i spoke to my sister this afternoon.  it's become a regular ritual for us, this weekly communicae (sp.).  she tells me about her life, i tell her about mine.  i try to slip in almost subliminal hints about where i stand on things, without actually being confrontational.  here is my stance, to wit: i believe in her right to pursue happiness, whether it's with a woman or a man, it really doesn't matter to me.  however, if my sister wants my parents to help her in any way, then she must abide by their rules, even if this runs counter to her desires.  in fact, in a deeper sense, although i, again, believe in her right to pursue happiness, i think that:

1) her idea of "happiness" is often inauthentic, in that it ignores what, for me, would be most fundamental: reconnection with her own children.  for me, i can honestly say that any "relations" would be secondary to the objective of reuniting with my own kids.  i think that the pursuit of relations after establishing that connection would be fine, but until that happened, i think it would be- i don't know how best to put it- ass backwards to go after someone...

2) as i may have mentioned earlier, i believe it is this very pursuit of happiness that is so problematic.  happiness, when it is an escape from responsibility and moral obligation, can only do harm.  what's more, as my sister often forms relations with people who are in similarly dire straits, well, the odds are stacked doubly so against the relationship being stable, and against either party retaining their stance (inevitably one pulls the other down, cheats on, lies, etc.).  people are not themselves unless they have their feet solidly planted on the ground...

***

i have no answers

oftentimes, i feel so frustrated.

there is no easy answer to reside in. life offers such unbridgeable contradictions, and the only thing i can do is straddle them, or swallow them. i love my sister, who is presently incarcerated. her hopes rest primarily on some long distance (in jail, everything is a long distance) relationship with another incarcerated woman in occc. i'm fine with that, and i can see how vital it is to keep some kind of hope for love or relationship alive in a place that smothers you with drudgery and weighs you down with the inescapable self-recriminations and guilt of what you've done... and yet...

i spoke with my mom this evening. she's a born-again christian (or should i say, born once, because she is a late-in-life convert who used to swear off all religion). she considered assisting my sister when she leaves prison, but she cannot countenance a gay relationship. and, in speaking with my mom, i realize that she's right, if not about her views on homosexuality, then about my sister's cyclical spiraling life. my sister has this pattern, a karma, or innen, as my grandma would have called it. she holds to desperate people, she seeks their love, and as neither she nor the object of her affections is stable, ultimately, inevitably, both tumble down further into the quagmire... to my mom, my sister needs to focus on getting her feet on the ground, caring for herself and her family (especially her kids)...

i can't really say with any finality what the right path is. even if such a path exists, it's hard to guide people to it. i'm not good at leading anyone anywhere; i'm actually quite lost myself. the only thing i can do is create a field within myself, an open space, that allows others to find a voice, and perhaps find themselves... i like to think it's like this zen buddhist idea of control: if you want to control cattle, you don't build fences; instead, you open a space for them, and allow them to govern themselves naturally.

***

people just try their best to get by. i suppose i do too. sometimes it would be nice to have some reassurance that we are doing what we're supposed to.

i don't know. i have no answers.

dialogue

i have been reading a book called "strategies that work". it is about how to teach reading comprehension to children. its key point is that reading has less to do with the mechanics of the process, or answering simple comprehension questions, and more to do with the thinking process, the dialogue with the text, if you will, enacted by the reader. in other words, the text is not some dead thing out there with a static message that is transmitted with fidelity into the mind of the accurate reader. rather, the text is like a statement made by a person in a conversation, and to truly "understand" or "comprehend" it, the recipient of that statement (the reader) must respond to it with his/her own thoughts, feelings, inferences, whatever...

i started an experiment with some of my students. i read parts of "wonder" to them. on the first day, i did a lot of talking about what i was thinking about as i read; it's what they call modeling the internal dialogue, or something or other. on the second day, which was yesterday, i read a paragraph to them, and then had them "respond" to the text by writing something on a single post-it. it could be anything, but it was supposed to be a legitimate response to what they had just heard. i told them, emphasized to them, that it was vital that they "turned their brains on" while they were reading. too often, it seems, my students turn reading into some mechanical task, where their mouths move, but their brains flatline. i was encouraging, forcing them to instead be active participants in the dialogue of reading.

it seemed to work. some students wrote their feelings down. some students wrote i wonders, or their personal inferences or predictions...