Quickly, because I am going back to work tomorrow after a long, long-deserved sabbatical, and need to sleep:
I need to clarify something about yesterday's post. I didn't "mute" 660 people on FB. That would mean that I wouldn't see their posts. Not my intention. Instead, I narrowed the reach of MY OWN POSTING to 145 people. I still can see and interact with the 800 people whom I'm friends with. They just can't all see my posts, unless I change the setting back to all of my friends. I can do this easily, but have the smaller group of people as my default setting.
So: I hard-blocked some family members. I muted several idiotic Trump supporters for my own sanity. And I've narrowed my posting audience to 145 as a default. That is all.
This afternoon I was at the gym for the first time in months; since I got back from Vietnam I've been a lump. Today I was listening to a song on the treadmill (incidentally, it was "Seasons Cycle" on XTC's phenomenal Skylarking album, about 1988). The tempo happened to match my pace, and my hands started tapping on the bar because I can't stop from doing that when I really get into a song. At that moment, something buzzed in my brain. Frisson on the hamster wheel!
This is normal, I know, but today I had been reading about how visualization while exercising makes the exercise "count" more, or something like that, and I had also been thinking about how my baked-in anxieties have always made sitting still and meditating really difficult for me...how much more I like to move while I am thinking...remember, I'm moving during this whole string...and then I got all catalog-ey (thanx OCD) and made a playlist called "3.4 [MPH] Walking Meditation" and skipped to the next song. It was faster, so I sped up the treadmill (beep beep), and the frisson happened again when I hit the right speed! Holy shit, let's make another playlist...called "3.5 Walking Meditation."
Gleefully I spent the whole hour putting songs in playlists, from 3.0 to 3.5. Here was the sequence:
New song comes on. Check against speed until head shivers. Bam--organized.
The frisson was the signal. It's the same way when I mix music and I know it's right. Or choose a word. It's a gift, like how a painter knows what color to lay down next to another. I have no eyeball orientation, but my ears never disappoint me. It's probably why I'm a writer. Anyway, THIS IS NOT EVEN THE COOL PART.
The cool part was that throughout all of this, I was experiencing a very rare clarity of mind. Somehow I had dialed into a fine space. It felt narrow and lucidly wide at the same time. I had an idea for a creative project, and I could see all of it. I could have written it all down right there, as I was walking, tweaking the treadmill, shivering and organizing music. I didn't.
That's ok, though. The hour passed in what felt like minutes (sorry). I went to the hot tub with Lucy and Jeff and we had a beautifully present conversation. Then Lucy and I jumped into the big cold pool because we're badasses and then ran into the locker room.
TL;DR: I'm running off to join a one-man band.
Sunday, January 5, 2020
Saturday, January 4, 2020
Culling Season
I've been traveling a lot and writing in my journal, and not keeping up with this blog, which was supposed to be for the deeper, more theme-oriented aspects of my life. To be honest, my life right now is pretty a-ok, aside from the house-shaped elephant in the room that I don't want to think or talk about at the moment. And the environment. And the state of the U.S. What I want to talk about in a short post, is Facebook.
There is no freaking way I'm going to get off of social media, because I love reading my FB wall and hear about what people are doing in Perth or Hai Phong or Amsterdam, Texas, Willow Glen, etc. Facebook serves an important connecting purpose for me and these people. I actually have a sense of what's going on in Vietnam during the months I'm in the US (right now, a shitload of weddings), and I get to see my friends' kids grow, and learn when people from high school die of seizure seizure stroke heart attack. It's a lucky window into worlds I don't really live in, and it doesn't affect my bank account.
If you're reading this, you also know that I'm an overposter. Not as bad as some, for real, but I really interact on FB. I've never wanted to be a spectator in any aspect of my life, so I'm always piping up. The interactions I've had with people there have really enriched my days and nights. So much of adulthood is doing things you'd rather not do, and having my friends in my pocket--even if it's just a simulacrum of friendship--sometimes just makes it easier to Do the Things. Anyway.
The Facebook friend list started getting carried away. I've had an account since the girls were born in 2008, and over time, like you I bet, I became friends with literally every human I have ever come across in 50 years. And their moms. Great, good, bad and ugly. Ambivalent people. The voyeurs (or maybe that's just a nightmare). People I aspire to be. People who should just let it go. The dead. Everyone.
At first, it seemed like a beautiful garden of wildflowers. In a terrarium. At the edges I could Block and Lock. Within this world--I felt, anyway--the invisible hand of goodwill would gently nudge and nourish us....
That was cool for a long time. I found old friends and repaired old wounds and reshaped my history such that I could sit on it like a big ole Buddha. The first problem came when members of my immediate family and I had a major--super major--falling out, and I realized that perhaps some aspects of my--of our: Jeff was in the middle of it--life were a little too available. Suddenly, I didn't want every-everyone to know every-everything. I blocked two people whom I'd never imagined I'd block. People who were second and third on my speed-dial list.
