legally intoxicated

"i saw the the best minds of my generation...

2005-12-13T00:11:00.000-07:00

... destroyed by madness." (thanks, allen).

in case you ever wondered if alcoholism is a fatal disease, it is. on wednesday, it took our friend, m., after a long bout with addiction and loneliness. all the old-timers in AA say that the choice between death and a spiritual solution is often not an easy one. obviously. too many of us take the long road and drink to hastened heart attacks (richard pryor) or swifter cirrhosis (pat morita). others, like m., shorten the path.

for dearest m., physician, bodybuilder, and great over-thinker. we miss you. may god now grant you the serenity...

sayonara, kumiko. salut, jacques!

2005-05-03T01:20:00.000-06:00

that tagline sounds much more buoyant than it should. i had to buy a new computer over the weekend--not exactly a pleasant task in the midst of finals. but i had no choice: my much-loved laptop collapsed a half hour before my first exam, and i wasn't about to risk the cramping of another handwritten exam. but the rush of the purchase--based on about 2 hours of internet research and much time making friends with amy at compusa--has lead me to the following low-tech ruminations:

1. it's the intangibles, stupid. i was very excited that my new machine, due to a sales glitch, would have a whopping 768 Megs of RAM. as someone who barely knows what a "meg of RAM" is, this unduly impressed me. surely, i thought, this much RAM would set the room on fire. the sound and graphics would change my life, and the 60 Gig hardrive could warehouse thousands of pics of l.i.t. doggie. however: i don't like the action on this new keyboard. it's so sticky, my fingers feel like a bird in an oil spill. and the keyboard is set too far back into the machine, meaning i have to use *real effort* to hold my arms up high enough to reach essential keys like [shift][F8]. the delete key is no longer down in its friendly place next to the control and arrow keys, and the board tinkles like an old chandelier whenever i type with my left hand. sure, i have a built-in wireless system and the battery lasts forever, but i'm not comfortable here.

for some reason i completely neglected the *important* stuff when buying this computer. i was thinking in terms of acronyms and numbers, not shoulder cramps and muscle memories. retraining my pinkie to find the delete key all the way in newfoundland was one of the hidden costs of the purchase. would i have given toshiba my richly undeserved money just to stick with their computer layout? um, probably. seeing as i spend more time with my computer than with my dog, best friend and boyfriend combined, i want something that makes me feel good. even if it is money pissed away on a bad product.

2. the anthropomorphic machine. because i do spend so much time on the laptop, i want to make friends. that means giving the computer a name. the old gal was kumiko, the toshiba. now i have jacques the compaq. but the baptism itself augured something bad. i once had a good friend named kumiko and generally like well-built japanese stuff. i have a love-hate relationship with all things french. (flaubert, gauguin, clare denis, chicken a la king...) perhaps predictably, jacques and i are not growing on each other. perhaps i thought a french name would appeal to the vintage side of my personality, the part that's more buffalo exchange than banana republic. but old kumiko, besotted as she was, wore like an old sweatshirt: her "P" key wiggled like a loose tooth and her feeble memory was filled with more shortcut keys than an old word perfect program. (i even had a shortcut key for "unconscionability," which came in handy during contracts). maybe i need to spill wine on jacques or something to break him in, but that's not really an option anymore. besides, there's also the problem of the sticky keys...

3. why warranty? jacques was a steal at about 1G with his enlarged memory and rabbit-quick processor. he also gets a $100 padded coach to ward against all the abuse kumiko suffered in my old backpack. but what really pushed the price into the realm of outrageous was the $319 warranty. why? because kumiko died just days after her second birthday, and every computer guru i talked to said no brand save the mac is expected to last longer. this seems amazing to me: i can spend thousands of additional dollars on features i'll never use, but it's impossible to buy durability and reliability, the things i most seek. hence, i've no other option but the warranty, which is filled with enough potentially unconscionable clauses to make me long for my old shortcut keys.

so i realized that, in paying for the warranty, i wasn't so much covering my tail on future computer repairs as paying protection money to the computer mafia. by dropping one week's salary on a warranty, i'm depriving the yakuza of another $1500 purchase in a mere 2 years. surely they'll probably get me for more blood money the day after jacques turns 3.

that'll be just enough time for me to get so attached to jacques, he'll need a send-off as treacle and contrived as this. mon dieu!

i'll have what he's having

2005-04-28T09:02:00.000-06:00

last night in my sleep i was at a picnic. the sun was low, as it was at last year's fete, and dogs were playing in the cool grass. buffs was in a tight pink polo, serving drinks from a long, ice-filled bin. "what'll you have, l.i.t.?" he asked. "a natty light," i say. at least i think i say natty light. i might also order a vodka tonic, i don't remember. buffs looks at me askance and hands me a can of something. the aluminum is sweating. i crack it open, take a drink, and all my blood surges to my face.

even as i take my first drink in almost two years, a funny thing happens. i make amends to buffs, something done only in AA's ninth step. i apologize to him and everyone in the blogosphere for not showing up with integrity. for pretending everything was OK when it wasn't. i say i want to live differently, but i keep drinking, and everything looks fuzzy...

