The Story of Evolution and the Evolution of Stories: Exploring the Significance of Diversity

and one more thing:
for those of you who might, too, be holden caulfield lovers ... a treat for you: been thinking about how some of you seem to feel that my words are clingy themselves, that you are feeling clung to ... holden explains better than i so i'll let him talk. his last words in catcher, the book in which he tells the evolution of his story, are thus: "I'm sorry i told so many people about it. about all i know is, i sort of miss everybody i told about. even old stradlater and ackley, for instance. i think i even miss gaddam Maurice. it's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. if you do, you start missing everybody."
and holden has just told us everything. and with these last words holden misses US, his readers ... those seem like clingy words if i've ever read any. and i guess i can relate. i tell so much here, to all of you, and i beleive holden, i know i'm going to miss ya'all ... and so i guess, you're right, my words are clingy. i could argue ... but i won't.
i guess i'll just say that i know telling my story creates ties, clinging-divises, but i don't take holden's advice ... i will tell my story ... and doom myself to a life of missing everybody, a life of lonliness. isn't that what you're asking us to do here? to tell our stories? to create ties between people? ....to risk intertwining our stories ... there isn't much that is riskier, i don't think ... maybe that is the strength of stories (but, godam it! there i go again trying to generalize.) ....so we have a choice ... do we tell our stories and then miss those we told, or do we not tell. both seem like lonely lives.......but, anyways, don't worry, i won't cling too hard ... you've seen me learn that ... i know, now ,that it is safer, i'll live a longer life if i don't cling too hard, i'll let go, don't worry. i know people leave ((i like thinking back to when i figured things out ... i figured that one out while reading little women with anne spring semester last year ... i went absolutely crazy when i figured it out .))
g'night all.
ps humm.. never got to talking about how we get into each other's subconsious' .... later.

So, I think I'll start with Diane's query:
"what other creatures on earth can take nothingness (ie the spot) and
create something more beautiful than was even there in the first place "

Last year, Emily Teel introduced me to a photography magazine called
Blind Spot (www.blindspot.com). At first, I felt exceedingly pedestrian
that I "didn't get it", but I never stopped to think that "blindspot" might be
important. I like to think of a blind spot (and, granted, i missed out on
tuesday's discussion) as something that might transcend the idea of
cultural capital. Thinking of blind spots leads us to hone in on
everything we overlook in our efforts to know what is "important" or
"useful". So, anyway, the pictures are beautiful and poignant in that
'ohhhhhhh, wow. hmm, i never would have paid any attention' sort of
way.

www.blindspot.com

Basically, it's about a high school teacher (Matthew Broderick), who will go to any and all lengths to destrot Tracy (Reese Witherspoon)'s efforts to become student council president. One of Broderick's high school friends (who is also a teacher), has an affair with Tracy and winds up losing his marriage. Broderick loses his job and winds up as a tour guide somewhere. It's a dark comedy, and it definitely has that essence of trying to destroy something because the idea imbedded in that something is larger than life. Tracy becomes an obsession for these men, and trying to "get" her in various ways destroys them both.

Just thought someone might want to check it out :)

Also, someone in Anne's Thursday discussion section made a comment about how the crew of the Pequod signed up for the whaling voyage because the concept of whaling is romantic, but I don't think that's true. This particular crew does not strike me as having a glorified vision of their life's work; they all seem to be running from something, perhaps life? Otherwise, why would they stay on the damned Pequod if many members of the crew acknowledge that they are going to die? Their voyage seems far from romantic, almost...suicidal.

The average teenybopper writing fanfic is writing is because he or she loves the characters, the relations between them, and the world they live in. Those who are particularly attached to a character might make a new character who their favorite character falls in love with. Those who love the world will make a new character who simply lives there and might be somehow involved in the plot. Those who love the relations between characters write with only the original story's characters and has them interact in the ways the author would like them to.

_Ahab's Wife_ seems terribly unlike these typical fanfics. It has almost entirely new characters, and they don't live on a boat for most of the book. This makes me almost want to give up on it as fanfic, but that's unnecessary. The thing is, what I think fascinated Naslund most about _Moby Dick_ is something few fanficced stories have and fewer fanfic authors notice; philosophy. _Ahab's Wife_ is studying the philosophy, rather than the characters or the world setting of _Moby Dick_, from a new angle.

