Things I Learned About the Justice System in Oneida County, New York

They will keep the courtroom at a toasty 80 degrees, but only have two "unidentified" toilets on the 3rd floor.

The elevator will take you up to the third floor, but you can't get it to take you back down.

None of the rooms on the third floor have numbers on them or anything indicating whether they are courtrooms, torture chambers, judges' chambers: nothin'!

If the security guy is occupied (in my case talking to some National Guard dude about whether or not he was concealing hand grenades, ha ha) you can walk right through the metal scanner and set it off, yet go unnoticed.

If you stand outside for more than two minutes, you will find two (or more) people screaming at each other about who did what and how the problem is that you took "my f'in' kid" blah, blah, blah. It's depressing.

Overall, one finds that the courthouse reflects the downtrodden nature of our fair county. It is clean, but just worn out in a hundred little intangible ways.

Attorneys on television seem so busy, articulate, and intelligent; attorneys in a real courtroom need a class in rhetoric.

The process is tedious enough that one can almost finish an entire novel, in my case My Name is Asher Lev.

That's it. The case was settled after eight Oneida County residents had to sit and answer the same rephrased questions for almost two hours.

I'm done for six years, but the whole experience has transformed me. I may never watch Law and Order again.

Juror Number #2, that's me

Seems a little gross to be number two, but, yup that's me, and at 9:15 tomorrow morning I'll be in Utica, New York reporting for duty. I have a copy of my MRI report ready to show any and everybody, but what if it's not enough?

Does anybody have any surefire get out of jury duty lines? Let's see what you got.
Happy Sunday

Apparently, It's possible to Have One's Cake and Eat It Too

Stupid Pet Tricks

Missy isn't well today.
She's bloated like a tick
Because she ate a birthday cake.
Yet, she isn't really sick

My bedroom's full of acrid stench
I'd rather not discuss.
I let her sleep upon my bed
out of sympathy; I'm a wuss!

She's big and round, but not so jolly.
I hope she'll be okay.
Perhaps she'll learn from this dumb folly.
I don't think so, what you say?

That's life at my house this morning in a nutshell. Now the whole world knows why I don't write rhyming poetry, but that's the best I can do in three minutes.
Happy Thursday!

Wild Ride!!!

Well, no: not even a mild walk yet. The doctor didn't even pretend that he liked my when-can-I-start-walking-again question today. He also told me that my only surgical option would be spinal fusion. But thanks to the Internet, I found the foloowing video at

http://www.spine-health.com/treatment/artificial-disc-replacement/lumbar-artificial-disc-surgery-chronic-back-pain

which shows actual disk replacement surgery and spinal fusion. They make it look so easy. Which one do you think I should choose?

Enough!

Here, in no apparent order, are some things I wish for concerning the campaign and upcoming election:
That I had an email function which would automatically reply to Barack, Dave and Michelle something like "Enough already! I'm voting for you; now stop emailing me four times a day! And don't call me either!"
That John McCain would stop being such a nasty, smirky, nasty, twitchy, nasty man. Hey, maybe he's a closet New Jerseyan. (Nicky, that last statement's here mostly to bait you)
That two of the most annoying things in life, the presidential campaign and the NPR Fall Fundraiser, are occurring simultaneously. I made the pledge, so shut up, will ya!?
That I could be there on that frabjous day when Dirk Kempthorne cleans out his desk
That Joe the Plumber had been left out of all this
That staying "informed" didn't give me such a headache
That all of my students would vote
That after voting in New York, the poll workers announced like they did in Pocatello, Idaho "Patricia Murphy has now voted." I know it seems like a strange custom, but it made my heart swell every time I voted.
That I was voting for Al Gore
That campaigning was one month long in America

What about you? Is there anything about the campaign that's getting on your nerves, or are you invigorated by the whole process? If you are, as the folks in central New York say "god bless you."
Happy rainy Tuesday

Cake Update and a Funny Picture

I guess I really have lost my touch. Cakes were never my strongest cooking genre, but at least I used to be able to turn out something that didn't stick in the throat like a lump. Let's just say thank goodness for ice cream, and for Daryl's cream cheese frosting which both added some lubricant to the whole disaster.

Yeah, I'm still taking the cake to work today to get rid of it, but I'll have to cut off all exterior edges. They're just too "substantial" to be eaten, crusty and dry as dirt. It's possible I mistakenly used bread flour, but that's what I get for not marking the stuff I buy at the health food store.

Next weekend it's pie, and if I can't pull off something that easy, I'm done! I have, over the years, probably made at least a thousand pies of various kinds from apple to gooseberry to sour cream raisin and lemon meringue.

I thought I'd post a birthday picture that I find hilarious for several reasons: One, it looks like I'm trying to be sexy, but actually I was just straightening out my sweater; two, it'll serve forever to remind me of the "Air Supply" turned "Rod Stewart" haircut (which I had taken care of yesterday afternoon) and my new motto: "friends don't let friends cut their hair"; three, if you look to my left you can see my heating pad lying on the couch, waiting for me to gimp toward it; and four, it'll remind not to combine too many patterns in one outfit.

Ah, the dignity of age!