-----

i don't write much about my AA life here, even though that's why i started this blog. i wanted someone to be able to google "sober law student" and find a voice out there. after all, there are lots of lawyers in the program. AA's founder had been a lawyer and corporate dealmaker. same with AA's third member. sober lawyers back East helped get me off the bottle, and a sober law student here welcomed me to Boulder. so i wanted to be here, 'case anyone else needed this deal.

still, i struggle sometimes trying to live a sober life, one that involves being there when i'm supposed to and refusing to feed off my own excuses. two years ago, i remember driving back home one morning, jittery and high, while everyone else in the neighborhood headed off to work. "how'm i ever gonna do this differently?" i thought. fast forward to last night, when i got a letter from my summer job. they asked me to show up at 8:30 the first day. my face instantly flushed, just like in the dream. "how the hell am i gonna do that?" there will always be a part of me that finds "normal" life unfathomable. but god keeps putting me in places where i've got to be up to the task. i kick and scream like hell, but usually if i just show up and do basic stuff, it turns out better than i'd imagined.

that said, i've got to take contrary action this week. i would love nothing more than to hang out in this enticing blog world and blow off work. i'm really most comfortable when i'm deepest in denial. but the work is there and needs to be done. and i've got to show up for it.

so, i'm taking the next week and a half off. i say this not b/c anyone cares, but b/c i've got to keep the promise to myself. so here's wishing you all the most that anyone could wish: the confidence of finishing finals with integrity, the satisfaction of a tough task done, and the bliss that comes with being divorced from the results.

reason 5,437 to take land use planning

2005-04-26T16:43:00.000-06:00

-----

i have learned (finally) to study with headphones on. too bad i didn’t get this in undergrad, when my roommate chewed her gum out loud and constantly belly laughed about postmodern theory. (more on that later).

but musical outlining becomes cause for musical celebration. here’s a list of guilty pleasures and things i love right now:

1. the fact that the killers sound like a better-produced version of duran duran. only i don't fantasize marrying them like i did w/ dd in 5th grade. (seriously: sis and i totally cried when nick rhodes finally wed.)

2. that enthusiastic little "clap clap clap" noise in snow patrol's "tiny little fractures." and the fact that the song is totally pretentiously about nothing: "If I've forgotten what to say /It's because all words are dust" (!) and then later: "is there a t-shirt i can wear / cuz i am soaking, look at me / what do you mean i don't love you? / i am standing here, aren't i?" now that's my kind of guy. when standing in a wet t-shirt = love.

3. along the lines of post-modern pretentions: i also love that eve 6 song "heart in a blender." "I burn burn like a wicker cabinet / sharp wire and oh so frail / I see our time has gotten stale." i can't think of a sillier metaphor than burning like a wicker cabinet. except maybe this one: "or am i oragami/ fold it up and just pretend / demented as the motives in your head." sweet!

4. offspring's "feet all up in the air." i used to hate it, till i realized it's just a rock 'n roll version of a raunchy rugby song. and it's a lot funnier than "at the gang bang," a rugby ballad my dear sweet ex would sing to me.

5. my old guided by voices albums. nothing can make you chuckle through corps quite like this line: "i met a non-dairy creamer / explicitly laid out like a fruit cake / with a wet spot bigger than a great lake ... took me to pie land / said, 'i'm a thigh man' / i will be eternally hateful. HOT FREAKS!"

---

and finally: i'm buying a new computer today. (yes, right in the middle of finals! when i have no money!) any suggestions on what NOT to buy? i'd advise anyone out there to *avoid* the toshiba satellite. motherboard gone in 2 years without even a teary good-bye. and right when i needed her most! at least she didn't sing rugby songs...

do i know you?

2005-04-22T12:15:00.000-06:00

i wish i could get frequent flyer miles from the psych services office at wardenburg health center. i'd be owed a trip to cancun by now, maybe even paris. or at least a smidge of sanity. i'd take that any day.

i am one of the bajillions of law students on anti-depressants. too bad i don't have real figures on that, but i'd bet my dog's ass that there are more people medicating in law school then there are in the top 25%. i read somewhere recently that more than 40% of law students report feeling depressed by the end of third year. and while the rates decline post-graduation, they never return to levels enjoyed by the population at large.

what's my point? well, between all my different medications and vitamins and painkillers for the inevitable library headache, my backpack sounds like a baby rattle. and the medication, generally, has helped a hell of a lot. i'm pretty comfortable admitting that i need a pharmacological cocktail just to stay sane. cuz i remember the alternative all too well.

so why, then, when i ran into a law schooler last week at wardenburg, did i pretend to be invisible? i've seen fellow fleming rats there before, and it's usually been cause for laughter: "tough row to hoe, eh?" but i never thought this person would need psychological care. i didn't want this person to know i saw him/her, so i ran off. not so much because of my own shame, but for fear of theirs.

