't a fun way to be.

996 Rejections

Well, certainly going the broken hearted way was a possibility for this, but lamenting all the times I've been rejected by women would probably be boring? Anyway, I'm taking this the route of poetry, which is totally interesting to all involved.

In the past year, I have submitted packets of poems or fiction 200 times to journals. (Not all at once, of course. I usually do send-outs of 40 packets , and I've done it 5 times in the past year). Of those 200 send-outs (usually 5 poems per packet, so that's 1000 poems [well, many are duplicates; I only have about 60 different poems I send out]), I have had four poems published. That's a rate of .4 %. For all the rejections, it's usually variations of this:

"Thank you for allowing us the chance to consider your work. We have read it carefully and have decided we can't use it at the present time. Good luck in placing it elsewhere."

That's the Quarterly West rejection slip I had sitting next to my computer that I just got in the mail. I got 5 rejections on Monday all at once, which is a lot even for me.

Now, I don't take any of the rejections personally; it's just a numbers game. But even having received almost 200 rejections in the past year alone, it still kind of bugs me every time. The poems I think are the strongest get rejected the fastest, I read the journals and the poems the publish all blow, people I don't like get good publications, etc.

The poetry/creative writing world is a competitive motherfucker. Luckily I'll make the big bucks out of this in the end. Oh, right. Poets are poor.

I don't know if I'm shedding any kind of light on this topic. The point is, it sucks getting rejected, even when I get a rejection slip in the mail every three or four days. Also, next fall when I apply to PhD programs, I'm going to get rejected by a bunch of those places, also. When I applied to MFA programs, I was denied by sixty percent of the places I applied. Only Houston and my safety, Colorado State accepted me. Luckily Houston was my first choice anyway, and is a pretty decent school.

None of this has to do with academics, or anything quantifiable. Maybe that's the worst part. I sometimes feel like people are judging me based on the work into which I put so much of myself. Which isn't true, but it's really something I've had to develop a callus for over time. Also, postage is expensive. 41 cents? I don't want to hear any more whining about the internets, post office.

Why Would a Fella Want a Girl Like Her?

Rejection.

Everyone has gone through it at some point in time or another. It could be not getting a part in a play, not getting into the school you wanted, or not being accepted society in general. To some, it’s just a fact of life and they get over it, to others it can be motivation to murder.

Doing theater and being in the arts field in general, rejection is a common occurrence. I thought I had gotten over being so upset by not getting the part I wanted. During Glass Menagerie, I had convinced myself I wasn’t going to get the lead part, and I didn’t, so it was no surprise. However, I just auditioned for Cinderella a little over two weeks ago, and it was terrible. Not my audition really - I totally aced my monologue. My song could’ve been better, but I had been singing in the tenor/baritone range for weeks because of our Easter program at church (we don’t have many guys who can read music on the Praise Team), so it had kinda messed up my normal range. Still, I thought, “Wingate (the music director) knows me, I’ve sung for him before, so he knows I’m better than that.” My sister also auditioned - we were hoping to be the stepsisters. It was really one of our only chances to be onstage together because we look so much alike. They told her what a good job she had done, and even the director (one of her professors) said so the next day. We both figured we’d at least get a callback to read again, and that was fine, even if we didn’t get the part.

Well you can imagine our shock and dismay when we didn’t even get that. I was at work all day, and they were supposed to call, but it was Kellie’s day off. Nothing. Maggie had heard at 11. As I talked to more people that’s about the time they got calls as well. Trying to rationalize, I figured that the director must have assumed that Kellie would see one of the lists they posted up on campus. (I wasn’t buying that lie, though.) With a sinking stomach, I drove to the college after work to look at the list. There were about 30 names, and ours weren’t on there. Basically almost everyone who had tried out got callbacks except for us. I called Kellie to tell her, but she wasn’t home, and instead I broke down and started crying to my mom. It was pretty pathetic. I didn’t go to church that night because I knew I wouldn’t be the best company.

I told Kellie to go to class the next morning and confront the director. Why would she tell Kellie what a good job she did, and then not give her another chance to read? Kellie couldn’t that day, because she didn’t do the assignment for that day. However, last Tuesday she went, and the director hugged her and asked her how she was. Kellie said fine, but was a little confused about what had happened. The director said that Wingate had basically taken casting out of her hands, and not given her much of a choice - which makes me really hate him now, because he knows I can sing. Granted - I damned myself by saying I wouldn’t take a part if I didn’t get one of 5 lead roles, but come on - you mean I couldn’t even be CONSIDERED for ANY of those five!

My problem is high expectations - and not just with theater. I get such grand ideas, and set myself up with such high expectations, that when I don’t reach them the whole world comes crashing down around me. I try to aim low, to expect the worse, and then get excited when something good happens, but for some reason that’s really hard for me to do. Maybe I’m more of an optimist than I thought - at least when it comes to myself and the goals I think I can reach.

So obviously this week’s theme is rejection, whether it’s a personal story or an analysis of society - have fun wallowing in your own misery.

Imusn't say that again.

It has been noted that I usually write of experiences and, therefore, really “don’t think.” This, then, will have nothing to do with my own experience, but only my own thoughts.

Part of living in a free country means that you have to trust your neighbor, and you’re likely to be offended by him or her at some point in some way. As Timothy Noah points out here , Don Imus had been shoveling his brand of hatred for years. In fact, I also read that he hired one of his show’s personalities because of the guy’s willingness and ability to tell “nigger jokes” on the air.

Obviously, living in this country, growing up with these values, and actually believing them to be the better way to do things, I don’t think for a second that Imus should have any legal challenges to his on-air behavior. I’m not a fan of the FCC in general, although I think the idea of ratings and ability to block shows on your personal TV set is a good one, and I don’t think they should have had anything to do with this. We are granted free speech, and if someone is willing to hand you a microphone and offer to pay you for the privilege of broadcasting your voice and opinions all over the country and beyond, more power to you. If someone’s willing to supplement that by putting you on TV for no extra work on your part, then you obviously are a pretty lucky person. And with that exposure, in America at least, you’re free to do precisely what you want with it.