The next question that comes to my mind, then, is what angle is it? It's easy to toss of that it's a woman's angle, a woman's perception of the issues dealt with in _Moby Dick_, but I think that's too easy, and unfair to the complexity of both books. So perhaps it's the perspective of Una specifically? Of someone who grew up in her environment, on the land, struggling with freedom and constraints? But that seems too narrow. Maybe I won't be able to figure this out until I've read more of the book. Maybe even after I've finished the book it will be one of those questions I just wonder and wonder about. Maybe the only answer is that it is Naslund's perspective. What do you guys think?

And here we find a conflict: to acknowledge our vulnerability "takes the pressure off" of us and allows for safety, while to acknowledge our opportunity posits greater control over our own destiny and allows for adventure.

The way(s) in which we choose to interpret our own smallness is often a matter of deep personal conflict. I can easily say that I choose to see my own smallness as opportunity rather than vulnerability, but have I acted in any way as to justify this statement? have I or will I throw caution and practicality to the wind, in pursuit of adventure or greatness? ...or will I remain on the safe and steady shore?

I wonder if ishmael struggled with such an internal conflict prior to embarking on his journey...and as I graduate this May and set my own sails into the sea of opportunity...I wonder if he regrets his choice.

Kabbalah says that we are all sparks that comprise a larger verb (or g-d). Therefore, we all possess g-d like qualities. We are simultaneously connected and disconnected, unique and aggregated. Because of this connection what one person does affects the rest of us. The smallness is only one part of the story. You cannot have smallness without bigness, and vice versa. I like to remember the immensity of what we are embarking on together, it doesn't give my smallness purpose -- rather, it reminds me of the purpose inherant in my smallness.

So, when Paul interrupted Anne (I am happy for these interruptions, additions of thought because they are generally working at the hinge if it all) on Tuesday to observe out loud that Ahab's Wife would not exist were it not for Melville's Moby (a tacit thought I am sure many of us had noodling around in our brains. I did, but had not noticed its worth yet), and that one created a niche for the other to enter, I got excited.

Fiction creates niches that more fiction can follow: To test this hypothesis, all I need is some time, a computer, access to some heavy-duty data bases that contain stuff about fiction (authors, dates, synopses, that sort of thing. I betcha I'd find some strong, interesting patterns across time, physical location, and cultural space.

The only way fiction is created is by filling niches created by predecessor fiction. Hmmm. It is so true that writers train for their craft by studying the works of other writers, past and present. Reading is the best path to writing. It is interesting that what comes from one writer reading the works of others can be fresh, new, dare I say it: original. How does that happen?

And what about non-fiction? The truth of it is that it is not "true" because we cannot/do not remember events faithfully...but I think it's more than flaky wiring...I think that we immerse event memories in our own psychological juices that change the color and shape of what happened as they go down.

But do we also create non-fiction in the niches formed by other people's non-fiction writings (and these could be scientific, journalistic, etc), or must first-order events spawn this form of communication?

It's getting complicated, but I'm not done. There's another thingie in the middle: Take something purported to be true—something you saw or experienced. THINK about it. WHAT are you doing to it in the process of thinking about it? Something's going on that produces extrapolation, conjecture, deductions.... are these "fiction"?

I'll stop. I think this will be the rope I climb...or wind up pushing on...for the third paper.
See ya's in class.

"Let me assure you and tell you that I know you, even something of your pain and joy, for you are much like me. The contract of writing and reading requires that we know each other. Did you know that I try on your mask from time to time? I become a reader, too" (p. 148).

"do you know that I try on your mask from time to time?"
.wow. it's amazing how things are so interrelated when you pay attention.

how lovely. I love to think that there is some sort of elemental interconnectedness among people... and this is now my favorite way to describe it. We are all part of the same action; I love 'verb' used like this... not so much as something *someone* does but just as the act that can stand alone with everyone contributing to it.

This makes me think of what I just posted (I read Diane's posting afterward). Perhaps this is why we read books-- to remind ourselves of our intertwining fates (so romantic...). Maybe this is why passages like the one I posted above hit me so hard; because Naslund is acknowledging something that we all feel (but have a difficult time expressing as poignantly as Diane has done).

I need time to think about this book; I feel like I want to keep it inside me, and have my own way with it before I let it out into the world. Isn't that selfish?

...at Orah's saying she's "curious of our professors' monomeniacle sides ... what they think about these quotes ... we get lectured to and asked questions, but don't get posts ..."

