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. ;)
,
Sunday, November 1, 2015
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?
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Meditation on Distance
There are a few times of the year when things get me down: October, February, and right after school gets out in the summer. Why the last one? As a public college teacher, I don't officially have to get dressed between May and September: this is a problem? A good problem to have, some will no doubt grumble. I suppose if I were a normal person, I would agree.
The Buddhists have a compound term, "dukkha-samsara," which roughly translates as "the shit of the world that gets you down." Example: Our forest is dying. Whatever doesn't die will be consumed by the fire caused by what does. This sucks. Nothing like being reminded of this on the way down the hill every day. In my fossil-fuel burning car. On my million-mile commute. I am, from this perspective, doing it all wrong, no matter how great Bluetooth is. I'm contributing to the problem, and will, someday, be punished for it. Ok. Boo hoo for me. What about the trees?
This is kind of the dukkha-samsara circle I travel in when I'm depressed. Which is now. Oddly enough, the trees I so love haven't seen me up close in over a month. Shouldn't I go there? Yes! It usually works as a good soul strainer. I thought that moving to the mountains would force me into more peaceful zones, but it is kind of like a dream where you are so close to something you love, but also so far. It doesn't happen unless you make it happen. I'll file this under "things you hate to do before you do them, but love that you did them afterward."
There are civilizations that seem to filter out the dukkha by design. All live close to the land. All don't expect busy-ness. All are able to sit still. I seem to be able to sit still only when in bed. I consume chaos at a rate that would probably stagger you, though you have probably noticed this if you look at my Facebook feed (the never-ending but often tasty samsara vomiting).
Actually, I was thinking about this the other day, within the context of softball. I didn't play softball for a long time, because the first time I did it I was put into left field. Even as a child I felt the distance between myself and the infield. Something seemed to be going on over there that was highly social and intense. I liked to watch them, but then the first fly ball came sailing towards me and I was disoriented on a few levels: the intensity of the team and the crowd's (small crowd) attention, suddenly focused on me (what?!), and the fact that I had no idea where the ball was. It wasn't the sun; it was me. I don't seem to have much of a sense of depth. After a few rounds of non-fly-ball-catching, neurosis started to kick in during the downtime. Hypervigilance. Cuticle-picking. Fear. Relief when a lefty came to bat. A whole new fear of the hop-up grounder (I never caught those, either). The idea of playing softball at all became terrifying, yet I persisted. (I also persisted during one soccer match in the goal, which is a more hardcore form of playing outfield. I learned here that there is an outfield/goalie personality type, of which I, even medicated, am not of. All respect.)
It wasn't until my Ph.D. program that I attempted to play softball again, for our creative writing dept. team (The Prose). It was kind of a "we need a body" request, and the great thing is that no one expects writers to be good at sports. I joined, mostly for the camaraderie, but also for the beer. Imagine my surprise when I was asked to pitch at practice. Pitch! Isn't that the most coveted, most admired position of the team? Didn't one graduate to pitching if they were a good enough fielder, the way a lackey someday becomes CEO? Wasn't the infield like the cool table in the junior high cafeteria? (Can you tell I never watched baseball on TV?) I was stunned, but since I knew I sucked at fielding, I did it.
Well, I was good at it. It took a few weeks of practice to get to the point where I could huff the ball all the way to the plate, but after that hurdle I was pretty accurate.
More than that, though, I learned this magic thing: anxiety can actually help when you are up close to the action. I was able to turn plays, even without a ton of coordination, with a consistency that shocked me. Hit the ball at me? No problem. Complicated chaos at home plate? I could handle it.
What a revelation! The more distance I had from the action, the more neurosis set in. The closer I was, the better. Bring it! We won three intramural championships, and I had something to do with it each time.
What a weird revelation!
I need to get up and do something. Mindfully.
The Buddhists have a compound term, "dukkha-samsara," which roughly translates as "the shit of the world that gets you down." Example: Our forest is dying. Whatever doesn't die will be consumed by the fire caused by what does. This sucks. Nothing like being reminded of this on the way down the hill every day. In my fossil-fuel burning car. On my million-mile commute. I am, from this perspective, doing it all wrong, no matter how great Bluetooth is. I'm contributing to the problem, and will, someday, be punished for it. Ok. Boo hoo for me. What about the trees?
