Stacks of Stickies

I just mailed off my final grad school paper. That paper, that's why I've been AWOL from the blogging front in the last few months; I've been up to my eyebrows in fairy tales (meaning I've been writing about them, not that what I'm telling you is one). But now it's done, one big treatise on "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", "Beauty and the Beast", and "The Frog Prince". I'll be anxiously awaiting my mark, and then editing the thing for submission to my uni's thesis collection.

So the paper is sent in, and I feel slightly stunned that I'm actually done. Two-and-a-half years of study finished with one click of a button. It can't really be true, can it? But then, there's always one more thing to do after that button has been clicked: I have to de-sticky my research materials. Yes, you know, de-sticky? Take the sticky tags out of the books, of course. I might have mentioned once or thrice, marking books is evil and will get you smote by the library gods. But a grad school student (or indeed any other student) has to keep track of interesting points in books somehow, so, enter the sticky note. I go through pad after pad of those things in the course of my research, plastering them all over the margins of the books, sometimes adorning them with expressive arrows  (← !!!) or erudite comments such as "Does NOT!!" or "pfffffft!", or even, I hesitate to admit, the occasional "IDIOT!" (it's true. I found one like that this time. What can I say - I was justly incensed at a scholar's assessment of my favourite movie.).

So then, by the time I'm finished my writing, I don't need all those place markers any more, and the university library, slack though they may be about the state of their books (I once had one out that sported the dusty print of a running shoe sole across its front page spread), would probably not appreciate all those pink and orange and green bits of paper sticking out of the book. So I pull 'em all out again and pile them on my desk. One stack of stickies indicating just how educated I have become. Or how muddled, either way. It's the sure sign that I really am done with whatever piece of research I've been doing.

And then I dump the stickies into the garbage, take the library books back to the library and put my own books on my book shelf (or pile them on the floor, because there is absolutely no book shelf space to be had any more), and then - then I go and find myself a book to read or a movie to watch that has absolutely nothing to do with whatever I just finished studying. Fairy tales? Hmm, I think I'll read a Regency romance now, thank you. But don't worry, I'll be back to fairy tales soon enough. Even studying them as intensely as this hasn't soured me on the topic, and that, my friends, means that it really is my thing.

Life, the Universe, and Stacks of Stickies. The sign of the end of grad school studies.

Rose

delicate petal
languidly sleeping
in elaborate shadow.
lazy red whisper

x

x

x

x

x

x

x
rose.

(from the archives, 2005 or '06)

Stuck in the Stacks

Apologies for the rather lengthy silences on the blogging front these days. My life pretty much looks like this right now:

That's right, I'm stuck in the stacks. Research stacks on fairy tales, "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty" for now, "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Frog Prince" hereafter. If you want to hear where I'm rambling my way along the research lane, you can follow me over at quill and qwerty. The last thing I discovered was a really great book by Orson Scott Card, Enchantment, which is a retelling of the "Sleeping Beauty" story, very loosely and very brilliantly. It won't really do much for my paper, but it was very interesting nonetheless. Then again - maybe it will (do something for my paper, that is)? Hmmm...  And there I go, off I go on a rumination rabbit trail again...

Life, the Universe, and Being Stuck in Research Stacks. I'll talk to you when next I surface.

Precision Scribblings

I just got a second-hand copy of one of my textbooks, Max Lüthi's Es war einmal: Vom Wesen des Volksmärchen (Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales). I bought it via AbeBooks, and it was mailed out from Germany (gotta love AbeBooks). Unfortunately, when you're buying a second-hand book online, you're buying a pig in a poke; there's no telling in advance what kind of shape it's in. The vendor's comment of "Condition: good" might mean almost anything. More than once I've been disappointed at all the scribblings and underlinings and highlightings in the book, and this one is no exception.

However, you've got to say this for Germans: they're tidy scribblers. This book is marked all over, but all the underlining has been done with a ruler. So at least, we've got precision scribblings here. It amuses me.

