guest blogger michael lee on the merits of disorder

the tie-died hoof liners are obscured by the rock.

well, it's hard to introduce mike lee.  hard to do justice to him in this format, but i'm glad to at least be able to give you an inkling of him here.  we met mike when christian got a job teaching in the university of oklahoma music department.  i was loathe to move to oklahoma, but quickly found that, with musicologist/composer/film scholar mike lee in town, there was always a little bit of mischevious fun and magic going on--a luscious dinner party, a screening of scooby-doo, a "dumb day", or a hi-jinx that actually turns you on your head, puts your roots in the air, and makes you see the world in a whole new way.  i asked michael to blog for us because, for me, putting your roots in the air is the ultimate solution to loosening up a tight place.

also, my kids are huge mike lee fans because he doesn't wear shoes, he wears hooves, and he doesn't wear socks, but rather hoof-liners.

please enjoy mike's generous words today.

An Exhortation on Disorder

Introducing yourself by trying to say serious sounding things isn’t very attractive. The rhetorical stance of exhortation is even less attractive and also pretty silly looking in our contemporary context. Well, I’m all for looking silly and unattractive, so hears a serious sounding exhortation about disorder.

Since the 18th century and the so-called Enlightenment, a story running through many facets of so-called Western civilization has been the power of the human mind to order and organize. Measuring the quantity of effort both productive and ultimately unproductive in this massive, pan-disciplinary undertaking defies the imagination.  Efficiency serves as an important corollary or even goal of this ordering impulse. Efficiency runs riot.

The fruits of this undertaking serve multifarious outcomes. I won’t say “good” and “bad” as that’s moral terminology, and much of this project has no obvious moral component. Some does, much of it “bad” in my opinion, but I’m in full declinist mode these days.

Many assumptions buried deep in the ways we think stem from this massive unfolding. You can see Democracy emboldened by this movement as the individual mind’s ordering capacity entitles it to determine its political leadership through the ballot box. You can see Romanticism with its absolute dependence on so-called genius posit that the human mind’s power to order privileges its orderings even in the service of the mind’s more perfect expression of subjectivity. Psychoanalysis was not Freud’s miracle discovery. The magic hand of chance didn’t pass over Europe and single out one Viennese physician for a surprise discovery. Much in the culture was already pointing toward the need of an ordering science to examine the thing that does so much ordering. Most of our technological advances of the last 150 years empower the individual subjectivity effectively allowing us to organize our communities without recourse to geography and order our experiences that they may all reinforce what we’ve made of ourselves. The economic developments of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Second Industrial Revolution, fuels an economy not based on need, but desire. The subjective, the mind itself, is now privileged to select for itself from a host of mass-produced objects that were once made on an intimate scale or not at all. What was once available in less variation to fewer, more affluent consumers, can now be chosen in vast array by huge numbers. There’s no end to the choices and therefore to the subtleties of our appetite to organize our lives around our desires. Democracy, Romanticism, Psychoanalysis and Consumer Capitalism are a few of the Enlightenment’s progeny.

This choosing leads to the great catastrophe of the twentieth century, not world wars, nor totalitarian nightmares, nor environmental degradation, nor threat of annihilation. Advertising. No German kid woke up in 1939 and decided to conquer Poland. Advertising, the thing that orders our ordering, persuaded them to conquer and them and others do a whole lot else to degrade our species during the last century. No one consumes to self-destruction without the assistance of advertising, the crown atop the head of The Economy of Desire.

A crucial counter-current to all this order sounded early in its history. I like Edgar Allan Poe and the Symbolist movement his “Fall of the House of Usher” inspired. His narrator, faced with the grim task of entering Roderick Usher’s decaying house, pauses to disorder the stones of the house itself in his imagination first by staring at its reflection in the tarn, then by closing his eyes and using his imagination. Perhaps by doing this, he might transform Usher’s house into a place he can enter. The mind is a powerful tool for ordering things, but it can disorder too. That’s Poe’s insight. He used this possibility primarily to alarm his readers, but in his narrator outside Usher’s house, he posited the mind’s true power to disorder that we might live in the world.

The Symbolists sought society’s disorder through paintings of impossible spaces, indeterminate times, and the timeless instructive power of Classical and Biblical allegories bent to the service of transient sensual pleasures often exaggerated to self-destructive extremes. The poets cultivated failure through obscurity and blanched at the outlandish drabness of emergent modern life. The musicians disordered harmony and let the infinite complexities of unregulated rhythm sound. Their politics were liberal to the verge of unfettered, yet absurdly monarchical and archaic in equal measures. The image of a rueful prince luxuriating in his impotence, paralyzed by elegant self-doubt became the political ideal to strive toward.

Why do we shun failure? Why do we avoid obscurity? Why do we seek structural and mechanical solutions to attitudinal and temperamental problems? Why do we celebrate the outward signs of maturation? Winning, clarity, solutions, acting your age are the stuff of order, but they need a counter-balance to realize anything like their best potentials. This springtime, summertime vision of the best way to live must make room for the chaos of fallen leaves, the rot of unharvested fruit, the second childhood of King Arkel, and the mystery of death.

For all our efforts at clarity, most of what we do is beautifully, perfectly, mysteriously opaque once examined on geologic or cosmic scales. Hell, even in the right now we find ourselves perpetually misunderstood. For all our efforts at clarity, has a thought ever been communicated in all its richness? The lecturer always withholds hidden reservoirs of meaning for fear of boring everyone, or for the knowledge that words finally fail.