I'd ask a sober, thoughtful birthday-related question of you all, but I'd much rather know about your top five (or however many you want to share) pies. Here are mine in random order:
sour cream raisin
chocolate peanut butter (especially from Pumpernickel's Deli)
pecan
sweet potato pecan
coconut cream

Frohe Montag Jedermann

Happy Birthday To Me

Sometimes my birthday brings such excitement, sometimes longing. When I was a kid, there were only two birthday cake choices at our house -- chocolate cake with white icing or white cake with chocolate icing. I always thought the former was more interesting, and I remember once asking my mother why there was no chocolate-on-chocolate option. She replied "too much chocolate". My mother has never baked a cake from scratch, and really why would anybody who lived in the land of German, Italian and Jewish bakeries we'll call Bergen County, New Jersey? Some of my fondest childhood memories involve standing on a sidewalk on Sunday after church, waiting on line to get into a bakery.

Oddly enough, my little British grandmother baked cakes, beautiful and interesting ones that she sent home with my father every once in a while. I say oddly because she lived in the Bronx in Parkchester, at 5 Metropolitan Oval, and I still find it fascinating that although she lived in an apartment she managed to make pickled onions and plum jelly. Where on earth did she even get canning jars?

Her son, my father, has long had a family nickname: "Vincent Cake Murphy", and I suppose it is from him that I get my love of cake. He would come home from a bakery, either one in the city where he worked or one in Tenafly or Hackensack, with a chocolate cake that housed layers of whipped cream and fresh sliced fruit: strawberries, blueberries, bananas. My mother pronounced them "gloppy" and our extended-family Sunday dinners always included pastry-like cakes for those family members who didn't share my father's love of what I'll call "real cake". Yes, I know this post makes my mother sound harsh; she's not: she just doesn't like cake.

This year, for the first time, my birthday has come at the wrong time in my life. As I see it, a choice must be made. Wallow, wallow, wallow as I face the fears associated with the knowledge that my latest back attack has done some real psychic, not to mention vertebral, damage: that I lost my way once again for awhile. Or, stop and steady myself as best I can. I choose the latter, and to close the deal I'm going to the kitchen right now to bake myself a cake. I don't know if I own any cake pans, but there's gotta be some kind of vessel I can use. Why not just go to the store? Well, if I did that I'd just buy a cake, not the point.

I haven't made a cake in a long time, so wish me luck.

On the Importance of Character

not mine, I'm talking here about book characters. And I'll begin with a confession. I loved being an English major, but it changed the way I read. I think the chore of always thinking about texts theoretically will do that to anyone. If you are/were an English major and you escaped this joyful and nasty tendency, congratulations to you! I, on the other hand, am still torn when I read a book that engages me on a purely emotional level and doesn't really have much to offer stylistically, theoretically, whatever-ly. I feel guilty, like I ought not be wasting my time. I feel led by the nose when texts are too obvious, like those movies we can conjure the ending to after ten minutes of viewing.

Years ago I read Elizabeth Berg's Talk Before Sleep. I loved the characters, how they invested so much emotion in the situation at hand. The book is about how a group of women who really don't know each other come together to support a mutual friend who is dying of cancer. Berg takes her reader through all kinds of surprising emotional developments, and in the end we're stunned at the book's outcome right along with Berg's characters, even though we all knew from the start what that outcome would be. I read Berg's second novel and was disappointed. So Elizabeth Berg and I parted ways.

It seemed like in graduate school we weren't supposed to love characters; ironic, I think because engagement with texts was probably why we'd become English majors in the first place. Don't get me wrong: I love a good debate, but I love a good book even more, and it seems to me that all that theory has a corrupting effect. I read with either a literal or figurative pen in hand, always thinking, thinking too much.

Over the summer I picked up Berg's Open House at the Clinton Village Book Sale, an annual event that is quite surreal in nature because true shite is lined up on tables next to true gems. I eyed the Oprah seal of approval warily (to say the least) and, half-ashamed, bought it anyway. Now that my pain level has decreased and I can actually read, it's on my bedside table because it's the book that I can pay some attention to, and it's the book whose intricacy won't stimulate the way too analytical part of my still befuddled brain. Why?

Because I love the main character. Maybe when I get my more sophisticated brain back I'll only focus on how formulaic the book is, but for now I'm going on a roller coaster with Samantha that is giving me opportunity to identify with her, to compare and contrast my experience with hers. That's what books can do, right? That's why we love them, yes? Well, maybe not, but that's why I love them. Good characters are thrown for a loop and they either sink or swim (hey two cliches in one sentence)! Is Jude Fawley better written than Berg's Samantha? Yes, definitely, yes for a hundred reasons no one wants to hear me rhapsodize about right now. Will there be a Little Father Time moment in Open House, one that shocks me and makes me think for days? No, I think not. But Jude and Samantha share one thing that makes them equally good characters; they're making due with what they have and what they have is stunningly sad and unfair, to them.

My natural inclination when faced with adversity is to read true crime books, but I think I decided that was just a little too prurient right now, and who knows what impact it might have on my juror objectivity. So Open House is my mac and cheese, my ramen, something that'll get me through until I can take on a book that seductively demands more attention. It's somewhere between eating dog food and eating the best steak on the menu. How unscholarly of me!

What do you read? What do you read for? What's it do for you? Good things, I hope.
Happy Saturday.
To all of you who are grading papers, believe me I feel you pain.

