The End of an Era

My unemployment is drawing to a rapid and unexpected close. At least temporarily.

My former editor at the OPP called me and frantically asked if I could fill in at a small, one-day-a-week paper in the next town. For some shady reasons he wouldn't disclose, the current reporter won't be working for at least two months, perhaps longer, and I've been asked to replace her until then.

So all of the jobs I applied for, all the cover letters I wrote detailing my desperation of getting at least an interview, all the networking, the unsolicited resumes I sent out, all the near-begging over the last five months...it was all worthless. When JJ called, he said he was looking at my resume (which was current), though he had no idea where it came from. And neither do I. Of all the places I applied, the newspaper was not one of them. It really is strange.

So while I'm extremely excited about getting a regular paycheck again, I'm honestly a little nervous. Yes, I've worked for a newspaper before. But I wrote sports. It was part time--a few articles per week--and it was easy. Covering court cases, city council meetings, school board sessions...that worries me. I don't know anything about that stuff--or even what parts are important enough to report. Ever since I agreed to this job, I've had small panicky moments where I want to quit (even though I haven't started).

Since the town is twenty minutes away, and since THEY called ME in a panic, I convinced them to let me do most of my writing at home. I should only have to travel a few days a week, and they agreed to let me keep my Friday Farm Bureau job. It was nice to be on the end of the interview where I got to make some demands. I actually felt valued and wanted--unlike a few weeks ago when I was pleading and trying to convince the local bagel shop that I can competently slice tomatoes and make sandwiches. And they still didn't want me.

Honestly, unemployment has depressed me. I thought I was going to be writing a ton, working out every day, working on personal betterment. Instead I can hardly find the energy--or willpower--to get out of bed in the morning. It takes hours of convincing, planning, and scheduling to get myself to get moving, to shower, and to actually leave the house.

That's why I took the job. Even though it scares me, and I don't think I'll enjoy it all that much. Even though every step of the way, this job has promised to be everything I want: Writing, working from home, decent pay (OK, my standards aren't that high anymore). Though I already have plans to inform JJ that if he finds out he needs a permanent replacement reporter he should look for someone else. I'm not planning on making this long term.

But for now, it should at least improve the number of days I change out of my pajamas.

Football Thoughts

With all the ranting and whining which took place prior to last night's game between the Vikings and the Bears, I want to voice my opinion. The game was moved to the University of Minnesota's TCF Bank Stadium when the roof of the Metrodome collapsed. Because the franchise wanted to keep the game in Minnesota--especially after the fiasco last week when the game between the Vikings and Giants was moved to Detroit--the University stadium was the logical choice. As all the sports' outlets reported, TCF Stadium is only suitable to be played on through late November, thus no underground heating coils, no plan for extreme winter weather. It was never meant to be played on in late December.

And so began the complaints. The Bears' players voiced their concerns first--valid concerns as this game had playoff implications for them. As snow continued to pour every few days, the safety of the field was continually questioned--especially in light of the league's new dedication to safety this season. The ground underneath the turf was frozen, the turf itself was frozen, layers of snow and ice made the surface a virtual skating rink. The teams would be playing on glorified concrete.

And I'm sure the ground was hard.

But since when is the National Football League a group of overpaid babies? They are already paid millions of dollars a year, plus endorsements, to play one game a week. Key word: Game. A backyard children's game.

Yes, the ground was hard. Yes, it was cold outside. Suck it up.

In college I was a local sports reporter covering mostly high school games. There was more than one evening I stood shivering on the sidelines during football games. It was technically "fall," but the temperature often dipped below twenty degrees, windchill under ten, with frozen fluries--the same conditions the Vikings and Bears played in last night. My toes were numb in my dress shoes before the National Anthem was finished. I could barely take notes in the second half--my fingers shaking and twitching with a mind of their own. By the end-of-game interviews, my teeth chattered as I asked my questions. My knees frozen in a locked position. Week after week I did this...and I was paid $7.50 an hour. I didn't have a $10 million over four years contract. Nike didn't ask me to endorse their shoes, Gillette didn't design a razor around my signature, no national campaign of my face with a milk mustache. $7.50. That was it.