The insight that something’s wrong with how we see the world is not new. Postwar America is flooded with people who had the same insight. What we do with this insight matters. I’m proposing nothing new. Just act like Poe’s narrator and look at things reflected in a brackish tarn when you need reassurance, or shut your eyes and move the building blocks around in your head. Relate to them as though they have moved. This might lead to failure or opacity or threats and accusations. Celebrate them. I’m not over proud of the placement of civilization’s building blocks right now and urge others to join in disordering them. If they are an illusion, and I think they might be, then they will yield.

GITP Interviews Michael Lee: 

Tell us about yourself.  

I spend too much time fantasizing to realize my potential and am not ashamed about this fact. I like old monster movies and identify strongly with both the monsters and the humans. I wish they could negotiate their differences, but no matter how many times I watch the same film, they never do. The monster’s inevitable defeat causes me regret, but I’m slightly recompensed by my ability to press “play” again on the DVD player or pop in the sequel. I’m interested in the objects of the Kuiper Belt and feel they have much to teach us. I have worked for the same employer for twenty-one years and wonder if this speaks badly of me. My dog died one week ago today and this has made me feel rather sad. I know that dog’s are finite and hold out hope that her energies will re-emerge in a fresh cosmic form, but that doesn’t change the fact that her loss is tough to bear right now.

Are you in a tight place right now?  if so, what are you doing about it?

My problems are pretty trivial examined in global terms. While this runs contrary to your blog’s premise, I don’t think my place is tight right now. If it is, it has to do with a sense that friends are leaving my community or want to leave it and that has me doubting my decisions to stay and stay and stay. I started doing something about it by preparing an application for a job at Montana State University, then I remembered that I’m on sabbatical and am contractually bound to teach here next year. I am trapped in comfort and cannot get out of it despite the copious model of others who are getting out.

What do you hope to accomplish before the end of the year?

I’d like to finish a book proposal and an article about how this film producer I love was believed to be a Communist by the US Government. The idea of the article is to bracket the question of whether the government was correct or not and look at his films to see if they seem to have been made by a Communist. I’d like to have a lovely visit with my sister who is flying out on December 17th. We always have lots of fun together, so I’m hopeful that will work out. I also hope that the traditional Mongolian deels I ordered will arrive in time for me to mail them to my sister in Eugene for Christmas.

What inspires you?

This could go on too long, so I’ll limit myself to one thing: the moon.

What is your favorite legwear?

I prefer baggy short trousers and tie-dyed socks on me. On others I like fancy breaches and colorful knee socks in winter, bare legs in summer. Here’s a tip: Socks can be profitably thought of as shoe liners that you wear on your feet.

introducing the fascinating erin fox

ms. fox--photo by justin hackworth

i first met erin fox years ago, when she was a student film maker completing a short documentary about my mother-in-law called "a merry widow."  i remember thinking how insightful she was, and what a smart subject she had chosen for this film, and how well she captured my amazing mother-in-law.  recently i saw facebook excitement going on over her upcoming project fascinating womanhood and i got in touch with her to see if she would guest blog for us, and tell us a little more about her work and this project.

Tell us about yourself.

I worked in film in Los Angeles for over 5 years and was privileged to work on several award-winning documentaries including Big River Man, a film about a marathon swimmer from Slovenia; Resolved, directed by Greg Whiteley about high school debate champions; and Cachao: Uno Mas, a film about the Cuban mambo genius from the American Masters series on PBS. I moved to Salt Lake in 2009 and I was fortunate to be hired for a documentary series for BYU-TV about missionaries with Chantelle Olsen and Manju Varghese. I teach some classes at the Art Institute of Salt Lake when I’m not working on the film about Fascinating Womanhood.

Are you in a tight place right now, and if so, what are you doing to get out of it?

As a freelance editor, I would work on a film for a while and then work at a law office or for a temp agency and all-the-while feeling immense pressure to date and find “a mate."  Marriage has always felt like the bigger concern than career from my family and church. I first read Fascinating Womanhood (1963) by Helen B. Andelin to learn about the ways of feminine enchantment. Later, when I heard that Helen Andelin was speaking on panels with Gloria Steinem, Helen Gurley Brown, and other notable feminists, I was intrigued. Here was one of our own sisters who spoke about being a woman during the Second Wave of feminism. What was that like for her? What did she say? Some people say she was crazy but I think Andelin’s life story has many parallels for women today who do it all.

Many people see Fascinating Womanhood as a horrible book that tells women to be manipulative to men and weak but I think it may be onto something. She says that the way to be attractive is to embrace your femininity and be a “domestic goddess." I am uncomfortable with “childlike anger” and feigning helplessness. But I think the answer to greater confidence and harmony with men is to find your true feminine self.

The Fascinating Womanhood documentary began with my sister Emily Fox King. She was in several bands with Brian Andelin (Helen’s grandson) and made her MFA thesis art exhibition at Brigham Young University inspired by Fascinating Womanhood. Emily got married and moved to Ogden and onto other projects. Heather Bigley has been an enormous help with writing and planning. I’ve had generous help from Chad Peters and Zach Marsh and the Utah Film Center. The film will be completed by May 2013, the 50th Anniversary of Fascinating Womanhood and The Feminine Mystique.

