Mountains Made Low

On Wednesday night, I wrote here about the sleep situation at my house. In particular, that it hadn’t been good in about a week, and that I didn’t know why.

Still don’t.

But Wednesday night was a much better night for the sleeping. Still a little strange, which I’ll get to in a minute, but much better all around. I woke up yesterday bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, yet feeling like I could have slept more, which is a difference because when my sleep is disturbed, I wake up feeling exhausted but like I couldn’t go back to sleep if I had the opportunity. So feeling rested and in need of more rest was a very good sign to me.

But it was still weird. It was weird because I remembered one dream from Wednesday night, but it seems it’s just “normal” run-of-the-mill dreaming, as opposed to whatever the (apparently) unbelievably weird and disturbing shit is that I have been dreaming the past several nights. I say this because I still woke up rested and refreshed, and in a positive, as opposed to disturbed, frame of mind for the first time in while, and the dream I remember having is universally classified as a nightmare by the dream interpretation folks.

Really.

What does it say about the dreams I’m not remembering—and that I’m getting more and more thankful, I think, that I’m not remembering—when a dream universally considered “bad” is an improvement, and I feel ready to face my day when I wake up.

I suppose it’s not really surprising, though, that “scary” dream images are an improvement over what can only be described as a sense of nebulous turmoil and chaos.

A sense which returned, in a minor way, last night/this morning, by the way. Not like it was, probably because it only, for sure, set in when I got greedy and said to myself, “No need to get up this early, you can sleep in today,” and got an additional hour between 7:30 and 8:30.

Note to self: if you wake up with no weirdness in your head, get up; rolling over and pulling the covers over your head is—apparently—just askin’ for trouble.

Happy Friday! This semester, Friday, to me, means not going into the office. It particularly, this week, means not going into the office by 8:30 in the morning. Which means I have time and leisure to make coffee at home.

The opportunity to drink good coffee is not to be overlooked—at least in my world.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been getting enough coffee every day all week. We have a coffee maker in the office, and it’s one of the good kind, where it has a reservoir full of already hot water ready to go when you pour more water in. You don’t have to wait for it to heat the water and it makes a whole pot of coffee in under five minutes. We also have an understood “you kill it, you fill it” rule about the coffee throughout the day, though there are some who apparently don’t realize that leaving a splash of coffee in the pot—enough to give you maybe ¼” in the bottom of your coffee cup—doesn’t really count as not killing it. In any case, though, even if you have to build a fresh pot, there’s never really a long wait. Hooray!

But instead of a cash kitty for the coffee, the deal is that everyone who drinks coffee brings in a big can of coffee grounds at some point during the semester (at the rate we go through it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was actually more often than that, but I have already made my first contribution). And, of course, we’re talking Folgers or Maxwell House or something like that, available in 3 or 4 pound cans at Wal-Mart and bigger ones at Sam’s Club.

One of my colleagues remarked the other day that you can often tell who made the pot of coffee you’re drinking from, because there are some in the office who “believe you can make bad coffee better by making it stronger.” And I hadn’t really thought about that, but it contains within it two thoughts that I agree with: First, you can’t make bad coffee better by making it stronger; and, second, lots of people seem to think this.

And lots of other people seem to think more people think this than actually do.

Let me explain this a little more. I like Starbucks coffee. I like Panara coffee. I like coffee house, and bagel shop, and bookstore coffee. All of these places tend to serve strong coffee. But their coffee is not good because it’s strong; it’s strong because it’s good.

To be sure, weak coffee is almost always bad. But strong coffee isn’t necessarily good. Most good coffee, though, is necessarily strong. But, I would say, it’s a quiet strength. It’s not a forceful or overbearing strength. It’s a strength that comes from preparation.

You can’t make a good cup or pot of coffee by brute force. It doesn’t work that way. Running two cups of water through a whole filter-basket full of grounds will certainly give you a cup of coffee that you have to chew, but it won’t be any good. And the problem here is with pre-prepared, mass-produced, grocery-store coffee grounds: they’re coarse, they’re dry, and there’s absolutely no telling how long they’ve been in that can.

If coffee’s gonna be any good, it should be fresh-ground, fine-ground, and its oils should have you almost scraping your grounds out of the grinder. If that’s the case, an appropriate amount of coffee in the basket will give you a strong, robust, wonderful cup of coffee.

Granted, the grinder itself makes an ungodly racket at early hours of the morning when you haven’t had any coffee yet. But that’s the price you pay. Or, at least, the price I pay.

