Tag Archives: life

Zumba: Yes, It IS A Workout

June 21, 2011 Robin 3 Comments

After months of trying to get healthy on my own, I had just about had it with workout plans that read “Do 10 reps of this, 20 reps of this, walk 10 laps on this,” etc. I was bored, bored, BORED of typical workouts and typical workout routines.

So, when a friend of mine from the local Choral Society spoke well of the Zumba class she took on Thursday nights, I was intrigued, but also very wary. Wasn’t Zumba that thing from the infomercial, with all the Latin dance moves and such?

I researched as much as I could online, watching videos like the one above, getting more interested…but I still thought it surely couldn’t work as well as it purported to. I had done enough dance and musical theater in my childhood and teen years to know that dance could engage the entire body, but I still worried–if it was too easy, it wouldn’t do much for me, and if it was too hard, I risked re-injuring a lot of my lower body.

Finally, I put doubts to the side and came to watch a Thursday evening class…and by the middle of the class, I wanted to join in. It seemed like a LOT of fun, and the music was very bouncy and great to listen to. Quickly, I made plans to try the class out, and the next available Thursday evening (June 16th, 2011), I actually did try it.

Takeaways from My First Zumba Class

If you mess up, you are probably not the only one messing up–even the instructor missteps occasionally! Laugh and keep going.
The high-energy music wordlessly encourages you to keep going.
Zumba is definitely not too easy. The moves are challenging, the tempo is fairly quick, and you will definitely find muscles you forgot you had. LOL!
If you haven’t exercised in a long time and still try to do everything just like the instructor does, you are going to hurt yourself. 😛
You can always modify the moves to suit your level of fitness.
It’s not a competition–do what you can and try to get a little better every time.

My Results During and After Class

After the first 20 minutes of class, I was already sweating like a hog in that air-conditioned room, and by the end of the hour-long workout, I felt accomplished, if not exhilarated. (I still don’t think my body releases endorphins when I exercise…I think it releases the opposite, ’cause I usually feel like gum scraped off somebody’s shoe after I work out.)

Now, I did have to take a couple of short rests in addition to the rests between songs, because my heart rate felt like it was starting to speed out of control. However, once I started modifying the moves and not trying to do absolutely everything the instructor was doing, I felt my heart rate kick into a higher (but much more controllable) level. For sure, I didn’t feel like I was going to keel over again.

I have never felt my heart get into that comfortable-higher gear before–usually it goes straight from “Resting” level to “LOL I’M COMING THROUGH YOUR RIBS”, with painful gasping for air included. Instead, the new heart rate was definitely faster than normal, but not scary-fast. My exertional asthma, which had triggered twice within the first 20 minutes, had all but vanished by the end of the hour as well. This was AMAZING! Not to mention that modifying the moves to exclude jumping, leg twists, and deep knee bends protected my knees from further damage and left me less sore the next day.

Summary

The best thing about Zumba is that you aren’t required to do every single move perfectly. It’s a “work-at-your-own-pace” type of exercise, with camaraderie and laughter included–which means it’s approachable for beginners and yet it can be high-intensity for people who are already fit. Doing Zumba doesn’t mean you’ll drop 100 pounds in a week or get ripped abs in 2 months, but you will see greater stamina, flexibility, and some toning. For certain, I’ve already seen benefits to my heart health and overall fitness capability!

Saturday with the Spark

Perfect Pitch

June 18, 2011 Robin 8 Comments

For a good portion of the world’s population, perfect pitch is a strange novelty, or an unheard-of phenomenon. For me, it’s part of my everyday life, and has been possibly since birth.

What Is “Perfect Pitch?”

Perfect pitch is the generally-used term for the ability to recognize (and often reproduce) correct musical pitches without an external reference. (Actually, in musical terms, “perfect” pitch references the ability to recognize pitches; absolute pitch covers both recognizing and reproducing pitches.) People with perfect and/or absolute pitch don’t necessarily hear BETTER–we just hear DIFFERENTLY.

Who Has Perfect Pitch?

It’s estimated that possibly 1 in 10,000 people have perfect pitch, most never discovering it due to lack of musical training. (Far more people can recognize played pitches as opposed to producing the pitches themselves, however.) But this isn’t just a musical phenomenon–it’s actually something that many people all over the world possess. While perfect pitch-wielders are scattered worldwide, it’s decidedly more common in Southeastern Asian countries, where a word or phrase said in two different pitches can mean two very different things (so you have to recognize the audible difference between those two pitched words).

Is It Genetic?

This apparent region-specific concentration of perfect pitch has led me to wonder if the perfect pitch gene (if such a gene exists) is a dominant gene; for instance, my father has it and my mother doesn’t, for instance. (Mom does, however, seem to have relative pitch, so there may be just a gene combination there that resulted in me having perfect pitch.) There are still currently ongoing studies to figure out the actual spread of perfect pitch, however, so we may learn in time just how widespread it is and whether it’s genetic or not.

My Theory

Since sounds are processed first by the inner ear’s organ of Corti, and then analyzed by the brain’s temporal lobe, it has long been my theory that perfect pitch requires a finely-tuned organ of Corti and a set of temporal lobes that is ready to receive such higher-definition signals. (This article seems to back me up, saying that the temporal lobes or planum temporale are generally enlarged in perfect pitch holders.)

