Raiders of the Lost Timeline

Sponsoring an archaeological dig through nine years of Facebook to dust off old posts that turned into full essays, which probably belonged HERE, not there, in the first place.

via GIPHY

Arrowheads, gems, fragmented pottery shards - coming July 2018.

#VanityProject
#BecauseSedimentaryRocks

Now Hear This!

I've been accused of quite a few minor crimes in my day, irritated people for any number of reasons, been the subject of more frustrated eyerolls and wry side comments than I care to count. But the accusation thrown in my face more often than all the rest has to be this oldie-but-goodie:

"...talks just to hear herself speak."

Well...yeah. Don't you?

Apparently not, according to my informal polling of anyone who will let me try to index their minds for a few minutes...until they get totally freaked out and change the subject. From what I can gather of the typically well-adjusted human: thoughts fly through, some of them interesting, some of them not, some of them applicable, some of them out of right field, some of them mildly witty, most of them quite ordinary; some stick, many drift away.

And here's when those thoughts get voiced aloud: when someone else is there to hear them, like the proverbial tree falling in the forest.

Unless all of these people are lying hard -- and frankly, I'd be shocked if they weren't -- living inside their brains is like having a corner office with a view of Times Square. Traffic rushes by at all hours of the day, sure -- but it's not like they need to climb into each and every taxi and investigate where it's headed. They sit, and watch, and are only occasionally distracted from their work. Otherwise, they can stay focused on a task, only minimally aware of the hustle and bustle going on all around them.

Is that what it's like for you, gentle reader? Do you work to keep it that way? Did you used to chase cars when you were younger but honed your focusing skills? Are your thoughts more persistent than you care to confess? What's it like, then, to be alone with your thoughts? Are they scary? Dull? Overwhelming? Irritating? Exciting? Are you glad to listen, or anxious for a distraction?

Don't you ever talk just to hear yourselves speak?

My brain, my thoughts, my internal monologue, my worldview - they're all entirely verbal. Not just strings of words, or thoughts, or ideas, but a near-constant livestreaming narration. Overlapping, but totally distinct. It's like standing in the middle of a crowded classroom and intercepting four students' questions at the same time. Confusing -- but not impossible, if you focus.

And so, I do.

I focus on my thoughts at all times, which is vain to an obscene degree. I'm surprised how infrequently I get called out on this grotesquely self-centered factoid. Don't you all know how often I'm tucked away in here and how little I'm out there with the rest of you? You must - how could you not?

But maybe you pardon my perpetual distraction because you know it could be, and should be, so much worse! Consider: my selfish preoccupation might actually be totally selfless. If I didn't monitor all these absurd thoughts at all times, they might run out into the world unheeded and crash into your ears with the fatal force of a Mack Truck, or flow out through my fingers onto the screen and seismically throb down optic nerves, like relentless pulses of strobe lighting. Truly, good citizens, I'm up here to police myself for the good of humanity -- which, incidentally, is also why my blog is completely devoid of photos. I'm too preoccupied with regulating my verbal world to have ever had a visual one. But that's a topic for another essay.

I often get asked whether I say every thought that runs through my head. First of all: rude. Second of all: not even remotely. Not by half, not a quarter...what you hear is just the tip of the iceberg, to mangle the phrase. It's like I have my own symphony orchestra, and when I tell you what I'm thinking, I'm really just humming the oboe line. But even that's too...straightforward. The reality is, it's internal chaos that makes perfect sense to me. Not a symphony, but a syncopated cacophany that I've listened to since I was small, and learned to detangle with the effortless simplicity of a first language.

Some of my thoughts are polite, raising their hand and waiting their turn. They know with complete smug certainty that they are intelligent, well-informed, relevant, interesting, and undeniably worth hearing. Once in a blue moon, they are even concise. At any rate, they adhere to a socially acceptable word limit. These are the thoughts I beckon forward with a crooked finger and a wry smile, shine their shoes, straighten their hairbows, and send them out into the world.

I'm often so proud of these well-mannered little buggers that I spoil the effect of their polish and training by blurting them out with glee. "Look at my thought! Isn't she GORGEOUS?" Of course, she is, but my overbearing helicopter parent delivery blinds my audience of the innate brilliance of my thought. She's cute and clever, but ugh, no more so than anyone else's! I laugh quick, braying ha!s at the end of my own sentences before anyone has a chance to process what I've said. "Aren't I terribly, terribly clever?" And you know, I am -- at least, until I self-consciously step on the toes of my own mind.

