Shingles or Spinoza: 2 Mar 2006
Bonjour tout le monde!
Recently I became convinced that learning the field you've entered is only about a third of the point of your first year of graduate school, if that. It's like boot camp in the army, or the first year and a half of the Bride's martial arts training in Kill Bill. Yes, you have to learn how to do the things they are teaching you, but really the first step is in losing any sense of ego (read: personal identity rather than ego-mania, though that too) you might have had before. You surrender to the process and in so doing finally become capable of learning the rest of it, ie. your field.
After finally recovering from shingles and finding a way to study that made me feel as though grad school just might be possible, I came down with strep throat and am still in the process of fighting it off. The only good thing I can say is Rachel didn't get it too.
If my above assessment of graduate school has any merit, my getting sick can just be taken as a means to whittling the thing I'm so caught up in calling "me" down. And maybe this is a good thing. I can turn to understanding myself as Spinoza would have me do, as a proportion of motion and rest, a sort of vehicle of continual change, and with this think of myself as a site of experience with the world.
This sort of self-image allows me to experience the world from a more fluid sense of perspective as well as noticing how the world changes as I change, not because I change the world so much (though I do, a little bit) as my awareness of the world is always changing. By understanding my total interconnection with the world I can realize that certain sorts of interactions result in various responses (like getting strep throat, or having kid-snuggle time with Rachel on the couch).
A couple of weeks ago I went to my neighborhood grocery store to pick up some supplies for dinner. That night had me feeling a little forlorn because I wanted to get Rachel and myself a steak and myself a beer but I wasn't getting paid till the next day and didn't feel like I should afford either. Coming around the corner of the produce aisle, just past the ripe orange peppers, and slightly green-turning to yellow bananas, I heard a feminine giggle responding to a rather deep voice. Looking for the source of both I found a tall blue display with a blonde woman inside it giggling at something a man said to her in French. The woman was surrounded by beer and in fact the display was for Boreale, the beer company that any good Quebecois import or local tends to drink.
To be more clear about the sort of city I live in, my neighborhood grocery is two doors down and across the street from our house. It's about the size a four car garage would be and it sells most of what ever you need but really is nestled right in the middle of a quaint little French neighborhood, quite inconspicuous and tended entirely by locals.
But there on a Wednesday afternoon, at the end of the produce aisle, a gorgeous and giggling woman with long blond hair was hugged inside a Boreale beer display surrounded by bottles and cases on discount. In front of her was a bottle of each of the twelve flavors of beer Boreale produces and a drink cup for anyone over 18 to have a sample. The man with the deep voice finished his tastings and with his two cases of beer sauntered away. I walked by the display slowly and the blond stopped me smiling, saying something to me in French. "I'm sorry I only speak English." I said to her in French. And she giggled, flipped her hair, demonstrated to all her 12 taster cups of beer and asked, "Would you like to taste my beer?" in a heavy French accent. It turned out you could stand there as long as you want and taste each of the flavors and then second another just to be sure. She told me it was $2 off that night for a 6-pack and then asked if I'd like to try the Boreale Noir, a dark beer flavored with coffee and chocolate and something like 12% alcohol. I told a friend of mine that in that moment with the blond giggling at me and opening up her arms to give me as much beer as I wanted, that in that moment I was a man.
See what I mean about different perspectives?
Rachel's current varying perspectives consist substantially in trying to dress up like Lucy from the Chronicles of Narnia or Violet from the Incredibles. The first is a seven book series she and I just finished reading from a chapter a night last week. And the second is one of our favorite movies.
She also showed me recently a Valentine she got from a boy at school. It had been on our fridge where she put it since Feb 14 but I hadn't realized it was from a boy to Rachel. Last night she showed it to me and asked me to read it to her. The front was a drawing of a cupid floating over a boy and a girl. The inside read in little boy scrawl, "Rachel, bon bon bon hon, ensemble, Leo." I'll admit to not reading very much French but even still, I think we can safely say this Valentine was more about the intention than the saying. Rachel asked me what "bon bon bon hon ensemble" meant. After explaining to her the meaning of the word "ensemble" ("Rachel, an ensemble is a bunch of parts brought together to make a group of some sort, and it can be done with people too." "Okay, mom.") I said that I thought it wasn't so much what the words themselves meant but instead what Leo wanted her to know. And that it seemed it was that he likes her and wants to be her friend. And yes, his name really does mean lion and her's really does mean lamb.
The couple days I was too sick to manage anything beyond getting Rachel to and from school she would ask me every couple minutes if she could bring me my medicine, or put lotion on my back. Next week she has an entire week off of school and I have no childcare options. But I'm certain life is meant to laugh at and I refuse to let my liver get as sad as it was before. So she and I keep snuggling on the couch and I can't imagine I'll ever actually finish a year of graduate school but I suspect eventually my awareness will change again and there I'll be a second year ready to start learning more about the field.
I was told a French Canadian saying yesterday regarding a person that we, in America, would say seems out of sorts and unwell. It translates as, "She just doesn't seem in her plate."
May all of you be in your plate!