this strikes me as funny now. is this person not supposed to get depressed, to sweat a bit in the lion's pit? like it's ok for me to be there, because i'm prone to thinking m'self a low life, but it's not ok for someone else? then i realized: this is a lot like all the other calculations i've been doing in my head this week. sitting in my classes, trying to compute who is smarter or more type-A than me so as to predict where i'll fall on the curve. it's a kind of mental darwinism we all engage in, an attempt to locate the fittest and then plan our studying rituals accordingly. and i've apparently become so good at this law student taxonomy that i've also factored in who is more mentally stable or unstable than i.

it's a sick ritual, i know. i also know i'm not alone in it: it was part of the OCI dance; it was there in the l/s application process; it'll be part of the summer clerk experience and of firm life thereafter. in this conformist world of lawyering, each of us will be measured against a rigid norm (does she golf? did he go to all the social events? did she bring an extra jacket to work?) , and we will measure others against that post. if not, we'd be unable to find our own place on the invisible hierarchy of professional life. so perhaps we shouldn't pull so hard against the academic mean to which we're tethered these three years of law school. because we help create it as it creates us.

or, maybe we should just stop giving a fuck and love people for the work they do and the people they are. so with all cynicism aside: i wish you much luck next week.

and with all cynicism intact: i plan on falling below the mean in corps, above it in legislation, and right on it in ethics. feel free to calculate accordingly.

chicago southwest?

2005-04-17T23:32:00.000-06:00

buffs has posted recently posted about ways to raise CU Law's profile. here's another option, based on an illuminating article in this week's NYTimes magazine. the story highlights Constitution in Exile, that other judicial activism movement, which seeks to restore supreme court jurisprudence to the Lochner era philosophy of inalienable economic rights. while its guru is Richard Epstein, author of our torts book and the intellectual sin qua non of the deregulation movement, many of its proponents have roots right here in Colorado. one is potential Rehnquist replacement Michael W. McConnell, now on the 10th circuit, as well as several "activists" involved in some of Joe Coors' early political organizations like Mountain States Legal Foundation.

given Colorado's increasingly conservative bent, combined with CU's smattering of Epstein adherents (soon-to-be Solicitor General Allison Eid chief among them), perhaps CU Law could re-brand itself. we'd be University of Colorado School of Law: Chicago Southwest, the wild west pioneers of legal objectivism. here, Lochneresque law could start a Sagebrush Rebellion against the Environmental and Indian Law departments, and those gunners in the Federalist Society would have guaranteed Supreme Court clerkships. amoral professors could finish the state's battle against medicaid and lead the rush to drill through the bottom of Grand Lake. meanwhile, CU would take a seat at the table of the top 10 law schools and play footsie with the likes of Yale and Stanford.

sure, this deregulatory legal philosophy would put even the most sold-out corporate lawyers out of business, and the rest of us would be left eating porridge in the legal aid clinic. but that's one way to raise the value of our degrees...

perfunctory post...

2005-04-14T08:54:00.000-06:00

EDIT: last week, when i posted the lyrics to jim infantino's "stress," i was pulling them out of memory 10 years gone dry. found the real, whole song online & it's worth sharing:

©1993 Jim Infantino
covered by James Naughton

I'm addicted to stress that's the way that I get things done
if I'm not under pressure then I sleep too long
and I hang around like a bum
and I think I'm going nowhere and that makes me nervous
Everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's thinking about me.

It's the little things that get you it's the little things that get you,
it's the little things that get you when you weren't paying attention,
It's the little things that get you it's the little things that get you,
it's the little things that get you when you weren't paying attention.

I'm trying to cut down on my caffeine consumption
so when I get up I just have one cup of coffee
and I like to have another cup of coffee with my breakfast
and when I go to work I like to get a cup of coffee
like the kind of cup of coffee that you get with a doughnut
'cept I never get the doughnut I just get the cup of coffee
and when I get to work I like to have a cup of coffee '
cause I like to have a coffee when I'm talking on the phone
but It usually goes cold and I need to get another
cup of coffee and it's lunch and I have an espresso.
And when I get back it's not morning anymore
so I have a diet cola and another diet cola
and by then I'm feeling fine and I'm feeling pretty sharp
and I'm feeling pretty wired and I'm getting things done,
but right about two I get this little tiny migraine
and it starts behind my eyes and it moves to the back of my
neck and it moves to the bottom of my spine
but it doesn't get there until five or six o'clock
which is the end of the day so I'm fine so I'm fine so I'm fine so I'm fine,
except when I have to work late when I have to work late which I usuallydo.

I'm addicted to stress that's the way that I get things done
if I'm not under pressure then I sleep too long
and I hang around like a bum
and I think I'm going nowhere and that makes me nervous
Everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's thinking about me.

I love to work I love to run I love to play real hard
I love to steal little things from the grocery store
like a piece of bubble gum or sometimes I just stick my thumb in a peachand leave it there.
I love to work I love to run I love to waterski, snowboard, jetski, skydive,
parasail, hang-glide, rollerblade, mountainbike, bungy-jump,
well I mean I'd love to do theses things if I ever had the time,
I love to work I love to work, I love to work out after work,
I love to spend a little time with this woman that I'm seeing
'cept we never really get a little time to spend together
so we call each other up and we talk about work.
But what I think I'd really love is to get out by myself
on a little tiny island in the middle of the ocean
with just me and a book and a cellular phone
and a personal computer incase something came up
and I'd eat and I'd drink and I'd run and I'd sleep
and I wouldn't do nothing except swim all day
'cept my beeper doesn't work under water,
where are the sharks? where are the sharks?
and there's this kind of anemone
that sticks in your foot and the poison goes up to your brain and you die
and sand fleas? sand fleas - yuck!
but actually I think it'd be really relaxing
just me by myself in the middle of the ocean
and that's what I'd really love to do more than anything else
except I'd probably hate it.

