Nancy's Musings

My mother and grandmother always used to give me advice about being ladylike - varnish your nails, sit with your knees together, realistic art vs. imaginary art, etc. I ignored most of it. My fingernails are shiny blue; I wear long skirts intentionally so I don't have to sit with my knees together; and I always have and will prefer abstraction, surrealism, and speculative fictions to realism, or even hyper-realism. This doesn't bother me, because I know what most people don't; that being a lady isn't about what you wear, or how you look.  Clearly:  But this is not the kind of lady I want to be either: that is, made so by performative utterance. I believe in using agency to overcome inheritance from "nature" and "nurture." In some ways, with help, I create myself, which process fills some odd space somewhere between artificial and genuine. The process of creation requires a fixed ideal of myself toward which I strive, when I have the energy. When I wa...

Yesterday as I was writing, my roommate texted me a picture of a Hogwarts pennant, and asked if I wanted it. Well, of course I want it. That's how I roll. I'm a geek and I let my geek flag fly (or at least, I will now that I have one). So instead of saying "you're welcome" and keeping her response civil, Jerrilynn (who is just over a full decade older than I am) proceeded to explain that her neice was getting rid of her "childish" decorations for a style that was more grown-up. I won't attempt to argue that a felt Hogwarts pennant isn't the sort of thing you'd typically find in the room of a college student in his early twenties, who remembers dressing up as Hagrid for Halloween. I won't deny that a framed print wouldn't be entirely more appropriate for a professional of my experience and ambition, or a woman of my taste and artistic experience. I also won't deny that my summer wardrobe of nerd-shirts and jeans isn't going to ...

At least one of my privacy-obsessed friends and a geographically distant relative are celebrating birthdays today. Birthdays are not the kind of information you just throw on the internet, even on a blog nobody reads, so I'm not telling you their names. The friend knows this is about her, because I regretfully informed her last week that I'm too strapped to buy her anything. It's especially tragic because I always have at least half a dozen gifts in mind that she might genuinely appreciate. So instead, yesterday she got two revised chapters of my second MS (I always celebrate anniversaries with more work, don't you?). My relative probably thinks I've forgotten, and doesn't read the blog anyway, but I love her very much. This is my gift for them. I'm writing my first public Fic. in their names, but without their names (if you know what I mean). Neushade Unoriginally by Nancy Roche  It is generally known that words exude ambient magic, and high concentrations ...

This weekend, I traveled with two friends whom I have known for nearly twenty years. We laughed, ate, and generally enjoyed ourselves. We are still good friends, and I imagine we always will be, even if we don't always agree or get along smoothly. All three of us have serious red streaks in our personalities, so there's bound to be some subtle maneuvering. Although none of us are wealthy, I am temporarily the most financially challenged of us, and I did not have the opportunity to balance the accounts with either of my dear friends, either for doing the work of driving, or for remembering to tip, and so I thought up this dubious scheme. Laurie Ann and Jennifer Louise, I want you to know how I see you. I'm not omnicient, so my perspective is limited, and colored by my adoration. I hope that none of my observations are mistaken for criticism, because I can't imagine wanting either of you to change in the slightest. There wasn't a single moment in the entire weekend th...

So I've been feeling painfully alienated lately, which probably spurred my "dating" posts. I mentioned to my committee chair today that although I'm in a PhD program, I'm never going to "fit in" to the class of people I now associate with. I thought back to the unbearable levels of awkwardness that were cocktail parties in the Fellows' Garden at Oxford, and the parties were awkward not just because I was holding a glass of orange juice. It's such an upper-class name drop, is Oxford. It's nearly a joke. I'm a fish out of water. Financially and educationally, my family are not upper-middle class. We're solidly upper-lower-class, which puts us just North of minimum-wage-slavery. And yet culturally, we don't fit that, either. Grandmother made sure we learned how to eat with the fork, tines down, in our left hands. She gave advice about ladylike fingernail polish (which I have since tossed out completely). She even, accidentally, gave ...

Clearly dating has been on my mind lately. It took one person expressing exactly how I feel to make me realize that I'm going about this all wrong. Let me explain the dilemma: I'm corpulent. I don't mind being large, although I would like to be stronger and more active, and when I can, I work towards that goal. Size and looks matter less to me than weakness. I despise weakness. While it is absolutely true that fat women marry all the time somewhere, in my immediate acquaintance it's an extreme improbability. I know exactly two plus-size women who actually go on dates, but they are no closer to marriage than I am, and you know my statistics from my last post. They date constantly - more often than the skinny women, even - and have active sex lives (relatively), but while men seem eager to use them, or to express physical attraction, they don't commit permanently. I watch them get their hearts broken, and sometimes I'm jealous that men express attraction (somethin...

It's been very refreshing lately to listen to a group of women whose opinions and education I very much respect discuss something as mundane as dating. I'm not one of them; they live in a different state. But our conversations prove to me that IQ is not EQ. These wonderful people have nothing fresh or poignant to say about dating. Is the subject simply too trite? Is all the dating wisdom simply already in circulation? What have I already said about dating? What could I possibly say? I don't date. Let me give you the statistics. Two weeks ago, a gentleman took me to a film. Just a film. I loved the film, but not the experience, so no more dates with him. Before that date, he had asked me out on one previous occasion (we went to the aquarium, and then out for seafood), eighteen months ago. I loved that date, but didn't hear from the guy for a year and a half. Before that, I hadn't been on a date since 2006, and hadn't been asked on a date since high school. So whe...