This is kind of the dukkha-samsara circle I travel in when I'm depressed. Which is now. Oddly enough, the trees I so love haven't seen me up close in over a month. Shouldn't I go there? Yes! It usually works as a good soul strainer. I thought that moving to the mountains would force me into more peaceful zones, but it is kind of like a dream where you are so close to something you love, but also so far. It doesn't happen unless you make it happen. I'll file this under "things you hate to do before you do them, but love that you did them afterward."
There are civilizations that seem to filter out the dukkha by design. All live close to the land. All don't expect busy-ness. All are able to sit still. I seem to be able to sit still only when in bed. I consume chaos at a rate that would probably stagger you, though you have probably noticed this if you look at my Facebook feed (the never-ending but often tasty samsara vomiting).
Actually, I was thinking about this the other day, within the context of softball. I didn't play softball for a long time, because the first time I did it I was put into left field. Even as a child I felt the distance between myself and the infield. Something seemed to be going on over there that was highly social and intense. I liked to watch them, but then the first fly ball came sailing towards me and I was disoriented on a few levels: the intensity of the team and the crowd's (small crowd) attention, suddenly focused on me (what?!), and the fact that I had no idea where the ball was. It wasn't the sun; it was me. I don't seem to have much of a sense of depth. After a few rounds of non-fly-ball-catching, neurosis started to kick in during the downtime. Hypervigilance. Cuticle-picking. Fear. Relief when a lefty came to bat. A whole new fear of the hop-up grounder (I never caught those, either). The idea of playing softball at all became terrifying, yet I persisted. (I also persisted during one soccer match in the goal, which is a more hardcore form of playing outfield. I learned here that there is an outfield/goalie personality type, of which I, even medicated, am not of. All respect.)
It wasn't until my Ph.D. program that I attempted to play softball again, for our creative writing dept. team (The Prose). It was kind of a "we need a body" request, and the great thing is that no one expects writers to be good at sports. I joined, mostly for the camaraderie, but also for the beer. Imagine my surprise when I was asked to pitch at practice. Pitch! Isn't that the most coveted, most admired position of the team? Didn't one graduate to pitching if they were a good enough fielder, the way a lackey someday becomes CEO? Wasn't the infield like the cool table in the junior high cafeteria? (Can you tell I never watched baseball on TV?) I was stunned, but since I knew I sucked at fielding, I did it.
Well, I was good at it. It took a few weeks of practice to get to the point where I could huff the ball all the way to the plate, but after that hurdle I was pretty accurate.
More than that, though, I learned this magic thing: anxiety can actually help when you are up close to the action. I was able to turn plays, even without a ton of coordination, with a consistency that shocked me. Hit the ball at me? No problem. Complicated chaos at home plate? I could handle it.
What a revelation! The more distance I had from the action, the more neurosis set in. The closer I was, the better. Bring it! We won three intramural championships, and I had something to do with it each time.
What a weird revelation!
I need to get up and do something. Mindfully.
Friday, April 3, 2015
Meet Me in the Morning
I'm not a morning person; I'm a fucking amazing morning person. My first class this semester is at 8:00, and I live 90 minutes away from my job. Silicon Valley, the overpopulated land of my birth (ugh), lies between me and my paycheck; hence, I'm up well before I would ever want to be. Want vs. need: sometimes you have to set up your life against your urges. Hey, but then you learn new things. One is that I relish the alone time in my little red car, when the sun is coming up, and I have Complete Control (CC) over the sound system. I get to DJ my life, and the songs that come up, sometimes randomly (thank you ITunes), re-blow my mind*. This morning, it was Bob Dylan, the man I love to hate. The terrible angel, in the summer of his art, communicating to me in parallel fashion, from Blood on the Tracks. It throws me back to another early morning, around 1999, when the demon of boredom + hormones drove me and my co-pilot Miah off to Galveston with the Wrong Boys. Many boys are wrong, but these two deserved the capital letters. (Of course, you could have said the same thing about me and Miah in this case: years later, another wrong boy told another to stay away from us, because "those two are trouble." I totally agree with him.) Anyhoo, it wasn't so much the Wrongness of the Boys I mean to emphasize here (though sometimes people are so Wrong, they deserve a tip of the hate...I meant hat), but the way the music cleaved to the moment, crystallized it, gave both Boys and music a kind of glow that only finds amplification through art. Whatthefuckever.
