Impossible -> Possible -> Easy -> Elegant -> Intimate

Dear Shiddy,

Bear with me as I try to explain, but right now I'm all about living the trajectory from impossible to intimate. According to Lance Brunner, it's about taking the things you want to do (but are less likely to do) and creating a space for them to become so familiar and rote that it becomes a seamless part of your life. In the way you might make a habit of running or knitting or knotting your tie. Since my experience at ALIA this past June, I've been hoping to recapture an intimacy and connectedness with community that extends beyond my family and circle of friends.

Last weekend my husband and I attended a weekend course on Shambhala meditation - a form of secular Buddhist practice. Our experience was just as our great instructor had predicted: frustrating, boring, difficult. Wow, you say. Sign me up! Yeah, well it was a distinct challenge to set aside thoughts of work, parenting and side projects to sit cross-legged for eight hours with your eyes open staring at an orange wall.

I won't fib and say I was suddenly enlightened, or that I solved a major dilemma while sitting in silence. But there was a certain calm that came about after my monkey brain settled down. A calm I typically only experience in the three minutes I have to myself in the shower each morning before my daughter rips back the curtain and announces she's pooped in my office.

Unglorious Mystery

Dear Shiddy,

Is it just the end of a decade that was defined by personal extremes? Have I unknowingly tumbled into a wormhole ala Donnie Darko only to discover that my pineal gland is back in 1992?

Why am I depressed? There is no evidence to explain my shitty attitude or bitch-ass feelings. This causes me no small amount of dismay seeing as how I:

• put goddamn flax meal on everything
• have dance parties with my toddler at 7am
  
• run 3-4 times a week
• take my medicine at the exact same time every day
• really like my husband (which I think you might agree is better than just loving him)
• have a job that has become really rewarding lately

Instead of motivated, joyous, and generous- I feel petty. Beset by grudges. Ready to trip or poison people (so that they will be my best friends?). Preoccupied with judgments and comparisons of my life to everyone else's. Outstripped, overrun, bested. Humbled and insecure. Romanticizing memories that in reality, sucked. What the fuck.


I've been hesitant to articulate all this because in the enumeration of it I think I may be making it worse, or at least ultra-specific. Up to now there's been such an expenditure of effort on my part to be present in my life, to enjoy the right now, to pay close attention. It is difficult to have orgasms about the life I lead right now. If only I had a 13,000 lux beam to shine on the back of my knee this would all go away. Like, instead of Calgon.

Office Ladies (Or: Diet Soda, Microwave Popcorn, and Baked-Good Terrorism)

Middy:

Allow me to be a dick for the duration of the present post.

The ladies in my office are loud and always talking about nothing in particular, and I am extremely unkind to them in my mind.

Near the microwave in the break room someone has thoughtfully placed a coaster that says, "In all things God works for the good of those who love Him," or some similar quote that is clearly not fucking true. Their voices are reedy and birdlike; they say "um" loudly, like an interjection, and they strain to talk over one another. This is what a typical morning sounds like:

squeaksquawk Weight Watchers brawwwwwwwk Dr. Oz squeaksquawk OH. bokbokbokbok Cookies and/or Snacks brawwwwwwwk UM. squeaksquawk OH. OKAY squeaksquawk UM. bokbokbokbok Weekend [etc.]

They are TEXAS LADIES. I love my adopted home, but I am not sympathetic to the Texas accent when it leaves the mouth of a woman. Men: Just fine; sounds avuncular. Women: Sounds ignorant. I KNOW THIS IS WRONG. I don't know why I am this way. This is how I feel.

Fair and Balanced

Dear Shiddy,

I humbly submit to you the weeknight musings of a tired poet and a punchy house-husband:





It gives me an embarrassing amount of satisfaction.

I Need a Minute.

I saw this the other day, and I got more jazzed than I've been about anything in a while. In this case, it was more the condition of the clothing and coffins that interested me than the condition of the bodies, but: Jesus, why does this do it for me?

