"But where is Faith?"

I've been doing a lot of thinking. So I want to say a few words before my office hour starts in forty-five minutes (I refuse to do a lick of official work or lesson planning until 11:30 a.m.). One of my best friends Audi took this picture of me when we took a midnight trip to Mesa Verde during the summer of 2006 ("midnight trip" meaning, we decided to drive from Mesa, AZ, to Mesa Verde, CO, at midnight and drove all night). Audi is still pretty proud of this picture, and we both feel it owns a striking resemblance to that old LDS journal cover that everyone insists is a painting of me: Walter Rane's "Add to Your Faith Virtue; and to Virtue, Knowledge."

Ironically, this photo that insinuates my 24-year-old self climbing towards goodness, truth, and light, was taken during the first and only spat I ever had with Miss Audrey N. I'm sure it had to do with lack of sleep, as well as upset stomachs from having only eaten several Jack-in-the-Box Monster Tacos and a whole Fry's Grocery bag full of summer cherries in the previous 48 hours. Regardless, the situation sucked. We tried to ignore the funk between us, running around trails barefoot and appreciating Native American rock drawings, stacking rock cairns to throw tourists off the right trails, chewing perfectly brown sugared juniper berries strewn along the borders of ancient cliff dwellers' walls. But the funk persisted. Conversations were strained, forced. Grins were a little too toothy, a little too quickly faded. I hated it.

A tangent: Nine months ago, I taught Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" to a group of at-risk girls at the boarding school where I taught English. I was nervous because I never really liked or had paid much attention to that particular short story--I was more excited to skip ahead in time to Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Raymond Carver. But my girls surprised me.

I read the first two pages in a shamelessly burlesque fashion to get the girls interested. I acted out Faith and YGB's dialogue suggestively, bawdily, ridiculously:
"Dearest heart," whispered--more like panted--Faith, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, "prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she's afeard of herself sometimes."

[. . .]

So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him (Oooh la la!) with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons [for some reason "pink ribbons" began to be interpreted as "hot pink lingerie"].

"Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. [. . .] Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven, hubba, hubba, hubba."

I felt some chagrin about it then, and I kept trying to séance-speak to Hawthorne on the other side, pleading with him not to roll around too much down in the earth there, that I really wasn't purposely trying to country line dance on his tombstone. Plus, ultimately, it worked. Even the ADHD girls calmed down to giggle at the sexiness of it. Then, oddly, they started to get into the narrative. They repeatedly shared personal experiences relating to Young Goodman Brown as he realized his Sunday School teachers and leaders in life and truth were no more than sick sinful hypocrites themselves, and where's the hope in that? How could he continue to swallow the truths from his youth after hearing the woman who taught him his catechisms laugh with the Devil over him because of his naivete, his gullibility?

My girls began to relate so much with YGB that I feared they would be tempted to follow his same fate--that they would lose trust in their Faith and her no longer sexy-funny or innocent-sweet pink ribbons, that they might begin to see "the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot." I wanted to weep when we read together, this time solemnly, this time with all the girls staring at their printed and stapled copies of the story and not at my no longer rolling eyes or shimmying body, the part when Satan reveals all the sin and wicked arts of all the members of Goodman Brown's Puritan congregation and asks God's children to "look upon each other" in their nakedness. It is here that Hawthorne writes this aching and mind-destroying passage:

" 'Lo, there ye stand, my children,' said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. 'Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race.'"

The story finishes with Young Goodman Brown never being able to look at his wife Faith the same way again--all hope in goodness and mankind was forever swept from his spirit and "they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom."

I looked up at my girls with worry that I had just further ruined them, that I was going to hear from all their therapists shortly for magnifying their cynicism and rebelliousness. But I was mistaken. Surprised, I watched these 14 to 17-year-old girls pause, think a moment, and then chorus out with shouts of "What a moron!" "What a dumb ending!" "Geez, Hawthorne, way to give us a downer," etc.

But I asked them what ending did they expect? How could Brown have kept his Faith after so much disillusionment, so much sorrow and hypocrisy and sin and secrecy? And my girls spoke truth--despite their dirty, filthy pasts and their own secrets and hypocrisies, their lips and tongues bled honesty like honey onto their plastic desktops. We talked about the dangers of cock-eyed optimism (a favorite topic of mine since my freshman year at BYU-I) and about how ignorance couldn't truly be bliss, depending on how you define bliss. The girls felt strongly that Brown could have accepted the sins and stains of his neighbors, even the imperfections of his own Faith, but that he could have chosen to focus on their light, on their goodness, on what they do right. That the red blood stain would be shadowed by the light and glitter and shininess that each friend and neighbor also held. Because we are multitudes, we contain universes.

I guess when I realized my friendship with Audi wasn't perfect, I got scared, because I thought it was. We had told each other repeatedly that we were perfect friends, perfect soul sisters, perfect fits. I feared hopelessness and cynicism and forever screwed-up-ness when we finally fought, and I always secretly hated this MormonAd-worthy photo that I found so misleading, so dishonest.

Apologies for the length of this post. I suppose I just wanted to tell the world wide web that I am a fan of disillusionment, a fan of optimism, a fan of truth and a fan of goodness. I am a fan of forgiveness and hope and the cores of souls. Audi is getting married soon and we have continued to bear the blessed name of bosom buddies all through the past four years. She is my kin and my heart and my blood. And I have a shiny countenance and shit on my hands at the same time. And I aim to keep on a-washing those dirty, grubby paws of mine and scrubbing them clean every day for the rest of my livelong life, dirtying them, washing them, dirtying them, washing them, and hopefully I'll be able to cyclically get myself somewhere good before I finally keel over and kick the bucket. And I aim to recognize the cores of the souls of all my friends and favorites who are running, trudging, sauntering, meandering, and frolicking this worn path with me.

In other words: Back off Satan, with your fears and your doubts and your cynicism. I'm having a great year.....the best year of my life so far. And don't it feel good.

