In some lapse of formal and informal education, I have never read any Dickens. I may have tried Great Expectations once, but it didn't suit me. Several years ago (5? 7?) I bought A Tale of Two Cities at the bookstore, thinking it was one that I should read and have, but it has moved with me across the country and back and sat on shelves until now. I knew it had something to do with the French Revolution and that's it - no "spoilers" ever touched me.
The first chapter was so full of time-sensitive allusions that it was hard to keep on, but it very quickly became an intriguing story and I found myself delighted by Dickens's skillful character painting and hilarious wit - charming and biting both. By a certain point, I knew where the last half of the book would go, but was pleased to still be struck by some plot surprises and to find all the anticipated parts carried out not dutifully but artfully and emotionally.
I didn't like Sydney (and I don't think we're supposed to at first) and was skeptical of the book jacket's claiming him as the character of the book. I didn't know Dickens had such a heart, such an acute understanding of the beauty of a soul. He draws this character out so beautifully and reveals his inner glory to us all. The last line of the book didn't mean much to me on the back cover, but following Sydney up the steps to his death, they mean something else entirely. They're words I won't forget.
"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
p. 55
Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson's [Bank], the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books ...
p. 131
A certain portion of his time was passed at Cambridge, where he read with undergraduates as a sort of tolerated smuggler who drove a contraband trade in European languages, instead of conveying Greek and Latin through the Custom-house.
p. 206
It is very hard to explain consistently the inner workings of this poor man's mind. He once yearned so frightfully for that occupation, and it was so welcome when it came; no doubt it relieved his pain so much, by substituting the perplexity of the fingers for the perplexity of the brain, and by substituting, as he became more practised, the ingenuity of the hands, for the ingenuity of the mental torture; that he has never been able to bear the thought of putting it quite out of his reach. Even now, when I believe he is more hopeful of himself than he has ever been, and even speaks of himself with a kind of confidence, the idea that he might need that old employment, and not find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror, like that which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child.
p. 211
"I fear he is not to be reclaimed; there is scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is reparable now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous things. And, O my dearest Love! remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery!"
p. 240
... with Monseigneur boastful of what he would do to avenge himself on the rascal-people before long. It was too much the way of Monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee, and it was too much the way of native British orthodoxy, to talk of this terrible Revolution as if it were the one only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been sown -- as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had led to it -- as if observers of the wretched millions in France, and of the misused and perverted resources that should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming, years before, and had not in plain words recorded what they saw.
p. 245
The Loadstone Rock was drawing him, and he must sail on, until he struck. He knew of no rock; he saw hardly any danger. The intention with which he had done what he had done, even although he had left it incomplete, presented it before him in an aspect that would be gratefully acknowledged in France on his presenting himself to assert it. Then, that glorious vision of doing good, which is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds, arose before him, and he even saw himself in the illusion with some influence to guide this raging Revolution that was running so fearfully wild.
p. 376
Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.
p. 379
The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together, and to rest in her bosom.
2.04.2015
5.24.2014
Whole Foods VS. Trader Joe's
I know, I know. Fans of both sides could ask indignantly how I could even compare the two. But let's just do this monetarily. Below is a table I made of an actual grocery run I made at Whole Foods (Sugarhouse). The next day, I went to Trader Joe's (400 S.) to buy some different things, but went around the store pricing everything I had bought at Whole Foods the day before. Cheaper is highlighted, as is the item itself when both stores have equal prices.
Behold, the $23 difference.
There are a few things to note, since the comparison can't be entirely equal. I wanted the paleo ketchup for flavor and it's only at Whole Foods, so we can call that a specialty item. I thought that the coconut oil was sort of specialty and wouldn't be available at Trader Joe's, but it was, for much cheaper. If I hadn't already started using it for oil pulling (that's another post), I would go to the trouble to return it. The gruyere was a hard comparison, too. I didn't actually want the cave-aged, which was much more expensive, but for purposes of comparison, Trader Joe's only had cave-aged and Whole Foods had both. I actually bought regular gruyere at $4.59 for 6 ounces.
More broad comparisons - Whole Foods has name brands as well as a house brand, and of course Trader Joe's only has TJ house brands, typically. So at Whole Foods, I can get Kettle Chips, Liberte yogurt, and Simply Lemonade. Then again, I can get those at Smith's, which is literally across the street from Trader Joe's and is definitely cheaper than Whole Foods. Whole Foods also has a meat counter, while Trader Joe's doesn't, but Sprouts does and is probably cheaper.
So, the conclusion. Except for actual specialty items that I can't get anywhere else (like paleo ketchup), most everything is available for less at Trader Joe's, with a little bit of shopping at Smith's to round it off. Oh, and Trader Joe's has cheaper flowers. It seems we'll be keeping Whole Foods as a lunch buffet and cookie counter stop only :)
See, here's the thing. I'm not opposed to spending $23 "extra" dollars if I'm making up for buried negative externality costs, like paying the developing world farmers a fair price for their crops and products, or even using my dollars to vote for more sustainable and healthy farming and processing practices. But I have a strong suspicion that most of the Whole Foods mark-up is for the privilege of shopping at such a holy, trendy, urban haven of consciousness. It's nice to walk into the store and know that every single thing in it is free of (list of 70 or so banned ingredients and processes). It means you don't really have to think about things. But most people can't afford to do that, and must pay that $23 markup in time and effort by getting good stuff at Trader Joe's (that has a shorter, but still good, list of banned ingredients and processes), driving across the street to Smith's, and reading ingredient labels.