I've been fascinated by dead bodies since I was little. As a child, I was obsessed with the skeletons and plaster casts at Pompeii and Herculaneum. I kept a copy of National Geographic with an article about it. I slowly destroyed the binding by flipping through and considering all the pictures, especially the Ring Lady.

I am strangely invested in the past: I am (maybe) more interested in it than I am in the future. Perhaps this is my weakness. I'll spend some Saturday mornings clicking through this site, enlarging images so that I can see lettering on windows and appliances, facial expressions, stitching on clothes. For me, the past is irresistible when there's a record of it--a photograph, a sound recording, a skeleton or (better) a weirdly preserved body--even if that record's not entirely reliable. I did seriously try for a career making half of the money I make now just so that I could flip through dead people's diaries and letters all day. (For the record, I'm now glad that didn't work out.)

As for my own past, I remember too much of it and consider it about as much as I consider what I'm doing in real time. (This is probably not true in reality--that would be incredibly sad--but it least it feels this way sometimes.)

Speaking of which, real time has been fucking me tough lately. I want to find a secret pause button so that I can enlarge and peer at some stitching or lettering. I've noticed the general acceleration more keenly since returning to Austin, because this place feels like a city-sized personal time capsule from my twenties. What intervened (New York City) was a blur: two and a half years of a certain routine (work, subway, gym) after years of little routine (graduate school, social life, part-time work). My memory from April 2007 to December 2009 bleeds and clusters. It feels like it didn't actually happen. Maybe this is excellent.

Of Human Management

Dear Shiddy,

In the way that there are people who derive great pleasure from calculating numbers or measures or notes; people who can assess the strength of a beam or building, who predict the time between accidents, deaths, or weather... that is the way in which I enjoy considering people around me. At its most dumb, my latent anthropologist spends a lot of subliminal energy reacting to and examining how I interact with others, and they with others, ad infinitum. This lends itself to a fairly crippling yet pleasurable sense of nostalgia, which I think it's fair to say is a major component of my personality. (Aside: an older friend once insisted that no one really knows nostalgia until their late 30s. I beg to differ.)

So there really isn't much outside of relationships that interests me about the world. When I respond to music, I'm approaching it from its real or imagined backstory. Photographs: more about the framing than the content. Nature- the way we all move through its space. (I kind of hate that word, what the hell is nature, anyway?) And as my twenties feel further in the past, I find myself in roles where I'm constantly managing other humans. Mostly grownups. And I think I like it most of the time.

That sounds manipulative, here is more what I mean: in my current occupation my tasks revolve around some hybrid art of influencing, hosting, encouraging others to connect and share information. To give in to the more human. Sometimes this coaxing only takes the form of me being an example of empathy or earnestness or frankness. There's almost nothing dark or clever about it, though I often want to indulge that aspect.

It is a strength of mine: rallying a group around a purpose. I am persuading, tailoring my words or actions to another vocabulary, customizing a way of being with a particular individual. I like determining how to be with each other- or at least setting up a series of possible ways of being together, better ways than what has come before. It makes me feel powerful. I work to articulate a public facet of intimacy- the one in which we tell mere acquaintances what we want, and they tell us their desires in turn. And the private instances as well.

If all that I have just described is so valuable to me, if I am detailing these qualities as the essence of what I do or am; then I guess it makes sense that the past would be my most important reference point and study aid. Because past relationships, events, dialogues form an amalgam of technique and intuition that gets richer and more accurate with each experience and contact.

And when a person from my past or present makes a reciprocal gesture toward me- one imbued with a similar attentiveness, affection, consideration- it feels like the world is speaking back to me, assuring me that there is nothing else.

A Trophy.

Middy:

Thank you for your persistence in keeping this blog semi-afloat while I went into communications hibernation. I see that my last post was nearly three months ago. As you know, I wasn't in life hibernation: I moved cross-country, I got a promotion, and I generally worked my ass into total desk-chair adhesion.

