the panic attacks sit indian style on my sternum.
they act like they've always come to visit
they butterfly into my chest like the ink from a squid
when it is afraid, in the solution we call the ocean,
a nicer word than solution that helps you let it wash over your ankles
your calves, you walk into it without fear.
you forget that it is filled with the hard remains of life,
with seaweed, whose arms snake out like my heartbeat:
steadily pulsing with the rhythm of the solution
all around it, instead of its own internal clock of life.
seaweed is living matter but just barely.
there's a mess of it down there,
along with the coral hanging on for dear death
on every hard surface it can find
and there is mostly no light. what lives there, in such a place
where the ground is the reference point
instead of a sky must have a kind of patience even trees
do not know the beginning of. A kind of waiting that begins
when it is formed
and continues when it no longer swims or looks
or does anything else I'd recognize as counting
as close enough to me
to even talk about. I'm self-centered, obv.
I finished a semester of law school and can't believe
such a snot-nosed environment probably changed me for good.
It's over and still my body is reacting, every twenty minutes,
and I can, for the first time, understand
why men need their boat books, their hemingway and melville.
It isn't about the surface of the water,
or getting from one place to the other.
Is it about getting close to the only mystery left not light
not dark not death not life, something we don't have a lingo for,
something cold and unacceptably complex for our words
to try and wrap up,
stuff onto a train and carry
towards that part of ourselves
that began being patient long before our eyes, startled,
began to shape this into this and that into that? Is it?
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
IL of a first semester
IL first semester is officially over, and my panic attack has stuck around to help see me into the new year. My anxious heart does not realize the civ pro exam is OVER. I had to send up prayers for relief during the exam (EDIT not gonna talk about the exam) and here I am still re-learning how to breathe properly. What I learned my first semester distilled into 600 characters (just kidding not gonna character count):
1. I am a social basketcase when not careening around the world with kick-ass confidence. Sadly, I AM that narcissist who swings from one end of (I like me) to the other end of (you don't like me?). I actually have little in common at first glance with the story of Narcissus, who preened over his reflection. But I remember word for word some of my own less-than-perfect commentary in Torts class, just in case the exact same situation ever happens again.
2. My ideals are either grounded in airy nothings (and have been blown away) or are very specific experiences, which I now squint at skeptically, even though I really did experience them.
3. When I hear someone's opinion, I often think, "That's conclusory" and if they have some kind of proof I want to ask, "Where are you reading from?"
4. I see torts claims (ending killer--Bruce Willis's wife has a NIED claim!!!).
5. I look through narrowed eyes for the sharp elbows of others.
6. I loved taking one of my exams and so, no matter what my grades are, will hold to the belief that something about being a lawyer may be just fine with me.
7. My poetry is my teacher in torts and my disaster in legal writing. In torts, I have to sift information and distill it. Like a poem. In legal writing, my thoughts need to move along, please, and make way for the legal reasoning OTHER PEOPLE have made clear. Just sort, and re-phrase, sort and re-phrase. Finding the forest for the trees is impossible if you think you get to BE one of the trees.
8. I am not the biggest fan of learning. This was a horrible realization. I thought I loved learning. Really I like positive feedback and being good at everything I decide to try. Not the same thing as learning.
9. Be a friend to have em. If you're like me, and you wait for the true-blue types that come to you, expect some loneliness. People are too f-ing busy to do much beyond the rudiments of friendliness, and if you need more reassurance than that, don't look to law school for friends.
10. My study mates showed up after all. I thought I was good to go with isolated study techniques, but the other solitaires and I leaned on each other just enough to help one another.
1. I am a social basketcase when not careening around the world with kick-ass confidence. Sadly, I AM that narcissist who swings from one end of (I like me) to the other end of (you don't like me?). I actually have little in common at first glance with the story of Narcissus, who preened over his reflection. But I remember word for word some of my own less-than-perfect commentary in Torts class, just in case the exact same situation ever happens again.
2. My ideals are either grounded in airy nothings (and have been blown away) or are very specific experiences, which I now squint at skeptically, even though I really did experience them.
3. When I hear someone's opinion, I often think, "That's conclusory" and if they have some kind of proof I want to ask, "Where are you reading from?"
