Christmas as an Adult

I guess this could be my first adult Christmas. I say this because this year's holiday feels less like Christmas than ever before. No magic. No whimsy. Just stress and booze and crotchety old bitties to deal with. Christmas Spirit has left the building.

I was talking to my friend Will about this phenomenon last night at his family's Christmas party. He told me he feels the same way about Christmas, that when one becomes an adult, he must learn to find the meaning of Christmas in a different way. It stops being about presents and Santa and magic and wonder. To be quite honest, Christmas is a fucking nightmare most of the time, scrambling to get the right gift, say the right thing so as not to piss off Uncle Winky who was already 3 sheets to the wind before dinner, and hoping to God you can still fit in you svelte new coat after days of feasting on chess squares and egg nog. But I think Will is on to something. He always has been a sharp boy. Christmas is about something else now; it's about getting back in touch with friends and family.

Night before last, I went to Christmas dinner at my best friend from high school Robin's house. We had lamb and corn salad (not very traditional Southern fair) and bottles and bottles of Merlot. Now, I've been knowing Robin for years and I've been going over to her house since I was probably 15, so I know her family well. Her mom, Bonny, is a wonderful woman, but a bit over-bearing, a bit detached. Until she gets some red wine in her. Bonny was all over me hugging me, telling me she loved me, that I'm part of the family, and that she wants me to have my wedding reception in her backyard, no matter if I marry a boy or a girl. It was funny, really, and it was also heart warming. This is what I love about the South: people show their love in the strangest of ways. My daddy will haul wood for the old woman down the road. My momma will sit with old people in the hospital as they die, no matter how distantly related. My best friend's mom will decorate her arbor with roses and twinkle lights so I can say "I do" under it. It's wonderful.

Last night at Will's parent's party, I had a good, long discussion with his mom, Sue, about politics. She told me she was on the planning commission for 11 years (there's a story right there!) and in her time she saw how corrupt those politicians were. She told me they all took bribes under the table. When back in 1994 some Canadian company was going to build a medical waste disposal facility in the soybean field beside Walls and Sacred Heart Elementary schools, she got a permit to protest, and marched from Walls all the way to the courthouse in Hernando. The Canadian company pulled out and Sue Freiman was a hero, at least until the next election.

I love knowing that story. I wouldn't have been privy to that information as a teenager. But there sat Sue and I by the fire, me with my beer, her with her glass of Preseco, talking about the ways of the world. And I really enjoyed it.

So maybe that's what Christmas as an adult is all about.

Christmas in Dixie

I have too little bandwidth to upload my photos (as I borrow wireless from the neighbors when I'm back in Mississip), so rest assured that I will blog about New York very soon. As soon as I can post my photos, too. Until then, I'll share with you some struggles young people face at holiday celebrations with the extended family down South. Here we go.

My 18-year-old cousin is four months pregnant. She attends community college and works as a waitress at a restaurant in town. She has a boyfriend, he's 20, and he's a nice boy. She brought him to meet the family yesterday. While my family members were wonderfully nice to them, my aunt (the old bitty) kept working in passive aggressive commentary about "marriage," "gainful employment," and "the costs of raising a child." For my aunt, my cousin has two options in her current situation: marry the boy who knocked her up or "get rid" of the baby. What a dismally closed-minded set of imperatives.

I don't see what the big deal is. So, she's young, and pregnant, and unmarried. She doesn't even want to marry the boy. That doesn't make her a bad person. A baby sort of slipped up on her? Well, at least we all know she's human now, and human beings often experience blessings conveniently disguised as "mistakes" at the time. This baby is a gift, and s/he will be loved. That's what matters, right? A dozen more horrible things could have happened. She could have killed someone in a drinking and driving accident. She could have joined a terrorist cell. Or (hang with me for this one--I'll explain) she could be a lesbian. I think the whole family should just give her a break and support her. Sheesh.