TRADER JOE'S FOR THE WIN!!!
I rest my case.
Behold, the $23 difference.
There are a few things to note, since the comparison can't be entirely equal. I wanted the paleo ketchup for flavor and it's only at Whole Foods, so we can call that a specialty item. I thought that the coconut oil was sort of specialty and wouldn't be available at Trader Joe's, but it was, for much cheaper. If I hadn't already started using it for oil pulling (that's another post), I would go to the trouble to return it. The gruyere was a hard comparison, too. I didn't actually want the cave-aged, which was much more expensive, but for purposes of comparison, Trader Joe's only had cave-aged and Whole Foods had both. I actually bought regular gruyere at $4.59 for 6 ounces.
More broad comparisons - Whole Foods has name brands as well as a house brand, and of course Trader Joe's only has TJ house brands, typically. So at Whole Foods, I can get Kettle Chips, Liberte yogurt, and Simply Lemonade. Then again, I can get those at Smith's, which is literally across the street from Trader Joe's and is definitely cheaper than Whole Foods. Whole Foods also has a meat counter, while Trader Joe's doesn't, but Sprouts does and is probably cheaper.
So, the conclusion. Except for actual specialty items that I can't get anywhere else (like paleo ketchup), most everything is available for less at Trader Joe's, with a little bit of shopping at Smith's to round it off. Oh, and Trader Joe's has cheaper flowers. It seems we'll be keeping Whole Foods as a lunch buffet and cookie counter stop only :)
See, here's the thing. I'm not opposed to spending $23 "extra" dollars if I'm making up for buried negative externality costs, like paying the developing world farmers a fair price for their crops and products, or even using my dollars to vote for more sustainable and healthy farming and processing practices. But I have a strong suspicion that most of the Whole Foods mark-up is for the privilege of shopping at such a holy, trendy, urban haven of consciousness. It's nice to walk into the store and know that every single thing in it is free of (list of 70 or so banned ingredients and processes). It means you don't really have to think about things. But most people can't afford to do that, and must pay that $23 markup in time and effort by getting good stuff at Trader Joe's (that has a shorter, but still good, list of banned ingredients and processes), driving across the street to Smith's, and reading ingredient labels.
TRADER JOE'S FOR THE WIN!!!
I rest my case.
3.05.2014
this many books
It's been a little more than a month since Andy got a job and we moved to Salt Lake. It's semi-permanent. And complicated :)
Short version: He was offered a full-time job at DreamWorks in L.A. Very last minute, he was also offered a six-month contract position with nVidia in Salt Lake. We felt really good about Salt Lake and decided to take a risk and go for it, even though it's not guaranteed to turn into a full-time position.
We're renting a lovely little house and it feels so much like home. We're pretty well settled, but I'm still unpacking lots of things. Which leads us to this.
I'm unpacking the boxes of books today and getting them on our three cheap bookshelves (propped with folded fabric on the front sides to try and lean them back towards the wall a bit, since we can't anchor them into these 100+ year-old wood-lath and plaster walls). I've only got two of the bookshelves loaded and this is what I noticed:
Economics
Public policy
Strategy & management
Statistics
Negotiation
Grantmaking
Fundraising
Evaluation
Budgeting
Human resources
Afghanistan
Medieval art & culture
African politics
Law
Breastfeeding
Fertility
Anxiety
Philosophy
International development
African cultures
Women's issues
African literature
French literature
French culture
French language
Japanese culture
Japanese language
Swahili language
German language
Welsh language
Malagasy language
Phonetics
Calculus, advanced
Algebra, abstract & linear
Physics
Biology
Geography
Poetry/anthologies
Computer programming
Graphics & animation
Artificial intelligence
Machine learning
Geometry
Sign language
Humanities
U.S. Constitution
American Founding
American Civil War
Anthropology
Writing/tutoring
Scottish literature
Business innovation
Cooking/baking
Religion/scripture
Quilting
This is before we really get into the fiction(!) which includes American, British, Colombian, Mexican, Japanese, French, Ghanaian, Kenyan, South African, Senegalese, Czech, and Greek settings and authors, to name a few. There are essays, short stories, cartoons, science fiction, fantasy, and memoir. It includes war and peace, home and abroad, spiritual and physical. Yes, our Harry Potter collection takes up more than one shelf, but that's because we have a set in English, a set in French, and the Philosopher's Stone in Latin (how is this useful? I don't know. but it's awesome).
It blows my mind.
I have THIS MANY books! I am lucky beyond belief. I have not only the education to be able to read, understand, and apply this many varied and difficult topics - I have been taught to be interested! to want to learn about a bazillion things and to know that I can.
Yes, the math and programming books are Andy's. Yes, the language and humanities books are mine. But half of them are his. And the economics, business, and politics books are mine.