My Personal Experience of Perfect Pitch

Almost like having a better cable box, my ears hear pitches, and my brain automatically identifies them–in fact, if I start focusing heavily on identifying a pitch, I can get anxious about it and psych myself out of the correct pitch. Perfect pitch is an instinct that shouldn’t be second-guessed–when I don’t second-guess it and get all obsessive about it, it’s always right.

For instance, I can be at a Wendy’s and hear the fries alarm going off, and I’ll say “I wish they’d turn that E-major chord down a bit–it’s a bit piercing.” Or sometimes I’ll be outside and hear a truck motor rumbling down the road, and I’ll think “Wow, it’s making an exact low C-sharp.” (One hilarious experience: standing outside hearing a plane roar by, a truck rumbling along, and an air-conditioner humming atop a building. The three together made a low, growly B-flat minor chord :P)

When I First Knew I Had It

As I related last week in my synesthesia post, my experience hearing the piece “Musicbox Dancer” by Frank Mills was perhaps the first inkling anybody had that I might have perfect pitch. But it wasn’t until seventh grade that I really began to hone in on the gift and really try to see if I still had it.

Dad would often have the radio on in the car, and he’d play “Name That Note” with me, identifying the keys of the various songs we listened to. As I grew up, I started to hear that certain radio stations’ versions of songs differed slightly from the CD versions I had at home. For instance, when I was nearly twelve, I noticed that the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” sounded “lower” on the CD player at home than it did on the radio. Dad listened to both versions, and confirmed that while my favorite radio station played the song in C major, it was actually recorded in B major–no fault in the CD player could have accounted for it, since we tested it in at least 3 different players. My perfect pitch had picked up on an industry “secret”–radio stations often play songs at 17 turns a second on the player instead of 16 turns a second on normal players. This speeds up the song just enough to help them fit in more songs per hour, but it does generate a half-step-up difference in key.

By seventh grade, as I neared my thirteenth birthday, I began to memorize certain parts of the choral music I sang during school hours, and compared them to notes on the piano. We had a piece we were doing that I knew was in F minor by the key signature; thus, I could mentally compare the notes with the chord of F minor on the piano, and so on. Memorization is not what perfect pitch is all about, but it does help define a musical ear to get to “know” where pitches are in relation to each other. At the end of seventh grade, I knew I had it, and I began to use it to help my fellow altos and me stay on our part.

Everyday Usage

Perfect pitch, for me, is something I try to use every day if possible. I listen for the keys of music playing on the radio (keeping in mind that it will usually be a half-step lower if I want to buy it on iTunes later); I hear the rumbling symphony of truck motors and car horns on the highway, isolating each note as I drive along. Sometimes, I’ll even listen to people who “sing-speak” (their speaking voices actually have some pitches associated with them), and at the risk of being horribly inattentive and rude, I’ll determine what pitches they’re using when they speak.

I definitely do use my perfect pitch musically as well as in everyday life, though. Sometimes, I use it to help me find harmonies to popular music; I’ll sing a soprano descant part along with Lady GaGa, or challenge myself to pick out a seamless alto part to Katy Perry’s soprano. In choirs, I’ll hum our starting note while the introductory music plays loud enough to disguise the sound, and in solo performances, I’ll sing a cappella parts with no trouble, knowing that I can trust my perfect pitch to tell me when I’m going out of key.

For me, perfect pitch is like a hidden facet of life that I am blessed enough to be privy to, and I know only God is responsible for this. I enjoy it, and try to take care of my hearing so that I can keep using it for a long time. And in the meantime, it’s fun to pull out as a party trick (or ten)…

Saturday with the Spark

Novel Therapy

June 11, 2011 Robin 1 Comment

I never thought I’d be a novelist, ever. And yet here I am, producing original characters and inventing extended plotlines!

Why I Never Considered Noveling: Impatience

I was supremely impatient as a child and teenager; my brain balked at the idea of writing about a character or set of characters for a long time. Not to mention that I was notoriously horrible at picking names for my characters, anyway. Something in me at that age rebelled against the whole process, even though I enjoyed telling stories and I enjoyed the art of writing creatively. But I stayed within the world of writing largely short fanfiction, because I felt as though I had to keep my characters contained in a pre-approved box to make them workable. Writing a completely self-produced novel, or even longer fiction at all, I reasoned, would feel more like work or a school assignment than a pastime.

I continued with this self-philosophy well into graduate school, because I struggled to write enough pages for my professors’ long paper assignments. While I enjoyed creative writing, I decidedly did not like long academic writing. Sometimes I felt that I’d said enough about my perspective on a piece of literature in just 4 paragraphs, and I didn’t need to beleaguer the point; yet, my assignment said that the paper must be 10 pages long. That goal, of a set number of pages I had to produce, was locked around my neck time and again, like a yoke. “See,” I told myself, “this is why I don’t bother with writing a novel. I won’t like the process, and it’ll be too long and too hard for me to focus on and be happy with.”

The Sharp Mindset Shift

I had not counted, however, on my teaching career disintegrating into flaming ashes under my feet. I had to utterly quit the teaching degree program and return home, not because of any family emergency, but because I had begun to suffer severe depression and even suicidal thoughts. If I had thought writing a novel would feel like a prison, teaching had felt like a lightless dungeon.