I've actually been fretting that my own monomania is so openly on display in this course, that (for instance), the web page I made for Tuesday's class, w/ its incessent quoting/reflecting on quotes/weaving together quotes/linking them to concurrent conversations elsewhere with Dan Gottlieb, feminist theory, information theory, local political arrangements...are all indices to same. Identifying/cathexing w/ Una as I do, it's a wonder I didn't show up on Tuesday in a hoop skirt (though I did drag in a few of my quilts....)

oh, of course, em: there's always an alternative to what IS....

and much? most? fiction moves us from one place to another: Moby-Dick begins in comedy, moves to tragedy (? or a zen state?). Ahab's Wife begins w/ a relational gesture, and will move slowly, slowly into...a sense of independence, of marriage-to-self, of taking self as center...? (Since I'm a *little* further along in Ahab's Wife than everyone else, I need to keep reminding myself not to "give anything away." But want to invite you all to watch as Una works herself out of/away from the Ahab-like "singleness of purpose," fastened on something outside herself, which originally drove her...)

Following Roz's suggestion that new environments are productive of new fictions "adapted to fit" them: Moby-Dick offers a 19th c. American alternative to Shakespearean tragedy, Ahab's Wife a 20th-c. alternative to Moby-Dick; our section today was imagining some pretty satisfying 21st-century alternatives to Ahab's Wife...

Well, okay, okay, we ACTUALLY spent an amazing amount of time today confronting the cannibal w/in. And discussion turned from the particularities of the dilemma of what-to-do-about-being-hungry-@-sea to the much larger existential questions of what it means to decide for ourselves about what we value in life, what gives it meaning (for instance: might dying physically be a way of preserving one self spiritually/emotionally/socially ....of survival in a different dimension, on a plane other than the material...??)

I thought of these queries, of Ahab's (and Una's alternative) way of answering them as I was reading Albert Camus's "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1955) this evening:

"the world itself is not reasonable....But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together. It binds them one to the other as only hatred can weld two creatures together....the doctrines that explain everything to me also debilitate me....They relieve me of the weight of my own life, and yet I must carry it alone."

A (slightly) relevant pun, provided by my daughter Mar,
just returned from a beach vacation:
what's the opposite of a pelican?

**a peli-can't

Despite how vivid the meaning of life becomes when life is threatened, I still believe that human life self-defines its own meaning, and beyond survival, human-created meaning could be void. Meaning is a mental function, biologically created to help us survive. Being faced with the need to survive on a ship with no food, the meaning of life becomes very strong. Life is something that most of us do not want to give it up. The ability to indicate meaning (values) around us and value to our life is truly made palatable by our emotions. So palatable that it seems to really exist, rather than just be a measuring tool for survival.

Maybe meaning does exist in this existence and perhaps of a different nature than how we conceive it. I tend to think that it probably exists whether we are alive or dead. It seems to me that CREATION IS GREAT, dead or alive. And, I imagine the meaning of it all to be glorious, because creation is so glorious. Now, I only know life and I give it great meaning. I know not death. I want to live!!! I feel that life might not have meaning but that life equals meaning. Or is that my emotions speaking? I am hoping boundlessly that death or whatever comes next equals meaning also. I just got off the phone with a friend whose mother died yesterday. She has been crying continuously and it sounds like her pain is almost too impossible to bear...............................................................................

LOVE and MEANING: As I said in class discussion today, I would die for my children and so my love for them means more than my life itself. Love can mean more than life. Thinking about choosing love over life in biological terms, it makes sense that a parent would die for their offspring. However, an offspring would also die for their parent. And some of us would die for another human being even if we did not know them. I know I would if I had some sense that the other person was a good person. This leads me to think about how our minds have power over our genes. I think our minds go further than being unconsciously driven to preserve our genes. If selfish genes alone were running the show, how could people make the decision not to have children, or make the choice to die (or not die) for one's children or others? This ability to make these kinds of choices might be a randomly evolved ability that we humans have developed. Our mind's independence from genetic influence may or may not interfere with future natural selection. In the meantime, we have choices like love or life. Pretty cool.

I guess you could say, the story of evolution has greatly influenced my understanding of meaning and the mind.

I do though occasionally get amused by things, such as the cross feed between our conversation and the Gottlieb event/conversation. I've noted some of what's going on here there. And actually created a whole new page based on the mix of the conversations. Have a look and let me know what you think? Does relate to our conversations here?