Lots of Love,
Elaine
Recently I became convinced that learning the field you've entered is only about a third of the point of your first year of graduate school, if that. It's like boot camp in the army, or the first year and a half of the Bride's martial arts training in Kill Bill. Yes, you have to learn how to do the things they are teaching you, but really the first step is in losing any sense of ego (read: personal identity rather than ego-mania, though that too) you might have had before. You surrender to the process and in so doing finally become capable of learning the rest of it, ie. your field.
After finally recovering from shingles and finding a way to study that made me feel as though grad school just might be possible, I came down with strep throat and am still in the process of fighting it off. The only good thing I can say is Rachel didn't get it too.
If my above assessment of graduate school has any merit, my getting sick can just be taken as a means to whittling the thing I'm so caught up in calling "me" down. And maybe this is a good thing. I can turn to understanding myself as Spinoza would have me do, as a proportion of motion and rest, a sort of vehicle of continual change, and with this think of myself as a site of experience with the world.
This sort of self-image allows me to experience the world from a more fluid sense of perspective as well as noticing how the world changes as I change, not because I change the world so much (though I do, a little bit) as my awareness of the world is always changing. By understanding my total interconnection with the world I can realize that certain sorts of interactions result in various responses (like getting strep throat, or having kid-snuggle time with Rachel on the couch).
A couple of weeks ago I went to my neighborhood grocery store to pick up some supplies for dinner. That night had me feeling a little forlorn because I wanted to get Rachel and myself a steak and myself a beer but I wasn't getting paid till the next day and didn't feel like I should afford either. Coming around the corner of the produce aisle, just past the ripe orange peppers, and slightly green-turning to yellow bananas, I heard a feminine giggle responding to a rather deep voice. Looking for the source of both I found a tall blue display with a blonde woman inside it giggling at something a man said to her in French. The woman was surrounded by beer and in fact the display was for Boreale, the beer company that any good Quebecois import or local tends to drink.
To be more clear about the sort of city I live in, my neighborhood grocery is two doors down and across the street from our house. It's about the size a four car garage would be and it sells most of what ever you need but really is nestled right in the middle of a quaint little French neighborhood, quite inconspicuous and tended entirely by locals.
But there on a Wednesday afternoon, at the end of the produce aisle, a gorgeous and giggling woman with long blond hair was hugged inside a Boreale beer display surrounded by bottles and cases on discount. In front of her was a bottle of each of the twelve flavors of beer Boreale produces and a drink cup for anyone over 18 to have a sample. The man with the deep voice finished his tastings and with his two cases of beer sauntered away. I walked by the display slowly and the blond stopped me smiling, saying something to me in French. "I'm sorry I only speak English." I said to her in French. And she giggled, flipped her hair, demonstrated to all her 12 taster cups of beer and asked, "Would you like to taste my beer?" in a heavy French accent. It turned out you could stand there as long as you want and taste each of the flavors and then second another just to be sure. She told me it was $2 off that night for a 6-pack and then asked if I'd like to try the Boreale Noir, a dark beer flavored with coffee and chocolate and something like 12% alcohol. I told a friend of mine that in that moment with the blond giggling at me and opening up her arms to give me as much beer as I wanted, that in that moment I was a man.
See what I mean about different perspectives?
Rachel's current varying perspectives consist substantially in trying to dress up like Lucy from the Chronicles of Narnia or Violet from the Incredibles. The first is a seven book series she and I just finished reading from a chapter a night last week. And the second is one of our favorite movies.
She also showed me recently a Valentine she got from a boy at school. It had been on our fridge where she put it since Feb 14 but I hadn't realized it was from a boy to Rachel. Last night she showed it to me and asked me to read it to her. The front was a drawing of a cupid floating over a boy and a girl. The inside read in little boy scrawl, "Rachel, bon bon bon hon, ensemble, Leo." I'll admit to not reading very much French but even still, I think we can safely say this Valentine was more about the intention than the saying. Rachel asked me what "bon bon bon hon ensemble" meant. After explaining to her the meaning of the word "ensemble" ("Rachel, an ensemble is a bunch of parts brought together to make a group of some sort, and it can be done with people too." "Okay, mom.") I said that I thought it wasn't so much what the words themselves meant but instead what Leo wanted her to know. And that it seemed it was that he likes her and wants to be her friend. And yes, his name really does mean lion and her's really does mean lamb.
The couple days I was too sick to manage anything beyond getting Rachel to and from school she would ask me every couple minutes if she could bring me my medicine, or put lotion on my back. Next week she has an entire week off of school and I have no childcare options. But I'm certain life is meant to laugh at and I refuse to let my liver get as sad as it was before. So she and I keep snuggling on the couch and I can't imagine I'll ever actually finish a year of graduate school but I suspect eventually my awareness will change again and there I'll be a second year ready to start learning more about the field.
I was told a French Canadian saying yesterday regarding a person that we, in America, would say seems out of sorts and unwell. It translates as, "She just doesn't seem in her plate."
May all of you be in your plate!
Lots of Love,
Elaine
posted by hawkbrwn at 8:40 p.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home