So, while I sat at home recovering, I began to poke around with a story I had crafted about two years before for an online role-play. I had written a bit of backstory for the character (about 30 pages), but after my teaching classes got started, I hadn’t returned to it (though I had wanted to). I had all but forgotten about it…and then, there it was, sitting in a writing folder on my computer. Now, I had nothing else to distract me from it, so I turned to this little slice of backstory…and I began to write again.

Hope from Within My Own Pages

As the character’s backstory spun from my fingers into the keyboard, I began to take heart from the sparkles of hope appearing within the story. The heartbreak of my teaching career was still a fresh wound in my back, in my side, but in this story, which was so open, bright, and sweet, there was light to be found. My own story, one I never thought would ever be, was beginning to pull me from the mire.

As 2009 ended, I had a story of about 50,000 words; now it’s well over 100,000 words and still going. I’m writing on my own terms–not by a schedule, and not holding myself to a word count or a page count, and I think that’s what helps me keep on writing. It’s something of my own design, something I can find solace in. (Plus, if I make it feel too much like work, that feeling will come out in my writing and make the novel very hard to read!)

Your Writing Can Be Therapy for You, Too!

I’ve found that the act of creating (whether it’s writing, music, or another art form) is soothing and joyful, returning me to a better state of mind. If you find yourself in need of a “reset button” for your mind, try writing; you might just surprise yourself with what you create. Who knows, you might have your own novel buried in your head waiting to be discovered!

Tuesday on the Soapbox

Bathroom Epiphanies

June 7, 2011 Robin 2 Comments

Time on the toilet isn’t just for aimless contemplation over constipation!

Sorry, I just had to use that line. XD

Well, if I can get over my giggles long enough to write this post, I’ll share with you some of the accomplishments I’ve achieved while, uh, occupied with other matters. You wouldn’t believe how some quiet time (relatively speaking) can help you solve problems in other areas of your life!

The Infamous “Layout Fix”

One afternoon, I was having a terrible problem with spacing in one of my web designs; a divided layer in my layout insisted on ending up at the bottom of the layout rather than up with its friends and neighbors closer to the top. As invariably happens when I’m struggling with a problem, my frustration level soared, which sent me to the restroom within minutes. (I swear, as long as I do web design, I will never need Dulcolax, ever. LOL)

As I sat there, reading randomly in a magazine I was keeping in the bathroom for such purposes, it hit me (not literally): had I remembered to set the padding to 0px for that particular divided layer? Being rather new to the concept of CSS padding as I was, I wasn’t used to taking that into consideration. My frustration level began to settle, as did my stomach–I had hope of fixing the issue.

Once I was finished, I headed straight back to the computer and checked, and nope, I hadn’t set the padding. The default padding for divided layers is 2px, and that 2px was JUST enough to throw off my design. I typed in “padding: 0px;”, and watched my layout fix itself, with joy.

Inspired by Necessity: A New Recipe

I was busy in the kitchen in my apartment up near college one evening, trying to figure out something to cook for dinner that wasn’t ramen noodles or a microwave meal again. I didn’t want to chance screwing up my meal by burning something (as I am so wont to do), but I wanted something “comfort-food-y,” something yummy and warm, because it was so darned cold outside that it made my insides cramp just thinking about driving out in it. Not to mention that my poor tummy had been upset most of the day, anyway.

Well, as you might have guessed, I ended up in a position to sit and think for a while. This time, I was without a magazine (horror of horrors!), and so all I could do was think…and I ended up thinking about recipes for comfort food. (Strange place to be thinking about food, I know, but there I was!) Eventually I found myself thinking about what Mom used to fix when I was little and had an upset tummy, and a memory of a wonderful chicken-flavored casserole came to mind. Mind you, I didn’t remember what all was in it, specifically, but I remembered the creamy yumminess of what tasted like cream of chicken soup, mixed with some kind of stuffing crumbs and white meat chicken, all baked and comfortingly warm.

Once I was finished, I called home and asked, “What was that awesome casserole you used to fix when I was home sick from school, Mom?” She fetched the recipe and read it off to me over the phone, and with new motivation I braved the bitter weather long enough to get the ingredients. About an hour later, I was enjoying warm memories and tummy comfort.

The Super Epic Final Exam-Finishing Visit

I was one of the unfortunate students who caught the stomach bug going around the dorm room one fall semester, and wouldn’t you know it, I had a huge final paper in one of my English classes to do and turn in the next day. How much had I done on it? Umm…yeah, let’s just say they don’t call me “The Procrastinator” for nothing.

So, I was sitting in front of my laptop, alternating between typing, backspacing, checking Facebook, and groaning…and then, I realized that just verbally expressing my discomfort was not going to work anymore. Speed was necessary–but so was my final paper, which I was currently very stuck on. Thinking quickly, I grabbed up my laptop and headed toward relief.

Without my ethernet cable connection (this was 2004, so wireless internet in the dorms was still a thing of the future), I was utterly without Internet, but the session still proved to be very, uh, fruitful; I suddenly remembered I had some additional points to make in my final paper, which I had forgotten in the throes of the last cramp. It almost seemed as if my current situation helped unbind my brain, and I found myself with a lot more to type about the pieces of literature I was studying. I took all the time I needed (both meanings intended), and ended up finishing the final paper entirely. More astonishing than writing it in the bathroom was the fact that I was actually DONE with a final paper more than an hour before it was due!

