discovering what i think

I once heard someone introduce an author as someone who "writes for the pleasure of discovering what he thinks." I thought that was a beautiful way to sum up what the writing process is all about. It's not all pleasure of course, but I find that astounding personal growth—and the satisfaction of having grown—is often as much a product of writing as the written piece itself.

Today I turn to writing because I long to feel better. I hope the critical thinking that writing requires will help me grow and feel better, even if just a little. Also, I find that having to extract thoughts from my own head and say them "out loud" sometimes demystifies them. Things that seem so important and true within the labyrinth of my mind are often exposed for the folly they are when I bring them out for show and tell. I recently learned a beautiful line from the play Macbeth. As Macbeth ponders his wish to kill the king and gain the throne for himself, he says "Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires." Only I desire the opposite: I want to bring my darkest fears and weaknesses out of myself so that they whither in light-saturated reality.

next painting?

Seed pods nicked from a tree in front of my son's school last week. I was transported by their systematic yet wild beauty. Trans. Ported. I'm still not sure how I will approach the painting stylistically, but I have a few ideas I'd like play with. There seems to be a lot of room for experimenting with paint application and texture. First some sketches to get a feel for the pods, stems, tendrils, highlights, textures, and shadows. Then I will play with the paint. I wonder what will happen. I wonder if "god" will decide to show up in my paint the way he lives in the thing itself. I'm planning to work both from photographs and the real thing. The photos are mostly a reference point for the light patterns I'm aiming for and to keep a record of the pods in case my small son finds them on my shelf and decides to explore their inner nature. Nothing gold can stay; it's best to be prepared.

Follow-up note: I did paint this as a still-life and will try to post a photo of the painting soon. I treated this painting as an exercise in thinking about light. Very enjoyable process.

tattoo

It's late and I really should be heading to bed, but I was just thinking about something I wanted to jot down. The past couple days I've been focused on getting a tattoo. I wouldn't say obsessed, just focused. Really focused. I've been pondering a tattoo for years, but until recently I hadn't been thinking about it seriously. It just never seemed like a good fit for me before. I mean, it's permanent, on your skin—your wrapping, your shell, your soft and vulnerable exterior.

This permanence has both positive and negative points. Such permanence, to me, is like a scar—I would willfully be scarring my skin. Making it ugly? What could be more beautiful than unscarred skin? And yet, permanence indicates a certain devotion—a certain loyalty and seriousness. What, in my life, am I certain will never change? What am I utterly, unalterably devoted to? Only one thing really: my child. In particular, my child while he is a child. So little, so vulnerable, so dependent on the goodwill and sound judgment of the adults around him, especially me, his mother. As soon as he was born—before he was born—I knew that I would do anything to protect and nurture him. It's such a primitive, almost violent, need to keep my child safe and thriving. I remember rocking him to sleep when he was a baby, looking down at his beautiful, pudgy baby face and realizing that pure love and pure violence—apparent opposites—are sometimes two sides of the same coin. To protect this innocent for whom I felt pure love, I would, without a doubt, destroy anyone or anything that threatened his existence. I remember Jon Stewart, the comedian, saying essentially the same thing about becoming a father—that suddenly you realize you could kill.

In a way I have already scarred my body for my child. I have stretch marks on my belly, breasts, and thighs, and my skin will never recover its elasticity. My understanding is that even ancient skeletons can be identified as mothers due to hairline pelvic fractures acquired during delivery. From what I remember of the intense and frightening pressure as my child traveled through my pelvis, this finding seems entirely plausible. So do I really need another scar on my body to keep the essence of my child and my own motherhood fresh in my mind? I want to consider that question.

My son and I like to sing Edelweiss, among other songs, before he falls asleep at night. It's from a sometimes silly musical, and I don't even like musicals really. But my father sang it to me when I was little and now I sing it to my own child. These simple facts alone make me happy.

 Edelweiss, edelweiss, Every morning you greet me. Small and white, Clean and bright, You look happy to meet me. Blossom of snow may you bloom and grow, Bloom and grow forever. Edelweiss, edelweiss, Bless my homeland forever.

It's easy for me to imagine the words of this song, written in devotion to a small white flower in the Alps, are for my own son, who, like me, has skin on the far-fair end of the spectrum. Blossom of snow may you bloom and grow, bloom and grow forever. It would probably sound silly to anyone else, but since I've been singing Edelweiss to him since he was a tiny baby, it means an awful lot to me.

