Shameless whining and whinging is really all I'm good for right now...

Yes, I'm one of those people that has fallen behind on the blogging assignment. Looking back and rereading my previous entries has left me feeling disconnected and with a bad feeling about them. Writing in this medium gives me the potential to make it disappear entirely with one touch of the delete key. However, this feels like cheating and a cop out. I can't bring myself to edit or erase any of it.

Struggling through the idea of a coherent self seems so childish and uneducated now. I have come to terms with the selectivity and performance involved in the whole process and now I feel like I just want to start over. There's too much here on the page and none of it really feels like it belongs to me. That would just continue this cycle I seem to be stuck in. When previous work does not seem adequate and I finally reach some sort of breakthrough, I just want to let go of the past inadequacies. Not this time - I have to learn somehow. Since I don't get a "do-over" in life, I do not get a "do-over" in life writing.

In the past I have given up other blogs and journals for this very reason. I really don't like the inconsistencies in writing forms and really strange conglomerations of different aspects of my interests, but they are there. In a way I had to slog through those textual performances to get my philosophy to where it is now. So, even though that delete button looks really friendly right now, these past musings will not go away. I will build. This may become even more disjointed as individual performances happen and I find that I actually can put more of my experience out here.

Back to Bacon...Fencing!

Today happened to mark my first full day back in my home state of Connecticut. I had hoped to be much more productive, however, one of my goals for the week has begun to be fulfilled - finding time to fence! This is important now for a couple of reasons. 1. I'm not fighting to fit fencing time into my class schedule. 2. Connecticut is a very foil heavy state, and I need some serious foil practice for the BWCFC Championship team event that Bryn Mawr will be attending in a few weeks.

Today also made me become a bit nostalgic. I do belong to a fencing club here (Fencers' School of CT in Guilford, which is seriously awesome!), but I still have a bit of an attachment to the first fencing club of which I was a part in high school. The Bacon Academy fencing club. Yes, Bacon. I will never forget Comas, my first fencing coach. There honest aren't words adequate enough to describe Comas as a person. He is well loved by everyone in that school. He has a great love for the sport of fencing, a mind in the gutter, and yet he is one of the most quotable people in my life with his profound statements. I knew him from the second day of freshman year as my fencing coah, and throughout senior year as my AP Spanish teacher. (Sometimes these realms mixed. For example, I distinctly remember being poked with a foil in the middle of class until I could trill a "rr" perfectly)! Today I was greeted at the door with a warm Comas welcome of a hug and kiss on the cheek and knew I had returned to one of the clubs I could call home.

Now, I typically feel like an old fart, because the kids with whom I would have fenced when I was actually in high school have since graduated. However, I have formed connections with the up and coming generation of new and better fencers. I feel like a mother hen for saying this, but I am always more hopeful and more proud of them every time I see them.

The club was still in the forming stage when I was passing through high school. There weren't many serious competitors, and as far as I know, only one of my fellow fencers and I have continued fencing in college. Although, oddly enough we both switched weapons - Kyle became an epeeist , and I a saberist (though as you can see, foil and I are still friends).

Now, there is an entirely different atmosphere. Multiple Bacon fencers just placed in the top 8 at individual state championships, and the men's foil and epee teams moved on to fence very well at the team state championships. An actual epee team exists! It's so exciting! Now I'll just have to work on introducing them to sabre properly :). I've gotten to know the foil teams relatively well, since I usually stop in to practice with them every once in a while over breaks. I am impressed by each and every one with whom I fenced today. (Yeah, my inner coach/proud mama is really kicking in now).

Devon, the club's newest fencer is getting so much experience so quickly, because she isn't afraid to just jump into the competition ASAP! In fact, she really reminds me of me at that age - really excited about the sport and learning everything by diving right in.

Jackie was the same way when she started, and you can tell that she has an incredible love for the sport of fencing. After a couple of years of training under her belt, she took the 5th place medal at the women's individual foil event at states - with another year to go!

Christian is a fencer with so much promise. He had fencing experience before high school and is only a freshman! He's already accomplishing great things and has so much time to grow (as a fencer...he'll probably grow height-wise as well, but he's already a sasquatch :P). Ok, random supernatural reference time over...sorry Sammy...I mean Christian! I will be looking forward o seeing where he goes in the future.

Last, but not least, Cooper is the fencer who has gone farther than any other who has ever been in the club - and he's only a junior. He has moved beyond just high school competitions and has fenced in USFA and large regional competitions. He's a disciplined fencer who also trains at another club in the state, and through training and competition experience, he as earned a D ranking already. Also, through his dedication he has become constructive and self critical, which can help to improve fencing if taken the right way. If not, it will become destructive. In this case, I worry that he is becoming like I was (still am occasionally, working through it) in terms of attitude. I will have to keep an eye on him.

