Insomnia

Most nights, I'm up until 3. Sometimes I miss my window of sleep opportunity, such as tonight, when I was tired around 11:30, but read until 1:00ish...and now here I am at 5:00ish.

Often I worry. Or stress. About something I'm obligated to do, and then I worry about not having enough time, or clarity of mind to do what I feel I must do: write, and work out, usually. These two things don't feel optional, especially not the first.

Or worry about whether my neighbors will wake me up in the morning.

I see my type of personality in others: it ain't perty. I don't want to be a stress-head case. It just consumes me, gives me no choice.

One good thing: I don't ever have to get up before noon these days. No work but my writing. My internship begins at 2:00pm. At the moment, this saves me, and many days, you'll catch me sleeping until noon.

Wow this is a boring post. All I'm capable of at the moment.

jem

And take that, evangelicals

I recently heard an interview with Egyptian writer Ali Salem. He spoke of the Muslim extremists in his country, of the fundamentalism that incites violence. “They hate life,” he said, linking this assertion with the belief that true life occurs after death, and that certain violent acts would be rewarded then by God. Indeed, extremists in our own country – who have transmogrified Christianity into something that more reasonable practitioners reject – manufacture their own divisive and violent battles in hope of attaining a better life after death. Thus, our leaders encourage the production and irresponsible disposal of poisons that irrevocably damage our world, they work (tirelessly, pathologically) to force women into lives that may not be appropriate for them, they create an unsafe, hostile environment for people who love people these fundamentalists have never met, yet despise. My intuitive understanding that life – plant, animal, human – is valuable and to be respected, that it is the birthright of people to decide for themselves how they wish to live, shows me with unfaltering clarity that our country’s extremists are wrong.

jem

Burgeoning evangelical dis

Some thoughts I'm forming for an essay on the misguided philosophies of the evangelicals.

jem

***

An American evangelical Christian with whom I once did volunteer work told me that people commonly turn to his faith following some major life crisis. I was surprised by the admission: it seemed to undercut the presumed power of the religion, positioning evangelical Christianity as something people turned to for relief, like a drug, a thing to ingest to make the pain go away. Indeed, listen to any evangelical radio station for very long, and you’re likely to hear the confessional of the former drug abuser, testifying how he left behind his substance of choice once he found Jesus. It begs the question, of course, whether the addict substituted one addiction for another.

But the phenomenon of turning religious in the midst of despair also brings to mind a truism offered by a wise therapist who once advised me on selecting a suitable romantic partner: one is more successful when she chooses out of interest and desire rather than desperation. I’m familiar with the monumental effort it takes to sustain a belief system acquired through means other than self-discovery and conviction. When you know something to be good, true – from experience, observation, from a feeling deep in your heart – but your faith-based belief system tells you it is wrong, evil, what results resembles a battleground more than a peaceful, loving mindset. Of my evangelical volunteer friend, I found myself wondering whether, before his abrupt conversion, he had ever gone to therapy.

Relationship reflections: a year+ later

I've been reading some of my previous posts: Wow, regarding my lost relationship of 2005-2006. Since then, dear readers, I dated several more people, saw some familiar patterns emerge, invented some new relationship behaviors.

What I've learned in this time

Indeed, many of my relationship mess-ups have been related to fear of being alone. Hence, I've jumped into something that isn't right, just to avoid feeling the panic of aloneness; or, fear of being squandered, diminished into nothingness, therefore manufacturing conflict in order to avoid the intimacy, that in my mind, equates my disappearing.

Alone/Squandered/Still

I've gained some insights into these fears: fear of being alone is very much connected to my having been left alone as a kid, and therefore put in some quite precarious circumstances. It's all about recognizing this as old fears, and recognizing that I'm not that kid anymore.

Fear of being squandered: well, that diminishes the older I get, the more skilled I get at voicing my needs, desires.

I do still fear being alone. I fear something pursuing me, and successfully overtaking me. But, having made the successful move from Cambridge to Ann Arbor has helped. Moving was one huge-arse fear I had, and, I've seen now that a lot of my fears were not realized. This gives me confidence.

Moral

The bottom line was that I was stagnant for way. too. long. Taking a risk has necessarily made small shifts in me. If you can't make something happen, take action, and let it happen to you. This is a lesson re-learned.