Incidentally, don't ever let me catch you scribbling in library books. The university library books I've got out right now are, in a lot of cases, a right mess. What is it with uni students? I don't care if you do it with a ruler or while holding the pen between your toes, marking up a library book is vandalism.

Life, the Universe, and Scribblings in Books. Enough with the rant, and on to reading Lüthi.

Pedant

"Pedant: a person who is excessively concerned with minor details and rules or with displaying academic learning", Google Dictionary says. And here's what's at the head of the Wikipedia article on the same topic: "This article is about a person who is excessively concerned with formalism and precision. For the piece of jewellery, see pendant."

Hehe - now that cracks me up. I suppose only a true pedant would appreciate it - somebody who's picky about detail. No, I'm not a pendant; I'm not wont to dangle off pretty necklaces. And as for being a pedant - who, me? Naaah.  I never show off academic learning, do I? The fact that I tend to feel smug about being able to use grammar properly, down to the correct use of the apostrophe in the possessive case, has nothing to do with any of this. (This all sounds better when you say it with your mouth pursed and your nose elevated just ever-so-slightly.)

What got me thinking of this was that I just wrote this sentence, referring to the country of Bordavia (in Christopher Bunn's latest novella, Rosamonde): "…it's famed for its roses." Hah, get it? Two i-t+s words, one with apostrophe, one without. It's not so hard, is it? Its rules are quite simple: when it's a contraction, you use the apostrophe; when it's a possessive, you don't. Huh, you say? The apostrophe is there to replace a letter (or two) you've left out, in the case of "it's", the space and i of "it is". When it's a possessive, the "s" is part of the word itself, just like in "his" or "hers". Think of it this way: if the country of Bordavia was a "he" instead of an "it", you'd say: "…he's famed for his roses", not "hes famed for hi's roses". See? Same thing for the itses. "He's/it's" and "his/its". Simple, no? My inner pedant is purring right now.

Now, as for pendants, I'm quite fond of those, too. I have some lovely pieces in my jewellery drawer - a silver locket, a jade maple leaf (I think that was a gift from Canadian relatives when I was a kid in Germany), a silver-and-tiger-eye teardrop, a small brass goblet (made by one of my sons in art metal shop), my mother's silver cross with a small blue stone in it (an aquamarine, perhaps? I wore it at my wedding.). In fact, my favourite pendants all have meaning - they've got provenance, i.e. I remember where they came from.

There, and that's the penultimate piece of pedantry for today, explaining to you what "provenance" means, as if you didn't already know or couldn't figure it out for yourself. Pedants of the World, Unite! You have Nothing to Lose But Misplaced Apostrophes! And the really funny thing is that I just mistyped "pedantry" as "pendantry".

Life, the Universe, Pedants and Pendants. Maybe we should stick with the latter, they're prettier.

Social Realism

Steve got a book! Well, okay, I got a book. A friend found it for me at a second-hand store, and at first I wondered why - I mean, I love kids' books, but why this particular one? Then I cracked open the cover, and all became clear: it's not for me, it's for Steve. Obviously.

It's called Teddy Edward in the Country, by Patrick and Mollie Matthews (published by Golden Pleasure Books in London in 1962), and it's the story of a stuffed bear, Teddy Edward, on a visit to the country with his human, Sarah (they normally live in London), as chronicled by lots of interesting photos. You don't see much of Sarah in the pictures, but lots of cows, swans, rabbits, and even some hedgehogs. And Teddy Edward, of course.

Steve considers it the best thing in Social Realism he's read in a long time; it's very true to life, he says. At least to life in England in the early 1960s.

It kind of threw him for a loop when I told him that the Sarah-girl in the picture is well over fifty now and probably has grandchildren; a bear's lifespan is very different from a human's - some only make it a few years before their plush is loved off, others last decades. For all we know, Teddy Edward is still alive and kicking somewhere in the home counties, and conversing with calves and kittens every summer. Maybe we should try to look him up if we ever make it to England.


Life, the Universe, and Social Realism for Bears. It's all in how you look at it.