If I get more detailed, my husband will burn my dinner. Anyway, so I'm listening (probably appropriately) to "Idiot Wind" on the way to a totally normal job, through the hills of Central California, still green, with cows a la those compellingly processed Eyvind lithographs, drinking more coffee than is probably healthy out of a mason jar, marveling at the exquisite eastern light and the tule fog lying in the bottom of the gulch running along the freeway, kind of grateful that I survived my 20s, still surprised at where I am now, and wondering excitedly what's ahead (hopefully not a semi-truck).
William Stafford, one of my touchstone poets, routinely rose before dawn to write. I have often thought of him on my way to work, wishing that I were at home to do the very same thing...though I know that if I were lucky enough to be at home, I would be asleep. Someday I will be old and insomniac, please?
But back to blood on the tracks. There is some behind all of my dearest friends and me. It puts the bitter in the sweet, and during this sweeter time in my life, I (conveniently) have the courage to acknowledge it. In fact, it's chilling when you are close with someone, and you realize that in spite of it, the relationship wouldn't survive a single fight: that you end up spending a good deal of time avoiding the conflict because you know what is bound to happen :( Boo. Not to glorify conflict, because it truly sucks (thinking of a certain summer in Amsterdam: sorry about that, Rosa), but to acknowledge that when you have recovered with someone, and truly forgiven each other (not always possible, I know), it's a unique kind of triumph.
I think this, anyway. Bob Dylan is a kind of consolation for the unforgiven, I suppose.
*Got to stop using this phrase.
If I get more detailed, my husband will burn my dinner. Anyway, so I'm listening (probably appropriately) to "Idiot Wind" on the way to a totally normal job, through the hills of Central California, still green, with cows a la those compellingly processed Eyvind lithographs, drinking more coffee than is probably healthy out of a mason jar, marveling at the exquisite eastern light and the tule fog lying in the bottom of the gulch running along the freeway, kind of grateful that I survived my 20s, still surprised at where I am now, and wondering excitedly what's ahead (hopefully not a semi-truck).
William Stafford, one of my touchstone poets, routinely rose before dawn to write. I have often thought of him on my way to work, wishing that I were at home to do the very same thing...though I know that if I were lucky enough to be at home, I would be asleep. Someday I will be old and insomniac, please?
But back to blood on the tracks. There is some behind all of my dearest friends and me. It puts the bitter in the sweet, and during this sweeter time in my life, I (conveniently) have the courage to acknowledge it. In fact, it's chilling when you are close with someone, and you realize that in spite of it, the relationship wouldn't survive a single fight: that you end up spending a good deal of time avoiding the conflict because you know what is bound to happen :( Boo. Not to glorify conflict, because it truly sucks (thinking of a certain summer in Amsterdam: sorry about that, Rosa), but to acknowledge that when you have recovered with someone, and truly forgiven each other (not always possible, I know), it's a unique kind of triumph.
I think this, anyway. Bob Dylan is a kind of consolation for the unforgiven, I suppose.
*Got to stop using this phrase.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Freaks & Geeks
Today a colleague from SFSU came to campus to deliver our annual endowed lecture, which was on the topic of an 18th-century African-American/Native American whaler/trader/entepreneur who was able to live a crazily successful, independent and free life, despite the odds. He was rich! He traveled all over the place! He did whatever the fuck he pleased (more or less). He was one of those people whose individual story is just now being uncovered, and it goes against the grain of "our" cultural assumptions about what life was like for people of color back in the day. It fascinates me that one person's story can effectively disrupt--though not necessarily discount--the narrative of an entire group in an interesting--though not always satisfying--way. The paradox of the outlier fascinates me: he or she who doesn't fit with anything, who sticks up like the proverbial nail, and who, if they survive into adulthood, is used to the hammer. I know this feeling a little, and know more than a few people who live/have lived/lived this class of feeling. What strikes me today: it depends how you look at it (your outlier-ism), and how much strength you have. Por ejemplo, I can say that I've known about six true outliers in my life: one of them shot himself at 40, one is currently coming out of (I hope) an addiction to meth, three seem to be fine, and one is my husband (my current case study). All six have been to the brink of sanity in self-doubt, all six were bullied/abused mercilessly (usually by members of their own family), all six are/have been/were on psychotropic medication, all six have either considered or committed suicide. WHAT?
This is all the bad stuff: aren't we just talking about the mentally ill, here? No. Each is an amazing, amazingly different person who has been blowing people away with their creativity since birth. All make things: words, pictures, concepts, sometimes money. All are unusually funny. All are perceptive. All tend to attract fans. All are polarizing.
