All Eyes on Me

Today is Mardi Gras, which means that the start of Lent is tomorrow. I like to observe Lent in some way, mostly as an exercise in self-discipline for a structured duration for a good cause. Traditionally the observance is giving up some indulgence, particularly one that isn't good for them. Most people now interpret with something food-related; I myself used to use processed sugar as my go-to, and while that would probably be good for me right now, I think I'd like to use it as an opportunity to change some behavioral habits that I'd like to improve in some way.

Last year for Lent I gave up procrastination, and that was actually pretty good for me. I resolved to do the things I needed to at their appointed time, rather than putting them off to the last minute, as well as cutting down on "screwing around time," like being on Twitter when I should have been working or something. I think I'd like to do something like that again. I feel like my work habits need an overhaul, as I've fallen back into the struggle to get my head into whatever I'm doing, and being highly distractable, even from tasks I theoretically want to do. I am going to devise a system that I will stick to for Lenten period, and see if in that time it gets more natural or automatic.

I like giving it a shot over Lent because doing it for a set period makes it feels easier than just "you have to work hard on this forever indefinitely." And with that period of practice, it might get easier to implement on a consistent basis. Structure always helps my brain, and lately I can use a dose of it to get me back on track.

With everything that's been going on, Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday have already come and gone without my realizing. Even so, I want to do something for Lent. I thought about it and I've decided that I'm going to give up being ashamed of myself. I have spent so much time and energy trying to hide things that I'm struggling with, to stop myself from displays of emotionality that I'm afraid people will think are unseemly. But I feel like I shouldn't do that right now. It might have saved me some judgment from people, but I shouldn't care about people who would judge me for being in pain over legitimate struggles in my life, and I think it did much more to trap me into having no way to deal with those struggles. Also, I just don't have the strength to pretend about that stuff. I have to get myself through this without wrecking my whole life, I need to have fewer things to worry about in order to do it. I have more important things to do than keep things that have hurt me secret.

This will be a big shift for me. It might end up being easier to do things the way I always have. But this also might help makes things easier in the process. I don't know. But I'm going to try it, in hopes that getting a little healthier will help me get through.

My grandmother certainly considered herself to be white. Her name was Julia Leone, nee Gush, and though I never had the chance to ask her about it or anything, that was still pretty clear. She had plenty of reason to. She had skin that was within the reason range of shades for a white person and no features that marked her otherwise. Her maiden name had any indication of ethnicity mangled out of it before she was born, while her married name, though Italian, was white enough. Her husband was white; she was even the mother of a pink-skinned, green-eyed, yellow-haired girl-- the proverbial angelic blonde child. The culture she sprang from and identified with is white culture. If you saw a picture of her, chances are you would not think anything different.

But really... my grandmother wasn't all white. Not completely. She was a first-generation Russian-American. Both of her parents emigrated from Russia in the early Twentieth Century. They met, married, and had eleven children in a small town outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of whom was my grandmother Julia. They spoke Russian, worshipped at a Russian Orthodox Church, and identified with the associated ethnicity. My great-grandmother Anna Sherba was fair and blonde, the source of Mom's looks, so unlike either of her parents. This is not an usual appearence for an ethnic Russian, but I was very surprised to hear it-- after all, Grandma, the foremost representative of Russian blood in my life, had sharp features and dark coloring. But that's because of my great grandfather, Tymko Gush, known sometimes as James Gush, whose real surname was lost to Americanization a hundred years ago. According to my Mom, he had tan skin, high cheekbones, and almond shaped eyes. To look at him, he was not a white man, he was obviously Asian.

Because of the Mongolian conquest of the area that would become Russia, there are parts of it where the inhabitants have quite a bit of Asian blood. I'm not positive, but my great-grandfather may have even been Siberian, where it is particularly common. Because of this his ethnicity would be hard to qualify, since he was likely the product of generations of mixed people marrying other mixed people, but he was probably some proportion of Asian and white. That combination is likely the reason why my grandmother looked as white as she did. But it makes me wonder-- what did my great-grandfather consider himself? Did he think of the white versus nonwhite issue? Or was he just "a Russian," a more important distinction in a new country where so few share your ways and customs? I have no idea if there's any conflict between Russians of pure Caucasian decent and the Russians who have some Asian in them. In America, I know pretty much every immigrant in my family suffered some poor treatment from someone on account of their ethnic background. Did my great-grandfather ever get treated differently for someone recognizing him to be nonwhite?