Something

Spring has finally hit southeastern Idaho. I took my nylons off on Sharon's porch while we chatted in the sun, and my legs breathed fresh air for the first time since September. I watched the clouds and petted Patch. Rigby has a few colors besides white and brown and pale blue--now we have greens, yellows, reds, blackbirds, squirrels, golden fields at sunset. It makes me want to listen to Sting. Fortunately for me, my lover owns every Sting album available to the general public, possibly a few besides. It wouldn't surprise me.

I also have great new driving music and a brand new semester starting tomorrow morning. No British Literature this time, just three courses freshman composition and an ENG 311 (I'm still trying to figure out what this class entails. I've planned as far as introductions).

My point: I'm pretty chipper these days, given to frequent secret daydreams and cautious reminiscences. I'm in love. His name is David Grover and I introduced him here once before from my escapades in Chicago. I think I've seen him in person approx. 9 days total. The rest of our courtship has consisted of three months of daily barrages of emails with the occasional phone call, the more occasional date via Skype, and a box of postcards with such words written on the backsides I have to sit down to read them. He is a lovely, good man, and I am hopelessly, devotedly, irreparably smitten.

I try and hear myself type this, anticipate the realistic and earthbound responses you all could give me. I try to be stoic, reasonable, the opposite of naive and ninny-pinny. But then I think of David's ridiculously unruly thick hair and the last things he's whispered to me or closed a letter with, and I grin beside myself. I find myself whistling without noticing, touching my face or my hair or my other hand like I'm My So-Called Life's Claire Danes, experiencing everything romance for the first time. Like a virgin. (Jokes, jokes....I've always been a virgin. I've been a virgin for 27 years. ....And that's not what this is about.)

I've been cautious to broadcast my relationship because I wanted to be sure I could say all of this without reservation. Last week I flew to Ohio and spent twice as much time with David on his turf (he's graduating with an MA in Creative Writing from the university there in June) than in all the days I had seen him previously put together. Oh, I was so afraid to leave the airplane. Who does this? I thought.....Who flies across the country to meet a man she's only met twice, a man she's only kissed once--a 3 a.m. kiss on the 24th floor of the Chicago Hilton on Valentines Day? I stalled the whole way out of the terminal. I walked into two bathrooms. I found myself staring into the windows of a bookstore, sweating. And I was wearing glasses, for crying out loud. My Anasazi glasses for crying out loud. They probably smelled of garlic and wet wool.

When I saw him, he looked so kind and so serious; I about had to sit down just to read his face. Here was the face behind the postcards, just as genuine as I'd hoped it would be. He stood and took a step towards me, holding out daffodils. Daffodils, I tell you. We grinned and hugged and didn't stop grinning or hugging the full five days I spent with him. I get to see him again in Utah this Friday. My turf. Drive him around in my car. Show him my life.

I don't know what exactly is the thesis of this blog post, except I just wanted to get it out there. An update. I fear to look naive. But I fear to sound even more silly or gaggy if I list all of the evidences of our love on the world wide web. I guess I mostly want to communicate gratitude. I am astounded at this great chance find, this crazy diamond of a boy who I've managed to spend nine days with against all odds, who I've managed to give my heart to against all logistics. I've dated and loved several shining gems of men in my lifetime, a few of whom might read this blog posting, these few of whom I still consider some of my greatest and most beloved of friends and brothers. To these select and good men, I don't mean to undermine or undercut anything tender I shared with you. But you each told me I'd find my own, that whatever comfort or security or passion or trust I couldn't achieve with anyone else so far, I would discover it all someday.

Well, I don't mean to count chickens or jump guns, but I've sure never felt like this before. This is entirely new. David feels like home. He is perfectly imperfect. I want to own him, to keep him as my pet. At the same time, I want to follow him around like a springtime sheep and watch him do meaningless tasks all day. At the same time, I want to discuss all great and all ridiculous topics with him. I want to play games with him all day. I want to put puzzles together with him into the evening. I want to hide the final puzzle pieces in my pocket, just to mess with him. I want to wear pigtails and run through streams with him. I want to dress purty and doll up my mug and my mane and make him dazzle by having me on his arm. I want to read great books just to discuss them with him. I don't want to sweat it about anything because I want to make our atmosphere calm and unruffled. Surprisingly, I haven't been tempted to sweat it. Surprisingly, I haven't come near to clamming up. He turns me into a vixen and a rascal. I like to think I turn him into pudding, into a devil, into a saint. I've never felt so secure. He's a gentleman. He has sad eyes and a gut laugh. He can purr like a lion and growl like a wookiee on my command. He can play any song I want on his guitar. He lets me boss him around and he lets me sit at his knee. His mind is full of beautiful things and his flattery is so honey-laced it hits me like a poison, rendering me pliable and soft. Yet it isn't much like the sting of a viper....that numbing that precedes the devouring and manipulation of the prey......it's a helpless feeling, but helpless in the arms of a good and careful man. I'm numb to the types of twittering sparrow fears that kept me hopping around past relationships, jumpy and nervous. Grover keeps me calm. I breathe slowly. I sigh and chuckle interchangeably. I want to be ridiculously good and make him ridiculously happy. I don't even think to trust--it feels natural just to take his hand and walk beside him because we've been walking the same path all along. How can I explain it?

Geez, I hope this isn't too mushy. It's still just me, plain old Gillzy. Except it isn't. Maybe I have turned to mush. Well, so be it. I glow, I beam, I quiver, I sing. Give me this day to fly through the air, I'll ground myself again eventually. Or maybe it'll be like that old Chagall, and I'll spend the rest of my days floating off, a high-blown kite flying from the hand of my love who holds my hand like a string, keeping me earthbound, keeping me soaring. My true love. What do you know. At long last, something is happening....

IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION

I've been spending the last two weeks trying to explain this to my British Literature students (the girls, mostly).

THIS MAN:

is way way way way way WAY hotter than THIS MAN:

How does this even need clarification? Dare to disagree with me, any of you.

Oh Colin Firth, your eyes! Your eyes! Your hair and your voice! I pine, I swoon, I die! A pox on any of you who can't appreciate the splendor of the Firth! I swear I'm going to flunk a third of my students over this debate. Young, blind, whippersnappers. Ugh, scroll back up, scroll back up!