It was a therapeutic move meant to create a boundary where there had been none, and it worked very well. You risk something when you post; even if it's tiny, it adds up. It had real consequences for me in real life: I felt safer, and in that safety, I grew towards and into something different. That was five years ago.
And then the opposite happened. Today I have plateau-ed at almost 800 friends, but only about 145 of them regularly interact with me. Until recently, I didn't think very hard about this ratio. Then I did. It feels significant but I'm not sure why. I'm going to try to write through it here:
When 82% of your FB friends never interact with you, is that a bad thing? It seems like it should be, because the default identity on the platform is "totally present," even if there are varying degrees of commitment. Whether your friend has vacated their page and doesn't see anyone anymore, checks it sporadically but never posts, stalks their friends, or just dislikes you, you don't know. How much, if any, affect you're having on them is impossible to determine. If they teeming with hatred, desperately in love with your profile, or are cheerfully or depressedly ambivalent about you, you don't know. Just when I think that x could give a rat's ass about me, she replies to a post about music. When I tag someone I love and they don't respond, even weeks later, I'm sad.
(Perhaps there should be a person-shaped icon next to each person's name, with the percentage of their total social media interaction indicated by a color? And another with the percentage of their interaction with YOU? I am so fucking OCD.)
Let's just say that it's hard to gauge what kind of impact I'm having on FB, outside of my beloved 18%. When I realized how large the non-interactive group was (four times larger!), I felt embarrassed that I hadn't caught it sooner, that my exhibitionist ego had been operating in "who cares-ville" for too long. It's weird to confront paradoxical feelings: I was embarrassed for my own blabbery, but also annoyed at the way people can ghost/coast on social media. You can learn a lot about people without talking to them at all. And I can go forever talking into a void.
I used to think that the trick to being FB friends with relatives, students and people from a different political hellscape was not to prune your words into diplomatically palatable bits, but to remain whole and alert and reach out with all of the people in your mind's eye. For better or worse, this has been pretty easy for me, but it's also allowed me to lump all 800 people into one giant Friend that I talk to. Learning that your Friend is 80% brain dead is fucking disturbing. Also, realizing that the impact of the 18% who interact with you has been diluted by the rest (death to lurkers!) is infuriating.
Anyhoo, TL;DR: I shortened my friend list through muting. So far, the world hasn't stopped spinning. We're still destroying the planet, and really bad people are getting filthy rich in full view of the rest of us. Next will be reckoning with the people I enjoy reading about, but never interact with, myself! And there's always the IRL version of FB, the most important garden to tend.
There is no freaking way I'm going to get off of social media, because I love reading my FB wall and hear about what people are doing in Perth or Hai Phong or Amsterdam, Texas, Willow Glen, etc. Facebook serves an important connecting purpose for me and these people. I actually have a sense of what's going on in Vietnam during the months I'm in the US (right now, a shitload of weddings), and I get to see my friends' kids grow, and learn when people from high school die of seizure seizure stroke heart attack. It's a lucky window into worlds I don't really live in, and it doesn't affect my bank account.
If you're reading this, you also know that I'm an overposter. Not as bad as some, for real, but I really interact on FB. I've never wanted to be a spectator in any aspect of my life, so I'm always piping up. The interactions I've had with people there have really enriched my days and nights. So much of adulthood is doing things you'd rather not do, and having my friends in my pocket--even if it's just a simulacrum of friendship--sometimes just makes it easier to Do the Things. Anyway.
The Facebook friend list started getting carried away. I've had an account since the girls were born in 2008, and over time, like you I bet, I became friends with literally every human I have ever come across in 50 years. And their moms. Great, good, bad and ugly. Ambivalent people. The voyeurs (or maybe that's just a nightmare). People I aspire to be. People who should just let it go. The dead. Everyone.
At first, it seemed like a beautiful garden of wildflowers. In a terrarium. At the edges I could Block and Lock. Within this world--I felt, anyway--the invisible hand of goodwill would gently nudge and nourish us....
That was cool for a long time. I found old friends and repaired old wounds and reshaped my history such that I could sit on it like a big ole Buddha. The first problem came when members of my immediate family and I had a major--super major--falling out, and I realized that perhaps some aspects of my--of our: Jeff was in the middle of it--life were a little too available. Suddenly, I didn't want every-everyone to know every-everything. I blocked two people whom I'd never imagined I'd block. People who were second and third on my speed-dial list.
It was a therapeutic move meant to create a boundary where there had been none, and it worked very well. You risk something when you post; even if it's tiny, it adds up. It had real consequences for me in real life: I felt safer, and in that safety, I grew towards and into something different. That was five years ago.
