The Desire to be Obsessed.

Today has just been a jumble of misunderstandings, understandings, hits, and misses, close calls, and connections. My life has been turned upside down, not because I've found something so entrancing that I must devote my time to it, but in fact it seems as though I cannot find anything at all to settle my mind. I want to be obsessed, I have to have anxiety, I want to experience the OCD that Shelby continuously blogs about. But no, Lisa has to focus her mind on everything, leaving it unfocused and cluttered with stuff. Stuff, stuff, and some more stuff.  I went to Dr. Sexson's office today looking for the answer, I figured if anyone was going to have the answer it would be him. And what did I find out...nothing. Yeah nothing, because in order to understand we must forget what we know. We have to detach ourselves to become attached. It is so complicated that my mind is in a knot. A very tight knot, one where you pull and all it does is make it tighter and tighter until there's no way of getting the knot out unless you cut it out entirely and throw it away. I really hope I don't have to cut that knot out and throw it away because I think there's a lot of stuff and unstuff that I want to know to help me unknot my knot. 

"And the way up is the way down, and the way forward is the way back." Eliot--Dry Salvages.

Then we were talking today in class about de-cluttering our lives. About getting ride of things in order to gain life knowledge.  And this got me to think more about the stuff that Survivor Man "needs" to survive. A few things and he can last a week in the wilds of the world. But what he always has no matter where he is, and what he "needs" to survive, he has his harmonica. A simple musical instrument that has lived in the pockets of many musical, homeless, stranded, wondering souls. And then i  begin to think, "Is this all I need in order to create order out of the chaos in my mind, a harmonica?" My dad has one on him at all times, in fact he gives me a harmonica once a year, sometimes even twice. I thought it was just a nice gesture a present to remind me he loves me. But really it was a present to simplify my life. The harmonica symbolizes everything I need in order to understand. He gives me these machines so that I can give life to my thoughts. Often times my dad tells me "Think in music Lisa, think music." My dad is extremely musical, and I am not. Well I'm not the same kind of musical as him. Music brings people together, it lightens the soul, it eases the hurt of life. I think my dad gives me harmonicas in order to gain happiness from sharing his love, music. 

But what does this have to do with Beckett, and Eliot and the decomposing of our lives, I have no idea, it just sounded like it fit, well in my puzzle it fits, now I just need to find the other pieces to make the puzzle whole. But can the puzzle ever be whole?--or are we doomed to keep searching for the missing puzzle piece? Connecting the dots has never been so complicated and time consuming. Eliot has created a festering wound in my mind of non-experienced experiences.  He has given me a reason to become obsessed, but I am hesitant to let go, to dive deeper into the no experience necessary. As Eliot sees it we do not learn from experience for life is always new, and therefore experience is unnecessary because nothing from the past can prepare us for the future. Every moment is a new beginning, and every moment past is an experience that we will never need to use, because each experience is so different from the other that there is no learning from it! AHHH yet again I am lost, confused, de-cluttering to clutter. Unstuffing to stuff my brain full of useless information regarding the now, which is the past, which is not the beginning anymore but the end, when the end is actually the beginning and the beginning though is new is actually old news because it is in the past now. 

And perhaps now, after writing through my confusion and my want to be obsessed I am obsessed! I am consumed by the filling and the pour out, the kenosis and the plerosis.  I am becoming...

~L.

my interesting inventory

the color of my room, a depressing blue, so dark that black would make me more happy.