The Moral of the Story

Time spent thinking is never wasted, no matter where it happens! ROFL!

Saturday with the Spark

Seeing and Feeling Music

June 4, 2011 Robin 11 Comments

For almost all of my life that I can remember, music has not only been an auditory experience, but a visual and tactile experience, too. As a child, I thought everyone saw swirls of varying colors when they heard music, or felt the hairs all over their bodies raise up like a standing ovation when a particularly beautiful chord was struck. To my utter surprise, when I tried to describe this to other people, they had no idea what I was talking about…and a good deal of them probably thought I was a bit off my rocker.

The Reason for the Swirling Colors of Sound: Synesthesia

It was not until I joined Facebook in late 2005 and saw a group called “We See Sound, Taste Shapes, and Smell Colors” that I finally found out what was at the core of my strange and wonderful experiences when listening to music. Synesthesia is a very interesting brain condition in which synapses in two or three different senses “leak” into each other; when one sense is stimulated, it triggers a response in the other sense. For me, every time I hear music or sound, the stimulated synapses in my temporal lobes (located just above my ears) “leak” into my visual cortex (at the back of my head), producing a veil of colors across my vision in response to the sound. (I have begun to wonder if the temporal lobes also leak somewhat into my sense of touch as well, since I experience tingling and hair-lifting in response to exceptionally beautiful music.)

Being a sound-color synesthete (and possibly a sound-touch synesthete as well) means that my experience of the world around me is very different from other people’s experiences. Every sound generates a color; the honking of a particularly grating car horn registers as a vomit-green flash at the corners of my vision, for instance. My boyfriend’s voice is the color of the eastern sky at sunset, a lovely, muted medium blue. And every musical key has a color associated with it, seen in the diagram I made for the synesthesia Facebook group below:

My First Experience of Synesthesia

One of my first and most startling episodes with sound-color synesthesia happened when I was a little girl (probably about 3 or 4 years old), playing with my Barbies in the living room while my father played a piece called “Music Box Dancer” by Frank Mills (see following video):

I had requested this piece because I was then infatuated with becoming a ballerina, and I made one of my Barbies dance along with the song as Dad played the merry little tune in C major. As you see in my diagram of musical colors above, C is a warm golden-yellow, the color of late summer afternoons in the South, and I luxuriated in this familiar, kid-friendly key.

When the song came to an end, Dad started it over again, except this time, he transposed it up a half-step, to C-sharp major. As the first notes were struck, I dropped my Barbie doll to the floor, my hands, arms, and scalp tingling–the explosion of deep midnight-violet in my mind was absolutely breathtaking! C major had made the notes feel like the kicks and strokes of a swimmer in a warm and languid pool, but C-sharp major transformed them into tinkling silver crystals, sparkling against a background like that of a clear moonlit night. I could hear the difference because of my perfect pitch (which I did not know I had yet), and I could actually see the difference between the keys in my mind, too. (This began my deep love and appreciation for the key of C-sharp, whether major or minor–it is my favorite key to hear music in.)

Every time after that, when Dad sat down and played “Music Box Dancer,” usually in C major, I would come up and say, “Play it up, Daddy, play it up”–I wanted to hear it in C-sharp major again. He understood what I was asking for after the first couple of times I requested this, and this, he related years later, was when he first started to wonder if I had perfect pitch. (My experience of synesthesia and perfect pitch are so intertwined that I nearly have to talk about them in context with each other; I have written more about how chords appear as multiple colors blended together in my mind in this blog post.)

Synesthesia in Everyday Life

I’ve had similar experiences with music and sound all throughout my life, and it’s an everyday joy for me. Singing in choral festivals and concerts, with all those varying voices joined in harmonies, creates the sense of a hovering structure in mid-air, silvery-gold and delicate like a thinning soap bubble; the chords we create feel as if they reverberate along my nerves, and every hair applauds. Even the sound of a plane engine flying overhead, the Doppler effect making the pitch go down as it recedes from me, generates a swirl of black and deep green in my peripheral vision. I can say it’s truly fun to be a synesthete–it certainly makes the world much more interesting!

Tuesday on the Soapbox

5 Real Social Coping Strategies

May 24, 2011 Robin 1 Comment

We all cope with society in various ways. Some of us use our smartphones to avoid conversations with strangers; some of us prefer the Internet to face-to-face communications. We are individuals roaming through a sea of more individuals, and most of us actively try to avoid threats and pass the time as peacefully as possible.

I’m certainly one of those who avoids conflict and threats as much as possible. I don’t like to be in or near fights; conflict makes me VERY uncomfortable. Thus, I find myself using certain coping strategies to make myself a non-threatening individual, to dissuade people from trying to harm me, and to maintain friendships. These are not entirely selfless strategies; I often do these things to keep my own sanity (or what I have left of it) more than anything.

Below are the social strategies I find myself using all the time, to maintain my social role as a “helper” and a non-threat.