It's interesting that you're concerned your brain life is atrophying. (For the record, I don't think you have anything to worry about; just re-read the second paragraph of your last post.) I've come to the same conclusion recently about myself. What do I do? Do I have any passions? I suppose knowledge (in air quotes) is a passion of mine: learning languages, learning about languages, reading, trying to know the smallest things about smallish subjects. But when was the last time I actually studied a language or read a book? Now that I'm not riding the subway for two hours a day, I don't have the same time-vacuum to fill with reading. And, reality check on that last thing: outside of working hours the last year or so, my brain has been so steamed into egg-noodle softness that I could only read partial New Yorker articles or maybe two paragraphs of a non-news- or politics-related Times article on my iPhone. Instead, I usually used my train time for easy iPhone comforts like making colored jewel shapes explode or doing easy crosswords while still using the "check grid" and "reveal letter" features.

Let's get the facts. What do I do? I work, I work out, I spend time with the s.o., I avoid crowds and never really socialize anymore because social situations usually involve alcohol and loud settings and being reminded that alcohol and loud settings make me feel weird and spaced out (a noticeable transition the s.o. likes to call "shutting down"), and that combo doesn't really work out for me. That last sentence causes me to wonder if I have a high-functioning form of autism, but I'll save those suspicions for a separate post.

I have many talents. When I've tried things that have nothing to do with physical activity (e.g., visual art, writing, music), I've excelled. But usually my perfectionism creates self-conscious hang-ups that drive me to stop.

So: I'd like to mark a turning point in my life with this move to the place I really wanted to be, which (when I really think about it) is one of the most amazing things that has ever happened to me. And which, I can't let myself forget, couldn't have happened without me. I need to use that general feeling of self-goodness and the extra free time I now have (my commute is only about 20 minutes each way) to do something I already know I'm good at, or to find something I'm good at that I had no idea I'd ever be good at.

Suggestions welcome.

The Year in Review

Dear Shiddy,

Let me begin with all the things I *didn't* do this year: I didn't sleep (because the baby didn't sleep), or make a ton of money, or wean said baby, or move somewhere cool.

But I did get pneumonia, become an aunt, attend five weddings, take the helm of a large commercialization project, lose 5 lbs, work on my marriage, refinance the house... I cried watching Obama be sworn in, made a lifelist, dragged my in-laws to the beach, taught our toddler sign language, fantasized about living in a different climate, rode on a yacht, took tap class, wrote a children's book, bought a live christmas tree, and generally came to the conclusion that I need to be investing way more time in my intellect and in my life-of-ideas.

I'm not sure how else to phrase that last part. Often, I observe my husband making these huge leaps forward, such is his voracity for reading and studying and learning. It's humbling. His energy reminds me that those topics that used to inspire me somehow aren't triggering the part of my head that catalyzes projects and ideas and initiative anymore. As if part of my brain is dormant and listless. What do I need to do next?

I want 2010 to be a year where I wake up and ask myself continuously "What do I want?" And if I am not doing the things I want to be doing, I need to police myself and ask over and over: "Why aren't I doing what I want right this minute?" Is there ever a good enough reason to ignore what you want?

Always Switched On

Dear Shiddy,
There have been more work moments than not lately when I feel as if I must remain in a constant state of hostessness - ever having to be the smiling, nodding diplomat immersed in a sea of sharp-toothed suits.

For instance, here I am from 9am-2pm on an average weekday:


That's right, my professional life IS THE STUFF OF CLIP ART. And beyond the horrifying turquoise blazer I'm obliged to wear, it's all about the handshakes and tightlipped business smile. (Why does everyone else get to wear gray? And I don't even like bangs!)

While most of my adult life I've acknowledged that my natural "peacemaker" tendencies have been a boon, sometimes the constant exercising of this one aspect of my personality GETS OLD. As in: Why don't I ever get to be the bad guy? The bitch? The hard-liner? The slacker?

Is it all my fault because I am simply too lazy to try out any new role? Do I fall into the easiest or most comfortable position just like that? How do I make use of any other unknown facilities or talents I may have when I subvert myself thusly?

Back in graduate school, a colleague once gave me a piece of frank advice: he told me I ought to pursue becoming a dominatrix. At least as a side-career, he said. Whatever character assessment he made to come to that conclusion, he never shared. But now I am wondering if I should have acted on that advice a long time ago. Because honestly I feel stuck in this place where I am a kindly and pandering middle manager.