What are you hoping to accomplish by the end of the year?

Would love to be on the way to a final edit. I hope to secure some funding for finishing the film and hiring an editor to sort through the 30 hours of footage we have.

What inspires you?

I’m reading The History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom and she gives accounts of wives in Europe and the United States. I read A Strange Stirring by Stephanie Coontz which was great.  I read Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May. It was excellent and puts into perspective how our grandparents define the American way of life. Women who had successful careers were portrayed as selfish and promiscuous. Singles were considered too “sick, immoral, selfish or too neurotic” to marry, so couples stuck together. Homemaking was a career and homemakers turned to experts to do their job well, which may be why books like Fascinating Womanhood were popular. It was like a scientific method for the perfect wife.

I am also inspired by music. I discovered PJ Harvey’s “White Chalk” album when I was unemployed, frustrated, and getting bad advice from therapists. I loved the simple piano parts on it and she became relatable for me as an artist. On Pandora I like to hear Arvo Part, Erik Satie and Arcade Fire.  Additionally, walking outside is my best source for inspiration.

What is your favorite leg wear?

I like the thick Smartwool or Thorlo socks. 

Summer 2K12: Honest Work

Because Rainy Days and Mondays always get us down around here, I (Ingrid, esteemed daughter of Lara) will be posting on Mondays this month, each week thinking of something that makes summer particularly summery. This week I'm thinking of summer employment.

Ah, the elusive summer job. I spent the better part of this summer in the dark corners of Craigslist seeking a part-time position to supplement my unpaid internship at BYU’s Museum of Art. It’s always been a little troubling to me that in order to graduate a qualified job candidate, I need to spend my summers working for free-- the whole internship thing feels like an elaborate heist for free labor. In any case, my Craigslist journey finally found me working as a receptionist at High Country Adventure, a grungy establishment that rents out tubes, kayaks, and rafts to folks who want to take them down the Provo River. Because it’s the job that everyone but me hates and because I don’t have a smartphone with which to ring people up/schedule appointments with (the fact that having a smartphone is a prerequisite to being successful at an entry-level job is its own can of worms), I tend to be assigned to be the parking attendant-- we don’t have any real parking lots on our grounds, rather we have a few spaces where the shrubbery is lower than in other places and we send cars there. Here are some important things I’ve learned in my parking journey:

1: It’s easy to start saying “y’all” a lot when you hang out with folks who drop their g's and enjoy recreational activities that start in a trailer (I'm not stereotyping here-- literally, the office at my workplace is a trailer). The demographic I work with is Utahns with tattoos and I find myself adopting their accent toward the end of my shift. In particular because I say the same words over and over again (reciting the route and practice involved in convenient and ethical parkin' here at High Country). I'm hoping this isn't appropriative-- enough people at Bryn Mawr assume I'm from some backwater compound that maybe I'm allowed to use the word "y'all"?

2: Sitting by a river all day, sending people down a river all day, and listening to a river all day are all good ways to get in touch with an excellent collection of songs. Something about the river is deeply inspiring to people-- see my favorite example below:




3: Only a jerk doesn't smile back if you smile at them first. Every time a car pulls in to the gravel road I rise from my lawn chair, take off my sunglasses, and saunter over to the car (read: truck) in question. If I smile and say, "Y'all have a reservation today?" the driver will smile and say, "Yes ma'am!" and if I make a face like an underpaid college student who has been sitting in the sun for a few hours and say, "Y'all have a reservation today?" the driver will make a face like someone who is about to try to be instructed to "go on ahead and wedge yourself between that there maroon polygamist van and the large bush near the river" and say, "Yes ma'am." If I act like the car in question is the car I've been waiting for all day and like I cannot wait for their epic river adventure to begin, people consistently park in better accordance with my instruction (even when my instruction involves "try to park as high up on the hill as you can and park straight and tight for me, kay?") This was also something I noticed last summer at my internship in Camden, NJ when I was soliciting interviewees on the street and trying to get around on public transportation every day. Most people have a reflex to smile back when smiled at which makes it easier for me to ask them to do something for me. 

4: The sun's rays do indeed change the color of one's skin. Ask me about my gnarly ombre upper thighs caused by Daisy Dukes (essentially part of the uniform) of varying lengths or the foot tan line I have from the leather t-strap shoes I wear to work. Note Tim McGraw's powerful musical illustration of a young woman's "suntan lines and red lipstick", which has come to be a very apt description of my Summer'12 look: 




And finally, a few quips from my favorite customers: 

Me: "Y'all have a reservation?" 
Gentleman: "Like an Indian reservation?" 

My favorite High Country bus driver: "How's my sun goddess doin'?" 

Gentleman: "You sure look pretty today!" (how did he know that I looked particularly pretty that day? He doesn't know what I look like most days! I hope!) 

Same Gentleman: "And you got butterflies in your ears to boot!" 

Same Gentleman, seriously laying it on thick: "Your smile has been the best part of my day!" 

(Should I feel harassed by this stuff? I never know. I just say thank you because at least they're not coming back and telling me that the lot I sent them to was full or not a real parking lot or something.) 