#1: Saying “sorry” all the time

I’ve done this for so long that it’s become an instinct. Any time anything happens, whether it’s really my fault or not, I end up saying “sorry,” either to express regret or to express compassion. The slightly twisted reasoning behind it: if I say “sorry” enough, people might understand that I commiserate with them, and thus are more inclined to see me in a positive light later on.

#2: Being helpful

If I help someone, I boost them up–as well as boosting my own feelings of self-worth. Helping that person may also lead to them having a positive memory of me, making them less likely to harm me or act against me in the future.

#3: Being emotional

Though it seems counter-intuitive, this is also a coping strategy. I had to dig a while in my consciousness for this reasoning, but from what I’ve been able to gather, becoming overly emotional means that others are moved to help me calm down, forgetting for a moment their own gripes with each other. (I have actually done this quite often in situations where a group needs to pull together to make it through–I somehow express the stress of the rest of the group, and we end up becoming a more solid unit as a result.)

#4: Forgiving quickly (or at least saying that I have)

If I forgive quickly, I am perceived as somehow a “better” person–though I confess sometimes that I can’t forgive as easily as the words spring to my mouth. (That’s a hard thing to realize about myself.)

#5: Staying quiet when I have a minor complaint

I don’t like to make a “big scene” and will stay quiet rather than being assertive. Reason: I don’t want to be seen as a nag or as a bothersome person.

What I’ve Learned from Exploring My Coping Strategies

All of the above strategies focus around others seeing me as someone they want to be around, someone they want to help, and someone that they look on with favor. This is related heavily to my experience of severe loneliness early in my school life, which shaped me more than I wish to admit. My way of dealing with threats, usually in the form of another person who is more aggressive, is to make sure they do not perceive me as a similar threat. Only then can I have some semblance of peace, since I have maintained harmonious relationships with them.

Summary

Coping strategies are the unconscious tricks we all use to maneuver in society, but sometimes they don’t always function the way we intend. One reason I posted this is because I have to dig into why I act the way I do in order to change the malfunctioning strategies–for certain, I can’t go around the workplace crying every time I feel threatened!

Learning about our inner emotional workings is a freeing and somewhat disturbing experience, one that has helped me get a better handle on who I am and who I am becoming. Try it for yourself–what’s really making you act the way you do in certain social situations? You might just learn something really interesting about yourself in the process!

Saturday with the Spark

Journals in Verse: My Personal Poetry

May 21, 2011 Robin 1 Comment

I’ve been writing poetry since I was a very little girl. Some of my earliest verses were composed on a summer vacation when I was about 7 years old, studying the motion of the waves against the beach as doubtless so many other poets before me had done. I was inspired by the fluid rocking motion of the water, and how it left the beach looking swept and clean, so I jotted down a little poem about it.

What I Used to Think Poetry was About

Poetry indeed served as a welcome diversion from other subjects like math and science, but I didn’t do a whole lot of it during elementary school. From what I learned in school, you simply had to write poetry in a very specific way for it to be considered “art.” I toyed with the idea of becoming a poet when I was older, but I certainly didn’t have the patience to sit there and rhyme ending words, or to make each line be the same length with the same beats as its predecessors. It seemed like a lot of work–and it ended up sounding a lot less inspired and beautiful–when I tried it, at least.

Poetry: Not Merely Meter and Rhyme

But the hangups I had about “appropriate” poetry style all but evaporated in middle school. I began to need a way to talk about the despair and anger I was feeling, without writing too directly about it and getting angry all over again. So I just wrote, breaking my poetry’s lines wherever it felt “right” to break them, choosing words only for their biggest emotional impact.

This poetry, in a real sense, became my journal entries. As I worked with fitting my emotions into a small space of verse, my feelings and problems became concentrated and yet refined. Other people could relate to what I had written, but it didn’t hurt me quite so bad to read it as it had hurt while I was writing it all out. It was quite like getting a splinter out of my finger and showing the sliver of wood to other people–it was painful poetry, but it was good because it was so raw.

I wrote this type of self-discovering poetry all throughout high school and well into college, and even some into graduate school. Much of that poetry probably shouldn’t really be shown to anybody now, since my style has evolved as I have grown up (not to mention my mindset). But the art form served its purpose–each poem helped me stay in control of my emotions, storing them in a paper jar, like storing fruit by canning it. And, I can reopen the jars at any time and re-experience my life at that moment.

Poetry as An Old Faithful Friend

As my life has become brighter, especially with the advent of my current relationship and my continued work on my novel and my music, I find myself less likely to lean on poetry’s shoulder, writing mainly life-observing poems rather than inward-looking poems (though I can still wring the tears out of a piece of paper if I’m in a mood to do so!). I use poetry now as an occasional journal entry, a way to immortalize a moment rather than a way to work out a problem. But I know that I can always write out my problem in verse; just like a faithful old journal, the art form of the poem waits for me to write.

How to Start Writing Poetry for Yourself

Though I’m sure the poetry purists out there are probably recoiling in horror from this post, I still recommend approaching poetry as an art form you can USE rather than as an art form you have to produce “just so.” If you let others’ guidelines for writing poetry become rigid rules, you can actually stifle your own creativity before it ever has a real chance.