I'm addicted to stress that's the way that I get things done
if I'm not under pressure then I sleep too long
and I hang around like a bum
and I think I'm going nowhere and that makes me nervous
Everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's out to get me but I feel alright,
everybody's thinking about me.

-------

last spring, when i was almost non-functioning and not coming to school, i assumed everyone was thinking about me and knew what a slacker i was. surely, they were whispered that i didn't deserve to be here, that i'm a nasty bitch who just ought to go back to burger king. that's funny, because that's what i was thinking about me.

when i finally snapped back into reality, i realized that i finally did have a role at the law school: as a foil for all those type-A personalities who feared God would strike them down if they didn't read all the hornbooks. i would be the poster child for depression: here's what happens to you when you beat yourself up too much! or, to strain another metaphor, i was the priestess for perfectionists. classmates would confess how behind they were in their reading, how they feared they just weren't made to be lawyers. we'd swap secrets about anti-depressants and trade casenotes outlines. hell: anyone could talk to me. having dropped one class and taken an incomplete in another, i certainly wasn't going to judge them.

so, if you feel like shit right now: it's going to be allright. you don't have to wish you could go back to january and start it all over again. you don't have to dream of being 7 and playing in the backyard with your dog. it is possible to plug on and get it done. if you want to confess your worst law school fears here, well, then shoot. and if not, happy thoughts are going your way.

or, if humor suits you better, here's a reminder that you're not the most nerotic person on earth.

a ditty from Jim Infantino, folk singer:
"i'm addicted to stress cuz that's the way that i get things done.
and if i don't think about it then i sleep too long,
and i hang around like a bum
and i'm never going to make it
and that makes me nervous.

cuz the world is out to get me
but i feel allright.
the world is out to get me
but i feel allright.
the world is out to get me
but i feel allright.
EVERYBODY'S THINKING 'BOUT ME!"

put the F in FCQ

2005-04-09T20:21:00.000-06:00

buffslaw has thrown up some mighty useful posts about professors and FCQs. i tried to comment, but found i couldn't wedge all my complaints in the common comment space. that said: here's my take.

*avoid the adjuncts*. the reasons are both practical and principled. first: most of them really do suck, and they teach law more for a CLE crowd than an academic one. i'm no genius, but i'd much rather watch Campos run up to his office, mid-class, to pull a "perfect" quote from a Borghes text than watch some schmuck read from a powerpoint slide as he contemplates how much work he left back at the office. professors are a rarefied bunch, but they stretch the mind a bit. and i'd much rather find myself standing in front of a judge someday with a stretched mind than a sketchy recall of a powerpoint outline...

second: this administration has got to get the picture. i can see calling in an adjunct to teach a practical course on mediation. but a core class like evidence or tax? that's just crazy. unless CU hires an adjunct who can hang with the likes of Collins and Weiser, then we should put the "F" in FCQ. listen: we don't have to persecute the teacher; just write in the comments that, while this guy is surely a fine lawyer, we're going to see a lot of them in our lives. but we miss out on valuable educational experience by not having a professor. the F is really for the school. if we ever want to become top 25, we've got to stop pretending that key social issues like immigration and bar-related courses like family law can be handled by first-time teachers pulled from the local donor list. (after all, the professor for both those courses was hired just this year).

and we've got to start building on the major strengths we have. for chrissakes, phil weiser brings some of the top names in tech law to this school every year, but he's the only IP teacher we've got. anyone wishing to specialize in new media has to take everything he offers--and a boatload of powerpoint classes. i truly rue the day he takes sabbatical. and what about our international law profs? the choice between them is a hobson's choice, if anything.

ok, i'm getting bitter and a bit off topic. but this school seriously hired Rainman to teach evidence last year. and you never know when that's going to happen again. you get to choose 20 classes in your three years here--and when you think about the time and money invested, that's not a lot. as a late-stage 2L, i've been told often enough to value law school because it's hell when you get out. no one's going to give a shit about policy, unless you can manipulate it for your client.

in the real world, there won't be a hell of a lot more high ideas ... but there will be powerpoint.

my boyfriend is out of town

2005-04-07T22:50:00.000-06:00

it’s not just a come-on, it’s a fact. in actuality, it’s scary. cuz i get crazier than a seagull on alka-selzer when he’s gone. and thinking me’self an independent woman, i don’t like to admit this. after all—i got stuff to DO! imPORTant stuff. law school! so i turn myself into a machine that stays up too late and reads too much and yells at the dog.

and the dog knows it too. not just because He Who Smells Sweaty hasn’t crossed the threshold of late. it’s cuz mom keeps looking into that Flat Rectangle of Light. which apparently gives doggie license to soil the carpet. and he has: twice.

