Patty's Weblog

In my iPod lingo, a "keeper" is a song that I do not delete from the iPod after I listen to it. The following song is actually a sleeper-keeper. It's a quiet song, doesn't have a catchy tune. I just like the lyrics. The "I wanna get off and go home again" reminds me of the part of the Stoney End by Laura Nyro that caught my ear when I was twenty-one: "Mama, let me start all over. Cradle me, mama cradle me again."

Yes, 99% of the time we are all content grown-ups. But now and then, we just want someone to take care of us. Sometimes we don't want to keep going towards the end of the journey, but want to stay where we are.

No, I'm not colorblind
I know the world is black and white
Try to keep an open mind
But I just can't sleep on this tonight

Stop this train
I wanna get off
And go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can
But honestly, won't someone stop this train?

Don't know how else to say it
Don't want to see my parents go
One generation's length away
From fighting life out on my own

Stop this train
I wanna get off
And go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can
But honestly, won't someone stop this train?

So scared of getting older
I'm only good at being young
So I play the numbers game
To find a way to say that life has just begun

Had a talk with my old man
Said "help me understand"
He said "turn sixty-eight
You renegotiate"

"Don't stop this train
Don't for a minute change the place you're in
And don't think I couldn't ever understand
I tried my hand
John, honestly we'll never stop this train"

Once in awhile, when it's good
It'll feel like it should
And they're all still around
And you're still safe and sound
And you don't miss a thing
Till you cry when you're driving away in the dark
Singing

Stop this train
I wanna get off
And go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can
Cause now I see I'll never stop this train

Stop This Train, John Mayer, Continuum.

Some days at work I am doing lots of things at once: helping different students, working on projects, cleaning up messes, getting labs ready for the next day, copying quizzes, yada yada. Last week I was doing one thing when a student needed help on something else and I said "Wait a minute, I have to bookmark . . . my life."

Grabbing a post-it, I jotted down a clue to where I left off on one track that I was on. Then I chuckled, thinking of my life as a book that I could mark and get back to a little later.

Walking in from my car to work, I was thinking of noting how nice the day was in a blog entry. The usual mushy stuff, like, the sky is blue, spring starts tomorrow, things in general are going well in my life, how it's good to stop and appreciate the good times, blah blah and rah rah. (Although I really mean it.)

Then something really cool happened. I went to the rec center and was getting ready for my workout. And then - and then! - I noted that in the stall the case that usually covers the toilet paper roll was off and folded back. The whole huge roll was exposed! No reaching up to try to find the start of the roll. No getting my hand stuck between the roll and the case. No spinning the roll one way and then the other hoping that the end would dislodge and decide to let the user know where the start was. No pulling on the end of the cheap paper and having it crumble into small bits. I could gracefully unwrap as much as I wanted.

I sat there staring in rapt amazement. Now THAT'S the sign of a good day.

Once in a while I feel that I am going into a fog, the fog that I used to work so hard to get to when in my twenties.

Maybe the hippies will be a generation that does indeed age gracefully, back into the fog.


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I have a favorite poem torn from a SF magazine tacked near my computer at work. It's by W. Gregory Stewart (and while researching for this blog, I realize that I also have a W. Gregory Stewart poem beneath my display at home - that one's about playing marathon solitaire, and I've played over 13,000 games).

For copyright reasons, I won't quote all of Stewart's poem. It's entitled "as much as most". Here are the parts that I find especially compelling:

"Here is as much as most folks need to know about space, time . . . If you go fast enough from as many A to as many B as you can why then you will eventually come to a place where you see yourself across a river. . . . And here is as much as most folks will want to know about Freud and the boys - whether you can meet your dreams on the AB itinerary will determine whether you look yourself in the eye when you do, or blink if you do - or want to wave."

Each time I read this, I think of it anew. If I saw myself across a river, like a river of time, would I look myself in the eye, blink, or wave?

I'd wave.

I think of this as I pass through my days. What am I working towards? It comes to me that I should choose to do things that would make my old and young me's want to wave at my now-me. It's a kind of a philosophy, if you think about it.

Chickens! Years ago on a whim I started collecting chicken items. I look around my kitchen and the walls and cupboards are plastered and stuffed with photos and plastic and fabric and ceramic replicas of chickens.

But . . . maybe my collection wasn't driven by a simple whim. Maybe an underlying supernatural force guided my homage to the chicken, because today I saw a sign - a sign! - from the Great Chicken God in the burned-food patterns of the toaster oven tray.