Other thoughts are dizzying, whirling dervishes that knock all other thoughts aside with the force of their passion. They are purely emotional, quick to appear and slow to dissolve. They press against the corners of my mind with angry, jabbing fists, grasping, clawing, and destroying any semblance of rational calm I work hard to project. They growl and screech, shake and thunder and boil my blood with the smallest injustices.

These thoughts are feral, primeval, and incoherent, superseding even my hyperverbal self. They billow up without warning, and are the only things I've ever known with the power to silence everything else. My stream of consciousness stops flowing with the chill of Arctic winds, and my other thoughts flee to the southwest corner of my mind to wait out the storm, wide-eyed and silent.

These thoughts embarrass me, and I work quickly to pull them in out into the light. I force them down into the pit of my stomach, warring rage with bile in a battle royale to keep my lunch right where I left it. Outwardly, my words are never angry or hateful during these spells, but they are clearly wrong. Far too fast, far too calm, far too measured, far too controlled. Nothing on the the face of my words that would signal an alarm, but there must be something in my eyes, in the set of my jaw or the tightness of my posture that scares people, makes them nervous, drives them backwards, freaks them out! while I float helplessly above myself for a few minutes, yelling "stop it!" to no avail.

My thoughts are sometimes noisy, like errant five-year-olds dancing barefoot through mud-puddles, blowing raspberries and wrinkling their freckled noses while banging on pots with long-handled spoons. These thoughts demand I hear them, recognize them, spend time with them, NOW! They are obnoxious yet secretly adorable, precocious and completely unreasonable coming from a 29-year-old woman.

They cling to the sides of my teeth and whisper "no no no!" when we meet strangers, refusing to show themselves for weeks or months or years until they feel comfortable, burying their noses protectively in the dips and caverns of my molars. Then one day, unexpectedly, out they burst with sunshine in their grins, ready to leap forward and play. These thoughts chuckle at silly things and yelp impulsive comments. These are the thoughts that never, never fail to laugh when someone says "duty," screaming 'real loud with sheer abandon like the secret word on Pee-Wee's Playhouse. (Haha, I said "pee.")

My internal SuperFudge is the main reason people think I'm terribly reticent - or just stuck up - when they first meet me. He's also the reason why, once I'm comfortable with folks, they have absolutely no recollection of my ever being anything but full of snickering, perpetu-glee. In other words, he's my biggest threat to my mask of maturity, occasionally forcing me to bellow inane things that leave people wondering "where did THAT come from?"

A few of my thoughts are, inexplicably, Spanish. They wish they could flounce about in a a bigger vocabulary sandbox, pobrecitas, ay ay ay! They admirably make do with the 200 nouns and five verbs I've been able to retain, like an incomplete set of magnetic poetry. In my moments of quick, benign, socially ventable frustration, these are the words that trip to the front of my tongue, nearly always warranting a cocked eyebrow and a bemused, "huh! Who knew I knew that?" Again, confusing nearby listeners.

By far - my favorite thoughts are me. Just me. A tiny near-perfect replica offering DVD commentary on the world swirling around my ears.

These thoughts are alternately sentimental and caustic, ridiculous and insightful, genuine and flippant, romantic and pragmatic. These thoughts speak only to amuse me. To infuriate me. To distract me. To reveal the world to me. To push me to action or grab my wrist to keep me from running headlong into the fray. These thoughts are beautiful and perfect, always saying the right thing and reacting the way I wish I would. She's the best part of me, and the worst, poise and gumption, self-control and self-preservation all wrapped up in wit and wisdom.

I adore her, which is why she almost never gets to speak. If my wailing banshee self is subjugated to - quite literally - the bowels of my existence, just me is similarly banished to the tallest tower of my mind. Somewhere I can find her, and listen to her, and allow her to watch over me, with minimal opportunity for outside interaction.

How could anyone else love her as much as I do? Why would anyone else be willing to put up with her barbed wit, or her marshmallowy sentimentality? Who else would know what to expect, and when? After all, she built herself out of my subconscious gray matter to keep me company and walk the world fearless and sheltered from outside consequence. She's tailor-made, which means she'd never fit anyone else.

I love this internal voice more than anyone else in the world -- a fact that horrified me with its simplicity when I first recognized its truth. Of course I love my family and friends; love them with a single-minded fearsome loyalty that can take a while to lock into place, but once it's there, it's one of the less movable forces on earth. But have they been there for everything, seen everything, shielded me through everything? Not a chance. Mostly because I'd never let them.

