a bit of a katie girl.

i have a confession. i’m a fair weather feminist. i like to pretend that the term third wave actually means that i can interpret feminism however i want to. that i can forgo independence, reproductive choice and egalitarian relationships when a certain mood strikes me. and that certain mood is loneliness. or rather, a fear of loneliness.

you see, i think that despite the best efforts of the women i’m proud to call my heroes–alice paul, eve ensler, gloria steinem, mary wollstonecraft, virginia woolf, adrienne rich and naomi wolf–women are still taught to be afraid of ending up alone. well-meaning aunts and grandmothers point to women who have remained single and then tell you what there flaws are:

she was too focused on her career. she wouldn’t have children. she was too independent. she didn’t know how to play the game. she wore her heart on her sleeve. she never got over a broken heart. she wasn’t feminine enough, boys don’t like that. she was too smart. she didn’t need anybody. she wouldn’t let herself be vulnerable. she has daddy issues. her parents got divorced.

really, the list goes on and on. some of them i’ve heard from my own family. some i’ve heard from guys i’ve dated. “ellen, you don’t need me…you don’t need anyone” or “you are too independent” or “what do you mean you wouldn’t change your last name if we got married” or “do you always have to win” or “you really wouldn’t give up a career to stay home with your children?”

these are the questions that, on occasion, keep me up at night. when i replay arguments in my head with past boyfriends to figure out where i went wrong. at what point did arguments like this start? what would have happened if i’d given the “right answers”? would we still be together? probably not, considering i have been the one to end all of my relationships. but what if i hadn’t told the truth…what if i had convinced myself that i had to be what they wanted me to be and what if i had figured out how to be that girl and be happy, instead of pushing these guys away in a cold panic at the thought of marriage. at the thought of babies. at the thought of being twenty or twenty two and having that much of my life decided.

what if i had never read gail griffin’s “calling” or adrienne rich’s “claiming an education”. what if i’d never taken my women in lit class sophomore year and finally found a voice for the injustice i’d been feeling for so long. would i be married now? would i be happy? would i be the one rewarded with thousands of dollars worth of gifts, a pretty ring, and a fancy gown? not to mention the tacit approval of (practically) everyone in my family? or if i had all of that and convinced myself that i was happy, would all of this have still surfaced at some point–some time in the future when i would have so much to lose by taking the time for self-exploration? by being selfish?

because i am selfish. right now. my life as a twenty three year old woman is all about selfishness. it is about indulging myself and figuring out who i am…and even though i will coo over babies or feel an occasional tug in my heart when i see a handsome man with a toddler on his shoulders…i know in my own heart that i’m not ready for that yet. its taken me two years to get back to a place where i might be able to fall in love with someone again. and where i come from, marriage and babies come after that.

but i’m still up at night sometimes, afraid of being alone. and what is so funny about that is that i am very much alone right now, in the exact way that i am afraid of. i’m not dating anyone. no one at all. in fact, my life in a volunteer corps with six female roommates means that i rarely interact with straight, eligible bachelors. if i could describe my life in one word right now, it would be cloistered.

but i have my friends. and i have my family. and i have my roommates. and they are all amazing. and presumably, will never stop being amazing. so i guess the worst that can happen is that i am “alone” like this for the rest of my life. so why am i so afraid?

i started reflecting on this two days ago when my roommate b. canceled a date with me. there is a new exhibit on afghanistan at the national gallery of art that i really wanted to see and because b. is something of an expert on the middle east, i invited her along so she could explain to me the political context of the art (that and i just like hanging out with her). we were going to meet after my church service was over, but she wasn’t feeling very well and ended up deciding to stay home. to be honest, i almost gave up and went home myself. i was afraid of going to the gallery by myself, i suppose. but then i thought of my mom’s accusation that i’ve had a serious lack of spunk these days, and i decided to go anyway. and you know what?

it wasn’t scary at all.

i had a great time. i loitered in the manet room, spent a full ten minutes looking at both sides of the da vinci, breezed through the dutch masters (because i secretly hate them) and went back twice to view two paintings by martin johnson heade that i recently read a very interesting book about. had i gone to the gallery with anyone else, they would have been seriously annoyed. but i didn’t. i went by myself. and it was lovely. i spent a half an hour picking out a new book in the bookstore, treated myself to a salad and then sat outside in the sculpture garden with my feet in the fountain and read until dinner.

but i wouldn’t have ever gone if b. hadn’t canceled on me. sure, i may have thought about going, but i wouldn’t have actually done it. i would have sat around being afraid of it when the thing itself is not scary. kind of like being alone. so here is my (albeit long winded) vow, to stop being afraid of something so not scary. something i’m already doing. something i’m already successful at. and to trust that, if i keep going at my own pace i’m going to end up precisely where i was meant to be anyhow.

xoxo.
ellie

ain’t vindication grand? thanks to a recent new york times article, i have discovered that i am not alone in my stringent literary requirements for potential beaus. i have spent years being criticized by family and heckled by friends because i adhere to one basic moral code. you are what you read. tell me the last book you’ve read and i’ll tell you who you are. let me talk to you about books and i’ll love you for life. my requirements for a relationship are simple but exacting. leave me alone when i am reading and we will have a foundation for success. because as thomas jefferson famously said, “i cannot live without books”.

this is how i see the world. i am a bibliophile. so it is only natural that when potential suitors come along “what is the last thing you have read” is one of the first five questions i ask. (the other four, in no particular order, are: do you like dogs? do you like red wine? how do you feel about the state of minnesota? and can you name three classical composers?) but the books. the books are a deal breaker.

