Don't Read This Unless You Have ABsolutely NOTHING Else to Do

This is gonna be part of my paper...

The swamp just beyond the wall is her only escape from the desolation inside the house. The girl gets up from the dinner table and saunters out the back door. Her insides have completely dried up again. If she dares speak, dust and ash will fall from her mouth, and she'd be silently scolded for making a mess.

She stands three feet from the edge of the swamp and finally lets out her breath. The dust and ash float toward the water and disappear onto its moss. She sits down, embraced by a thin fog. Damp air moistens her lungs, and she remains still and silent for awhile, paralyzed but awake to her insides stirring themselves back to life. A feeling of home settles into her chest.

It's a different kind of silence out here than in the house. It's fresh and moist. And when something stirs out here in the woods--a bird, a breeze--the sound emerges from the silence--is borne of it--and nothing is disturbed. There is silence and sound at the same time. Words like these come to the girl and she knows it is the swamp talking to her. She doesn't tell anyone, though. No one would believe her and that would make her insides turn back to dust and ash. That's what not believing a girl can do.

---------the boring version----------

Angeline hated being in the house. No one really spoke in there--even at dinner--and if they did, what they said was so boring. It seemed that only boring things were allowed there. Whenever she said anything interesting--anything that mattered--her mother would start removing imaginary dust from the table. It seemed that the girl's words made the house unclean.

She found comfort by visiting the swamp that was just beyond the rock wall separating the backyard from the woods. She could relax there. It was her real home--a place where she could breathe and smell life. She sits here for hours having imaginary conversations with the swamp. In these conversations, the swamp always tells her the truth and never ignores her. When the swamp is silent, she tells herself that the swamp is still thinking about what she's said. It believes her and so makes her life bearable.

If I Write It As a Blog Entry, Maybe It Won't Seem Like An Assignment

Hi.

That damn paper still plagues me. But thanks to my friend, I'm convinced that I don't have to write it in a formal, boring academic way. In that spirit, I'm gonna write it as a blog entry and imagine my loving audience out there cheering me on and reminding me that it really doesn't matter so much anyway. It's just school.

Ok, but first I need to do some obligatory procrastination before sitting down to write.

Over and out,
Jenn

Seriousness is Serious Problem

Hello Ya'll.

I woke today with a serious case of seriousness. Luckily, I was able to drag myself to a coffee shop and get rid of it. But what if coffee shops didn't exist? What if...dare I say it...coffee did not exist? We need more readily available cures for seriousness and I hereby announce my plea to the Universe: Please give me more reasons to laugh! And while you're at it, more massages.

Over and out,
Jenn

Cyberspace is a good listener

Hi again.

So last night's journey into blogland was a fun one. As I write, I imagine an audience before me, interested in hearing my thoughts about life and the world. Usually, I have difficulty finding people to listen to me without having to manage their challenges and attempts at changing the subject! I love this no cross-talk forum. That is not to say that I don't enjoy conversations, it's just that I tend to need some space and time to talk so that I can even figure out what my thoughts are. You know? I'm sure I'm an offender too, but it's hard to find listeners who are actually listening openly and with genuine curiosity. Even when people have questions about what I'm saying, they are often actually challenges veiled in curiosity. My ideas tend to challenge the status quo--because that is interesting to me--and often I find myself on an imaginary witness stand having to defend them. I have to think there is something cultural about how we welcome or don't welcome brand new ideas. Again, I am sure I do these very things that I am criticizing right now because that is how my world works.

So, my stance on blogging: fun, and gives me a chance to try out new ideas and let them just be for a while. Cyberspace does not judge or give me grades--as far as I know.

