When mistakes don't matter

On the edge of the end of the semester, I am fully in a place where I'm celebrating what students are achieving rather than noting their mistakes, weaknesses, challenges, or whatever neutralish term I assign to the things I focus on that fall short of my assignment. Despite the hurried aspect of trying to get done, the end of the semester is when I enjoy reading their assignments, watching their presentations, and learning exactly what they have learned.

Mistakes don't matter when the literary magazine class has given me and my colleague, their project managers, as we prefer to refer to ourselves, the title in the masthead as Editor & Chief. We kind of like our new sense of selves, and thus, in future literary magazine classes, I imagine that Paul and I will introduce ourselves as the editor and chief. A pun is born that will carry forward.

At times I believe I should record myself at the end of the semester, a reminder that when I grow tired and a wee bit jaded (which fortunately is not often), I need to remember to celebrate student successes. Because it is during those moments that I am so grateful for the cool ass job I have.

At the end of the semester, I finally allow myself time to reflect, even if I profess I am so stressed because I have no time. It's like I can't help that voice inside that sees the rest ahead, that knows that I have worked so hard and am ready to just shake it all off, that voice that keeps reminding me of all the wonders I have experienced this semester.

• I had a student I've known for a couple of years come out to me as trans, watching his face feel finally complete and relieved at being able to take a step into the body and being he sees himself as.
• I watched a group of students who have spent most of the year hanging out in the GLBT Resource Center, shooting the shit, talking some nasty sometimes, laughing, hugging each other every day when they leave and sometimes enter, articulately convey to the school's President and Vice President of Student Success their needs regarding a new GLBT Resource Center. They were passionate, approachable, genuine, and made an impression--on the administrators They left their impression lingering on me.
• I stood in front of a literary magazine class with my colleague and told the students at the start of the semester that in 15 or so weeks, they would produce a literary magazine from start to finish. When we broke down all the work, they looked daunted, not believing this could be. When they opened the boxes of the printed journals yesterday, they looked so proud at what they had accomplished, as a team, on their own. Tomorrow we celebrate with a publication party and an open mic.
• And I anticipate tomorrow, when I get to watch groups of students put on dramatic presentations of plays they've remixed, showing me through their scripts and performance that they understand elements of drama, celebrating all their learning. Not paying attention to any mistakes.

Spring

When I hit this point in the semester, the point where the work never stops, the piles never reach a state of done, and I am Sisyphus, pushing my students and myself, I sometimes just stop. Today, after running some errands, I came home, exhausted, coaxing myself into an afternoon of grading. Before I could commit, I stepped outside to chat with Nan while she industriously prepared the garden. When I felt the spring warmth, I sat back in a bare lounge chair, not quite ready for its cushion, but on the cusp of days holding endless hours with nothing scheduled, nothing due.

Spring holds so much promise for days on my bicycle, spinning laps around Wash Park, staring about at dogs, people, flowers, and green, finally reflecting and creating in my mind. Spring reminds me that even though my freedom is less than ideal now, it is a choice and soon, I will have plenty of space and time for choice.

Time to grade.

Skim-Milk Marriage

Thank you Justice Ginsburg for finding a food analogy for marriage. The past two days of Supreme Court hearings related to the issues of same-sex marriage have put my brain and emotions on overcharge, analyzing with the pundits, unraveling the transcripts, trying to figure out what the words and sentiments mean, staring into my own obscured crystal ball, attempting to read the future.

I live in a state that passed an amendment limiting marriage to between a man and a woman. And while this state recently approved a civil union measure, I am left, as Ginsburg puts it, with not quite the real deal. While many friends celebrated the passage of civil unions, I found myself less than enthusiastic over it. Perhaps it was a year hangover from last year's Colorado legislature session, feeling the level of hate and obstruction that too often characterizes those opposed to sanctioning equal marriage for all. When the civil union measure just recently passed, I smiled relief, but wasn't entirely happy. Several times I've been asked whether Nan and I will civil union. The answer is maybe.

To engage in a civil union means to accept something less than what others have if they desire to publicly claim their union (marriage). And while civil unions accord a slew of rights all protected by a fee and signature, Nan and I already have piled high boxes of paperwork that we paid for years ago in the form of a trust to protect us and give us most of those rights.