Overall, they are a truly amazing bunch. Since I do have coaching experience, I try to offer all that I can in terms of shaping technique. However, I can learn a lot from their coaching for me on the strip, for they have gone farther then I may have an opportunity for, and I honestly enjoy what they have to teach me as fellow fencers. Thanks, guys!

Home Away From Home - The Comstock House

Spring Break always signifies a time to relax and get away from daily stressers. As much as I love Bryn Mawr, there is always a sense of urgency from which I need some time away. One of my favorite places of escape is my uncles' B&B in Vermont. Ever since they bought the Comstock House and rebuilt it from a 19th Century ramshackle farmhouse, it has been one of my favorite places on Earth, and it certainly didn't let me down this break for many reasons:

1. Gorgeous Vermont vistas: Rolling fields, extensive woods, rich farm land, duck ponds and snow capped mountains. The works. You can see any number of these things as part of the 360 degree panoramic view.
2. Delicious REAL food: My uncles have always been good cooks and now cooking is part of their living. They create the most delicious dishes featuring ingredients fresh from their farm; fresh eggs and chicken, lamb, vegetables. They even bake their own bread and make their own jam. I had the best lamb stew EVER this weekend!
3. Real Vermont maple syrup: quite self explanatory
4. Baby lambs!: Visiting during spring break means lambing season, and two dozen little white, black, or white AND black puffs of wool. The little darlings really are the cutest things I've ever seen. The last two were born a couple of hours before I arrived, so I got to see newborns this year!
5. Hiking/Snowshoeing
6. Little town of Plainfield, VT: Town where the Comstock House is located. Cutest town center ever! Main highlights = River Run restaurant that has been there forever, used/antique book store, local artisan craft store, and a yoga/meditation studio.
7. City of Montpelier, VT: There are so many discoveries to be made in this city. This time I got to see the T. W. Wood art gallery that currently houses the State Collection with pieces that were commissioned for state buildings. Of course, a stop at the Hunger Mountain Co-op is always in order.
8. Hunger Mountain Co-op: Just calling this a health food store would be an understatement. Not only is it my favorite health food store, it is a community fixture with information about events, activism, and opportunities to get involved on a local level.
9. Relaxing start to Spring Break

*pictures will be added once I get them loaded to my computer :)*

Hell Hath No Greater Fury than Women with Swords

At this point in time I must report on a very exciting day for the Bryn Mawr fencing team. Go Vixens! We had a team tournament with Temple and Princeton at Princeton University this past Sunday. First of all, it began at a respectable hour of the day. For some reason most people think it's a good idea for people to start swinging swords around and attempting to stab each other at the ass crack of dawn. Meaning, we pile into the van before it's even light out. Luckily we didn't have to be on the road until 10am. The day started off on the wrong foot, when it turned out that Princeton had sent us directions that were completely wrong! Since I was one of the drivers, I was not a happy camper. I feel bad for the team in retrospect, but luckily I kept it to a couple of snappish comments until after warming up, because I was pissed off, hungry, tired, and about to keel over. A chocolate chip cookie and a bottle of water later, I was doing ok. We got the team checked in, and we were ready to fence.

I was fencing foil, so we would have a full team. (There are only two full time foilists on our team.) Our sabre team had been dropping like flies due to illness, so we only had two of them. However, sabre was being fenced as an individual event, because Princeton didn't have any saberists. Epee was also an individual event for our three, because Princeton only had one of those. Foil was the only team event. Princeton had eleven foilists, nine of whom were fencing that day. Therefore the teams for the event were: Bryn Mawr, Temple, Princeton A, Princeton B and Princeton C.

I wish I had been able to see what had been going on with epee and sabre more, but unfortunately those events were going on across the room. Our saberists, Michelle and Annalee did extremely well. Annalee had an awesome DE (direct elimination bout), and was extremely close to medaling by a couple of points. Our epeeists, Courtney, Jeanette and Travis also did extremely well, and Jeanette did bring home the bronze medal.

Foil was fenced in a team of three - A: Me, B: Rachel and C: Lydia. We were matched up with the A, B and C fencers of the other teams in order to fence a round of pools. Everyone did really well. We went on to team direct elimination and began by fencing Princeton C, one of the first teams we faced in pools. Victory for Bryn Mawr! We won this round and moved on to the next to fence Princeton A. My favorite bout of the day had been with the A fencer from this team. He had been wiping the floor with people all day, so I had no great expectations for this bout in terms of score. However, I was not going down without a fight. As Rachel put it later, I basically went sabre on his ass. I wanted to have some fun with this so I went into full attack mode purely for the hell of it. He ran. Almost off the end of the strip. I ended up losing anyway, but it was 5-4 and had been tied up for a while. We lost our second DE, but not by a lot, and ended with a decent 4th place finish. Best part of the day? The looks on Princeton's faces when we started coming back like crazy. That's right guys! We may be smaller than you, but we are vicious! :)

Final tally in the fencing journal:

Victories - 8, Defeats - 4, Touches Scored - 53, Touches Received - 37, Indicator - +16

Overall, a decent day of fencing that was incredibly fun!!!

