High School Commencement speeches

I attended a graduation ceremony this evening for Archbishop Chappell High School, an all-girls Catholic school in Metairie. It was everything that one would expect a private school graduation to be: the graduates walking in and out to the brother school band playing Pomp an Circumstance, opening prayers, the shining expectant faces of the girls who already know they will be the recipients of a number of academic awards, the eye rolls of the slackers who secretly wish in a way that they, too, were receiving accolades, the awkwardness, the unbalanced walking in heels as if for the first time across the stage and with great uncertainty up and down stairs, and of course speeches. Speeches meant to send of this fresh set of scholars into the realm of the real, of auspicious beginnings.

During each speech, I could not help but feel the faint sensation of nausea, and the desire to stand up in protest: Stop this celebration of mediocrity! Stop selling lies! Cease the semantics and cliched well-wishes! Granted, there were some good quotes selected, but even so I found myself inserting my own commencement speech:

The Valedictorian implores her classmates, "Never doubt yourself..." blah blah blah fulfill your dreams blah blah blah God will provide.... I say to the class of 2014 PLEASE! DOUBT YOURSELVES. Think that you may be wrong. Think that the way you see things may not be the only way, or even the right way.  Think that you don't have it all together. Think that other people are much smarter than you, much more talented than you. Think that everything you hold to be true could be turned upside down, sideways, and inside out. Doubt that you understand things. Doubt that your interpretation of what you hear and read and see corresponds with reality. Doubt that other people care about you knowing the truth. Doubt that you are smart. Doubt that you have faith. Doubt the meaning and reason behind your every action. Doubt that anything is about you. (Nothing is ever about you.)

And then once you have doubted, once you have broken down everything, rebuild.
Rebuild with the Real.

The world is full of people who think they are God's gift to humanity, that They are the chosen few. I saw, they are a chosen few who spend too much energy thinking about who they were chosen and how special they are. Stop dwelling on being chosen and work. If you can learn to live in a way that allows for more humility and less narcissism, the world will be better. Remember: The finch in the bush is the center of its own universe.

The valedictorian said to her class, "a little work can go a long way towards success." But let me clarify, my dear class of 2014 who has never really worked. Work harder than you have for anything else, but don't work for money. Work for relationships. Work to see things and people more clearly. Work to understand the world more fully. Work to create. Work to smile. Work to appreciate things. Work for balance. Work for meaning.

Mean things. TURN OFF THE POP STATION and Listen to music that tells a story. Listen to a radio play. Listen to a book. Listen to nothing. TURN OFF The REAL HOUSEWIVES and watch Stephen Hawking's mini series How the Universe Works.

Mean things.

No professor will stand over you to make sure you read,  So, read for pleasure, read for inspiration, and read to know that you were not the first person to think of something important. Read to know things. Read so that you have something to say that means something.

Finally, the one virtue that I could wish upon any graduate, or any person for that matter is courage. It takes ultimate courage to stand and face yourself. It takes courage to take responsibility for mistakes and failure and selfish or disordered motivation. See your own story so that you might get a glimpse of someone else's story. Never overestimate your vision of the truth. You may see just a pinhole of what IS, and yet you can accomplish infinite goodness if you would only know what you see and see what you know.

We are a speck on a speck on a speck, but we are also an expanding universe Capable of greatness in the tiniest most insignificant of moments. Infinity works in both directions.

I leave you, class of 2014, with Ralph Waldo Emerson's definition of success.

To laugh

                                                                      often and much,

to win respect of intelligent people

and the affection of children;

to earn the appreciation of honest critics

and endure the betrayal of false friends;

to appreciate beauty;

to find the best in others;

to leave the world a bit better

whether by a healthy child,

a garden patch, or a

redeemed social condition;

to know even one life

has breathed easier

because you have lived.This is to have succeeded.

Developmental psychology: the adolescent brain

Had a thought while reading up on the developmental process of the adolescent/teen brain. According to the text, due to the faster development of the amygdala coinciding with a slower development of the frontal cortex, teens paradoxically overestimate the riskiness of life AND underestimate the application of that risk to their own lives. So, In other words, while teens may hold a perspective that the world is more dangerous than it is, they also believe themselves immune, which would account for higher instances of risky (stupid) decisions and behavior among teens, some of which are fatal.  Binge drinking, girls walking home alone at 3 am, drunk driving, indulging in cocktail of recreational drugs the night before an exam...

ok, so this we know...