And then the opposite happened. Today I have plateau-ed at almost 800 friends, but only about 145 of them regularly interact with me. Until recently, I didn't think very hard about this ratio. Then I did. It feels significant but I'm not sure why. I'm going to try to write through it here:
When 82% of your FB friends never interact with you, is that a bad thing? It seems like it should be, because the default identity on the platform is "totally present," even if there are varying degrees of commitment. Whether your friend has vacated their page and doesn't see anyone anymore, checks it sporadically but never posts, stalks their friends, or just dislikes you, you don't know. How much, if any, affect you're having on them is impossible to determine. If they teeming with hatred, desperately in love with your profile, or are cheerfully or depressedly ambivalent about you, you don't know. Just when I think that x could give a rat's ass about me, she replies to a post about music. When I tag someone I love and they don't respond, even weeks later, I'm sad.
(Perhaps there should be a person-shaped icon next to each person's name, with the percentage of their total social media interaction indicated by a color? And another with the percentage of their interaction with YOU? I am so fucking OCD.)
Let's just say that it's hard to gauge what kind of impact I'm having on FB, outside of my beloved 18%. When I realized how large the non-interactive group was (four times larger!), I felt embarrassed that I hadn't caught it sooner, that my exhibitionist ego had been operating in "who cares-ville" for too long. It's weird to confront paradoxical feelings: I was embarrassed for my own blabbery, but also annoyed at the way people can ghost/coast on social media. You can learn a lot about people without talking to them at all. And I can go forever talking into a void.
I used to think that the trick to being FB friends with relatives, students and people from a different political hellscape was not to prune your words into diplomatically palatable bits, but to remain whole and alert and reach out with all of the people in your mind's eye. For better or worse, this has been pretty easy for me, but it's also allowed me to lump all 800 people into one giant Friend that I talk to. Learning that your Friend is 80% brain dead is fucking disturbing. Also, realizing that the impact of the 18% who interact with you has been diluted by the rest (death to lurkers!) is infuriating.
Anyhoo, TL;DR: I shortened my friend list through muting. So far, the world hasn't stopped spinning. We're still destroying the planet, and really bad people are getting filthy rich in full view of the rest of us. Next will be reckoning with the people I enjoy reading about, but never interact with, myself! And there's always the IRL version of FB, the most important garden to tend.
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Better to Fade Away?
This is not a pity party. I promise.
It's just that lately, I seem to have this conceptual art project going: how to die without thinking about it.
Let me be straight: I've never contemplated suicide. My obsessions have always been rooted in the abstract. My dad's father, unfortunately, did kill himself for real, in American Samoa of all places, when my father was 15. 15! I look at my daughters and realize that Grandpa Don was on a whole different level of fucked-up-ness. I'm nowhere near there, and I'm rapidly approaching his death-age of 55. I know that when my father turned 55, it was a hard year for him. I didn't understand it then, but I do now.
Luckily, as screwed up as I am, I've not ever gone there.
However, something has manifested that both surprises and un-surprises me. Maybe you need to be middle-aged before you start looking back and then can't deny that there has been a pattern. Or maybe you need to make small improvements, as I have been doing, to see the difference. I don't know. Maybe you can help.
I quit drinking alcohol about two months ago. I've done this on and off throughout my adult life; it's really no big deal for me to do it. The problem is that it kind of tweaks my social life and makes me have to do work in different places. Ultimately, it's a good thing, though. There is the embarrassment of not being able to hold liquor the way I used to: call that the impetus to quit. And then, over a period of sobriety, I realize that certain social bonds wither away without the booze. Others stand sad and neglected. I start to fix that, and realize what I'd been missing amid the ha has: undeniable connection. This kind of connection is formed inside of box playhouses when you're a child, or on the playground in junior high, when you are a pariah and someone finds you interesting in spite of it all. It continues amid the bomb craters of drunken weekend hookups (love during wartime), when a special person hands you a perfectly ripe pear. Or extends a hand at a party that took extra guts for you to walk through the door. These people come back to life with a special shine when you are sober. Or, more truthfully, when you are making plans for sobriety. It resonates and makes you want to continue.
Hard work, eh, when some sunny days you just want to sit down with a beer and laugh?
I do miss that: Colleen, Miah, Wendy, I do. I can be an excellent partier. But as the sober comic Marc Maron says, "I got my drinking hours in. I filled my quota." I'm done for now. Probably a long now.
On the same note, I recently started what I call my evening constitutional. I walk for about 45 minutes at dusk, up and down the very steep road in front of my house. I put this idea off for a long time. If you could see the road, you would understand why. But I was frustrated with my inconsistent ability to get to the gym, which is 20 miles away. And as I've aged, and because of my thyroid cancer, I've gained weight. I've been walking almost every night since June. If my daughter Lucy comes with me, we talk and look for animals. We do the think normal families do around the dinner table. If I'm alone, I listen to music or watch an episode of Narcos. Or just marvel at the beauty surrounding me.