Internet, My Love Monster

Last night I read yesterday's post about Aunt Grace to Aunt Grace (she cried), and then I sent it to her, at her request. I enlarged the font, which she exclaimed she didn't even know one could do. She will make my Uncle Dave print it out because, I think, she's (actually they're both) afraid of "the machine," as she calls their computer. Amazing, but at least it means I don't have to worry about them reading my blog, right? The aforementioned goes into the category "Old People Are Soooooooooooo Cute."

As I write this, I'm listening (on my machine) to the famous and incredibly pretentious John Mullan interview Graham Swift, trying to tell Swift what his own novel The Light of Day is "about" and getting (go Graham, go!) a run for his money. Swift is by turns amused, bemused, and funny, and winds up saying things like "for goodness sakes; it's a love story!" in response to Mullan's penchant for restorying and reshaping Swift's novel(s). It reminds me of how much I like Graham Swift, even though his last novel Tomorrow disappointed me so dreadfully. It also reminds me of how much I love the Internet, even though I've sometimes gotten myself in trouble because of it.

Are you ambivalent about the Internet? Are you, like me, caught up short sometimes when you think about how much time you spend in Cyberspace, on the Information Super Highway? BTW, my composition students and I always have a chuckle when we talk about those last two terms.

In response to yesterday's comment, yes Mikey, I need to fly like a little bird, to be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, etcetera, etcetera. So, which one of the former is a movie reference?

Jess, remember Graham Swift? And can I vote more than once? I read a few of the other couples' posts and they pale in comparison to yours, so vague and wussy.

Friday Peace

Family

I'm taking time out from my usual complaint narrative to write about family, on this my Aunt Grace's 83rd birthday. When I was growing up in suburban New Jersey, I was lucky enough to have three women in my life all the time. My mother Catherine Cecelia is the oldest, and her two sisters Eleanor Margaret and Grace Patricia are/were younger by two and four years, respectively.

What was it like having this catholic women's trinity, as I affectionately call them (don't worry they all think/thought that's funny) around all the time? Well, it was wild! Since I'm the youngest by so many years, they treated me like a princess. They had a mother I never knew who was, by all accounts, kind and overprotective, and my three were certainly all that and a bag of chips where I was concerned. They all got from their mother (and from Catholicism too, I suppose) a sense of impending doom. They worried constantly, and when I grew up I'd joke with them and say things like "it's a wonder I ever left the house!". Yes, I was the "don't do that, you could break a leg" kid.

My aunts doted on me and thought I was cute and funny, even though I was really high strung and scared all the time because of what we'll call the "Catholic school climate" of the 1970's. My mother was a little more pragmatic about things; she's the only one of the three who had children, and it's just her nature to be a bit more "business-like" (a recent quote from said Aunt Grace).

When I became a rebellious public school teenager I did it big time (rebellion, that is) keeping secrets, constantly pushing boundaries. I fought with El, who lived with us and who was by nature feisty, and I made Grace cry. My mother had her own way of dealing with things. She didn't argue, didn't chastise, didn't really even criticize. With El and mom I could justify my behavior as teenagers do, but seeing Grace cry would always stop me up short. This was, after all, the woman who had dropped me off every day at catholic school after a mile-long car ride during which I often cried the whole time, and then cried herself all the way to work because she felt so bad for me.

I never called them Aunt Grace or Aunt El; they were too close for titles. Since neither of them ever had children, they loved us four Murphy kids like their own. When El died eight years ago, I worried so much about Grace, mom too, but Grace so much. Today I know she'll think of her sister and miss her so much.

In August I took Li to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Tenafly, and we cleaned El's grave and I cried and cried and told her all kinds of things about all kinds of things, like families do. My family has changed so much (they're so damn old now) and sometimes I long selfishly for all of those lost years I squandered living away from them. But I'm closer now, and Thanksgiving's just around the corner. Today I'll call my Aunt Grace and she'll call me "my darling," and the world will be a little better for it. Me, I'm just lucky to still have what I have -- a family that stills puts me in awe of itself sometimes.
Happy Birthday Gracie

Never Gonna Give You Up . . .

I'll begin by saying that I'm one of those people who really suffers from "song that gets stuck in your head" syndrome. We all do, I know, and thankfully said songs usually only last a day or two. The problem is the song is rarely one I like (so I don't even know many of the lyrics) and usually something so cheesy it's embarrassing, especially since I often sing aloud.

Ever since I saw the Sarah Palin video done in response to the Barack Obama/Rick Astley video I've had that song in my head, you know the one, "Never Gonna Give You Up". Maybe it's so funny to me because it goes with my new Air Supply haircut. I decided to do a little research and found out KISS and Brian Griffin versions. My response to these was, of course, more chuckling. But when I went back to find the Sarah Palin/Rick Astley clip, I couldn't. I couldn't even get rickrolled: bummer!

Here's the thing: I don't know about you, but I think it's hilarious when I find a version of a song that I never really took seriously (have, in fact, made fun of) and it's been spoofed. It's postmodernism at it's best, I guess. But then there are those other times, like when I was looking for clips on the Internet and found so many bad versions of "The State that I am In" that I wanted to plug up my ears forever.

Try it: youtube some song you think of as funny or lame or whatever and see what happens. Then youtube a song to which you have a profound emotional connection. See if your responses are different. Let me know what you find out.

On Being Peaceful and Other Apparently Impossible Goals . . .