Second bit of information:
According to one study looking at how adults and teens were able to interpret emotions via facial expressions, results showed that teens are more likely to misinterpret the emotional facial expression in another than adults.

So--the highly emotional, moody, dramatic, angsty teen, the one who feels everything is less able to identify emotions in other people.
This would account, I suppose for the fact that teens rarely know what they themselves are feeling well enough to articulate it to their parents, teachers or even friends.

Would this less developed ability to interpret emotional expression fully have something to do also with teens tendency to indulge in behaviors that resulted in short term happiness, even at great risk whether emotional or physical? ---I'm happy and therefore I will continue to feel this happiness as if it will never end...imagine first love and first heartbreak. They would intellectually know that it hurts to go through a break up, but they haven't experienced a great pain before so they wouldn't be able to interpret it properly as a risk. Thus--diving in head first.

 Is the later maturation of the frontal cortext, which results in adults' superior judgement of emotional expression, possibly influenced by the results of said risky behavior in the years before? (i.e. environment affecting biological development) Can our brain actually become hard wired to make judgements that best protect us from experiencing certain pain or trauma again?

These are questions I have...

once upon personality-type revelation

     I drove in circles for nearly 45 minutes in search of the perfect coffee shop experience. coffee that is actually good (this narrows the field dramatically even in a town like New Orleans) Not too crowded, not too hipster, not too commercial. When I finally realized how long I'd been driving, and how many different directions I'd turned, "maybe this place, maybe I'll go downtown..or no maybe way uptown..." I settled on the Village Coffee and Tea Co. on Jefferson and Freret: decent coffee, poor service, but quietly busy enough with other people doing more important things that I can feed off their energy, find something important to do. and perhaps most people are not doing anything of any particular importance, but they, too, are feeding off the energy of expectation of this small cross section of coffee addicts, and thus becoming more productive.  Now that's what I call reciprocity.
     I'm an INFJ, according to Ms. Katherine Cook Briggs, and Ms. Isabel Briggs Myers. I'm an outgoing introvert, with a knack for counseling other people, and the pleasurable burden of usually being right with just enough insecurity to keep me from trusting my own judgement. It's on this fine, brisk Sunday that I've hit my maximum of alone-in-my-house time, and am filling my pail with alone-with-other-people-around time. Thus, the coffee shop excursion.

Getting what you want

Is it possible to get what you really, deep down want out of life, even if you aren't entirely sure what that is..

I only made it part of the way through that book-made-documentary " The Secret" because I felt foolish watching it. So, I can get everything I want simply by willing it to myself?  As a young Catholic, people used to tell me that I just needed to pray for God to help me to get what I needed. Maybe the opposing theories, one of total self-centered power, the other of powerlessness in the face of the will of God, have created a perfect mental storm leaving cynical apathy in its wake. Or maybe the Catholics have it right and God just simply says no quite a lot. I imagine God--a terrible imagination--shaking his head at me in condescension, "Poor little thing. She never asks the right questions." Alas, am I destined for the divine head-pat for ever? I suppose I shake my fist at the sky far too many times a day to be taken seriously.  

       I think the only thing more annoying than this abysmal communication gap between me and the divine universe is the self-awareness vacuum I encounter on a daily basis. It is said that we despise most in others what we see in ourselves, and I think that's true. And worse, we condemn others for that which we refuse to see in ourselves. And we are ALL capable of seeing ourselves for who we really are, excepting perhaps those with certain documented mental illness. If you think otherwise, I recommend Von Trier's rather disturbing movie, "Dogville." (In fact, if you are due for a soul shaking--and if you think you aren't than you most definitely are--I also recommend Breaking Waves and Melancholia. )

People are amazing--horrible, wonderful, powerful--and I guess this is also a premise behind things like "The Secret," and even in Christian teachings. The first thing we do that makes us worse, less human, is surrender our power.  (I can't help it. I can't change because...) The second, likely simultaneously with the first, is we fear knowledge---knowledge of self and knowledge of another--and blithely ignore the consequences.

Maybe the first step in getting what we want, or even merging with we need with what we want is making a pattern change in these two areas...