Mormon Art I Must Have

I found this piece at the Springville Art Museum about six months ago, when I was taking a group of girls from my boarding school on a field trip. I gently steered my girls away from this piece because I didn't think their young eyes were prepared for its magnificence. I forgot about its resplendent nobility until I was telling a friend about it in Chicago. This oil painting is larger than it looks. It looms. Gloriously, even. Mt. Rushmore. Look at that.

This is the kind of Mormon kitsch that I would really love to own. So I could destroy it.

Or actually, I would place it behind a red curtain and hide it. Then, for a good time, I would pull a golden rope cord to reveal it to select friends. And we would appreciate it the way one should properly appreciate a work of art that carries this magnitude of terrible, horrifying, blasphemously hilarious unmeant mockery.

Who thought this was a good idea? Who thought THIS of all treasures belongs in a museum?

Howl at the Full Moon Tonight

Tonight is a full moon, and hopefully the coldest full moon we will have until November. As a way of celebrating this full moon, I'd like to tell a story of a memorable full moon from my past. A full moon.......on the trail.

*coyote hooooooooowl*

So there we were: camped at a cow tank about five miles from Squaw Creek and another five miles to Lime Creek (Note: I just went through a fist full of dirty trail letters trying to find the name Lime Creek in one of them because I forgot what that Final D was called. The name came to me while I was searching, but now my fingers are blackened a little from true-blue Anasazi grit. It feels good. I tried to smell the letters in case they smelled of the trail, but my lip gloss smells too minty to detect the undertones of sweat, sap, and Arizona dirt). I was with a boys band--there were seven of us all together, I think. Three staff (me, Lane, and Curly) and five boys.

It had been our layover day. We had hiked the entire day before, hooting and hollering as we kicked up the dust and slid-skidded our way down off of a mesa and onto a juniper-laden hill surrounding a cow tank oasis. Cow tanks glitter brighter than gold seen from those mesas in the early afternoon.

I had camped there before, during a 36-hour rainstorm. I had been with a large boy band then, as well, and had still been the only girl. Though we had spent all morning no-tracing our firepit and grass beds, when I walked back onto that nostalgic patch of grassy hilltop, I could still detect the rock borders my boys had built to keep the water out of their sleeping bags and I could see the grassless lines forming small rectangles around the thicker junipers where we had dug trenches to flow the river away from our shelters. That had been a good month before. All of those boys had gone home to their families since then.

I could still see each of them and I remembered who had slept where. I set down my pack at the foot of the tree where one of my favorite youngwalkers had slept and lay down on the ground to look up and see what he had stared at for those 36 hours. Probably pretty much the same thing I had seen--wet juniper boughs and dripping green army tarp.

It wasn't going to rain this week. I only built a shelter to keep off the wind. It was still chill at night, and I wore a wool jacket to the fire circle. The full moon was a harvest moon and it was orange.

We sat around the fire and made trail cheesecakes. This was a good boys' band and we had had a good layover. Two of the boys rose early with me and helped me gather firewood all morning. Most of the junipers had been in fires and our hands turned black from gathering so much ashy burnt wood. We got a small fire cracking, and set about making our breakfasts. Lane and Curly, the other two staff members, slept in until all the other boys woke and started throwing small rocks at their shelters. I'm pretty sure I initiated that.

Then we spent the day having sittings and awarding names and beads; the boys sat underneath the juniper shades with me and we made bracelets all day. It was adorable. We had each made lists of people we were going to make presents for during that layover. I taught three boys how to round braid and flat braid and one of them became quicker than I was so I started to file stone pendants out of pride. Price had given me ironwood to work with, and I divvied up the scraps to a few more boys and lent out my files and we had an industrious day stringing beads and braiding fake sinew necklaces and writing in our journals. No one even took a nap. Best layover day I ever had on the trail.

So that night, when we gathered around the fire circle beneath a full harvest moon, the boys and I felt good. I'm trying to remember the fire circle topic. Every night on the trail, we pass around a talking stick (think the conch shell from Lord of the Flies) and the person holding the talking stick speaks freely from the heart about whatever question or topic someone in the band comes up with. I remember one of the boys picked the topic, and it was something about weakness. I remember feeling humbled. I remember Lane and I exchanging glances over the fire, as if our eyes were telling each other that this was good, this was real. I loved working with Lane. Genuine, genuine, careful man. But fun and squirrely, too. We had spent the day in serious, reverent contemplation to come up with honor names for two of our boys who had changed significantly since they had received their first, and now outdated, Anasazi names.

After everyone had spoken, we were silent. I love the sound of a campfire spitting coals. Everyone in the band had been here for a few weeks. The smoke didn't bother any of us. We each shared what we had made that day and who we were going to gift our best pieces to. One boy had made a bracelet for each of his sisters, another had made a necklace with a wooden bead for his mom, another boy had dutifully, nervously scraped together a stone ring for a girl he hoped would still be there when he went home, bless his heart.

That's when we noticed the moon was bright orange. "We have to howl at it." I suggest that to every band I'm with during a full moon. Whenever I'm with a girl band, and the moon looks kind of full, I just tell them it's a full moon all week because those girls have so much fun finding reasons to hoot at the top of their lungs.

The boys were in. We walked up to the lip of the cow tank so we could see the reflection of a ghostly orange circle filling the water's surface. A double full moon. We felt like savage kings of beasts and started giggling prematurely. Then, on my count, we all howled and hooted and roared at the moon, and then we waited. Sure enough, from two or three different points away off in the distant horizons, we heard Anasazi bands throw back their heads and return our calls, howling and hooting from their own cozy cowtanks or creek elbows. That was when my favorite of the boys turned to me and said, "Emily, did you know I have cat eyes?" and in the light of the full harvest moon, he bugged out his eyes, and I saw that his pupils dropped down to a point, like a teardrop, like cat eyes. And I screamed my guts out in awesome giggly fright. I had never seen coloboma before, didn't know it existed.

And that's how I'll honor the full moon tonight--I'm going to remember those boys and our adventures, the hot house we built at the end of the week, the time we got lost while Curly was leading, the time Cat-Eyes teared up when I gave him his name and told him he was a man, the light of that harvest moon. Hit it, Neil Young.