However, the values that capitalism depends on are not as reliable and difficult to cross as the Constitution. To limit the right to free speech, you pretty much have to be the president or an integral part of the executive branch acting on behalf of the president. Even then, you’ll eventually be questioned. But corporations don’t answer to this power; they answer to their bottom line and their stockholders. And I believe this is what it came down to with Imus. As long as he was little-known and out of the eye of the Washington Post’s front page, he could preach whatever type of garbage he wanted and he would find an audience. One wonderful thing about America is that it’s a diverse place, and there’s an audience for everyone’s opinion, no matter how much it goes against the ‘cultural values’ that the mainstream professes to share. There is no one set of values that defines Americans as a group. And as long as Imus could find an audience, his sponsors (CBS and NBC) could find advertisers for his show. Advertisers equal money.

Sometimes, advertisers will pull out of a topic temporarily while a shitstorm blows over. Other times, like the OJ mockumentary , something is in poor enough taste that extra publicity actually DIScourages advertisers who don’t what their products associated with the filth, even if it does have an audience. I think this is what happened with Imus. It was impossible to say that this comment was a freak slip-up or lack of judgment, but as long as only his audience was hearing what he was saying, it wasn’t seen as a problem. But when he got too much attention, the advertisers pulled out, probably for good. Then CBS and NBC made some of the best decisions they ever could from a social consciousness standpoint by following their bottom line and canceling the show.

Why was this one comment the straw that broke the camel’s back? It was a pretty slow news week. The real question is why do companies allow themselves to be associated with Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter or other people who preach hate with a microphone? I don’t know. I know some people who have stopped using products specifically because Rush endorsed them, but I also know people who take whatever dribbles out of Rush’s mouth as gospel truth. I suppose the lack of support has not reached a critical level yet, but it may.

In a few months, Imus may show up on Sirius radio or something else that is further from mainstream criticism and self-righteously defend his show and ethics. Maybe he’ll be the anti-Bill Maher. But that’s the beautiful thing about America’s system: even people we disagree with are allowed to speak. Loudly.

Censorship in Russia

At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia’s largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be “positive.” In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin. How would they know what constituted positive news? “When we talk of death, violence or poverty, for example, this is not positive,” said one editor at the station who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. “If the stock market is up, that is positive. The weather can also be positive.” [full article here]

A Different Take On The Topic

First, 100th post!

Second, Sorry I'm late.

Third, here's my post.

Within the blanket of the broad topic for this week, "words," and the subtopic censorship, I think that an interesting news story has arisen. The Virginia Tech shootings, of course, are on the news all the time, and everybody is scrambling to find an angle to take on them. It's probably too early to tell what the angle that will be repeated ad nauseum for months will be (like during Columbine it was playing violent video games or listening to Marilyn Manson), but one aspect of this attack that people are talking about that I worry might be the angle is the dude's creative writing.

Apparently, Cho was a creative writing student (he had at least taken some classes if that wasn't his major). Many classmates are coming forth and describing how dark and disturbing his writing was, and how as a result they should have seen this attack coming. Two of his plays have even been posted online, with many news organizations pointing to how twisted and dark they are. Famous poet Nikki Giovanni (I think the term "famous poet" might be a bit of an oxymoron) has said she had to speak to him in her class about his writing (and also his behavior, but that doesn't fit with my argument) and how it was disturbing the class.

Well, as somebody who a) is a creative writing graduate student, and b) wishes to teach creative writing for a career, this angle that the news is taking is bothersome. What if schools were to suddenly start deeming it necessary that all students who hand in disturbing or dark writing be reported to school counselors? Over the past semester in poetry workshop I handed in 7 poems. In 6 of those poems, there were deaths. In 3 of those, it was murder. Last semester, I handed in a poem called "Execution" to class in which a serial killer is the speaker, and he graphically disembowels a young couple and then wishes for death and hurt for all their families. In Frank Bidart's last book, Star Dust, a National Book Award finalist, there is a poem in which the speaker kills a woman with a hatchet, then stabs her through her gut and reaches up through her to pull out her heart. Frank Bidart and I aren't about to go on shooting rampages. (Well, I'm not. I don't know Frank Bidart personally, so who knows?)

In poetry, we are told (by Frederico Garcia Lorca and our teachers) that all good poems are written with an air of duende. That is, that the threat of death hovers just behind the poem, influencing the words and the way they form on the page. Even a great love poem must be written through duende, because we are transient beings who will one day die, and the love must be informed by that temporary nature.

I think that judging what people are going to do by how dark and disturbing their writing is is ludicrous. But people want to think that they can somehow be prescient about this sort of senseless act, and that's why they so desperately try to find the "cause." Additionally, if we learn something through this and are able to stop another person from suddenly cracking, then those 32 people who were killed would have died for something, rather than just senselessly. So I understand the psychological need to find something to pin this terrible act on. I just worry about how the censorship of dark ideas might influence the poetry classes I'm going to take or teach in the future. Will students start self censoring themselves so they don't get labeled as potential killers? Will the trust that must exist between a poetry teacher and student be destroyed when teachers must start turning in their students poetry to administrators for analysis?

Well, that's the end of my real argument. But I just wanted to add that Cho's two plays that have found their way online are not as deeply disturbing as all the news sites are making them out to be. To me, they just seem stupid, like the guy obviously wrote them in a half an hour just so he could pass the class. When I taught fiction workshop I was handed much more violent stories, and I never thought twice about whether or not the student was going to kill people. So we're just trying to say that the signs were there, rather than the reality of the matter, which is nobody can tell when somebody is going to snap.

Smile Like a Saint, Curse Like a Sailor

My sister and I curse - All. The. Time. - well, at least at home that is. We call each other every name under the sun, but usually it's just teasing (What's up, ho? Nothin' bitch). Of course, to people who only curse when their angry or upset, this may be a little confusing , but this is where intent (as has already been somewhat discussed) comes in. There are a lot of other clues, in speech and body language, that makes it very clear when we cross the line between playing around and anger.

My mother hates it, and has tried repeatedly to ban us from using "that language", but we just kind of laugh, and do it anyway. Her arguments are really weak. The first one is "What are you going to do when you have kids?". Ummm, ok that's not even an issue, and probably won't be for quite some time, but let's explore, shall we? I don't curse when I'm at work except maybe an occasional "hell" or "damn", but that's pretty rare. Does she think that I'm completely unable to control myself? I can tell when and around whom it's acceptable to curse, and behave accordingly. I'm not some 5 yr old who has learned a new word, and just blurts it out whenever I feel like it.