I am the luckiest woman alive. I have shelves of books. I can read them all. I can go to work. I can stay home. I can have children - as many or as few as I want. I have a toilet, and a shower, and as much water as I'll ever need. I have medicine. I can cook and worship and touch people while I'm on my period! I have tampons! I can wear whatever the hell I want! I can say what I want. I can have sex or not have sex. I can buy a house or a farm or a car. I can open my own bank account. I can vote.
And the beauty of having all of those things is that I get to choose what I will do with them. And I get to be responsible for what I do.
There's no culture or patriarchy or religion that is forcing me to have sex or not have sex. To dress a certain way. To have kids. To not have kids. To work. To not work. To read. To not read. I can choose to be educated. I can choose who I will be, what I believe, what I want, and what I will do with that education.
I can say what I want - and if I say hurtful, judgmental, hypocritical things, then I am responsible.
I can wear what I want - and I choose to wear things that are comfortable, that are a reflection of myself, and that show my belief in the body as a sacred, beautiful, empowering, and wonderful gift.
I can choose to work or stay home - and do what is best for me and my family at any given time.
Yes, there are limitations. There are unfair influences and exceptions. Yes, someone can rape me, beat me, kill me. Someone can limit my opportunities in the world and at work because I am a woman. Someone can treat me unfairly. Someone can misjudge me. People can break the rules and infringe on my vulnerability and sacred rights as a person. But I live in a time and place, and have the education, the opportunities, and the money, so that these things are surprisingly rare. So that they are (generally) acknowledged and treated as the violations they are. I live in a world that defends me! That defends my freedoms and rights as an individual, as a woman, as a human.
And most of the world can't say that.
I guess that's the reason I have all of those nonprofit management and international development books. Because I can choose to do something about it.
Short version: He was offered a full-time job at DreamWorks in L.A. Very last minute, he was also offered a six-month contract position with nVidia in Salt Lake. We felt really good about Salt Lake and decided to take a risk and go for it, even though it's not guaranteed to turn into a full-time position.
We're renting a lovely little house and it feels so much like home. We're pretty well settled, but I'm still unpacking lots of things. Which leads us to this.
I'm unpacking the boxes of books today and getting them on our three cheap bookshelves (propped with folded fabric on the front sides to try and lean them back towards the wall a bit, since we can't anchor them into these 100+ year-old wood-lath and plaster walls). I've only got two of the bookshelves loaded and this is what I noticed:
Economics
Public policy
Strategy & management
Statistics
Negotiation
Grantmaking
Fundraising
Evaluation
Budgeting
Human resources
Afghanistan
Medieval art & culture
African politics
Law
Breastfeeding
Fertility
Anxiety
Philosophy
International development
African cultures
Women's issues
African literature
French literature
French culture
French language
Japanese culture
Japanese language
Swahili language
German language
Welsh language
Malagasy language
Phonetics
Calculus, advanced
Algebra, abstract & linear
Physics
Biology
Geography
Poetry/anthologies
Computer programming
Graphics & animation
Artificial intelligence
Machine learning
Geometry
Sign language
Humanities
U.S. Constitution
American Founding
American Civil War
Anthropology
Writing/tutoring
Scottish literature
Business innovation
Cooking/baking
Religion/scripture
Quilting
This is before we really get into the fiction(!) which includes American, British, Colombian, Mexican, Japanese, French, Ghanaian, Kenyan, South African, Senegalese, Czech, and Greek settings and authors, to name a few. There are essays, short stories, cartoons, science fiction, fantasy, and memoir. It includes war and peace, home and abroad, spiritual and physical. Yes, our Harry Potter collection takes up more than one shelf, but that's because we have a set in English, a set in French, and the Philosopher's Stone in Latin (how is this useful? I don't know. but it's awesome).
It blows my mind.
I have THIS MANY books! I am lucky beyond belief. I have not only the education to be able to read, understand, and apply this many varied and difficult topics - I have been taught to be interested! to want to learn about a bazillion things and to know that I can.
Yes, the math and programming books are Andy's. Yes, the language and humanities books are mine. But half of them are his. And the economics, business, and politics books are mine.
I am the luckiest woman alive. I have shelves of books. I can read them all. I can go to work. I can stay home. I can have children - as many or as few as I want. I have a toilet, and a shower, and as much water as I'll ever need. I have medicine. I can cook and worship and touch people while I'm on my period! I have tampons! I can wear whatever the hell I want! I can say what I want. I can have sex or not have sex. I can buy a house or a farm or a car. I can open my own bank account. I can vote.
And the beauty of having all of those things is that I get to choose what I will do with them. And I get to be responsible for what I do.
There's no culture or patriarchy or religion that is forcing me to have sex or not have sex. To dress a certain way. To have kids. To not have kids. To work. To not work. To read. To not read. I can choose to be educated. I can choose who I will be, what I believe, what I want, and what I will do with that education.
I can say what I want - and if I say hurtful, judgmental, hypocritical things, then I am responsible.
I can wear what I want - and I choose to wear things that are comfortable, that are a reflection of myself, and that show my belief in the body as a sacred, beautiful, empowering, and wonderful gift.
I can choose to work or stay home - and do what is best for me and my family at any given time.