Surly

No longer can I wake up an hour earlier than my body thinks she has to in order to clean snow off of my car and show up to campus for students who aren't actually showing up for their appointments.

No longer. Not today. Today I'm taking a stand. I'm going to defend it. Right or wrong I'm going to defend it. I'm going to kill my dad's 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California by pushing it out the glass window of our posh garage and watching the wheels spin once it's lying supine on the ground below.

I don't think it's fair to spring forward before Mother Nature does. I don't think it's ethical.

In Luve with Rabbie Burns

Yesterday morning we discussed the great Scottish Plough-Poet, Robert Burns, in my Romantic Brit Lit course. We watched many great Scottish YouTube uploads of Scotland moor images with Dougie Maclean or Michael Marra singing Burns' greatest hits of folk songs. The highland Scottish blood in my veins flowed quickly and sharply when we listened to "Robert Bruce's March to Bannockburn"--I felt my teeth turn sharper, my ears more keen, my eyes more piercing, my hair more red, my biceps and thighs more thick and muscular-like.......I felt like I could jump through a window and rush at the woods even as the Rexburg sky grew colder, darker, and more sinister. I felt like a Scottish werewolf, and I did not like feeling caged.

Long story short, I've been thinking in a Scottish accent ever since (I can't speak it, but even as I'm typing these words, I'm hearing them in as close to a Scottish lilt as my imagination can create), and I've decided to spend the month of August this year in the British Isles, giving a good half of that time to bouncing around the Scottish Highlands.

I've been doing the research all morning and August seems a fine time if I can book a place to stay a few nights in Edinburgh well enough ahead that I don't find myself homeless smack in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival. I'm excited to get lost in the crowds there, and then get lost in the highland moors and get literally eaten alive by midges. I hope it rains banshees and that I only have a few select days of perfect memorable sunny green weather. I want to spend a whole day picnicking at Loch Ness, watching the lake.

I know I've posted Europe trip plans before, but this one is legit. I have a month break between July and September and I plan to use it. Zufelt, can I sleep on your floor a couple of nights in August? I will pay you more than peanuts for the hospitality.

To my Great, Great, Great Grandfather, Archibald Gardner:

I'm going to visit the land of our blood. I'm going to find the castle where your father was wrongfully imprisoned, and I'm going to leave white flowers there out of respect and humility. I'm going to walk the roads you might have walked and stare off into the same rough hills and woods you might have wandered through as you prayed to know if Joseph were a true and living prophet, and if this strange book warranted leaving your country to pursue the Western wilds of America and take on six or seven more wives.

You never returned to your home country, but perished instead after a long, hardy life of running a mill in northern Utah and hiding from the law. I am going to be listening for your ghost winds when I walk along the shores of different lochs and toe the ground looking for treasures around the ruins of old stone walls, old churches, old schoolyards. I hope your spirit walks through mine and that as I sleep on your native soil, I will dream what you dreamt and wake with your thoughts on the edges of my own.

To my ancestors on the MacGilliland side of my genes:

I promise I will do some sort of research on you all before I embark so the Gardner side of me doesn't take up all of my spirit. If you all had been Mormon, maybe you would have made better records of yourselves. Or rather, if you had been Mormon pioneers, maybe I would have been required to tell stories about your lives every year for Pioneer Day during Primary, but as it is, nobody shoved your livelihoods down my throats and I just don't know a plumb thing about you except that one of you hooked up with a Cherokee Indian somewhere down the line.

The least you MacGillilands can do is lead me to your graves or records or something when I'm in your own country. Crazier miracles have happened in the name of genealogy, right? They're in the Ensign every other month.

I'll Be Your Candle on the Water

This blog post directly coincides with my severe procrastination disorder that is keeping my stack of freshman personal essays from entering even my peripheral vision. I promised my students tomorrow. I gave them my word. And I'll do it, too. After I post about Pete's Dragon on my blog.

First, if you are my real friend, you will go to this link and listen to Marcos Valle and Patricia Alvi sing "Nao E Facil," a brilliantly poignant bossa nova version of "It's So Easy." This was the best internet find I've had in years. I've wasted twenty minutes of my office time listening to it on repeat and dancing. You are no longer my friend if you do not take two minutes out of your life and follow that link.

I didn't upload these movie images myself, some other great Pete's Dragon soulmate must have, somewhere out there in the cyberspace world. Aside from my crushes on Red Buttons as Hoagie and Mickey Rooney as Lampey, my heart will always belong with Jim Dale as Dr. Terminus. Money by the pound, indeed.

I have a feeling there will be more Pete posts in the future, but this should do for today. I think I can tackle more papers now, what with the sweet lilt of Bossa Nova dancing in my brainwaves.

He has the head of a camel. The neck of a crocodile. The ears of a cow. He's both a fish and mammal and I hope he'll never change...'cause it's not easy to share somebody's dream. It gets easy when you work as a team. You've got to tend it, fan it--that's what I plan to do.

Or....

Liiiiiiiiife is lollipops and rainbows, with the one you love. Someone you can always be with, argue and agree with.....climb the highest tree with.

What my life needs is a large cartoon dragon that only I and drunk people can see.

Last Picture: The Disney Ink and Paint Girls work on Eliot.

Tuggin' my sleeve, Chicago is.......

Chicago did not let me down. And yes, it did have all that jazz. I left on the plane with major apprehensions. I wasn't sure who would show or who I'd hang with or what exactly the panels at AWP are even like. I was scared, a bit. Ask my mom.

But that is the beauty of Friday the 13ths and holidays, especially when so many of them are packed into the same three-day weekend. It's like standing in the center of a ring of toadstools--something wicked or supernatural must happen, it's a general rule of the universe. Chicago now ranks as one of my top five cities in the nation, and last weekend ranks as one of the new best nostalgic string of moments that I'll be talking about until I finally quit this earth and move ahead. I'm pretty sure I'll still be talking about it after then, too.