After about a month of watching me do this, my neighbor Melody asked if she could join me. I didn't know her well before this, but now I do. I have not only lost eight pounds, but I've gained a new friend. Moreover, I feel really good about an aspect of my life that usually feels terrible.
Yay, self-improvement! All of this good stuff makes me inventory the rest of things and I see all the stuff that I do that leads in the general direction of an earlier death: my love for junk food (Coke, especially), my occasional cigarette, my terrible sleep hygiene. Where does it stop? I guess it all stops the day your heart stops. And do I want to live that long? I honestly don't know.
I honestly don't know! Sometimes you just want to live the rocknroll fantasy: better to burn out than fade away. Sometimes you love to cheat. It's how it is, right?
I'll let you know how it's going later, but I feel pretty good right now.
It's just that lately, I seem to have this conceptual art project going: how to die without thinking about it.
Let me be straight: I've never contemplated suicide. My obsessions have always been rooted in the abstract. My dad's father, unfortunately, did kill himself for real, in American Samoa of all places, when my father was 15. 15! I look at my daughters and realize that Grandpa Don was on a whole different level of fucked-up-ness. I'm nowhere near there, and I'm rapidly approaching his death-age of 55. I know that when my father turned 55, it was a hard year for him. I didn't understand it then, but I do now.
Luckily, as screwed up as I am, I've not ever gone there.
However, something has manifested that both surprises and un-surprises me. Maybe you need to be middle-aged before you start looking back and then can't deny that there has been a pattern. Or maybe you need to make small improvements, as I have been doing, to see the difference. I don't know. Maybe you can help.
I quit drinking alcohol about two months ago. I've done this on and off throughout my adult life; it's really no big deal for me to do it. The problem is that it kind of tweaks my social life and makes me have to do work in different places. Ultimately, it's a good thing, though. There is the embarrassment of not being able to hold liquor the way I used to: call that the impetus to quit. And then, over a period of sobriety, I realize that certain social bonds wither away without the booze. Others stand sad and neglected. I start to fix that, and realize what I'd been missing amid the ha has: undeniable connection. This kind of connection is formed inside of box playhouses when you're a child, or on the playground in junior high, when you are a pariah and someone finds you interesting in spite of it all. It continues amid the bomb craters of drunken weekend hookups (love during wartime), when a special person hands you a perfectly ripe pear. Or extends a hand at a party that took extra guts for you to walk through the door. These people come back to life with a special shine when you are sober. Or, more truthfully, when you are making plans for sobriety. It resonates and makes you want to continue.
Hard work, eh, when some sunny days you just want to sit down with a beer and laugh?
I do miss that: Colleen, Miah, Wendy, I do. I can be an excellent partier. But as the sober comic Marc Maron says, "I got my drinking hours in. I filled my quota." I'm done for now. Probably a long now.
On the same note, I recently started what I call my evening constitutional. I walk for about 45 minutes at dusk, up and down the very steep road in front of my house. I put this idea off for a long time. If you could see the road, you would understand why. But I was frustrated with my inconsistent ability to get to the gym, which is 20 miles away. And as I've aged, and because of my thyroid cancer, I've gained weight. I've been walking almost every night since June. If my daughter Lucy comes with me, we talk and look for animals. We do the think normal families do around the dinner table. If I'm alone, I listen to music or watch an episode of Narcos. Or just marvel at the beauty surrounding me.
After about a month of watching me do this, my neighbor Melody asked if she could join me. I didn't know her well before this, but now I do. I have not only lost eight pounds, but I've gained a new friend. Moreover, I feel really good about an aspect of my life that usually feels terrible.
Yay, self-improvement! All of this good stuff makes me inventory the rest of things and I see all the stuff that I do that leads in the general direction of an earlier death: my love for junk food (Coke, especially), my occasional cigarette, my terrible sleep hygiene. Where does it stop? I guess it all stops the day your heart stops. And do I want to live that long? I honestly don't know.
I honestly don't know! Sometimes you just want to live the rocknroll fantasy: better to burn out than fade away. Sometimes you love to cheat. It's how it is, right?
I'll let you know how it's going later, but I feel pretty good right now.
Thursday, August 4, 2016
The Real Deal
Here I am again. Nice to see you.
I'm teaching creative writing again, after so many years, the last copy of my syllabus exists only on a diskette. I am really not legit anymore.
On the bright side, having not seriously written anything for the last twelve years, I'm so out of practice that the exercises suggested in the textbooks I'm considering actually look fun.