It's half comforting, half depressing to be that self-reliant.

Sometimes I wonder if the inevitable end of my story is that I'm going to wander off into the wilderness and shack up in a cave with my perfect beautiful idealized self. Or, at least, the urban and employed equivalence of hermitage. Because, really, with my terribly crowded head, I don'tneed anyone else. Want? Ah, that's a different story! But is it enough?

One of my other favorite girls, Jane Austen, totally got my predicament:

We all have a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be. - Fanny Price, Mansfield Park

Now there's a girl with nothing but words in her head! Poor Jane was probably even less visual than me, if such a thing were possible.

But it's true, really. Because, for all the cross-traffic of my mind, all the multi-layered personalities and struggles for dominance, I mostly keep myself pointed in the right direction. Fanny Price was a bit of a drip with a cousin complex...but she's not wrong. And internal moral compass is so much of a nicer spin than borderline schizophrenic.

I take the best care of me. I'm the best guide for me. The best thing - the safest thing - the wisest thing - is to listen to my thoughts. So what's the harm of talking just to hear myself speak every now and again?

Sometimes the fog of my mind is lifted with a statement so clear, so smart, so perfect from within that I have to let it out, and give that best version of myself a moment aloud. I want to hear how these ideal thoughts will echo inside my skull, flow out through my nose, hum deep in my throat, buzz against my lips, glide across my tongue. Sometimes I have to sit down and write these words out, to see the way they look in marching lines of consonants and vowels strung together just for me. I think that's part of the reason I've only ever been able to write late at night, when no one's really looking, in places public enough to maybe be found, but privately enough to not selfishly demand it.

It's the way I've always written, as far as I can remember, taking dictation from my own thoughts. Right now, I'm whispering these words to myself, pushing the ideas down from high dusty shelves in the back of my consciousness, pulling out words and phrases I've heard or read and wrapped up for later use. I once told my fourth grade teacher that I was my favorite writer. Of course I was. Who else would be? Who else would know exactly how to pick the words I needed?

My teacher thought I was being a smartass. In hindsight, I think she was an idiot, so it works out fairly perfectly.

So, go ahead. Censure be damned, in the undisturbed quiet of your car, talk just to hear yourself speak. Write just to see what comes out. You might be surprised to find it was exactly what you needed to hear.

While You Were Out

I always hated taking days off school.

Not for any practical reason like missing my friends or thinking it would be rough to catch up, certainly not because I minded being sick (legit verifiable germs are a great way to finagle extra attention and Jell-O) and heaven help those ignorant bastards who thought being away from school was BORING (Why? How?) But eventually -- you heal, you mend, you regain strength, and then, there's no reason to stay out anymore.

Because THAT was the real trouble with being absent: it's temporary.

And, in my paranoid and self-centered young mind, that first day back was sheer torture. I imagined all sorts of heady expectations that went along with disappearing and reappearing once again. Were you expected to account for all your lost time? To provide an inventory of your symptoms? Act apologetic for major grade school traumas missed? Recap what happened on every soap opera and daytime court show you greedily packed in -- and if you were healthy enough to watch TV, shouldn't you feel guilty for missing class? What if they switched seats while you were out? What if something funny happened that would become the "you had to be there" moment for the next three months?

Or what if no one had ever noticed you were gone? Well, then - to call attention to yourself would just be embarassing. Pleading. Sycophantic. Did people want to hear about your day away, were they glad for the time you were away, or were you a nonentity?

Sometimes, the anxiety of coming back actually made me sick -- which bought me another day of 7-Up and TV trays and popsicles and Judge Wapner -- and made the going back even scarier. Would more days missed require a more fantastic excuse? Some kind of strange tropical illness contracted through my charitable work with the pygmies...or at least, my sister's Brownie Troop? Or better just to slide back into my desk, nod at all the teacher said (not that hard, after all), and hope to rejoin the class already in progress, like my absence was nothing more than a bulletin from the emergency broadcast system?

Two days, four days, a whole week...the longer you're out, the worse it gets.

But three years? That's not the kind of absence you can explain away with a slight cold, or food poisoning, or even the most generic catch-all teen disease known to man: mono.

Three years means your family joined the witness protection program, or moved back to the Old Country, or Dad got transferred to another branch, or you became a teen mother addict runaway turned private dancer.