Yes, there are limitations. There are unfair influences and exceptions. Yes, someone can rape me, beat me, kill me. Someone can limit my opportunities in the world and at work because I am a woman. Someone can treat me unfairly. Someone can misjudge me. People can break the rules and infringe on my vulnerability and sacred rights as a person. But I live in a time and place, and have the education, the opportunities, and the money, so that these things are surprisingly rare. So that they are (generally) acknowledged and treated as the violations they are. I live in a world that defends me! That defends my freedoms and rights as an individual, as a woman, as a human.
And most of the world can't say that.
I guess that's the reason I have all of those nonprofit management and international development books. Because I can choose to do something about it.
9.07.2013
a retrospective
Originally written in Pittsburgh, about September 2010. In many ways this still expresses my efforts (though the struggles are different now), but enough time has passed that I feel alright sharing it. Tread lightly, speak kindly.
things are changing so quickly and yet so sluggishly, too. it's hard to believe how the time has gone by and pushed me to the brink of change. I've come a long way, but I'm still struggling with so much. not least because I'm just now becoming truly aware of what I've been struggling with.
last week I had my last appointment with my therapist before I leave my semi-permanent residence in utah valley for a graduate city life in the east. it was sad. partly because she has helped me through a lot of things and really helped me to change my life for the better and it's sad to say goodbye. partly because it's so frightening to contemplate trying to make it without her, or a therapist in general.
it was more than a year ago when I started having my first panic attacks. I didn't have that many actual defined attacks, but there was a period of about a month when I was constantly panicking, just barely keeping it under control, kind of like silent seizures. I went to an honors seminar lecture that talked about the psychology of overcoming fear - it was really great and I learned a lot, but just thinking about feeling fear, even positive thinking, triggered it. it was a constant spiral of anxiety and panic, of grasping for control of my own mind.
I managed, but barely, and I decided then that I would get help when I came back in the fall - there was no reason to go through something so awful without help. I was not going to go through that again.
after school was over, things evened out and I went to france to have fun. but I was in love. in love with a boy who didn't really realize it or what he was doing to me. in retrospect, I can see that I was actually in love, more obsessed really, with this idea of who I thought he was. but the emotion was genuine. I was ready to do a lot of drastic and brave/stupid (aren't they the same) things on that emotion. (and I did). it made for a rollercoaster of a year, a heart-breaking, excruciating year. that's the backdrop for april through december.
during my internship in france, after study abroad was over and I left all my friends, I found myself in toulouse, completely alone, depressed and heart-broken, working with poor, handicapped old people : pretty much all I thought about was death. and the boy. yeah, it was really healthy.
enter the food troubles. I had been gaining weight steadily since the beginning of the school year, especially in the winter. I had certainly gained some weight since coming to france, but it wasn't the end of the world - mostly from eating lots of good food all the time, since, let's be honest, if you're in france, you eat good food and you don't feel bad about it. but in my solitary, depressed state, food became the only thing to do. it was compulsive and automatic and I had never felt so out of control. and it was kind of numbing. a relief.
and I ballooned. I had only gained 15 pounds, but wow, it made a big difference on my miniature frame. when I came back to school in the fall, I was just as heart-broken and depressed, except instead of having almost nothing to do, I was the busiest I had ever been in my life. so I didn't eat. I simply didn't have time to eat. my appetite became non-existent. and all of the weight went away. which didn't convince me to change my non-eating ways because, well, it worked.
looking back, that's scary. looking back, that could have turned into something very serious very quickly. it was absolutely a case of thought-action fusion where the brain is incapable of distinguishing between the actual thought and the subsequent action. you think you are helpless to resist a thought. if you think about eating, you will eat. if you say you will only eat three cookies because you know it is bad to eat the whole box, yet you think about eating the whole box, you will eat the whole box. and I did. lots of boxes.
the same thing happens with my skin - if I think about messing with my skin, I will. I tell myself I will not touch my face today, but if I think about it, I end up in front of a mirror doing what I promised I wouldn't. it's getting better - I'm working on strengthening my brain against the habit, waiting 5 minutes after the thought before acting, or 10, or pushing it to 15. but I can be standing there after who knows how long, hating what I'm doing to myself, feeling so scared and helpless and say - stop it now. turn around. go away. go to bed. stop. - and I can't do it. I can't stop. and it scares me shitless.
you know how people tell you to build up your self-esteem? how you're supposed to stand in front of the mirror before you walk out the door in the morning and tell yourself - you're beautiful. you look amazing. go have a good day and be happy because you are simply smashing. - most of the time I feel pretty. sometimes I feel simply smashing. I'm ready to embrace this body of mine for what it is and stop wishing I was 16 again.
but when my skin is bad, it's the only thing I can see. when I finally stop, a long while after I try to make myself stop and can't, I look in the mirror at what I've done and I hate myself. I do what you're not supposed to do. I look at myself and say - good job. see what you've done? you look like shit. what the hell is wrong with you? you look. like. shit.
happily, I had more time winter semester - I ate better food and more meals and exercised twice a week. I was healed from the heartache, found closure, and took joy in the life I had - it was a miracle. and gratefully, these issues all seemed to disappear.
