Just Kristin

I know that there are lots of things I am sup­posed to be doing, lots of ways I am sup­posed to be in the world… Some­times, though, I get very con­fused. When I feel guilty about being the way I am, peo­ple who love me tell me that I should feel no guilt, ask­ing, “If you had [insert ill­ness such as can­cer here] would you feel guilty?” Well, chances are, I would. How­ever, I know that the answer is sup­posed to be “no.” Fine. No guilt. On the other hand, when I am told things like, “Just don’t be sad,” (although I haven’t heard this one in a while, thanks to the under­stand­ing nature of my fam­ily and friends) or “Don’t think of your­self as help­less, but rather see each event in your life as a choice you have made,” I can­not help but feel the clammy grip of my ever-lurking sense of shame: Why can’t I just be happy? Why do I feel so help­less? Why, even when I have intel­lec­tu­ally iso­lated each choice I have made, do I feel that I had lit­tle say in which path I ended up tak­ing? I have to leave this room of mine. I am sure that there is a door some­where in this dark lit­tle hidey-hole that I can­not see, a hid­den door with a knob only on the out­side, per­haps. Once I am in a brighter place (or per­haps out­side — my door, if I have one, might open out to a park or a gar­den) I might be able to see how easy these tacks are to take. Other peo­ple who live in brighter rooms seem to have no prob­lem. Until then, though, I will keep shoulder-ramming my walls in the hope that some­day, some­thing will give. In the mean­time, please par­don the noise, dust and occa­sional flood­ing. Under con­struc­tion, you see.

So, it seems that, accord­ing to this quiz, I truly am a “dog per­son”, with a bit of otter and beaver thrown in. (Thanks, Wags, for the B-n-B moment. I know, I know. I said, “beaver.”)

…indeed. Check out both the gallery and the FAQ. Well done, all. My per­sonal favorite is the one that says some­thing like, “Dear Rest of The World, There have been some trou­bles at home recently — as you may have heard… Do you think it would be alright if I crashed at your place for about 4 years? I… I can pay rent. Love Aaron”

The desire is there. The moti­va­tion some­times shows its face. Sup­port is avail­able a-plenty. What holds me up, then? If I am to believe that skill comes with prac­tice, then noth­ing should hold me back. This inspi­ra­tional speech made by Unka Neil at the Har­vey awards offers a ver­bal kick in the arse:

As a solu­tion to var­i­ous prob­lems you may encounter upon the way, let me sug­gest this:

Make Good Art.

It’s very sim­ple. But it seems to work. Life fallen apart? Make good art. True love ran off with the milk­man? Make good art. Bank fore­clos­ing? Make good art.

Keep mov­ing, learn new skills. Enjoy yourself.

If I were a reli­gious per­son, I would believe that I, as well as our coun­try, had been aban­doned by God… but I am not. I do despair, though, since it has been aban­doned by its peo­ple. I wish it were harder for me to believe that our coun­try is so blind to inter­na­tional opin­ion, that its peo­ple are so hood­winked by a cor­rupt admin­is­tra­tion, myr­iad times caught — on tape no less — lying about impor­tant things, about things that affect us, our coun­try (rather than lying about some­thing per­sonal that was no one’s busi­ness to begin with), and who we keep around (“we” being a rel­a­tive term) because its fig­ure­head reminds us of our pseudo-Christian (WWJD? lesse.…war, war, war, cour only the rich and pow­er­ful, polute, cod­dle corporations.…yep, now he is one Chris­t­ian man), misog­y­nis­tic, homo­pho­bic, xeno­pho­bic, alco­holic, illit­er­ate, bul­ly­ing frat-boy days, and because he seems to be a stal­wart leader sim­ply because he never learns, never grows, never changes his mind (or so he says — video has proven oth­er­wise) while the other guy voted one way when being lied to, and another way when he found out the lie, prov­ing his abil­ity to learn and change and admit when he was wrong. I wish that this was all the joke the rest of the world sees it to be (although they and I agree that it is a very scary joke). I despair. I despair for our free­dom, for my child, for this coun­try, for the future, for my san­ity. Come on, stragglers.

• Char­ac­ters that are either all good or all evil
• A story that shows one view­point or group as either all good or all evil
• Dull or unimag­i­na­tive or overly-cliche verbiage
• Empha­sis on the mun­dane w/o offer­ing a new viewpoint
• Too much descrip­tion of any one thing, no mat­ter how artful
• Flat, life­less, change­less characters
• Either all-lovable or all-unlovable characters
• Too much input from the nar­ra­tor if he is not one of the characters
• Too much predictability
• Com­plete lack of predictability

This is it for now…still a work in progress.

• Char­ac­ters with believ­able per­son­al­ity traits
• Thought-provoking themes
• An at least occa­sional breath­tak­ingly beau­ti­ful turn of phrase
• Some story ele­ment that removes me from what could be my own life
• Artfully-done descrip­tions
• Some aspect of search, of growth
• At least one truly lik­able character
• A bit of the fantastic

This is it for now…still a work in progress.

While it was bound to hap­pen, and though I can­not say that I am dis­pleased with the sit­u­a­tion, I nonethe­less can­not but feel a bit odd and old when I tell y’alls that my daugh­ter, the Smoop­ster, has begun men­stru­at­ing…get­ting a monthly deliv­ery of a box of red roses…taking a lit­tle ketchup with her steak…getting vis­its from aunt Flo…occasionally clos­ing for maintenance…having her ter­ror­ist alert go to code red…having com­mu­nists invade her sum­mer house…joining the hunt for red October…taking her meat rare…brewing on auto-drip…painting the town red…punctuating…rebooting the ovar­ian oper­at­ing system…seducing the vampires…sitting on a nice merlot…getting her oil changed…letting Mother Nature stay at her hotel…offering the sacrifice…counting down from egg #180…having her walls repainted…receiving her monthly statement…reapplying her lipstick…playing the Red Sox while they are in town…riding the cot­ton pony…having her pixies…taking Car­rie to the prom…surfing the crim­son tide…warring in Virginia…putting too much sauce on the taco…having vis­its from the Car­di­nal… Enough? Hey, if I can’t laugh about it, find joy in it, then I will just have to be sad about aging. Any­way, I have come to love my peri­ods — I think of them as healthy and pow­er­ful (cheesy and new-agey tho that sounds) and I hope she does too. We will be par­ty­ing Mon­day night in cel­e­bra­tion of the event. Huz­zah! Every change and devel­op­ment in her that I am priv­iledged to wit­ness is a fan­tas­ti­cally mag­i­cal thing.

I have started a new blog, and this is my first post. I will be start­ing a novel, and it will be my first. No giv­ing up, no let­ting my mind talk me out of any­thing. Wish me luck, everyone.

“I deeply resent the destruc­tion of fed­er­al­ism rep­re­sented by Hillary Clinton’s will­ing­ness to go into a state she doesn’t even live in and pre­tend to rep­re­sent the peo­ple there,” Keyes said. “So I cer­tainly wouldn’t imi­tate it.” — Alan Keyes, FOX News, March 2000.

What a hyp­ocrite. Keys, sit down and shut up.