Now, of course I have no problem with lesbians. Hell, I love them, because I love everyone. But my family--not mom and dad and step dad and brother, but those various aunts, uncles, and cousins who don't know me--can't handle the homosexuality. What I mean by that is they LOVE that there are gay family members, only because they have some pariah to constantly judged their morality against. So what if Hunter is in jail for drug paraphernalia and DUI again, at least he's not gay! It's sickening, really. Compound this with the fact that I'm the gay family member, and a handful of cousins my age have gotten married and are having babies. More power to them. Marriage and babies are events to celebrate. They seem fairly innocuous topics of conversation. Until busy body aunts and my dear, sweet, misguided grandmother turn the discussion on me: "Timmy, when are you gonna bring a girl home for us to meet? I know you will one day. You ain't a queer. I won't ever believe it."

Yep, that's what my grandmother says to be, nearly every time I see her. And I know she's not being mean. She's just concerned about me, because she doesn't know what a gay relationship or life look like. I think it's hard for her to love someone so much (I'm her favorite) and not know how to understand him because his life is so different from what she knows (my grandmother has been married since she was 14). I'm good at just shaking my head and changing the subject. But I wish the extended family would except the fact that I'm not going to bring home some pretty little girl, marry her, have babies, and live in a double wide on the 40-acres in Cedar View where all the other aunts, uncles, cousins live.

Don't get me wrong. I love my grandmother. I know she loves me. She's helped me out in a lot of situations, and I know I can call her for help any time. I also remember to call her and just chat with her a couple times a month, because I know she's old and lonely and a 10 minute phone call from her grandson makes her day. It makes my day, too. So I can look past her grumbling with my sexuality. She really just doesn't understand. So, this Christmas, as I'm sure will be the case in every holiday celebration for the rest of her life, I will smile, nod, and change the subject each time it rolls back around to marriage and babies. Then I'll go to the shop to drink beer and whiskey with the men of the family while the women discuss me. It's fine, though. When they're talking about me, at least they're giving someone else a break.

Update

Back from NYC much poorer and much more cultured. Great times, great pix, great plays. Will update about all of that later (note to self). Be prepared.

Finally Free and Paying It Forward!

Just finished up my out-of-class final for the 17th Century/Age of Milton course. Wrote lots about erotic desire in Donne's "The Flea" and "Holy Sonnet 10" (the 'batter my heart, oh three-personed God' one) and Milton's Samson Agonistes (much better than Paradise Lost, if you ask me). I'm beat, and I know more about Donne's and Milton's psycho-sexuality than any country boy should. I'm getting so good at the 17th century, I'd make it my focus if I wasn't so attached to feminist theory, modern drama, white trash studies (yes, this sub-genre of cultural studies exists), and poetry writing. Which takes me to my next point.

I am inspired by the seasonal generosity of Steph and Donna so much so that I want to participate in this paying it forward thing. Since I have no cool ARCs of Neil Gaiman books to give away, nor am I adept at knitting, sewing, and various other handicrafts, all I have to offer are my word crafting abilities. Therefore, following Donna's model (she's such a trend setter!), I promise an original Tim Sisk poetic creation for the first three readers to comment on my blog.* I promise I won't burden you with any surly teenage-ish "but why doesn't he love me?" rag. I think I grew out of that when I was 22 and a half (wink). Really, I'm not a half-bad poet, I swear. To sweeten the deal, I'll even throw in an NYC trinket.** So go ahead and comment....you know you want to.


*I fear I've opened up a giant can of insecurity: What will I do if I don't get three comments? (write a poem about it)
**This promise is entirely contingent upon how reckless of a spender the Big Apple makes me.

In the Home Stretch

All of my first graduate school papers are finished. Just took all my books back to the library, so if you've been looking for all the texts on Early Modern gender and Shakespeare feminist criticism, they'll be back on the shelves by week's end. Now, I must complete an outside of class final exam, and I'm 1-2-3 home free....Almost. I mean, I still have the NYC trip beginning on Thursday (that's right, THURSDAY). The small town boy is going places, yessir.