Also, several drunken teenagers have shouted while driving out of the lot, "I love you!" I just assume they're talking to the Daisy Dukes. 

wildcrafter, artist, & urban homesteader raquel smith callis

raquel on a "garden tour spree"

raquel smith callis is one of my sheroes.  she has been involved in getting our farmer's market going, our first night gallery stroll, and getting the city of provo to allow backyard chicken coops. she is a trend setter and a trend maker and helps to make provo a more environmentally and aesthetically progressive place.  

she also makes really rad textile art and paintings.  i love her blog gritty pretty, and you can see some of her artwork, textiles, garden and home projects there.  i promise you'll be inspired!

My twentieth high school reunion is this summer (Provo High School class of '92!).

It's time to reflect! 

On the glory days (ha!) but mostly I'm reflecting about butterflies.

Butterflies and their proverbial wings fluttering and innocently causing maelstroms!

You know how a short conversation can change the course of one's life even when that conversation was never intended to be consequential? There's a large cloud of those rabble-rousing butterfly wings that have changed my course countless times. One of those seemingly everyday tiny-cause-and-huge-effect occasions is coming to mind right now...

As a teenager i froze for fashion. I wore strappy shoes and very short skirts all winter and believed it was a responsible idea to cap Provo with an enormous dome providing citizens with year round climate control (73 degrees being ideal!) Then my bishop's wife told me about her daughter's discovery of environmentalism and plans for earth day. I had never heard of earth day nor environmentalism. My mind was blown! (By the way, my then bishop's daughter now blogs here.)  All these years later I love being in tune with all four seasons and plant and harvest according to the phase of the moon. Every day is earth day. Yup, my current life style is pretty different from what I imagined in high school. 


Though I still think its awesome to wear short skirts and bare feet in the winter and FEEL the weather.

What do you want GITP Readers to know about you?

I'm on a garden tour spree.  Got an aloe vera plant on your window sill?  I wanna see it!

Here are photos from a tour I went on this last week. A garden in Orem (Provo's neighbor) that uses many permaculture principles such as aquaculture, vermiculture, etc.

And here I am with my son Ezra in our garden this morning.

raquel and ezra--outside all day, every day

  
Are you in a tight place, and if so, what are you doing to get out of it?

Have you seen the movie Girl on the Bridge? Contortionists are sexy; tight places are a requirement. But wow, when a space opens up and you can twirl with reckless abandon? I figure that's where i'll end up as a crone, twirling in the great wide open.

What do you hope to accomplish this year?

As a mother of a toddler i have quit having expectations to accomplish much. We're outside all day everyday enjoying nature, visiting with friends, in the garden stuffing our faces with berries, chomping on fennel or out in the mountains wildcrafting.

 
What inspires you?

Everything! Wait. That's not true! The rampant ugliness of our sprawling built environment is very uninspiring. But then i challenge myself to change my perspective about beauty and embrace strip malls and chain link fences. But vinyl fences can go to hell (there are many negative health effects of polyvinyl chloride in its production, use, and disposal.)

What is your favorite leg wear?

In the summer: bare legs under two skirts. Two skirts are handy when you're always harvesting something; one skirt becomes an apron to gather up fruit or transport freshly laundered clothing to dry on the line. In the winter I love wearing tight corduroys under tunics.

susan ito: throwing herself in, body & mind

health-seeking diabetic writer physical therapist

i first met susan ito in a creative writing workshop at mills college in the early nineties in our m.f.a. program.  her stories were always so compelling.  she's a gifted storyteller, as you will find out by going here.  i'm so glad she agreed to write for us!


Mind & Body: The Shifting Sands of Identity


For years, I maintained a regular blog, one that I thought would never end, at ReadingWritingLiving.wordpress.com. It started as a meditation on writing and reading to share with my writing students, but it eventually leaked into blogging about parenting and marriage, about daughtering, about food, about being an adopted person and travel and random incidents like accidentally throwing my keys into a trash can.

bloodfinger/d-day

Then in 2009 my life changed with a blood test and I learned that I had Type II Diabetes. I didn’t want to write about this on my regular blog. I was appalled and ashamed and frightened. But blogging had become my way of making sense of the world, and so I immediately began a secret, anonymous blog where I worked, bit by bit, to understand and befriend my long-neglected body

When I thought of myself as a writer, I didn’t really like acknowledging that I had a body. I didn’t feel very comfortable in it or happy with it. I was a person of the mind, a person of words and thoughts. My body was an inconvenient bag of flesh that I sort of reluctantly dragged around. I avoided mirrors and liked to dress in clothes that could double as pajamas.

Then after D-day, as it were, I threw myself into that body. I turned away from writing pages and instead began counting miles and shedding pounds and journaling about food and photographing meals. I didn’t have time to read novels or try and write them. I was fighting for my health and my life.

foody mcbody

I got healthier. Not cured, because what I have is a progressive disease. You can’t turn your back on it or it comes slinking back. Sometimes it grows against the best of efforts. But it turns out that my pants size was not the only thing that had shrunk – so had my literary brain, my writing life, my manuscripts (three book length projects in progress had all stalled to a halt).  I realized, with a breaking heart, that although I now consider myself a runner (previously unimaginable) I struggle to think of myself as a writer.


Can we nurture both our brains and our bodies? Can we write, and read, and run and make a living, too? It all takes time and mindfulness. It seems that there is never enough to go around.