That’s why I’m not suggesting any specific rules or regulations. Rhyme if you want to, make it rhythmical if you want to, but feel free to explore the edges of the art form, too; discover the line where speech becomes poetry, where words become art. Write what you really feel and think, and worry about refining it later, if it even needs refining. The world may not need another perfectly measured and rhymed work of art–but it does need your thoughts.

Tuesday on the Soapbox

Sheltering Branches

May 17, 2011 Robin 1 Comment

I love the thick green of forest leaves in late spring and summer. Somehow, it feels as though the very air is thicker with life than it is in the barren, cold winter; birds hop along branches, and squirrels scurry up tree trunks to hide in the foliage. The delicate beauty of each thin leaf combines with its brethren to make a soft silhouette of shade on the grass, promising rest and relaxation.

Maybe it’s my inner hippie coming out, but forests have always felt sheltering to me. It surprised me to learn, while I was studying for my English major in college, that in literature, forests have often been used as the sites for sorcery and evil being afoot, such as in Young Goodman Brown. I guess it’s because my house is planted square in the middle of a large forest that I’ve always viewed forests as places of rest and safety. The screen of leaves, tree branches, and trunks fully obscures my home from the road, generally keeping us safe from robbers and trespassers. Sinuous branches arching over parts of the driveway and house may present a slight danger during ice storms, but for much of the year, they provide welcome respite for all sorts of little animals (and tired humans returning from shopping trips!).

I’m the kind of person who will drive down the road, sight a particularly beautifully-shaped tree, and stop and take a picture of it; I’ll do the same for lovely vistas of foliage allowing just hints of sunlight to pierce through to the ground. What I love most is that trees and forests aren’t just beautiful, but useful–when I’m taking refuge from the sun under a pretty tree, it feels sometimes like I’m being watched over and protected. Other people seem to think the same thing, albeit unconsciously; when looking for a parking spot in the summer, the spots with trees shading them are usually taken first!

Even though trees might besmirch our cars with their sap, overly shade our front lawns, or even threaten our houses when they die and begin to lean, I still think they provide a restful counterpoint to human life. You can’t just stop and watch a tree grow, and yet they are in constant cycles of growth, as their rings tell us. They are perpetually still and yet vibrantly alive in the same moment, like a person in meditation. We spend our days rushing around for sustenance and shelter and comfort; they derive their sustenance and comfort from the ground underneath, and provide us with a little of the same.

Photos belong to: IPadWalls.com & The.Rain.Man’s photostream.

Tuesday on the Soapbox

Loneliness, the Bane of My Existence

May 10, 2011 Robin 5 Comments

Author’s Note: This post is pretty heavy lifting, emotionally, but this is one of the reasons that the category “Tuesday on the Soapbox” exists on this blog–it forces me, weekly, to dig into personal, social, political, moral, and ethical issues and really get down to what these problems are really about. If I’m not brave enough to tackle the minefield of my own emotional makeup, then I’m not really doing right by this category. And maybe those who read this post will be inspired to dig down into the detritus of their memories, as I have, and find some beautiful “a-ha!” moments along the way.

If you understand that I fear being lonely–not being alone, but being without people who love me and care for me–then you understand me. It literally rules everything I do. I am the way I am because I greatly fear the moment when I am utterly without love.

One might wonder why I, an only child of doting parents and loving extended family, would have grown up with this type of neurosis. I can give you a one-word answer: school.

Where Loneliness Grew

Everything I needed to know about life, I did learn in kindergarten. I learned that friendships were often political alliances; I learned that they could be made and broken in the same day. I learned that friendships were fragile because people were petty creatures, able to hate you or fear you deeply over nothing. Five-year-olds do all that just as well as 30-year-olds? You better believe it.

I was an only child, desperately seeking children my own age for friendship. But even the first day of kindergarten proved to me that I had royally bungled that attempt. I was exuberant and talked in outlandish imaginative words. I wasn’t used to having other kids to play with, they weren’t used to a weird kid like me, and I didn’t understand their “picking” and “teasing.” All this difference didn’t serve me very well, because soon I was the absolute outcast in the classroom, apparently too different to befriend or even speak to.

The Pattern Continues

Elementary school passed in much the same way–the glass wall between me and the rest of my classmates did not come down over time, but only strengthened. I would attempt to play with the popular kids, and they would laugh and walk away as if I wasn’t even human enough to treat with respect. I would try to talk to the kids sitting on the edges of the playground, who also looked lonely, and they would scream and run away as if I was some terrible monster. It made me feel unworthy to be alive. I had parents who loved me and told me I was a good person–but how good of a person could I be if my entire grade level couldn’t stand to be anywhere within ten feet of me? I was clean, I dressed neatly, and I was good at schoolwork. Despite this, was I somehow tainted?

Whatever was “wrong” with me in the eyes of my classmates has been a mystery to me since those long-ago days of early grade school. All I know is that my role in the school’s social system was established early on, and I was not allowed to move from that Godforsaken role until well into high school. I was the whole class’ emotional punching bag, no matter if you were a “nerd,” a “jock,” a “prep,” or anything else. Anybody could pick on me because I didn’t know how to defend myself against it, and it was apparently great fun making me cry because I gave people what they wanted–a response. I got teased for my hairstyles, my clothes, my grades, the way I walked, the way I talked, my height…absolutely anything and everything they could think of.

