The last few days have seen the unique torture of moving every item you own out of your house, complete with Nick somehow bending space and time to fit our entire 1000 sq ft apartment into the tiniest U-Haul I've ever seen:
IT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A MOM'S ATTIC!!!
AND with our subsequent semiserious leg injuries from running into the trailer hitch with all our might:
like this but solid metal with more sharp edges
And in the midst of the please-let-this-be-over-soon madness, I got an email from Kevin Wildes SJ PhD, the president of my beloved alma mater Loyola University New Orleans, reminding me that today is the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus and patron saint of the university.
Father Wildes' email contains an excellent summary of Iggie's life that you might enjoy.
Ignatius was born in 1491 as a member of the Basque noble family. He was a courtier and military officer who eventually was wounded in battle. While recovering from his wounds, Ignatius had a deep, personal experience of God's love for him and all creation. Over time he developed an ever deepening awareness that creation was filled with God's presence and that God labored for all members of creation. Because of this experience, Ignatius believed it was possible to "find God in all things." For Ignatius, even the smallest things could lead him to unity with God and he lived his life to give witness to the God of love.
Ignatius and his early companions quickly found themselves at home in universities. Ignatius and the Jesuits thought that universities, which celebrate human accomplishment in the arts, sciences, and the professions, are places where God can be encountered. Ignatius also understood that ideas were not only things to be studied for their own sake but, he believed, our ideas affect who we become as people. Ideas affect the lives we lead, and in this way, they shape the world.
St. Ignatius has inspired and touched me ever since my Ignatian Spirituality class in college with Father Fagin. Iggie's life and legacy fascinates me, and I feel a very special connection with Ignatian spirituality that transcends religion. The tenets of self-awareness, effective love, discernment, and even of finding God in all things speak to me as an atheist and work for me completely in my worldview, so long as I think of "God" as another way of saying "the energy that connects everything," which, let's face it, it basically is.
handsome fellow, huh?
I feel like my years at Loyola really educated me as a whole person--which is one of the hallmarks of Jesuit education--but it wasn't just the 10000 Classics classes I was able to savor. What I learned in that Ignatian Spirituality class alone was worth all four years of tuition. Know yourself. Show your love through your deeds. Wait to make a decision until a feeling of peace moves through you. And most importantly, look for that energy that connects everything everywhere. Have gratitude for it always.
Happy feast of St. Ignatius Loyola! Wish us luck as we travel to Nashville today!
Discussion Question:
Have you ever connected with a religious figure or text or whatever outside of your religious beliefs?
To say that things are kind of crazy right now is the understatement of the century. July has seen my bittersweet last day of work at Peachtree Publishers; a wild visit from my beloved Davina; a trip to Missouri to visit my grandmother, great uncle, and wonderful cousins; an incredible experience in North Carolina at Transformus, my first burn, which included serving breakfast to hundreds of people in the woods AND having my car, the Spruce Goose, get stuck in a muddy ditch and only barely survive the subsequent 5 tows out; AND teaching a crazy week-long all-day critical writing class for 14 middle schoolers at Margaret Mitchell House that involved taking a major field trip EVERY DAY.
I am exhausted.
And guess what! The U-Haul arrives tomorrow afternoon!
Remember how we're moving to Boston? Well, now we are actually starting the moving part. We're packing up our stuff, driving it to Nashville Saturday morning, putting it in storage, and taking the month of August off for our Summer of Camping and Tramping, wherein Nick and I make no plans and do whatever we feel like and drive all around and go camping. I cannot wait.
Sadly, there are a whole lot of boxes to be packed and loaded and unloaded before our carefree August begins. Le sigh.
Moving has always made me a little emo. Hence the Modest Mouse. I realized tonight that I always end up doing the same thing when I move: listening to "Gravity Rides Everything" and writing about how much I hate to move. So I have unearthed some of my emo scribblings about the trials of moving over the last decade or so for your enjoyment.
MAY 2003: Moving out of my dorm room (and temporarily to Davina's house) and into my first apartment TRAUMA: My suitemate "broke up" with me--i.e. told me she didn't want to be friends anymore.
MAY 14, 2003--the room is emptying itself gradually. boxes have been lugged endlessly and we've almost purged ourselves of this year. and in a very real way. in the cleaning of the suite, one of my suitemates decided that our friendship belongs out in the dumpster behind new res* with the discarded magazines and ill-fitting jeans, things too heavy or not worth moving to a new place...
moving out last year found me in the same place - sitting in my empty dorm room, listening to modest mouse** and crying quietly to myself at the prospect of time in franklin. taking on new things is easy for me - it's giving them up that sucks. this has been a really marvelous year for me despite all the infinite drama.
this morning, i was staring at a pile of clothes that didn't fit me anymore. i could not bear to get rid of them despite the fact that i would never wear them again. ashley said to me, "katie, you never throw ANYTHING away." this statement has rung true for me all day.