Finding that balance is the new challenge, it seems – the eternal challenge. I’ve returned to my first career as a home care physical therapist. It reminds me that this work was what drove me to want to write in the first place – I was amazed at the kaleidoscope of human experience I was witness to on a daily basis, and my clinical notes weren’t enough to contain the stories I was holding. The writing grew and grew, and finally I threw aside my health care work to get an MFA in creative writing.

inspiring patients/a kaleidoscope of human experience/too many stories for the charts

I try to keep all the balls in the air. The physical therapy brings me a solid income and a flexible schedule. Which allows me to find the time to run or bike or swim. And to attend my first weeklong writing workshop in years.

I dusted off the pages of a book I started in 1992 and stopped, started, and finally stopped for good after I got diagnosed. In the world of marathons and triathlons, we call that a DNF: Did Not Finish. I desperately do not want this book to be a DNF. And so, nervous as a first timer, I return to the workshop, my pages clutched in my sweating hands.

Once I was a physical therapist who had a dream of writing. And then I became a writer who “used to be a physical therapist.” Then a struggling diabetic writer. Then an athlete. Now? I’m trying to be all of it: a health-seeking diabetic physical therapist writer.

I don’t know if we can ever completely shed parts of ourselves. They come around again, sometimes knocking at the door decades later, to surprise us. What can we do but let them in? 

1. What do you want GITP readers to know about you?

Anything you'd want to know can be found at either of my blogs -- I'm pretty transparent at this point!http://www.foodfoodbodybody.wordpress.com or http://www.readingwritingliving.wordpress.com

2. Are you in a tight place right now, and if so, what do you plan to
do about it?

I'm in a terribly tight place in terms of time management and juggling the million things I need and want to do! My plan is to... I don't know. Sleep less?

3. What do you hope to accomplish this year?

I hope to stay healthy, to complete at least one more triathlon, to see my youngest child off to college, and to (deep breath) FINISH at least a rough draft of ONE of my three books in progress. Wait, does a year mean 2012, or does it mean 12 months from today?

4. What inspires you?

Going to a marathon or triathlon and seeing women who are much older, larger, and slower than me (and I'm reallllly slow!) who are doing it anyway. Older women who write and publish their first books. My patients, who work really hard to walk across a room. People who overcome the odds with their tenacity.

 5. What is your favorite legwear?

Flannel pajama bottoms or Spandex capris.

newly minted: guest bloggers eva & anna

introducing newly minted graduates eva snow asplund and anna kate gedal, barnard college, columbia, class of 2012.

did i mention i was at their graduation last week?  i may have forgotten to mention that.

both looking for jobs/internships:  anna in museum education or historical archives (she did an internship designing historical tours in boston last summer) and eva in computer science/non-governmental organization in india (speaks hindustani).

you know, just in case you know of someone looking for a super smart super rad recent grad.

sophomore year

Are you in a tight place? If so, what are you trying to do about it?

A:  As a recent grad, I can say with certainty that I’m in a really tight place.  The job market is tough, especially for a lady trying to break into the museum world.  I am cursed with a passion for early American history!  I also can’t decide whether to live Utah or DC, West Coast or East Coast.  But don’t worry about me too much, I’m doing a lot about it these big decisions.  I’ve been compulsively applying to jobs and getting in touch with all sorts of people.  Sometimes the hunt is exhilarating, but at other times devastating.  This summer, I’ve also promised myself to re-learn the art of relaxing.  I plan on attempting to restore my soul through gardening, positive affirmations, and lots of napping in the sun.  

E:  Every congratulations, and every bit of advice I’ve received on graduating has been prefaced explicitly, or uttered with the subtext of, “In this economy…”  A week before classes ended, myself and all of my classmates who were unlucky enough to have to take out loans for our college education filed down to the basement of the student center to sign the papers assuring our lenders that we would not change our names or identities, or flee the country, without first notifying them in writing.  Where once there were the kindly advisers and administration sitting in the offices of ivy-covered Milbank Hall, now there is a faceless corporate body and things called “credit score” and “capitalized interest” directing my life.  It’s difficult not to feel resentful.  I’ve considered faking my own death and fleeing the country, but I think in the end what I’ll end up doing about it is approximately what I did to get here in the first place—complaining a lot, failing to process the meaning of numbers above 3 digits, and remembering occasionally to be grateful for the opportunities I continue to have, stress-inducing though they may be.

frosh

What do you want to get done this year?

A:  This year I want to be first and foremost happy with my myself and my life.  I have spent the past twenty-two years being overly self-critical.  I think it’s time for me to be more zen about everything and more devoted to spontaneous fun in the form of road trips and horchatas. This year, I want to land a job (that doesn’t actively destroy the world and one that I could actually be content doing), practice my beautiful saxophone again, smile more often, restart shooting with my manual camera, as well as work on some mixed media projects.   

E:  At the beginning of last week I attended my own graduation—jam packed on the lawn of Columbia University campus—and at the end I attended the graduation of the kids who started at my high school the year I left—a tiny ceremony in a reception hall in the mountains.  At my graduation I said goodbye to a lot of dear friends, and at Walden’s I said hello again.  It was a jolting and inspiring reminder, settling into the back row with two people who were among my closest friends 4 years ago, that we had each managed to create full and independent lives apart without losing the ability to launch headlong into the heartfelt gossip and teasing that filled up our lunch and after school hours in high school.  In the next year I want to complete the transformation from college me to whatever’s next without forgetting the best 90s and early 2000s music videos, outrageous stories and obnoxious inside jokes that kept us together on weekend nights for the last 4 years.

senior year--spring break in utah

What inspires you?