So, some pictures. It was truly a Ferris Bueller Chicago experience. I went to three panels and that was it. I ditched out on everything and painted the town red with trusty old chums and brand new interests. Joe and I searched all the crannies of the Art Institute and saw mummies and Sue the T-Rex and other natural history paraphenalia (you ought to check out the room about "Our Moving Earth." There's no way you can be disappointed. At all. Really. Not disappointing. Anti-disappoint.) at the Field Museum and pressed our foreheads against the windows at the top of the Sears Tower. Sharon joined us for a Valentines' Day Massacre reenactment on Friday the 13th, and I even had a Charlie-Sheen/Jennifer-Grey moment with a charming new prospect and that's all the details you're going to get here. Except I wasn't wearing a lot of eye make-up and he didn't compare me to a whore.

Chicago from the Sears Tower:

Blade Runner as seen from the Sears Tower:

A large trough of appetizers (mushrooms, zucchini, mozzarella) that Joe and I ate about half of, triumphantly, disgustedly.

The deep dish stuffed Chicago-style pizza that did us in after the appetizers. We murdered about half of it, too. It was a superhuman effort, I don't care how little we had eaten that day up to that point.

On Friday the 13th, Joe, Sharon, and I caught a cab to Chicago's Oven Grinder, across the street from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929, when "Bugs" Moran and Al Capone's men had it out in a bloody Chicago bite of history. We saluted the ghosts that haunt that thar side street and enjoyed the best salad and pizza pot pies I think I'll ever eat. It was truly wicked and pagan.



Sharon under the Antiques sign *snicker*

This is the part where we expressed how much fun we were having in Chicago.

Later that night I was invited to a rollicking Friday the 13th game night at Grover's hotel room. I held my own. I would have won had we played cards or Mouse Trap.

This is David Grover. Sometimes he comments here. Everyone be nice to him. You can tell he is quality from the kickass Cosby sweater he is sporting.

This pic is courtesy of Joe. It's the large metallic awesome lima bean next to the ice skating rink. I believe it has magical properties and I visited it more than once during my time in Chicago.

Here it is up close.

The inside is a great concave tunnel of reflection and shimmering acid trip. It makes you walk around looking as idiotic as I do here.


On Valentines Day we walked through the many leg statues on the way to the Field Museum. The legs reminded me oddly of Pink Floyd's goosestepping hammers.....maybe?

Here's me in front of the stained glass Chagall at the Chicago Art Institute.

Oh right, that's Sloane and Bueller. Yeah, not me. The Chagalls, the Magrittes, Wood's "American Gothic"--none were on display at this time. Foiled again. Nothing has peeved me more since Jeff Koons' ceramic statue of Michael Jackson and his monkey, Bubbles, was in storage when I went to the SFMOMA. Fortunately I saw my fair share of Van Goghs, Toulouse-Latrecs, Monets, Manets, Winslow Homers, Hopper's "Nighthawks," Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon," lots of Frank Lloyd Wright chairs, and a truly inspiring shot of Peter Lorre that Joe pointed out for me.

I can't complain. I had a truly transcendent and surreal twenty minutes when I thought my calves were going to burst, I'd pumped them up with so much blood from walking around not going to any AWP panels, and I lay down on the floor of the old Chicago stock exchange room at the Art Institute, listening to one of my greatest old friends play the piano in a room of great acoustics, staring up at this:

I can't recreate it for you. Not here. There isn't the time or the space. It was a fantastic weekend. Dream Academy's "Please Let Me Get What I Want" didn't stop running through my head and neither did Frankie Sinatra. Life altering, literally. Cathartic. Irresponsible. Nostalgic. New.

Later on Valentine's Day I got to watch many Oscar-nominated animated shorts in a truly fabulous old-timey theater with some really swell kids. I ate even more pizza, laughed at even more jokes, and then I was escorted back to my hotel by a charming man with plenty of charming conversation and charming charms. Well done, Chicago. Well done.

Bonus ghost pictures:
"Sharon As Sloth Fratelli"

"Amy Sucked into a Brothers Quay Twitchy Short"

"Presidents Day Flashy Ghost avec Gilliland Chillun"

For Adrianne McBride

A friend of mine passed away in a car accident yesterday morning as she was leaving Provo. She was a friend of a friend, but we had made plans that would secure us as bosom buddies if I ever got around to visiting her in Utah. We were alike as far as how our general lives matched up--we had both dated the same man at one point (hence the friend of a friend), we were both graduated, working, single LDS women with great dreams of love and family and general life success. She was very kind to me--one of those people that smiled and laughed with me when I was feeling awkward and new in their circle of friends. Anyway, she really wanted these shoes, they'd been one of the most recent life goals she blogged about. So I guess this blog post is for you, Adrianne, to let you know I'm thinking about you and really praying that people walk around wearing these in the spirit kingdom, and not those awful silky white slippers with the tiny bows on the tops. Though, if people really are walking around in these for all eternity, I'm entrusting you to give me high heel lessons when I catch up to you. We'll miss you, and thanks again so much for your friendship, even after you were no longer obligated to be my friend. I hope you are feeling rested and happy wherever you are, and that people still tell really good jokes and you can still laugh really hard without getting into too much trouble.
We'll still get together someday, I promise.

For those who have found this blog by googling Adrianne's name, a memorial blog has been created by one of her best friends and you can link to this page here.

Top Five Reasons High Fidelity Brings Me Break-Up Catharsis

1: It sheds light on the all too fortunate reality that my former fellow and I had absolute minimum common interest in music and movies. Not quite true. Movies we bonded over a bit, but he never did pull me onto the Battlestar Galactica bandwagon and I still hate most of the cartoons on Adult Swim because they make me feel small, and not in that good humble sort of way. But music set us even further apart. Save a couple of Gary Jules tracks and Harry Chapin, our opposing taste in bands put an impatient strain on any long drives and road trips. The language and sex in his punk collections clammed me up and he complained that my music wasn't loud enough to cover the humming noise his tape deck makes, which irritated him. Though, he did like Elliott Smith and Jose Gonzalez even though he could never remember their names. He'd just say, "Oh, I like this," whenever one of their tracks came on. It became almost uncanny, how I came to count on that, "Oh, I like this." I made him a mix cd the week he first kissed me. I thought he was somebody totally different and made it all completely wrong for him.