So I might try to do the homework along with my students, just for kicks. Zen mind, beginner's mind. I have no excuse anymore. I disentangled myself from chairing the academic senate again at the end of this year. It was a tough year. What the job required, ultimately, was more interest than I actually had. I did what I could, which wasn't much.
As my students say, I ain't trippin.
About that, anyway.
The big machine that sucks up money is in warm-up mode. We just cleared the lot, and several simultaneous projects are happening: well, temporary power, grading, paving, septic...and then there is the house, which in my OCD-ness build a to-scale model of out of Legos, then covered it in cardboard painted blue:
This is very close to what the house will look like. Cape Cod-style meets industrial, with some old-fashioned Greek proportions. Galvanized steel roof. V-channel rustic siding with six-inch trim. Big sliding doors that disappear into the wall. Not pictured: a lean-to glass greenhouse attached to the kitchen. Cat5 or 6 hardwired into every room. Solar-heated radiant floors. Reverse-osmosis water treatment. Two five-thousand gallon water tanks.
It's bigger than I thought. The garage is actually underneath, which makes it three stories tall. It will have three bedrooms, three full bathrooms, and an apartment bootlegged into the side of the garage.
It's going to be very expensive. Go big or go home. I just don't know what to say in my defense except that I've waited almost twelve years--Jeff and I have waited almost twelve years, and I will be much much closer to 50 than 40 before I'll ever see it.
This is our dream. This is where my creativity has been for the last few years.
I'm teaching creative writing again, after so many years, the last copy of my syllabus exists only on a diskette. I am really not legit anymore.
On the bright side, having not seriously written anything for the last twelve years, I'm so out of practice that the exercises suggested in the textbooks I'm considering actually look fun.
So I might try to do the homework along with my students, just for kicks. Zen mind, beginner's mind. I have no excuse anymore. I disentangled myself from chairing the academic senate again at the end of this year. It was a tough year. What the job required, ultimately, was more interest than I actually had. I did what I could, which wasn't much.
As my students say, I ain't trippin.
About that, anyway.
The big machine that sucks up money is in warm-up mode. We just cleared the lot, and several simultaneous projects are happening: well, temporary power, grading, paving, septic...and then there is the house, which in my OCD-ness build a to-scale model of out of Legos, then covered it in cardboard painted blue:
This is very close to what the house will look like. Cape Cod-style meets industrial, with some old-fashioned Greek proportions. Galvanized steel roof. V-channel rustic siding with six-inch trim. Big sliding doors that disappear into the wall. Not pictured: a lean-to glass greenhouse attached to the kitchen. Cat5 or 6 hardwired into every room. Solar-heated radiant floors. Reverse-osmosis water treatment. Two five-thousand gallon water tanks.
It's bigger than I thought. The garage is actually underneath, which makes it three stories tall. It will have three bedrooms, three full bathrooms, and an apartment bootlegged into the side of the garage.
It's going to be very expensive. Go big or go home. I just don't know what to say in my defense except that I've waited almost twelve years--Jeff and I have waited almost twelve years, and I will be much much closer to 50 than 40 before I'll ever see it.
This is our dream. This is where my creativity has been for the last few years.
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Star Wars on the Brain
I don't usually have profound thoughts on a birthday, but this one is different. I'm 46 today. No one tells you about the sixes: at 36, I had the distinct sense that no bones about it, I'm not a kid anymore. Even at 35, you can still get away with young person's thoughts, actions, antics. But 36: the expiration date has passed on youth, for sure. I turned 40 a few years later and it was no big deal. But 46: again, another feeling. Life is most undoubtedly over half over. The shadow cast backwards becomes less interesting than what is coming...and what the f is it, anyway? People in this age are invisible in the flashy-pants world of advertising, movies and gossip. We apparently move in an uninteresting and uglier way to the world at large. There is a great anonymous space for discovery here, I know, but as a person who likes to be in the limelight...it's sobering, too.
It's been a long time since I actively mourned whatever beauty I had (that funeral was way too long); it's a big relief when health overtakes vanity. My children are in that flush of loveliness now, and it's so fun to watch them grow. I'm glad to be an older parent. I'm a better parent because I'm older: I know that.
Besides a trailer jack and a pair of Red Wing boots, I don't have any birthday desires. I am 46 and I rent from my mom, but I have almost every other thing I could possibly want. For 46, I've done well, and I'm glad I'm not dead.