So, I'm at a stage in my back attack where I have the ability to think (a little more clearly now that my pain has subsided a bit) about what a nasty, mean-spirited person pain has turned me into. My hope is that recognizing this attitude is the first step toward recovery, that it means I have a little distance. I'll let you in on the things that really bothered me for awhile during this time of trial:
1) People going for walks in this beautiful fall weather. How dare they???!!!
2) People lifting things with ease, especially that one guy we'll call my boyfriend who effortlessly hoisted my new microwave around Target the other day, sending me into a tailspin of murderous envy.
3) Any peaceful people anywhere, anytime who appeared cheerful and not 75% distracted by pain. I guess misery really does love company.
4) For awhile, people who could stand up straight.
5) My Aunt Grace, who cries every time we talk on the phone and makes me wish I'd said "everything's great."
6) My commonsensical inability to just medicate, which results in a refusal to drink myself into oblivion or narc myself to nirvana. This one was compounded every time someone would say, "Well at least I hope you're getting some good drugs."
7) The pathetic feeling of accomplishment I got when I actually cleaned the house by myself.
8) Stupid drivers (let's face it, there is such a thing) because I was so distracted by pain that whenever anyone did anything to compromise our safety, I wanted to hunt them down and kill them. Of course this problem was compounded by the fact that I knew I could no more hunt and kill than I could do, well, anything else. Further complicating this little scenario was the knowledge that with so much pain-distraction, I was probably the worst driver out there, no small accomplishment in central New York.

Basically, the whole think reminded me of what a nasty miserable unhappy person I used to be. What a good life lesson; no, really, I mean that. Don't worry, I'm not ready to be like that newly canonized saint I heard about on NPR, who said something like I consider a day without suffering a day lost. I'm just ready to get on with it, whatever it is. After we looked at the MRI report the other day, I knew that it was time to start thinking beyond lasers.

And things are stating to bother me less. For example, I only stuck three pins in my John McCain voodoo doll last night. I was also really worried about grading papers because I thought my current state would result in caustic nasty comments like "My life sure would be easier had someone, somewhere had taught you how to write a comprehensible sentence." But so far, I'm doin' okay.

I hope your day is a pain free and peaceful one, whether you're in Idaho buried under that freak eight inches of snow, in CNY lovin' all this splendor, or anywhere else you might be.

What????!!!!!!!

I don't know how much longer I can keep up my pretense of optimism. If there's a last straw I think I just got it . . . in the mail. Yes, the unspeakable has happened. My little, gimpy injured self has been called to JURY DUTY! Oneida County, I hate you, yes hate you! How could you do this to me? Don't you realize that if I sit on one of those benches for more than ten minutes I'll be in so much pain that I'll want to give whoever is on trial the death penalty, even if it's just for a bar fight or too many traffic tickets? Don't you realize that I'll be so crazed with pain that I won't even care that NY doesn't have the death penalty, and I'll still be holding out for it, writing "DEATH" over and over on those little slips of paper until someone hauls me off to the Marcy Psych Center? Didn't you get it when I filled out the form and listed "college professor" as my occupation that there's no "sub list" I can draw from to keep my students on the road to their education? Maybe I should take all 45 of them with me and say I'm doing a social justice theme for my classes. Ha! That'd show them.

But seriously, the irony of all this is that I got the summons after this morning's drive home from Daryl's house. On the way I experienced a moment of great joy, as I like to call them. They've been few and far between since I hurt my back, but there it was. As I rounded a bend on the Brimfield Road, I got a really good view of all the golden, orange, and even crimson foliage that makes this place I live in so glorious. It filled me with joy. I cried a little. I love that feeling. Too bad Oneida County had to ruin it with "you are required to call every night after 10/24" and no mention of an end date. And that "Thank you for your time and commitment to the New York State Jury System" statement at the bottom of the notice is just like salt in the wound.

Normally I love the workings of the criminal justice system, but I noticed there wasn't a box to check for "right now isn't really a good time," so I guess I'll have to either get a note from my doctor, or show up with my MRI slides pinned to my shirt. Man, life is just too complicated sometimes.

Vanity, thy name is woman . . .

Yeah, I know it's really "frailty", but today I want to write about vanity. It's a characteristic I've always struggled with, well, always. I don't want to be a vain person. I'd like to think that I'm good, basically honest, somewhat kindhearted, maybe too liberal and naive, and that's what ought to count, right? Right. Often when I face my own vanity I feel like my friend to the right here is readying to say his famous line: "You're despicable!" Then I try to remember that a little vanity is normal, healthy even.

Where's this going? Well, it has something to do, I suspect, with what my dead white guy crew, Donne and Herbert, and I suppose Blake would have obliquely or directly referred to as the visage of pain, that look that people(yeah, I know they were mostly talking about Christ, not 40-something English teachers) have when they're in a lot of pain. You know the one, especially if you've ever lived with chronic pain; it's alternately a grimace or a blank stare. It's taut lips and a wrinkled brow. It's not attractive by any means, and makes its wearer (at least if I'm that wearer) feel less than competent, old, worn out, and for some reason very short.

Let's add to this visage the overall effect of my new, failed haircut, which I believe makes me look like I should be on the cover of an old Air Supply album. Hey, I know they're big in Germany (anybody get that redesigned Tom Waits' allusion), but frankly their look isn't one I want to emulate. Yes, they got the moon; they got the cheese, but they also have crappy, dated, somewhat mulletudinous hair.