Let's WAKE UP, people.  

It's a new year, another year of hustle, too much to do, but never enough hours in the day, too little sleep whether due to the aforementioned too much to do, or else insomnia,  one of the cruelest jokes the universe loves to play on me. And indeed, it is only one of the cruelest.

As I lie here for a second consecutive night without the ability to rest my mind, I remember a time when writing was a solace, when my vocabulary and memory were better. My memory, in fact, now is so bad that I've begun to worry about early onset dementia, or perhaps some form of stress-induced psychosis, the early signs of which are a sudden drop in one's ability to remember things that you've done only seconds earlier. Am I becoming the man from Memento? Will I start making choices in life knowing that I'll forget them when I wake up the next morning and document according to how I prefer to remember? When I sat down to clip my fingernails and found, upon moving to the second hand, that it had already been clipped--no recollection of the process--I realized that something must be done.

As a teacher, I feel like I spend most of my life working to make others see, mostly kids of course. I try to inspire them, I try to give them tools with which they can clean out their own souls when they need a good mucking. This is utterly depleting, as much as I do love it. But the ecstatic, ego-boosting and momentary bits of insanity to counter the true insignificance of a single action are matched in amazingness--as in I'm still amazed-- only by the ages-long-weeks of no progress, or even regression. Thank God for moments of blissful insanity or teachers everywhere might be on suicide watch, one sob story, ungrateful kid, or short sighted parent away from a the nervous breakdown.

Ironically, as I work to help people "see," I prefer, perhaps to my own detriment, to remain unseen. Thus, I have opted for a public writing forum--a perfect medium for hiding in plain site. Where anyone can read, no one really cares to. Where there is no secret, there is no desire to know.

There is always a secret.

Source: ninbra.tumblr.com via Dorian on Pinterest

Today is a new day

and it's high time I clean the screen of my mac. I've got war-hardened dust bunnies nesting in the imperceptible crevices of the digital plane.

There is something to be said for a desk job that allows you plenty of time for your thoroughly unchallenged brain to think of clever ways to talk about mundane and otherwise uninteresting aspects of life. Now that I'm out of the desk job and into a "run-around constantly job" I live in constant fear of becoming boring. Does this mean that I'm saying a desk worker is likely to be more interesting than a busy body? Little things seem to matter more and take bigger chunks of your brain power as you address 20 insignificant-yet-incredibly-significant tasks at once.

I suppose instead of spending time creating puzzles at a desk, I've transitioned into a life which my world has become an enormous puzzle. Every interaction is a piece and many pieces are only shades darker or lighter than the pieces around them.

Lines pale and disappear between success and failure, right and wrong, and decisions in one direction or another don't last more than a blink of an eye. For every success there is potential for a greater success. For every 20 right things you do, there is 1 wrong thing that nullifies all credit gained from the 20 right things.

But things work out one way or another...in fact, there is no one vision of the puzzle. It's being drawn as its being put together. The end is no where in sight until it's actually in sight.

Today may be darker or lighter, but the work on the puzzle today creates the signposts and starting lines for tomorrow's labor.

On summer Poetry and apocalyptic dreams

Summer poetry is the product of an abundance of quiet time. Quiet time is much rarer and much more coveted during the year to waste on the woes and sick-mindedness of a spoiled white American woman...

and yet, while self-loathing may be my default in order first to armor myself in the face of as yet non-existent literary scrutiny, I am rather pleased with myself enough to say that I'm proud for having decided upon poetry as a means to expel my demons as opposed to drunkenness and debauchery, which in either case, would only lend itself to the unleashing of those demons on those closest to me.

Besides, it can be fun writing somewhat amusing yet transparent poetry.

But as I said, summer poetry is the product of an abundance of quiet time. I haven't much enjoyed quiet time this year. In fact, quiet time is in fact the noisiest and least restful time of all. And I don't believe for one moment that I'm alone in this opinion. Quiet time is difficult, which is why so few people actually engage in it. During quiet time, you're left only with yourself.

How frightening.

