Finally!, years of tests, teacher's opinions which had to be right in order to pass the class, my own ineligible notes, and 8am classes...over! While most people who spend 7 years in college become doctors, I learned how to make pottery, how to draw a picture with chalk, how to survive a heart ripping divorce, and how to love many things. At my Department Graduation my Adviser said of me, "It was a pleasure having Tamara in class. Workshopping with her was an interesting and insightful moment. She's very direct while being articulate, heartfelt and encouraging. She would be a good teacher..." They didn't tell me I would write a masterpiece one day. I swallowed that chunk of humility with a vodka tonic. My Mom called me tenacious. After looking it up in my worn out Oxford American Dictionary, which I use with my now crumbling Bartett's Roget's Thesaurus, I was grateful for the underground complement.
School is about figuring out who you are, what you believed in, what feels right, sounds correct, works with your body type etc. It's an awakening to the the things you can respect, trust, love & commit too. So I figured in my mid-life crisis I needed to reconnect with some of the fundamentals I missed while surfing my way through high school. When I started college my ground rules were simple. I'd take 12 hours a semester and I'd refuse to go to summer school. I got odd jobs in the summer to stay busy. I stuck to my plan and upon graduation I had discovered a whole new set of personal values. I discovered the innate and smart blond inside of me with something to add to the world other than being someone's wing-[wo]man.
Going back to school helped me think young. One thing about growing old is if you're not carful modern concepts, ideas and TV shows can pass you by. Over time this can make a person feel lost and disconnected, regardless of facebook. I enjoyed participating in current affairs with free-spirited students. They helped me with the full University experience, that and the fact that I was in college alongside my daughter. During my college years I totaled 15 phone numbers from students, 5 invitations for drinks from my professors, 3 offers to go surfing in Costa Rica, and unlimited choices of study groups. I was definitely more popular than I was in high school. How redeeming is that!?! I recommend everyone going through a mid-life crises regain their ingrained ego by going back to college.
At 40+ I had to study extra hard to remember proper nouns and timeline dates, so I was that person that actually read the homework. In truth I spent obnoxious amounts of $$$ buying New Addition books that were nothing more then old editions with the chapters moved around (what a scam that is!). I never sold the books back because deep down I'm a goofy nerd and I couldn't help but find "the facts" in the required readings interesting. I now have shelves of wisdom I keep for future references, however, promptly upon graduation, I burned all my math books in a very satisfying bonfire.
What I didn't like about school were tests. Multiple choice ones gave my body heat flashes, and I'd get dizzy trying to use the process of elimination technique when, in my philosophical mind, all applied. I was better at the quizzes I could bluff through with a maddening number of words. It's a Liberal Arts technique that took me over 100 hours of class participation and a semester of Epistemology to master. My one school folly was that I cheated to get a C in Computer Class. I couldn't grasp the concept of a spreadsheet so I copied off of the 18 year old kid sitting next to me. One of Sarah's high school friends did my Powerpoint assignment, which I got and A on. My one failure was in Intro To Spanish Literature because the teacher taught the class in spanish and I couldn't hang. However I was so interested in the readings (which were in spanish) I bought the books in their English translation and read them. The teacher wasn't impressed and still gave me an F.
In 2004 I entered the Creative Writing program at UNCW with the dream of becoming a poet. It quickly became obvious that there was a hellish future in poetry. In workshops my professors told me, "You have censorship issues," and the students said, "We don't get it. You need to stay away from the Thesaurus." I took everything they wrote on my papers to heart, but discovered my personal demon was the fear of my sentences being misunderstood. And when my words didn't help people make the metaphysical leaps I anticipated, I'd get frustrated. I lied to myself thinking it was my age. The truth was, I discovered so many voice options they confounded even me. I also have issues with past and present tenses. They sublime in my brain. I mean seriously, what about the past doesn't transfer into the present anyway? Like, you live to perform live, and, read again what was read? Anywho, I'm now the queen of constant revisions.
For one poem I wrote in 2005, and tend to like, I worked on the voice for 6 months until I came up with an inner child. I found her voice a good way to stay away from the big words I was learning in my Thesaurus and the philosophy mumbo-jumbo I was addicted to. The poem goes like this...
Night Lights
(fiction)
by Tamara Paul
There are a lot of little night lights in my new home.
I count them all the time but I can not count past ten so I count to ten twice.
There are more I leave behind.
Some of them call me into a room as if they were my friend,
like the big tulip light with a white butterfly on it.
It glows orange and green on the red walls of Mommy's office.
Mommy's office has no big lights.
She says that she cannot work in big lights.
She says too much light hurts her eyes.