4. I see torts claims (ending killer--Bruce Willis's wife has a NIED claim!!!).
5. I look through narrowed eyes for the sharp elbows of others.
6. I loved taking one of my exams and so, no matter what my grades are, will hold to the belief that something about being a lawyer may be just fine with me.
7. My poetry is my teacher in torts and my disaster in legal writing. In torts, I have to sift information and distill it. Like a poem. In legal writing, my thoughts need to move along, please, and make way for the legal reasoning OTHER PEOPLE have made clear. Just sort, and re-phrase, sort and re-phrase. Finding the forest for the trees is impossible if you think you get to BE one of the trees.
8. I am not the biggest fan of learning. This was a horrible realization. I thought I loved learning. Really I like positive feedback and being good at everything I decide to try. Not the same thing as learning.
9. Be a friend to have em. If you're like me, and you wait for the true-blue types that come to you, expect some loneliness. People are too f-ing busy to do much beyond the rudiments of friendliness, and if you need more reassurance than that, don't look to law school for friends.
10. My study mates showed up after all. I thought I was good to go with isolated study techniques, but the other solitaires and I leaned on each other just enough to help one another.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
A Concrete Memory
Memory is like the brown birds
I assume are sparrows
What's left of the free
Fowl in upstate New York once the blue jay, grackle,
The crows and robin have all beat it
For the season. A brown upshot of color
Crescendos into the air on my left my eyes
And sense of where I am
Travelling with them
Startled, sky-bound, sudden, average. For instance:
Carrying the clunky pieces of sidewalk out
In my strong thin hands to the wheelbarrow,
So my dad could cart it away
The sun like an organ note of Karl Orff or something.
My hair grew heavy, pink and white fat circles on my face
Gave away my heat exhaustion.
I wanted, as it turned out to be my one chance, to prove a girl could do it.
However I was eleven and Dad
Moodily handed me a can of Sprite
Plunked me under a thin tree
That wasn’t part of the jobsite; some stranger’s property.
A contractor invents his rights
To stand on what he builds: does it with a branded hat, a sign,
Embossed cards with “Free Estimates”
Written along the bottom, though he can crack open
The stone ground
Like an egg. I sat on the grass waiting while I grabbed
At the air with my lungs
As if I needed a second person’s share,
Waiting for instructions and even swung my eyes
Around after a while. It didn’t belong to me, that moment,
Even as I grew accustomed to doing nothing
as the day ended early and we headed home.
I went back to books,
Opinion; I failed at humility and in fact what remained
Was an assurance:
Not only can I do anything
A girl says she can but when the sun bears down
Too much I can also take a rest anywhere.
I assume are sparrows
What's left of the free
Fowl in upstate New York once the blue jay, grackle,
The crows and robin have all beat it
For the season. A brown upshot of color
Crescendos into the air on my left my eyes
And sense of where I am
Travelling with them
Startled, sky-bound, sudden, average. For instance:
Carrying the clunky pieces of sidewalk out
In my strong thin hands to the wheelbarrow,
So my dad could cart it away
The sun like an organ note of Karl Orff or something.
My hair grew heavy, pink and white fat circles on my face
Gave away my heat exhaustion.
I wanted, as it turned out to be my one chance, to prove a girl could do it.
However I was eleven and Dad
Moodily handed me a can of Sprite
Plunked me under a thin tree
That wasn’t part of the jobsite; some stranger’s property.
A contractor invents his rights
To stand on what he builds: does it with a branded hat, a sign,
Embossed cards with “Free Estimates”
Written along the bottom, though he can crack open
The stone ground
Like an egg. I sat on the grass waiting while I grabbed
At the air with my lungs
As if I needed a second person’s share,
Waiting for instructions and even swung my eyes
Around after a while. It didn’t belong to me, that moment,
Even as I grew accustomed to doing nothing
as the day ended early and we headed home.
I went back to books,
Opinion; I failed at humility and in fact what remained
Was an assurance:
Not only can I do anything
A girl says she can but when the sun bears down
Too much I can also take a rest anywhere.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
objective memo for a subjective girl
Our objective memo is due on the 24th, and my second draft is done. I hate it but that doesn't mean it is bad. I just didn't realize legal writing took all the thoughfulness out of writing (someday I wil learn to put it back in, in structure and in cites, but I'm not there today). Our objective memo is about transsexuals...in the fact pattern we were given, the applicant is not hired and it just might be because she is a transsexual.