but i’m not just a codependent girl who’s certain she’ll die obese and alone. i hate aloneness for the sheer inhumanity of it. without someone to hog the covers at night, i quickly grow cold. i forget how to love and think about what someone else is doing. i become the Law School Machine, unoiled, poorly calibrated, and scared.

he comes back tomorrow, and i’ll promptly announce i can do only one dinner this weekend, and could he please, please, go to the mountains or something. and then i’ll still stay up too late, flitter about nervously, and still wake him up when i stumble to bed.

but when i do that, i’ll be me: a walking, breathing, loving woman.

when editing goes awry

2005-04-03T16:09:00.000-06:00

this one from a highly condensed summary of an ethics case:

"insurer has standing, over insured's objection, to raise insured's counsel's conflict where insurer, not insured, would ultimately be liable for any judgment."

yeah, thanks, mr. supersmartprofessor, i got a lot out of that.

baby, remember my name...

2005-04-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

and now, for something completely arrogant:

i've been worrying lately about my legacy at the law school. not really about how people will remember me, but what people i will remember from law school. an associate at the firm where i work recently mentioned that she'd gone to dinner with a group of law school friends. that's nice, i thought, especially since she graduated 6 years ago. i hoped i would still sup with l/s buddies in 6 years. then i realized: i don't go out to dinner with them now. in fact, there isn't even a group of them. i've made one close friend in l/s and there are some people i wish i could bond with. but mainly i hang out with an assortment of students who dislike each other quite a bit.

there's definitely a part of me that wants law school to loom large in my mind as more than a painful learning and ego-defeating experience. i'd like to remember the friends i made here. then why do i feel so disconnected? is this inherent in the law school experience--that we ultimately pursue our own studies and splinter apart? that the competition fundamentally divides us? that we become so specialized and near-sighted that it's difficult to relate even to each other?

for most of the first year, i thought this problem was specific to me. because i was terrified to go "drinking" with law school comrades, i never had those seminal drunken chats with my newfound community. i've never cried and slurred "i love you guys" to anyone at CU. for me, that's still part of the problem. an example: while studying in the library friday, a classmate started heading out to the international law society f.a.c. "c'mon, l.i.t., let's go have a beer," he said. i was genuinely surprised he requested my company. and deep in the gut i wanted to go: nothing seemed nicer than sampling an international selection of beers on the sun-drenched lawn with the shadows growing long around me. to simply gab with my colleagues and feel that "ease and comfort" that comes with a drink.

course, i can't do that. even when i stop by for a soda, it's a little awkward. i go home to feed l.i.t. doggie and later head to a meeting.

perhaps this isolation is peculiar to me. but somehow, i fear i'm not alone in it. the big cliques that congealed last year seem to have dissolved, and even classmates who find close friendships make particularly odd couples. sadly--and no offense to you guys--i feel like the blogging community is the closest thing to a "gang" i got. and we all pretend not to know each other.

since i'm determined to end this on a happy note, i'm making a proposal: let's all have dinner together. a bloggers-only event. buffs, bolder, moop, l.i.t., jaded and blue parrot. monkey law would get a special dispensation. even tim hadley could come. no one has to know. we'll break our anonymity, so to speak, but only with each other. and, maybe, only for that night.

go ahead, tell me i'm an asshole. but in my sick, romantic way, i imagine it would be fun: like a law school blind date. or, it could be a disaster.

you tell me.

theocracy now!

2005-03-29T21:27:00.000-07:00

it's been a day of transition in the myopic world of CU Law. Buffs is all aflutter with talk of the rankings. BolderLaw is retiring. Johnnie Cochran is dead. And so is church/state separation.

but, in an alarming and satisfying twist of fate, it is alive and well in colorado, where the supreme court decided that maybe the old testament's "eye for an eye" mandate wasn't the most ethically up-to-date standard for determining whether a convict should live or die. boy, i sure hope i never have jurors like those at my trial for blasphemy or cursing, lest they "lay their hands upon [my] head, and ... stone [me]." (Leviticus 24:14).

speaking of leviticus, it's probably a good thing that old testament law is no longer the law of our land. because if it were, our government wouldn't be able to detain foreign nationals for months without due process or access to a lawyer. and they certainly wouldn't consider shipping them off via private jet to be tortured on foreign soil. after all, leviticus says it best: "Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country: for I am the LORD your God." (24:22).

if you prefer not to read my long-winded polemics...

2005-03-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

then here's a short, visual one. found this on www.fairlds.com while trying to find out how mormons celebrate easter. it's from a mesa, arizona, protest against an LDS easter pageant.

little as i know about mormons, at least i'm assured we are common enemies to this guy:

who would have known identifying as a "lewd woman" and a recovering "pot smoking little devil" would be so invigorating!

this was your life.