I am happy. and stable. and working on learning how to feel feelings without judgment, without fear, without needing to control them. otherwise, feeling things leads to anxiety which leads to feelings and more anxiety and an inescapable circle that feeds into panic. when I first went to my therapist, I was so worried about the compulsive eating and the obsessive damage I was doing to my skin - I wanted to work on that. I'm glad she had the insight (I guess I shouldn't be surprised that she's good at her profession) to know what was really causing those things.
it's a little scary to think that I never actually overcame those problems - they went away because their emotional causes went away. so it worries me what could happen again when life gets hard. but I'm actually overcoming them every day as I'm allowing myself to feel things and not being afraid of feeling and giving up my control over emotions. when I am unafraid of feelings, I don't need to numb them with binge endorphins or hours in front of the bathroom mirror.
I'm working on it.
things are changing so quickly and yet so sluggishly, too. it's hard to believe how the time has gone by and pushed me to the brink of change. I've come a long way, but I'm still struggling with so much. not least because I'm just now becoming truly aware of what I've been struggling with.
last week I had my last appointment with my therapist before I leave my semi-permanent residence in utah valley for a graduate city life in the east. it was sad. partly because she has helped me through a lot of things and really helped me to change my life for the better and it's sad to say goodbye. partly because it's so frightening to contemplate trying to make it without her, or a therapist in general.
it was more than a year ago when I started having my first panic attacks. I didn't have that many actual defined attacks, but there was a period of about a month when I was constantly panicking, just barely keeping it under control, kind of like silent seizures. I went to an honors seminar lecture that talked about the psychology of overcoming fear - it was really great and I learned a lot, but just thinking about feeling fear, even positive thinking, triggered it. it was a constant spiral of anxiety and panic, of grasping for control of my own mind.
I managed, but barely, and I decided then that I would get help when I came back in the fall - there was no reason to go through something so awful without help. I was not going to go through that again.
after school was over, things evened out and I went to france to have fun. but I was in love. in love with a boy who didn't really realize it or what he was doing to me. in retrospect, I can see that I was actually in love, more obsessed really, with this idea of who I thought he was. but the emotion was genuine. I was ready to do a lot of drastic and brave/stupid (aren't they the same) things on that emotion. (and I did). it made for a rollercoaster of a year, a heart-breaking, excruciating year. that's the backdrop for april through december.
during my internship in france, after study abroad was over and I left all my friends, I found myself in toulouse, completely alone, depressed and heart-broken, working with poor, handicapped old people : pretty much all I thought about was death. and the boy. yeah, it was really healthy.
enter the food troubles. I had been gaining weight steadily since the beginning of the school year, especially in the winter. I had certainly gained some weight since coming to france, but it wasn't the end of the world - mostly from eating lots of good food all the time, since, let's be honest, if you're in france, you eat good food and you don't feel bad about it. but in my solitary, depressed state, food became the only thing to do. it was compulsive and automatic and I had never felt so out of control. and it was kind of numbing. a relief.
and I ballooned. I had only gained 15 pounds, but wow, it made a big difference on my miniature frame. when I came back to school in the fall, I was just as heart-broken and depressed, except instead of having almost nothing to do, I was the busiest I had ever been in my life. so I didn't eat. I simply didn't have time to eat. my appetite became non-existent. and all of the weight went away. which didn't convince me to change my non-eating ways because, well, it worked.
looking back, that's scary. looking back, that could have turned into something very serious very quickly. it was absolutely a case of thought-action fusion where the brain is incapable of distinguishing between the actual thought and the subsequent action. you think you are helpless to resist a thought. if you think about eating, you will eat. if you say you will only eat three cookies because you know it is bad to eat the whole box, yet you think about eating the whole box, you will eat the whole box. and I did. lots of boxes.
the same thing happens with my skin - if I think about messing with my skin, I will. I tell myself I will not touch my face today, but if I think about it, I end up in front of a mirror doing what I promised I wouldn't. it's getting better - I'm working on strengthening my brain against the habit, waiting 5 minutes after the thought before acting, or 10, or pushing it to 15. but I can be standing there after who knows how long, hating what I'm doing to myself, feeling so scared and helpless and say - stop it now. turn around. go away. go to bed. stop. - and I can't do it. I can't stop. and it scares me shitless.
you know how people tell you to build up your self-esteem? how you're supposed to stand in front of the mirror before you walk out the door in the morning and tell yourself - you're beautiful. you look amazing. go have a good day and be happy because you are simply smashing. - most of the time I feel pretty. sometimes I feel simply smashing. I'm ready to embrace this body of mine for what it is and stop wishing I was 16 again.
but when my skin is bad, it's the only thing I can see. when I finally stop, a long while after I try to make myself stop and can't, I look in the mirror at what I've done and I hate myself. I do what you're not supposed to do. I look at myself and say - good job. see what you've done? you look like shit. what the hell is wrong with you? you look. like. shit.
happily, I had more time winter semester - I ate better food and more meals and exercised twice a week. I was healed from the heartache, found closure, and took joy in the life I had - it was a miracle. and gratefully, these issues all seemed to disappear.
