Goodbye Heather!

Yesterday was Heather's last day at work. I shall miss her! She made working at the office so much more fun, and made me realize that it is NOT unreasonable to expect normal, fun, warm interaction with co-workers. Heather-- thanks for the games, the blunt opinions, the tarot cards, and the genuine interest in what I said and did! I hope you sell a million pools. :)

Morality Play

Things got kind of strange at work today... Tall young Michael made some comments about women, how he thought women should be subordinate to men or some such, and it all sort of went downhill from there. Heather countered him, mentioned my name, and the next thing you know we're embroilled, eventually getting all the way to gay marriage and religion. I feel rather odd about the whole thing. On the one hand, I feel like if I'm going to go around with a very good opinion of my own articulation of ideas, and support for my positions, I can't really avoid these kinds of conversations. And to a point, they can be very interesting. But it's hard with tall young Michael, because he's so naive and definitely uneducated in many, many ways... but somehow he also strikes me as sort of innocent. He says terrible things, really not ok... but I feel, ironically, that I should be gentle toward him, because he is still, in some fundamental way, a little boy. He wouldn't thank me for that, I know. And it's hard because I express myself in such measured, qualified prose, which at this point is natural for me in matters of import, but doesn't seem to be natural for anyone else there, so I'm not sure if they understand what I am really trying to say. I think the really difficult thing there is that I have adopted such phrasing because I have been taught that it is in some ways essential to clear communication, and yet often it hinders my ability to communicate in situations where people have not been so trained. So that kind of defeats the purpose right there, doesn't it? I have an inordinate love for linguistic care, and I don't know if this makes me a more precise communicator, as I would wish, or not. And Heather is so forceful and convinced that it is hard to disagree with her. Or maybe it's just that now we are on a "side" together in the argument, but in actual fact I do not agree with all the conclusions she draws.

Maybe the point is that I am really, really, really confused about morality, and it preoccupies me to an extent that even my closest friends don't always understand the mixture of intensity and trepidation with which I approach the subject. Because intellectually it is clear that morality is a relative, culturally detirmined thing. But my heart wishes for a standard against which I can hold my own actions and those of other people, and therefore... be justified in judgement, I suppose, be it good or bad. I know judging is a trap, but it is so incredibly hard to avoid, and to be honest I like it. When I can make a judgement I feel safer, more certain about the world.

And it's easy to question morality when those around you have a different point of view, but it's not something we even think to question when we are all making a moral judgement in consort. For example, later in the day we watched Oprah, and there was no debate over whether the mother who gave her children Xanax to sedate them was morally wrong to do so-- we were all certain that she was. And I am certain. But what if this was a highly contested issue? Would I remain certain?

I think one of the bottom lines I come to is that morality can be detirmined situationally rather than generally. Take the issue of gay marriage, or marriage at all. There definitely may be couples where it is morally wrong for them to marry, and couples where it is not wrong (I don't know if marriage is morally "right," since to me that carries a bit of a compunction to commit a right act). This has nothing to do with their respective genders. Are there actions, then, that are always or almost always wrong? It's interesting to get to this point, because I think that murder is essentially worse than rape, however I would say that rape is always wrong, while killing may not be. It's so CONFUSING!

Also, I'm often nervous about expressing my views in a company where people disagree with me, and I don't like this about myself. I am morally scrupulous, but I'm not sure that it makes me essentially better as a person.

Then there's the fact that I love shady characters and antiheros, and can forgive in fiction what I would condemn in life, and especially in myself.

WHAT IS MORALITY? Is it relevant? Is it absolute? Is it relative? Is it the essence of what makes someone a "good" person, or is it merely an attempt to codify compassion? Does it actually relate to compassion directly? Now accepting submissions on all of these questions!

Ooh... and if anyone really thinks that women are inferior to men, I think your opinion is the intellectual and moral equivalent of horseshit.

I'm a bundle of contradictions. Love to my faithful readers, if you happen to exist... sound off! Inquiring minds want to know.

Dear Katie

I can't post in your blog either, without signing in to whatever service you have. But I think I should have fixed the problem on my end. This post is just for you. :)

Mayday, I'm on the fringes...

Wow... what a strange couple of days it has been. Before I say anything else, I want to say this: WE GOT INTO THE NY FRINGE! And it's my play, and the admission is based purely on our merits!! Though the news is still hitting me, that's helping make life a lot better right now. "We" for the uninitiated, is The Uncut Pages Theater Company. www.uncutpages.org. Please go, and donate money. ;)

The news about the Fringe couldn't have come at a better time, literally right on the heels of May Day, my first May Day as an alum. I had a really good time for most of the day. For some reason I decided to get very drunk in the afternoon, but not (I hope) obnoxiously so, or to the point where I got sick or could not speak or walk. I hope I continue with the record of never getting to that point, because I would not like to see the scorn I tend to have for other people who do (more the obnoxious than the sick) turned on myself. But... it was a beautiful day, after a coldish and cloudy beginning. The sun came out right in the middle of the May Hole dance, as the vigorously shaken purple parachute launched flower petals into the air and everyone danced around in giddy feminist circles. (Sometimes I am struck by how much of what we do/have done at Bryn Mawr seems like the kind of thing that only happens in movies or books. But it's real. These things do happen. Does everybody have such moments in their lives? What does it mean that the cinematic or literary creations, mirrors, and takes on reality become the reference points for our real lives? Especially interesting since so many, many people commented on how the events of September 11, 2001 felt like a movie, or they thought they were actually watching a movie. Anyway. Bryn Mawr is like this in a much more lovely, idealistic kind of way.)

The rest of the day was lovely. I went dancing and skinny dipping about, and generally did all things appropriate to May Day.

I did not see my flower fight girl, who I have had a flower fight with every year since I came to Bryn Mawr. Katie told me she was there, but, superstitiously, I did not seek her out. I guess it felt like a cycle had come to an end, and I should not interfere.

That feeling is probably also why I felt so strange at the end of the night. Like the cycle of being at Bryn Mawr and leaving Bryn Mawr had completed its course, and now I was really and truly gone. Sometimes I hate so very very much that I have been out of college for a year and I'm still afraid of leaving college, which, after all, I have already done. I feel so inept whent that fear comes over me...

But this entry has been going on forEVER, and it's time to end it before I get kicked off here as has happened about 500,000 times when I tried to finish it.

More when we fix the internet at home. :(