*new res = New Residential Hall, now Carrollton Hall, my dorm at Loyola. No one thought New Rez was a weird name for a dorm and we were all sad when it got a real name. **bonus! according to livejournal, I was listening to "Gravity Rides Everything" as I wrote this entry.
MAY 15, 2003--My sophomore year of college has been drained to the dregs. Last night was a true-blue disaster*...I sat in my spot on Steph’s stripped bed and looked around that room for the last time. I couldn’t help but stare hard at the wake left by four girls who can’t wait to move away from one another...I just wonder how I’ll feel when I read this in a year or two.**
*I still think true-blue disaster is a great turn of phrase. To my dismay, it appears 132 other times on the internet so I can't claim it. **according to livejournal, I was listening to "Trailer Trash" by Modest Mouse when I wrote this entry.
MAY 2006: Moving out of my apartment in Texas after my first year of grad school TRAUMA: Facing the end of the hardest year of my life and reckoning with the idea that I had to go back the next fall
Not very much has changed. Three years ago at around this time, I was having a smoke and ljing about my awful move out of New Res. Now I'm having a smoke and ljing about my awful move out of Villa Solano. I hate moving. Particularly moving out. Moving in is kind of fun, actually. I just want to be FINISHED - have all this shit moved out of here and get in the car and just RUN - run away from Austin and this life that has treated me so strangely....
Steve's been very retrospective about this year, and I am all whateva whateva. I don't think I am ready to digest this year yet - I just need to get out of here and clear my head and rest for a while....Too much thinking for tonight. Time to sleep for about twelve seconds before the packing resumes.
JULY 2008: Moving from Texas to Atlanta TRAUMA: Moving across the country.
I'm sitting looking around my apartment half-packed and there's trash everywhere and stuff all over the floor. I have to get all of this packed up and ready to drive out of town on Saturday morning. I'm leaving for Atlanta and it's really starting to set in. It's so weird to be leaving Austin even though I knew all along that this was a temporary engagement and that I was only gonna be in Austin for a little while which is really bizarre. Nick and I use to say to each other almost every day oh my God we live in Texas and it was so weird and now we're like oh my God we're leaving Texas this is so weird.... I should stop rambling but I just seem like I need to record this feeling. This sort of like half-packed, unsettled, weird feeling, having said my goodbyes but not yet being out of town.*
*If this reads a little funny, it's because this is transcribed from a livejournal voice post, where I did spoken blogs.
* * *
Soooooo...I'm sitting here looking around my half-packed apartment and feeling kind of emo and weird. Not very much has changed. In the same place as always, listening to Modest Mouse and trying to digest the upheaval. I'm ready to just be packed and finished so I can just run away from Atlanta and this life here that has treated me so strangely. I'll miss my dear friends, especially my Lanier, but four 500+ mile moves have taught me that we'll see each other again and keep in touch. I'm not throwing them out with the truckload of stuff I'm taking to Goodwill. I collect friends like owls everywhere I go. I'm hearing Ashley's voice in my head: Katie, you never throw anything away. In a way, was it a compliment?
I just wonder how I'll feel when I read this in a year or two.
Too much thinking for tonight. Time to sleep for about twelve seconds before the packing resumes.
Discussion Question: Not really a question, just a topic. Discuss how much moving sucksss
On Saturday, Nick and I flew up to Kansas City to visit my darling grandmother in northern Missouri. Neither of us are crazy about flying but we considered the 14-hour drive for a weekend trip to be a bit egregious even for us. Our Delta flight (1163) was pretty unremarkable until we started our descent. We got near the airport and then...flew past it. Alert people on the plane started to look a little alarmed. One by one the copilots strode purposefully toward the back of the plane and opened a small hatch. For a moment it felt like the cabin was losing pressure. The flight attendants started to look a little nervous. We flew past the airport again, and then again, so low and close it seemed like we could just jump out, thank you. They finally said over the intercom that there was some issue with the landing gear. People shifted nervously in their seats. After a few more loops past the airport, they finally put the plane down on a runway lined with police cars and ambulances. Turns out it was just a problem with the landing gear sensor and not the the gear itself, which they apparently ascertained by flying right past air traffic control so they could see if the gear was down. Is that seriously the emergency procedure? How much could they really see when we're whooshing by at 400 miles an hour? Whatever. I'm just glad we lived to tell the tale. Nick and I were a little rattled but had already mostly forgotten about it when we heard a report about our flight on NPR national. Which was weird. And cool. Read the boring AJC article
Have I ever mentioned that I am married to a genius? Nick programs robots. His research is particularly focused on human-robot interaction and the way robots and humans learn from each other. Apparently the New York Times came to his lab at Georgia Tech to check out Simon, the robot he's been working on with his colleagues for the last two years under the watchful eye of Dr. Andrea Thomaz. The article is pretty interesting, but what I like most of all is that a PHOTO OF NICK AND SIMON LEADS THE ARTICLE!