Over and out,
Jenn Powell

Starting a Blog

Starting a blog is my first topic, which seems timely. Hopefully nothing I write here will sabotage my future political career. To be honest, I'm starting this blog as a procrastinatory measure against writing a paper for school. Perhaps framing writing as a recreational--and optional--activity will somehow morph into actually writing the paper. I know what you're wondering: What is the paper about? I'll tell you here: It's about literature's potential to heal the various divisions in the world by giving readers experiences of embeddedness within the world/cosmos. An assumption is that the self/world split is actually an illusion that has developed over time (and rapidly since the birth of patriarchy and at lightning speed since the industrial revolution), but that split--however illusory--nonetheless creates major problems for the Earth community. Basically, it leads to people being mean to each other and ruining the Earth Party in countless ways. One way to dissolve this perceived split, and to get the band back together, is to provide experiences for "others" of experiencing themselves as being inexorably part of the Universe. Basically, to experience communion with everything in creation. My paper is about how reading certain forms of literature can help do this. Of course, there are many ways--literature is not the only way! Lots of people do drugs to simulate this communion and that may be a legit way to move toward this type of healing of which I speak. But that route has obvious risks. Lots of people choose spiritual paths and meditation to become one with all there is. I guess this is a good path, too, but meditation takes so friggen long and then you have to get all disciplined about it, go through a stage of self-righteousness, think you have the solution to everything and annoy people around you who have seen this happen for countless people fresh from three weeks in an ashram. And worse, sometimes "spiritual experiences" can leave a person too "one with all" and with an attitude of "everything is as it should be," and they are left unmotivated to actively transform the world. Well, everything AIN'T as it should be, as any oppressed person would tell you, and we need people to DO things to change them.

Lots of events and practices that are considered "natural" and part of evolution are actually harmful to our community and threaten our future. I'm sure evolutionary psychologists have lots to contribute to the world, but they are leaving a legacy of people who think because the dominant humans do something, it somehow contributes to progress on our evolutionary path. When you start out with that premise, it's easy to concoct a rationale for how any action vibes with Darwin's theory of natural selection. Man, all sorts of counterproductive things get explained away by that kind of thinking: sexism, racism, etceterism. "War is natural because I've read about it in all of my history books! People have told me that it's always existed, so I guess that means it's natural. Man, I feel like shooting something right now." The co-opted "it's natural argument" a roadblock in exploring the mystery of life. The stories that get generated by biological determinism are neat, complete and bear no call for change. "Oh, that's why I hate math! I'm a girl and can't be good at it anyway. Cool, now I don't have to study! Let's go foraging...I mean shopping." I think that is why explanations from a biological deterministic standpoint they are so appealing. There's the question and an answer and the show is over. In my opinion, in our American culture, there's an aversion to mystery and change that makes the status quo seem inevitable--and so it only makes sense that from there, the only thing to do is to make the status quo tolerable. But then, why do so many people experience so many things as intolerable? If sexism were "natural," wouldn't women thrive because of it and not just in spite of it? Wouldn't I be in a better mood more often?

I seek to join others working and living to spread the paradigm that makes everybody happy. As I write this, i realize that I haven't talked much about this, but I will at some point. My very personal stake in chnging the world is that I'm sick of being hurt by people who perceive me as completely separate from them. If all goes according to my plan, there'd be no reason for anyone to intentionally hurt another because it would be such an obvious act or self-inflicted harm. And tell me how evolutionary psychology could explain that one. (that's not a challenge--I'm sure they could find a theory, those crafty rascals...I'm trying to stop saying bastards.) This new paradigm will be marked by gentleness and sacred ways of seeing EVERYTHING! I'm not talking about living in a limp handshake kind of way--but the more active--yang, if you will--complement to this gentle way will be more like playful sparring. Imagine kittens playing. That's how harmless and fun the non-gentle aspects of living will be in the new paradigm I have brewing. Maybe there will be "violence" but it would be more like kung fu matches after which everybody goes out for dinner together afterwards--winner pays.

Ok, so my first foray into this blog world has been quite a trip. I'm not sure that it's lending itself to writing a paper that an instructor would consider scholarly and well-researched, but those papers are boring and, in my opinion, don't change the culture very much in positive ways. Often they don't even get used as anything other than research for additional scholarly well-researched papers. I may completely change my mind on this last claim within hours, or as caffeine levels dictate.

Hopefully, I've said some things here that inspire support or silent challenges. Honestly, I'm more in the mood for support, so if you have ideas that vibe with some of the things I've said, I'd love to hear them. If you can help me connect my ideas better--and ground them in stories--I'd be very happy. If you find yourself disagreeing with my ideas, I still love you, but am not in the mood right now for challenges. All this is still incubating and I want to give it a chance to take a more resilient form. Please go easy on a sister who is just a newbie blogger. A good way to start a comment is "Jenn, you are a totally rocking chick. Oh by the way, could you explain a little bit more about your idea..."

Over and out,
Jenn Powell