The second is "You must not be as intelligent as you think, if you can't come up with other words to say." I can be quite eloquent when I want to be, but it comes down to one thing - I like to curse. Sure I could come up with other words, but most of the time they don't get the point across like using the word "fuck" can.

Substituting words like freakin'? Please - just say the word because (as Jane said), the intent is there. Why sugar-coat it? When I worked at a camp, one of the leaders of a group had taken to saying "Oh my stars" instead of "Oh my gosh" because she thought it was too close to "Oh my God", and was still offensive. I thought that was pretty good compromise, but if you're still thinking "Oh my God", and you're Christian, well you're damning yourself anyway by thinking it, so why not say it?

As far as Imus, I guess he gets what he deserves, but (to bring back an old topic) what's the difference between what he did and Ann Coulter's remark? She got a slap on the wrist (if that), and he gets fired. Granted his was on air, and hers was at a conference or meeting, but was it also because of the target? Of course maybe it's because hers made no sense (Edwards isn't even gay), that people didn't put up more of a fuss.

Also, everyone is going on about how rap music has the same offensive words, but there is a difference. Their lyrics, though offensive, are probably not aimed at anyone specifically, whereas Imus's were. It's one thing to make a stupid generalization, but it's quite different when you make it personal. As far as the difference between Tennessee (or whatever the other team was) being "cute", and Rutgers, he was talking about how Rutgers had tattoos (I guess that cancels out any cuteness), and was trying to make them out to be tough girls, and said the wrong thing.

Of course there are tons of exceptions to the rap lyrics. Eminem has written songs about killing his wife. I meant that there were no songs that were calling specific women "hoes". (Except Eminem - damn!) Anyways - what's the difference between calling women offensive names and saying you want to kill a cop? My point being you're going to have to censor a lot of things, and where do you stop?

This is off the topic, but...

I thought you all may be interested because of our previous gun control conversations.
This article from the Washington Post talks about international reactions to the Virginia Tech shootings and heavy questions about America's gun problems.

Jane, I read somewhere that South Korean officials offered public condolences to the Virgina Tech families. Can you offer any more insight into the international reactions? I think the writers of the Post article just looked at other news web sites to find out what they were covering.

Jane's UPDATE: One of the best blogs about Korea, The Marmot's Hole, has an excellent post on the subject, which continues to be updated as new information becomes available. Click here to read. (He summarizes a lot of Korean news sites, which is great for those of us - like me - whose Korean skills are embarrassingly limited.) One of the things he has mentioned is that the Korean President and Foreign Minister have offered their condolences to the American people. Definitely read the post; it's quite informative. There is an incredibly long post on this topic up at another great blog about Korea, Scribblings of the Metropolitician, entitled The Politics of Pride and Shame, which I recommend, assuming that you can force yourself to wade through the entire piece.

Words, words, words.

I’d been planning on writing on this topic for a while now, although with recent current events, I’ll be expanding this topic somewhat. What’s my topic? Words! Didn’t you read the title?

The first thing I want to talk about is profanity and the use of pseudo (or faux) profanity. You know, saying “darn” for “damn” or “shoot” for “shit” or “frigging” instead of “fucking.” There are innumerable examples of faux profanity, and plenty of reasons to avoid actually uttering (or typing) a four letter word. Back in high school, I had a good friend who frequently uttered the phrase, “Oh fudge!” instead of “Oh fuck!” In tenth grade I stopped using (American) profanity entirely, and replaced all cuss words in my vocabulary with the British cuss word “sod.” When you’re still a kid, and subject to regulation of your speech by parents and teachers, use of such faux profanity is certainly understandable.

But what about as we grow older? A couple of years ago, I received some rather unpleasant messages from another blogger with regards to my views of feminism. She provided a link to her site, and I visited it. It was full of a lot of quotes from the Bible used to stress the importance of the wife being subordinate to her husband. I used to blog a lot about feminism back then, and was pretty accustomed to getting such nonsense in my inbox. The thing that stuck out about this woman’s site (which sadly is no longer online) was that while it was chock full of religious messages of the “right” way to live in accordance with the writings of the Bible, it was also chock full of profanity. Well, faux profanity at least. She substituted words such as “beeches” for “bitches,” “focking” for “fucking,” “sheet” for “shit” and so on.

I’ve thought about that woman’s site periodically ever since. If you refer to someone as a “focking beech,” you’re not actually using any of those “bad” words, but the meaning is still the exact same. Likewise, if I say something’s “fucking awesome” that’s obviously a compliment, but if I say someone’s a “freaking idiot” that’s definitely an insult. A lot of people out there go to great lengths to avoid the use of a small handful of words that are, for whatever reason, deemed “bad.” However, words are just random collections of letters; it’s the meaning that we assign to those words which makes them good or bad.

FCC regulations prevent the use of certain words on the airwaves. However, faux profanity is an easy way around that problem. While it’s certainly easier to make a list of banned words in order to keep offensiveness from radio and television, hate can be delivered without a word that’s considered profane.

This brings me along to how this topic of words relates to current events. See, as of a little over a week ago, I’d never heard of this Don Imus chap. But then again, shock-jocks are hardly my cup of tea. On the off chance that by now you somehow haven’t heard the thing that Imus said which led to him being fired, here’s the clip:

(If you can't get the video to play, click here.)

I agree, that’s pretty damn offensive. Of course, from all accounts, this fellow was frequently pretty damn offensive. What is it about this incident in particular which sets it apart from all previous offensive comments made by this man? Is it the choice of words? The choice of targets? And why is it no one is discussing the fact that whomever it is Imus is talking to also called the Rutgers girls hos? (Or is that spelled "hoes"?) On NPR all this week, I’ve heard a lot of different commentary on this. I’ve heard some black women decry this as terribly offensive, while other black women said that they found this funny and didn’t see what the big deal was. I’ve heard people say that the firing of Imus is censorship, while others champion the decision. And I’ve heard that had those remarks been made by a black commentator, no one would have minded. This in turn has led to a discussion on misogynist rap lyrics. (There's an excellent post on this topic over at Pandagon, which I definitely recommend checking out.)

I, for one, am glad that Imus is off the air, because I am opposed to hate speech of any kind. Of course, there are many people out there who disagree with me.