To come back three years later would just be...weird. Confusing. Didn't someone who looked a little like you used to go here? Remember that joke we had that time? No, no - I guess you wouldn't. Do you still like that song? Oh - no, I don't either. Could you even rejoin your class after three years of homeschool equivalent, or did jumping out of line earn you a whole new place? And could you even come back, after all, or would you have to go to some alternate reality continuation night school for lost causes?

Clearly, it's easier - safer - more reasonable than to have never been absent at all. Because coming back with all the weight of what ifs felt scarier than starting fresh in the first place.

I've written more, imagined more, pondered more, logged on more, put fingers to keyboard more in the last 2 1/2 years than the static placeholder of my last entry could possibly ever indicate. But I hate being absent -- and the longer I was away, the scarier it got.

Who cares? Who remembers? Granted, most of my absences were lengthy, but this one was epic. What kind of earth-shattering masterpiece would justify disturbing the calm of my never-updated page?

An apology?

Busy, yes. Grad School, sure. New job, indeed. Never ending stream of twentysomething mental crises, no doubt.

A valid excuse?

Bored, not a bit. Forget to write? As easily as you could forget any other appendage! Done with writing, blasphemy. Out of ideas, impossible when all you write about is yourself. Over yourself? Don't you wish!

A forwarding address?

Haven't been here, but I've been writing...
A thesis. A great one, too. A journal. Dead juicy and emo, yup. An endless string of nonsensical emails to the faithful. Not as many as you'd think, no. A book. One day!

So why come back now?

Moved back to the neighborhood? Eh, never left. Suddenly had something to say. Not so far, do I? Searching for my missing piece? Well, that's closer to the truth. Teetering on the edge of a mental crisis? Good lord almighty, not another one! Bored of the homeschool self-writing gig? Well, I'm nothing if not a verbal exhibitionist. Decided to give in to the outraged cries of nagging fans?

Dear Teacher,
Please excuse the author for absenting herself from her blog over the past three years. She was...afraid to come back.

What else is there to say?

I always hated taking days off school. Please excuse my absence. Let me slink into my desk and rejoin the class -- already in progress.

Sanitized for Your Reading Pleasure!

Good news:

If my uberpersonal writing style meant your name got caught in the crossfire of my blog, you're free from the oppressive shackles of my mentionitis. I've combed over two years of writing (you call that semi-annual drivel two years worth?) and taken out any non-celeb, non-askin' for it, private citizen kind of names.

Please let me know if I missed anything!

Bad news:

Several of you wrote brilliant, witty, complimentary, friendly and otherwise delightful comments...and I just showed my gratitude by hitting that cute little trashcan icon. What a jerk I am. Sorry about that, I couldn't figure out a way to edit. But keep commenting...just keep leaving my name out of it! (You dig).

Good or Bad news, depending on your POV:

The aforementioned edits mean I just let my horribly neglected readership know I am, in fact: still alive, not in the witness protection program, with access to a computer and full use of my typing fingers. This of course means you can expect more to come throughout the summer. Poor you. Your brains were just starting to feel comfortably untaxed again.

Enjoy the sterile, faceless anonymity that is
Of Cabbages and Kings: Version 2.0!

Sexy Homework

My first Blackboard assignment for my Linguistics class asked us to post our feelings and questions about the subject. Most of my classmates wrote variations of "I don't exactly understand grammar, will my students know?"

I went in a totally different direction, and ended up with the best piece I've written in a long time. I heart me.

Ego means I share.

----------------------------

I suppose I should warn you guys right off the bat: if teaching grammar without really "getting it" is the skeleton in your closets, I'm the boogeyman hiding behind your winter coats. I am thrilled to be writing on this topic. Listening to our first lecture last Tuesday gave me the distinct feeling that Linguisticsland will be a wonderfully welcoming place. I’ve never toured the country, but I recognized my people.

I AM the dreaded grammar Nazi. I read your posts, and I caught every error you worried about making.

Oooh, creepy.

If I've lathered you into a panic, comfort yourself with three facts:

1) You actually didn't make [many] mistakes, you just felt the need to apologize.

But you made yourself doubt...and that's the insidiousness of prescriptive grammar. As one of our classmates said, she hears the mistakes, but she lacks the confidence to correct them. She knows the rules, but she doesn't remember why. I always tell my students "you know more than you think you know." Your gut is brilliant. Run with it.