When I move to the question of marriage--would I get married--the answer is maybe, probably, I hope. It all really boils down to that public expression of love. Yes, I want equal rights and the same opportunities as married couples, but what I want more is that public acknowledgement that sanctions my union, my love. I want my partnership to be celebrated rather than looked at as somehow not worthy of others. I didn't think I wanted marriage until I listened to Edie Windsor capture the sentiment of marriage best in this short video about her and Thea.

Over the past two days, watching the tweets and blogs roll in as the Supreme Court hearings finished, I found myself caught up in the hope of just decisions regarding the cases. On Facebook, people turned their profiles to the HRC equal symbol on a background of red. While some people chastised folks for simply changing their profile picture rather than doing real action such as contacting legislatures, I found the whole visual display uplifting. When I went to my page the other afternoon and saw a sea of red, I teared up because of the visible support, a moment when I did not feel marginalized and less than.

Honestly, the thing that I want most, and the thing that I don't expect to get, is for the Court to render a judgment that makes a sweeping gesture declaring that any law, any statute, any piece of legislation that places homosexuals in a lesser than category, unequal to heterosexuals, is unconstitutional and cannot be upheld. I would like to see a just declaration that reminds citizens that we are all created equal, and with that, we are all entitled to the same common good, benefits, liberties.

Passover

Sometimes life says you just have to change up the tradition a bit.

Most Passovers, I attend a seder, sitting around a table with a group of people, overstuffing on various courses, drinking wine, singing the traditions of the seder hosts. I like the ritual, the boisterous quality of lots of talk and joyous song, the memories of childhood and Passovers past. I also cannot resist a holiday that a former partner's son nicknamed The Reading Holiday--people sitting around a table reading from a shared book that tells the story of Passover.

As a child, we would have Passover seders with extended family, scrunched into tiny Brooklyn apartments, racing around the small rooms searching for the Afikoman, often hidden in between couch cushions or inside a piano bench. The seders would last an eternity, especially the second half, post dinner, which seemed extremely unnecessary except for opening the door for Elijah, drinking more wine, and singing songs.

When I moved out to Denver, miles too far to travel for a family seder, I attended friends' seders, adopting their traditions, their song renditions, their rhythm of the holiday. Tonight, though, Passover needed to change up a bit. After several weeks of exhausting travel to conferences, followed by a trip back east to a funeral that included lots of hours in the air, airports, and on the road driving, I couldn't muster the energy to attend a seder filled with people.

But, I didn't want to go through the evening without a sense of the holiday. I wanted some type of celebration, even if it was of my own rendition. I didn't really care about reading the story, singing songs, or even all the traditional dishes (that would have taken too much preparation). Instead, I wanted the house to smell of food. So, I lit a candle, set a table with placemats, and Nan and I dined on gefilte fish with horseradish, a lemon-garlic roast chicken, asparagus, and matzo with butter (a childhood treat). With the counters in chaos, the pets prowling about, Nan and I dined happily, in pajamas, at home.

I Can't Resist You, Oscar

Tonight, I will take my perch upon the couch and spend three hours engrossed in the Academy Awards, guessing at the winners, cheering when I'm right, booing when my idea of art is ignored. And even though I know that when it is over, and I announce something akin to "that was a waste of three hours of my life," I will return again each year to spend the evening with Oscar.

I take my preparation seriously, aiming to see as many of the nominated films as possible, ensuring that I am an educated viewer able to pass judgment on film excellence. Since they changed the best picture nominees to a field of 10, I often fall short, as is the case this year. After a whirl of frantic filmgoing, I just couldn't keep up, and so Life of Pi and Les Miserables, I apologize. The other night I devoted hours to viewing all the nominated live action shorts and began viewing the animated shorts. As for the foreign films and documentaries--oh Oscar, I have failed you--although I do believe I have seen the best pics in each of the categories.