2005-03-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

hopping around the blogosphere this week, i've noticed many a post about terri schiavo. one blogger made the stock comment that this is a private tragedy made cruelly political and public. we should all get out of their business.

that's true, i thought. hope that never happens to my family.

then i remembered that it did.

it was the mid-to-late 70s, well before my consciousness, but the l.i.t. family was beginning to feel as tragedy-prone as a clan of Colorado Kennedys. my college-aged uncle had recently died when he and a buddy mixed booze and the icy twists of Monarch Pass. everyone was still in mourning when the news took a turn for the worse, and our family became part of the news.

my father's pregnant cousin had been running errands with her daughter (and my playmate) shannon, in the car. there was an accident. shannon was thrown from the car, but survived. her mother was brain dead, with the baby still alive inside her.

the family was faced with a moral and medical dilemma: should they keep the body alive to save the baby? the baby wasn't yet able to survive on its own, and the mother, absent a miracle, surely never would again. at the time, this crisis also presented an opportunity: if the doctors could save the baby, it would be a medical breakthrough. through no fault of my family's, the story became front-page news.

i don't remember how long it lasted, but the baby survived, for a time. but the pain, and the publicity, were intense. after the lapse of a few days--(or was it weeks? i don't know)--the baby died, and the scrutiny faded. the mother was removed from life support and given a proper, and private, funeral.

the details, for me, are fuzzy because i don't remember any of this first-hand. and it's not exactly lore in the l.i.t. family. i do recall discussing it once in high school with my father. "did they pull the plug themselves, dad?" i asked. "did they let the baby die?"

"i don't know," he said. "no one ever discussed exactly what happened."

politically, one would expect my parents to side with schiavo's parents in a matter like this. after all, they are fiercely anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, anti-right-to-die. "pro-life," as the partisans call it. politically, this seems to them the moral path.

but privately, i know they feel differently. my father's cousin's death was never a political issue. her life, her fertility, her ability to "bear" the child inside her were exclusively family issues. though i will never know, i like to think my family was able to make a *decision* about her death and have it respected in the halls of the hospital and the halls of the law.

to me, there is nothing distinctly moral about prolonging pain. there is nothing absolutely, ethically "right" about keeping schiavo alive. if cain, abel, adam and eve had sets of clear moral choices, every technological advance since exile from eden has created moral ambiguities. advanced medical science leaves us with advanced issues of ethics. issues present choices, and personal choices must be made privately.

the partisans in the fight over my father's cousin were battling for SCIENCE and OPPORTUNITY and, in a way, LIFE. they had no right to be there. because at the end of the day, they were only there for their own egos.

jeb, w, and de lay have no business in the schiavo fight, either. they're attempting to rewrite the law of family (that parents should have more decisional weight over spouse) and of church/state relations (that the church has a role in these intimate decisions). and they're doing it with the most selfish of motives.

so, yeah, i wouldn't wish this most personal of debates upon anyone. and now that i've inserted myself into another family's personal life ... i'm going to get out. right. now.

free will astrology. like free-will religion?

2005-03-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

jaded law (http://jadedlaw.blogspot.com) wrote about her secret aspiration to be a horoscope writer. i have also wished for same. so i went to my favorite horo site, www.freewillastrology.com, where i found the following, beautiful poem:

Now, when the waters are pressing mightily
on the walls of the dams,
now, when the white storks, returning,
are transformed in the middle of the firmament
into fleets of jet planes,
we will feel again how strong are the ribs
and how vigorous is the warm air in the lungs
and how much daring is needed to love on the exposed plain,
when the great dangers are arched above,
and how much love is required
to fill all the empty vessels
and the watches that stopped telling time,
and how much breath,
a whirlwind of breath,
to sing the small song of spring.
-Yehuda Amichai
translated from the Hebrew by Leon Wieseltier

then i clicked through to my horo, which included the tarot card "faith." odd, given my recent post. spring, renewal, faith. dunno: maybe i need it especially this week, given all the work that needs to be done and all the exceeding self-reliance that keeps getting in the fucking way.

of course, the horoscope was all about oral sex and gourmet food--not exactly conducive to finishing law school projects. which brings me to my title: free-will astrology and free will religion. horoscopes work because there's no boundary between self-will and chance. any kind of day can fit in any kind of horo, just add self-will. spirituality w/out doctrine seems the same: if there's no book or guru there to dictate what i need to be doing--i can let my own little mind rationalize whatever i want! which reminds me of a typically crazy smart person in the program who one day decided to make his intellect his higher power. it's hard to think of a quicker road to hell.

but in reality, that's exactly what i've been doing. and damn, i'm getting quite far afield.

in the land of the other

2005-03-21T16:01:00.000-07:00

snapshot of the depressive on spring break: skiing relentlessly, until she's just too freakin' sore to keep going. then: spending the next day asleep in the hotel, until she realizes it's 2 and she's hungry. ...

today i am in the land of the mormons. which is a totally new cultural experience for me. i'm from a big country where religion is taken seriously, but doctrine, per se, is not. i've also lived abroad, but amid the same cacophony of beliefs. i've never really been surrounded by religion, and never bothered to ask my parents why we were dutch christian reformed and not methodist or baptist or buddhist.

and i learned, slowly in college, not to ask true believers why they trust what they trust. this was after visiting my jewish friends after hanukkah and demanding they tell me the story of the lights. or barging in on a Black floormate and asking to hear the story of kwanzaa. ("no one thinks we celebrate it, except for white people" was her answer.) gradually, i learned that if someone says she's religious, etiquette demands that i smile graciously, curb my swearing and ask no questions.