Even more impressive than my measly paycheck--the athletes I was watching weren't paid anything. They pounded each other into the frozen ground, took repeated beatings without as much as spending a down on the sidelines. They sprinted every play--eyes drilling to the endzone--no touchdown dances or flair. They played on a frozen cornfield-turned-football-field. They didn't have hundreds of personnel to keep the field warm, perfect, and clean. There was blood. There were aches, pains, noticeable limps, bruises. Concussions.

But one thing they were missing...complaints.

They played because they could. Because they wanted to. These kids' heads weren't swimming with NFL dreams. Most of them wouldn't even play in college, and they knew it. They were just doing what they loved, playing on the surface they had. No matter what the condition of the field was.

THAT'S playing for the love of the game.

Response to Cigarette Warning Label Campaign

During this morning's news, I saw a story about the new labels that are going on packs of cigarettes, complete with horrifying photos and warnings that "Cigarettes can kill you!" (Here's a link to the story: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20022483-10391704.html)

I hate cigarettes. The smell, the smoke, the danger, and the cancer. All the money that is poured into this horrible, life-threatening industry and product makes me sick. We could cure world hunger and homelessness with all the money spent on tobacco products. Such good could be done with this money; instead, only repeated, addictive destruction. Ending smoking forever would do nothing but good for the human race.

However, like prohibition, ending tobacco use permanently is neither realistic nor probable. I'm not naive enough to think this will happen in my lifetime, or ever. So what do I think of this new photo campaign? I think it's a waste. Of course, it's possible it could deter "potential" young smokers from picking up the habit, but it will do little to nothing to help career smokers quit.

Does the federal government really think that smokers are unaware of the dangers? That those who are so severely addicted to the habit are going to be shocked by the news that "smoking could kill!" them? People who smoke know they are destroying their lungs, heart, and mouth. In fact, most of the smokers I've met are always "trying to quit."

So what if the government, instead of this "scary photo" campaign, threw money into free quitting campaigns. I know there are resources out there, but do they work? Why not? How could they be more successful? I don't believe that scaring someone into a lifestyle change is really the best motivation. It could be effective, but it could just stir the pot and create more ill feelings between the government and smokers.

But as the Shaman says, "We shall see."

Haunting Poetry

Perhaps not to be is to be without your being

Perhaps not to be is to be without your being,
without your going, that cuts noon light
like a blue flower, without your passing
later through fog and stones,
without the torch you lift in your hand
that others may not see as golden,
that perhaps no one believed blossomed
the glowing origin of the rose,
without, in the end, your being, your coming
suddenly, inspiringly, to know my life,
blaze of the rose-tree, wheat of the breeze:
and it follows that I am, because you are:
it follows from ‘you are’, that I am, and we:
and, because of love, you will, I will,
We will, come to be.

(Neruda)

I've recently fallen in love with poet Pablo Neruda. I have never claimed to be a poet and have never written decent poetry. But I very much appreciate those who can. I do love poetry; I love its shape on the page, the way such few words can create a magical image. No other genre is as powerful or beautiful as poetry. All writing is art, but poetry really seems like art. It feels like art.

Evocation.

Poetry has this influencing authority, this command about it that makes you feel things...emotions you don't even want to feel. You look down to see tears staining the page, blurring the words in front of you before you even realize you're crying. Then you hate poetry for a raging moment--maybe cast the book to the floor, hate the poet for the turmoil he's caused to your insides. It's haunting, though. It won't leave you alone. That's the thing about poetry. Such few lines. Such power those few lines hold. So I always pick up the book again.

One final Neruda poem. It's been haunting me. So I let it haunt.

Absence

I have scarcely left you
When you go in me, crystalline,
Or trembling,
Or uneasy, wounded by me
Or overwhelmed with love, as
when your eyes
Close upon the gift of life
That without cease I give you.