There is a line in the Tao Te Ching, a fundamental text for me, that says something like: "When filling the glass, stop short of the rim: do not overfill." Until middle age, this seemed like a classic cop-out. Why wouldn't you shoot for the moon in all of your endeavors? For women, overdoing it is often the only way possible to success on a par with men: you have to be 150% better. I've seen this in my own job: I worked harder than almost anyone just to be noticed, got my rewards, then watched again and again as men who were either deadbeats or nuts skated right by, and sometimes way past me. Gross. Outrageous. Whatever. At any rate, the adage didn't seem to apply to my life. Here's the thing, though. It's really coming in handy now, because for the last few months, I've been standing on the edge of a choice: staying a professor or moving into university administration. Could you imagine suddenly making not twice, but three times your salary? Going to the same job? Seeing a lot of the same people? Three of my colleagues/friends in the past year have done this..like someone put fertilizer on their careers and they just shot up. Our campus is changing quickly, growing, and eyes are looking around for people to lead. And I just happen to be a leader.
I never knew this. Again, these aren't words usually spoken preemptively to women. Today, though, it's a different world, and I'm a different person. I've taken certain leadership opportunities and done mostly well with them. Actually, I've used leadership as a way to not do other things that are in the long run, scarier: write creatively, teach better, hold my head high in spite of not being paid very much.... I guess you can say that I've distracted my way into becoming a somewhat important person in my job. Hence the crossroads. I can see the signs ahead: you are about to become officially awesome in the eyes of a lot of people who never noticed you before. The pull is kind of trashy and sexy, like People magazine, like Taco Bell (yum).
I guess I'm kind of an asshole myself, because the job does suit me, just like brassy language and cliches. OCD helps, too. I could do it really well: this is not the issue (yay confidence!)
There is a sense that the more one does, the better. Overfill the glass. Cut the fucking trees. Don't look back. Do it or someone else will. Seize the day. Manifest destiny. Banzai. Kowabunga. Welcome to the Real World. Be the one percent.
Ok, I'm getting ahead of myself, here, but honestly. If you're going to go for it, then why not fucking go for it? Why not be the president?
There is a line you cross when you are standing where I'm standing that is probably more significant than any jump from dean to provost to president, etc. Cynical faculty call it going to the Dark Side. I've seen enough of the university administrative world to know that it isn't all dark, but unfortunately, the shoe does fit most of the time. Nothing is free. Vocation becomes rat race, and you find yourself worrying about things that have little to do with the Life of the Mind. And at times, you have to be a dick in an official capacity!
Back to the Tao Te Ching. If I stop short here in my career, at 46, will I regret it? You only get a few of these opportunities, lucky lucky child. Last week I was ready to get on the next imperial transport, and spend my future fortune. Then, one day I was driving home, having bitten my nails down and worrying about something someone said about my PowerPoint, and wondering if I could actually swing a 160-mile round trip commute every day, and I just went: NO. No, you fucking idiot. You didn't spend 45 years learning to appreciate your weirdness and becoming a martial artist in the classroom and doing it the hard way, sneakily, under the radar. You didn't figure out that doing good in the world was the best way to nurture your own soul, and that students and colleagues regularly feed you in ways that money never will...you are a freaking socialist anyway! You have earned the right to laugh at whatever you see as funny because it costs you nothing. You can continue to thrive on the scraps of thrown away things/people/ideas and get PAID TO READ BOOKS. Stop here! You won't become deadwood, but even if you do, who cares?
Happy birthday, dear Jedi. ;)
,
It's been a long time since I actively mourned whatever beauty I had (that funeral was way too long); it's a big relief when health overtakes vanity. My children are in that flush of loveliness now, and it's so fun to watch them grow. I'm glad to be an older parent. I'm a better parent because I'm older: I know that.
Besides a trailer jack and a pair of Red Wing boots, I don't have any birthday desires. I am 46 and I rent from my mom, but I have almost every other thing I could possibly want. For 46, I've done well, and I'm glad I'm not dead.
There is a line in the Tao Te Ching, a fundamental text for me, that says something like: "When filling the glass, stop short of the rim: do not overfill." Until middle age, this seemed like a classic cop-out. Why wouldn't you shoot for the moon in all of your endeavors? For women, overdoing it is often the only way possible to success on a par with men: you have to be 150% better. I've seen this in my own job: I worked harder than almost anyone just to be noticed, got my rewards, then watched again and again as men who were either deadbeats or nuts skated right by, and sometimes way past me. Gross. Outrageous. Whatever. At any rate, the adage didn't seem to apply to my life. Here's the thing, though. It's really coming in handy now, because for the last few months, I've been standing on the edge of a choice: staying a professor or moving into university administration. Could you imagine suddenly making not twice, but three times your salary? Going to the same job? Seeing a lot of the same people? Three of my colleagues/friends in the past year have done this..like someone put fertilizer on their careers and they just shot up. Our campus is changing quickly, growing, and eyes are looking around for people to lead. And I just happen to be a leader.