it was in this context that i met too good friends, both mormons. rather, they're jack mormons. a couple of the heaviest drinkers i've ever met, and confused as hell. so i never asked questions, assuming it was too painful. that left my entire perception of the religion based on what i read in 8th grade history and what a young missionary told me once on a plane. i found both versions mythically distasteful.

so here i am, two blocks from the center of the mormon universe, feeling more than ever like i'm in a foreign country. why is everything really closed on sundays, why are bars called "private clubs," why does everyone say "hi" on the street? i came to this bookstore/coffeeshop for the free internet, but found myself drawn to the "religion" section, which occupies the entire second floor. half of that was dedicated to LDS literature, including a book called "how awesome will it be?: preparing teens for the second coming." there's no "lady chatterley's lover" here, but they do have nearly pornographic copies of italian "marie claire." how much does doctrine pervade culture? is it ok to pour joe at a coffeeshop and deprive oneself of caffeine? i feel like i need to educate myself, but only with one of those NYTimes approved "critical biographies" of the church. i didn't see any of those on the shelf.

so, i suppose today's sad commentary is that i have no idea how to talk about religion. even in a program where i have to rely on a higher power to get through a day w/out a drink, i have no idea what mine ought to look like. and i think everyone else' s looks kinda silly, too. in this way religion and politics, though both taboo topics in polite conversation, are completely different. i can argue politics knowing that my sparring partner and i will never convince the other of the truth. but when it comes to religion, i'm completely afraid of being pierced.

the naked family

2005-03-16T22:48:00.000-07:00

i grew up in a naked family. my parents weren't right-wing porn stars, but they weren't exactly the taliban, either. there was a moderate amount of nakedness in the house, such that it was no big deal to walk in on dad taking a pee and have a little conversation.

while this code of conduct naturally changed the moment we hit puberty, it has reemerged as the naked children have borne chillins of their own. allow me to indulge you with a tale of the naked family--the next generation.

l.i.t. sister is urging her toddler son, l.i.t. nephew, to get ready to run errands. l.i.t. nephew procrastinates. (it runs in the family). "i have to pee," he says. so he does, naturally, standing up.
l.i.t. sister decides it's her turn. she puts the seat down, drops trou, sits for a tinkle. l.i.t. nephew is aghast. "MOM!" he says, "do you pee out of your butt?!?"

"no," she says. "i don't have a penis, like you, so i have to sit down."

a few minutes later, l.i.t. nephew is still dawdling. says l.i.t. sister: "i'm a little frustrated with you, because you won't get ready to go."

his reply? "well, i'm frustrated with you because you don't have a penis. YOU ONLY HAVE FUR!"

goodbye, fear.

2005-03-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

the title is written wistfully, with a period. if it had an exclamation point, it would be like mary tyler moore throwing her hat in the air and grinning: "goodbye, fear! we're gonna make it after all!"

alas, i'm kinda sad mine is gone. cuz fear used to be the great motivator. i was terrified everyone would think i was a schmuck--or (mon dieu!) imperfect--so i tried real hard. if i was afraid of mediocrity, i had to be better than everyone. and i couldn't be sure unless you told me, so i got real good at soliciting comments, too.

(i'm sure you've all seen this movie:
girl: omigod, i am so... fat
girlfriends: omigod! you are so not! you're, like, a size negative zero!)

so fear made me miserable and miserable to be around. it was definitely there when i started law school. i remember talking to some hapless classmates during the first day of orientation, not-so-slyly listing my achievements and doing my best to get feedback. (omigod, my LSAT scores were sooo low!) but somehow, after those first grueling weeks, the fear dissipated. maybe becuase i realized i couldn't out do 172 other type-A personalities, maybe because the professors saw through my big-word bullshit. by second semester i was totally withdrawn, unable to show up for class or do more than 3 pages of reading an hour. if i wasn't going to be at the top of the shitpile, i was gonna get buried underneath it.

after two months, i came out of my stupor, and the fear was gone. at that point, just getting through first year would be a major accomplishment. so i did, and it didn't kill me. i was just "showing up and doing the deal" as the AA folks like to say. and i'm making it through second year, looking a hell of a lot more like the sloppy drunk that i am. in a word: i'm half-assing my way through the rest of law school.

still, i miss the sting of fear sometimes. i just finished a major project, and my heart barely raced. i didn't come up with any new theories or magic bullets or miracle cures. it was very average work. and the responses were: "eh."

i miss the smug, if brief, thrill of victory. but if i'm long for this world, that's not my lot anymore. a wise woman told me my highest aspiration now is to become a worker among workers. fair to middlin. 50th percentile. because that's where satisfaction really rests.

i guess. because for all my fumbling, i'm pretty happy. i just wish happiness was occasionally shot through with glory.