So… What do you think about Don Imus? FCC Censorship? Profanity and faux profanity? Hate speech? Rap lyrics? Anything else pertaining to words?

*yawn*

Throughout high school, I had dreams that I was pregnant but that no one was really going to take care of me. No one really seemed upset, but I usually ended up going on long, silly adventures with my swollen belly, and certainly no one cut me any slack. A few times, I actually had the baby and woke up soon afterwards.

Later, I began having dreams in which I was attacked or had to defend myself, but I would beat in vain with my tiny fists at my attacker and not be able to fend him off. These were always scary to me.

The most interesting dream thing I can think of, though, happened in college when I was living with my boyfriend. One night we both rolled over asleep in bed and bonked heads. As soon as we did, I saw a flash of a Temple of Doom style place with fire and a giant abacus with red and blue painted skulls in place of beads. That was pretty weird, but I woke up right away and asked if he was ok. He said he was but that he'd been having a nightmare about a hellish world with red and blue skulls on a giant rack and demons running around or something. I swear, when we bumped heads in the night, his dream actually jumped into my brain.

I also used to know someone who got 'night terrors,' which meant that there was a strange and almost inhuman moaning that would come from his room some nights, like a sorrowful dog. I always rushed in to wake him because it sounded like he was in horrible pain. I never asked what he was actually seeing, though. Those were probably dreams better forgotten.

Blogmare On Supergroup Street 4: The Dream Master

Well, I thought I would have lots of dream related things to talk about, but I can't remember most of the recurring ones I should remember right now. So I'll just mention a few.

I guess the dreams that stick out the most are the nightmares, or the really bizarre dreams. When I was a kid I had a recurring nightmare in which I would stumble into my parents bedroom, and on the tops of the walls there would be the shadows of many icicles illuminated by the television. I would never see the icicles, but I remember this dream very vividly, and it always freaked me out.

I mentioned in one of the responses to somebody's post earlier that I frequently have dreams in which a meteor crashes out of the sky to the horizon and creates a huge explosion, but more common than that is a dream in which I will be walking or driving along and I will witness a passenger plane crash two or three blocks away. This dream predated September 11, and even my fear of flying. I've had the dream so much now that whenever it happens, in my dream I actually say "And this time, it's not a dream." Whoops, dream Glenn, you're so dumb.

The classic recent (past 5 years) nightmare that I've had (and it's weird because it's so stupid) is that I dreamed that a paid a surgeon to remove all my bones. For some reason, he had to pull them all out through the soles of my feet. The feeling it made was a lot like stitches being pulled through you when you just have a local anesthetic. But the worst part was that after I had all my bones removed, every time somebody touched my skullless head I would lose a memory, and get slowly dumber. All my friends thought it was hilarious, and kept touching my head, and I just got dumber and dumber as the dream went on. I guess it sounds lame written down.

I still have countless dreams in which I am still teaching 7th grade. In each dream I begin by thinking I finally have a handle on the class, and I will be capable of teaching them. But by the end of the dream the class is always in chaos again, and I can't restore order. I think I had a variation of this dream the other night, even, except I was teaching at some college, and the college was located in the middle of a refurbished mall.

I don't think Farnell reads this blog at all, but I recently had a dream that for some reason I let him drive my car. He was doing fine, but then the steering went out, and we careened across a huge intersection and into a parking lot. We were fine, but then he forgot how to put the car into park and we bumped into somebody's parked car. They got totally pissed and started keying my car like crazy. This losing control of a car dream is something I have a lot. I will take a turn a lot faster than I mean to and fly off the edge of the road, into trees. Or suddenly my feet won't reach the pedals, and the car just keeps speeding up.

Well, I probably have infinity more interesting dreams that I can't think of right now. I'll try to remember them and maybe edit this post. Or this is probably already plenty long.

Dream a Little Dream

But not of me - that would be kinda creepy depending upon the context of the dream.

I have the unhappy situation of not being able to remember my dreams. There have only been a few that I have been able to remember - like the one where Amber and I did heroin. I guess it stands out because I remember the feeling in the dream so much, though I've never taken heroin, so I have no basis of comparison.

The other ones that stand out were ones I had about the end of the world, and there are several I can remember. One was that there was this gigantic earthquake, and chaos everywhere, and my mother was missing - and somehow because of that I knew it was the end. There was a split, and you had 2 groups of people - The New World Order, and the Old World Order, and the newbies were using violence to bring people to their side. Next thing I remember was that I was in a room with a bunch of people - in some government building - and the women were taken to a room and given a bag full of makeup. I knew something was wrong, so I asked one of the chemists who were in the room for some reason (it was Caitlin's dad), and he said it was ok - as long as they didn't take my picture. Then I was at some movie theater, and I had the choice of seeing Pretty in Pink or Reservoir Dogs, and I had the feeling my choice decided if I was going to heaven or hell.

It's kinda neat to pick it apart - like the fact that some cultures believe (or past tense, believed - as I'm not sure many still do) that having your picture taken steals your soul. Ok - so maybe that's the only thing, but when I told my mother she read a lot into it, and then started talking about how there was scripture saying people would have prophetic dreams and stuff.

Another one I had, there were demons everywhere, and the humans were rounded up and put in concentration camps (or something like it). It was pretty terrifying, and we were all sure we were going to die, but then one of the demons told us it was only going to be about 12 people killed worldwide. (Obviously, not so scary after that) The last one involved parts of the moon breaking off and falling to earth. Though in the whole dream, it was more about me finding someone and saying goodbye than it was about the destruction.

I was reading a theory that people who can't remember their dreams are subconsciously afraid of the content of their dreams - which made me think: If the stuff I can remember is pretty scary - what kind of crap am I dreaming about that I block out?!

There's also another thing I want to talk about that's related to sleep, and has happened to me quite frequently. I wake up, but for whatever reason am unable to open my eyes. I'll struggle, but they're so heavy I can't get them open, and I just eventually fall asleep again. When I wake up the second time, I'm fine, but it's so scary. I don't know if this is some weird dream or if my body is just too tired and unable to wake up with my brain. I've started writing a story about it, and we'll see how that goes - I'm kinda stuck right now.

I could gush about my love of Neil Gaiman, but I think I'll save that for another post.

Mr. Sandman, bring me a.....