2: High Fidelity brilliantly captures the subtle dishonesties and honesties in virtually every budding or breaking romance tale. I love when Cusack and Lisa Bonet talk all night and Cusack admits he is only acting the role he contrived as the sensitive, witty guy who has hints of melancholy beneath the surface of his recent split romance. Or the bridge scene when he gives the top five things he misses about Laura. Or when he cries at Laura crying at her dad's funeral. It's cathartic to me because I now feel less like a moron or a loon for talking to myself during my run through east Rigby on Tuesday. Telling a couple of shaggy-coated ponies on 4300 East all about the specifics of my recent heartbreak makes me more like John Cusack, who is awesome, thus making me also awesome and not crazy like I had originally pigeonholed myself.

3: The violence and the sarcasm. It might make me look like a jerk, but I love the scene when Tim Robbins confronts Cusack in the record store and Cusack fantasizes about what he'd like to do to the guy, which escalates into knocking out Robbin's teeth and slamming a cash register onto his face. I'm not saying I condone this kind of violence or that I'd ever put a comparable scene into any movie I'd ever shoot, I'm just also saying that it kind of felt good to feel an outlet for the conflicting and embarrassing emotions I have felt myself trying to bury all week. I like Cusack's anger. And Jack Black's anger makes me laugh, which feels good too.

4: Obviously the soundtrack is cathartic. I've dated enough guys who love that movie that almost every track reminds me of someone I've cried over since the film came out in 2000. While Rob Gordon is reliving his top five most humiliating breakups, I'm reliving my own top five. This can be cleansing. A smart man I know sent me the sentiment that breakups always involve your same heart falling onto the same hardwood floor, except each time your heart cracks into new patterns, different wounds. I agree. But I also think the fall can reopen old scars; I can hear echoes of past losses exhaling through the split seams I'd forgotten I'd only just sewn up the year or two or three before.

5: High Fidelity helps me fall in love with John Cusack all over again. When life takes away a lover, Hollywood provides fantasy characters for us to project all our desires for kissing and cuddling and long hand-holding walks along a pretty horizon. It hurts too badly to think back on the real-life experiences you just had because it only magnifies your inability to have that again with that same love, and it almost always gets followed up with an image of this said former lover doing all of those same things with somebody different--usually a skinny blonde with cute, clever fashion and perfect teeth. And a clean car. And no moodiness or clamming up moments. Just any perfect blonde skinny girl one can find almost anywhere along the Wasatch Front or in a singles' ward near you. But John Cusack, he'll always be there for me. I just slide in an old VHS of Say Anything and let the dreams begin. The trenchcoat, the boombox, the idea of being led around a pile of broken glass, that car in the rain. Or Better Off Dead, the mad scientist laugh in the cafeteria scene......I swoon! I swoon! And when I'm not swooning for Cusack in High Fidelity, I'm swooning for Jack Black. Black is witty, spazzy, quirky, and he makes me laugh. I would totally date him. Plus, what a voice. Seriously.

The only drawback for having High Fidelity act as a catharsis for my recent breakup is that Cusack's character ends up with Laura in the end after all. They get back together!? So I'm left feeling cleansed and jealous and almost angry that Cusack is making that perfect mixtape for the girl he wants to make happy for the rest of forever and I'm sitting on this lonely couch in this lonely house in this lonely town in the middle of nowhere, where I am an anachronism at my own school--too young to be treated like I belong with the faculty folk, too old to be let into any of the singles' institutes or social events........I'm lost in limbo, and it's cold outside.

I'm going to get a bowl of cookie dough ice cream out and watch Say Anything until someone responds to this post and then I'll read your comment and check "Be Social" off my list of appropriate human functions to accomplish on this day of February 6, 2009.

What I Learned in School Today

Today was tough. And refreshing. I had to teach my college freshmen a hard lesson. I'm quite the softie, as most of you can hopefully attest. However, my 75 freshmen students made me read over 200 pages of pure trash over the weekend. I was offended by their lack of proofreading, their absence of any original thoughts or genuine feelings, their dogmatic assertions that contained less than a lick of concrete evidence or proof to back up their Mormon clichés and catch phrases. 25 of the essays looked exactly the same. I wrote down on a 5X8 card lists of meaningless words that showed up on almost all the essays without any example or qualification accompanying them: good, bad, future, past, people, things, society, media, tools, gifts, habits, choices, goals, callings, responsibilities, passing time, modern day, blessings, trials.

I warned them I was harsh in my comments, but lenient in my grades. A B- this time would be a straight flunk next time. I told them how disappointed I was that their essays about being "leaders of this generation," about how "blessed" and "privileged" they were to be attending "God's school in the latter days," about how the "fulness of the everlasting Gospel" sets them apart from "the evil world"--these essays--were fluff. Garbage. Empty, aimless, lazy words.

They had spoken of themselves against "the world." They had spoken only to each other in smug, ethnocentric confidence. So the new rule is that their audience in my class must include people outside of our own faith. They can still share spiritual experiences, mission stories, faith-promoting anecdotes--but they must speak to the world. This shocked them. I talked about Chaim Potok and how I'm not Jewish but I spiritually connect with him and the traditions and beliefs he includes in his literature. One student yelled out Gandhi. I supported that. I would have thrown candy at her if I had had any.

I told them about the teenage girls I taught at the boarding school I came from--how many of them had been through abortions, about how they still get high when they go home for Christmas, and have sex, because they are addicted. I told how half of them had attempted suicide before and that their arms are raked with long red lines from where they cut and don't know how to stop wanting to cut. I accused my students of labeling girls like this as ignorant, evil, carnal, incapable of the spiritual epiphanies my freshmen students purportedly have just by breathing the air on this campus. Then I told them about how some of these 14, 15-year-old girls with scars on their wrists and straight Fs on their report cards had handed in essays to me that were more profound, more honest, more sincere, with stronger spiritual connections and energy than 75% of the essays I had received from these self-proclaimed chosen generation leaders.