And yet, I continued to try to reach out to these people, because they were my classmates, for better or for worse, and they were the best shot I had at trying to form friendships with kids my own age. My life was school and home; I had no neighborhood of kids my age to come home to. I kept trying the same things expecting a different result, hoping that this attempt might get at least one of the kids to respond positively. Some days, after 7 1/2 fruitless hours of this, I came home and fervently prayed to God that I would die in my sleep. And that was just elementary school. Even then, I already knew death would be an escape from the horrible, crushing loneliness I felt.

Loneliness -> Depression

Around second grade, largely due to loneliness, I lapsed into what I now know as my first cycle of depression, which had been immediately preceded by several severe crying fits in the classroom. I cried because of the teasing; I cried because I was hurting emotionally. My second-grade teacher could not deal with me, so she sent me to the office, twice. I was reminded that if I had a third office visit, I would be suspended. I was horribly afraid of that third office visit (what it meant for my precious-seeming permanent record more than anything), and so I began to internalize my feelings so that I wouldn’t be sent to the office and permanently marked as a “bad kid.”

Depression came to join loneliness very soon after, at the same time my teacher began to praise me for my magical “turnaround” in my behavior. If she had only known what she had helped to engender in me; the sadness stagnated within me and festered into a darker emotional infection. My life thus became my schoolwork; pride in my work took the place of friendship. If I could not have friends, then I would just be the best in school and no one could disrespect me for that.

I spent the rest of elementary school in this fog, which only a few people pierced through to become friends; I still remember them fondly and have kept up with them over the years. But I remember also the silences which followed every “cool” comment I tried to make in groups; everyone just got awkwardly quiet, and then resumed talking as if I had never spoken. I also remember the moments of aching for someone to just recognize that I was there, that I was a fellow human being, and being too afraid to make the first move for fear of being laughed at and teased. (Isn’t it funny how our brains focus on the negative memories?)

Middle School: A Fertile Ground for Loneliness Indeed

Middle school did not clear this fog very much; in fact, as my body bloomed into its bigger adult form, I began to be teased for my weight as well as everything else. To think that I had looked forward to middle school, thinking would be better because I was with people from two other elementary schools, and I could make a clean slate of things. Unfortunately, the kids from my elementary school warned the kids from the other schools about me on the FIRST DAY, spreading vicious rumors and lies that they had grown up to believe about me.

By the second day of sixth grade, I was again an outcast, except with three times more people around to either tease or ignore me. But now, instead of just verbal abuse, I was physically assaulted, as well. Other kids slammed my head against lockers, held me against the wall so they could jiggle and pinch my flesh. A gang of six girls got together to torment me in the bathroom, dumping bathroom trash (used tampons and pads) down on my head in the bathroom stall, standing on each other’s shoulders to look down at me while I tried to use the restroom in peace. (Years later, I watched the movie Carrie and envied the title character for her ability to get back at all the hateful people in her life. I was all too familiar with the tactics her enemies used against her; the movie hit far too close to home.)

The Only Defense Against Loneliness

If it hadn’t been for seventh-grade choir, I probably would not be alive today. Choir gave me a sudden reason to live–I was suddenly one of the strongest singers in the choir, and other people depended on me for the voice part, whether they liked me or not. I was suddenly useful. The loneliness sped away when I sung with the group, because I had a purpose and I had people who needed me; it didn’t matter that I was fat, that I wore “high-water” pants, or that I still cried easily. Thus I learned something else about society–as long as I was useful, people would like me. I also discovered that I had a gift for vocal music, and coupled with the writing I had begun to do more of, I began to cling a little more closely to life.

Outwardly, I began to be more self-assured as I left middle school and went into high school. I looked very confident and poised on my graduation day, when I urged my classmates in a graduation speech to “be bold” and grab their futures. All through college, as well, I was considered to be studious, helpful, and well-educated, and people depended on me for help in tough classes. I was eager to help, not only because I enjoyed seeing other people achieve their best, but because they were genuinely grateful for my help and appreciated me.

Where Loneliness Still Blooms

But even as successful and “happy” as I appear, even today in my late twenties, I am actually no more self-assured now than I was back in seventh grade, as my teacher training so painfully taught me. As I watched my seventh-grade students flounder in loneliness and self-doubt, I saw myself…even the “teacher” skin could not cover it. I’m a Magna Cum Laude college graduate, generally well-liked by the people in my life, loved by a wonderful Christian man, and on my way to becoming successful with the writing and music I used to keep myself alive. Yet, I still apologize for everything and do my best not to get in people’s way. My past has taught me to err on the side of being too nice and too friendly. If I am considered “nice” and “friendly,” people will like me; if people like me, they’ll stay close to me, and never betray me.

Yeah, I’m a pretty pathetic person once you get to know me. I’ve been crushed by loneliness and depression for so much of my life that it’s almost more normal than normal. Almost everything about me is a coping strategy–my helpful nature, my humor, my writing, my music, even my gaming. Everything I do helps me deal with the horrible fear of being lonely as I once was, even as I’m surrounded with people who care about me. I live in fear of the ill-considered remark, the unintentional slight, the momentary mistake that leads to someone leaving my life.