A:  Right now, I feel inspired by the beautiful weather outside my brother’s window in Brooklyn.  I’m living amongst the trees.  I also feel inspired by the love I felt from my friends and family over this past week.  Personally, I struggle with times of immense change and find that the only redeeming quality of these overwhelming moments is hearing that other people have faith in me and my abilities.  I am also inspired by less profound things including my fav wedges from Provo’s Target (I think I’ve finally mastered the art of walking gracefully in wedges), by knowing that everyone I love is just a phone call away, and by the new red lipstick I bought yesterday as a treat for completing my first official job interview (pray for me!).  Above all, I’m inspired by the fact that I can move anywhere and do just about anything with my life this year.

E:  Britney Spears, and her music.  I’ve been a fan since I was seven and memorized every word to Dear Diary.  That’s almost 15 years that I’ve been making my way through life inspired by her wisdom and shamelessness.  I’ve always identified with her unabashed trashiness, the hint of narcissism in her lyrics, her weight fluctuations, and public meltdowns.  Unlike her beautiful blond colleagues, Britney never seems to get noticed in gossip magazines for the elegant way in which she is sporting her “baby bump,” or up-do, or semi-famous boy toy.  And yet, post-meltdown, her songs have progressed from regretful of her privileged but lonely place in the world (Lucky, Oops I Did It Again) to actively inviting and enjoying the voyeuristic gaze of the paparazzi, and of America.

junior year--halloween--dressed as salt n' pepa

What is your favorite leg wear?

A: I am pointedly anti-pants.  I don’t like the way they look or feel, so I find myself wearing lots of tights.  In these past few years, I believe I’ve become quite the connoisseur of this alt form of leg wear.  I’m fearful of colorful tights or ones with wild prints, although I admire all who bravely sport them.  Personally, I’m all about the black, lacey, flowery tight.  It works for all occasions and just about all outfits.  I will continue to wear them or long skirts until my legs get a solid base coat of bronze.

E:  I like a good pair of tights as much as the next girl, and I’m definitely enjoying the fur coat I’ve been sporting since the inauguration of finals season, but my very favorite leg wear would have to be either my house pants--over-sized mom jeans with paint splattered all over the thighs--which, truth be told, I sometimes also wear out of the house, or borrowed sweat pants.  Somehow the ones I buy never fit quite right, but my friends seem to have a knack for picking them out, and I have a knack for innocently borrowing them and forgetting to return them for a couple of weeks.

sheroes: special guest carol lynn pearson

You and I, child, /Have just begun

When we learned that former guest blogger Ingrid Asplund was doing a piece on Carol Lynn Pearson, we asked if she would interview Pearson for GITP. Here's what Ingrid got for us:

"Also Important is I Never Keep my Mouth Shut"--CLP

I write for and am an editor of my school’s feminist newspaper, the college news. My column, Oxy-Mormon discusses issues of Mormonism and feminism. I compiled a list of my Mormon sheroes for this column, and Carol Lynn Pearson was one of the first people I thought of, as she has long been an inspiration to me. 

Carol Lynn Pearson is a playwright, poet, author, and philosopher who has contributed a great deal as an advocate for LGBT issues and women’s authority in the Mormon Church. Her best known works include Goodbye, I Love You, which tells her story of taking care of her gay ex-husband as he died of AIDS, Beginnings, a best-selling book of her poetry. She was also the librettist for My Turn on Earth, a musical about Mormonism, and wrote Circling the Wagons: No More Goodbyes. 

What I admire about Carol Lynn Pearson is her courage in speaking out about controversial issues within Mormonism as well as her recognition that her unusual beliefs make her as a valuable member of the Mormon community. In her words, “I have a unique opportunity to build bridges.” I was lucky to be able to interview her on the phone today and ask her a few questions, as well as our four GITP queries.

IA: When did you first find yourself at an intersection of Mormonism and feminism? Was there one “aha” moment? What was that like?

CLP: I was a high school sophomore at BY High school, and my seminary teacher, who was a very good man, gave a lesson where he said that we have many Heavenly Mothers because polygamy is a true and eternal principal and that as we became more righteous, we would understand polygamy better. I remember walking home, and thinking there was just something wrong with that and that there was no way my seminary teacher was right. It never occurred to me that I was the one who was wrong, I think that too often women think that if they disagree with something the church does, it’s their problem and that they need to always defer to priesthood authority.

IA: Do you ever feel discouraged with how things are going? How do you deal with that?

CLP: *laughs* I often feel discouraged, outraged, and many other negative feelings that the church hasn’t joined the greatest movement we’ve ever had for women, which of course is feminism. However, I am not discouraged about the entire world or about Godliness because I know that humanity always moves forward. When I feel discouraged, I get in my spiritual helicopter and I look at the big picture of history—we may have our bumps and we may slide back occasionally, but the human condition always moves forward.

I’ve been focusing more on LGBT issues within the church recently. There has been big traction nationally with LGBT issues so the church has been focusing on that as well. Because there hasn’t been as much talk of women’s issues nationally in recent times, the church hasn’t been addressing it much. I have been focusing on gay rights recently because I haven’t seen any Mormon feminists commit suicide, unlike gay youth.