My love,
We have found each other
Thirsty and we have
Drunk up all the water and the
Blood,
We found each other
Hungry
And we bit each other
As fire bites,
Leaving wounds in us.

But wait for me,
Keep for me your sweetness.
I will give you too
A rose.

Nonfiction

Fiction. From the Latin, fictium. Meaning created. From fingere--to shape or fashion. Therefore nonfiction means not created, unshaped, unfashioned?

Can we write such a thing as true nonfiction?

I often tell those who ask that my favorite kind of writing is nonfiction prose. Personal Essay. Memoir. Reflection. Diary. But even as I reflect on the numerous nonfiction peices I wrote in college as a writing major, were those essays completely unshaped?

Nonfiction is such a difficult genre; though shouldn't it be the easiest? How hard is it to recount a story exactly the way it happened? We do it hundreds of times a day--I tell my husband about the fiasco I experienced at the grocery store, he tells me about an awkward elevator ride at work, my best friend tells me about something the kids in her elementary school class said, my former roommate calls with more nightmare stalking from her exboyfriend--and the stories go on. Nonfiction doesn't have the challenges of fiction. There is no conflict about where the plot should go, how to make the story move forward, which character is the murderer (it's always the butler anyway). With nonfiction, you already know the ending. You lived it; there's nothing to decide.

Right?

Nonfiction is unshaped--pure. Only it isn't. I took Autobiographical Writing my senior year of college, and a friend and fellow writer in the class posted on her Facebook status the night before a major peice was due: Writing a memoir feels a lot like making up things that didn't really happen in my life (Lacy Barker). I can only add that I felt the exact same way. Even if I wasn't making up things exactly, I was certainly attempting to attribute meaning and emotions that I didn't feel at the time of the events. Isn't that shaping?

I know that creative nonfiction has a long history and has certain rules of its own. And I'm not trying to make a moral judgement--whether creating emotions or shaping facts is right or wrong--I'm just a writer. And as such, we often consider ourselves to be shapers or creators as artists. The very words that are synonomous with fiction. 

Can we write such a thing as true nonfiction?

The Writer

My name is L, and I am a writer. I don't mean that's my job, because it's not. I try not to define myself by my employment, mostly because I currently don't have any. I spent four years in college freaking out about grades and perfection so I could get a good job after graduation. I wonder if I would do it differently knowing I'd still be unemployed four months after walking the line with my Magna Cum Laude medal.

My husband B is the bread-winner. He went to two years of community college and now works for the best corporation in town. Funny how these things work out. I'm working on the housewife role. I always enviend June Cleaver's life a little. Although I don't generally put on a flouncy dress every morning so I can scrub our toilet. It's actually quite a feat if I change out of my sweatpants. And it's always a treat for B to come home to me actually wearing some makeup. Maybe I have a ways to go before I'm as quaint as June.

Another thing...I'm not sure "housewife" is actually the right term for me. I mean, it's more like "basement apartment wife." We like to call our little abode "The Ann Cave." It really is a little hole-in-the-wall place. A walk-out basement turned apartment by our crazy landlady who lives upstairs (Ann). Ann is really quite nice. And also wealthy. She drives a Jag, travels the world (one of the walls in our apartment is papered with a giant map), and only wears robes. Yes, robes. Not like we occasionally catch her off gaurd in her robe when we bring up the rent check. More like we have a scheduled six o'clock meeting, we call at 5:45 to confirm, show up...and there she is in a different robe. I imagine her closet is lined in them, that perhaps when she made her second million, she decided to throw away all her other clothes and trade them for robes. It's certainly one of my goals.

Of course, being a college graduate with big career plans and ending up unemployed is a bit of a disappointment. Especially in this day, where the first question everyone asks is, "So where are you working now?" I try to ignore their insensitivity. But some mornings, like today, I brood over it while I drink my coffee and plan that night's casserole. And tighten the belt of my robe.