So, what am I gonna do? Well, I'm going into survival mode. When Pin comes next week, she's going to do what she can with her phenomenal hair cutting ways. That's a lot of pressure to put on one very small non-professional hairdresser, but I know from past experience she gonna do some magic. And getting a haircut from her is so much fun -- she yells, barks out orders actually, and all around bosses me around while alternately jumping around and straddling me to get a better look at what she's doing. I'm aware that while I find these behaviors charming, they are important reasons why she should not become a professional hairdresser. Thank Gawd, as my family would say, she has a trade already.

But that's next week. What am I gonna do in the interim? Well, I'm going to dye my hair dark red brown and hope it makes me feel a little better. I'm going to eat a peanut butter/wheat germ toasty treat, and I'm gonna sit in my newly vacumned house, jubilant over the fact that I defied my doctor's orders and (very slowly and carefully, mind you) sucked up at least one dog's worth of dog hair yesterday. And I'm gonna grade some freshman papers, so I can feel like I'm doing my job, sort of.

I'm also going to upload a pic that my buddy Dave Loomis took of me in March to remind myself that better days are ahead, an icon of optimism of sorts. I hope you all have reasons to be optimistic as we charge into this beautiful autumn weekend.

So it's Thursday again

and last week's vow of optimism has been sorely tested, but I'm sticking to it. Here goes:

1) This week my students were really engaged in our class discussion, and that, after all, is part of why I do what I do.

2) This week my MRI gave me some answers, not the kind anyone wants to hear, mind you, but answers are better than vague speculation. Now I have direction, sort of.

3) Daryl made me steak last night, so I didn't have to eat the frozen mass that passes as food we call Lean Cuisine.

4) Lifting five lb. weights instead of three pounders is so easy now that the three pounders feel like nuttin'.

5) Related to four, even though I think he's lying to make me feel better, Daryl says my skinny little arms look more toned. Side note: if anyone else wants to tell me lies to make me feel better, bring it on!

6) Lil' Pin (aka Catherine "the Hurricane" Billman) is coming to visit next week, and if all works out she'll be taking Missy back to MA with her, where Missy will get the walks and attention she deserves.

7) Related to six, Lil' Pin is a massage therapist, so she's in essence the perfect house guest right now.

8) Related to 5 and 6, next week is mid-semester break, and while we've put the kibosh on a trip to Saratoga Springs, at least the Pin will be around to entertain me, and (I'm so excited about this part) I can give her the rest of her birthday present that was too fragile to ship. She can trim my hair because I have to do something about the hair debacle created by my well meaning but too-eccentric-to-trim-hair-not-listening-to-a-word-I-said-about-it friend.

9) Related to six, Missy has for three days now been "sugar-free". By this I mean the sugar she consumed from a twelve ounce bag of "harvest mix" candy that she got off the back of the counter last Wednesday (I would've liked to have seen that one) has finally worked its way out of her system. She's not tweaking at all anymore, and isn't even really twitchy. She's stopped following me around and tripping me all the time too, and as a result I no longer despise her.

10) It's still beautiful here for now.

I hope everyone has a few happy things to think about today. If you want to share them with me, cool. I like to think that optimism can be contagious. If you're in the Utica, NY area there's a great photo and digital media show going on at SUNYIT's Gannett Gallery tomorrow night at 5:00.
Happy Thursday

Comfort Food, Again

Since I hurt my back I've been eating a lot of Lean Cuisine. I feel like some pathetic, lonely forty-something spinster every time I peel back the cello and pop that frozen chunk of whatever into the microwave. But, there's one food that has consistently made me feel better through all of this crapola -- peanut butter toast. Whole wheat bread (really whole wheat, none of that fakey stuff), good pb (in my case Teddy's), a little jam or honey, and the essential toasted wheat germ. Yum, yum, yum! It makes me feel like there's hope.

So now I'm branching out a little, and of course that means I run the risk of losing some of the satisfaction I get from the aforementioned combination, but I gain empowerment because I think I've being less rigid. I tried Heidelberg raisin bread today. So far, so good. On the plus side, nice warm raisins, nice chewy texture. The down side? It ain't whole wheat, no how, no way.

What do you eat to get by when the goin' gets tough? Yeah, I know I've asked such questions before, but I think it's so much fun. I know a certain college professor who could come up with a great comment on this one, but I know he won't. Alas!
Happy Day everyone out there!

Welcome to my chamber . . .

I wish I could figure out how to spell that scary Dracula noise; you know the one that's like Mmmmaahhhhhahahaha. That's the best I can do. That's what I thought an MRI would be like. Some little hunchbacked guy says something like "Ms. Murphy, we are ready for you" while rubbing his hands together in mad-scientist fashion, and inside it's all dark and kinda Minority Report-esque. But that's not what it's like at all. It wasn't the least bit scary (I had an open MRI). I guess the concrete thing that's inches from one's face could cause some folks a little tremor. The room had several windows and a great view of fall foliage.

But, the noise. I think it's funny that everyone and everything, the receptionist, the first lab tech, the second lab tech, and even the questionnaire asked me about claustrophobia, but said nothing about the insane noises made by MRIs. The first noise bore some resemblance to the sound a building or a bridge makes when it's starting to collapse, only regular and steady. I thought, okay, this must be normal because if the machine was about to fall on me these nice people would probably rush in to pull me out. Right?