People talk about about how they would never want to marry themselves (hence, the opposites attract phenomenon...) and that's because we have the potential to make ourselves more nuts than any outside person could do. It's a sad, truth, however, that unless you want to remain a shallow and altogether non-introspective individual, quiet time with yourself is a necessary, good-for-you annoyance. Like swallowing vitamins. (Who the hell decided vitamins needed to be the size of roaches and have the density of a bar magnet??) If you can just get them down your esophagus, you won't get sick all winter. deal?

and just as you must take your vitamins daily for them to really do their job, so must we brave our own ridiculous, fickle minds.

I suppose by subjecting you people to my poetry and this blog in general, I've decided to make sure you all suffer the introspection with me!

Congratulations, ye happy people.

Summer Poetry # 3

oh,
so quiet.
with maddening fortitude and tenacity
the volume does the void so magnify,
I hear the echo of a great hall in a closet
the sound of swallowing water clogs my ears
deaf to all but the great and persistent and fiercely confident voice
that isn't there
at all.
so very,
very
quiet.

Summer Poetry #2

Rise from a fall
out of determination
but if not from that
do it out of sheer spite.
let yourself be picked up
like a child
but if not like that
then
like a penny on the ground.
so many may have walked over you
but someone,
one among the many,
even while you lay pace planted on the road
saw you still had it,
worth.

Summer Poetry #1

Now

gone is gone is never gone is always and forever never

time is a twisted little twist of a devil

and love is and always never kind or forthright or civil

bewitched in betwixt the minefields we wander

through today before the future yesterday our hopes slay

faster and fiercer the pierce of and arrow that festers once entered

though we muster the shredded cluster of courage

the sepsis is imminent in the contentment of our sentiment

we must away tomorrow and today to live in tomorrow as it becomes today

but whether today tomorrow yesterday this moment has is will pass only now

More than one life to lead

News flash! We DON'T get more than one life to lead. But getting the obvious out of the way...

I've been inspired to write after watching the movie "127 Hours" with James Franco, which has supplemented experiences in my life quite closely. This may be a little heavier than my usual blog posts----and yes, I realize that IS saying something---but the time has come to talk about something really real, and not just ranting and manufactured meanings.

On January 11, 2011 my dad died of Leukemia no one knew he had. And even though the circumstances of the death meant he did not experience long-term suffering, the sheer loss has affected me in ways one would only understand having lived through it. The simplest lessons, the ones we hear over and over, learning by rote, learning vicariously through the dramatized versions we love to watch in film, are the most difficult to understand without experience, the most shockingly true once you have the experience, and the easiest to forget in the shallow pool we like to call regular life.

Let's not forget:

1. We only get one life.

We get one shot to live the best way we possibly can. But it's not really just ONE shot. Let's not forget either that life is a massive conglomeration of little, tiny, insignificant shots. A span of 80- 100 years (you hope) full of opportunities to love, and opportunities to make the right decision, or to learn from a mistake that seemed like a good idea at the time.

2. Life is short.

We have no idea how long we're supposed to be here. (Hence, we hope we get a span of 80-100 years) It's the end of the world for someone every single day. You could die choking on your cheerios in the morning.

3. LOVE who you "love," don't just go through the motions.

Hopefully, we all get to learn at some point what love is and what it really means. Don't mess with people. Don't complain about your spouse too much. When they're gone, you'll be wishing for his dirty laundry on the floor, or her yelling at you to pick it up.

I suppose having someone close to you die is a little bit like starting over in life, like having a second life to lead. Things that used to be so important no longer are, and some things that were important have become even more so.

All any one of us has, ACTUALLY HAS, is our will, our choices, and our love. That's it. We worry ourselves with so many things that don't matter, and we're so dense that people have to suffer and die to wake us up. And even THEN it doesn't stick.

(In defense of us humans, though, we live in a great paradox of living in the now and planning for the future. We don't know when we're going to die, but we have to plan on living for a pretty good amount of time because we probably will in most cases. So we forget the basics, the important integral parts of our being, while planning our lives.)

None of this writing really matter, I suppose. But I hope that those of us who are at a period like this, when life has been stripped of the human planning trappings exposing the heart of what we're DOING here, can remember what's important even after the initial shock subsides.

the metaphorical nail in my foot I got avoiding a metaphorical pile of dog poop

Would I have ever thought 5 years ago that I would look back on my quarter-century life and see a fistful of regrets?

No. The answer is no, I was sure I was too careful for mistakes. Or, at least too careful to make any real ones.