honestly, the reason why i love facebook so much is that i can heckle people’s literary choices. if judging is a sport then facebook is bat, glove and ball. if you have listed under your “favorite” books anything by dan brown or v.c. andrews, you will be judged. you will also be judged if you have something listed i know you have never read. proust, for example. or whitman. or adrienne rich. there are girls i went to high school with who i know for a fact have never picked up dream of a common language or leaves of grass…but there they are on their facebook profile. a testament to falsified intelligence and literary posturing. perhaps you read a quote you liked once…something about your whole body being a poem? while isn’t that nice. you haven’t read the whole poem. don’t put it down. quotes from robert frost on a facebook profile are also a key indicator of a feeble mind. you took the road last traveled. whoop dee doo. isn’t that original? (also an incorrect interpretation of the poem, i might add). i also hate girls who say that romeo and juliet is their favorite book. first of all, it is a play not a book. second of all, you don’t like the book. you like the story. you like it because you cast yourself as juliet and whatever moronic excuse for a pre-pubescent you are currently dating as romeo. get over it.

some of you may be offended by this point in the entry. i could apologize, but i won’t. its my blog. and when it comes to intelligence, books are nonnegotiable. i don’t care how smart or special your parents told you you were. if you’re not reading quality literature, you are not fully comprehending the world.

yes, i have opinions. as i told one of my favorite college professors, i have opinions on opinions. but i do listen. for the most part. the people i am most impressed by are the ones who argue for a beloved author intelligently. who are able to say what makes a book great. who can convince me to take another look. it happened with hemingway. it happened with steinbeck. it happened with emily dickinson. and i’m eternally grateful. it will not, however, ever happen with the davinci code.

i have gotten in major trouble for these opinions before. on one memorable occasion i was talking to my best friend’s new girlfriend and i asked her what her favorite book was. because i assumed my friend would date someone intelligent, thoughtful and well-read…i chuckled as i asked, “and don’t tell me its the davinci code!” it was. whoops. i would like to point out, however, that the relationship didn’t last. coincidence? i think not.

as someone once said and my mom is famous for quoting “we read so we know we are not alone“. thank-you, new york times, for assuring me that at least some of my neuroses are not unique.

xoxo.
ellie

addendum (slash shout out to my mother): when i sent my mom this article via e-mail (subject line: I TOLD YOU SO), she responded:

A few thoughts:

You should not be snooping at what people are reading, you should ask.

I have not heard of Pushkin (but now I have to look it up)!

For most of us, relationships are about helping each other grow, which leaves open the idea that someone can open up a whole new world of literature for someone they care about.

The fact that you found this article, Ellen, speaks to your need to get out more and read less!

Given how we love dogs, our opinion would rise if we found a friend with a book that implied that you can learn life lessons from dogs on their end table.

Stop with The Da Vinci Code!

Love,
Mom

yup, she’s a katie girl too. so in case you think i haven’t been toppled off my literary high horse a time or two, be assured that my sense of duty and filial obligation keep me perpetually grounded.

so, i know i promised to put up a new katie girl post every tuesday. and i fully intended to keep that promise. however, things have been a bit crazy around here with strep throat and the cell phone disaster and now i am leaving for a retreat in pennsylvania for the weekend.

so katie girl might have to wait a bit.

although i assure you that the next entry is going to be really good. seriously. and that i will post it next tuesday. until then, here is what’s on my mind (because that’s what a blog is for, right?):

i stayed up until one o’clock finishing o, pioneers by willa cather this morning and almost died it was so good. i like to read cather when i’m homesick. i know she is writing about nebraska, but her descriptions of the plains are painfully beautiful and remind me so much of the farms around owatonna.

i also love that cather was this fantastic, gifted, gender bending lesbian trapped in victorian culture. her writing always manages to convey this in such fascinating ways. in everything i have read about cather’s life there is this great sense of the tension between who a person is, who they are meant to be, and who they have actually become. cather moves to new york city when she’s young and gets this great job as an editor, but what she really wants to do is write. so she creates this mediocre novel that is essentially a second rate version of henry james. other people like it, but cather is unsatisfied…she just can’t seem to find her own voice. frustrated, she leaves new york city and travels to visit her brother and to visit her parents in her hometown on the prairies of nebraska. this is where she finally finds her story. she starts composing o, pioneers and finishes it after returning to the east coast. she subsequently writes several more books and stories about life on the great plains including my antonia and the song of the lark.

i love that cather had to go home before she found her story. she had to reconcile where she came from, her roots, with the version of herself she had spent her twenties creating. and it is in this reconciliation that she must have realized she needed both. home is where she writes about and she writes it beautifully, but she needed both who she was and who she had become to find her authentic voice. roots and wings. somewhere along the line we all figure out we need them both. a lesson i’m still trying to learn.

willa cather was definitely a katie girl. and i envy her (as any author would) for finding the story she was born to tell. you can see her settling into the language of o, pioneers. the prose is absolutely effortless because she is speaking a truth from her own life, complications and all.

i leave you for the weekend with one of my favorite passages, and a promise that i will be back with a new entry for the katie girl project next tuesday. until then:

“she had never known before how much the country meant to her. the chirping of the insects down in the long grass had been like the sweetest music. she had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.”

me too, willa. me too.

xoxo.

ellie