Dream, from Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels

I am absolutely in love with everything Neil Gaiman has touched. I was first introduced to Gaiman's works back in college, when a friend lent me all of the Sandman graphic novels. I recently read Smoke and Mirrors (thank you, Linda!), and when I was finished, I found myself craving Gaiman to the point that I re-read Neverwhere again. (No, that's not redundant; I really do mean that I re-read it again. I've read it several times.) Anyway, I'm not sure if it's the influence of Neil Gaiman's specific brand of insanity right before I turn out my light, or the recent problems I've had with my suspect prescriptions from Vanuatu, but I've had some crazy dreams over the past few weeks. I wish I'd thought to write them down. Instead, all I can tell you about are two of my most recent dreams.

Yesterday I left work early, as I was ill. I went home and slept for several hours. I should probably mention that my landlord owns a gigantic white bunny rabbit named Toto. Toto always greets me when I come home, so I had petted him briefly before staggering upstairs and collapsing into bed. I dreamt that I was at a restaurant with a group of people. One of them was Caitlin; I don't remember who the others were. Caitlin was encouraging us to order a certain dish from the menu, so we did. However, when it was her turn to order, she only requested tea. It turned out that we had ordered rabbit stew, made with Toto, boiled whole - fur and all. Luckily, that was where I awoke.

While I'm sure I dreamt a lot last night, I only recall what I was dreaming right before my alarm went off. I swear I don't usually have dreams about high school - after all, that ended ten years ago! In my dream, the band was going on a trip somewhere for a concert. Evil Mr. Atkins was still the director. It was winter, and raining; the weather was thoroughly miserable. Gwen, Melissa, Avery, Chris and a few other were there, no one else. Fatkins (nope, not a typo) was furious that everyone was late. Slowly, people began to trickle in, and we were told to get on the bus. It took so long for everyone to arrive, however, that they decided to give us a 30 minute lunch break. One of the chaperones asked me and Gwen to stay on the bus to make sure no one stole anything. Except that then the parking lot flooded, and the bus was swallowed up by a giant whale. Gwen and I barely escaped, and were holding onto the top of a chain-link fence to keep from being swept away when my alarm began beeping.

Who knows what any of this means. I would just like to add that Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley received the inspiration to write Dracula and Frankenstein, respectively, from dreams. Obviously, my dreams last night were far from that caliber!

I'm just gonna go find a cash machine.

[Just a note: I had a very substantive post idea all ready, but don't have the energy/time to tackle that one. So I'm doing this one on the fly.]

Due to some recent issues (without going into details), I have begun to take some medication. For a short time, while trying to find the right "med balance," I was taking a relatively large dosage. While on this dosage, one of the side-effects was very vivid, strange dreams. I was only on this dosage for a couple of days. But it did get me thinking about things like dreams and reality. It also got me thinking about reality being what we perceive, and things like: Does reality differ from person to person? Is there such a thing as "objective reality"? Etc. Now, among other recent things, I suffer from something called delayed onset sleep disorder. Meaning, I'm a night person. It is very hard for me to go to sleep at night when I want to. In the past, this was never a problem, as I had jobs with late hours that allowed me to stay up until I would naturally fall asleep, which is not necessarily an unreasonable hour, but now that I work an 8-5 job and have to get up no later than 7am, I can't go to sleep early enough to get a decent amount of sleep. So for the past couple of years I've been taking over-the-counter sleep-aid. Anyone who has taken this stuff knows that it's really just an antihistamine, with the side-effect of sedation making its use for a sleep-aid. I've always hated the fact that I had to take this stuff to sleep at night during the week. Now that I've began taking a different prescription medication, I decided to find an alternative to the over-the-counter antihistamine sleep-aid (I was concerned about any interactions, etc.). I wanted to get a prescription to Rozarem, but due to my general doctor's gross misdiagnosis (she likely won't be my doctor for much longer!), I didn't get one. When I discovered that the main ingredient in Rozarem is just melatonin, I went down to the natural food store and got some melatonin supplements. It worked very well, making me sleepy but not the "artificial" sleepy, a more natural feeling sleepy. However, I got a kind that you drop into your drink in a little dropper, and was likely using too much-- the result being, very realistic and vivid dreams that I easily remembered. This morning, for example, I had a couple of "false awakenings," which is where I woke up, looked at the clock and realized that I was running late, decided to eat my cereal anyway, and then started to get ready to shower- only to wake up when my alarm went off. Due to this unintended but not unwelcome side-effect, I decided to keep a dream journal, and things such as lucid dreaming, etc. have taken my interest. All of this rambling on is leading into a few things to choose from to talk about under the general topic of: dreams.

When I was little, I used to be afraid to go to sleep because I was afraid to dream. The dreams seemed real, and while I never recall having nightmares, I always had extremely fucking weird dreams, and this scared me when I was little. So I used to sneak into my parents room at night to sleep, because it made me feel safe (I was like 3 or 4 at the time), and my pediatrician told my parents to turn the lock on my bedroom door around and lock me in my room if I started to do it again. So they locked me in and I got over my fear of nightmares. After that, I was always fascinated with dreams. I found that I often explored things in my dreams that upset me in real life. When I stayed at a friends house and his parents scared the living shit out of me with stories from the Book of Revelation (rivers of blood, red moon, stars falling from the sky, etc.), I had dreams of the end of the world for weeks. When in grade school a classmate told me that "if you die in a dream, you will die in real life," I got killed in my dreams (and, to this day, every once in a while, I will randomly get killed in a dream). I've always been fascinated with dreams, and there are times (I'm not sure if everyone has experienced this) where a dream has been so real, it sticks with me for days. I can remember something or someone that makes me feel something or brings up old feelings, good and bad, or something will happen in a dream that sticks with me, whether it be an image or a feeling, etc. And there are times when, in reality, I feel depersonalized, or I get a very surreal feeling, and wonder if I am dreaming. Supposedly, people can have lucid dreams, in which you realize within the dream that you are dreaming, in which case you may be able to control things, bring your "real world" identity into "dream world," etc.

So everyone can talk about dreams and dreaming, the nature of dreams and reality, etc.