I spent a tense couple of hours debating transsexual rights with my fiance, and the upshot was that I actually learned something...which can in no way be applied to my memo.
What I learned was, some people dislike being told what to think about someone else ('s sexuality). They see that as a co-op of their will, and so: see a transsexual, get offended. I always thought that people who were anti-transsexual-rights were hateful patriarchal thugs (in theory I might still like this particular straw man). My fiance told me, "When a woman says "See me as a man" and I don't, it feels like I'm supposed to join them in a lie. In an objective world, there are men and there are women." To him, there are no hirs or zes or queers. This to me is crazy talk, though I get it. I get transsexuals too...because I'm subjective. One experience of truth at a time. To me it is much more sane to give up the notion that there is an Unchanging Real Truth. Maybe my woman-ness is less chromosomal and anatomical than it is the idea of woman-ness that everyone joins together in inventing, one pink doll at a time (I barely comb my hair but I work at woman-ness nearly as much as the next girl. Or I will, I swear, tomorrow.)
Yet here I am with all these realizations, and not a one goes in my objective memo. It is a memo which is, two edits of careful inch-by-inch legal reasoning later, probably about as objective as any other construction (one experience at a time). It'll do, though, until I knock out a third draft.
I spent a tense couple of hours debating transsexual rights with my fiance, and the upshot was that I actually learned something...which can in no way be applied to my memo.
What I learned was, some people dislike being told what to think about someone else ('s sexuality). They see that as a co-op of their will, and so: see a transsexual, get offended. I always thought that people who were anti-transsexual-rights were hateful patriarchal thugs (in theory I might still like this particular straw man). My fiance told me, "When a woman says "See me as a man" and I don't, it feels like I'm supposed to join them in a lie. In an objective world, there are men and there are women." To him, there are no hirs or zes or queers. This to me is crazy talk, though I get it. I get transsexuals too...because I'm subjective. One experience of truth at a time. To me it is much more sane to give up the notion that there is an Unchanging Real Truth. Maybe my woman-ness is less chromosomal and anatomical than it is the idea of woman-ness that everyone joins together in inventing, one pink doll at a time (I barely comb my hair but I work at woman-ness nearly as much as the next girl. Or I will, I swear, tomorrow.)
Yet here I am with all these realizations, and not a one goes in my objective memo. It is a memo which is, two edits of careful inch-by-inch legal reasoning later, probably about as objective as any other construction (one experience at a time). It'll do, though, until I knock out a third draft.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
suggestions please
Now I have a project, inspired by The Resurrectionists and I will get on it, the day after finals, I swear (I hope). But who to pick on first? Which case is written with such trite maxims it deserves to be turned into a poem? Post a suggestion if you think of a case that made you laugh as much as a Nancy Drew book (with her olive green knit and matching pumps).
Monday, November 2, 2009
out sick
I didn't know you could get sick in law school but I went and did it. It gave me a surprisingly helpful perspective: the world did not crumble and fall away when I didn't pick up torts for two days, nor contracts, nor civil procedure, nor anything much besides ginger ale and zinc tablets. Halloween was cancelled at our house, even the kids didn't get to go out. Now we have four costumes all set for next year....and that too is not the big terrible deal I thought it would be (though I love Halloween).
I went and got a B+ on the lawyering midterm and was sick for most of the week waiting for that grade. By the time I got it I was all "Meh" etc. Part of me was thrilled I am NOT flunking out of law school but most of me notes that praying about grades is simply a form of spiritual sickness. (A sickness that I HAD, but the fever swept it from me like a journey to the desert.)
I have a mock exam in Contracts on Wednesday. I love that we are getting one, it is much more interesting than going to the Cali site and doing mock exams all on my lonesome, which incidentally is my game plan for every Friday afternoon and Sunday evening from now until finals. (Do you Title Cap "Finals"?) The test will be commented on, though we had one for civ pro once and after studying for four days I was rewarded with the comment "need more detail here" and that was about it. So, I have low expectations this time around. But I am studying all day today and tomorrow just so I can practice confidently skimming down a page and typing as fast as I can about offer and intent and acceptance and bargain that is consideration and performance and promise and reliance and restitution and assent and definiteness and revocability all, all, in the context of the circumstances and often with the use of that concept of reasonableness winking in the sunlight with many meanings and at the end of the day I will hope I can weave as many facts to those concepts and hope, also, that this is the essence of good test taking: I know this broadly, and here, I know this in this fact pattern's narrow example, too. Who knows if that is what the Right Test looks like. I've been to the desert of a weeklong fever, I think I'll be OK no matter what.