Which brings me back to the tattoo. It occurred to me that I would very much like to bear some physical mark of my child—something other than the stretch marks and episiotomy scar I acquired in the early days. I want a record of him as he is now—a very little person—before he thinks I'm annoying or embarrassing, while I'm still the center of his world and we still hold each other and sing unabashedly every night before bed. I know this sweet time is fleeting and I'm trying to soak up every drop while I can.

Given all this, I've decided I want an edelweiss scar. I want to carry those bedtime songs with me on my skin for the rest of my life, just the way I do on the inside where only I can see. I want to be able to look into the mirror and be reminded that this little boy has left a permanent mark on me, a beautiful scar. Edelweiss, edelweiss, bless my homeland forever. I should be so lucky.

k-mart

Sometimes I like to walk around K-Mart all by myself in the evening. It's open late and it's five minutes from my house, so every few weeks, after Liam goes to bed and Scott becomes absorbed in his computer game or Family Guy, I head out. I usually really need something like toothpaste or hair color, but that's not why I go. I go because it's a chance to lose myself in fantasy. Yes, K-Mart is my fantasy land, but I have to go alone, at night, or it doesn't work.

I love to walk in and head for the hair color aisle. There are hundreds of colors. Hundreds. I usually go for dark strawberry blond or light auburn, which is close to my natural color but slightly more interesting. Sometimes I go a little lighter or darker, or maybe a different brand, but I look them all over every time. I imagine myself with short dark hair like the pretty, sophisticated-looking lady down the street who takes her kids to my son's karate school. I've wanted dark hair ever since I was a little girl. It has always seemed more mysterious and dangerous and alluring to me, which are things I've always secretly wanted to be. With dark hair I'd be a creature so unlike who I am—the wholesome Midwestern girl with strawberry blond hair, freckles, and a desperate fear of hurting people, or being hurt. On the other hand, sometimes I imagine getting the peroxide streaking kit and being very blond with sun-dried beachy hair, a tanned little nose, and a perky, fun-loving personality. I would take up surfing and be good at it, and wear a red bikini and feel nothing but warm sunshine and busty confidence. The boys would like me, especially the lifeguards, and I wouldn't be afraid of them. But mostly I want to have lots and lots of dramatic, wild, curly dark red hair, like a Pre-Raphaelite fairy tale character or Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. I tried it once about twelve years ago. My hair was long and I dyed it very red and slept in pink foam rollers. The next morning I went to work with my hair and gave tours to old ladies all afternoon. By evening the curls had gone limp and I felt like an ass. I washed my hair several times to fade the color, but it was a state of being only time could mend. Back at K-Mart, I consider all my options—all the people I could be, all the lives I could live—and then select my usual L'Oréal RB8 and put it in my basket.

Next I head for the shoe department. The shoes are terrible at K-Mart, but I always scrutinize every aisle just in case I find a gem. In winter I look at slippers. They are all imposters, but I like them anyway. Some look like princess slippers, all pink and fuzzy with little satin bows in the front. Some are made for a pretend ski lodge, with faux wool linings and indoor/outdoor soles. Usually they don't have my size (M, 7–8), just lots of small and big ones (S, 5-6 and XL, 11–12). Once I did find a pair of pretend ski lodge slippers in my size and I bought them. I wear them year-round when I'm doing housework, even though they tore in the front early on. The soles are slippery too, so I have to be careful on the stairs.

Hosiery is next and typically more promising. I can count on K-Mart to have interesting tights that will last through a wash or two, which is really all you need. I usually check the thigh-high hosiery display as well—I sometimes like thigh-highs because they don't pinch my waist after lunch. I never like K-Mart's selection, but it never stops me from looking, just in case. The women on the fronts of the thigh-high packages are all decked out in corsets and lacy underwear, as if taking away the control-top suddenly makes the whole concept of nylons more exciting. Could I ever be like that take-her-home-to-mother whore on the package? Me, who knows all of my own inadequacies so intimately? She looks so happy and comfortable in her sexy thigh-highs and bustier. But then, she has dark hair. She is by nature mysterious and exciting. Perhaps I could exchange the L'Oréal RB8 for something darker and buy the sheer thigh-highs? Does K-Mart sell the corsets too? No. No. Better to go with the opaque thigh-high tights in the plain packaging at Wal-Mart. They will be warmer in the winter anyway.