We didn't manage anything as dramatic as cannibalism on Thursday, but I thought it was an interesting discussion nonetheless. I'll trust my colleagues to fill in their own view but what amused me was the notion that Naslund was raising some serious questions about the "moby dick moment", suggesting that maybe it was Una who was/is the "extraordinary" person and Ahab the "ordinary" one (rather than the reverse, as in the "canon"?). After all, Ahab just lost one leg, whereas Una lost a baby, a mother, a father, and .... (all in the first hundred pages). And it didn't cause HER to become monomaniacal. Which then (inevitably?) returned the discussion to "clinginess". Maybe Ahab was the clingy one? Was Una "clingy"? If so, to what? (no, I'm not clingy EITHER).

Referring to Paul's posting, I think that Una is the 'clingy' one. She clings to life with a tenacity that Ahab lacks because when tragedy occurs, it is Ahab who turns his back on everything that he once held dear and focuses all his energy on death and destruction. Una's circumstances were much, MUCH more catastrophic than those of Ahab, but she loves life enough to move on.

On another note, I find the syntax of Ahab's Wife so interesting. It has an almost poetic, rhythmic quality to it as if it had a Toni Morrison-esque beat.

page 224: "The murdering. We shouldn't. Voices cracked as lips and tongues. We must."
page 225: "We drank and ate. We slept. We dreamed, and believed reality was dream."

It's fascinating how those choppy sentences can be more profound and emotionally-riveting than Melville's long elaborations. Ok, that's all for now =)

I can't keep from wondering how Melville would feel about this book. If I were him I think I'd be upset (and I assure you, it isn't because I hate the book). The author is not doing anything particularly innovative here. Innovation would mean that the book could stand on its own. I'm sure the author had good intention, but something about it feels like she took the easy way out and cheapened Moby-Dick in the process. The author has raped Moby-Dick, leaving it somewhat broken in my mind.

haven't had internet access since last tuesday and i'm kinda glad that i wasn't able to chart my reaction to ahab's wife as i was reading, but only now, 600 pages in, can i finally release my thought about it ... but i'm am at a loss of words. i just don't know about this book. i don't know. it's a loose feeling: not knowing, premontions of imminent collapse. i'm inclined to formulate a condenced reaction to the book by the end of my reading, but i'm going to try to resist that.
...i'll start by saying that i was disgusted by the book until page 231, chapter 46, ganglion. not really important why i couldn't take it ... the important thing is what happened on 231. and i don't even know. it just got good. really good. she started being able to write ... i don't know what happened ... she started knowing about life ... and and and her words were just sublime for a couple chapters ...she makes me stutter ... i'll go back in a later post and say why i think these pages are just so sublime ... but, not now.
i'm just stunned by this sharp change in her writing ... for the rest of the book she seems to dabble in an out of this genious.
sometimes she speaks so so deeply to me.
so, i guess i am frustrated that she cannot keep that level of genious in her writing. melville doesn't either, i guess ... but for some reason i find it much easier to critisize her fluffy writing ((that's an understatement)) rather than his boring writing ((i guess, that, too, is an understatement.))
but maybe that's what our whole conversation about 'embarrasement about past postings' is all about. Ahab's wife is about the evolution of a woman and i guess we can't get to the genious without the learning to be a genious.
should the learning, should the embarrassments, should the development be published? it is about the movement toward beauty or is it the beauty itself that is treasured? i guess this course is all about how the important part is the evolution, not the end, but i don't know here ... you tell me ... i'm at a loss, i just don't know. i thought until now that it's about the movement, the evolution. but, i don't know anymore, because of this book.
i'm kinda at a loss for words (wish my body would just let me be in silence for a while ... or at least let me quote for eternity ... let the masters explain my soul) but, i guess i will just quote to you two lines that blew my mind:
md: ahab to starbuck:
"stand close to me, starbuck; let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into the sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God."
and ahab's wife:
david to una:
"'i forgive you,' he said in his mellow male voice that seemed to blend God and nature."