I went and got a B+ on the lawyering midterm and was sick for most of the week waiting for that grade. By the time I got it I was all "Meh" etc. Part of me was thrilled I am NOT flunking out of law school but most of me notes that praying about grades is simply a form of spiritual sickness. (A sickness that I HAD, but the fever swept it from me like a journey to the desert.)
I have a mock exam in Contracts on Wednesday. I love that we are getting one, it is much more interesting than going to the Cali site and doing mock exams all on my lonesome, which incidentally is my game plan for every Friday afternoon and Sunday evening from now until finals. (Do you Title Cap "Finals"?) The test will be commented on, though we had one for civ pro once and after studying for four days I was rewarded with the comment "need more detail here" and that was about it. So, I have low expectations this time around. But I am studying all day today and tomorrow just so I can practice confidently skimming down a page and typing as fast as I can about offer and intent and acceptance and bargain that is consideration and performance and promise and reliance and restitution and assent and definiteness and revocability all, all, in the context of the circumstances and often with the use of that concept of reasonableness winking in the sunlight with many meanings and at the end of the day I will hope I can weave as many facts to those concepts and hope, also, that this is the essence of good test taking: I know this broadly, and here, I know this in this fact pattern's narrow example, too. Who knows if that is what the Right Test looks like. I've been to the desert of a weeklong fever, I think I'll be OK no matter what.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
lawyering midterm tomorrow. this is me not studying.
Research midterm in Lawyering tomorrow! 35% of our grade!
I'm seesawing between the calm assurance that I have studied the American Law Reports, Code of Federal Regulations, United States Code Annotated, United States Code Congressional and Administrative News, Federal Supplement, NY Juror, etc., etc. and could find a code, statute, case, annotation, law review article about a particular topic with my eyes shut, to the whiplash idea that I will stare at the exam tomorrow in despair at recognizing exactly nothing.
My fellow students and I have not had a chance to whip ourselves into this kind of study-for-our-skins frenzy since the LSAT. And with that test in mind, I guess it is best to just be calm and fatalistic. There is no re-take. There is no more time to study. The path is the path, we will basically be looking up laws and cases and agency regulations and there won't be enough time but...(deep breath...optimism shining thru...)
we will be on point and interested and bright and quick.
We will all remember to check the goddamn pocket parts and that agency regulations are primary authority and to always cite to U.S.C. and that West Digest's keys lead to the unofficial reporter keys. We will remember that there's a crapload of useful stuff in the USCA: annotated material such as CFR, cases, Pub.L numbers. We will check ourselves occasionally during the test because it will be so intuitive, the near right answer will look like a nearly right answer and the right answer will be practically in BOLD PRINT it will be so obvious.
We will all get an A and she will have to curve something else in the class, like, (says the blogger hopefully) our f-ing WRITING.
I'm seesawing between the calm assurance that I have studied the American Law Reports, Code of Federal Regulations, United States Code Annotated, United States Code Congressional and Administrative News, Federal Supplement, NY Juror, etc., etc. and could find a code, statute, case, annotation, law review article about a particular topic with my eyes shut, to the whiplash idea that I will stare at the exam tomorrow in despair at recognizing exactly nothing.
My fellow students and I have not had a chance to whip ourselves into this kind of study-for-our-skins frenzy since the LSAT. And with that test in mind, I guess it is best to just be calm and fatalistic. There is no re-take. There is no more time to study. The path is the path, we will basically be looking up laws and cases and agency regulations and there won't be enough time but...(deep breath...optimism shining thru...)
we will be on point and interested and bright and quick.
We will all remember to check the goddamn pocket parts and that agency regulations are primary authority and to always cite to U.S.C. and that West Digest's keys lead to the unofficial reporter keys. We will remember that there's a crapload of useful stuff in the USCA: annotated material such as CFR, cases, Pub.L numbers. We will check ourselves occasionally during the test because it will be so intuitive, the near right answer will look like a nearly right answer and the right answer will be practically in BOLD PRINT it will be so obvious.
We will all get an A and she will have to curve something else in the class, like, (says the blogger hopefully) our f-ing WRITING.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
