Plate o' Shrimp

So here it is—my brand spankin new blog named plate o’ shrimp.
Which I imagine to those of you who are not devotees of the 80’s cult movie classic Repo Man registers as just odd. Yet as the quote at the top of the page illustrates, that strange little movie had embedded in it a pretty nifty idea about the interconnectedness of things that has kept that movie in my memory for a good long time.

Yet many strange, sad, and wonderful things have happened to me between my earlier 20s when I first saw Repo Man and today—chief among them was loosing too many people I love to cancer. Now granted that loosing anyone to cancer counts as too many, yet watching people I loved fight and struggle for even their last painful limited days has changed me fundamentally. Phrases like “It’s all good” “everything that is supposed to happen will happen” and “it is a blessing “ no longer tumble from my lips as easily as they used to. If there is anything I have learned from catastrophic illness it’s that death isn’t picky. Good people with steely resolves to live can die as easily as anyone else, and a strong will alone will ensure none of ours survival.
I used to think that the interconnectedness of things meant that there was some reason of larger purpose for the things that happened in my life that were beyond my control, now I know there is no higher purpose. Yet I do believe myself and everything and everyone around me to be connected by their existence in a kind of holy chaos. For me the idea that no matter bow hard I try and how well I plan that my life could go catastrophically wrong and end abruptly provides me with a rigor in my self-examinations that I find comforting. It makes the sorting process so much easier. I was happiest in a house most of my family felt should be bulldozed. Studying hard is fun. The thought of professionally pursuing my considerable talents for academic administration fills me with a profound melancholy.

Sell all my belongings? Okay… I sold the last of my books today but one box. Sell my house, quit my job, move half way around the world, spend any retirement I have accumulated and go into deep debt in pursuit of a second career? Scary?.. yeah a little. But not as scary as facing my own unhappiness if I continue down a “safer” more sober path. Bring on the change.
I am actually proud that I am a little scared. Time was that I wouldn’t entertain such feelings, but I am feeling every inch of this change. I cried when S. took my fiestaware away to store at her house. It is scary because this might not all work out, because it might, and because I am leaving all those notions of being able to control the outcome more and more firmly behind.

So where is the lattice o’ coincidence in all this. I went to Grenada for my 30th birthday 12 years ago and fell in love with the place, and think at least once every winter that I would like to spend a year or two there.
Deanna Martin, the creator of Supplemental Instruction-- the program I run at SFCC, told me two years ago at a conference that she thought that SGU would be a good fit for me.
And as I recall the seafood is amazing in that part of the world. Shrimp plate anyone?

posted by Sa @ 10:40 PM