With that kind of cocktail of naivety and pride, it's a wonder I've even survived at all. I mean, shouldn't I have been abducted or died in some car accident by now? I like to compare my existence--the sheer miracle of it---to the miracle of retaining both of your eyes for the duration of your life. Those delicate, gelatinous balls of translucent tissue and water are affected by DUST particles for crying out loud. I mean, seriously!

And now that the veil has been lifted, what now? What the hell now? I find myself plagued by the memory of a speech on sin and its effects on us I had the wonderful privilege of hearing as a 9th grader. Imagine you are a piece of wood. Every sin is a nail you drive into yourself, the piece of perfect wood. Jesus (savior, woo!) removes the nails in confession, BUT we're left with the holes forever. In other words, the consequences from your mess-ups stay with you forever. and let me tell you, a broken relationship (friend, boyfriend, spouse, relative) is a scathing little bugger of a nail.

Pretty sad for us out there. Especially if you're like me and keep nailing things to yourself. Or running into stray ones just lying around. Nails that is. Or step on ones jutting out of the ground. They don't tell you that's how the nails really get you. We're not (in general) so masochistic as to do things we think will be injurious to our persons. NO! We think we're doing ok until @#$!@$%@#$^ in comes the rusty nail on the pavement we hit trying avoiding a pile of dog poop.

That's real life. Substituting a nail to avoid a pile of dog poop. Choosing or falling upon A "sad" to avoid an "even sadder." We don't usually get a choice of "Happy or Happy" or "Happy or sad." That would be too easy. And THEN sometimes what we THINK would be "even sadder" is really just the "SAD!"

I'm sure anyone reading this is probably thoroughly confused by all of this rant, but the point is very simple: Life, and trying to live it well, is just really hard.

Sometimes, sometimes a LOT of times, you're probably being an idiot. We just hope and pray our idiocy doesn't hurt us or people around us too badly.

My coffee is eating a hole in my stomach lining.

You know what I can't stand? When you feel like there's a giant iron weight strapped to your neck weighing down every breath you take and the movies you watch still have happy endings. That's not life. We're standing around with our heads in the sand and making up stories about how with wish life would be so we don't have to think about how the world actually works. And then we feed these stories to our children so it's all they know resulting in an ever increasing generational depression and/or apathy. Because what's the point when life always ends in pain, an everyone you know has to lie to cover it up because we can't deal with it!?

Banks are Evil

My house is cold,
I'm eating chocolate to warm my bones,
in this wretched zone of alone.
my dishes are growing, my bed linens thinning,
banks' pockets thicken with every penny I stick in
their miserly backsides cause their swivel chairs to squeak
and then, I'm sinking again,
in cold old home,
eating chocolate to warm my bones
in this wretched zone of alone.

How yelling at my ex across a street helped me become a better musician

First of all, for the record, I hate saying "my ex." I don't know why it comes so naturally, but somehow it has been programed into me by way of romantic comedies and kids television shows in which 14 year olds have "break ups" and "get back togethers." (In the words of the drunk trying to steal our cab last night: B**** please!)

But I digress. The real reason for opening this blog is that I had a maturity break-through as a musician the other day: I finally learned how to belt like a broadway star, and now having done so, I see a sort of beautiful symmetry to the timing. I'm growing up, so my voice changes like what's going to happen to Justin Beiber any time now. Except this girl-woman version. It's like a metamorphosis for which I sort of feel a sense of gratitude to the man who helped me get here. Broken heart, string-along, douche bag Trial by FIRE aside, I was able to use my experience in love to propel me into a place where I could physically express a passion I've never been able to express. Why yes, my life IS a movie.

Belting, as it was explained to me, like any singing is an extension of speech. But there's an intensity behind it that is different from other forms of singing. I learned how to belt by harnessing the voice I had when I yelled F*** You across a street. It was crazy then, and it's crazy now. But as passionate as I am, I'm not a yeller. Belting is like beautiful yelling. Yelling with abandon. It needs to be vulnerable and full throttle, or else it doesn't work. You can't be afraid and belt, kind of like you can't be afraid while you're expressing to someone months of hurt you've been repressing.

So I have a different voice now. A new power, in a sense, that kind of came out of nowhere and everywhere.