“Ever the opportunist, this adoptable creature might find his bed in an old beaver lodge, or burrow beneath a garden shed. He’s confident in woods and city alike.”

So I don’t normally put much stock into the stuff found on random websites like suite 101, but after walking behind a raccoon for the last part of my block, I got home and had to google the creature as a totem animal. The above line comes from a suite 101 article on just that.

Creative and inventive, able to make his home anywhere, the raccoon is  clever, communicative and mischievous. I’m thinking about leaving Chicago (aren’t I always) and seeing the  fat guy  waddle across my path made me want to know more about what his spirit guide could  have been saying.

Much like the seagull, who visited me in a sunlight moment before I came back to Chicago this spring, the raccoon is an animal who can creatively make do with what he’s got, anywhere. City or country.

As a guide he allows us to “take on and let go of the many roles we fill”–a healthy reminder that we can be many things.”If,” according to  a shamanism website,  ”raccoon comes to you may be being asked to let go of a situation, person, belief or habit. Reversely, the message may be for you to receive the gifts being offered to you by the Universe.” Why not both, if one leads to the other thing?

Development as poverty.  My suggested reading for ecofeminism this week makes an argument for the idea of westernized development as another form of colonialization for the inhabitants of  Third World citizen, specifically women. It is the women who are close to  the land, harvesting food and materials, working in the kitchen, collecting herbal remedies and folklores for the family home.  Development then, with its presupposed ideals of necessities and outcomes based on the necessities and outcomes desired in the Western world, has changed the  imagined needs and desires of people in the less developed countries and sent them into a hasty spiral of poverty.

I’m thinking about these things today as I think about my friend Ryan.  He’s moved out of the  apartment he shared  with his girlfriend this summer, and has been camping out–literally–since then.  He’s in the south-ish, KY, so it’s apparently not too cold there yet, but his rustic lifestyle sometimes baffles me.  He’s done this before, roughed it in such a manner, and he loves living on the land, immersed in it and aware of its very being, but the lifestyle seems to me to be so extreme.

And yet he is happier than he has been for a very long time.  I’m trying to have zero judgement around his life choices, because they are his, but I come from a society in which that sort of living makes one out to be a crazy man.   And yet I can see some sense in it.  We’ve talked about going feral in class, living off the land and just being in it, seeing what we become when left to our real instincts and senses. I’ve been reading books by women who renounced their way of city living for a deeper investigation into their senses. So this type of living might be crazy, but  yes, it makes sense to me,  if done for the right reason.

More sense perhaps, than that of Wes’ lifestyle, his big, bigger, biggest TV, his nice, nicer, nicest car compulsion, his need to keep up with his neighbors and outdo their lavish living.  To me, that lifestyle is crazier still. 

I am somewhere in between.

I don’t want the TV, or  need a nicer car. Is that only because I have lived so long without a TV an already have a nice car?  What is it that I feel I truly need?  Basics for survival is all that comes to me.  Food, shelter, my health.  Friendship. Intelligent discussion.   Could I have these things if I left Chicago? Of course I could. So what’s keeping me? 

There is something  that still ties me down, ties me to the expectations of  my upbringing and my society. My friends could all see me living off the land or hitching across the country, but my family? They are getting used to the idea of me being  settled down into school and work, here in Chicago.  If I up and renounced my way of living, what would they do to me?

Is that what keeps me from going feral? From seeing what I can be with no safety net, no one there to catch me, bail me out, shake me to my “senses?”  Or is it something in me, some dream of the good life, of a childish protection and guidance  through everything? I want to finish school, safely, comfortably, without struggling and stressing.  Forcing myself to rely on my own means of survival seems a bit too extreme, at least at this point in my ecofeminist development. But if not now, when? I certainly don’t want to be sleeping in a tent and bathing in a stream before springing into class each morning and expecting anyone to take me seriously.  Unless of course,  ecological perspectives are the focus of the lesson!

Busy looking up places to visit. Feeling moved to seek a spiritual center. Sedona, Arizona.   Taos, New Mexico.  Rapid City, South Dakota.