I am able to balance it all especially because I’m a Libra, so I go through the world with both hands out and am able to remember that on the one hand, we have a serious need to reframe our concept of a creator to encompass our Heavenly Mother, but on the other hand, I love the Mormon community and I see a lot of room for support and leadership for women.

Also important is that I never keep my mouth shut. I change pronouns when I sing hymns to sing about the faith of our mothers, and I am always willing to stand up during Relief Society and remind everyone that we come from a Heavenly Mother and a Heavenly Father. Just the other day I emailed my Stake President—it may surprise you to hear this, but I am on excellent terms with my ward and stake—and I closed the email by reminding him that “God moves in mysterious ways, Her wonders to perform.” 

I also try to remember that Salt Lake City is not the hub of the universe. It is one place in God’s great vineyard, and it has many wonderful answers but it does not have all the answers.

IA: Do you have any particular habits for nurturing your spirituality/activism/artistic practice?

CLP: I try to read nourishing and expansive books… not usually Deseret books! I’m also plugged into many spiritual arenas, lots of spiritually oriented mailing lists. I have my women’s group that has met once a month for about twenty-five years. It’s a very intimate group of about six women, we started out aiming to make change in the church but now I’m the only one of them who still goes to church and I go to church on my own terms, not as I did thirty or forty years ago. In my own personal meditations and prayers I think of God in terms of a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother. I think that might be a limited way of picturing it—if we even can picture something like that—but I try to remember that God is so much larger than what we talk about. Because God is love, wherever I find love, I find God—this can be in heterosexual relationships, homosexual relationships, in Islam, Protestantism, Mormonism… Mormons do remarkable things, regardless of all the crap they do.

IA: What are your feelings on the future?

CLP: I see women’s situations and women’s rights issues as improving worldwide. The Dalai Lama said that it is women who will save the world, and I absolutely believe that. As long as we don’t destroy the planet (and if we do destroy the planet, we’ll find an alternative space to continue the human condition on) we will continue to do our strange dance of forming relationships between men and women. Women should continue offering their strong feminine energy to change and improve power structures inside and outside of the church rather than merely trying to participate in existing power structures that are oppressive. Of course I’m sad that the church seems to be on the last wagon of feminism and gay rights issues, but I’m ok with it because I know we’ll figure it out eventually.

Are you in a tight place?

Yes I am, or I wouldn’t be human! I try to keep a general position of affirmation and confidence to deal with that.

What do you want to get done this year?

I am working on what I call my “Preparing for Death” project. I’m getting my archives in order so that I can feel at peace with all of my boxes and files organized. I also have some goals for my personal relationships and such.

What inspires you?

Anything heroic inspires me! Right now I am watching To Kill a Mockingbird on Netflix, it is very inspiring to see characters doing what is right and letting the consequences follow. I am inspired by the beautiful coincidences that seem to pop up every day, I even wrote a book about that. I am inspired when I walk up into the hills to go for a run, and I am inspired by nature being ongoing and beautiful. I am inspired by the people in my life and I’m also inspired by my own creative work! Sometimes I think to myself, “Dang! I am so lucky that I get to do this!”

What is your favorite legwear?

Old jeans.

guest blogger: rad rioter & writer natanya ann pulley

socks.  this year she will socks.

 NATANYA ANN PULLEY's maternal family home is near Tuba City, AZ. She is half-Dine of the Kiiyaa'aanii (Towering House Clan). Bicheii is Tachiinii (Red Running Into Water Clan).

i briefly intersected with natanya in an instructor training several years ago, then one day a link to this totally rad hilarious/serious piece she wrote for mcsweeney's, open letter to johnny depp's tonto, popped onto the radar and i knew girls in tight places had found their next guest blogger.  natanya has a slew of cool projects going on:  she's co-editor to the forthcoming good medicine: an anthology of native american humor.  she is currently working on her phd at the university of utah in fiction writing. she is an editor of quarterly west, and her work can be found in: western humanities review, the florida review, moon milk review, the collagist, drunken boat, and the los angeles review.  she just ordered her copy of and is excited to read walking the clouds: an anthology of indigenous science fiction.  you can find out more about natanya and her work at gapp's basement.  

in the mean time, hear the words she has graced us with here:

“Colonizer Bunny” by Bunky Echo-Hawk

Red Riot: Emerging Native American Voices and Poetics

I’m still feeling something out. The edges of it, a little like static in my hand. I feel the charge, know there’s a fabric. I want to tell you about it. I want to invite you to feel it with me. But I’m not sure what it will become. Imagine it is very large and we will continue to be warmed by it. Or it becomes heavy? Oppressive? What if it is just a small thing? Rare … or forgettable?


I have held the edge of this fabric for long amounts of time. I have clutched it. I, at times, pull it towards me … and it comes: 

There are many emerging voices from Native American writers, poets and artists.

And the things they say!

The way they say!

The way they are heard! It is something … new.

[Left:  Leather “Indian Chief” postcard stamped: “Oct. 5, 1907 Southbend, (PA).”
Found April 2012 at an antique store near Salamanca, NY (Allegany Indian Reservation)]

[Right:  “Feather Lollipop” (Cherry/Blue Raspberry/Grape) purchased April 2012 at Smokin’ Joes Trading Post near Sanborn, NY (Tuscarora Indian Reservation)

I have always felt there are great voices among my Native American families. But they seemed larger than life (than my life). Steadfast. Honest. Brave. Oh yes, the meme plastered on Facebook! You have seen it. Jpeg: Native Some-Chief in traditional dress. Quote of great wisdom. Over 1,000+ likes.  Shared. Forgotten. This is not to say that our elders were not wise, were not brave or were not steadfast and honest. But that they loom.