Boy, you should have listened to me. I've never spoken so boldly to a college classroom before, not that I can remember, anyway. They were listening so hard. I loved them for that. I love them for their humility. We read three excellent examples of good essays I had received (there were only 10 A's out of the 75 students), and we looked at one of my student's rough draft and final draft and the impressive rethinking, reorganizing, and reviewing process he went through.

I just got an email from a girl whose paper I had commented harshly on. She had written in response to an Aldous Huxley article about Hitler and "herd poisoning." She discussed the Holocaust in a naive, shallow way--not because she is naive or shallow, just that it was the typical lazy freshman comp. essay. Her email is lengthy and sincere. It begins: "I have read your notes on my Essay many times over and yes you were harsh, in fact I have never had someone tell me that I had a lack of research, sight and empathy. It really did hurt, and yes I did cry, but I can never tell you how much your words, in class and on my paper, have changed what I think about writing and thinking in general." She goes on to talk about her proposed revisions, which involves a topic change. Her excitement to write a paper about something personal and important to her is evident in the length and energy of the remains of the email. It was not kissing up. It was not guilt-induced.

Instead of feeling like a conqueror, I feel weaker than ever. I asked this girl to stare herself down, look at her own crap, and admit her weaknesses. And she did it! And I feel like a selfish fool for sidestepping my own crap as often as I do. I know that by holding my students to these expectations, I am raising my own standard as an instructor and a writer. I feel like in today's victory, I am surrounded by a hundred before unseen idiotic and puny traits of myself. I guess this where I'm supposed to go out to a rock in the woods and pray. And yet, all the animal inside of me wants is a delicious sandwich from the Hogi Yogi drive-thru and to watch a crappy movie. Yeeeeeeeeargh...........and it's only Monday!

I better bring cookies to my classes on Wednesday. Cookies and love.

M

The university foreign film club was supposed to play Seven Samurai tonight, but they didn't get the copy of the movie down to Salt Lake to have it filtered to a PG rating in time (I know, I know, but at least they are showing foreign films here). Instead, we watched Fritz Lang's 1931 horror/comedy film, M. I was hooked from the opening scene with a group of small children chanting a grisly nursery rhyme (any movie that begins or ends with groups of cute small children doing something horribly creepy is bound to hit my list of favorite all-time movies--why is this?). M was one of the first talkie-movies (and way cooler than the movie-within-the-movie from Singin' in the Rain), and it's German, so we got to hear a lot of danke schoens and unts and achs.

But what really made the movie blog-worthy was Peter Lorre, who played the child abductor and murderer. I had noticed Lorre from watching Casablanca and wondered if he hadn't been the creepy bug-eyed fellow from those old Looney Tunes episodes (and weren't the super old and unethical Looney Tunes the best ones?). Peter Lorre in this film is horrifying--I'm hooked. If anyone is interested in having a Peter Lorre film festival with me, come to Idaho soon. I'll be having it the weekend after I have my Fritz Lang film festival. We can celebrate several nights of film noir....film noir nights.......naughty needed nights of numerous film noir. Peter Lorre, I'll see you in my nightmares. You and your bush baby eyes.

Quick Catharsis, General Update, Please Don't Judge Me Too Harshly For This Post

I have to finish my lesson plan on Alexander Pope tonight for my 9:00 class tomorrow. This is something I must do. I just got broken up with on the phone. It's okay, he didn't have a choice. That's the thing with long distance relationships. He didn't want to make me wait. He really is a very decent and kind man. I'm a bit heartbroken right now, kind of shaky. The thing is, really, that I'm by myself in my room and it's very, very cold outside and I guess you could say that I'm not sure how to have a decent catharsis to calm down my brain to help me focus on the work at hand.

I just read part of a book tonight about a Mormon pioneer woman who gives birth in the woods while she is looking for medicinal plants for her sick son. She had it way worse than me.

And I just saw this movie Terminal for the first time and Tom Hanks had it way worse than me.

I'm really trying not to make light of this. The truth is, I'm weeping like a dumb little kid right now. I've never been good at the breakup thing. I don't know how to let go. I feel like I've failed. Seriously, how long can a girl keep at this, you know? How many times do I have to go through this kind of pain before I find true love? I try not to be jealous of my young students and their pure, light loves and early marriages, their rings by spring. I'm really trying not to be jealous.

My heart is heavy, but I went to a talk once by Elder Holland when he came to a stake conference in Mesa, Arizona. He told us that Heavenly Father loves broken things. He said that from broken sky comes rain, from broken earth comes grain, and from broken grain comes bread. He says Heavenly Father just loves broken things and when we bring Him our broken hearts, he takes such good care of them on his altars, he is so tender with them and if we sit really patiently and let him work with our broken hearts, he sends us off with a stronger heart than the one we had before it broke.

Ah.........seriously, there is no worse feeling than this. It just echoes and mirrors all the broken places and scars from before. But it does feel a bit good to cry quite a bit. It feels cathartic, not depressing. I'm going to read Pope's poem about Eloisa and Abelard, they had it way worse than I do. Abelard got castrated for crying out loud and Eloisa became a nun.

If my ex-fella is reading this, thanks for letting me down easy. I've never had a phone breakup before, now I know that I hate them. I don't feel any kind of closure except that now I've posted it on the world wide web and maybe that helps me make it real. Darren is a good man, and he'll be great for some girl, somewhere.

And I am going to try to not feel like a failure and just breathe in the air real easy and watch for those little perfect moments, you know? When I was a missionary, I always saw butterflies when things got hard. Even then, I realized how cheesy that was. But they were heaven sent, I'm sure of it, and every time I felt low and a big black and purple butterfly did a quick circle around me and flew up to make me notice the sky, I sure felt damn good. I think all the butterflies in Rigby are dead or hibernating or flew south or whatever they do, but I'll be on the lookout for something tomorrow, and I'll let you guys know if I see anything really beautiful.

Sorry for this confessional post. I think I can finish my evening's work now.

Two mondo posts in one day.......I don't think I'll need to blog again for a week at least.