Incredible, incredible. There's also a blurb about the Media Lab at MIT, where Nick will be starting in the fall. By the way, if anyone has a copy of the Sunday Times laying around, PLEASE hold onto it for me! We were in the middle of nowhere on Sunday and couldn't find a Sunday Times to save our lives. Read the article!!!
Aaand on Monday night, I got word that our wedding was going to be featured on Offbeat Bride! I absolutely adore this website--it features unusual weddings of all stripes and it is hands-down the best website for wedding inspiration, as far as I'm concerned. As soon as we got our incredible wedding photos back, I wrote up a profile and submitted it to Offbeat Bride. Now, almost a year later, here it is! And I have to admit, I really enjoyed reading it! Click here to read it for yourself.
lol check out the tags: BRIDES IN GLASSES, CANDY, CHURCH WEDDING, HAT, NON-MATCHING BRIDESMAIDS, RECEPTION DRESS, SECULAR, TENNESSEE WEDDING, TUXEDO
So I think our stock is up. Think I could parlay all this publicity into a guest spot on Law & Order: SVU?
Discussion question: Discuss your brushes with fame. Links encouraged.
I am proud to present to my readers what I consider to be the greatest cartoon short of all time. This lovely short is from 1951. Sixty years old and still pitch perfect.
LAMBERT THE SHEEPISH LION
Discussion topic:
Discuss how awesome this cartoon is. If you must, you may mention other candidates for best cartoon short. But they better be good...
As I mentioned in this post about YA novels of the 80s and 90s, I'm purging some childhood belongings in an effort to make room for all of the stuff we're not bringing with us to Boston. Among the myriad treasures unearthed in my closet was a box of cassettes. Some Beatles tapes, some cassingles, and buried at the bottom, a mixtape.
This tape was actually one of a trio--a tape of happy songs, a tape of sad songs, and this, the third, a tape of the best songs. The other two are long gone, probably left in friends' cars over the years. I made the mixtape in 9th grade, just a couple of years before I'd listen to my first burned CD and then, soon after, my first mp3 playlist. It's strange how the days of cassette tapes and mp3s rubbed up against each other so close.
My husband and I freely admit that we are stuck in the late 90s--a fact that we owe, perhaps, to the fact that we first met in 1995. Also stuck in the 90s is my beloved car, the Spruce Goose, who was born in 1998. Same as the mixtape. It has a tape player, of course, so I popped it in yesterday morning on my way to work.
The case with its handwritten track listing was long gone, but I had my suspicions about what I might find on the tape. I'm a creature of habit who still relishes many of my favorite albums from ten or fifteen years ago. But listening to my busted old car stereo playing a busted old tape, I felt myself floating on the hissing, popping, clicking reel. My 98 Avalon was a time machine to 1998.
do you hear that clicking?
This mixtape is a snapshot of my teenage life, but more than that, it's pretty good. Okay, mostly.
NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALLED MUSIC: VOLUME 1
Track 1: "Uncle John's Band" originally by The Grateful Dead, covered by the Indigo Girls
I once read an interview with Meshell Ndegeocello in Seventeen where she called "Eleanor Rigby" the most "musically perfect song" she had ever heard. I've never been able to get it out of my head. At the time, I decided that the most musically perfect song I could think of was the Indigo Girls covering "Uncle John's Band" and therefore it probably ought to be my favorite song.
Remember how I'm a creature of habit? I still name "Uncle John's Band" almost reflexively as my favorite song of all time (a distinction that's pretty absurd anyway). I wasn't surprised at all that it was first on the tape.
The track comes from Deadicated, an awesome Grateful Dead tribute album from 1991 that I stole from my dad based solely on the gnarly cover.