I guess the big lights give her all those blue boo boos.
She says she does not want to see the men she works with either.
I do not understand all that,
but I guess that is why Mommy likes to buy pretty night lights.
I like to look at them, and I try to count them.
Some night lights are on the counters,
other lights hide behind plants.
An angel light glows behind a picture of Grandma holding a water bucket.
She is on a farm. She was four like me.
I like that picture. Her face is dirty but she is smiling.
She must of been having fun on that farm.
I know I would like it.
Grandma gave me Tickles.
She said she knew what it was like when Daddies go away.
She said Tickles would understand too.
I guess Tickles is smarter than I am.
Big lights do not scare him.
We like to cuddle.
There are lots of Tinker-bell lights on the walls.
They show me where the light switch is
and they give me the light I need to go pee pee at nighttime while Mommy is working.
Sometimes I sleep next to the light that looks like a yellow glass part of the moon.
There is a little blue star hanging from its tip top.
I like that one the best.
Tickle likes it too.
It glows next to the couch in our big room.
I sleep on the couch sometimes.
That way I do not have to hear Mommy cry at night.
That makes me sad and I cry too.
Mommy will not cuddle with me.
She says that is why I have Tickles.
Maybe tomorrow I will try to count all the night lights again with Tickles help.
He is smarter that I am.
He can count past ten,
but has not taught me how yet.
In my short stories the young voice tended to disagree with my world experiences so I spent many Creative Writing projects trying to find an adult voice that didn't sound like a rambling Ayn Rand. By the time I graduated in 2007 I had so many voices in my head that they'd spend way too much time arguing about word play. I loved it though, and wrote the ramblings down on expensive internet accessible typewriters that would crash every two years and take my "art" pieces with them to the trash heap. Good thing I'm accustomed to pushing PRINT. Upon graduation I embraced the fact that writing gets me higher than any drug I ever took. I still dream of the day it will pay my AT&T bills.
On the occasion of my graduation I bought for myself Hans; a 2005 black manual 6speed V8 BMW 645ci. He's pure road sex!
My Infinity G35 had become a money issue and it was time to let him go. The dealership in Raleigh had already replaced the clutch once. I blame the malfunction on the time C took a Porsche off the line. She won! That was impressive. It goes to show you that sometimes it's not horses but technique. But my biggest money issue with the Baby was with the tires. The front and the back tires were different sizes so they couldn't be rotated and the Baby liked expensive tires that softened up while driving. One year when I took the Baby to Snowshoe he got stuck and I had to have him pulled out. It bent something that made the Baby wear down tires in an odd way. He also started skipping on meandering turns. It was a little scary at high speeds.
I checked out our local BMW dealership and found a black 645 that was hot as hell but it was an automatic. I researched the internet and found Hans in Pittsburg (yes, Hans is a European Steeler). I made a trade-in deal over the phone which equaled Hans being paid for in full! So the following weekend C and I drove the Baby 10 hours 23 minutes up to Pennsylvania. It was a beautiful drive through the mountains, but it was a better drive home with rotatable run-flats (there's no place in Hans for a spare tire), and cool moving headlamps. Within the first hour of driving my new BMW I discovered that "Efficient Dynamics Pleasures" meant Hans was much smarter than I am, even with a college education. He's got more bells and warning lights than I had ever seen. Good thing he came with 3 owner's manuals. I keep a 5 euro bill in his visor to help me understand his sophisticated touchiness.
Because Hans was from Steeler Land the first thing I did was to convert him with an Oakland Raiders emblem. I stuck it on his trunk. He's also the first car I ever had that I haven't put surf racks on. (Gratefully I ride a 5'2" kneeboard that fits inside with me.) The sexiest thing about Hans, besides his looks, is his giddy-up horses. Once C and I were driving back from Myrtle Beach and I passed a left-lane driver who was doing the side-by-side thing with the car in the right lane. I used the left turn lane, which was short in length but nothing compared to Hans' down-shifting magnitude, to pass the left-lane driver. The slow driver got so pissed he called Highway Patrol. I was pulled within two miles. The officer complimented on Hans (which happens a lot) while giving me only a warning citation. The slow left-lane driver, who had pulled over with me to confirm his complaint, watched. The officer told him to go away. If I wasn't attached I'd go out the fine outstanding officer. I like people who understand the thrill of being born addicted to the fast lane.
All-in-all, graduating from college and getting a new car was a highlight in 2007. But the biggest highlight of the year was Sarah's wedding in Italy... That will be explained in 2007 pt.2.
"Freewill is a corollary of consciousness: to say that we are free is merely to mean we know what we are doing." (The Story of Philosophy; by Will Durant, 1961)