I am happy. and stable. and working on learning how to feel feelings without judgment, without fear, without needing to control them. otherwise, feeling things leads to anxiety which leads to feelings and more anxiety and an inescapable circle that feeds into panic. when I first went to my therapist, I was so worried about the compulsive eating and the obsessive damage I was doing to my skin - I wanted to work on that. I'm glad she had the insight (I guess I shouldn't be surprised that she's good at her profession) to know what was really causing those things.
it's a little scary to think that I never actually overcame those problems - they went away because their emotional causes went away. so it worries me what could happen again when life gets hard. but I'm actually overcoming them every day as I'm allowing myself to feel things and not being afraid of feeling and giving up my control over emotions. when I am unafraid of feelings, I don't need to numb them with binge endorphins or hours in front of the bathroom mirror.
I'm working on it.
The Problem of Pain
Here are my notes from my recent study of The Problem of Pain, by C.S. Lewis. I go chronologically through the book with quotes that highlight important concepts for me, and also serve as a sort of guide through some of his over-arching logic. If anything doesn't seem fully or well explained, it's because I took short quotes and I'll direct you to the book itself to figure out exactly what he's saying.
I've included page numbers, though my copy is a rather old and obscure version - it doesn't even have an ISBN number! Macmillan press, 1962 edition, 1975 printing.
"Food for thought" simply means that I haven't quite got my head around it or don't quite agree, but want to think about it some more. Asterisks indicate passages that directly relate to conversations Andy and I have had recently (sometimes multiple times, sometimes quite heatedly) and give some further insight (or validation) for our views.
If you don't want to read it all, skip to the last section, the Best Part Ever.
~
"That God can and does, on occasions, modify the behavior of matter and produce what we call miracles, is part of the Christian faith; but the very conception of a common, and therefore stable, world demands that these occasions should be extremely rare." (33-34)
"Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself." (34)
"Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. If God is love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness." (41)
food for thought:
"The place for which He designed them in His scheme of things is the place they are made for. When they reach it their nature is fulfilled and their happiness attained. When we want something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy." (52)
"Every vice leads to cruelty. Even a good emotion, pity, if not controlled by charity and justice, leads through anger to cruelty." (65)
If we truly were in a "creaturely" state to God, then, as Lewis's logic goes, it would be temptation and sin to become as a God, to have and desire independence and free will as separate beings from God. Granted, we cannot gain eternal growth, independence, and free will (that results in consequences) without becoming dependent on God and giving up our free will to Him - He who loses his life for my sake shall find it.
"The first answer then to the question of why our cure should be painful is that to render back the will which we have so long claimed for our own, is in itself, wherever and however it is done, a grievous pain." (91)
* "Some enlightened people would like to banish all conceptions of retribution or desert from their theory of punishment and place its value wholly in the deterrence of others or the reform of the criminal himself. They do not see that by so doing they render all punishment unjust. What can be more immoral than to inflict suffering on me for the sake of deterring others if I do not deserve it?" (93-94)
"It is a poor thing to strike our colors to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up 'our own' when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms; but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had." (97)
* "It has sometimes been asked whether God commands certain things because they are right, or whether certain things are right because God commands them. I emphatically embrace the first alternative. I believe ... that 'they err who think that of the will of God to do this or that there is no reason besides His will.' God's will is determined by His wisdom which always perceives, and His goodness which always embraces, the intrinsically good." (100)
food for thought:
"If pain sometimes shatters the creature's false self-sufficiency, yet in supreme trial or sacrifice it teaches him the self-sufficiency which really ought to be his - the 'strength, which, if Heaven gave it, may be called his own.' Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God's, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it" (102)
"I am not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. That is what the word means. I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine of being made 'perfect through suffering' is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design." (105)
* "Indignation at others' sufferings, though a generous passion, needs to be well managed lest it steal away patience and humility from those who suffer and plant anger and cynicism in their stead." (108)
"If tribulation is a necessary element in redemption, we must anticipate that it will never cease till God sees that world to be either redeemed or no further redeemable." (114)
"Hungry men seek food and sick men healing none the less because they know that after the meal or the cure the ordinary ups and downs of life still await them." (114)
"Pain has no tendency, in its own right, to proliferate. When it is over, it is over, and the natural sequel is joy ... Thus that evil which God chiefly uses to produce the 'complex good' is most markedly disinfected, or deprived of that proliferous tendency which is the worst characteristic of evil generally."(like error and sin, as he describes) (116-117) Andy made an interesting point here that this isn't entirely true - that there are pains like abuses and trauma that continue to have lasting effects and cause more pain, proliferate it.
* "Thomas Aquinas said of suffering, as Aristotle had said of shame, that it was a thing not good in itself, but a thing which might have a certain goodness in particular circumstances." (122)
"The demand that God should forgive such a man while he remains what he is (wicked), is based on a confusion between condoning and forgiving. But forgiveness needs to be accepted as well as offered if it is to be complete: and a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness." (122)
hell - punishment, destruction, privation
fire evokes both torment and destruction
destruction = unmaking, or cessation (no more progress) of the destroyed (though I don't hold to the notion of becoming unmade completely, of no longer being a soul) (124-125)
~
Best Part Ever:
"I am considering ... why He makes each soul unique. If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it." (147-148)
"What can be more a man's own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the divine beauty better than any other creature can." (150)
Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note. Aristotle has told us that a city is a unity of unlikes, and St. Paul that a body is a unity of different members. Heaven is a city, and a Body, because the blessed remain eternally different: a society, because each has something to tell all the others - fresh and ever fresh news of the 'My God' whom each finds in Him whom all praise as 'Our God.'" (150)
"For doubtless the continually successful, yet never completed, attempt by each soul to communicate its unique vision to all others (and that by means whereof earthly art and philosophy are but clumsy imitations) is also among the ends for which the individual was created." (150)
"For union exists only between distincts."