To me, they are untouchable.

For many years, I did not confess this even to myself. I did not want to oppose the power of the wise quote next to a sacred sepia (always sepia—antique brown complementing brown-brown) image. Who can defy a poster? It exists in more than one place, on more than one (virtual or not) wall. It is obstinate! And recognizes only the building that holds it up.

Then … well, fuck it. Sorry for the cursing, but truly … fuck it. I can’t feel my self with that poster looming over me. I can’t write my experience and understanding of my heritage when the poster threatens to wrap itself over me. I can’t join this discussion—this landscape of looming figures. And (I will say it) not just the landscape of warriors and chiefs, but the landscape of larger than (my) life Native writers and artists as well. The generation between the weight of the people as they held their traditions and the age of the Internet which speaks to us all from anywhere, anytime and in all ways. The Native American renaissance of the 1960’s and 1970’s, both a call and a threat. They made the images, the language, the phantoms that would tromp through Native American literature for the first time. They exploded the quiet and filled it with our elders’ lives made familiar, strong and solid. Wordspaces that bounded forth, but fell to replication (as all great things do). To tropes.

"redmen" by steve judd

Fuck it. I began to write non-fiction without the pressure to speak to/for a people held in, between or from tradition. I wrote for me: the me that threw my arms up and said, I don’t know how to do any of it! How to recover a heritage—how to speak to a past time—how to hold it all together. My mother left the Navajo reservation when she was five to live with an LDS family in the Indian Placement Program.  There is too much in that one line for any one story, for one book, for one life. There is too much in it and I have learned to respect it. To respect that it is a still-beating thing. That my heritage shifts in color, size, texture. It sings many songs and continually cuts its own legs off to start again. It boils to steam and drifts to airs and comes back to me in rain, wind, in breath. In smog.

And, here is the secret: I am not alone. This, a blessing. The consoler of the racist bullshit, of the lightness of my skin, and the image of my grandmother’s bent spine under crushed velvet as she lie dying in a rest home far from her hogan. The confidantes of my fluxing world, my mis-speaks, my confessions of liking cyborgs, horror movies and the soothing feedback of post-punk shoegazing music while still bound to some of the stories and sands of Dinetah (no matter how cloudy or misheard or mislearned they were).

Tiffany Midge. Layli Long Soldier. Orlando White. Sherwin Bitsui.

My support system when I wrote what I thought was my final word on the matter of my heritage. When I wrote why and where it hurts (not in society or history), but where it slayed me in my home, in my memories, in my losses. My mother’s words even, and often. I wrote an essay to explain why I could never think myself as Navajo, woman, self again. Why I’d split too much in all my ways. I wrote in an effort to say I was done trying; I give up. I was and could only be this mismatched, undone and redoing self. Just a modern, half-breed mess. My heritage pacing inside me or splashed back on me like varied lights from a projector. Spoken, blood, and dream ties within and around me to the rez, to my family, to the land-the people. No two-world being, like my mother’s war and art. But instead, a many-world being, road-worn. And kinda weird. Grouchy, but okay, but fine. Whatever.

The modern Native voices—these ones sought me out. Their names, their work, their invitations and support. Our discussions. We speak of new Native Voices rising. There are many. A Red Riot. They are everywhere. It is brewing—this new (dare I say) aesthetic. It’s not just coming, it is here and, it is not finished. It will one day be made into tropes and someone else’s wooden indian, but for now … these new Native Voices … well, they say … everything. Fuck it. We’ll say it all; we’ll say it new.




Tell us about yourself. What would you like "Girls in a Tight Place"
readers to know about you?

Confession: I watch a lot of late night terrible cable T.V. I know this because I wake with this jingle in my head:



Am in need of a brain scrub.


Are you in a tight place right now? If so, what are you doing about it?

I just got out of a tight space. I didn’t do anything to make it happen other than to let time happen. To breathe; To say, I’m just going to do what I do and keep moving forward. And then the universe relaxed. It was all just birthing pains. I do not know what will come of it. But it is something new and raw.


What do you want to get done this year?

I asked this question aloud to myself and heard myself say: socks. I don’t know what that means, but my goals are too large to speak of just yet. The act of hearing them inside and then out would burst me all open, split at seams. It turns from a goal to a dream to a path to a Life. I want to get done with another year of Life (the kind that adds up to some particular set of songs, to some particular image or motif, the kind of Life that adds up and onwards). And I want to get done with socks. Whatever that means.



What inspires you?

Sound. Rhythm. I feel hollow sometimes. Mostly, I feel heavy with junk. Then there is a song, a tone, a beating and I know I must follow. When I do: magic (writing magic, but also the other kids of magic). When I don’t: it builds to a haunt or scream or croaks and dies. I try to follow the sounds. It can be difficult to do so. 


What is your favorite legwear?

Late 80’s. Black leggings. Ending at the ankle. Black lace. Under cut-off jeans. The Cure’s Disintegration. Depeche Mode’s Black Celebration. Lost Boys and Heathers, but Less Than Zero wasn’t the book. Nachos. Slurpees. Love letters to Christian Slater. Black leggings, a dark coccoon.