After that, they would warn me via the head phones when another scan was about to start and how long it was going to be. The scans themselves are only a few minutes long, which is probably really good because if you're subjected to the noises long enough, your head starts thinking that anything that makes that much noise can't be good. It's like, I suppose, a poltergeist in that respect.

So, I'm proud of myself for not freaking out. Why, you might be thinking, is this so important to her? Well, it's like problematizing and overcoming history, and I don't care what Linda Hutcheon says about the text, I'm doin' both here. Yeah, I know any former grad students who read this will accuse me of playing fast and loose with Hutcheon. Whatever! Bring it on! I'm feeling feisty today!

A little family history. Once my father was bedridden off and on for almost ten weeks. Some of you know he's 97 now, but this was years ago when he was very vigorous. He had what turned out to be a hernia and was in excruciating pain. Once, my mother almost bled to death via a slow leak that was never found, and she wound up losing 3/4 of her blood volume. I could go on with anecdotes. I could tell you about my Aunt El's leg turning blue from ankle to knee before she went to the doctor, but I think you get the point. Our family doctor was the perfect partner in crime, too. He never looked at any body parts; his office didn't even have paper gowns. I swear I'm not making that part up. Come to think of it, maybe he was actually a shaman, but one who could write prescriptions.

What's this got to do with the MRI? Well, it illustrates that part of my culture (a very profound part) is made up of lovely and beloved people who would've rather done just about anything than seek out medical help. They're not simpletons; they don't think that modern medicine itself is scary. I think they just deep down remember that when they were young people went to the doctor and often got worse, not better. Yeah, they're that old. So I grew up freaking out over every immunization, every allergy shot, probably because my poor mother started seething with anxiety just calling and making the appointment. My pediatrician deemed me "volatile" (as in, Mrs. Murphy Patricia is "volatile") as he wrote the word on my chart. I won't tell you how Dr. Stern the oral surgeon felt about my temperament. Actually, I was terrified, and well, maybe a little volatile.

So, I'm pretty proud of myself when I can handle stuff, especially something like an MRI that makes even calm people quiver a little. My bravery does have boundaries, however. I just couldn't bring myself to give consent for the contrast dye. I read the form three times and just wasn't comforted by vague statements like "in a small number of people . . . death" and the fairly substantial list of other reactions. I just kept sitting there, pen in hand, thinking jeez can I really add nausea and vomiting to my list of physical problems right now, even if it only lasts "a few days"?

I like it when I can do things that help me overcome some of the anxieties that I know we all feel, but that maybe I, thanks to nature and nurture, have too much of a tendency to give in to. I still shake my head in wonder sometimes that it took me three anxiety-filled attempts to learn how to drive, and that I didn't get a dl until I was 28 years old.

Anybody got any bravery stories for me? Jess, are you inspired to get that permit and join the rank and file of roller derby drivers on the GSP? You can do it, baby!

What Kind of Nut Job . . .

is excited about getting an MRI? Well, me. Today's the day I go for my MRI and I couldn't be happier. Well, I could be a lot happier if I wasn't in constant pain, but that's beside the point. Since I woke up today, I've had the Bugs Bunny theme song in my head:

Overture, curtains, lights! This is it, the night of nights.
No more rehearsing and nursing our parts: we know every part by heart
Overture, curtains, lights. This is it, you’ll hit the heights!
And oh what heights we’ll hit! On with the show this is it!
Tonight what heights we’ll hit. On with the show this is it!

I feel like getting this MRI will at least help me get on with it, find out what's going on in that mysterious wonderland we call the lumbar region. And I would be so tickled if the whole set up was like that scene from The Wizard of Oz, you know the one. I don't really have any hopes that it will be, though. However, with my Bugs Bunny song in my head, I should be able to focus on lying still for the requisite half hour and bring that ever-delicious cartoon element to the situation.

Which reminds of something that I've been meaning to ask for awhile. Am I the only one out here who would secretly like to be a cartoon character? Oops, there goes the secret. I grew up wanting so badly to be Bugs Bunny; he was smarter than his peers and mean, mean, mean, but somehow you just knew there was some goodness inside. In fact though, I'm a lot more like Elmer Fudd, in that even though I get older and older, I'm still really gullible.
Schones (entshuldigen fur die "schones"; Blogger hat kein umlaut) Montag Freuden!

I got out of the house!

Yes, my back was killing me by the end of the day, but I got out of the house yesterday. D and I went north for a drive to look at fall foliage. I discovered a strange phenomenon; the foliage was better right around where I live than it was closer to where (scientifically speaking) it ought to have been further along in the process. I wish we could have walked along the canal, which must be stupendous right now, but I'm not there yet. Well, I am, but my back isn't.

When I was a kid growing up in the big NJ I used to think that because the leaves were usually at their zenith right around the time of my birthday the whole thing had been designed in honor of me. It gets better. My older brother once said that he always felt his birthday (three days after mine) kicked off the holiday season. You known Stephen John Murphy Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and then Christmas and New Years. I'm starting to think I come from a family of egomaniacs. My only defense is that I thought such things as a kid; SJM, on the other hand, was about 45 when he said this.