I've included page numbers, though my copy is a rather old and obscure version - it doesn't even have an ISBN number! Macmillan press, 1962 edition, 1975 printing.
"Food for thought" simply means that I haven't quite got my head around it or don't quite agree, but want to think about it some more. Asterisks indicate passages that directly relate to conversations Andy and I have had recently (sometimes multiple times, sometimes quite heatedly) and give some further insight (or validation) for our views.
If you don't want to read it all, skip to the last section, the Best Part Ever.
~
"That God can and does, on occasions, modify the behavior of matter and produce what we call miracles, is part of the Christian faith; but the very conception of a common, and therefore stable, world demands that these occasions should be extremely rare." (33-34)
"Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself." (34)
"Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. If God is love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness." (41)
food for thought:
"The place for which He designed them in His scheme of things is the place they are made for. When they reach it their nature is fulfilled and their happiness attained. When we want something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy." (52)
"Every vice leads to cruelty. Even a good emotion, pity, if not controlled by charity and justice, leads through anger to cruelty." (65)
If we truly were in a "creaturely" state to God, then, as Lewis's logic goes, it would be temptation and sin to become as a God, to have and desire independence and free will as separate beings from God. Granted, we cannot gain eternal growth, independence, and free will (that results in consequences) without becoming dependent on God and giving up our free will to Him - He who loses his life for my sake shall find it.
"The first answer then to the question of why our cure should be painful is that to render back the will which we have so long claimed for our own, is in itself, wherever and however it is done, a grievous pain." (91)
* "Some enlightened people would like to banish all conceptions of retribution or desert from their theory of punishment and place its value wholly in the deterrence of others or the reform of the criminal himself. They do not see that by so doing they render all punishment unjust. What can be more immoral than to inflict suffering on me for the sake of deterring others if I do not deserve it?" (93-94)
"It is a poor thing to strike our colors to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up 'our own' when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms; but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had." (97)
* "It has sometimes been asked whether God commands certain things because they are right, or whether certain things are right because God commands them. I emphatically embrace the first alternative. I believe ... that 'they err who think that of the will of God to do this or that there is no reason besides His will.' God's will is determined by His wisdom which always perceives, and His goodness which always embraces, the intrinsically good." (100)
food for thought:
"If pain sometimes shatters the creature's false self-sufficiency, yet in supreme trial or sacrifice it teaches him the self-sufficiency which really ought to be his - the 'strength, which, if Heaven gave it, may be called his own.' Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God's, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it" (102)
"I am not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. That is what the word means. I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine of being made 'perfect through suffering' is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design." (105)
* "Indignation at others' sufferings, though a generous passion, needs to be well managed lest it steal away patience and humility from those who suffer and plant anger and cynicism in their stead." (108)
"If tribulation is a necessary element in redemption, we must anticipate that it will never cease till God sees that world to be either redeemed or no further redeemable." (114)
"Hungry men seek food and sick men healing none the less because they know that after the meal or the cure the ordinary ups and downs of life still await them." (114)
"Pain has no tendency, in its own right, to proliferate. When it is over, it is over, and the natural sequel is joy ... Thus that evil which God chiefly uses to produce the 'complex good' is most markedly disinfected, or deprived of that proliferous tendency which is the worst characteristic of evil generally."(like error and sin, as he describes) (116-117) Andy made an interesting point here that this isn't entirely true - that there are pains like abuses and trauma that continue to have lasting effects and cause more pain, proliferate it.
* "Thomas Aquinas said of suffering, as Aristotle had said of shame, that it was a thing not good in itself, but a thing which might have a certain goodness in particular circumstances." (122)
"The demand that God should forgive such a man while he remains what he is (wicked), is based on a confusion between condoning and forgiving. But forgiveness needs to be accepted as well as offered if it is to be complete: and a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness." (122)
hell - punishment, destruction, privation
fire evokes both torment and destruction
destruction = unmaking, or cessation (no more progress) of the destroyed (though I don't hold to the notion of becoming unmade completely, of no longer being a soul) (124-125)
~
Best Part Ever:
"I am considering ... why He makes each soul unique. If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it." (147-148)
"What can be more a man's own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the divine beauty better than any other creature can." (150)
Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note. Aristotle has told us that a city is a unity of unlikes, and St. Paul that a body is a unity of different members. Heaven is a city, and a Body, because the blessed remain eternally different: a society, because each has something to tell all the others - fresh and ever fresh news of the 'My God' whom each finds in Him whom all praise as 'Our God.'" (150)
"For doubtless the continually successful, yet never completed, attempt by each soul to communicate its unique vision to all others (and that by means whereof earthly art and philosophy are but clumsy imitations) is also among the ends for which the individual was created." (150)
"For union exists only between distincts."
back again
Still lots going on around here, but not much on the blog :/ We'll consider this a random update.
