Forget. Remember.

I'm back in school.

Three weeks ago, I was overjoyed at this. Possibilities opened wide before me and I fantasized about the homework I would have. Oh, the great things that might occur!

Now, as previously mentioned in my blog, I am grateful. I am so grateful that I live in a country where I am allowed and encouraged to pursue my education. I'm grateful that I can almost sort of afford to go to school. I'm grateful that my husband and family and friends fully support this idea.

I stopped going to school seven years ago. I dropped out of the community college where I was majoring in administration of justice and toying with literature and French. I left the country, came home, and got a job. I started a long stint of wasting my youth and teaching myself things from books and Teh Intertubes. Somehow in that seven years, I forgot a lot of things.

I forgot how tiresome it is to be lectured for six weeks on something I could have picked up in eight hours. I forgot how grating it is to have an instructor who posesses neither feeling nor flair for the subject he teaches. I forgot how I used to lose myself in any bit of minutiae in the classroom in my boredom. (Holes in the ceiling tiles, ripples in the carpet.) I forgot how much I appreciated art on the walls of the the classroom to give me something to think about and still look studious. I forgot how unapologetically, vocally ignorant many of my fellow students were and still are. I forgot that my generation forgot how to read, and subsequent generations are out to make us look like ravenous bibliophiles. I forgot that I have not really learned anything new from any teacher since I was 12.*

So, what's different now? Now I'm too old to screw around. That's the long nd the short of it at this point. I'm not 18. I can't give up and fly to Europe and dismiss the idea of ever having a degree. No matter how dull these next few years prove to be, I have to slog through it. I have to do well and in many cases feign interest in order to do well.I have to bide my time, pay my dues, and play the game.

Funny that; in high school those exact phrases made me screech about the purity of the auto-didact and the corruption and bias of the system.

Now, it fills me with a sense of grim, determined dread. I'm back in school.

Now I remember.



*Rich Herold, my art history teacher in 1999-2000 is the notable exception to this rule. I learned more in his class than I ever picked up on my own. His was my favorite class in all of high school and since.

Author! AUTHOR!

I was inspired recently by my best friend Di. When she truly loves a book, she will often track down the writer and send them a nice email. I resolved to try it the next time I read something that really moved me.

The occasion came sooner than I thought with Wicca's Charm by Catherine Edwards Sanders. I was moved, but not in the happy-fun way. Below is my hastily typed letter to her webmaster. I don't suppose I need to elaborate on my not reccomending this book...

Ms. Sanders-

I borrowed your book this weekend from the Santa Monica Public Library. I am feeling more and more fortunate that I didn't buy it.

In your book, you point out how displeased you are that Pagans stereotype Christians as ignorant, Bible-thumping, Evangelical southern hicks. You then cleverly combat this stereotype by portraying Pagans as drug-addled, ill-educated teenage slackers. You then follow it up with a "Jesus is panacea!" cautionary wail that falls just a little short of original, but hits somewhere near the borders of the Land of Irony.

Your scholarship is poor. Your interviews are badly planned, chosen, and conducted. Your preconceived notions bleed through the book like the smell of library air. Your Christian sense of charity stays your hand before the edge of outright insult, but just. This book is a pathetic attempt at a grass-roots ethnography and a failure.

It fails to inform anyone of what Pagans are truly like. It fails to impress me, a Pagan, that a Christian writer is capable of anything like fairness on the subject of religions not their own. It failed to teach you anything, it seems.

Thank you for continuing to assassinate the collective character of a minority faith. Thank you for ensuring that I will be asked, again and again if I worship the devil or harm children. Thank you for your bigotry and small-minded lack of insight.

It galvanizes smart Pagans like me to do this work ourselves. We need puppet journalists like yourself to remind us how much ignorance is still out there.

Blessed be,

Meghan Elison
Pagan Meghan
youtube.com/pagantv

Right Now

Observations:

1. I think it's hilarious to walk around in my Renaissance Faire clothes while talking on my Bluetooth.

2. I saw Sex and the City the other day. It was wonderful, like a sparkly punch in the gut followed by cocktails and a hug from your best female friend. More than the emotional taffy pull with our beloved characters, I was shocked by how this movie made me crave beauty again. I get along most days quietly noting real Tiffany's from fake, culling out the imposter handbags from the genuine article. I wear approximations of good perfume purchased on the cheap at the drug store down the street. I've been unemployed and broke for a while and I had forgotten how much fun it is to really clean up and feel shiny and new. It was a very girly moment I had with Jennifer Hudson on that screen. (Skinny smoker Carrie I ain't.) She was curvy and self-posessed and lovely and knew what she was worth to the last penny and pound.

3. It costs nothing to dream, but it costs damn near everything not to.

4. I was reading "The Girl with No Shadow" by Joanne Harris at the Barnes and Noble the other day. It's $25 in hardback and they have comfortable chairs; do the math. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and after a half hour and the first 100 pages we had to leave. Throughout the rest of the day, I had that sudden, jarring feeling that I had forgotten something important like my cell phone or my wallet... or a small child. I so loathe separation from a new book I'm reading. Ask my lovely mother-in-law; she's seen me brave car sickness to tear through Diablo Cody's memoirs on the dusty back roads of Temecula. I am insatiable until that last page is turned.

5. Tomorrow I meet the widow of my husbands best, favorite, most influential seminary teacher. So many occasions when I don't know what to say. (Maybe it's a sign of weakness when I don't know what to say. Maybe I just wouldn't know what to do with my strength, anyway.)

6. John is a dream, the gentlest part of my dreaming. The only one that doesn't fade in the face of reality. Ever mine. Ever thine. Ever ours.

7. Cars are so complicated. Gods bless everyone who understands them- particularly the intrepid souls who have given us advice this week. We have a carburetor! Who knew?

8. I can't find a new diary anywhere. They've stopped my making mine. I'm at a loss when the intertubes fail me... (YOU SHOULD ALL BE KEEPING DIARIES. Yeah, I went there. I used all caps. That's how important it is. Ask me why sometime.)

9. Forget about summer in the desert. By the time you realize it's over 110, the numbers mean nothing. It's like asking what circle of hell you're in. It's so over by noon.

10. Water. My gods, water. Get dehydrated once. I dare you. It will change your consciousness.