also grobstein (((i really really really hope i'm quoting you acurately...a million apologies if i misunderstood))) said that he thought naslund did this intentionally. naslund wrote crappily at the begining on purpose. hadn't thought of that. but, now looking back to the realm before 231 i can see glimmers of genious that i hadn't noticed in my blinding disgust. (example (205) "at your own death, i adked myself, can the vastness of your own experience be buried in the ground, funneled into nothing but the shape of a grave?")
and finally i'll whisper some heavenly quotes to all of you, my friends...from ganglion:
"let me know that into the knot of self comes the thread called time, and that what i am, disgraced or blessed, came from what i was, goes to what i yet may be." this woman can write! and she's found a crack in my very making and has squeezed herself into my being with words! soul peircing!
and i have to go, but will have to post later about the three of them holding each other together. (241) "'do you think that we would die for each other?' i asked. 'yes,' giles said. 'or live. you might find that harder.'" and i asked in another post: who would hold me together if i didn't hold myself tight in the knot that is me? and this is a clinging threesome in which they don't hold their SELVES together individually, but rather, they hold the group together. but, what the hell happens when an essential part of this single knot is loosed!!!!!!!!!!!!! what happens when the people you cling to, the people who hold your very existence together, die!!!!!!!!!! godamn it! what happens?!?! kit goes mad. he's a clinger and ceases to be. una does not cling. she is like ishmael and she loves, but does not cling and she lives on. perfect example of the safer life of a drifter. (((i fall back into bad habbits of useing this flawed termenology ... sry ... but i think it kinda relevant.)))
k. gtg. later friends!
ps was so happy when naslund included pip. never got to talk about him, but pip is one of my favorite, if not my very favorite character in md ... that means one of my very favorite characters in all of literature.

pps didn't mean to poke at our prof.s in the post from last week. i'm just feeling more known than knowing ... don't like that ... i'd rather be wise than famous.
...maybe

Even for those of us who claim they do not cling to anything, do they not cling to the belief that they do not cling to anything? It's like believing there are no truths...except that believing that there are no truths is a truth in of itself.

It bothers me that Una is so composed. I understand, in some way, she is fighting madness and consumed by her guilt, but I feel these emotions come second to Una's determination to forget. I'm finding it hard to relate to this perfectly, composed Una. Giles flings himself off the boat (I think it was intentional anyway) and Kit goes mad, but Una... Una is determined to forgive herself and make sure no one finds out so that she might be given a second chance to lead a normal life. It's not that I want Una to kill herself...I don't know what I want. But I'm hoping with 300 more pages to go I find a different Una – an Una I can see myself in.

*Do something nice for a senior (you will appreciate the same thing some day)
* Treat yourself to your favorite snack food. A little indulgence does wonders.
*Read a little of that book you've been wanting to read for pleasure but
haven't felt there's been time..
*Rent a favorite movie---preferably a comedy! Laughter is a cure all.
*Attend an event on campus to support other students
*Go off campus and explore someplace you've never been before
*Take a nap
*Re-connect with someone you've been meaning to write, call, email, etc......
*Read, write, sing, dance, draw, paint, play....move and be moved, inspire
and be inspired....
*If nothing else, sit down, kick back and breathe deeply. Repeat often.

---------------
And then I guess I should say something about our readings... well, I REALLY like Ahab's Wife. I feel like we are just watching and experiencing her growth and development (physically, emotionally, morally and otherwise) into a who she is in those first lines of the book, and that is sort of fascinating to watch unfold. I am completely engulfed in this book, and constantly wondering what is going to happen next or when she is going to marry so many times, so many ponderings.

On the subject of clinging... what i am reading in the book and in what I hear orah saying sounds like clinging might be equatable to "loving" (argh- whatever that really is). When Una is clinging to her two male friends she is feeling kinship and as Daniela said Una finds a compliment to herself in them (or so i believe)... i think she "loves" them. I think she loves the way they make her think and feel, while there is still a degree of fresh naive teenage romance, she is learning what the world and life have to offer, and loving it.

I don't think Una is a drifter at all (well rather not entirely). No, she does not kill herself or go mad with guilt nor when she loses her complimentary kin, but I don't think that means she still isn't clinging to something. I hear others saying she is clinging to life, I like that. I too think she is clinging to life, and in doing so she embraces others who live and exhibit/experience the beauty of life, but she doesn't allow dispair to drag her away from continuing her own experiences... there is something about this that I am admiring I think because it feels like she doesn't agonize or dwell for very long on hardship (yet she carries an impression of everything she has lost or gone through with her).

I may be giving Una too much credit here(romanticizing it a bit), or perhaps even not enough, I don't know but something tells me I am going to be regret some of this later.

And what if we all must have then taken our own calf and foot, as Mary said, to roast and live off of? Is our consumption of self so different than the calf-consuming act of Moby Dick? And since comsumption of flesh apparently produces consuming obsessions, could the monomania resulting from self-cannibalistic acts turn anywhere but inward?