- Went to Seattle on an MPA Career Trip and took a long weekend up in the San Juan Islands with Andy
- Graduated with my Masters in Public Administration, Nonprofit Management
- Landed a consultant position for the summer with AidData at the College of William and Mary
- Went out to Williamsburg, Virginia for the summer job, went without Andy for a month, then got to pick him up in D.C. for the second month or so
- Moved from Utah to Virginia, back to Utah, and then again in Utah, in the space of a month. Luckily, most of that was just with suitcases and not with all of our stuff.
- Kept loving Liana, the most adorable baby of all time, walking now
- Discovered J.Crew
- Celebrated year 2 with my lovely Andy, this time at a little B&B in Salt Lake, a yummy Mediterranean dinner, and a trip to the aviary.
Now I'm taking it easy while Andy gets ready to defend his thesis next month and we both look for jobs. I'm looking forward to moving somewhere awesome, finding a fun place to live, and starting our careers.
I've decided to beat the baby hunger by buying baby clothes whenever I want, and then I can just have a baby shower with the essentials - like diapers! - when the time comes (whenever that is in the distant future). It hasn't yet panned out because I just want to buy clothes for myself :) But with jobs will come the money and then I can buy baby clothes and fabric and all of the other unneeded and currently impractical things I want.
What I've Been Reading Around Here:
- The Tao of Pooh
- Angle of Repose
- Blink
- Ender's Game
- Wildwood
- I Capture the Castle
- Why Children Fail
- The Problem of Pain
- The Politics of Breastfeeding
and many more!
Also, my hair is super long.
- Went to Seattle on an MPA Career Trip and took a long weekend up in the San Juan Islands with Andy
- Graduated with my Masters in Public Administration, Nonprofit Management
- Landed a consultant position for the summer with AidData at the College of William and Mary
- Went out to Williamsburg, Virginia for the summer job, went without Andy for a month, then got to pick him up in D.C. for the second month or so
- Moved from Utah to Virginia, back to Utah, and then again in Utah, in the space of a month. Luckily, most of that was just with suitcases and not with all of our stuff.
- Kept loving Liana, the most adorable baby of all time, walking now
- Discovered J.Crew
- Celebrated year 2 with my lovely Andy, this time at a little B&B in Salt Lake, a yummy Mediterranean dinner, and a trip to the aviary.
Now I'm taking it easy while Andy gets ready to defend his thesis next month and we both look for jobs. I'm looking forward to moving somewhere awesome, finding a fun place to live, and starting our careers.
I've decided to beat the baby hunger by buying baby clothes whenever I want, and then I can just have a baby shower with the essentials - like diapers! - when the time comes (whenever that is in the distant future). It hasn't yet panned out because I just want to buy clothes for myself :) But with jobs will come the money and then I can buy baby clothes and fabric and all of the other unneeded and currently impractical things I want.
What I've Been Reading Around Here:
- The Tao of Pooh
- Angle of Repose
- Blink
- Ender's Game
- Wildwood
- I Capture the Castle
- Why Children Fail
- The Problem of Pain
- The Politics of Breastfeeding
and many more!
Also, my hair is super long.
1.01.2013
here's to a new one
two whole posts in 2012 ... this has been a rocking year for blogging :)
in my defense, I started grad school again in January and have been the busiest ever, in winter semester and this fall. I worked SO hard this last semester and got straight As in five classes - I'm pretty darn proud of myself :)
here are some highlights of the year:
- started grad school again - Master of Public Administration, Nonprofit Emphasis, at BYU
- went to Ghana with the MPA and loved it SO MUCH
- read books the rest of the summer
- visited Virginia for Jeffrey's high school graduation
- celebrated 1 year with my lovely Andy, on a freezing, miserable night camping in the Uintas - we'll try the whole anniversary thing next year and see if it turns out any better :)
- did a literature review for one of my professors, and now I'll be writing a paper with her this coming semester
- went to D.C. on an MPA Career Trip
- had a lovely Christmas with my family in Utah - they drove out to be with us
- Claire's new baby Liana, who is the softest and sweetest baby in the world
it was one of the hardest years ever, but lots of good to look back on, too. hopefully I'll have some more to say in 2013. if you're sticking around, thanks for sticking around!
christina
in my defense, I started grad school again in January and have been the busiest ever, in winter semester and this fall. I worked SO hard this last semester and got straight As in five classes - I'm pretty darn proud of myself :)
here are some highlights of the year:
- started grad school again - Master of Public Administration, Nonprofit Emphasis, at BYU
- went to Ghana with the MPA and loved it SO MUCH
- read books the rest of the summer
- visited Virginia for Jeffrey's high school graduation
- celebrated 1 year with my lovely Andy, on a freezing, miserable night camping in the Uintas - we'll try the whole anniversary thing next year and see if it turns out any better :)
- did a literature review for one of my professors, and now I'll be writing a paper with her this coming semester
- went to D.C. on an MPA Career Trip
- had a lovely Christmas with my family in Utah - they drove out to be with us
- Claire's new baby Liana, who is the softest and sweetest baby in the world
it was one of the hardest years ever, but lots of good to look back on, too. hopefully I'll have some more to say in 2013. if you're sticking around, thanks for sticking around!
christina
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