Me, Too

A friend of mine posted this article on Facebook the other day: "Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy". The gist of the article is that GenY people, born between the late 70s and mid-90s, are unhappy because of the expectations they have on life - expectations that they're special, and therefore should be extra-successful, not like everyone else. There's a gap between expectation and reality, and that's what makes for unhappiness. Happiness, the author says, is Reality minus Expectations; if the expectations exceed reality, you end up with a negative balance.

Now, I'm not a GenY person, I'm a GenX'er (that's those of us born in the 60s and 70s, between the Boomers and GenY). But what this article is saying applies just as well to us. See, one of the points it makes is that GenY'ers are set up for overblown expectations because of what they see around them, namely on social media. What they - or rather, we - see is the carefully crafted public image of friends, relations and former classmates, the image that is presented to the world via Facebook, Twitter, and whatever else is out there. And guess what? That image is always a pretty one - a flattering profile picture, stories of success, status updates about what a good time we're having at our resort vacation, and so on. So when we take a look around our virtual reality world, everyone else seems to be doing well - everybody else but us.

So do I do it any differently? Nope, I don't. My status updates are chirpy, funny (well, there are great jokes circulating on Facebook), occasionally sentimental, often trivial, sometimes triumphant. But what I don't tell you is that at 4:30 that morning, I was lying in bed sobbing into my pillow because I woke up early (again) and depression crashed in on my head, making me feel like a failure on all fronts. I don't tell you that I've gained thirty pounds in the last three years and hate it (and I certainly don't post a profile picture showing off that fact). I don't tell you that those thirty pounds are the direct result of my habits - too much sitting, too much eating, too much wine, and too little of whatever else one is supposed to do to counteract the poundage accumulation and be generally healthy. I don't tell you these things because I value my privacy, but mostly because vulnerability of this kind of profoundly scary.

It is for all of us. But if you listen to Brené Brown, she'll tell you that it's that very vulnerability that is the pathway to health (emotional health, anyway). Those two little words, "Me, too!", are immensely powerful. And the realisation that behind it all our friends' glowing public profiles hide a whole lot of mess can go a long ways. Our lives are messy. My house is dirty (no, really, it is. I'm not one of those people who apologise for the state of a house that looks like a picture from Better Homes and Gardens. I've got mould on my window frames, dust bunnies in the corners of the rooms, a rim of grunge around the bottom edges of my cupboards, and, please, let's not even talk about the storage area in the basement.), my children didn't turn out the way I had anticipated back in my idealistic twenties (I thought if I raised them "right", they would become a certain kind of person. They didn't. I can't show them off as products of my superior parenting or homeschooling. They're great people whom I like a lot, but they're not what I thought they would, or should, be.), and I never yet did do that amazing, world-saving thing that I thought I would do with my life (I was never quite sure what it would be, just that there would be one). My whole lifestyle - heck, my whole life - isn't what I had expected, what, twenty-five years ago, I would have thought was the "right" way to be.

And if I've ever given the impression in public that my life is, in any shape or form, perfect, I apologise. Because it isn't. I can't stand people who have it all together, who exude that smugness of "I'm right, and my life is right, and if only you did what I do you wouldn't be such a [insert insulting epithet]". Well, I certainly don't have it all together. Not by a long shot. I'm still working on that balance, the happiness equation from that article - Happiness = Reality - Expectations. We usually can't do much to alter the "Reality" variable of that equation, but the "Expectations" one, that's changeable. Our expectations are shaped, in part, by what we see around us, what we perceive others' reality to be. Admitting to who we really are, what our actual reality is, might help make the answer to that equation into a positive number for each other.

And just by way of illustration, here's a picture of Johnny and Steve (Steve just got a cat tongue wash, that's why he's looking a little exhausted). They never have problems with this issue, even though Johnny, for one, well might have: all other cats have four legs, he's only got three. Talk about a gap between expectation and reality! But he never lets it bother him. Maybe it's because he doesn't go on Facebook much.

Life, the Universe, and Expectations. Me, too, friend, me too.