But it is not just the guessing that sirens me in each year. It's a cultural history, a ritual born in my early teens. Oscar night always meant a chance to stay up beyond my bedtime. Growing up on the East Coast, the ceremony usually went until 11:00 p.m. or beyond. Not only did staying up late mean a treat, but that night always held an element of surprise--not just in terms of unexpected winners, but in the pomp and circumstance of the speeches. I remember Jane Fonda's anti-war speech when I was 11, Littlefeather's speech (in lieu of Brando) about the treatment of Native Americans when I was 13, a shocked David Niven when a streaker commandeered the stage when I was 14, and Vanessa Redgrave's Palestinian fervor when I was 17.

Each year I'd look forward to the host (Billy Crystal's opening song and dance), the opportunity to banter about the choice of dress, the clips of best picture and other nominees, and the memorial clips of people who had died in the past year (always bringing on tears). Tonight, I will await the musical performance of Adele and clips, wondering when the night's memorable moment will fall.

But before then, I still have a few hours, Oscar, to take in the rest of the animated shorts.

Blogging as a Warm Up

Sometimes, when faced with the task of writing (and yes, it often feels like a task), I first delay, but then often settle upon writing a blog. It's low stakes--sort of. I don't seem to edit as much as I'm writing, leaving that task for a second or third read. Instead, I am somehow able to let my brain, the word-tick machine, simply dictate to the page. I begin with a particular thought, but that thought usually gets interrupted with ideas, with that click that happens when I settle into writing, when I stop fighting what I can't avoid, when I allow myself the time to do that which makes me smile deep inside. I never, well hardly ever, second guess the words that I put upon a page when blogging.

That doesn't mean I don't revise, question some language, attempt to craft to the best of my ability at the time. But I don't linger for hours, days, weeks, months, years with a piece on my blog. It is fluid. And it's something I can begin and end, usually in one sitting. Rarely, do I begin a blog and not finish it, abandoning it because I couldn't find enough to say, because I lost interest, because I was afraid of rejection.

It is instantly publishable, guaranteed an audience, even if that audience are only a few, even if that audience I can predict. Low stakes--sort of.

Writing Goals

I hate to admit it, but I actually sat down and composed some very specific writing goals for the coming year. While this admittedly might have begun as a delay tactic, having set aside the entire weekend to spend chunks of time doing some writing and arriving at day two still wandering in my mind, composing the goals did spur me to eventually write.

In the list of goals, I aimed to be concrete, accomplish specific things rather than achieve a certain behavior. Almost two years ago, when I needed to compose a set of writing goals in preparation to work with a writing coach, my goals were less tangible and included:

• Build confidence in my sense of myself as a writer
• Understand who I am as a writer
• Understand craft more from a writer's perspective
• Learn to embrace revision

Over these past years, I've learned that these goals will always remain a shifting constant. They are not something to achieve directly, but rather guiding principles in my work as a writer. I needed them as a starting point to reclaim myself as a writer, to be willing to do more than silently whisper the word writer. I need them now to keep me anchored in the writing, in the present, in my desire to keep refining my craft.

Today, I constructed a list of nine very specific writing tasks, a to do list blueprint to hold myself accountable throughout the coming months. They include:

• Work on Joan Didion letter and submit to McSweeney's Internet Tendency
• Submit flash fiction stories to Stories on Stage flash fiction contest
• Revise several essays, attempting to dig deeper to get at their heart
• Finish revisions and submit my CSA essay to Alimentum and other journals.

And then, when I finished committing an accountability list to the page, I did work on a new piece that has been swirling in my mind and stirring in my memory for the past several months. Forcing myself to begin drafting about my rock 'n roll days, I spit words to the page, happy to have an 800 word start, even if very rough. 

While mining bits of my NYC days is a long-term project, I have folders of writing produced over the past two years of taking workshops at Lighthouse Writers. Thankful for all the pieces of writing that are worthy of my attention and revision, I feel mostly centered in my decision to see what I might do on my own, without the structure of a workshop, without the feedback and encouragement of a writing coach. Even though this feels a bit precarious, downright scary to have myself as the guide of discipline since I usually defy any type of schedule/structure, I am ready.

I have begun to do more than whisper writer. Recently, on a plane flight returning home, the woman next to me overheard a bit of my conversation I was having with Nan about bits of George's memoir draft I was reading. My plane neighbor turned to me at one point and asked, "Are you a writer?" I choked at first, and then answered, yes. It wasn't a loud yes, but more of a tentative yes. Although wavering, I had moved beyond silence.