And if this were so, what mask would we see? what would we see beyond it?

"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last. Yet, looking up into the clouds---I conjure him there: his gray-white hair....... etc."

With these two sentences combined she is saying—Captain Ahab was not my only love, but, yet, I am seeing his beautiful image in the clouds. She is not afraid of giving him height according to her appreciation of his nature. To me this is a sign of her ascendance to a more evolved female, the kind that is so assured of herself that she can give praise to men. Moreover, this is not a fluffy woman because she is a woman, who loves (many) and lets go when change beckons her to do so. She does not cling to men, not even to life. I think my appreciation of her in this instance is because of my age and my experiences of loving and letting go. It's not something that people do easily. It takes strength that I think is highly commendable. There are many people that lack it.

In the beginning of the book, when she was threatened in childbirth, she did not make many moves to preserve her life or her babies. At this point of the story, I wondered why she did not behave strongly. But as I came to better know Una, I feel that this was because of the many things in her life that made her despair. Earlier in her life, when Captain Frye lay down huddled in the boat during desperate times, Una looked at him as if he were a coward. This was the Una who had strength and determination. When she laid freezing to death bearing a child, this was the Una that was weakened and hopeless.Her shadow had arisen to the surface. I witness her shadow character throughout the book, such as when she marries Ahab, she seems to be marrying her father's monomaniacal spirit. She seems to be making peace with her father's spirit in a more successful setting.

She starts her story, referring to the men in her life and continues with the traditional female behaviors, which is historically determined but she ventures into her independence throughout.

I am enjoying this book very much. There are constantly in depth ideas to post about. I definitely think this book can stand on its own. More to come.

After thinking thru your queries, about self and others and the affects of relationship on self:

In my experience, romantic story-book true love came and went twice and I have sustained self and even grew in its presence and its departure.

But there was a time when madness threatened to fracture me. My son developed schizophrenia two years ago, at age 17 and for a while there it seemed like I lost him completely, even though his body was alive, he was not there.These were times when I felt so low that life became a fog of pain and sadness that permeated even my occasional laughter. It was like I, like he, was also not present in my body. I often thought how I would like to just lie down and let go of control. Lose myself to ???????

Thanks be, he is somewhat back (even somewhat is wonderful) and there is hope for more of him to come back. The pain and sadness are multitudes less. I continue to still be a somewhat fractured self. It seems like I am very dependent on him for my sense of self; like the love is so strong that what happens to him happens to me. I've never experienced anything like it before. I think it has to do with the sharing of extreme pain or extreme happiness between loved ones.

Humans are so resilient (to a certain extent). I think the effect of loss of relationship on one's self depends on the depth and degree of loss and the time available for healing.

I pray for the people suffering too much loss due to war and famine and devastation around the world.

Una is tricky. I can't decide if she is "fluffy" or not. She tries to be radical and to unsex herself and play around with gender roles. that is certainly not "fluffy" stuff. This side of her excites me. I love seeing women who can prove that a "man's task" is not really a man's task at all, but a person's task and anyone who is up to the challenge can be succesful. like sailing on a whaling ship and wearing trowsers is a man's job or a boys job, but it's not cause Una can do it too. then again, she seems to do things half way. she is only another man on the ship part of the time, she becomes a fluffy female again the moment she is in the presence of- and especially when confronted by- Giles and Kit. suddenly when the truth of her womanness is known she can no longer be this unsexed radical person. suddenly she wants to love and mediate and cuddle instead of climb rigging and kill whales. the men around her reveal her fluffy side, and I wish that they did not, because i like the other una better. I like the trowser una, not the cry-because-i-want-to-be-a-good-wife-for-my-mad-husband Una.

finally, in response to Orah, As of now I think that I hold myself together fairly well. even though my family and i now communicate long distance they are a part of the glue of my life, as are my friends that i left behind at home and the friends that I have here. even though I love them and love being around them, and though they all help to hold me together I don't think that I would come completely undone without them. maybe for a while, but i could pull myself through. I can very easily see myself, however, finding someone someday who provides a very neccesary adheasive in my life and possibly coming undone if i lost that- though maybe not to kit's extremity.

also, thanks to Mary for sharing her personal story.

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go."

i love mary oliver and i love this quote and its wisdom. but i am not there yet. in response to orah's question i say, yes, yes i would wage an honest battle with the deep because i have not learned that lesson of loving and losing yet. i have not yet lived enough and loved enough for that.


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