I think of my immediate family. Now on the third generation in this country, my family appears very white, and benefits from the associated privilege. In fact, people have assumed that we must have the very highest level of privilege that being white in this country can possibly confer on you because of how well we present-- that we're not descendents of relatively recent immigrants (we are), that we do not have a close working class history (we do), that we come from people who are rich and educated (we don't). My grandparents-- poor, uneducated, and foreign --did not experience that same privilege. Their backgrounds made them targets for all kinds of hate and discrimination; even my mother and father faced some of that growing up. But still, the time and place my grandmother lived, when you're already suffering because you're ethnic, well, at least you're not tormented for being nonwhite. Getting to claim whiteness was some status better than none. So I guess it's not so strange that my grandma would forget or ignore that part of herself. After all, people tend to consider you to be what you look like. When she looked around, in the mirror or at her blonde daughter, it was probably easy to forget.

Tymko Gush, however, is not the only one I wonder about on that side. My great-grandmother Anna makes me wonder as well. She came to this country from Galitzia, a small area that has been owned by several countries but at the time was Russia, at the age of seventeen to escape the Bolsheviks. At the time, many Jewish families were fleeing from the exact same place to America as well. Her first job in the country was working as a maid for a Jewish family. And I realized when I came to Brandeis that many of the weird "family words" we'd been using-- nebbish, noodge, schmatta --were Yiddish, and had come into use because Anna used them. Those are small things, but they made me wonder... could my great-grandmother have actually been born a Jew?

My mother scoffs at the idea. That blonde ethnic Russian? This was the woman who took her to church every Sunday, who was devoutly Russian Orthodox her entire life. She explains the Yiddish with Anna's maid job when she was first learning English, so their words became her words. (Also, it turned out we used them mostly wrong.) Mom's almost certainly right; of course she knew the woman and I never did. But I can't help wondering, if for only one reason-- Anna Sherba was my mother's mother's mother. So if she was Jewish, then under the law, so are we. So am I.

I know myself to be a white Christian. Though I acknowledge my background to be infintessimally nonwhite, I think it would be silly to consider myself as anything else. That part of me is extremely small and extremely distant from me, plus I see a pale face and Caucasian features when I look in the mirror. But it's fascinating to know it's there in my background-- that I'm a little more complex than meets the eye. And I'm a Christian in my bones. I've heard of people discovering their Jewish heritage and deciding to return to it, but I can't imagine why that alone would be enough to draw you. It certainly wouldn't compel me. But how strange to think that a fact in the past could possibly make something true, that, without its acknowledgement, seems like a fanciful impossibility. I could, technically, be a Jew. It doesn't change me... but it changes something.

Funny how these things work.

This is another piece of Fallen that I wrote for school. It builds upon this piece, where Julien offers to hear Gabriel's confessions in hopes of helping ease his burden. But he learns that Gabriel's burden is greater than he'd ever guessed, and he has no idea how he's going to find the way to help him.

( Julien had an engagement late on Sunday nights. )

I wrote this short piece as a submission for my science fiction and fantasy class. This is a scene from a fantasy novel I have been thinking of writing for quite some time. The idea is that after a great battle with the forces of hell, a team of people from a religious university that trains people with special powers find what seems to them to be a baby demon. A nun named Magdalena speaks up for his life, names him Gabriel, and raises him at the university to fight on their side. Still, he is regarded as a monster by many and struggles a great deal with the question of whether or not he really is one, particularly when he is confronted by how holy objects have the power to hurt him.

This part is inspired in large part by the Night on Bald Mountain segment of Fantasia. I do so love my Catholic ceremony, imagery, philosophy, and issues of guilt. ;-)

( La Voix was a bell of the church... )

I have always been a fan of cassocks, the long, severe coats worn by priests outside of liturgical dress. I like how many different vibes they can give off; authoritative, modest, powerful, reliable, separated, even scary. If anyone ever saw that lame comic book adaptation Ghost Rider from a few years back, you may remember the way Peter Fonda playing Mephistopheles. My mom pointed out to me, "They have him dressed like a bishop." So they did, and I thought it looked incredibly creepy and cool.

Whoa. Looking at my calendar, it appears that Mardi Gras has crept up on me and falls this year on... today. I haven't really given any thought as to what I should give up for Lent yet, which means I don't know what I should indulge now before I am without it for the next forty days.

My typical Lenten sacrifice is processed sugar. It's good for my health and for my weight. I think I did that for something like eight years in a row. Last year, however, I elected to keep kosher to see what it was like. I must confess, kashrut is one of the Jewish concepts that means the least to me. It was an interesting experiment, but frankly one that did little to recommend the practice to me. It wasn't so bad, I guess, but I didn't really feel there was anything positive about it that outweighed what it demanded giving up. Pork is a food, not a sin, and a delicious one at that. But still, it's something that means an awful lot to certain very important people in my life. So I guess it's a gesture of respect to them if I decide to do it again, which does matter to me. Processed sugar, but contrast, is a personal sacrifice, but there's no expression of love involved, only the self-denial for Lent.