I also turned my eternal quest for optimism in a new direction yesterday. I bought a new rug for my bedroom, a new bedspread, and new place mats for my nightstands. I have two cool nightstands with kind of beat up tops, so a covering is crucial. My room is pink, no not my choice, I just haven't repainted since I moved in to this ancient heap of a house. The walls are pink with a hand stenciled border (the previous owner was an artist) and the wood floor is a sort of well, almost eggplant color. So, I don't have a lot to work with, since I'm not a girly girl so floral prints are OUT. I found a cool striped rug at Target (cheap!) and a new (ridiculously cheap!) cocoa bedspread with pink stitched (like a thin stencil almost) flower shapes, like outlines, get it? My powers of description are not keen when it comes to describing bedrooms, sorry. The place mats for my funky nightstands are a kind of olive green. Very funky I think. The thinking is that since the bedroom's basically my prison, it might as well be a cool looking prison.

We also stopped and bought apples at Northstar Orchard, which made me a little sad because so much has happened (like apple season!) since I've been in jail. But basically it was an optimistic day, finished off by a visit to a new sushi place. I never would have guessed when I moved here five years ago that the greater Utica area (that's funny; when I type that I feel like I'm making a joke) could support not, but two sushi restaurants. The sushi was good, the service sucked. The appetizers were good, but they came after the sushi, long after in appetizer years. We had aged tofu and edamame (sp?): quite yummy. The sake was excellent and did not smell or taste at all like lighter fluid.

So I guess the moral of my story is: thank goodness I'm middle class and can redo my bedroom and eat sushi! The transition from starving graduate student has often left me feeling a little apologetic, staid and slightly foul for some reason. But heck, yesterday I liked being middle class. D even said something about our middleclassedness. Of course, we're middle class in NY, which actually means we're poor and we just don't know it.

Wherever you are, whoever you are, have a great Sunday. I'm gonna read the Times and eat apples.
Peace

And the winner is . . .

Al Gore. If I were Barack Obama I would have begged him to be vice president, tried to guilt him into it, tried anything. I would have promised him a small country (maybe Lichtenstein), 72 virgins, an icebox cake, whatever. He's not perfect by any means, but there is that one thing he does "right".
Happy Joyous Weekend to All,

Long ago in a faraway kingdom . . .

I wrote a creative doctoral paper. It was "about" contemporary poetry, but ultimately it was about my own struggle to reconcile why I write the way I write. My outside reader from the music department said that the thing she liked about my poetry was that I didn't speak in poems like a victim. She said I took on real "life turmoil" I'll call it for lack of a better phrase, but that my poems indicated strength and determination in the face of personal adversity. In other words, I wasn't a whiner; I wasn't a complaint poet.

Well, tonight's a reading, and I'm in that state that always precedes such events: are the poems cringingly solipsistic; are they trite because of my attempts at humor? Don't get me wrong; I think this is a good thing for me to go through. Poetry is for me the only writing I get to do that isn't in some important way contrived. Sure, I contrive to come up with a good line, contrive to place it well rhythmically with other lines, but poetry is the place where I have the privilege of revisioning audience rather than predicting audience. The poem is mine. It's all about me, but I would love it if the reader/listener felt some connection, walked away with some feeling like "I know what she's talking about. Been there, done that."

I think that's the greatest thing about writing creatively, aside from its therapeutic value I so believe in. I used to belong to a writing group long ago and far away in that place we'll call Idaho, and my only critic (the only one of the four of us who would actually give me a critical response without worrying about what my emotional response would be) would tell me my poems were too cryptic. And they were. I really wanted to put something out there, talk about what was on my mind, but I was too close to things and too unskilled as a writer to know how to do it.

When I went to the Rocky Mountain Writers Festival this year in April, people said my poetry had changed. They liked my new stuff, as they called it. Ironically, some of that new stuff was already old to me because I'd written it over the span of my five year absence from the writing scene there. But I had to say, and I still have to say, that I kinda know what they're talking about. When you as a writer can take the time to get away from big things and enact some change, the substance and texture of the writing can change. The comfort zone from which you write can result, at least in my case, in something more lucid, less laden with . . .

whatever such things are laden with. I don't have any answers about poetry. I have so many times wished it would go away, leave my life -- out damned spot -- that might as well be me talking, but only sometimes. So, as I prepare some poems for tonight by reading through my new stuff, I know I'm going to decide they're all horrible, embarrassing, total clunkers. But I know I'm going to read them any way. And maybe somebody's going to come up to me after the reading and say (it's happened in the past, so I'm crossing my fingers) something like "I really like what you wrote about . . ."

If you're around the vicinity of Clinton, NY, and you want to hear some poems and prose, the College Street Cafe is the place to be at 7:30 tonight.

One last thing: I really had my hopes up for the debate last night, and was sorely disappointed. Joe Biden acted like a civilized human being, and Sarah Palin (I swear this is true) kept her accent and gestures under control so well that I couldn't work on my impersonation. Just as I fell asleep one half hour in, Daryl said her accent was coming back, but by then I'd moved on to bigger and better things in the Land of Nod.

I asked Daryl this morning who the dem v.p. candidate should be. If you'll give me your ideas, I'll let you know his and my response in my next blog post. Think complementary here, if you like. Or think facetiously, if you want. I'm interested either way in what you have to say. Whatchu got?