something is rotten in the state of Denmark

2005-03-14T18:37:00.000-07:00

the best thing about family dysfunction is that it's so easy to diagnose. and all symptoms were on display saturday for l.i.t. grandpa's 91st birthday. l.i.t. grandpa is a dry drunk who got off the sauce in the early 60s. he had put his own father and brother in alcoholic asylums in the 40s only to find himself succumbing to the disease. he read one AA pamphlet and decided he was definitely an alcoholic--only not the kind who needed a silly program with a bunch of rules. he quit drinking on his own, but not easily. as he said himself: "if you had offered me Marilyn Monroe in one hand and a pack of Lucky Strikes and a bottle of bourbon in the other, I'd have passed up Marilyn in a minute."

his daughter, l.i.t. mom, barely touched the stuff most of her life. one margarita was enough to get her singing and dancing to the likes of bobby brown. "it's my .... PERRRRRROGATIVE!" she would growl. what a hoot. but about three years ago, after the l.i.t. kids had gone off to college, she found she really liked a cold corona after work. in fact, she liked them a lot. these days she likes between 6 and 12 of them a night. l.i.t. dad has taken to counting the recyclable and updating us kids, but he's tired of talking to her about it. "it's my prerogative," she basically told him. this time with a slur, not a growl.

it's been a long time since i've seen l.i.t. mom sober. grandpa's birthday was no exception. bottles magically flashed in and out of the refrigerator, and l.i.t. mom would disappear for an hour at a stretch. apparently her m.o. is to shut herself up in the windowless master bathroom, smoking, swilling and listening to right-wing radio. beer is hidden all over the house.

funny thing is, l.i.t. mom's behavior isn't the first sign that something is wrong. our actions are more telling. l.i.t. dad has suddenly taken renewed interest in things far outside the home: gyrocopters, karaoke machines, trips to alaska. everyone is suddenly more helpful, and more silent, in the kitchen. and acrid political debate hangs like a heavy smoke over the whole house. l.i.t. mom now speaks only in rants, and only about ward churchill. in fact, while there on saturday, i found a letter to the Fire Ward Churchill Committee donating $200 in the name of my parents "and our daughter, who attends the law school."

!!!!

my parents, who won't even give a pocketful of pennies to the salvation army bell-ringers, giving 2 bennies to fire a stupid professor with a bad pair of highlights? and with my name on it! it was almost enough to make me forget that my mom is at the gates of alcoholic insanity. and then i realized: it's the prime indicator that she is.

step one: we admittted we were powerless

2005-03-13T11:41:00.000-07:00

i've been meaning to launch this blog for months and could never find the right opening line. first, i wanted to do it because all the cool kids at my law school were doing it. then, i wanted to do it because there's just no blog out there for sober law students. then i wanted to do it because of ego--because, i'm a smart kid, goddamnit, and people should read what i have to say.

who knows if my motives are correct. i guess this is a blog for all the sober law students out there, whether you're in hiding or not (i am--kinda). and for all my 12-steppin' party people out there who don't hear enough smart-people gripin' at your AA meetings. and for all the dunderheads at CU Law who are just dying to read yet another blawg. this is for you... (oh yeah, and mainly for me)...

today we'll start with a common theme: procrastination. because if necessity is the mother of all invention, procrastination is the father of all blawgs. today i'm (not) working on my seminar paper, and as usual i'm in knots of anxiety. every time i have to write a paper in law school, i consider dropping out. then, about halfway through the paper, i reconsider my incredible genius and imagine special ceremonies being given in my honor for completion of this great work. then, as i'm sweating through a half-finished paper half an hour before deadline, i'm ready to take another medical leave of absence.

step one says "we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable." the alcohol part, for me, was easy. about a week before i got sober, i was trying to compute my mileage on a cross-country trip and spent the entire length of Kansas trying to remember what 9x6 was. i was a summer away from starting law school and was too wet brained to handle basic math. a few days later i woke up naked in an unusual place after drinking at bars and finishing a liter of cognac at home by myself. i was still drunk when i showed up to meet my new boss the following afternoon. i could no longer control how much booze i put in my system, no matter *what* i had cooking the following day ... or the following fall.

so, in a way, law school (or the spectre of law school) helped get me sober. and, almost two years later, it helps keep me crazy. because while i can admit i'm powerless over all sorts of things (alcohol first, then cigarettes, then caffiene, and chocolate...) i won't face up to my law school problem. the fact that i try to control how much i study, or how late to start on a project and still make it "perfect." the fact that i freak out at precisely the wrong time, or let fear sabotage a promising career. admittedly, law school hasn't led me to nakedness in unusual places, but it has spawned panic attacks, bouts of depression and out-of-the-blue fights with l.i.t. boyfriend. clearly, i'm powerless over law school, and my life becomes unmanageable.

so, what can i do? well, the program says i need to pray, ask something bigger than me to take it over. then i have to do the next right thing, which prolly means asking my professor for more time. or asking that librarian the difference between a "stat." and a "pub.law." accepting that this entire process is bigger than me, and my thrashes of intellectual angst ain't gonna make a lick of difference. and that's humbling. we alcoholics don't like that. neither do we law students.

so i've got to get down on my knees, here in the library bathroom, and be reminded of my humility. cuz the world don't turn on this paper. and getting an ulcer won't help me help others. god didn't get me sober three months before law school for me to try to blow it ... again.