My bed facing west to east, I would have it north to south because my dad say's the polar magnetics pull you from the north and south, "so if you sleep north and south you'll be taller each morning." This is what he used to say to me, thanks Dad! my epithet is Little Legs, polar magnetics is a joke! and there's a giant window facing north which is cold to sleep under in Montana winters. Next to my bed, on the south side a wicker basket with all my crocheted hats and hooks. Next to that my great grandmothers chair, a puke yellow only a great grandma, grandma, and great and grand daughter could love. On top of the chair is the crocheted blanket my grandmother made years before I was even a thought. On the ground next to the chair is a box full of clothing I wore-out in high school that I am trying to detach myself from so I can get rid of them. From there a dusty TV on the east wall, with my father's Christmas present, The Koran, resting on top of the dust box. My closet, a mess of colors and shoes, weights so I can pump my iron, and my other grandma's Singer Sowing Machine. From there under that north facing window, my dresser I got from a elderly lady I worked with after she died, on top of that a plant I adopted next to the plant are my jewelry boxes filled with Grandma Juanita and Grandma Shirley's jewelry, not the good stuff, my mom has that. From there Slinky's bed is tucked in the corner, with tiny pruning holes all over it. Next to her a bedside stand with a 45 caliber handgun resting on top. Above the gun, a plaque with a cartoon girl picking pedals off a daisy, with the phrase "I love you, I love you not, I love you...Because of you a Daisy died today." This concludes the tour of my bedroom and the inventory of my life. Looking back now, my stuff is kind of interesting.

~L.

20 minute lifetime in Tide Pools

Eliot's Dry Salvages dives into the depths of the sea, past creatures we know nothing about, it washes us up onto the shores of a distant beach, a tropical isle, an iceberg. But in one moment and one pool, it shows us a glimpse into itself:

"The sea is the land's edge also, the granite

Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses

Its hints of earlier and other creation:

The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale's backbone;

The pools where it offers to our curiosity

the more delicate algae and the sea anemone." (lines 16-21)

This look into the tide pool, and area that is washed over continuously, always changing is a time trap. Low and high tide happen everyday. It is what surfers use to plan their waves, it is attached to the moon, and helps wash away abandoned sandcastles, as well as destroy ones in progress. The tide is a life in itself.  

Laguna Beach Tide Pools

Growing up around the ocean, I learned about the tide pools and the life that lives in these pockets of oceanic evolution.  When the tide would go out, the kiddies would rush in, peering into the crystal clear portals, involving themselves in the life that survived the rushing waves. And then, POOF, the kiddies must rush away from the deadly tide. Then, back out! The kiddies rush back in and find the pool they were exploring to look completely different. In a matter of moments the tide pool is changed, a lifetime of 20 minutes, waking up to find something completely different. 

I love tide pools and find myself getting lost in them even hear in Montana, dreaming of what life would be like to live by the mercy to the tide. I get lost in my dreams blocking out the now, and entering into my mind, my memories, my imagination, my 20 minute lifetime.

~L.

My Day of Hogs and Grounds

So it's funny how life works, and your internal clock is more on than the one placed by your bedside. For the past few weeks, I kept waking up exactly at 5:55 am. No matter how many vodka soda's I had had the night before, no matter how late the episode of Californication ran. 5:55...5:55...5:55...Then yesterday, nothing, no 5:55, no 6:00, there was no 6:30, and there was no 7:00. my day was slipping away while I rested my eyes. At 8:00am panic! Rush downstairs, throw food in the dog bowls, grab my backpack and head out over the icy tundra that Lincoln runs along side of.

Wait, class starts at 9:30, always has and always will, at least until May. How could a day devoted to repetition, be so screwed up that my repetition was lost in my slumber? I knew then that it was going to be a good day. And in the end, after a pitcher of Guinness with Tai in honor of Joyce's 128th birthday, and Bill Murray's survival of the repetition, and a bite with Bri at Stacy's bar. I recapped my day by listening to none other than I-Cube's song "It Was a Good Day"

Please go home and enjoy the recap of your day while being serenaded by a great player of the game--I Cube.

I can only hope that today will be better than the last.

~L.

Finnegans Wake found in The Skin of Our Teeth

So far I've only found one part, but both it comes directly from Finnegans Wake:

On page !6 in the beginning Mrs. Antrobus is being attacked verbally by Sabine, and Mrs. Antrobus says, " When Mr. Antrobus raped you home from your Sabine hills, he did it to insult me." Then in Finnegans Wake on page 197 a little over half way down the page it clearly says "...when he raped her home, Sabrine...." this is pretty much the same line exactly. I have no idea how this page found me...well I do know, it's right before my page I selected and so I started reading from the beginning of the chapter on page 196 and luckily I had just been rereading The Skin of our Teeth directly before.  Kind of cool in my opinion.

Alright I'll find more but until then, adieu! 

~L.