What? Yes, South Dakota. I guess I’m thinking Rapid because it’s close to home, but writing that out just now next to the other locales allowed me to see just what kinds of places I’m going. Places with a kind of history and heritage that belong to the land, back before white men roamed it.

My travelin’ bones are gettin’ restless as fall bears down on Chicago!

It is October, October 9, to be precise. Typically, October is not a good month for me, and I spend the last part of September in agony, staring down the calendar.  This year I just dreamt a lot.

Three weeks ago, on Monday night (still in September) I dreamt that I was drowning. And going blind. At the same time. It was dark, wherever I was, and there, holding me in the water, one arm under my back and another arm under the crook of my knees, was my old track coach.  When I told my co-worker about it the next day, she said “you know, I’ve always believed that we can figure out the meaning of our dreams if  we think about it. There’ so so much out there on dreams, but whatever about that. We know, if we know ourselves.

 She’s right.

 I had my first big packet of work for school due the next morning, and despite the fact that I  had been dealing relatively well with work and the assignment, I guess I was much  more stressed out than I realized.  I got the packet it, everything was fine, and I received good feedback on all the work in it.

 In my dream  two weeks ago I made all of my friends mad, friends that don’t even really matter anymore because they all live in Nebraska and have no bearing on my life here. I don’t remember anything details, anything but waking up with the  general feeling that it was ok to have  angered them because I made them mad by standing up for social justice somehow.  Whatever I did, I didn’t care that they were mad at me, because I knew that what I had done was the right thing to do. Last week I began thinking about home and how I would rather be in Nebraska than Chicago right now. All I do here is work at work or work on school work at the library. I’m not boo-hoo-hooing that at all, it’s just that if I have no time for a social life, why be here where it’s cold and expensive? Yes, it’s cold in Nebraska, but I can drive while  there and don’t have to spend time outside  being in active, waiting for transportation. In some weird way I know what the dream meant. Well, maybe.

 When I came back to Chicago this spring, after Colombia and after Nebraska, I told myself that I wanted to be here until I could handle being with myself anywhere, without giving into the surroundings or people. I wanted to develop my own sense of security in what my goals and purpose is so that I could go anywhere and not be dissuaded from them.  I think that could be the dream’s purpose: if you go home and people don’t understand you at all anymore, you’ll be ok with it.

 And last  week in September, that dream, oh, that one. I dreamt of a former boyfriend, the one.  Not my first, boyfriend, but the first one I slept with, the one I loved passionately for all of those passionate reasons, the one who made me happy with all  of my heart but couldn’t, eventually, get it together enough to make me happy in my mind.

 In the dream we are in Nebraska, and we are maybe getting back together again. He is showing me some land, the land he thinks he’s going to buy. He’s showing me and is so proud of it, how he’s managed to get his shit together and save up the money for land. And then, my father, who always hated this guy, says “Marcella, ask him why he was chasing the twins with Bob Rutten the other night, before you go with this guy again. “

I look out at the dark prairie (always night out in these dreams, across the barbed wire fences, across a ditch and back to Rodney. There is a silent tear streaming down his cheek, because he knows my dad is right. He’s done something bad again. 

 I don’t remember what it was that he did, or how the dream resolved itself, but I do know that I woke up knowing that the message from that dream was that people never change.

 People Never Change. Amazing, at a time when other parts of my past are calling out to me.  

It was five in the morning when I woke from that dream, and I couldn’t get back to sleep after it. “People never change” was rumbling through my head. Not because I really felt any pain for Rodney, in real life or the dream, but because I wonder how true it is.  I’ve changed. I don’t drink the way I used to, I’m not as immature (all the time) or as selfish ( in the same ways) as I used to be.  So people  change. I know it with my heart.  But do I know it with my head? Do I need to  have the perfect intersection of the two, or will I ever again be able to lead with my heart? 

This week, I haven’t had any dreams. Not one. I suffer a crisis of faith in my writing abilities and am miserable all month in October, and I’m wishing for a dream.  Last week I had the flu, and this week I had a crisis of restlessness. So far so good, but no resolve has come to me in slumber. 

