Subject: Cecilia: A Re-Introduction
From: Cecilia Baader (ceciliabaader@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Sep 30 2001 - 23:24:21 GMT
Hello.
So I've just received this email from the majordomo that informs me that
new list subscribers should introduce themselves.
I guess that I can do that.
Hello, my name is Cecilia Baader and I'm a bananafish. The problem with
bananafish, as many of you know, is that sometimes they get stuck in
these banana holes and they eat and eat and eat until they get stuck and
cannot get out. What happens is, they get stuck and then maybe they
die.
Or perhaps they understand what they've been doing wrong and go on a
diet. They go on a diet and shrink a little and swim away from the hole
of their own digging and sooner or later, they figure out what it is
that they've done wrong and they swim back. Because bananafish are most
comfortable with their own kind.
If you really want to know, (and I'm not saying that you do), this
particular bananafish is going to go back and tell you a little bit
about that David Copperfield kind of crap.
I come from a medium-sized Catholic family. My father is a History
teacher with an unholy interest in the American Civil War. When I was a
kid, we didn't go to Disneyland. We went to Gettysburg. My mother is a
grant writer and a lobbyist for educational issues in the State of
Illinois. She's a fine writer and speaker and loves public roles. My
oldest brother Bobby is a musician who is always trying to get a record
deal. He has a fantastic ability to make you want to laugh and laugh,
even when you're mad as hell at him. Mary Kay, my older sister the
psychologist, likes to tell me when I'm wrong and I love her so much
that I let her. My youngest brother Brian is a Corporal in the United
States Marine Corps. When I heard about the attack, I went into a panic
for obvious reasons. However, the USMC has decided to let him out as
planned, so my baby brother will come home safely.
I grew up in and around Chicago. Though I do not live there now,
Chicago will always be my heart home. I honestly think that there are
places on this earth that a person will go and a part of their soul will
recognize that place and throw back its head to shout a barbaric yawp of
joy. There is a feeling of belonging and of joy that comes over me as I
wander down State Street and hop on the el and climb the steps to the
bleachers of Wrigley Field. Chicago sings its blue song within me
everywhere I go. I get similar echoes of that belongingness in other
places: I felt it once on a mountainside in Wyoming, in a little street
cafe in the Latin Quarter of Paris, at a goofy street fair in Greenwich
Village in New York, and on a beach on Assateague Island. That feeling
of belonging is essential. I've travelled extensively, and I recognize
when it is not there.
It is not in Wisconsin, where I live now. Which is not to say that
Wisconsin is a bad place -- when I look, I see happy people all around
me who do belong here. It is simply not for me. Perhaps it is because
I could care less if the Packers have won. Perhaps it is because I
don't have that great of a taste for beer and brats. Perhaps it is
because I am tired of my job, I do not know. I only know that this is
not where I belong, and the feeling weighs upon me more heavily every
day.
I escape by doing things that I enjoy. I'm a voracious reader. Yes, I
know. Perhaps everyone on this list will tell you that, but the reading
part of me is integral to my personality. My bookshelves are so full
that I have stacks of books all over my house. My favorite authors are
J.D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf,
Louise Erdrich, P.G. Wodehouse, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Jane
Austen, Graham Green, Joseph Conrad, Joseph Heller, Sherman Alexie,
Cristina Garcia, Robert Mackenzie Bowman, Eudora Welty, Lorrie Moore,
Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Fyodor
Dostoevsky, Thomas Hardy, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, Leo Tolstoy,
Franz Kafka, and the list probably goes on, but those are the ones that
come to mind right now.
I read a great deal of poetry, too. I would list my favorite poets, but
if you made it through the last list, I'll not force you to read another
one. Rainer Maria Rilke is right up there at the top, and once upon a
time, I put together a website where I transcribed his LETTERS TO A
YOUNG POET as well as a number of poems by my favorite poets. I stick
more toward modern American poets in my tastes, though I've represented
a great many other times and places on that website as well. A person
could go to that website and read and read poems all day long. My two
favorites are, I think, Conrad Aiken's "Song of Senlin" and Stevie
Smith's "Not Waving But Drowning," and in those two choices I've already
proven my previous statement wrong, as they're both British poets who
have been dead these many years. If ever you feel like visiting my
archive, my website is: http://www.geocities.com/c_baader . Perhaps the
most amusing thing on the website is my guestbook, where my best friend
spent an entire evening making up aliases for herself and signing it. I
go there every so often just to remember and laugh.
I work in the farming industry, a job that I will always remember even
after I have left it because when I introduced my best friend to one of
my customers, she decided to marry him. As far as I know, she is not
yet chasing mice around with a carving knife, but give her time.
Cornfields do strange things to a person. I'll probably stay in this
job for a little while longer, but I'm hoping that when I finish filling
out and sending in all of these graduate school applications that are
littering my desk, one of them will take me. You see, I'm also a
writer. And I'm hoping that I can take two years out of this life and
concentrate on that, and only that. Right now, I'm shopping around a
half-dozen short stories and working (very slowly) on a novel that will
probably be finished sometime within the next millenium.
When I'm not causing gigantic scenes on bananafish, I'm posting drafts
of stories to the American Zoetrope website, an online Writers Community
that allows you to post your own work when you have reviewed the work of
five others. ( http://www.zoetrope.com ) Writing, you see, is my
bliss, as Joseph Campbell would put it. Some days I hate it, some days
there's such joy in it that I can barely stand it, but every day it is
there, in me.
So there it is. And hopefully, you can read my strange little
introduction and understand why it was that I had to go out of here
those many days ago in such a blaze of anger. Additionally, I hope to
begin by example a way for listmembers to better know each other and
better converse.
Do you feel up to a reintroduction? Let's please start a new dialogue.
One without rancor and pretense. When I signed off, I received emails
from a few listmembers who said that they do not typically post. I
think that every voice on this list, even the unheard ones, are
important, and I'm hoping that we can possibly foster an environment
where people can discuss Salinger if they want to, but maybe they can
also discuss other issues that are pertinent to everyone here. Like the
fact that the world feels like it's separating at the corners.
Love,
Cecilia.
-
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