Lastly, I want to ask a question: some of my favorite movies/books/music etc. concern the blurring of the real and the unreal. It also occurs to me that, if I lie to you about something that impacts you, I have altered your reality. But if you experience it as reality, is it any less real? I want to compare two movies that are largely given very bad reviews, and the very mention of their titles (at least one of their titles) will likely elicit groans: Vanilla Sky and Solaris. Now, both movies have their flaws: Vanilla Sky is largely a piece of crap, especially the nature of the reveal of the twist at the end; Solaris is actually pretty great (I'm talking about the new version, not the extremely long older Russian version). But I bring them up for this reason: (if you haven't seen one or both of the films, you're likely not ever going to see them- but I'm going to spoil the twists of both if you haven't seen them, so there's a fair warning) Vanilla Sky ends with the main character realizing that he has been cryogenically frozen and has been experiencing a lucid dream- unfortunately, his dream has been infiltrated by subconscious guilt etc. and turned into a nightmare. However, upon realizing this, he is told that he can erase all of this and start over with the dream, where he can basically have whatever he wants, including the girl of his dreams- or he can wake up, it's 150 years in the future, the girl of his dreams is obviously long dead, and his wealth will not last. He opts to wake up to reality.

In Solaris, the main character is confronted with a strange planet that brings back people from people's pasts- this planet brings back his dead wife, who committed suicide (if you haven't seen the movie- watch it, it will make sense). His mind being haunted by his dead wife, the planet brings her back from his memories, and basically the end of the movie is, he can choose to leave her behind, her being a fake construct of his flawed memories and desires, or submit to the dream- he chooses to enter the dream, where his wife is still alive, though it is not real and is a construct of the strange planet. Both characters were faced with a similar choice: Dream or reality? Both chose differently: In Vanilla Sky, the character chose reality, as flawed, unfamiliar and possibly bad as it may have been. In Solaris, the character chose the dream- to stay with his dead wife in a fantasy, including his flawed fantasy of how he remembers his wife and wishes her to be. The question is: Which would you choose? Not necessarily as the characters in these movies, but if you were faced with similar circumstances?

Many people would say that life is a dream. I've read many different things: that dreams are a gateway into another world, like "astral projection." At the very least, dreams are interesting and can tell us things about ourselves. Hopefully you all can make something out of this topic.

T-T-T-Transitions

That was the B-Side to Changes. Not many people know that. Basically, I stole Stephanie's joke sort of.

Well, I had a pretty good transition story about some current situations in the English department here at good ole U of H, but then I though "Uh oh. What if the people in question read this blog?" They probably don't, since basically most of our readers are Jane's blog's readers. And people searching for ways to get condoms out of their eyes. But I'm playing it safe.

So my transition story is about the one time I graduated college and then realized at the last minute "Hey, I need a job or something. This school thing is over." So, having a million options with a BA in English (and a minor in Asian history, for some reason), I decided to apply to a lot of middle school or high school teaching positions. You used to be able to do that in Florida if you weren't certified, as long as your degree was in the subject you were teaching. Well, at the last minute, just when I hoped, I mean, worried that I was not going to be hired by anybody, I was hired by a great little school by the name of Kissimmee Middle School. Oh, maybe I should disguise that name in case parents are looking for great schools for their kids and decide against that one. (Disclaimer: I taught there five years ago. I'm sure it's a way awesome school now.)

Anyway, when I was hired, the principal told me that he didn't want to hire me, and that I would probably be a bad teacher, but that he was going to give me a shot anyway. It turns out he was right, and I was a bad teacher, but I'd like to think it was the fault of the bureaucracy and other teachers. And I guess my fault for being so mean, too. But because I've told stories of how bad it was to teach there before, here's the abridged list version.

- When I told the administration that I felt that around 30 of my students needed to be held back because they could barely read, they told me they couldn't afford to fail them, and would just pass any students I failed anyway. The more students a school fails, the less money they receive. But the more students a school fails, they more money they need because they will have more students. So of the 30 students I actually turned in Fs for, the school failed 2.

- Our school was a "C" school by Florida standards. In Florida, schools are assigned money by how high a grade they get. A schools get more money, F schools get the least. Our school was a "C" school, but not because of grades. In fact, I was told our students would never get higher grades on standardized tests or general academics. It was just the demographics. So to maintain a "C" grade, the school bought hundreds of computers, because technology level was used in calculating the grade. Now, most of these computers were not hooked up, and there was nobody to teach the students how to use them, but because there were computers physically located at the school, our letter grade was maintained.

- The geography teacher on my team really hated me. She told the students not to listen to anything I said, and that I did not know what I was talking about. I'm not sure where this hatred originated. But she did have a hand in getting the science teacher fired. Now, when the kids were taught sex ed they split them up into boys and girls. The science teacher got the boys, and the geography teacher got the girls. (Thank fucking god I did not have to teach sex ed.) Anyway, they decided they needed to be "hip" with the kids. The science teacher decided to tell dirty jokes. Which was a bad idea and he got fired for it after the geography teacher told some students what to tell the principal. However, the geography teacher decided that to be hip she should tell the girls how much she loves blowjobs, and how she loves giving her husband blowjobs first thing in the morning, and that the girls should give their boyfriends oral sex to avoid pregnancy. For some reason, that seems a lot worse to me than dirty jokes. But this was the same teacher who told the students that Hitler was gay, and that's what caused the holocaust, and also one day when a football player (13) took off his shirt in her class she came to me afterwards saying "He did not look 13, let me tell you." Gross.

Anyway, that's not really a transition story. I guess it was the transition from school to the real world, and it was miserable. But on the other hand, I got real paid.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I am well familiar with transition. From moving once a year and breaking into the "real world", to having a different hair cut/color every few months - the one constant in life is change.

Transitions at work are always...fun. Working at a place with high turnover (hmm..like a library?), really makes you appreciate change and adapt. One month you can have a coworker you love, the next month they quit and a person who makes you wish you were deaf takes their place. (That is, after 3 months of screwing around the county does before they hire anyone). It's that constant shift in group dynamics that throws me for a loop sometimes. However, I suppose if I didn't have such annoyances, I wouldn't have any good stories either - and I'm sure everyone is well aware I love to tell a good story.

Some examples: Our reference librarian quit after I was there about a year. No tears were cried, I assure you, because she was the most unreasonable, short-tempered, nasty person I had met who worked with the public. (Nick, you know who I'm talking about). Shortly before she left, they hired someone in the other reference position (so she wasn't literally taking her position, but in essence she was). I was hopeful that she would be better than our other, but as time wore on I found out she wasn't.