Just so you know, my final paper for the Renaissance Tragedy class, entitled "Gender, Agency, and "Witchspace" in Macbeth" is probably the best academic paper I've ever written. So, it could have been researched better, and I'm sure it's vague and tangential in places. But I have an interesting (and dare I say new?) reading of the text: I argue that the witches in the play are gendered female (the topic of their gender is highly debated among critics) and that they have agency to de-stabilize the patriarchal dominant culture (it's almost absurd to argue the witches have agency in some critical circles) because of their marginalized space, which I term "witchspace" (way to invent a concept!). Witchspace is a gendered arena in which destruction, disorder, and bewitching are enacted on the dominant culture through Macbeth. The witches have agency in this space because they project the social problem of what to do with women who don't fit into patriarchal gender imperatives back on society. In doing so, they undo patriarchy. Check out 4.1--the necromancy scene--where the witches create the brew that reveals the prophecy that ultimately undoes Macbeth and the state (the whole "none of woman born, Burnim Wood to Dusinane" thing) with body parts of marginalized persons--a Jew, a Tartar, a Turk, and a "birth-strangled babe ditch-delivered by a drab" if you want to see textual evidence of the power marginalized bodies in marginalized spaces have.

Yessir, if I learned one thing at good ol' UCA, it's how to do a close reading of a text. Many thanks to Mary Ruth Marotte and Wayne Stengel for pushing me to dig in and do sound, interesting, and textually supported readings.

Tomorrow is the final exam in my 101 class. Last day with my kids. My mentor's bringing donuts, and I'm supplying the OJ. I'll miss those brilliant young men and women.

Off to pack. Can you believe it--I'm three days from New York City, and I'm three days from you.

Do It Like a Big Bear! Grr!!

Obviously, you can take us away from UCA, but you'll never UCA away from us.

Neglectful Blogger

Sheesh. I have had such a busy week, with almost nothing to show for my late nights and stressful days. Why is it that the end of the semester presents more opportunities than ever before to procrastinate? Case in point: on Wednesday at 2:00 pm, I ran into another first year in the library. He suggested we get coffee at a local shop and study. Sounded good to me. Flash forward 11 hours later, it's 1 a.m., and I'm stumbling in my door drunk and hoarse after an afternoon and evening of bar hoping then karaoke singing (my rendition of "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" was the hit of the night). I won't even go into Thursday night except to say I finally got home at the time most people get up for work in the morning (5:30 am!) That's what happens when you don't take your own car.

Suffice to say, I will be in the library all day. I must write 8 more pages of my paper. Must. Then I'm sticking a fork in it. I'm excited by the prospect of being done with paper writing for a whole month in just 3 days. In 6, I'll be in New York.

Now, off to the library!

The Problem of People in Lyric Poetry

Working on an essay that situates my lyric poems into the broader concerns of lyric poetry. I'm writing about the relationship between poet and people and how (the issues surrounding relationships with) people appear in and behind lyric poetry, though they are ultimately filtered through the poet's self and experience. Anyway, found the best passage ever from Sylvia Plath's Unabridged Journals (of course I would quote Sylvia Plath) to support my personal ars poetica, and now I will share with you:

I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time.

One paper down...

two more and a final exam to go.

I'm finished with my first real graduate school paper. It's a 12-pager for my 17th Century/Age of Milton class entitled "Heart Strings, Purse Strings: Longing, Landscape, and the Problem of Patronage in Aemilia Lanyer's "The Description of Cookham." And you know what, I don't think it's half bad. Tomorrow morning I'm going to finish up the works cited page and give it a final read through, so I hope I still feel it's a strong paper after that. I think I will.

I took some chances with this paper. I wrote about a relatively unknown female poet who doesn't have a large critical tradition. I argued that she flexes a subversive muscle and uses the country-house poem, normally a place where aristocratic patronage is celebrated, to critique the system. And I think my reading is insightful, intelligent, and textually sound. Let's hope my teacher thinks so, too.

Now, I'm moving on to the essay situating my poems within the lyric tradition, then finishing up the 15-20 pager on the witches in Macbeth. It's going to be a busy week, but I'm ready for it. As lame as this might sound, I'm actually excited to write these essays, show what I know, test out some new ideas.

Good luck to all you students, teachers, and student-teachers out there!