Happy weekend!

Disclaimer: More Optimism

Many years ago in a land faraway from here (we'll call it Idaho) when I was a teachers' aide, I always loved Thursdays. There was an energy at school on Thursdays that I credited to the impending approach of the weekend and the fact that students had gotten through the malaise that often seemed to strike on Wednesdays, when they were in the thick of it (educationally speaking) and just plain getting tired of all the activities and the demands placed on them. Fridays were often a wash; it was really hard to get anything out of students because they were, I bet, thinking about cartoons and playing outside and sleepovers. This was, I'll interject, back in the day when kids played outside.

I decided to revive my own optimism about Thursdays, so every Thursday I'm going to list and explain a few positive things that have happened this week. If any of you regulars choose to see this as a desperate attempt by someone with a ruptured disc who's been listening to rain for three days, and who was awakened at 5:00 by the sound of "something" landing on her roof, so be it, and of course you're correct. Here goes:
1) Part of the reason I moved back to the East was that I missed rain so much. I think growing up in the garden state hardwired me to at the very least expect rain, so really I shouldn't be complaining too much right now. Rain is lovely in its own way. And it smells good, not like sagebrush like it does in Idaho, but good nonetheless. As long as I take my vitamin D religiously, I should be fine. If not . . . well, I shudder to think of the consequences.
2) My Sarah Palin (voice only, thank you very much) impersonation is coming along very nicely. I've always been pretty good at some accents, abysmally bad at others. Her accent's tricky. If you put too much "Minnesota" in it, you loose some of the roundedness that makes it interesting.
3) The vp debate is tonight, and I think it will be interesting whether or not Joe Biden has been drinking.
4) I was able to do about one half hour of weights and crunches yesterday.
5) I have proudly (in a puffed up moment of what could turn out to be ridiculously false bravado) proclaimed that I might be able to take a short (around the block) walk this weekend. Hey, it's a goal.
6) My Pin (short for Pinhead, the nickname I call my youngest daughter when I want to remind her that no mommy is perfect) seems much happier this week now that some household issues have worked themselves out.
7) Because of my back attack I've lost five lbs. I'm pretty sure they were the only five lbs. of muscle I had on my body, but heck, that's what the weights are for.
8) I'm going to read some poems tomorrow night at the cafe, and it's going to be fun. I love doing poetry readings -- they make me scared and happy all at the same time.
9) I got to kiss the Lean Cuisine goodbye last night and have pho with a certain extra special someone. Man, did it taste good. And driving to and from Pho Mekong didn't make me feel like crap, painwise.
10) The imaging center called, so it looks like my MRI has been (finally) preapproved by the almighty Empire Plan.
11) Dr. Draney's pep talk and accompanying article has really made me feel back on track as a compositionist. Rock on, Dr. D!

Hey, that's a lot of positive things. I'm quite surprised, actually. Anybody out there have any optimism you'd like to share? I'd love to hear it. Carlie, perhaps you're feeling better and have received a lifetime supply of chocolate coffee beans in the mail?

Happy Thursday, drip drip.

Ya Gotta Accentuate the Positive, Right?

Yeah, that's the spirit Murphy! Glass half full, right? Well, that's today's motto for me. I don't even care if it's trite and overused. I'm feeling better, pain-wise, and part of that means looking forward to some fun and funny events, some real, some surreal.

I think the v.p. debates will be quite surreal. I am, and always have been, a democrat, but I'm going to try not to be too smug. Joe Biden's no prize, as I see it, but Sarah Palin has become a joke of great magnitude. Now, I could give into that perfectly natural democrat response that says something like, well it's our turn and we've watched the country degrade so much in the past eight years: bring on the blood bath! I could sit in front of my telly (I'm trying on new (to me) words here) with a glass of wine and hoot and holler, I suspect. But maybe I won't. I saw the Katie Couric (sp?) interview and felt so sorry for the woman. On the other hand, really, what was she thinking? That nobody would notice her lack of background and preparedness because she is so genuine? By the way, I do think she is . . . what you see is what you get, except fiscally it seems. Lena, my dear, I expect a response and will be sorely disappointed if I don't get one.

In reverse order of my "thesis statement," I'm really looking forward to our reading Friday night at the College Street Cafe and Artists' Studio. It'll be great to get out of the house, say goodbye to my LOST friends (what's left of them) for an evening, and hear what everybody else has been writing. I have new work to read, and I'm thrilled to say it's not hysterical "lumbar" poetry. Wow, what a sub genre that would be!

I'm also going to buy Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and The Death of Adam this weekend, then choose which to read first. I'm drawn to both, but in my current dim witted state (still a little fuzzy, head-wise) I think the novel will win out. Robinson is just so smart a writer that I know The Death of Adam will be quite brilliant, and those Puritans are so delicious, but I also know I'll have to be a little less dopey to really get anything out of it. It actually scared me how much I loved Housekeeping all those years ago.

I'm also sure that pretty soon I'll be able to bend over and pick up all the laundry that's strewn about the house. I did it once last week and it didn't work out so well. I see this scenario as a treat until I remember that the next step is actually washing it and putting it away. Right now, my house sorta looks like a consignment store.

One final "bright note" (I hope you're not already sick of my optimism): at school yesterday I watched one of my freshman students register to vote. I shook his hand.

Have a great day!