At least 25 minutes have passed. Sometimes I move on to the gloves, scarves, hats, and handbags area. Accessories really are the most transforming of possessions. K-Mart sells a winter glove I really like, with half-fingers and a moveable mitten-top you can flip back and forth to cover or expose your finger-tips as needed. For two years in a row I've bought these glove-mittens in red. They are the only red things I own and I love them. One spring I bought a 100% real straw gardening hat and I put it on whenever I weed my garden boxes. I love this hat as well. When I wear it I am in southern Africa under a hot sun, trying to grow coffee like Meryl Streep. Sometimes, at K-Mart, I also try on polyester newsboy hats or plastic aviator sunglasses or rayon scarves or vinyl motorcycle bad-girl handbags with faux metal studs. I feel comfortable in none of these things, but I put them on and look in the mirror anyway, hoping no one is watching. I am a grunge model, Amelia Earhart, Grace Kelly, and Joan Jett.

Sometimes I stroll through the patio furniture display or the garden section. The pool toys, board games, office supplies, linens, furniture, and (a favorite!) the kitchen gadgets. I pick things up, examine them, consider the price, and put them back. I do this over and over and over again, all the while knowing I will most likely never buy any of this cheap, piece-of-shit merchandise. But I like to consider these items carefully. I like to imagine what it would be like if they were nice and I had them all in my dream house with my dream life and my dream self, who could change every day depending on her moody inclinations.

And then, when my conscience tells me I'll start to raise questions at home if I'm gone much longer, I head to one of the two open check-out lanes. I wait and wait, and finally I unload the contents of my shopping basket onto the counter: one box of L'Oréal RB8 hair color, one pair of cheap tights, children's spf 50 sunscreen, a birthday card, and boys' size 6 Batman underpants. Sue (Layaway Manager) scans my selections and puts them in plastic bags. I swipe my debit card and stare at the giant bra Sue is wearing under her cheap polyester blouse. Lace? Sue? Really? Pin number entered, receipt taken, have a nice evening. Oh, Sue, you have no idea. I have had a nice evening. I've been a whore and the Princess of Monaco, a surfer girl and Robert Redford's Danish-African lover, all courtesy of K-Mart and the miracle of synthetic fibers. I feel refreshed, renewed, and ready to go home and face my reality for a few more weeks, until RB8 fades and it's time, inevitably, to recolor.

fear

In the grip of other intense emotions, like grief and jealousy, we might feel anguish, but fear shuts us down, arrests the life force—to be driven by fear is like dying inside.

Sharon Salzberg, "Faith"
In the Face of Fear

genesis

thoughts on creativity

I wrote this little number last year, in the midst of a personal renaissance that followed five intensive years of baby-minding. I had just watched a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert regarding the nature of creativity, and it struck a chord in me that I hadn't heard in a long time. I felt compelled to work out some of my thoughts in writing. I don't think I ever polished this mini-essay, but I still think it's worth keeping. Since I worked out these thoughts last year, I managed to finish one painting and am working on two more. I have sketched more, written more, and felt more comfortable in my own skin than ever before. It was a powerful time of growth for me, and it's still evolving.

I must admit that against my will I have come to find this woman unbelievably insightful, honest, sane, and helpful. She’s the one who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, which I received out of the blue from a friend last year. Of course, at the time, I read 10 pages and completely dismissed the author and her book because it’s a NYT bestseller, which obviously means it’s a shallow, touchy-feely piece of crap that only masses of soft-minded, soft-bodied, Oprah-loving women would find meaningful. But goddammit I picked the book up again a couple weeks ago and it’s really fantastic. 

That’s all I’ll say about the book. I just wanted to set the scene. You know, to explain how I ended up googling this woman. So I googled her and found this excellent talk she gave recently in California, and it made me see orange (a good thing), and breathe a sigh of relief (a rare thing), and feel like I have a new friend (just hearing the thoughts of someone whose take on life is so similar to my own). (And by the way, if/when you watch the video of her talk—it helps to know that when she says “god” she doesn’t mean “God.” She means the Poetry rather than the Prose.)

