theocracy now!

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...

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

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.