The Office Grand Tour

My office is starting to look legitimate, so I thought I'd post some pictures and give you all the grand tour. This way, those of you who still think I am sharing a custodial closet with four other one-year hires can be schooled in the ways of truth and reality. Let the rumors cease! (I kid....I know you all have better things to do than gossip about how much bigger my office is than yours.)

Okay, my first brag: Brother Samuelsauce is letting me borrow one of his watercolors for the year I am here. He let me yoink it from the halls of the English Department and I felt like Carmen Sandiego, running out of there with a huge framed artwork under my arm. The bandit mask I was wearing at the time didn't help, either. This photo doesn't do it justice. It's a columbine flower and it's beautiful. You can't see half the colors in it from this picture.

I know the sling looks stupid right there but there was a nail in the wall right there, and I had this sling, and anyway I'm just hanging it there until I find a better place. I'm proud of that sling. I refuse to drawer it. What if I need it?

I'm pleased that I can almost fill my bookshelves. I should also add that every time I go home, I'm bringing up more books. Also, I have posters coming. But I can't resist showing off that I have an actual office with actual books on actual bookshelves. Many thanks go out to Chandler and Sharon--Chan for helping me carry in my many books from my car to the my office in 10 degree below zero weather and for Sharon who stayed in my nice warm office categorizing the books and deciding who should sit by whom (she was appalled that I even thought to put Faulkner on the same shelf as Dickens).

Please note my nerdy cross-stitch in the upper left corner. You want a close-up? That's right. It's a cross-stitch about books. I made that. Are you going to judge me or are you going to pat me on the back? That's linen, man. I'm a crazy cross-stitcher. I have the seeds of a homemaker in me yet and don't anybody accuse me otherwise.

Here's a close-up of my favorite corner of my bookshelf. I'm quite proud of that antler, even though it's pretty puny compared to the antlers my wilderness therapy friends have found on the trail. The week I found it was a good week and I tied it to the top of my pack every day to carry it home with me. I was going to cut it up and make a knife handle out of it, but I'm sort of glad I never got around to doing that. The Korean bracelet was a birthday gift from Konrad a few years ago and I made that little bird dish at the primitive skills gathering in Boulder, Utah. I let it oxidize black and the small bits of coloring on its stomach and eyes are from minerals we gathered and crushed into paint. It isn't my best piece--I gave that one to my mom.

The spoons are from the trail. I made the large one from juniper and a small dark one from cottonwood bark. Price made me the red one from manzanita and he also made my remembrance pouch that you see hanging there. The arrowhead was a blanket trade I made with my fine friend and mentor, David Holladay. He had been working on it all day and offered it for a small clay pot I had made. I definitely got the better of the deal. The leather bracelet I made with a boys band once and the wooden girl was a gift from my mom. Let me also point your attention to my wicked cool copy of Lord of the Rings and my illustrated Hobbit.

I can't go anywhere without my Grover doll so he's relaxing up there on the top shelf next to my folders and my Yellow Submarine lunchbox (I have far cooler lunchboxes than that cheap hardly-retro Beatles box, but I like to leave that collection at home. I don't think people would take me seriously if I had a whole row of children's 1970s and 1980s lunchboxes filling up a shelf).

I'm going to do a lot more to this wall, but this is how it looks so far. I've clipped some articles about Anasazi and wilderness therapy programs in Utah--the debates surrounding wilderness therapy intrigue me to no end. I really could spend my life talking about the ideas, stories, and legends of the business. It's really pulled me into Native American lore and the writings of Whitman, Thoreau, Ed Abbey, et cet. I'm hoping if I fill a wall with inspiration I might be able to contribute my own writings to the conversations abounding in outdoor magazines and mental health journals about the camps. Or whatever. I don't know. I'm just a kid.

My view. It's basically an immortal gray sky, snowy ground, and a construction trailer. I'm not bashful at all about staring down construction workers walking around out there. I'm more than pleased that all the equipment I can see is Caterpillar equipment. I always feel like Grandpa Ted is somewhere up there admiring them with me. Oh, also, I'm getting blinds for my window soon (though chances are I'll never close them), but they say the blind guy is in Mexico for another week or so. They sent me an email that said just that. "The blind guy is in Mexico for another two weeks." I thought it was a riddle or something. Some riddle where the punchline goes, "Then he picked up the hammer and saw." Wasn't there a riddle from elementary school like that?

This tablecloth from Iran is a new installment. I had an Iranian student at Utah State a few years ago and he had brought it for me after going home for Spring break. I think it's beautiful. It probably doesn't mesh with everything else going on in my office, but hodge-podge has always been my general decorative theme, hasn't it? If only I could find my old Glen Campbell "Rhinestone Cowboy" blanket. That would look awesome stapled to the ceiling (I kid, Jen, I kid).

Here's my last close-up. A picture of the fam, a "BELIEVE" tin sign from my mom (I couldn't figure out if it is more a "Believe in Santa" or a "Believe in Christ" sign, but then I stared at it so long I just thought, yeah, BELIEVE! Just the vibe of believing....I really dig that), a water gourd that Matt Howard gave me, and a talking stick my good friend Melody made for me on Cherry Creek. I love that stick. She etched my trail name onto it--that seriously must have taken a whole Sunday layover. I used it in all my favorite fire circles, and it has passed through the hands of the finest youngwalkers and trailwalkers who fiddled with it while they spoke their hearts. It has magical properties to me, laugh if you will. I say it straightfaced.

Oh, and right, my desk. Here it is. It's a mess. The screensaver came with the PC....I haven't figured out how to change it and I haven't decided what I'd want to change it to anyway. Every once in a while a unicorn picture and a dolphin picture shows up on it and that makes me giggle every time. Another unicorn is found on my pencil box--on the other side it says "EMILY IS BOSS" in pink paint. One of my favorite New Haven girls made it for me. She had been hard to win over at first, and I cherish that unicorn pencil box. I also found that pack of invisible cards in a box I rummaged through at home. It has some nostalgic properties, too, and I like to mess with them when I am waiting ten minutes nervously before class (I never get nervous in class, just in the ten minutes before).

Well, hey, thanks for visiting my office. It feels cozier now that I've had old friends visit.