She’s talking about the nature of creative people and how difficult it can be to manage your self, your creative drive, criticism (from others and from yourself), fear of failure, and the confusion that comes with the same force simultaneously keeping you alive and threatening to destroy you. What is this thing? Where does it come from? How do you live with it without going crazy?

Coincidentally, I’ve been pondering these same questions more than usual lately. I’ve been excited and encouraged recently to feel my perception of my self shift from I am creative. I can’t stop. It makes me feel crazy. But what have I done? Is anything I produce any good? What does that say about me? Why should I bother if it isn’t any good? Why bother if what I create doesn’t live up to what I feel I can do? Can I make a living as an artist? Do I really deserve to be called an artist?  

to
I am human, and to be human can be many things. It’s as if “god” (for lack of a better term)—the engineer, the painter, the sculptor, the philosopher, the mathematician, the chemist, the biologist, the physicist, the clown, the poet, the creator, the lover, the destroyer—split into billions of pieces and became living beings. My particular shard of humanity happens to be heavy on the creative ingredients in their many forms.

So now, rather than focusing on Me, My Identity, and whether I feel I meet the Artistic Person Criteria as I understand it, I suddenly find I am reveling in the thought that I am not unique. Millions of people are heavy on the creative ingredients and we all share the same battle and bewilderment with the creative drive. The natural impulse is to fight to establish one’s identity, if only to oneself, as an artist whose work and voice and soul is different from anyone else’s—to prove yourself to your self as much as to others. I, Me, Mine. I am an artist. Look at Me. This work is Mine.

But now, suddenly, I don’t feel I have to prove anything. I am not competing. I am what I am and I can’t help that, in both good ways and bad. To my usual self, who strives (mostly privately) to prove that she deserves the title Artist or Creator, I want to say, with the compassion of a mother, “Shhh, it’s ok. Be still.” Just do what you do because that is who you are—you couldn’t help creating, even if you tried. The act is all. The process—the creating itself—is all. What you strive for is already there in your fabric. Just sit down and do it—practice your craft, in every sense of these words. That is your job, that is your voice, that is who you are and what you do. It doesn’t mean you won’t struggle with your work, because you will. But that struggle is the point—it’s what makes you alive. Just don’t let the struggle take control and have the last word.

So this is what I’d been thinking about over the weekend, and when I listened to Elizabeth Gilbert’s talk. Her (and Tom Waits’s and the Greeks’) notion that the creative drive is like a collaborator—something you can ask to go away and come back when you’re ready—made me smile. It was like warm milk when you can’t sleep. All my life I’ve been fearfully running from this creative drive when I feel it coming—it makes me crazy and sick and upset. Yet it lives with me and I can’t get rid of it—like the “genius” in the walls she refers to. Tom Waits’s idea that you can take over the reins and negotiate the relationship never occurred to me before. I’d always assumed it was a ghost that haunted me at will unless I hid from it. Who would have thought you could ask it to wait a minute? I’m just so damn glad to know these people are out there and that their shard of humanity has so many of the same ingredients as mine. I don’t care if they’re more prolific or successful than me—that’s all gravy. All I care about is that for the first time I’m finding comfort and inspiration in that notion that I’m one of a million, rather than one in a million.

minor confessions

I sneak Scooby Doo fruit snacks from my own pantry every night. I stare, practically paralyzed, at my child after he has fallen asleep. I smell his hair, listen to his breathing, and feel his tiny shoulder with my hand. I am afraid of almost everything. I rip up my cuticles when I'm preoccupied or nervous. I don't want to join the PTA. I sing 80s rock ballads really loud in my car because I know all the words. I love watching Family Feud and Murder She Wrote. I think I'm recovering from a case of Athlete's Foot, but I have no idea how I got it. I sometimes wish I could be a big, black jazz singer in a red sequined dress instead of a skinny white girl with anxiety issues. I have no idea what I'm doing. I always cry when I'm angry; it makes my face puffy and purple, but my eyes turn an amazing shade of electric blue. I am alternately fearful of and content with my own hypocrisy. I have been terrified of vomiting since I was six. I feel like I'm always a step behind. I've been systematically sneaking Liam's Easter candy. I love bologna (the meat product, not the city). Someday I would like to travel to India, but I'm scared of what my phobia would do to me while I was there. The second toe on my left foot is longer than that on my right and I have an extra set of ribs. When I was born I was pigeon-toed and had to wear leg braces as a toddler to straighten out my feet. I like my freckles now. I have nightmares that my hair is long again and wake up in a panic. Sometimes I get sick of hearing my own voice.