Those who don’t drink coffee will have no idea, for the most part, what in the world I’m talking about here. But even if you don’t drink coffee, don’t like coffee, have no use for coffee, ask yourself whether quiet strength born of appropriate, if not always careful, preparation is preferable in most circumstances to forceful, overbearing, and pushy displays of “strength and confidence.” If you can agree with that, you’ll have some inkling of why I like my coffee the way I do.

Speaking of which, my coffee is ready….

Or so Tim Rice tells us of politics in his libretto for Evita.

Me, I’m not so sure.

The 2008 presidential campaign is just getting into its full Democrats versus Republicans swing. One candidate has named a running mate, the other, no doubt, will soon. People who identify with both parties are jumping ship—Republicans for Obama are cropping up, as a Democrats for McCain. McCain seems to be scoring particularly big among supporters of Hillary Clinton, and that almost makes sense, if you stop to think about it.

But here’s the thing I’ve been thinking about, particularly as I was talking to my students yesterday about the idea of critical reading as we begin a summary assignment in first year composition….

I asked the students why it might be important to consider what they already know about the topic of a text—and what they already think about it—before they actually read the text.

And here’s why it’s important. If we don’t know what we already think, for ourselves, we are more likely, I think to respond viscerally to the texts we experience. If we generally agree with the text, that is, we are likely to view its specifics less critically; if we generally disagree, we are likely to read in a more pissed off frame of mind and disregard everything the text has to say—calling it simply “wrong.”

We embrace what we generally agree with, and write off what we don’t.

In a college class concerned primarily with the current of ideas (reading, writing, thinking, persuading), this is bad enough. But I see it happening outside the classroom, too, as our nation is once again polarized by the impending elections.

Except it’s not just each individual “text” that I see people responding to from the gut—not just individual statements, speeches, or interviews. Instead, it’s the candidates that are being embraced or written off, based on generalities. And it seems to be worse than usual.

Sure, I have, already, pretty much made up my mind which of the two candidates I’m going to vote for in November, and those who know me well will be unsurprised by which it is. But that’s not the point.

The point is, instead, a call to THINK. And a call to realize that, no matter whom you support, no matter what your political preference, John McCain and Barack Obama both have some good ideas. Because it seems to me unproductive to paint everything “the other guy” says with the same brush.

Because let’s face it, there are McCain supporters out there who would insist on a “Yellow Sky” plank for the party’s platform if Obama issued a statement saying that the sky is blue. And there are Obama supporters out there who would declare that McCain was out of touch with their grey, rainy reality, if he said the same thing.

No matter how much we would like for them to be, “the other guy” cannot always be wrong. And the candidate who declares that the sky is blue is, generally speaking, correct—even if we don’t like much else of what he has to say.

And that’s the point here. Generally speaking, the sky is blue. Generally speaking, the sky may or may not be falling, but it hasn’t fallen yet. And if it does, in fact, fall, “the other guy” won’t have pulled it down on our heads.

Complete. Total. Utter. Sheer.

Annihilating.

Exhaustion.

I cannot remember when it was that I last got a good night’s sleep. It has probably, though, been about a week. Last Thursday night, I think. Maybe.

Part of it, I’m sure, has been my work schedule this week (which will—I’m also sure—settle down next week). With the subbing for an out-of-town instructor Monday morning and this morning, I’ve put in two thirteen-hour days this week already, along with a regular, which is to say 9-hour, Tuesday.

But you’d—at least, I’d—think that the kind of tired that comes from long days at work, along with extra time in front of classrooms full of students (two extra class sessions, three extra hours) would be the kind of tired that encourages good sleep.

Always has been in the past.

And it’s not out-and-out insomnia, exactly. I do get bouts of that occasionally, and this stretch has included two mostly insomniac nights. But—fortunately, I think—the main problem hasn’t been insomnia. It’s been, instead, that when I do sleep, it’s not working. By which I mean that it hasn’t been particularly restful sleep. I haven’t had any trouble getting to sleep most nights, that is, but my sleep hasn’t been restful—or, the past couple of nights, even peaceful.

It’s mostly been dreams. But nothing about them that I can really put my finger on. Highly disturbing, but vaguely so. I can only really remember one or two images from these dreams, and these are disturbing, but I get the sense that the images I can remember aren’t nearly as disturbing as the ones I can’t. It’s just a sense, but I think it’s an accurate one.

The problem is, as when I wrote about the bout of insomnia, earlier, I can’t put my finger on it. I like the new job—I like it a lot. I’m a little stressed about still owning the house in NC, and a little scared about whether or not I’ll be able to sell it, but not like this, I think. And I just can’t nail down any other reason I might be sleeping this fitfully, or, on occasion, not at all.