2) By outing myself, I've probably ensured my posts will be scrutinized harder than the rest of the class. Uh oh. On the other hand, I probably spend waaaay too long constructing these posts, so we're even. You probably came on, posted, and got on with your lives. It’s called perspective, and I envy you that.

(And here's the biggie…)

3) Remember when you'd hide behind the couch at a new friends' house when their yippy dog would arf and howl at you from behind a plastic baby gate? "Don't worry," your friend's Mom would say, "He's more afraid of you than you are of him!" And this logic was so bizarre that you found yourself strangely comforted.

So are the grammar Nazis. Sure, we talk big. We cluck disapprovingly at "10 items or less" lanes in the Supermarket. [When using a specific number, they should use "fewer."] We roll our eyes at folks who blast through life at hyperspeed and can leave the “I’m aware of it, but who cares?” typo in “Help your students with there homework.” [That’s their; a possessive.] We physically cringe when friends describe a bar as “more funner!” [I *refuse* to explain that one.]

We have strut. We have bravado. We have…an overabundance of shame that we care about such minutia. We realize that, in the grand scheme, very few people DO care. As our professor explained, we can easily understand what someone means when they make an error. And here’s a mind-blower: is it an error if no one notices? If a tree falls in the forest, and crushes a grammarian, does anyone care?

We’re more afraid of you than you are of us, and that’s the truth.

So, while many of you said that you feel the need to hyper-correct every mistake your students make, grammar Nazis correct their students very infrequently. We worry about converting our students into martinets who are incapable of seeing the big picture because they’re too busy obsessing over every last point in the ellipsis.

We say things like “spelling doesn’t count here; I just want to see your ideas!” We nod and smile when our enthused students recount what “Me and my cousin” did last weekend. We long to snap back with a glib, “I don’t know, *can* you?” when our students ask if they can use the bathroom. That slightly crazed look you might remember in the eyes of your most eccentric English teacher? That might have been the weight of thousands of “overlooked” errors building up in her brain; your invisible-to-the-naked-eye misstep the last drop in a gushing torrent of repression.

So, to cope, the grammar Nazi becomes schizophrenic. If you’re like me, you explain subtle grammatical distinctions to your students in rushed tones, almost apologetically. Then, you explain that “written English” and “spoken English” are two completely different languages, with different rules. You hope your schizophrenia is catching: class, please know these rules and understand them perfectly when it comes time to take your High School Placement Test, but feel free to speak with your friends however you’d like. No one, you explain, expects you to pay attention to the rules all the time.

This is true, actually. I’m not this eloquent in everyday speech. No one is. If you ever encounter someone with audible semicolons joining their brilliantly-constructed independent clauses, seek help immediately. You are likely face-to-face with a pod person, and they should not be trusted.

But how are my students expected to learn the rules if I never give them a reason to practice?

I am excited about this Linguistics class because I am hoping it will yank me from the closet so forcefully that I will host a grammar pride parade by the end of week 9. (It will be fabulous.) I do know the rules—and I do know I’ve broken quite a few in the lines above. I also know I don’t feel comfortable enough to force them on my students.

So, here's my question for the semester: why NOT grammar?

Why is it shameful to trust your gut and know that something “just doesn’t sound right”? Why, as teachers, do we still feel it isn’t our place to correct students who have misspoken—only to edit them into red ink oblivion on their written papers? Why do people look at you like a pretentious boor when you answer “I’m well, thanks!” to their cheery “How’re you?” Why did Dr. Hagstrom feel like she needed to apologize for prescriptive grammar as the thing we all dread?

In the spirit of full disclosure: looking at a syllabus and seeing syntax as a topic? That’s not something I dread, that’s like hearing that we’re taking a field trip to Baskin Robbins!

As ridiculous as it sounds, I need this class because I need to remind myself that it’s OKAY to talk about grammar in English class. I need to hear that Linguistics IS important because my students will be judged on the way they communicate. Fairly or unfairly, that’s the truth.

Mostly, I need to hear that the prescriptive grammar I adore is NOT the only way. And not in the condescending “it’s not wrong, it’s just different” academic mindset I’ve been raised. Rather, “proper” English is just another dialect that has its own rules.

However, if reading this makes you want to unleash your inner Nazi: go read Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss. (And, yes: I am feeling a bit twitchy that I can't underline that book title!) You may decide that grammar is sexy.

Alas, taking hours to say so is not. Thank goodness for deadlines—I can only hold my grammar-pride Cinderella captive until midnight. It’s back to a pumpkin of shame at 12:01.