Milestone

Oh my gosh, I'm so proud of myself! A couple days ago, I finally finished reading Una Nueva Tierra, the Spanish translation of Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. And it only took me two and half (well, closer to three) months! Alright, fine, I know that's kind of pathetic. But still: it's the first entire book I've ever read in Spanish! Wish I could say, "Next: Don Quixote," but I'm afraid I'm not quite there yet. I think next will be the Tao Te Ching.

I should celebrate by ... like ... eating tacos or something ... (-:

Correction

In my previous post, "Free Dirt" I said I found myself struggling to establish appropriate physical boundaries with four individuals--I should have said: five, including the church cat, Peaches. I have literally let her walk all over me.

Some of you may think I'm joking, but I'm not! I love animals, but I dread the idea of ever having a mammalian pet again. Haunted by guilt over neglecting the dogs we had growing up, I'm intimidated by the intense obligation I feel to fulfill dogs' and cats' need for affection.

This is why I'm always talking to Brandon about getting a lizard. "Let's get a lizard! We won't ever have to worry about it becoming emotionally attached to us! We can get a great big iguana, or gila monster, or even a monitor, and it can just live as a wild animal in our house--it'll be so great!" A tarantula would also be fun. Or a snake. Not a scorpion, though; they're icky.

Pretty Women

One day my Hebrew prof. began the class by saying, "I am an unusually good-looking person." In fact, he wasn't really, so we all sort of smirked or raised our eyebrows, and he continued, "It's true! I am an unusually good-looking person. How do I know that? Well, by looking in the mirror, of course!" We still weren't getting it. "Because when I look in the mirror, I know just where to stand, and just the right angle to hold my head, so that I see myself in the best possible light, and dang, do I look good!"

When I was a child, people used to tell me I was beautiful, and I believed them, partly because, like my old Hebrew prof., I thought I could prove it to myself by looking in the mirror. Now, as an adult, I no longer have a sense of how pretty I am, because I don't trust my own perception and I don't trust anyone to tell me what they really think. I guess I consider myself to be kind of pretty, on a good day, in the right lighting, as long as my hair is doing something flattering. But I know I am not among the top tier of gorgeous women ...

One day I saw a woman on the train who just about made my heart stop--she was stunning--her face was just so perfect. I've always hated that stupid song, "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt, and yet it came true! Well, except, she never looked at me. And she wasn't with anyone. But, "I will never be with her" (sigh!) ... although that's really not so tragic as that dumb song makes it out to be. I just hope she has a significant other who appreciates the perfect contour of her cheek, the exquisite shapeliness of her mouth, etc. etc.

I never blogged about one of the high points of my time in Florence--seeing (adoring--really, just short of worshipping) Titian's Venus of Urbino. "The woman." I remember how I caught my breath the moment I first saw a photo of her in my art history textbook. The most sublimely erotic image of a woman ever painted.

But to think! She's not just an imaginary ideal! There are women, living, flesh and blood women as beautiful, as perfect as she, ripe for the enjoyment of some damn lucky bastard. I wonder if they know, these goddesses among women, the brilliancy of the radiance they possess ...

"Ah, pretty women ..."

I suppose they must know ...

Firewheel Tree

Virgie's Guide To Pasadena Trees
Episode #2: Firewheel Tree (Stenocarpus sinuatus)

Excuses

We watched The King's Speech Saturday. Every bit as good as it was made out to be. And the story really resonated with me--the story of man unmistakably, and unavoidably called to greatness, who nonetheless has a terrible, embarrassing weakness obvious to everyone.

My own vocation is not nearly so great, and neither is my weakness so obvious. But as I get closer to ordination, I have felt some intensification of anxiety about the significant amount of responsibility I will be taking on, and the fact that I am at heart so flawed and fragile.

I've always been something of a hypochondriac--never about physical illness, but about psychological maladies. My imagination keeps cooking up all these excuses, reasons why I'm really not fit to be a minister.

I can't do this job because I have an undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder. I can't do this job because I'm really bipolar. I can't do this job because I'm on the verge of a psychotic episode. Or I'm suicidally depressed. Or I'm really transgendered. I can't do this because I'm not a human being at all, but a super-realistic android, and my whole life is just an experiment to see if a robot raised as a human can attain to a normal life. The experiment is failing. I should be deactivated and recycled for scrap metal.