Hopefully one of my last WTF moments regarding blogging...

Seriously, they're breaking my momentum!

So far it seems like my issues with journaling/blogging have to do with the way what I'm saying is going to be perceived. I guess I'll chalk it up to hyperawareness of a possible audience. I know that we are always strongly cautioned as writers to remain aware of the audience, but for this particular endeavor it has proven to be a hindrance. That self consciousness that leads to selection of varying degrees had crept up to the point where I was not writing at all. A blog is a very funny genre. Everything that was discussed was true, including the idea that a blog deals with more of the constraints of autobiography than private journaling. however, the form which the writing takes still has the illusion of a private journal entry - the dated entries giving an appearance of an ever occurring present and the lack of coherence, or writing in the moment. I think that I got used to the fact that journaling was for my own reflection, but I was never really sure about blogging. I mean, I don't have a theme, because I figured that I would be asked to write about random things and I know how random my brain can get sometimes. Why be limiting? I also don't really know about audience either. I mean, I think it's safe to say that my professor is reading it, because she has to know whether or not I'm using the thing. Other than that, who knows? My blog doesn't have any followers, so I could very well just be writing for me. This not knowing has made it difficult to decide what and how to write. However this defeats the purpose, because it won't be interesting to me or anyone else if I don't actually write. Besides, the more we end up discussing forms of life writing, the more exciting it all seems!

We're All Incoherent, So There!

It seems as though I must already backtrack on a claim that I tried to put forth in my very first entry in this blog. Well, hey, I expected that to happen. This is a learning space. It looks less and less like I will be creating an identity around, or somehow owning this space, and more like I will be existing and interacting within it. At the moment I am along for the ride, and I'll figure out what happens as I go.

At the beginning, aka a few weeks ago, I decided that I would be "figuring out who I am and discovering my 'identity' from various sources, blah blah blah." This is a misconception that many people seem to have about life writing: the coherent self. It is a myth; it doesn't exist. There isn't one self that remembers every past to present, and who can encompass every identity, affiliation, relationship or interest that one has. Smith and Watson have a good way of putting it (47), "We are always fragmented in time, taking a particular or provisional perspective on the moving target of our pasts, addressing multiple and disparate audiences." Autobiographical writing is instead a performance.

Words from the wise:

~Tiresias - The prophet who existed as both a man and a woman throughout his life claimed that to fully know oneself was to die. Living happens in the exploration and realization of our many aspects.

~Virginia Woolf in Orlando: Orlando tries to call up facets of himself in order to discover which is the "true self", when in fact all are true, but they do not mesh together as one, supporting the idea of the fragmented self.

So, there we have it. No more coherent "self-discovery" from me. Just a performance - or in my case, perhaps an incoherent improv will have to suffice :)

Imbolc

Brighid's Gift

Aimlessly,

I wandered the icy garden

With a chill against my neck from more than the wind,

When I saw a woman before me,

Waiting by a fountain, filled with snow.

She smoothed her long red hair away from her eyes and

Smiled at me with her arm extended,

And told me that she had brought be a gift.

I moved closer, slipping ungainly on the ice toward her

Until I could see what she had brought for me.

She covered the remaining few feet, then stood behind me and

Clasped a thin, intricately woven iron chain around my neck.

I looked down, and there was the heart-shaped locket

That I had lost in the snow over a year ago.

It was newly forged from different metal, but I

Recognized it as my own

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Imbolc is one of my favorite pagan traditions, because I always encounter something new, no matter what. It is celebrated at the beginning of February and is known as a fire festival and honors the Celtic goddess Brighid (goddess of light, poetry, healing and smithcraft). It heralds the return of spring, and more importantly the life giving force behind the season. The tradition began in a climate with harsh winters (Scotland, Ireland) so people were expected to look hard for small, but sturdy signs of life. This sentiment was rather fitting this year. The ritual I attended was cancelled once due to a snow storm, and actually took place on Bryn Mawr's second winter weather advisory day. The goose prints all over Rhoads beach were a good sign, although it turns out that new signs of life on Bryn Mawr's campus are not all that subtle. They staged a loud, honking takeover of the athletic fields after all. A tradition that is usually observed is a meditation upon what one would like to see grown in health and strength, working toward the upcoming season. A meditation and ritual knotwork served as a calming catharsis to the uproar over the weather here.