She wasn't quite as mean, though she had her moments, but was just on another level (an illogical one) as far as her thinking. She got too stressed out if she was at the desk by herself (she liked to wander away from the desk for about 20 minutes at a time, and then those pesky patrons would come up wanting help, and she had to drag herself away from the stacks - can you believe the nerve of them?) Sometimes her way of finding the answer to a question made no sense, and at least once she accused me of opening her email and writing to someone, and then later, stealing notepads from the desk. She quit a couple of months ago, and I can only pray that the new person will be different. I can't help but think that maybe you have to have a certain personality to work reference - or maybe the position turns you into a bitch if you work it long enough.

Sadly, that's not the only change in employment that wasn't for the best. I used to have a coworker I loved to work with. We had the same taste in books, so she was always giving me new series to read, and in general was great to talk to. Well she quit and started working for a school in Branford because it was closer to home, and she could spend time with her sons during vacation, before they went off to college. About 3 months later a new person comes on, and again I thought she was alright at first.

Now she's been here for awhile, and every minute around her makes me want to pull my hair out, or move - that position in S Korea looks better everyday. She never listens, and she is always trying to guess what you're going to say. There's a reason - her husband's tongue was removed because of cancer or something, so I understand why she does it, but she needs to realize that most people (probably 99%) would rather just talk instead of having her guess (incorrectly). Here is a sample conversation:

Her: What did you do this weekend?

Me: Well I -

Her: Did you go to the Azalea Festival? I didn't even know it was going on, did you know?

Me: I did, but -

Her: You didn't want to go? Don't you like flowers? Or do you? I don't know...

Me: Well -

Her: Have you heard about such-and such going on next week? Blah, blah, blah....

That's the point that I start wondering if the edge on the ruler is sharp enough to slit my wrists. I thought it would stop when we got the other computer at the desk, and I could resume my web browsing as before, but it hasn't. To drive the point home, one of my other coworkers, who is the most patient person I know, is fed up with her.

To compound these problems, we just switched to a new system, so those of us who are faster at picking things up have to pick up the slack, and help train the slower ones. Everyday is an uphill battle it seems. Sometimes I just have to tell myself "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can - keep myself from stroking out today"

Transitioning out of the Department of Defense

[Before I begin *my* piece, I'd like you to read this excerpt from an article by Jeremy Scahill, as it's pertinent.]

On September 10, 2001, before most Americans had heard of Al Qaeda or imagined the possibility of a "war on terror," Donald Rumsfeld stepped to the podium at the Pentagon to deliver one of his first major addresses as Defense Secretary under President George W. Bush. Standing before the former corporate executives he had tapped as his top deputies overseeing the high-stakes business of military contracting--many of them from firms like Enron, General Dynamics and Aerospace Corporation--Rumsfeld issued a declaration of war.

"The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America," Rumsfeld thundered. "It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk." He told his new staff, "You may think I'm describing one of the last decrepit dictators of the world.... [But] the adversary's closer to home," he said. "It's the Pentagon bureaucracy." Rumsfeld called for a wholesale shift in the running of the Pentagon, supplanting the old DoD bureaucracy with a new model, one based on the private sector. Announcing this major overhaul, Rumsfeld told his audience, "I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself."

The next morning, the Pentagon would be attacked, literally, as a Boeing 757--American Airlines Flight 77--smashed into its western wall. Rumsfeld would famously assist rescue workers in pulling bodies from the rubble. But it didn't take long for Rumsfeld to seize the almost unthinkable opportunity presented by 9/11 to put his personal war--laid out just a day before--on the fast track. The new Pentagon policy would emphasize covert actions, sophisticated weapons systems and greater reliance on private contractors. It became known as the Rumsfeld Doctrine. "We must promote a more entrepreneurial approach: one that encourages people to be proactive, not reactive, and to behave less like bureaucrats and more like venture capitalists," Rumsfeld wrote in the summer of 2002 in an article for Foreign Affairs titled "Transforming the Military." [Written by Jeremy Scahill for The Nation. Click here to read the full article.]

*******

In March 2003 I began working for Defense Security Service (DSS), an agency which was part of the Department of Defense (DOD). My job title was Special Agent, and my job was to conduct background investigations on US military personnel, DOD civilian personnel and DOD contractors – anyone who might need a DOD security clearance. In March 2003, 9/11 was still a very recent event. The war in Afghanistan was well underway and the war in Iraq was just beginning. The threat of terrorism loomed larger than life. It was a time when nearly every phrase uttered by a politician contained the words “national security.” One would therefore assume that my agency, as the people determining who should and who should not gain access to classified materials and locations, would have been viewed as an integral part of the DOD. However, that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

When I joined DSS in March 2003, the agency was alive with rumors of a possible transfer of DSS out of the DOD and into another agency: the Office of Personnel Management (OPM – the agency which manages the HR side of the US government). At that time, OPM was already using private contractors to conduct background investigations on people requiring lower level clearances. There were rumors that our entire agency was to be privatized in order to make the security clearance business more cost-effective. Private contractors contracted by OPM were paid by the numbers of cases they closed. DSS employees received a government salary based on years on years of employment.

Now, all jobs should set standards for their employees, and certainly there are many jobs in the world in which basing pay on the amount of projects completed is perfectly acceptable. You might assume, however, that the US government would be willing to pay top dollar in order to ensure that security clearances weren’t being issued to budding terrorists. But you would be wrong.

Higher-ups in the DOD felt that the agency was paying DSS far too much money per investigation… money which could be better spent in Iraq. Then OPM offered to do the job for less. The transition of DSS out of DOD and into OPM took roughly one year. DSS was renamed the Center for Federal Investigative Services (CFIS).

One of the first things that OPM did during the transition was to get rid of most of the IT staff, with the idea being that each office did not need its own IT specialist. Instead, they created a sparsely-staffed call center for employees with computer problems to call. Many of my coworkers were above the age of fifty and not overly computer literate. The loss of our IT guy meant that those of us in the office who were younger and more computer savvy frequently spent hours assisting coworkers with their computers. And since the next thing that OPM did was to provide us with a completely different set of software, we were kept very busy indeed!