This album has it all--Los Lobos, Suzanne Vega, Jane's Addiction, and even a haunting rendition of "Friend of the Devil" by Lyle Lovett. I listened to this CD until I almost wore it out. Oddly enough, to this day I have never owned a Grateful Dead album and when it comes to their many zillions of songs, I basically only know "Touch of Gray," "Scarlet Begonias" (because Sublime covered it), and the songs off this album.
This is all heresy to Deadheads but quel dommage. Admittedly, some of the production and instrumentation of this album is pretty dated and maybe even a little hokey, but something about the way Amy and Emily harmonize on "Uncle John's Band" is so wholesome and American and reassuring. It calls to mind warm Southern summer afternoons--creekbeds and sunburns and fish fries. Even I type this I am bopping around and snapping. This song is a hell of a drug.
Track 2: "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles
I told you that Seventeen article made an impression on me.
Track 3: "Vox [extended remix]" by Sarah McLachlan
Sarah McLachlan was among my first musical loves from the moment Fran Blumenkopf gave my mom a copy of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy that we proceeded to listen to for several years straight. Sarah didn't really hit the public eye in a big way until 1997's aptly-named Surfacing, so for many years I considered her to be my special secret favorite artist who I had all to myself.
Basically the highlight of my whole life (at least, up until that point) was getting to actually meet Sarah when I won a contest in Seventeen* that sent my mother and I to the 1999 Lilith Fair in Denver--limo at the airport, swank hotel, plum seats, and a meet-and-greet on Sarah's tour bus.
*I did not realize until I started typing this how prominently Seventeen was going to figure. Hey, I guess that's what we read for fun before we had stuff like Amanda Bynes' Twitter.
wearing my very special angel necklace that I gave her--she wore it on stage that night.
The original "Vox," off Sarah's 1988 album Touch, clocks in at almost five minutes. So of course, Sarah threw a seven-minute extended remix on her neat Rarities, B-Sides, and Other Stuff album.
This is not a great song. Sarah hasn't quite learned how to ground her ethereal voice yet. The lyrics are the stuff of my own poetry circa 1998--tangled webs and velvet and yearning. I don't know what it is about this song, maybe the Latin title, but this endless song became my favorite song to listen to on repeat, sometimes for hours at a time. There's something so zen and soothing in that kind of repetition. I spent so many hours listening to this song that the main theme still feels like a security blanket to me.
Track 4: "I Will Survive" originally by Gloria Gaynor, covered by Cake
Cake's incredible Fashion Nugget album was introduced to me by none other than my dearest Lanier, whom loyal readers will know as my current Sunday dinner partner. Before there was Sunday dinner, there was Thursday night. We couldn't drive yet, so my mom would pick us up after school and take us for whatever adventures our afternoon held. We insisted that nothing but Fashion Nugget play in the car on Thursday afternoon. My mom's favorite song was "Nugget", which we found scandalous and hilarious and wonderful.
I'm a sucker for covers so I instead gravitated to "I Will Survive", the classic disco anthem originally recorded by Gloria Gaynor that tells the story of the rebirth and freedom that comes with lost love. Cake's cover, with John McCrea's almost spoken vocals and Vince DiFiore's soaring brass solos, recasts the original in a whole new way that's real and relatable and raw beside the glossy finish of the original disco instrumentals. Pop-Up Video or some other informative cable program taught me that Gloria Gaynor eventually went born-again and changed the lyrics to as long as I have Jesus' love I know I'll be alive when she performed it later on in her career. Sadly, the closest thing I can find to confirmation of this is a video of Jesus lip-synching to the disco original.
"I Will Survive" turned out to be the soundtrack to mine and Lanier's inevitable teenage heartbreaks. Because, as everyone knows, when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you're gonna believe them. Our breakup routine included chocolate ice cream, ritual destruction of relationship trinkets, and vigorous sing-alongs to "I Will Survive." Stuffed with ice cream, surrounded by love letter confetti and smashed ceramic doodads, dancing with your best friend, who has time to give a thought to that jerk who made you cry? Oh not I.
In our next installment, I'll bring you four tracks that give a fantastic a cross section of the best of late 90s through the eyes of a suburborural teenage girl.
Discussion Question:
If you just HAD to pick one favorite song, like at gunpoint, what would you say?
I really detest the term May-December relationship. It is evocative, but almost too evocative--the image of the May party as green and fresh beside the wizened, withering hull of their December partner is tad on the dramatic side for me.
for example
I remember exactly where I first learned this irritating phrase--in a review of Richard Gere and Winona Ryder's regrettable romantic film Autumn in New York, a movie that features a terminally ill Ryder falling in love with silver fox Richard Gere.