These are the people who seem to live outside time, convention, etc., and reinterpret it, navigate it, in ways that others only get much later. It's a narrow, magnificent, almost magic path. It's the low-percentage shot that makes it: the needle threaded, with flava. The elegance, the ease is what's so hard to watch, and so impossible not to.
Which leads me to the problem: others get jealous (or something) and want to not just destroy, but annihilate these people. I've seen this over and over. How does the outlier triumph...especially over the long haul, when he or she is mostly alone (as these people tend to be, literally or figuratively), and often under siege? I don't know. There is something to be said for knowing how to lie low and blend in. One of my wacky friends figured this out early, even took it to an extreme (which annoyed me).
I've been talking a lot in my rhetoric class about Martha Stewart's weird love for her drone (don't ask). Whatever you think of her, she is an outlier (art): but her relentless drive for more, more, more seems to have eclipsed this in a really tacky way. Bob Dylan, another nut (who should have listened more to his own advice, IMHO) once wrote, "To live outside the law, you must be honest." Martha, you seem to have started to believe your own bullshit, which I suppose is one of the pitfalls of constant loneliness.
I was going to attempt a witty dismount here, which would go something like: friends, honesty, ethics, find the right Rx, try not to poop in the temple, etc., but then my stomach started growling for Taco Bell and this is already way too long for a Friday read, so....if you had any advice for the lonely weird, what would it be?
This is all the bad stuff: aren't we just talking about the mentally ill, here? No. Each is an amazing, amazingly different person who has been blowing people away with their creativity since birth. All make things: words, pictures, concepts, sometimes money. All are unusually funny. All are perceptive. All tend to attract fans. All are polarizing.
These are the people who seem to live outside time, convention, etc., and reinterpret it, navigate it, in ways that others only get much later. It's a narrow, magnificent, almost magic path. It's the low-percentage shot that makes it: the needle threaded, with flava. The elegance, the ease is what's so hard to watch, and so impossible not to.
Which leads me to the problem: others get jealous (or something) and want to not just destroy, but annihilate these people. I've seen this over and over. How does the outlier triumph...especially over the long haul, when he or she is mostly alone (as these people tend to be, literally or figuratively), and often under siege? I don't know. There is something to be said for knowing how to lie low and blend in. One of my wacky friends figured this out early, even took it to an extreme (which annoyed me).
I've been talking a lot in my rhetoric class about Martha Stewart's weird love for her drone (don't ask). Whatever you think of her, she is an outlier (art): but her relentless drive for more, more, more seems to have eclipsed this in a really tacky way. Bob Dylan, another nut (who should have listened more to his own advice, IMHO) once wrote, "To live outside the law, you must be honest." Martha, you seem to have started to believe your own bullshit, which I suppose is one of the pitfalls of constant loneliness.
I was going to attempt a witty dismount here, which would go something like: friends, honesty, ethics, find the right Rx, try not to poop in the temple, etc., but then my stomach started growling for Taco Bell and this is already way too long for a Friday read, so....if you had any advice for the lonely weird, what would it be?
Friday, February 6, 2015
Four Things Your Friend Needs to Work On!
I'm loving the clickbait today: 10 Reasons Why John Lennon was a Dick. 15 Celebrities with Strange Body Parts. As long as a student doesn't walk in as I'm waiting for the slideshow to change (big photo of Bobbi Kristina Brown taking a bong hit). Too much.
I've been sleeping a lot. Partly it's because I have two early morning classes, which doesn't fit well with Jeff and my interest in late-night Netflix binges: British psychodrama, anyone? Could there-- statistically--be that many serial killers in North England? You would think so. My daughters are getting used to Mommy crashing for a few hours after arriving home. I like to compare it to Sport's novelist dad in Harriet the Spy, who slept during the day, and whom Sport romanticized, even as he was making his own dinner.
Lots of things are going on, and I'm still feeling sucky-of-the-having-eaten-too-much-shit variety, but it's getting better, I think/hope. Today, rather than hiding my head under a pillow, I'm visualizing constructive ways of annihilation. Just kidding. But it has occurred to me that I've never been very good at expressing anger. Usually it just bottles up until it explodes: red (rage) or blue (detachment), with blue dominating: I'm really good at ignoring people to death.