When I first arrived at DSS in 2003, they were using a case-writing/reporting software which worked in conjunction with Microsoft Office and Access 97. I remember wondering why they were using something so out of date. Little did I know what was to come! As part of our transition to OPM, we received “new” case management software. The program was DOS-based and had been written in 1984. OPM representatives went to great lengths to assure us that this “new” software was so much better than the software we’d been using. We were told, among other things, that it was faster, easier to use, and more efficient. Now I don’t know how recently (if ever) any of you have worked in DOS (I hadn’t since I was a kid), but faster, easier to use, and more efficient are hardly the adjectives DOS inspires. The new system was cumbersome, slow, and difficult to use even once you knew how. Report writing, which had previously been the easiest part of the investigatory process became the most difficult part overnight. Additionally, in order to transmit ones reports, one had to log into the mainframe. Unfortunately, the system was not designed to accommodate that many users. There were several occasions when I would try for hours (after coming home from work) to transmit a case, and was unable to do so until after midnight. More efficient? The truth of the matter was, the DOS-based program was cheaper to run.

Additionally, OPM decided that DSS had been too lax in its production standards. Under DSS, agents received points for each interview conducted. Short interviews and records reviews earned a small number of points, whereas lengthy interviews (some interviews took hours; others took days) earned a much larger number of points. We needed to earn a certain number of points per month for our performance to be considered fully successful. Under OPM the system was revised drastically. OPM expected to conduct a certain number of interviews per day, period. This meant that if you had a serious interview that spanned two or three days, you could still be rated unsuccessful if you were unable to catch up on your numbers. You might have just stopped a spy from getting a clearance, but if you weren’t making your numbers it didn’t matter. If you took too long to close a case, you were wasting Uncle Sam’s money. It didn’t matter that you’d done a good job. Speed was valued far more than quality.

Four months after DSS formally became CFIS, I quit and changed careers entirely. But that’s a tale of transition for another day.

You mark that frame an 8, and you're entering a world of pain.

I can't say I've ever had any trouble with job transitions. I am, though I hate it, somewhat sentimental, so it is always hard to leave people you work with for a long period of time (at least the people that you actually like), but I have never really had a problem with managing a job transition. I worked at a public library for almost five years, to then move 400 miles away and begin working at a lock-down children's "last chance" mental health unit, with occasional stints at the adult acute care unit (which included people detoxing, people who were Baker Act-ed, etc.). Now I work in a management position in a fairly large city on the opposite coast. So I suppose I'd also say I don't have much of a problem transitioning when it comes to moving to different places- the move from my hometown was probably the best decision I ever made, and then moving from the west coast to the east coast a little over a year later wasn't a huge problem either. There's some adjustments, sure. The transitions that I suppose I have had trouble with are the personal ones.

I loathe to get personal on a blog. But I will say that this topic, like the last one, is somewhat appropriate to what is going on right now in my life. I can think of personal transitions throughout my life and how hard they were: starting school when I was very little was difficult, because my mother was basically a housewife and I didn't get the social interaction of pre-school. Not that I really remember that. I remember when I graduated high school: I was not a fan of high school- I always looked forward to finally getting out of high school and being "an adult." And then I remember, the summer after I graduated, being completely depressed. In retrospect, it was because I was used to having external things define me- being a teenager defined me, having to go to high school defined me, my group(s) of friends defined me, etc. Then suddenly I had to define myself. It didn't help that I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, as far as what I wanted to go to school for or do as a career (I always envy some of my friends who just seem to have known very early on exactly what they wanted to do- I didn't figure it out until I was 24, and even then, it's questionable if I chose what I chose because I just had to choose something.) That seems to have all led to my recent problems, which seems to be signaling another transition in my life- this one not necessarily brought on by any external forces. It seems that I have spent a great deal of the last several years since high school and moving away and finally starting a career not really thinking about what I was doing, not pausing to think about what was going on inside of me, and getting too much of my identity and influence from external influences, as opposed to looking inside of myself or paying attention to what's going on inside my own mind/heart/etc. Perhaps it could be a sort of transition period into "adulthood" (yes, I'm 26, but these days, people spend more and more of their twenties still stuck in a sort of post-adolescent mode- I read it in a Time article!); figuring out what is truly important in my life, what I am "living for," what truly makes me happy and fulfilled, realizing certain things, etc. This has been an especially tough transition period for me, but ultimately something positive will (hopefully) be a result of it; as with most transitions, whether they be work related, academic, or personal, one comes out of the other end stronger than before. In the meantime, facing things that I haven't faced, thinking about things I haven't wanted to think about, and putting the pieces together is going to be a task, but it is one I am increasingly up for.

Transitions

Sorry so late, guys. I posted a comment earlier this morning saying that I signed on just to find out what the topic was when I suddenly remembered that Glenn posted the last one, which means its my turn now. I repeat it because I just checked, and it didn't seem to post *shrug.*

The reason I've been so slammed lately is because Friday was the last day my company was known as DFI International. From now on, it's DeticaDFI. I got pulled into some of the transitional communication issues on top of my already big workload, so I've been pretty swamped.

But that got me thinking about transitions. There's been a lot of whispers since they announced that the company was bought in February, especially since we didn't have any warning until they were doing the final paperwork-- Detica is a publicly owned company in England on the London stock exchange, so legally they weren't allowed to announce it early to anyone but the seniors. A lot of people wondered if they would loose their jobs, if some of the more useless managers would loose their jobs, if we would loose some of our contracts, if we would be able to dump our sub-contractors, if we would have to give up happy hour Fridays, etc., etc.

I have to say, though, that the senior management team has done a very good job of have meeting after meeting after meeting (including parties and bribes of free food and drinks) to make sure we're all ok with it. In fact, by today's rooftop happy hour, we were all sick of hearing the motivational speeches. Now, since the final paperwork and approval just went through and we were only today officially DeticaDFI, the full effect of the integration remains to be seen. But it has caused some stress.

I've noticed I've been forgetting a lot of stuff lately, even though I would swear I did it. I've been a little irritable. I've had slight trouble sleeping (and I am usually a very sound and easy sleeper). I've almost dreaded going to work some days, just because I knew I had so much to do there. In all, I'm glad this is official now and I can relax a little about it.

I think all transitions cause a lot of stress and can throw us all into a bit of a tailspin if we're not careful. So tell me about your transitions: perhaps from high school to college, college to employment, moving from one place to another, whatever. How have they affected you?