a few things as i see them

by the bootstraps

Ugh. I'm trying to pull myself up by the bootstraps to face this goddamn housework. It's Monday morning. I decided to take the day off from work to try and get the house and food situation under control--the chaos and mess is more than I can stand. But I'm having tremendous difficulty getting un-slumped this morning. I had crazy stressful dreams last night, including one about giving birth in Linda Eaton's old Subaru to a baby that looked just like Liam. In my dream I relived those exhausting final moments of pushing the baby out, only there was no doctor or nurse there to guide me through it, just Linda, who kept telling me not to push. When the baby was born he appeared to be at least 8 months old, of course, and he had red hair and blue eyes, and I hugged him and hugged him. Another dream addressed my anxiety about having run out of canned peaches. Yet another explored the possible causes and consequences of a suspicious clunking noise that's been coming from under the car this week. Christ. I'm finding, however, that these little blog entries are a real help in maintaining my mental, emotional, and creative equilibrium, especially if it's leaning a bit off-kilter. It's like opening a valve and letting some of the brain-soup trickle out, relieving the pressure and, of course, allowing room for the inevitable, interminable creation of more. So I'm hoping that if I spill some soup here, I'll feel a little more at peace and ready to get down to business with this boring housework. (Ah, if only!)

I think some of my frustration comes from constantly having to be patient--placing so much of what puts color into my life on hold. Creative pursuits, people I love, experiences I crave. It's like being thirsty and sitting outside with a cup waiting for the rain. I can't control when the rain comes and it usually doesn't last long when it does. If I'm lucky the storm fills the cup up enough to last until the next time it rains, but I never know when that will be. The waiting and the utter lack of control is hard. I suppose that's a luxury grievance. But if I never examined the source of my discomfort, I think I'd do myself and those around me an injustice. It's a matter of making sure you can recognize the difference between an immediate, heartbreaking problem (ie I have no food or my child is sick) and a longstanding imbalance or disappointment (I wish I lived in Fantasy Ireland). I suppose it's the "quiet desperation" that bastard Thoreau wrote about (I've never been able to forgive him for going to his mother's for dinner regularly during his time at Walden Pond. Get a job, cook your own dinner, and then tell me your thoughts on life). Ah, I'm starting to feel better already.

Luckily it's a rainy day, which suits my mood. If it were sunny it'd feel like a prom dress at a wake. Ok. I think I can suck it up and pick up the goddamn house now. It's so nice to have a place where I can be as self-indulgent as I want to be and not worry about whether anyone's sick of listening to me. It's like being a kid again. Let's see, where should I begin? The sea of kindergarten worksheets covering the dining room table? The overflowing basket of ironing? The unmade beds? The patched but not painted holes in the walls? The bags of misc for Goodwill? The dishes?

time for bed

Today wasn't too bad, to dip into my midwestern lingo. The thing I'm most satisfied with is planting my tomato seedlings in bright orange Home Depot buckets with holes drilled in the bottom. Nine in all: three cherry, three slicers, and three Brandywine pinks. I also transplanted the basil and parsley seedlings, and planted forget-me-nots in a shady corner. Hopefully the forget-me-nots will mix friendly-like with the volunteer violets that have sprung up there and create a nice perennial spread of dark green with blue and purple flowers. There's already a nice carpet of moss in that space so I'm hoping it will look all woodsy and pretty, and, most importantly, be gorgeous with very little maintenance.