I mean did you lose Ethan Hawke's number or something?
Autumn in New York is a pretty perfect example of what American society holds up as one of our few ideas of an appropriate intergenerational relationship--a tender but sexual relationship between an older man and a younger woman.
But what does our culture make of other types of intergenerational pairings?
Devout readers will remember that I have touched on this topic before when I blogged about my relationship with my hero Douglass Parkerin this post. I've also mentioned my beloved Gregory, a former tutee and dear friend of mine--May to my hoary old December. In fact, when I started thinking about it, I realized that my life is rife with friends outside of my age cohort--like my NaNoWriMo partners Jessica Alexander and Teri Osborn, for example--and that, in this day and age, my predilection for befriending people of all ages falls outside the usual parameters for interpersonal relationships.
Our culture seems to come pre-set with two acceptable settings for non-family intergenerational relationships: lover/lover and mentor/mentee. If you feel a special connection with someone of a different age, you have three options:
(1) fall in love, assuming both parties are of the age of consent, Demi and Ashton-style
(2) develop a patronizing relationship wherein the older person enriches the younger person's life with their abundant life-earned wisdom and the younger person infuses the older person with youthful energy, Karate Kid-style
(3) ignore it
Why can't a person of another generation just be my friend? Is the widespread abuse of children at the hands of adults the reason why it's weird for a twenty-something to call a teenager their friend? Is the rampant ageism in our culture the only thing to blame for the stigma against making friends who are much older? I really don't know. I've wondered these things my whole life.
As an only child, I learned to interact with adults at a very young age. My first intergenerational relationships were forged with my parents' friends and business associates when I was knee-high. On lazy summer days, I would often accompany my parents to the advertising agency where my parents worked--Dad as an account exec and partner, Mama as a copywriter--and wander the halls chatting with the employees. Richie and Phyllis and Pat and the whole BG crew went out of their way to treat me like a little grown-up, taking me for sushi lunches and asking my opinion on the latest creative pieces.
I was a little older when I met my parents' friend Kenna. I don't remember how I came to know Kenna but it only took meeting her once for me to come to believe that she had hung the moon.
1997, dinner before Gallagher show
Kenna was like magic to me. The kindest eyes, the sweetest laugh, and the best ideas. Kenna took me (and my dear friend Alex) to one of those pottery studios where you paint your own stuff back when they were brand new and no one had ever done it before. She took me shopping at the vintage stores in downtown Nashville and almost acquiesced when I begged her to buy me a vintage teeshirt embroidered to say I'M NOT FAT! I'M PREGNANT! She also took Alex and I to see 1970s comedian Gallagher, whom we had inexplicably come to adore over repeated late-night viewings of his specials on VH1.
...yeah I don't know
I always had lots of friends my own age, but what I loved about Kenna was that I could be completely myself around her. I could geek out over painting pottery and Gallagher and not worry about looking like a dork. Even as a teenager who supposedly Did Not Care What Other People Thought, her company was a tremendous relief. I'm speaking of Kenna in the past tense because it's been AGES since I've seen her, aside from a quick hello at my wedding. Hey Kenna, is Gallagher touring again?
My nontraditional friendship with Kenna blew the door open for me making friends of all ages. In high school, I participated in Missoula Children's Theater's touring show every year. MCT is an incredible program--a truck rolls into town on Monday and casts students aged 5-18 in a huge musical production that goes on the following Saturday.
One year, I was cast as Ma Munch in The Wiz of the West. My part came complete with a fetching pair of overalls, a four-line solo (if you need a new tonic / he's got snake oil to spare...), and a crew of elementary-school Munchkins. On the first night of rehearsals, I couldn't help but notice that one of the Munchkins, with her round cheeks, big glasses, and bouncy personality, seemed kind of familiar. She reminded me of me.
It turned out that I had a lot in common with Little Leigh Sauvageau, as I always called her. A fellow sibling-starved only child, she decided we were "twynnz" and used to write me adorable little notes addressed to MY TWYNN. After the show, her mom called me all the time to baby-sit Leigh. I didn't know how to tell her that she didn't have to pay me--I just genuinely enjoyed spending time with her daughter. We would rent movies and do art projects and just be silly until the wee smalls when her parents came home. We mostly lost touch after I went to college and her family moved away.
Fast forward to a couple of years ago. Leigh contacts me out of the blue to say she's going to be in Atlanta and would I like to see her?
clearly the intervening years have caused us to mellow and mature
I guess we were onto something back when I was December and she was May--Leigh and I are still like sisters. We had an incredible weekend of hanging around and talking nonstop.