I was in a treatment room at the doctor's office for a routine dermatology appointment last week. Actually, the day was my birthday. The door was closed but I could hear the nurses and doctors talking about patients as they walked noisily up and down the corridor. I heard one of them say " . . . the older woman in room . . . "

Could they mean me? Am I now in the category of older people?

Later, at home, I looked at my face in the mirror. Not the usual cursory glance to make sure I am somewhat presentable, but a full, glasses-on scrutinization. Perhaps those deep lines, lost eyelashes, waddly neck skin do make me appear "older". Sometimes I sit on the couch and study my hands, intrigued by the many patterns of wrinkles and folds of skin and age spots.

I don't mind much, but it is interesting to know that others think of me as older. I still think of myself as in my favorite photo of myself at 5 years old, roller-skating down the sidewalk.

Go to read more for my younger photo.
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If I had to recommend only one of the teaching company courses to someone I like, that course would be The Story of Human Language. And the reason is not so much for the course material, but for the lecturer, John McWhorter. He could talk about most anything and I think I would enjoy it. A Google search of his name pulls up many links, including a Wikipedia entry. He studies creole languages and has written several books, including Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America. He sprinkled the lectures with subtle humor. For instance, in a discussion of some intellectual aspect of language he tossed in a reference to the US as "a tortured, first-world, over-developed country".

A tortured, first-world, over-developed country. Says up a lot.

An example of over-development recently popped up right next to where I live. For a couple decades, we have lived a ways out in the country on dirt roads with homes widely spread. No roads were marked, but we all got around just fine. Overnight the county must have decided that that was not right. See the photo below. They went a little overboard.



If my grammar here is a little less formal than normal, it's because of the course. I now feel that sometimes it's important to just let those grammar rules go. To be less tortured. More on this and other ideas and a couple more photos are in the continuation of this blog entry.
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Out of the corner of my eye I notice my cat crossing the room and know she is a witch's cat. A slinking, dark kitty, in her life I am the only one she has befriended.

I stir my chemist's pot of bubbling brew, happy for her company.

Questions of Value is my current Teaching Co. course (Prof. Patrick Grim). The third lecture addresses what we value in a life, asks us to think about what we think is a good life. Is a good life one that is prized, or is it one that is praised? A life that is enviable, or one that is admirable?

The enviable life is one full of endless enjoyment, parties, and pleasure (think Paris Hilton). Viewed from inside this life, it is full of good fun, and some people value this type of life above all others. In contrast, the life that is admirable is one that people on the outside consider a life of value. "He is a good person." It's sometimes a life of self-sacrifice for the good of others. (Think of Ghandi, or Sister Theresa).

Consider these two types of "good" lives. In my opinion, it is important for us to take time occasionally to consider or re-consider our goals. Am I after worldly goods, items that offer me comfort or are that are the current fad, or would I rather act in ways that help other people, even if it means self-sacrifice?

In the end, Prof. Grim and I agree that a happy medium is the best: Help others, and also work to make your own days pleasurable.

Take some time now and then to make sure that your life is in balance.

Prof. Grim validated some ideas that have come to me over the years. If you sacrifice to help someone else, you are usually giving that person pleasurable things. Okay. So, you are leading a valuable/admirable life, while helping someone else have a valued/pleasurable life. If the life that is more valued is the one that is admirable, you rob the person you have "helped" of having a valuable life, because all they get to do is sit back and enjoy the pleasurable things you have given them.

Prof. Grim categorized learning for the sake of learning as one of life's pleasures. I've always thought that.

I like the philosophy courses because they give words and validation to many ideas that have drifted across my consciousness all these years.

Back to the philosophical value of a life. I wrote in the above paragraphs that I believe a life of value is some combination of pleasure and hard work and sacrifice; a balance, a constant tug-and-pull of what you feel you should do to help others or society, and what you want to do to please yourself. I think this reflects directly our internal selves, the id and ego as explained in the psychology courses that I have taken. The striving for pleasure while the little voice in the back of your head says you should instead be doing what is "right". You want to eat that brownie, but your conscience tells you that it will make you fat. You want that new pair of shoes, while your conscience tells you that you should save your money and you cannot steal the shoes. On an internal basis, we have not a struggle with a life valued as enviable or admirable, but a struggle within our own self about what will bring us pleasure and what is best for our survival, or what is the proper way to act.

So, what to do? I combine pain and pleasure. Like going to do my work-out: the exercise will be a lot of hard work, but the music flows from my iPod and I feel pleasure. Or I go for a bike ride, and the hard ride is softened by the nifty new bike and I am rewarded by a view of the back range.