I just don’t feel that stressed when I’m awake.

But there’s apparently some kind of turmoil, somewhere. There must be.

Otherwise, why?

And, yet, here I sit, exhausted and tired, but not precisely sleepy right this moment, writing. There’s a certain amount of head-shaking to be done at that, I think.

And I wish I could figure it out, because then I might be able to do something about it.

Might. Maybe.

At least I could try….

Well, right now, I’m posting to the blog. For the first time in two days, apparently.

I really started the new job yesterday. Started it by subbing for an instructor who got called out of town at pretty much the last minute. But subbing in that 9:30 am class, yesterday, made for a very long day. And I’m doing it again tomorrow. But then my schedule will settle down a bit.

But for right now, I’m exhausted. Really, really tired.

Beyond that, though, I’ve been evaluating student writing samples, and working on a couple of creative projects. But I promised I’d keep posting here, and I will. But let’s just put the two-day lapse, for now, down to 22 of the last 48 hours spent at work.

Really.

And I’ll look at a few more papers and hopefully get a good night’s sleep tonight.

(Also, still loving the new job, craziness this week and all!)

I was talking, the other day, to a friend of mine who is a pianist. Not professionally, exactly, but as consistently pursued avocation. She’s very good, and is often asked to play at weddings and the like. I don’t remember how it came up in the conversation, exactly, but she mentioned that it was creepy when her dad one time remarked that her performance is akin to making love to the piano.

I had to agree that for a father to make such a comment to his daughter is a little strange; but I also pointed out that, not just in her case, but in the case of most creative or performative ventures, he wasn’t wrong. And I realized, then, that this was not a new idea to me, it is an idea that I had thought about—and written about—before.

Last summer, summer 2007, I started a pretty ambitious writing project…. I wrote 100 pages of a novel. I sort of shelved it when school started last fall, and hadn’t even thought about it in months. But this conversation the other night reminded me that I had dealt with that very idea, in my writing, in the pages of that manuscript.

I’m not sure if I’ll go back to it now, or not. I don’t know. It’s tempting, and it may do me some good to have a creative outlet other than this blog (though I won’t stop writing here, even if I do return to this or start other projects, I promise). But whether or not I return to my novel or not isn’t the point, here.

The point is, I think, that the creative impulse and the sex drive are, if not the same, very closely linked in the human psyche. Undertaking creative or performative activities is, in fact, very much like making love to the subjects and objects of our creation and performance.

In artistic creation or performance, after all, we open ourselves to ideas, information, and experience. We take it into ourselves. It becomes part of us, and we release our expression or performance into the world, a mixture of “us” and “not us.”

I don’t mean to indicate, though, that creation and performance are all “receptive” on the part of the artist. They’re not. As much as we receive in the process, we also give just as much. While our external sources may, well, penetrate us, we also, in the creative process, penetrate them. We as much wrap ourselves in those external ideas and and information as bring them within ourselves. This need not be the case, of course: our work can be only receptive or only penetrative, but the best artistic work is a give and take, in which the artist and subject each enfold the other.

Furthermore, it is abundantly clear that we all have this impulse inside of us—all human beings have an innate drive to create. In a lot of people, though, this creative impulse is only seen as the procreative impulse (whether that procreative activity leads to actual procreation or not). As one of the characters in that book I started last summer says on the topic:

I want to show that it was the same passion that drives unrequited lovers mad, that drives the raging sluts among us to fuck like bunnies, that drives the more self-controlled to get married and have children. That book was [his] child, and writing it, the process of getting it, was, for him, damn sexy.

In order to create or perform, we must feel that same passion, I think.

And for me, I’m at my most creative when that passion—outside the realm of creativity—is both encouraged and bottled up. The creative juices flow best, that is, when my other passions are legitimately inflamed but are not regularly able to find release. When those other fires are not stoked, my creativity dwindles. And when there’s regular release, the creative drive also slackens.

But that’s how it seems to me at the moment. I’m not sure that it’s exactly right. You other creative types out there can let me know what you think. And if my thinking on this topic changes, I’ll revisit it.

At least, if I can do so without violating any of my rules for the blog.

My post on/review of The Shack has drawn comments from (according to Firefox when I clicked the link) “a known attack site.”

Leave it to spammers, phishers, and other online predators to know where to plug into the culture to generate traffic to their sites.

Second thought, maybe that’s not so funny.