Already?

It's New Year's Eve all ready and I feel like I've hardly taken a breath.

Grad school applications are proving to be more complicated than I could've imagined. It's the same basic information again and again but repackaged in many different ways. And you better get it right or you face jeporadizing or forfeiting your entrance into a particular program. I've gotten 1/2 in. Yikes!

And packing for Guatemala isn't looking any better. It's clear to me that we're supposed to pack light, but not only am I not sure what that means, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to do it, given I have to pack work time and pack for non-work time. Oh, and I think I have like three articles of clothing packed and a good amount of things to still buy.

The good news is that one of the programs I'm applying to requested a creative writing portfolio of either fiction or poetry. As I did poetry, I had to submit 10 pages (of my best) poems. It was actually kind of difficult, but I did it and I was pretty happy with the caliber of all 15 or so poems. Expect to see some appear here in future posts.

A Post for Christmas Eve

I suppose as the title implies I ought to write about things that somewhat have to do with the holiday. Maybe.

My iPod which froze yesterday is now unfrozen. This has happened before, and like before, yesterday I just let it die, and then set it back in its charger dock and it was fine. Must be a bug or something...

I went to (my) church today. It's been awhile since I've been 1) to any church and 2) to my home church (of which I am a member). I find it difficult to "rate" church nowadays as if it's some kind of experienced, a product to be consumed. Actually, I guess I shouldn't say I find it difficult to rate, since I tend to be hyper-critical about everything, but I am very uncomfortable about rating something that is so tied to the spiritual. There was nothing that made me want to leave, which is good, as this has happened several times in the past. I was surprised at the lack of traditional Christmas songs, but the music was all right. Nothing terribly complex in the lyric department, and nothing outstanding in the melody department, although some moving stuff (we do Gospel tunes and hymns at my church, which is AME, btw). The musicians are good though, so I guess that makes up for that. I liked the Scripture readings. Among other passages, we read Hebrews 10:5-10 and Micah 5:2-5a, the second of the two which I found especially moving (although, I would recommend reading both as they are especially apt for this season).

The sermon was done by a visiting pastor from a Baptist church in Tampa. The pastor was a friend of head pastor. He seemed apt at preaching and he preached on two verses: Luke 2:11-12. He talked about the sign of Jesus' birth as a sign of the Gospel. It was almost postmodern (hee hee)! I only had a couple of quibbles with his sermon. One was linguistic, because (and I think it was just a slip) he said something was Greek word for sign, and it isnt'. Two, he made a distinction between the sign itself and Jesus' birth, saying the sign was more important than the real thing (the birth). I kind of see them as one in the same (is that me being postmodern, I wonder?) and inseparable. I mean that Jesus' birth was the sign and was important in itself. I don't know, I just feel like the incarnation is a big deal. I should mention that he made a distinction between the baby Jesus and the man Jesus in that the baby Jesus didn't do anything while its the man Jesus that turned the world upside down. While I agree that it is the adult Jesus that we focus on, I do feel that the incarnation itself is important, even though I can't quite articulate why right now. Although maybe he was saying that the playing out of the incarnation (that is the acting out of Jesus' total divinity and total humanity) was more important than simply the incarnation itself and I think I would agree with that. But I still don't see how the sign and Jesus' birth ("the real thing") are different or separable. Because it seemed to me he was arguing Jesus' birth was the sign. Anyway...

Regardless, I guess it stirred some thought and that mattered. There were also a LOT of people at church today. We almost couldn't fit everybody in the sanctuary, and we have a pretty large sanctuary. Of course it was a combined service (we usually have two services, and today we just had one), but there were a lot people out of town. But the tithe and offering procession today went on forever and ever today! (I'm assuming if you go to or have been to black church, you know what this is, but if you don't have this experience, for the offering, everyone in the church marches up to the altar to give whatever they've come prepared to give, and then afterwards the ushers march up usually in some kind of special formation with some kind of special step or what have you.)

But after all that... I kind of feel like I want to start going to church again regularly. It's more of a feeling of something I feel like doing than...I don't know. I have this idea that church is a performance, but not in a negative way but in a very positive way, and I have this tug to be a part of that. I feel like it's us acting out the invisible in a very explicit manner, or at least I feel like it ought to be.

Of course, that means several other things for me as well, so that might make finding a place to go still difficult.

Well, a happy Christmas to all who wish to have one. (Did I mention the visiting pastor said that without Christmas there would be no holidays? I guess he forgot that Chanukah has been celebrated for a lot longer than Christmas...)

Could it be? Another post?

I have no idea who reads this, but you've been in for a real treat these past few days.

And I think things are going to get messier, because I don't have time to journal, due to Christmas shopping and other holiday related activties, the large amounts of grad school application stuff I must do before January 2nd, and the preparation I must do before I leave for Guatemala January 2nd.

So very quickly...

I saw Little Miss Sunshine on Monday and it's a quirky little comedy that I'd highly recommend. It's smartly written, funny, tragic, and hopeful. It's "sweet" in that it certainly has a moral to it, but the characters are complex enough and storyline inventive enough not to be insulting. I also liked the soundtrack quite a bit too, and not just

because there's a Sufjan song in it (which I found to be a bit jolting actually, which may have been simply because of the fact that I recognized it, and hence, noticed the editing, and then didn't like the editing, because I though it was sloppy, but it probably wasn't, etc., etc...). Oh yeah, it also has Steve Correll in it, and he does a superb job, although, really, the entire cast is great.

For my trip, I'm supposed to read a book, and so I picked up a book by Jared Diamond called Guns, Germs and Steel which is about why Europeans have dominated everyone else and not the other way around. He chalks it up to environmental differences and the resultant subsequent societal developments...and as of right now, I think I buy his argument. It's at least, so far, a very interesting read.

And look! New Jersey joins Connecticut and Vermont!

...And is it just me, or does this reek of the separate but equal laws that prevaled for way too long in the last century?

Home

I decided I would get into the Christmas spirit by posting this poem. Hee hee. This poem is for all the mothers out there with their children coming home for the holidays. For the rest of us, this poem is a reminder.

And for anyone who's paying attention, you can be sure I'm not going soft on you.

Home

His car parked in the driveway,
I can almost hear him–imagine him–
sleeping soundly,
breathing between the sheets–
and I know that my walls
are keeping out the world for him tonight.

© 2006 K. M. Camper

Peach Pits

I can't seem to do any "normal" blogging, so it's back to poetry. Which is good, I think. I probably rant too much anyway.

This poem probably is a venting of my experience with violence in relationships recently (not necessarily physical). Somehow it came out in the context of familial relations. I didn't have the particular experiences depicted in the poem, but a lot of my poetry isn't "confessional" in that sense anyway. A lot of my poetry is as much fiction as it is poetry.

Peach pits

Father in cloud of aftershave
counted time
and hid his razor blades in his mouth

Mother grabbed the other side of Oklahoma
and halved all the eggs yoke-running,
leaving the uncooked batter in the oven

They shipped us to our Grandma
who would buy us cantaloupe,
cut it up and give us the seeds,
with Grandpa watching from the back,
tonguing his pipe and smoking her leaves

You tell me you remember after dinner
clanging silverware on empty plates
and eating whatever was left still sitting at the table

And when we both go to our patches,
we can only pick to give each other
Peach pits
which we watch each other barely chew
and swallow.

© 2006 K. M. Camper