I never knew this. Again, these aren't words usually spoken preemptively to women. Today, though, it's a different world, and I'm a different person. I've taken certain leadership opportunities and done mostly well with them. Actually, I've used leadership as a way to not do other things that are in the long run, scarier: write creatively, teach better, hold my head high in spite of not being paid very much.... I guess you can say that I've distracted my way into becoming a somewhat important person in my job. Hence the crossroads. I can see the signs ahead: you are about to become officially awesome in the eyes of a lot of people who never noticed you before. The pull is kind of trashy and sexy, like People magazine, like Taco Bell (yum).
I guess I'm kind of an asshole myself, because the job does suit me, just like brassy language and cliches. OCD helps, too. I could do it really well: this is not the issue (yay confidence!)
There is a sense that the more one does, the better. Overfill the glass. Cut the fucking trees. Don't look back. Do it or someone else will. Seize the day. Manifest destiny. Banzai. Kowabunga. Welcome to the Real World. Be the one percent.
Ok, I'm getting ahead of myself, here, but honestly. If you're going to go for it, then why not fucking go for it? Why not be the president?
There is a line you cross when you are standing where I'm standing that is probably more significant than any jump from dean to provost to president, etc. Cynical faculty call it going to the Dark Side. I've seen enough of the university administrative world to know that it isn't all dark, but unfortunately, the shoe does fit most of the time. Nothing is free. Vocation becomes rat race, and you find yourself worrying about things that have little to do with the Life of the Mind. And at times, you have to be a dick in an official capacity!
Back to the Tao Te Ching. If I stop short here in my career, at 46, will I regret it? You only get a few of these opportunities, lucky lucky child. Last week I was ready to get on the next imperial transport, and spend my future fortune. Then, one day I was driving home, having bitten my nails down and worrying about something someone said about my PowerPoint, and wondering if I could actually swing a 160-mile round trip commute every day, and I just went: NO. No, you fucking idiot. You didn't spend 45 years learning to appreciate your weirdness and becoming a martial artist in the classroom and doing it the hard way, sneakily, under the radar. You didn't figure out that doing good in the world was the best way to nurture your own soul, and that students and colleagues regularly feed you in ways that money never will...you are a freaking socialist anyway! You have earned the right to laugh at whatever you see as funny because it costs you nothing. You can continue to thrive on the scraps of thrown away things/people/ideas and get PAID TO READ BOOKS. Stop here! You won't become deadwood, but even if you do, who cares?
Happy birthday, dear Jedi. ;)
,
Monday, September 21, 2015
Bone on Bone
My father is overweight. When I express my concern; he always says the same thing: "Julie, I'm going to be around to piss on your grave."
I'm down in the East Bay, visiting a colleague who is hosting this year's contingent of Japanese students from the maritime university in Kobe. It's the first time in at least five years that I've been back to Oakland, and I am not prepared...was not prepared for the waves of feeling, the memory of several formative segments of my life, all of them connected to writing and anxiety, of late adolescence vs. the cliffs of fortune. Listening to Neil Young sing "The Old Laughing Lady," past dawn on the way to an $8.00/hr. job. College was over, and the younger kids were still laughing it up on the rooftops on the other side of the Caldecott Tunnel, which might as well have been in another country. God, it was sad. I got fired for the first time. I threw my dog's crap over a chain link fence, into a ravine behind my apartment, where it hit a sleeping homeless person. A middle-aged woman who owned a communal house warned me that I couldn't keep alcohol in my room, as her teenaged daughter would break in and steal it. I slept with a Beretta, under instruction from my father that I shouldn't use it unless I meant to kill. One night I got high by myself and almost immediately lost my hold on context: I felt as if I were in the city's throat, on my way to becoming indistinguishable from it. Is this what private school does to you, or does this just suck?
Coming here was the first step in getting out. Somehow I knew this, though there was no future in almost anything I was doing. This was where I made my first furtive, ragged-fingered plans.
Today I sat across the street from a house owned by a close friend from long ago. It had partially burned in a basement fire when he bought it in 2001, but he painted over the smoke stains and replaced the charred struts and joists, gave up halfway and built a new house behind the old one. Then started anew on the old house, I see today, and now it's a rental...still semi-finished, ramshackle, but probably bringing in good money. Still hanging on. I admire that.
And what has shaped me to the point where I find myself returning to this place, 25 years later, like a tourist, or a Russian doll? Fate and its almost imperceptible curve? Luck? Humor? I recognize this grit, this feral city, as part of me.
I'm still hanging on, too!
Monday, August 17, 2015
Bodywork
There is a fairly famous clip of a barber in India giving what can only be described as a ecstatic haircut. I'll see if I can post it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geLtFCxDs40
Does your hair stand on end and do you get goosebumps when you see this? I do. It's a physical sensation that seems to come from the mere suggestion that "cosmic forces" are being drawn out of and pushed into the body. I looked a little into this and found a niche of people who either create or watch videos of crinkling, tapping, whispering, etc., very close to the ears and around the head. The oddest thing about this totally physical response to certain rhythms within a close proximity was that it didn't necessarily have to be erotic...necessarily. There are groups who mess with that stuff, but it's kinda embarrassing to watch.