And impossibly, perfectly, my little sister Leigh caught the bouquet at my wedding.
somewhere, Leigh's girlfriend Amanda is getting nervous
Leigh and I share something I long-ago dubbed the *snap*. It's something a select few people have, and you can recognize it instantly. It's like a live wire crackling behind your eyes. I think it has something to do with being creative and intuitive.
I saw Nadine Eckhardt's *snap* in a stack of hand-edited pages of the first draft of her autobiography "Duchess of Palms" when I was volunteering at UT Press in the editorial department. Nadine, I was told, was of the pre-computer generation and needed someone to key in her edits of her first draft. I was thrilled to get anything besides photocopying to do so I dove right in.
Nadine's book grabbed me on the first page and did not let me go, luring me through border towns and DC and the Austin of another era. After spending a frustrating twenty minutes half-heartedly keying in edits in between feverish bouts of reading, I finally switched my monitor off and just let myself read the manuscript, knowing I'd have to work double-time later to finish keying in the edits and not caring one bit. I fell in love with saucy Nadine and her incredible adventures with her famous husbands and LBJ and the elder Bushes and all manner of other glitterati. When I turned the edited files into Alison, the acquiring editor for the project, I fell all over myself raving about the book.
Fast forward a year. I've snagged one of the two coveted UT Press Fellowships and have scored my dream job--working full-time in the Copyediting department for a year. Nadine's manuscript needs a managing editor. They give it to me. I am breathless.
Nadine lived in town and she came in to meet with us and show us some photos she was thinking of using in her book. I was immediately enchanted--Nadine is pretty, pint-sized, and absolutely the zestiest, liveliest person I know. Her photos were incredible. One--a photo of her as a teenager as the Duchess of Palms in her hometown of McAllen, Texas, framed by palm fronds--was so incredible that I snuck a photocopy of it later to tuck in the file in my desk labeled inspiration. She invited me to her house in South Austin to go over some edits.
looks like trouble
Nadine and I started coming up with lots of flimsy excuses for hours-long afternoon editorial meetings. We filled her lovely home up with gossip and laughter more times than I can count. And in the midst of our fun, I had a hand in creating a book that I am so incredibly proud of.
I miss Nadine so much ever since I left Texas, but we write letters--and now sometimes emails.
If you're interested in Duchess of Palms can buy it here or even read it on Google Books for free here. I can't say enough about how awesome it is.
* * *
Some friends change your whole world. They make you reimagine your life. They redecorate your brain.
Dr. T. Davina McClain came into my life at 3am one random night in high school. Always a little compulsive, I had kept myself up half the night emailing the heads of Classics departments around the country, asking questions about life in the program. I was just about to go to sleep when I noticed that someone had written me back already. Davina had written me a long, exuberant email about the program and all of the wonderful things that would await me should I come study with her in New Orleans. I was stunned. Who was this effervescent woman and why was she emailing me in the middle of the night?
When I went to visit New Orleans by myself that summer, Davina picked me up and treated me to a day in the Quarter--the French Market, bookstores, cafes. I knew I had found a home in that sweaty, foreign city.
It's hard to describe what Davina became to me. I was tight with a number of wonderful professors at Loyola--Paul, Karen, Kleist--but Davina was my Davina. My favorite professor, my advisor, and my mentor, she helped me plan for my graduate career from the moment I set foot on campus. She met with me outside of class endlessly to read Latin and Greek, and conducted independent studies with me even when she was on sabbatical. When it came time to apply to grad school, she steered me through the entire hellish process and helped me nab a Mellon Fellowship, admission to Cambridge, and even an interview for the Rhodes Scholarship. When I found the post office closed one deadline Friday and I called her in tears, she came and picked me up and drove me downtown to the post office that closes late. I went so far because she pushed me so hard--I wrote dozens and dozens of drafts of everything until they were perfect. Sometimes she'd just come over and hit "New Document".
But Karate Kid this ain't. Davina was my friend too. I spent weekends at her house, enjoying the humanity of a real home with home-cooked meals, curled up on the couch watching My So-Called Life and sobbing together. When Hurricane Lili threatened New Orleans in 2002, Davina packed me AND my boyfriend AND my cat (AND another of my beloved professors, Karen Rosenbecker) up and drove us to take refuge at her parents' home in Texas. We talked on the phone all the time for hours. She was something like my mother and my sister and my teacher and my friend.
Was? IS!
After Nick proposed to me on New Year's Eve 2007/8, I knew right away that I wanted Davina to marry us, and I told her as much probably a little hastily just a few days later. Probably a little hastily since I hadn't discussed it with my fiance.