 However,  the crisis of restlessness passed in a day, and having dinner with my friend Mary last night  helped me see that the reasons I’m always thinking of past lovers and then getting all up in a tizzy over them is because I love the comfort of  my past with them. Even if there’s stuff that’s not good.  Is all of this connected, intertwined? Of course it is.  Now I just have to make sense of how.  Too bad more sleeping isn’t an option.

There are two kinds of writers in this world. One is the writer who writes for the technical comfort of words, the boundaries of structure, grammar and proper vocabulary are this writer’s domain.

The other kind of writer writes for the uncertainty of new territory, the exploratory, the adventure that comes in creating new words playing with structure and forgoing the solid, gray bars of English usage and structure.

While both writers keep in their mind the considerations of the audience—will my readers understand this, have I given them the structure and sequencing they need, etc., the first writer appeals to a more linear, technical audience. This writer may be ace reporter for The Wall Street journal business section . No hip breakthroughs in dialogue and presentation  here, these readers  are on just as much of a deadline as  the writer, with money to be made, bills to be paid and contracts to negotiate.  TO a T, this writer following the guidelines mapped out by the APA, The Chicago sticklers, hawk-eyed editors.

The second writer,  in contrast, is compelled to  tell his story in an equally useful manner, but his purpose is not to broker a deal between intelligence and the next big thing in a subject, verb, object fashion, but to bridge the gap between the here and now with flourish of dialogue, a setting of scene, an introduction of the audience into the moment.  This writer will have his audience in mind also, of course (what writer doesn’t) but only distantly so. This writer writes with an innate passion, an explorer getting tangled in the words and images that come to his mind and won’t let him go. He is the more fluid of writers, the one who loses control, and in doing so, maintains it.

I aspire to be a writer of both worlds, blending the fact of clean lines to the art of art of experimental construction, but I find that so often it has to be one or the other. I liked  journalism because it sets up boundaries, but the fluid openness of expression is what has drawn me into a more literary world.  I think it’s a good habit to practice writing from both directions, but  a difficult craft to execute well.  I find that depending on what mood I’m in, what experience I’m writing about, or who my audience will be, my style and voice varies wildly. Isn’t there any way to artfully blend the two?

“I’ve always made an effort to stay away from women whose best friends are gay men.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s just.. bad news, just..”

“Because they’re used to being pampered and paid attention to…”

So I’m sitting in the computer lab of my “fabulous” building, listening to this theatre company go over lines and complete casting for their next show. The conversation veers here and there and back again, but when I heard the above conversation, which was not script but real dialogue, of course I paid attention. Sadly, that was the last that was said about it, but it made me think. Is that true? Do women whose best friends are gay men feel like they’re missing out on something in  a relationship with the straight man when they get there?  Are straight men incapable of paying attention to women in the way the want?

 I dunno about that. I have a few gay friends, but more than that, most of my female friends are lesbians.  Is that the same thing, in some weird, opposite way?

All of this thinking about gender and sex and friendship issues makes my head hurt, since that’s really all I’m talking about in ecofem, but I did read this funny article awhile back, by a gay man in defense of himself and all other gay men who should also stay away from straight women. 

Goes both ways,  I guess. But then doesn’t that make it bi?  Middle way, little of this, little of that…certainly nothing wrong with that.

I woke up this morning, and instead of going to the gym, peered into the fridge, looking for breakfast.

I’ve been trying to use up the last of the “graham bumpers” cereal that I brought home from work last week, because they were expired, so I didn’t quite feel like having cereal yet again this morning.  But my papaya was gone, the …there! The figs! The plums! The lemon!

I also brought home from work some figs and plums last week, thinking I’d can them. I got too caught up in school work to do so, and they were getting older by the moment. So assembling my things—soup pot, measuring cup, flame on the stove—I chopped up my fruits, made jam, dumped it on toast, and had breakfast.

Not too shabby for a morning’s work, eh? I haven’t gotten around to getting the lids for my jars, but with a cupboard full of empty Mason and Ball Widemouth jars (once home to pickles and other garden vegetables), I’ve got the canning on the brain.

I’ve never made fig preserves before, but I thought that based on the ways my Gramma used to can things, or the steps I’ve gone through with my dad, it shouldn’t be too hard. That’s another post though, once I get the lids needed for those jars.