But I'm afraid the truth is, I'm not crazy (above paragraph notwithstanding). I would like to be. I would like to have an excuse to give up, throw in the towel, jump off a bridge. But the truth is, I can do this job.

I keep clinging to an image of myself as utterly incapable of accomplishing anything, a complete and total failure. And yet, here I am one quarter away from completing an M.Div., getting ready to take ordination exams in August ...

Honestly, I don't know what to make of that. Obviously, the thoughts I have about myself are ridiculous distortions. Yet they hold some truth. I may not be crazy, except that to be human is a kind of madness.

Perhaps George VI was lucky to have such an obvious weakness--it made it clear up front that he was a flawed and fragile human being, like me, like everybody else--and that his greatness did not eliminate that frailty, but transcended it.

Una Poema

So last night, Brandon gets home and notes that I seem tired.

Slumped over at the table, each word requiring an effort, I exclaim, "Must ... write ... perfect ... brief, explanation ... for my blog ... of what is wrong ... with Platonic metaphysics ... from a Christian perspective ..."

"Is this for your internship?" Brandon begins to ask and stops himself, "This is just to appease the demands of your muse, isn't it?"

Oh, the muse. Indeed a harsh taskmaster yesterday--but then (of course, when I was supposed to be going to bed) she graced me with a very special gift: my first ever poem in Spanish.

It's certainly not in the beautiful/profound category--just quirky/philosophical. But it sure was fun to write. (English translation below.)

Fingir a Querer

Yo quiero lo que no puedo tener
quiero el imposible
Pero si de verdad no puedo tenerlo
¿es un verdadero deseo?
¿o quiero querer y solo fingir
que quiero tener lo que quiero?

Ahora escucho a mi corazon
¿Quieres querer o tener?
Me dice, "Yo debo fingir a querer"
Así le pregunto por qué
"¡No sé! Que extraño. ... Ahora yo veo:
es porque yo no quiero nada."

Yo no quiero nada. ¡Que serenidad!
Siento tan mucho mejor
quiero sentir esta paz por siempre
--¿o solo quiero quererla?


Pretending to Want

I want what I can't have
I want the impossible
But if I really can't have it,
is it a real desire?
Or do I want to want and only pretend
to want to have what I want?

Now I listen to my heart
Do you want to want or to have?
It says to me, "I have to pretend to want"
So I ask it why
"I don't know! How strange. ... Now I see:
it's because I don't want anything."

I don't want anything. What serenity!
I feel much better.
I want to feel this peace forever
--or do I only want to want it?

Clumsy

So, last month, we started doing Zumba classes at the gym. I kept thinking, the first two weeks, I should write some silly little piece about how terribly clumsy and uncoordinated, how absolutely awful I was at it--you know, quick, before I got really good.

Um ... dream on, me-of-the-past.

Okay, so, yeah, definitely been at this for over a month now, and definitely still chronically about one and one third beat behind the rest of the class, still the gaping dope struggling to catch on, even when all the instructor is doing is marching in place. "C'mon, dummy--left, right, left, right--no, your other right! How can it be that hard?" Once I finally get the hang of some step, I cannot allow my mind to wander even for a moment, or else all is lost, and suddenly, I'm just standing there, looking like a complete idiot, as everyone else moves gracefully, all together, in perfect sync, or so it seems to me.

I blame it on my autism spectrum non-disorder. (Because even with the supposed over-diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders, people like me, without a disorder at all, continue to slip through the cracks.) It's all about having a one-track mind--being able to block out external stimuli, finding the world at large to be overwhelming, shutting it all out, except a small, manageable bit.

But more specifically, related to my utter ineptitude at Zumba, it's about only being able to think about one thing at a time. If I try to do the footwork, I can't manage the arm/hand motions. Even once I get the hang of the leg part, if I try to add the arms, it just all goes to pieces.

This is also why I am the world's second worst driver. "Oh dear God," I hear you say, "Someone out there is a worse driver than Virgie?!" Indeed. The world is not safe.