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July 10, 2007 Thirty-Eight Days: Unrelated 
I have a post ready to go, and I have pictures; but the pictures aren't on the post, so you'll have to wait another day to see it. I'm still peeling primer out of my hair and I think I'm going back tomorrow to finish the trim in the bedrooms, and maybe start the bathrooms. But the phone line and internet are hooked up, and I've started restocking the kitchen and bathrooms and moving a few boxes in to the storage room, so little by little it is starting to feel like the place I will live. Soon. In the meantime, that and related drama are making it hard for me to turn my thoughts to other subjects for even the half hour or so necessary to develop the most half-hearted post. I'd like to have something more interesting to offer those of you still reading; it might have to wait for life to calm down a bit. Here's a list of the things I might like to write about, if I could write about anything right now: 1. I'm reading Ann Carson's latest collection, Decreation. It's not as unified thematically as her previous collections, in my opinion; but buried away in the middle of it is an interesting little essay about total eclipses and marriage, in which she appears to make several contradictory statements. Spouses are colours; eclipses are a form of totality as well as a metaphor for marriage and coupling throughout history; total eclipses invert and absent colour. For example. I've read it half a dozen times and I'm still not sure I "get" it (if anyone in the audience has read this particular piece and has insights in advance of whenever I get around to posting about it, feel free). 2. Oh yeah! That book swap thing! I'm busy on the 14th and 15th and the 29th. How's everyone for the 22nd? Once I get an idea of the numbers I'll decide on a location and email people separately. 3. The functions of guilt and remorse. Specifically, that the main claim--that guilt is self-focused and therefore useless while remorse is other-focused and therefore productive in preventing further occurences of problematic behaviour--is bullshit. 4. Intentions, good and otherwise. Posted by Andrea at July 10, 2007 9:54 AM under Decision 2007 EMAIL this entry (comments fields are below this section) Comments I'm incredibly tempted by the description of that Ann Carson essay. I haven't read it yet, but you know me - throw a theoretical conundrum and I'll run miles to catch it, worse than a Lab with a tennis ball. The Guilt/Remorse equation is interesting as well, and I'm right with you on a post on intentions. So many intentions. So little motivation.
Thinking of you. Posted by: Rachel at July 10, 2007 10:57 AM
Thinking of you, Andrea. Posted by: Casey at July 10, 2007 11:17 AM
Sending hugs and some ibuprofen for the sore muscles. I won't be around on the 22nd, so everyone else will get to take the good books. With any luck, though, I might be reading a book that day . . . Posted by: Madeleine at July 10, 2007 11:40 AM
I'm still here. And reading. We'll stick with you, throughout the long haul, have no fear of that. And, we completely understand the quiet. As for guilt, do not let it eat you up inside. I know most people still do it anyway, but try hard to keep in mind that there were valid reasons, and that those reasons are still no less valid now. (o) Posted by: KLee at July 10, 2007 12:32 PM
I think we've got birthday parties to attend on the last couple of weekends in July. Sorry I'll miss it! Posted by: Lee at July 10, 2007 2:57 PM
I'm absolutely still reading and I have no intention of falling off. I find I don't really comment much, here or anywhere, and I truly don't mean any offense by it. I just don't think I've got much to say, other than this: I can't imagine how hard this must be right now, but I suspect it could get worse before it gets better. Hopefully I'm wrong. I think about you every day, even when I don't pop in to see if there's an update. (There aren't many of those days, to be honest.) And if I think of something useful I can offer, I will offer it. Be well, please take care of yourself, and keep working on your new place. It will be your new home in no time. :) Posted by: amy at July 10, 2007 5:20 PM
Admittedly I am quite cynical having worked for most of my professional life in domestic violence (where batterers are remorseful every other day and then continue to batter), but I'm not a big fan of remorse. It sounds passive and yet still manages to be grasping and demanding. If you're remorseful, don't I have to forgive you? BTW, I'm also not a big fan of "forgiveness". Told you I was cynical. Posted by: Zany Mama at July 10, 2007 5:48 PM
Heh. I like Zany Mama's comment. I'm not a big fan of remorse, either, because if you don't forgive the remorseful person, they then give you the puppy-dog-eyed guilt trip and that is just Not. On. I'll forgive you when I'm damned good and ready and if that never happens, then so be it. Forgiveness can be overrated, too, especially by the forgive-ee. I'm still reading. Hang in there, Andrea. I know how hard this is. Posted by: julia at July 10, 2007 7:05 PM
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Change is God (Octavia Butler, Parable Series) "If the writer is a socially privileged person--particularly a White or a male or both--his imagination may have to make an intense and conscious effort to realize that people who don't share his privileged status may read his work and will not share with him many attitudes and opinions that he has been allowed to believe or pretend are shared by 'everybody.' Since the belief in a privileged view of reality is no longer tenable outside privileged circles, and often not even within them, fiction written from such an assumption will make sense only to a decreasing, and increasingly reactionary, audience. Many women writing today, however, still choose the male viewpoint, finding it easier to do so than to write from the knowledge that feminine experience of reality is flatly denied by many potential readers, including the majority of critics and professors of literature, and may rouse defensive hostility and contempt. The choice, then, would seem to be between collusion and subversion; but there's no use pretending that you can get away without making a choice. Not to choose, these days, is a choice made. All fiction has ethical, political and social weight, and sometimes the works that weigh the heaviest are those apparently fluffy or escapist fictions whose authors declare themselves 'above politics,' 'just entertainers,' and so on." Ursula le Guin Email Frances! frances AT athenadreaming DOT org You can email her mother too (that's me):
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