For now, I anticipate that everyone at work will enjoy the pulpy fruits of my labor, and that the preserves will keep in the fridge for about a month.

Plum Good Fig Preserves

3 pints figs, washed and diced 3 plums, washed and diced ½ C sugar ½ C water 2 T lemon juice Combine all ingredients in a large pot and mash coarsely. Bring to a boil, let bubble until the splatters threaten the walls of your kitchen (a couple of minutes) and reduce to a simmer. Stir pretty consistently so the fruit mash doesn’t stick. You will have to stir more diligently as the time passes. If your chunks are too big, it will take them a while to dissolve, especially the plums. Mine were too big this time around, so I let the stuff simmer for almost an hour, to cook it down. The fruit taste is about perfect for me, but you may want to add more sugar if you like things overwhelmingly sweet. Next time I think I will add another tablespoon of lemon juice plus some zest.

Slap this yumminess on some PB & Toast, and voila! Breakfast!

I think I pinpointed  the root of my recent problem with understanding ecofeminism today.

In an earlier post  (buddha brain) I rambled on about the ways in which I’m feeling like my posts for my ecofeminism class are either insubstantial because I don’t offer much in the way of solution, or crass, becuase I take a sort of flatlined approach to solving the problems of chemical use, health, etc.

Well, in a couple of weeks I have to lead a discussion about the pollution of New York’s Love Canal and the resulting legislation, and I’ve begun to do some of the reserach on this. I also decided that maybe I should go beyond the required and suggested readings for my class and find some readings of my own in an effort to better get inside the ecofeminist mindset. Well, leave it to a man to present me with an idea I can understand.

“Ecofeminism: A contemporary radical school of environmental philosophy. It emphasizes the similar ways nature and women have been conceptualized, devalued, and oppressed. It also asserts the close interrelationship between environmental and social issues. Androcentrism (male-centeredness, masculinism) is a fundamental problem that must be addressed if we are to end the subjugation of nature and women. The ideal involves a recognition of the value of the individual as part of a community, in which great value is placed on diversity, equality, and interrelatedness. The self is seen as embedded in a community, place, and the body. Cultural ecofeminism prizes the special, essential relationship between women and nature. Radical ecofeminism rejects any essentialist tie between women and nature as a social construction. Instead it deconstructs any transcendental dualism in which one gender, race, or class is considered closest to nature and of highest value. {See deep ecology.}” – from David Landis Barnhill, Director of Environmental Studies, UW Oskosh

Did you see it? there, after “interrelatedness?” “The self is seen as embedded in a community, place and the body.”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is my problem. Ecofeminsm, feminism, individualism hell, independence or any of the “isms”… whatever social theory you’re looking at, embedded in the idea of understanding one’s place in society is the idea of self as some sort of object injected into a society, place, body.  I’ve spent the last year and-a-half consciously trying to get over the idea of self, and ego. That’s buddhism for ya, and that’s the problem for me.  I can appreciate that we want to preserve the earth and work together to fix it and that women and animals should be treated just as well as any man, but at the end of the day, all of us, we’re all suffering and living and  trying to hold onto our bodies.

And working to further develop a planetary theory that goes against my own theory for existence seems like the antithesis of  having an egoless view.

I got an email from a former boyfriend today.

“Join me September 25 at  Shoe’s Pub as I am crowned Chicago’s Dive Bar Champion…” read the subject heading, sending me into alternating fits of nostalgia and laughter.  My dear friend Sean, with whom I once shared bits of my life and my body, has, over the past 2.5 years, hit every dive bar in the book “Drinking and Diving in the Windy City.”  Now he is ready to celebrate by taking a commemorative sip with all of his buddies at this place, Shoe’s Pub, which is, unfortunately, in Lincoln Park, home to the Chad and Trixie. 

In his email, he listed all of the bars by nighborhood, and  as I read over them, I smiled at the memories of the ones we’d hit up together. His random silliness in this mission is what makes me laugh, becuase he’s the guy I refer to whenever I say “I used to date this guy in politics.”  He’s serious and intelligent, and that he’s conquered such a frivolous goal has earned from me some sort of admiration.  Clearly the  breakup was amicable, and in the ensuing 2.5 years, we’ve remained friends, but the thing that makes me laugh the most is that in  his dive bar bars book, on the cover page, there is an inscription from me, his then-girlfriend, marking the book as a present I’d given him for Christmas.  I got cookbooks and a massive collection of poetry (with recordings of the actual authors) on that fun Christmas, but more importantly  than that, I’ve still got a great friend whose silliness still sometimes manages to include me.