We spent a lot of time considering options for the ceremony but it all came back to Davina. She was ordained by Rosewood Ministries in Tennessee and she performed our beautiful marriage ceremony on May 16, 2009. She wrote her own sermon and everyone agreed that it was among the most moving and incredible wedding ceremonies they'd ever seen. I'll never forget it.
Davina is the director of Louisiana Scholar's College now and she is Mother Goose to dozens and dozens of gifted young students. I hope each and every one of them appreciates how lucky they are to spend a little time under her wing.
My dearest Davina is coming to visit me in Atlanta for the 4th of July weekend and I can't wait to tear it up with her. Just like Leigh and I have enjoyed the evolution of our friendship as the years have gone on, Davina and I enjoy a whole new kind of relationship now that my days as her student are over. I can't wait to burn the city down with my friend.
Discussion question:
Have you ever had a friend who was much older or much younger than you?
DISCLAIMER: This post is a little spoilery but trust me, it's not much more than what you learn in this extended trailer.
I am a semi-fanatical Sex and the City lover. The opening theme song is the soundtrack to my undergrad and grad school years, when I would often binge on episode after episode while cleaning my house or doing homework or while doing nothing at all. I started doing a rough calculation of how many hours I have spent watching the 94 half-hour episodes--all of which I have, of course, in a sweet hot pink box set--and the initial figures were so damning that I elected not to calculate any further.
So fanatical, in fact, is my love of this show, that I sobbed through probably 80% of the first movie in fangirlish delight when I saw it on opening night at Alamo Drafthouse with my long-suffering husband, starting with the moment in the opening credits when you first see Charlotte with her child at long last:
and peaking at the moment when Charlotte is telling Big to stay away from Carrie after he ruins the wedding.
break. my. heart.
SATC1 had a lot of problems, but it also had a lot of wonderful moments. If nothing else, it was really satisfying for the fans.
SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human--working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled c*nt like it's my job--and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car.
--Lindy West
kind of says it all. The only word I could come up with for it was 'grotesque.' Wikipedia says grotesque is a "general adjective for the strange, fantastic, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or bizarre, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks." EXACTLY.
Critics have by and large skewered this movie. It has a pitiful 18% on Rotten Tomatoes.
But I haven't read a single review yet that points out one particular flaw of this movie that really bugged me as a fan: many of the plot points are recycled from old episodes.
Naturally, the movie hits on some classic SATC tropes: Samantha is old and lusty, Miranda is overworked, Charlotte is jealous, Big is emotionally unavailable, Carrie is basically a horrible person who is absolutely impossible to please, etc. But SATC2 does more than refer to recurring themes from the show. It recycles storylines from the show, and worse, handles the storylines hamfistedly while they're at it.
Since I'm kind of a frustrated academic, I gathered some evidence to support my thesis.
CARRIE BRADSHAW HATES TAKEOUT AND YOU IF YOU EAT IT
In SATC2, Carrie just hates that her rich husband likes to get expensive gourmet takeout sometimes instead of going out to eat at an expensive gourmet restaurant. I knew I never liked that man.
As I watched Carrie berate Big over a paper sack of Japanese food that almost certainly cost more than I make in a day, I had a distinct sense of déjà vu. I was taken back to the good old days of Carrie and Aidan, Season 4, the days of Aidan stripping Carrie's floors and taking her to Suffern and being inexplicably saintly despite Carrie being, as usual, insufferably selfish. All That Glitters (s4e14) finds Aidan longing for a night in with his lover and the TV and a bucket of chicken, and Carrie longing for a hot night of grinding on shirtless men and her girlfriends (including pregnant Miranda) at a gay club.
When she comes home drunk and ready to get it get it, she's disgusted to find Aidan splayed out and glazed in KFC grease. She finds his request to rub his belly repulsive in the extreme.
Next to unctious, shirtless Aidan, swollen and comin down with the itis, Big looks absolutely portrait-worthy with his probably spotless black leather shoes on the gorgeous couch and tidy box of Japanese food on the table. You could kind of feel Carrie's pain when she's torn between a fun night out with her girlfriends and rubbing the belly of her beached, greasy boyfriend. But Carrie, seriously? After "eleventy decades of chasing his emotionally abusive jowls through the streets of Manhattan" you've finally landed Mr. Big, and now you're nagging him to death because he doesn't want take you out every single night of the week? That's crazy even for you, Carrie. And that's saying something.