But how's that working for me? The bottling part, not so much. That's goal #1. Say no earlier. I've become better at that at work, for sure. Tenure is a lovely crutch, but a crutch nonetheless. My sister and I always used to give more points to those who tackle problems sober/naked/without nets...but who actually has the guts to do that? I'm trying to have the guts. The NUTS!
And then, the delivery of anger. Once I get around to actually being mad, I lose control really fast. Goal #2: be a more effective (read: ethical, read: not-righteous) yeller.
Ok, dear reader, I challenge you to make. me. mad. Come on.
Goal #3: Stop inviting conflict.
So all of this crap has had its usual effect on me, which is a diagrammatic accounting of my social life: yay OCD! Actually, OCD is very comforting to me, which is why I have it. I started thinking about old friends and what it means to have old friends. Do you have old friends? Some people, I realize, do not. Or (and this is much closer to my situation) some think they have old friends, but have relegated many of them to the confines of Facebook, which is like a "whole nother" category...like a Diet Friendship: safe and sane and somewhat sanitized.
Facebook is great for my OCD: everyone present/accounted for, but it is nothing like real friendship. Hence Goal #4: See actual people with some regularity. Jeff and I don't get out much, but it means so much to us to have old friends, especially ones we share (e.g. Robert, Miah). And then the new/old friends.
Do you really give a shit about any of this? I'll understand if you don't. (Direct violation of Goal #1: awesome.)
The really good news of today is that it's raining in Northern California. Our parched mountaintop is getting a break, and hopefully the wind will blow down a lot of dead trees so we can clean them up and pretend they were never there. One of my favorite students will visit tomorrow and we will walk in the woods, looking for mushrooms and wildflowers, grill something, and fulfill the requirements of Goal #4. I will sleep some more, do some work, maybe finish reading a book, maybe throw a few plates, scream into the waves, etc.
I've been sleeping a lot. Partly it's because I have two early morning classes, which doesn't fit well with Jeff and my interest in late-night Netflix binges: British psychodrama, anyone? Could there-- statistically--be that many serial killers in North England? You would think so. My daughters are getting used to Mommy crashing for a few hours after arriving home. I like to compare it to Sport's novelist dad in Harriet the Spy, who slept during the day, and whom Sport romanticized, even as he was making his own dinner.
Lots of things are going on, and I'm still feeling sucky-of-the-having-eaten-too-much-shit variety, but it's getting better, I think/hope. Today, rather than hiding my head under a pillow, I'm visualizing constructive ways of annihilation. Just kidding. But it has occurred to me that I've never been very good at expressing anger. Usually it just bottles up until it explodes: red (rage) or blue (detachment), with blue dominating: I'm really good at ignoring people to death.
But how's that working for me? The bottling part, not so much. That's goal #1. Say no earlier. I've become better at that at work, for sure. Tenure is a lovely crutch, but a crutch nonetheless. My sister and I always used to give more points to those who tackle problems sober/naked/without nets...but who actually has the guts to do that? I'm trying to have the guts. The NUTS!
And then, the delivery of anger. Once I get around to actually being mad, I lose control really fast. Goal #2: be a more effective (read: ethical, read: not-righteous) yeller.
Ok, dear reader, I challenge you to make. me. mad. Come on.
Goal #3: Stop inviting conflict.
So all of this crap has had its usual effect on me, which is a diagrammatic accounting of my social life: yay OCD! Actually, OCD is very comforting to me, which is why I have it. I started thinking about old friends and what it means to have old friends. Do you have old friends? Some people, I realize, do not. Or (and this is much closer to my situation) some think they have old friends, but have relegated many of them to the confines of Facebook, which is like a "whole nother" category...like a Diet Friendship: safe and sane and somewhat sanitized.
Facebook is great for my OCD: everyone present/accounted for, but it is nothing like real friendship. Hence Goal #4: See actual people with some regularity. Jeff and I don't get out much, but it means so much to us to have old friends, especially ones we share (e.g. Robert, Miah). And then the new/old friends.
Do you really give a shit about any of this? I'll understand if you don't. (Direct violation of Goal #1: awesome.)
The really good news of today is that it's raining in Northern California. Our parched mountaintop is getting a break, and hopefully the wind will blow down a lot of dead trees so we can clean them up and pretend they were never there. One of my favorite students will visit tomorrow and we will walk in the woods, looking for mushrooms and wildflowers, grill something, and fulfill the requirements of Goal #4. I will sleep some more, do some work, maybe finish reading a book, maybe throw a few plates, scream into the waves, etc.
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