Kisses.

jem

Lesbianism in _Mrs. Dalloway_

And to prove that I'll keep in better touch, here's a prospectus on a paper I wrote recently on why I don't think that the novel _Mrs. Dalloway_ is about repressed lesbianism. I think that lesbianism is a significant aspect of the project Woolf undertook in the work, but, I think many queer critics have overcompensated by claiming that the entire novel is one big instance of repressed lesbianism. This undercuts, I think, the true lesbian desire that *is* apparent in the novel.

Voila. Tell me what you think.

Component Lesbianism in Mrs. Dalloway

Clarissa Dalloway’s onetime love for Sally Seton in Mrs. Dalloway is one of the novel’s most resonant instances of a larger theme that pervades the work: wistfulness over unexplored or imperfect intimacy. Mrs. Dalloway reminisces of her kiss with Sally Seton:

Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone
urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the
lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! (MD, 35)

Yet in reference to this, the most exhilarating romantic connection of Clarissa Dalloway’s life, we are also told of her current feeling: “She could not even get an echo of her old emotion.” (MD, 34) Clarissa Dalloway is never able to feel truly close to another person. She most successfully operates in the world by collecting partial intimacies from those presently or formerly connected to her – most notably Sally Seton, Peter Walsh, her husband, Richard – and holding these in her mind as a montage of affections.

It is my thesis that Clarissa Dalloway’s wistfulness is not a direct correlate of repressed homosexuality, as has often been argued; rather, it is an inability, or an unwillingness, to engage completely with any person. It does, however, seem eminently possible that were Mrs. Dalloway existing in a context in which homosexuality was fully sanctioned, she would live her life as a lesbian; that is, her fear of societal reprimand for her love of women is great, and stands in the way of any earnest pursuit of lesbianism. (The same can be said of the author herself.) I argue, however, that even in such a scenario, Clarissa Dalloway would remain the emotionally detached protagonist that she is. Mrs. Dalloway as a lesbian would as likely refrain from exploring love for an unforgettable boy of her youth as would the heterosexual (or asexual) woman of an unconsummated marriage refrain from pursuing the only expression of romantic love that she can imagine. Our heroine is most comfortable in a world frequented by loved ones who remain at arm’s length.

In my paper, I look at previous analysis of lesbianism in the novel, and offer an alternative to the common claim that Clarissa Dalloway’s characteristic wistfulness, melancholia, is due to unexpressed lesbian desire. I consider other sources for her longing and consternation: Peter’s compelling yet smothering nature; Richard’s trustworthiness and dependability, but, perhaps, his inability to measure up to an ideal notion of a husband; the jealousy she feels for her daughter’s attachment to a woman she both loathes and oddly admires; the irksomeness of this woman, Miss Kilman, for her showy humility, her devotion to an unimaginative religiosity, her piety to unhappiness; the blandness of people like Ellie Henderson, and their thorough inability to add vitality to her parties. All these people, all these factors impress themselves on Mrs. Dalloway, shape her experience of the world she presents to us. Finally, I discuss Virginia Woolf’s relationship with Vita Sackville-West, for further insight into the nature of lesbianism in the novel.

My project, then, is to show that lesbian desire is one component of many from which the consciousness of Clarissa Dalloway is fashioned. Mrs. Dalloway manages intimacy carefully, never advancing close enough to be squandered, nor straying so far that she cannot feel its peripheral comforts. This, if anything, is Clarissa Dalloway’s signature trait. And it is for this that she is a beautiful compendium of love, anguish, fear, joy, detachment, and transcendence.

Work Cited/Sources

Jensen, Emily, Clarissa Dalloway’s Respectable Suicide in Virginia Woolf: A Feminist Slant, Ed., Jane Marcus, (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1983).

Lee, Hermione, Virginia Woolf, (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).

Raitt, Suzanne, Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993).

Smith, Patricia Juliana, Lesbian Panic: Homoeroticism in Modern British Women’s Fiction, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).

Woolf, Virginia, Mrs. Dalloway, (London: Harcourt, Inc., 1925).

Hello Again!

Hello World, I'm back! I've moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and am now getting my MFA in creative writing. The past year was filled with applying to 16 schools, dealing with a severe hip injury, moving from Cambridge, MA to Ann Arbor, and completing my first wonderful year of the program.

I've missed you, and will try to keep in better touch.

jem