At this point in the movie, the drunken audience in the theater started to get kind of restless and pissy. Carrie asks Big (rhetorically, of course) if she's a bitch wife who nags him all the time. One particularly disgruntled moviegoer shouted YES and the entire theater cheered.
SOMETIMES HAVING SERVANTS IS AN UNFORTUNATE BUT UNAVOIDABLE SIDE EFFECT OF BEING FABULOUS
The girls are thrilled upon arriving at their expensive suite in Abu Dhabi, but kind of weirded out when a bunch of turbaned men line up attentively and inform the quartet that each one of them has been assigned a personal manservant. The women must learn to negotiate all the tricky situations that come with having someone wait on you hand and foot. Or something.
They did an entire episode about this in Season 2 called The Caste System (e10). Remember? Samantha dates a rich dude who has a servant, Charlotte hooks up with a movie star, Miranda buys Steve an expensive suit, and Carrie just hates that Big brought her to a fancy party with extra-rich people?
In both SATC2 and The Caste System, the girls are uncomfortable with the machinations of the class system. For about a minute before they go back to being waited on hand and foot.
Even though neither iteration of this storyline wraps up in a way that even begins to reconcile the massive social issues they've raised, The Caste System at least attempts to offer multiple perspectives on living in a class-stratified society. We get to see the women both as the regal upper-class Manhattanites they are and, through Carrie's storyline, as people who don't quite qualify for the tippy-top of society. SATC2 doesn't give us anything beyond the fleeting, cringing guilt of rich white ladies who are being waited on.
SAMANTHA IS SHAMED FOR BEING A SEXUALLY LIBERATED WOMAN
On their trip to Abu Dhabi, only do the ladies have to deal with having a quartet of manservants, but they also have to negotiate the complex social mores of Muslim culture. While none of the four seem to excel at this particularly,
Modest isn't the first word that springs to mind
Samantha in particular struggles to comport herself properly. It's hard to stop grabbing the packages of virtual strangers on a dime, you know? I'm sure it will not come as a surprise to learn that Samantha ends up publicly shamed by the locals for being an Independent Woman who happens to carry condoms by the dozen and dress like a fourteen-year-old on a hot day.
Samantha is no stranger to this kind of unjust treatment. In Four Women and a Funeral (s2e5), Samantha philanthropically gropes a married man as she's fundraising for a nonprofit, and is subsequently blacklisted from Everywhere That Matters when the wife busts her and besmirches her reputation. In Are We Sluts? (s3e6), one of Samantha's one-night-stands lets a robber into her building, and the other residents ride her so hard about her promiscuous lifestyle that she moves to the Meatpacking District. (Har. Har.) And in Cover Girl, Carrie walks in on Samantha providing a valuable service to the Worldwide Express guy in her office, and for once even her good friend Carrie has to agree that she's taken her sexual openness a step too far.
When we see Samantha screeching I HAVE SEX! crazily at a group of elderly Muslim men in the street while wielding fistfuls of condoms, it's not just awful because we've seen it all before, again and again. It's offensive AND stale.
CARRIE LOSES AN ITEM WITH HER NAME ON IT WHILE SHE'S AWAY FROM NEW YORK. GET IT? IT'S A SYMBOL. FOR HER IDENTITY. WHICH SHE ALSO LOST. ARE YOU FOLLOWING?
Here's the big spoiler of this post. Are you ready?
Carrie loses her passport. And it's a problem for about 10 minutes until she finds it again exactly where she left it. Cool story, Carrie. I think I get the symbolism. You're far away in a foriegn country trying to figure out your ever-shifting love life and in the process you briefly lose your passport and therefore YOURSELF.
This is heavy stuff, Michael Patrick King. But you wrote this already, remember?
The final episodes of Sex and the City, where Carrie is in Paris with Baryshnikov? She loses her Carrie necklace when she's feeling all lost and sad and then, in the final episode, An American Girl in Paris: Part Deux (s6.2e8), she finds it again before she works up the nerve to break it off with Aleks.
The American Girl in Paris episodes are some of my favorite episodes of any television show ever. I've seen them dozens of times and still find myself breathless in anticipation of Big and Carrie finding one another. I still sob gratuitously through basically the whole thing. But Carrie's ordeal in SATC2 has really no tension and no stakes at all. Maybe she'll miss her first-class flight home that afternoon? How did this pass as the climax of a 2.5 hour movie? HOW DID THIS MOVIE HAPPEN AT ALL?
I am so utterly disappointed in my favorite franchise.
Cute jacket tho.
Discussion Question:
oh come on let's just talk about how dumb this movie was
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