File Under: My Hood

Our family just got back from a little sojourn to Austin, TX. I don't need to tell you Shiddy, that while Austin is riddled with rock bands, indie folk, students, and hippies of all sorts- it's home to some of the nicest people I've ever met. Within minutes of arriving there, people were initiating pleasant conversations with our toddler, giving us gifts, nodding their heads in sincere approval (of our life choices apparently?), and just being all-around accommodating.

Which brings me to the stark contrast that makes with my current 'hood.

Midwest Scenario #1: It's 9pm, my husband and I are quietly reading in bed. Off in the near distance we hear a clarinet playing Westminster Chimes. We look at each other and go back to reading. The "chimes" become obsessive, repetitive, strangely rhythmic. Suddenly, a 5-7 member drum circle joins the fray from across the street. We look outside to see a burgeoning group of amateur musicians on lawn chairs. Also in the works: a pair of random barking dogs (one pit-sized, one yippee) and then... a circular saw. Then there is a combo yawling/moaning/chanting happening that can only mean raw male bonding at its finest. We try our best to laugh it off. Update: that clarinet is STILL playing Westminster Chimes.

Midwest Scenario #2: 11pm, everyone is asleep. Shrieking emanates from the center of the four lane through-way directly in front of our house. This is not completely unusual, since we have the good fortune of living next door to a "Church House" (read: Flop House). The inhabitants of which, over the course of the last seven years, have held keggers and smokeouts and all means under the guise of holy bible study and extraChristian awesomeness. One favorite activity of theirs is a game my husband has affectionately named "Street Douche" which involves just standing in the middle of traffic screaming. When my husband or I have tried to engage them in logical dialogue regarding typical workday hours or noise levels or the trials of living with a sleeping infant, they've either been unbelievably clueless or offered a holier-than-thou/condescending excuse such as "Umm, well that was a REALLY important party where we were fundraising for Habitat for Humanity." Really? Really really? Community service with bongs? You people are out of school, with jobs (ostensibly)! How about you do my community a service and grow the hell up?

Midwest Scenario #3: 4am, I wonder why it is so goddamn quiet and why I cannot hear either of the two different types of buses (city, university), or the recycling truck, or the dumpster hauler, or the drunk driving drag racers, or the half-disabled crane that has been positioned near the abandoned house in the alley for the last six months pretending to do work. I get up to look out the window. It's snowed 21 inches overnight and the whole city is on shut down. That's why it's silent around here.

This is what I have to do to get some quiet in my neighborhood: invoke a fucking blizzard.

Re: Penises

I first saw one, I think, when I was about four. I have this one unconfirmed memory of my mom taking me into the bathroom and explaining to me what a penis was while my dad was toweling off. I shit you not. This has been a vivid "memory" of mine for decades, but I hope I'm imagining or mis-remembering it. And I don't want to have a verifying discussion with my mom ever, so I will probably never know what actually happened.

About a year or two later, my parents did make me watch a VHS with Henry Winkler. The creep in overalls strumming about penises haunted me vaguely until a few months ago, when I realized I could simply Google "henry winkler child molestation" and find the specifics.

When I was about seven, my aunt and uncle gave me a copy of The Anatomy Coloring Book along with a set of fucking sweet magic markers. I'm pretty sure the male genitalia page was the first to get Marvy-ed.

Basically, my fascination with dicks began early, long before I found out that babies didn't just "happen" to women once they got married. I didn't see one in its proper state until I was 17, but it wasn't much of a surprise because of the following fact: I discovered my dad's porn stash* when I was 11. On the outside, I was a quiet and studious adolescent with an autistic level of interest in Mozart. But being an only child of two working parents allowed me to spend my summer days paying excruciating attention to every minute of my dad's VHSes, each of which was like 8 hours long, crammed with back-to-back pornos from the 1970s and early '80s. It was the same scientific-inquiry skill set that had me winning state science fairs. And yes, I knew who Ron Jeremy was long before anyone else in my age group did.