I had to go to a memorial today and so dropped Liam off with the Wieman family at the Hockessin baseball fields near the library. I'm always glad when he spends time with them because their family has three children and it gives him a taste of a more free-wheeling, kid-centered sort of lifestyle. To find the Wiemans, however, we had to tromp through the labyrinth of tee ball and baseball fields filled with suburban youth and their parents. There was just so much yelling. I can deal with cheering most of the time, but the ceaseless barking of commands, gym coach-style, unnerved me completely, just as it always has. "Jeff! Jeff!! Bring in the balls. Go! Go! Go! C'mon. Bring 'em in. Hustle!" I couldn't wait to get out of there. I hate hustling and people who hustle and people who think it's important to hustle. I even hate the word hustle itself. It reminds me of my loathsome gym teacher for seven long middle and high school years. I can still picture him yelling "Hustle!" with sprays of spit flying from his big old disgusting mouth as I tried to figure out how to connect my pale, gangly, teenage appendages with some form of ball. Now that I've officially graduated from multiple levels of formal education I feel I shouldn't have to listen to people who say "hustle" anymore. I've answered all the questions on all the tests, I've completed the courses--even math, I've turned in all my homework, and I have finally been set free from the firm institutional grasp of early life. I don't want to hear "hustle" anymore, especially on a Saturday morning.

The only place I intend on hustling right now is to my bed, and I'm going to do it at my own pace. It's after 11pm, I made a sincere, if weak, effort at ironing this evening, and I have to make a real effort at housework and cooking in the morning if I'm to have any chance at a good week. I've even washed my face already and put on my pajamas. My memory foam mattress pad,  NYT crossword puzzle book, and little bedside lamp are waiting, and everyone else is sound asleep. My favorite part of the day.

a week of losses

Funeral Blues Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead. Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods; For nothing now can ever come to any good. W. H. Auden

This has been a week of losses. On Tuesday I learned that a colleague at work passed away following heart surgery, and also that a couple I was good friends with many years ago, when they first met, are splitting up. Wednesday a man hanged himself from a tree behind the playground at Liam's school, at the entrance to our neighborhood. And today, Friday, I learned that a friend is retiring from Winterthur--I'll miss seeing her face and hearing her stories. I also found out that my parents had to put their cat, Sam I Am, to sleep this morning because no one could figure out why he was so sick.

I feel I haven't been handling all of this very well. It has rattled me more than I expected. I think the suicide got me thinking of the fragility of souls. I've always loved how, many years ago, people used to refer to individuals as "souls," as in "this town was inhabited by 246 souls." As I travel through my days, I sometimes try to imagine the people I pass as souls--souls driving their cars, buying their groceries, and bringing brand-new souls into the world. It strips away all the incidentals. So when I heard that a soul in my very own quiet neighborhood--on a sunny hillside, in a tree with new spring leaves--had been in such a state of despair so as to end his own existence, I felt tremendous grief in my own soul. I don't know his situation, his personality, or his lovable or detestable traits. But if I think of this person simply as a soul I can't help but wish my own soul could have metaphysically been with him and held him and kept him safe through that dark night on the sunny hill, until some sort of help arrived. I suppose that's what some people imagine God to be--the eternal mother-figure of unconditional love. Is it bad that I secretly wish I could be God? I know real people and real problems and my own very real inadequate human-ness make this wish impossible, but I secretly wish I could mother the world. Probably because, since I myself am just a soul, I know how badly I could use those imagined, eternally reliable warm arms around me sometimes.

All that said, I am fortunate that most of my weeks include more gains than losses. I heard a line in a movie once that caught my attention, "We have reached the part of our lives where life stops giving and starts taking away." I am thankful that I am not yet there, and that this week is the anomaly rather than the norm. But it has been sad and difficult nonetheless, and I feel weight and emptiness together in my heart.

But of course there have been occasional moments of pure joy and delight in the ridiculousness of life this week too. One day when I was leaving work, a garden tram was dropping off a load of visitors at the main doors. As I approached the doors, swimming upstream against the disembarking tram passengers, my eyes were drawn to a great swath of undulating pale yellow fabric. It was the babydoll dress of a tremendously obese woman with oddly thin, purplish bare legs. Yards and yards of lemony knit cotton sprinkled with tiny white polka dots, waving like the American flag as she heaved her weight from foot to foot. I'd never seen anything quite like it and was mesmerized like a kid at the circus until, with great force of will, I recovered my manners and mentally noted that I hoped she had a nice visit and could stay standing without incident for the whole 45 minute tour. Immediately behind the tremendous lemon dress was a dwarf in jeans. And immediately behind him was a hunched octogenarian woman with thin scarlet-dyed hair, sideshow makeup, and a shiny violet smock. It made my day.

Can my desire to be a person driven by compassion really survive my love and appreciation for a carnival?