When I think a back on what I was doing when I met Sean and where I was working, and all of the experiences since then, what really makes me smile is that life in Chicago has been good to me, no matter what part of the city I’m in, or who I’m there with.  Each memory that I get is like a pocketsized milestone, drinks included.

So I’m in grad school, I get it. I’m old enough and experienced enough as a student that I don’t need my hand held. I should be able to figure things out on my own. But I’m also in a literature-based academic environment.  And as we move into the third week of school, I’m finding myself increasingly frustrated (already!) with the notes and instructions I’m getting from one of the instructors. She asks us to make sure we have spell-checked our documents and presented our arguments and information in a clear way, and yet her online lectures are as full of  misspelled words as they are empty of punctuation or clarity.

“The readings for this week are posted her in week two as down loads. Let me know if you have trouble accessing them. The Narrow Road to the Deep North Matsuo Basho Journey to America Alexis de Tocqueville Venture into the Interior- Van de Post Travels with Charlie- Steinbeck You are also required to read from Wikipedia on line, Travel Literature the History section, Travel guides, Types of travelogues and in particular note the list of Notable Travel Writers and travel literature. Suggestions: Thomas Swick has become a travel writing guru of sorts. Take a look. www.thomasswick.com/articles/roadnottaken.html And Worldhum on line is worth keeping tabs on: www.worldhum.com/features/travel-books/“

That is copied exactly from our instructions. Because of the way the text is uploaded onto our site, deciphering which is what made no sense. So I asked other students if they knew where things were, via an online post that the whole class could read, and one of my classmates told me that in addition to a lack of clarity in who wrote what in our assignment instructions, she had labeled the readings incorrectly on the site as well. I found the stuff and got through it somehow  some of the PDF files were in upside down in the middle of the reading) and the day before it was due she sent me an email saying “hopefully you’ve found the readings by now.” So much for letting her know that I’d had trouble accessing them.

Ok, so I’m bitching about nothing.  As I said, I don’t need my hand held. But I picked this program because I liked the structure of it, which allowed the teachers to live anywhere and facilitate the classroom experience online, and also because I expected a certain amount of professionalism. I might be a student, but after all, how can I come to take my learning experience–and the program itself– seriously if I’m in a writing programin which the instructor does not even bother to use the spell check or write for clarity herself? Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by my other instructor, whose notes are impeccable, whose care with language and intention conveys a certain level of not only interest in us but in her subject matter.

I’m not the only one who views this level of professionalism as something worth merit. From the Illinois State Board of Education’s “The Role of Teacher Professionalism in Education,” we can see that communication in any setting is one of the most crucial aspects to a fostering a professional atmosphere. The refers to grade schools and high school, but it should apply equally at the Masters’ Level, especially in a writing based program.

“The final characteristic of teacher professionalism, conduct, is equally as significant as the first two.  The manner in which an educator carries himself or herself is a reflection on one’s classroom, school, community, and educational system.  Conduct is a representation of how well one takes care of himself or herself, from aesthetics to language and behavior.  However, these are minor qualities of conduct.  Conduct also includes one’s ability to initiate and maintain quality communication with all the parties involved in education: students, fellow teachers, school board, administration, and parents.  It is through energetic communication by a professional that initiates understanding, whether it be a student grasping their potential or the professional voicing their displeasure on a newly implemented regulation.  A professional teacher desires to locate effective communicative skills to achieve preferred educational goals.”

The worst part of all of this is that her laziness is creating in me my own sense of laziness. If she hasn’t made the effort to write to the best of her abilities, that tells me that I’m not worth her efforts. Which in term allows me to feel that she, and this class, are not worth my own best efforts. I know that’s a self-defeating way of thinking, and is my own problem to deal with, but I am truly amazed at how easily it is rising up inside of me with each new assignment.