As for your memory, Middy, I have a few questions. Did he whip it out without warning or explanation? Did he fiddle with it? While (in theory only) I admire his spirit of adventure, I wonder why he chose to show it to you in its revolting, flopsy** baseline. Samey for the solidly middle-class-looking man who whipped it out for me on a deserted side street in Chartres when I was backpacking solo in France. I was already pretty familiar with dicks by that point, but it was extra startling and pathetic-looking for being uncircumcised. I walked straight to the train station from there.


* We're talking boxes and boxes of mags here, and about a dozen videos.
** Best word choice ever, Middy. Bravo.

Re: Crack-up Gift

Yeah, that is pretty awesome. What would be more awesome is if you sent a crate of these to an elementary school as a charity gift, and then it turned out they all said "ORGASM WORLD" or something like that.

P.S. Re: Penises. I have a lot to say. More later.

What the Boners Tell Us

The first penis I saw up close belonged to a public-school teen a coupla houses down whom I had a crush on. He just whipped it out one day while we were watching TV in his basement, and I honestly had no idea how to react. Pretty sure I ended up screeching and running back to my house (promising God frantically that I'd go to confession that Thursday night).

Years later in college, I had to workshop a poem by a fellow student about the first time she touched a penis. She compared it (numerous times) to a luminescent mushroom. Now I don't know about you, Shiddy, but when I saw L whip it out on the plaid couch, there was nothing particularly radiant or woodsy about it. It just seemed to me (at the time) a long, flopsy, flesh-colored tube sock with night crawlers just under the skin.

Yep, I'm a horrible person.

Crack-up Gift

I simply love the idea of sending someone hundreds of randomly printed overstock pencils. Am I alone here?

Squeeze

I am not an astronaut. I am a hungernaut.

All Details Required

It was an overcast but unseasonably warm late December afternoon when you and I trolled the aisles of my local Midwestern Target...

You were in town for a New Years party. We were searching for a bottle of soy-based non-dairy creamer for your morning coffee. Up and down the refrigerator cases we ambled, separately, with me pausing at whatever Target's latest melamine offering was on display.

Here is what I only half-remember: who saw them first. That's right, I said them. (And also, I think I reached for my phone to urgently find you and the aisle you occupied.)

Why? Because there was more than one microcephalic Somali female adolescent shuffling past me. They were wearing matching pink jumpsuits. Only one dragged behind her a small wooden pull toy. Could've been duck or dog, really. I had trouble catching my breath.

So, there it is. It was what it was. Suddenly, a David Lynch miniseries.

Speak, .

I've prided myself since childhood on a sickeningly retentive memory. Dates, full names, and faces pile up in my noggin like earwax. (E.g., I visited Florida for the first time on June 19, 1989, and I lost my virginity on June 10, 1997.)

Unfortunately, since hitting my late twenties, I've found that there just isn't enough room in there for all that. My memory's been importing at a shittier bit rate, doing a kind of Cookie-Monster chew and not swallowing much of anything.

I've done some housecleaning and found suspect memories in there: things that may not have happened as I remembered, things that may not have happened at all, and weird lacunae for things that probably did happen. Then there are the things my memory stole: things originally described to me secondhand, which I eventually began remembering as having seen myself.

So I must ask: Was it just you, or was it both of us together, who saw a Somalian (or Ethiopian?) microcephalic pulling a toy dog (or duck?) on wheels in the food aisle of your local Target?

It has to Happen

I have to stop watching television, logging in to Facebook, basically TAKING ANY PART in our culture. Why?

Because after my last somewhat morose post, I watched some prime time TV (never amounts to anything beneficial). And then, I couldn't stop pondering this question:

What ever happened to that slightly pretty/funny girl a class ahead of me in high school... the one who had kind of sold out to the popular crowd, but whose lining was strange and smart and oddly humorous? At a cast party I remember her making up some ridiculously funny 'forbidden dance' involving "flossing her crotch" with a football scarf. See? She got away with that kind of shit and was STILL invited to the sleepovers, WTF.