When Jeff and I were having trouble getting pregnant so many years ago, I went to see an acupuncturist in Oakland and when she put a superfine needle right into the top of my head, my whole body became covered in goosebumps: it was a crazy response, but it also felt great. My whole being relaxed. I learned that the top of the head is one of the seven mystic chakras in the yogic tradition, and that some yogis ask their devotees to imagine a ray of light emitting from the exact center of the crown.
The other day, I was face down in the West Lake (Tây Hồ) district, the most bourgeois part of Hanoi (wha?), looking at the back of my eyelids while a nice woman was totally phoning it in to my lower legs. I started to wonder if maybe I weren't trying enough, that maybe if I visualized some kind of mental analogue, it would feel better. Maybe I could participate, somehow. As if on cue, the woman decided to move to my head, and I imagined a Indiana Jones-style ark opening out of the top of me: wow!
This is the trouble with being spiritually flat-footed. You want everything explained away.
One time I went to a hot springs that dated back over 100 years. It wasn't fancy, and had that crumbly smell of locker rooms. Trickles of water came down from leaky pipes, and a stout woman with a mustache handed me a large towel and held my elbow as we walked into the steam. There was something about the care with which she led me, then the alternating hot and cold sensations. The shock to my system wasn't always pleasant (a cold plunge is a little like dying to me, just for a second), but the end result was me wrapped in my extra large towel like a grub, lying on a cot, I felt absolutely at peace. I mean, totally drained of tension. It felt like being reborn, I kid you not. I've spent the last 20 years trying to find that again. It's just hot and cold water, right? No. It's everything together.
You wonder if you can systematically, perhaps slowly, change the patterns of your life so that more regular syncing between body and mind can occur. I know this happens when I exercise, but it's so short, and often times I'm trying to distract myself from the entire effort (usually something broody on PBS). For me, it's release of tension, because I am a bunged up girl. I'm not always so willing to visualize white light in and snakes out of my nostrils. What do you do to relax?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geLtFCxDs40
Does your hair stand on end and do you get goosebumps when you see this? I do. It's a physical sensation that seems to come from the mere suggestion that "cosmic forces" are being drawn out of and pushed into the body. I looked a little into this and found a niche of people who either create or watch videos of crinkling, tapping, whispering, etc., very close to the ears and around the head. The oddest thing about this totally physical response to certain rhythms within a close proximity was that it didn't necessarily have to be erotic...necessarily. There are groups who mess with that stuff, but it's kinda embarrassing to watch.
When Jeff and I were having trouble getting pregnant so many years ago, I went to see an acupuncturist in Oakland and when she put a superfine needle right into the top of my head, my whole body became covered in goosebumps: it was a crazy response, but it also felt great. My whole being relaxed. I learned that the top of the head is one of the seven mystic chakras in the yogic tradition, and that some yogis ask their devotees to imagine a ray of light emitting from the exact center of the crown.
The other day, I was face down in the West Lake (Tây Hồ) district, the most bourgeois part of Hanoi (wha?), looking at the back of my eyelids while a nice woman was totally phoning it in to my lower legs. I started to wonder if maybe I weren't trying enough, that maybe if I visualized some kind of mental analogue, it would feel better. Maybe I could participate, somehow. As if on cue, the woman decided to move to my head, and I imagined a Indiana Jones-style ark opening out of the top of me: wow!
This is the trouble with being spiritually flat-footed. You want everything explained away.
One time I went to a hot springs that dated back over 100 years. It wasn't fancy, and had that crumbly smell of locker rooms. Trickles of water came down from leaky pipes, and a stout woman with a mustache handed me a large towel and held my elbow as we walked into the steam. There was something about the care with which she led me, then the alternating hot and cold sensations. The shock to my system wasn't always pleasant (a cold plunge is a little like dying to me, just for a second), but the end result was me wrapped in my extra large towel like a grub, lying on a cot, I felt absolutely at peace. I mean, totally drained of tension. It felt like being reborn, I kid you not. I've spent the last 20 years trying to find that again. It's just hot and cold water, right? No. It's everything together.
You wonder if you can systematically, perhaps slowly, change the patterns of your life so that more regular syncing between body and mind can occur. I know this happens when I exercise, but it's so short, and often times I'm trying to distract myself from the entire effort (usually something broody on PBS). For me, it's release of tension, because I am a bunged up girl. I'm not always so willing to visualize white light in and snakes out of my nostrils. What do you do to relax?
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