With the help of my beloved, my friends, and my family, I am starting to dig out from under this loneliness…but it’s going to take a long time to free myself from these choking vines. But I hope one day I can see others as purely friendly instead of as potential enemies, and be rid of this loneliness at last.

Tuesday on the Soapbox

Love Transforms Us

April 26, 2011 Robin 1 Comment

The “love” of which I speak in this article can be romantic love, the love of friendship, or the love of God, but its power does not get diluted in the slightest by its different denominations. Love is a powerful force is in our lives, and I have personally witnessed and experienced what a profound effect it can have on us–I believe love can change us when everyone and everything else cannot.

(This post, admittedly, is my attempt to speak of what I don’t quite grasp yet, so it might be a little out there. But it’s been a rare uplifting topic on my mind for a few weeks, so I decided to write about it.)

Romantic Love: A Motivator for Personal Change

For years, I hated myself. Absolutely, definitively, hated myself. Imperfection was the big concern for me–I wasn’t mistake-free, of course, and I got picked on in school for every mistake I made, mostly because I made such a big deal about it. I even began to self-mutilate because of my perfectionism, ranging from beating my own head with my fist to biting the first phalange of my right index finger. I wanted to be perfect, and when I couldn’t be, I had to punish myself. Disturbed logic as it was, it made sense to me in the moment. I didn’t consider myself worthy of love because of my imperfection.

Though I am not completely free of self-mutilation today, I do it a lot less frequently (and with less vigor) than I used to. That, I can credit almost completely to the supportive, healing love my longtime boyfriend has offered me. He doesn’t yell at me or deride me when I begin to bite my finger (as is my wont when life is generally not going my way). He instead sits with me and talks to me, literally “talking me down” from hurting myself any worse. He’s told me several times that seeing me hurt myself frightens him and makes him sad, and that he would rather that I hurt him than hurt myself. (Of course, I would never hurt anybody else–that’s one reason I turn my anger on myself rather than hit somebody who might deserve a good punch in the face. XD)

Over the years we have been together, I have watched my need to self-mutilate shrink to an occasional thing rather than an everyday thing, and I find myself sharing my little successes with him, telling him that it’s been four days since I last bit, or maybe even a week and a half since I last bit. One day at a time? Indeed. It is a daily process, but his support and his love make it possible for me to let the dark crescents of bite marks on my fingers heal, and for me to stop needing to inflict more. This healing relationship has helped me to transform, in a way I never imagined I could be any different.

The Love of God: An Amazing Changing Force

In the mid-2000s, I knew a lady in her early thirties who was a friend of a friend’s family. She stayed with them a few weeks at a time, when she was between houses and between jobs; I soon grew to understand why she was often between houses and between jobs, since her drug use and drinking were a major part of her life, as well as abusive men who stole from her and tried to control her. She spoke often of being so strung out she didn’t know where she was, and on late nights my friend and I would hear her begin to cry, only to fall asleep in the middle of her tears. I didn’t really know what to say to her, how to talk to her so that maybe I could help her–it seemed like she was already an old woman in a young woman’s body, with medical problems and addictions that thinned her brown hair and shrunk her face so much that she looked like a faded portrait of herself.

She moved out of my friend’s house for the last time in 2007, and we lost contact with her afterwards. I worried that she was in prison or in a homeless shelter somewhere; I hoped maybe she had found a place to live somewhere else, away from all the bad memories. The last place I expected to see her again was my church in March of 2011, coming down the aisle to talk to the preacher about moving her membership there.

As I stood in the choir loft that morning, singing the verses of the invitation hymn that called anyone who wanted a few moments to pray at the altar to come down, I saw a trim but healthy-looking woman stand up from one of the back pews and walk down the center aisle toward the front of the church. Her hair, wavy and thick, was highlighted, warm blonde atop light brown, and she wore a smile and a glow that spoke of being whole at long last; she wore a simple blouse and skirt, looking put-together and professional. I did not know her, I was sure–and yet, as she clasped hands with the minister and began to speak to him quietly, I felt that somehow, I did know her. It was not until she turned and glanced at me, and her eyes brightened with recognition, that it finally clicked; she was the friend of a friend’s family from so long ago. She was so utterly changed, inside and out, that the memory I had of her didn’t match at all.

After church services were over, I came down from the choir loft and went to speak to her. There was a radiance about her that almost made me disbelieve she was the same woman I had known before–gone was the frail old-young woman who was sometimes too strung out to answer the door, and in her place was a woman with a new grace and stability. I didn’t get to speak to her long, but I walked away knowing that the love of God had transformed yet another soul, one I never would have guessed could have been reached. The completeness I sensed was so touching and poignant that I found myself weeping. Just as God had transformed my life through the love of a good man, so had He done hers through time and spiritual rediscovery.

I Don’t Know How It Works, But I’m Glad It Does!

I don’t know exactly how these transformations take place. All I know is that it’s hard for me to look back at the way I was before I met my boyfriend and feel the self-hatred thrumming through my memories, because I am quite different now. Yes, the hate does come back on occasion, when I’ve missed a turn on the road for the fifth time, or when I just can’t solve that last puzzle that will make a website work. But it’s a lot less often now. The love God brought into my life changed that for me, just as He changed the woman I once knew from helpless and broken to complete and joyful. Love, in all its forms, can indeed transform us as no other force can on earth.