Anyway, turns out I cannot look her up on Facebook because I am not prepared to be devastated again.

Also, there's this. And I have so many feelings about that - right now hysterical laughter is winning out against horror. So that is probably a good thing. For me. At least.

Wishing for Exile

Dear Shiddy:

Your last post made me feel sad and worried. I wish you were feeling less frazzled and stuff. The post instantly brought to mind the purported benefits of transcendental meditation (being able to block out noise and all sorts of other external stimuli). Unfortunately, I myself am horrible at filtering things out or performing any of those disciplined mind exercises (though I've never actually taken a class). But the husband has had some success with it. Worth a try? Who knows.

I am in a similar boat to yours in the sense that I have never really liked the city I live in now. Many people and books and other assorted sources of supposed wisdom tell me that you can learn to love your life anywhere, that it is all in your head, etc. And it's true that I've got a lot of community here, but from a purely aesthetic perspective, for example, I find this city incredibly ugly and barren and boring. And what, what can you do about the climate? Puhhhh.

In summation, this post contains no actual advice, only a bit of commiseration. Sometimes, I find it's nice to spend some time with your imagination, detailing with exquisite specification the exact type of place and environment you'd ideally want to live in for all times.

Why I do not love NY.

As I continue to fantasize about leaving New York soon and for good, I thought it was time for me to get out of my system a few of the reasons I hate this place so much:

1. It is deafening. There's a John Cheever story whose protagonist, a 1950s New Yorker, is startled by the sound of a bus outside his window. Cheever plops down a line that might be the most resonant thing I've read since moving to NYC (despite the fact that I don't like Cheever that much): "It seemed to him that the penetrating noise of the city had a mortal effect on the precious lives on the city's inhabitants and that it should be muffled."

I have worn earplugs every day since May 2007. At first I only wore them in bed, to hide explosive bus brakes outside my bedroom window and the sounds of people shouting to each other, which, even if jocular or celebratory, always sound to my WASP ears like fighting. I quickly graduated to wearing them on the subway. An express train barreling through a station, squealing brakes, intercom announcements = repetitive aural rape.

It's not just my sensitivity, which is admittedly high*: research backs me up on this shit. I've since learned to keep my 'plugs in from the moment I leave my apartment to the moment I step into my office building, and likewise the reverse.

2. It smells like piss. The streets, the subway stations, even the subway cars. I've always been aware of what piss smells like (I have, in fact, been pissing all my life), but since moving here I have learned to identify all piss varieties, on a spectrum that includes alcoholic, dehydrated, and kidney-failure pathologies. On the Times Square platform where I change lines every morning, there is a reflective, congealed film underfoot. By smell, you know a train is on its way even before hearing it because the train pushes out a cylindrical piss cloud from where it had been patiently baking inside the tunnel.

3. It's fucking expensive. This one's obvious, but I'll never get used to it. I'll be brief: The other day I was staring in the window of a store selling interesting items, and I saw this:
These knick-knacks (specifically, the owl, the squirrel, and the polar bear platter) filled me with a kind of hysterical longing I didn't understand. And then I did understand: I hadn't bought a single knick-knack since moving here two years ago. I have almost no disposable income because I spend nearly half of my net income on rent.

4. There are too many people. My significant other once astutely commented that there are so many people in this city that it cheapens life. I see waves of people walking in the same direction (e.g., to a subway station at rush hour), and I become panicky and hateful and excrete cortisol. About a month ago, I realized what an asshole I'd become when I scoffed at a comment made by the S.O.'s little brother, who was visiting on his way to college. We were watching people zombie-shuffle in a human column boarding the Staten Island Ferry when he marveled that each of these people had a soul, and a life, and wasn't that overwhelming? Yes. Yes, it is. To the point where you are comfortable seeing others not as souls but as retarded fucking assholes who are (more crucially) in your way.**

* I don't normally relate to this kind of self-diagnosis--in fact, I hate what it implies about me--but when I took this quiz I literally selected all of the check boxes.

** Not to imply that there isn't an overabundance of R.F.A.s here.