I love Easter. What could be a stronger expression of the triumph of hope over despair, light over darkness, life over death? It is trust in this triumph that is the heart of my value system.
Rooted first in metaphor, my world view swerved over into outright belief in the tenets of Christianity some years back, not that you would know it from my recent church attendance record. That transition had some interesting steps, but it started by deep and thoughtful consideration of what I knew of my own experience to be true, then expanded to a few key concepts taught by others. Without any attempt to be definitive or complete on this beautiful Easter morning, I offer up a few of them.
Opposite things can be true—hold them in your mind without trying to resolve the contradiction. Dealing with the death of a loved one or the loss of a friendship calls us to grief and rage. At the same time, we know that death comes to each of us and that loss is our lot on earth—that truth requires acceptance. One loss after another, sometimes it seems that way, until that final loss of our own lives resolves into who knows what. Personally, I don’t need to know what comes next—I have quite enough to manage to process what is going on in this lifetime. Perhaps if the Buddhists are right and we have multiple approaches to truth, perhaps in my next lifetime I will get to chew on that issue.
Despair is a sin. As a person who has battled depression from time to time, this was a hard one for me. My nature is sunny and upbeat, but my biochemistry sometimes goes in the opposite direction. How can that be?
If you hang around churches very much, soon you will notice that people may stay away for years but come back for holidays like Christmas and Easter, but even more they come back for major life transitions—joyous ones like weddings and baptisms, sad ones like funerals—and for comfort in times of trouble. Churches persist because they bring comfort and because they deliver the message that we mere mortals must look beyond today’s sadness in our own lives to a bigger picture. If we insist on focusing only on our own pain, only today, admittedly real and deserving our care, but if that is all we see, we are guilty of despair. So I had to learn to see beyond my immediate moods and let my heart lift up my biochemically challenged brain. This ongoing practice takes a lot of private time, and my family and friends often don’t understand where my moods are at any given time, but life is better now.
Despair is an interesting word—it means literally the lack of hope. In French, “esperer” means “to hope.” Some years ago, working in Brazil, I was startled to see the copy machine display the following message: “Espere!” It turns out that in Portuguese, this simply means “Wait” but it gave me a giggle to get an inspirational poke from the copy machine.
Start from where you are. We all have our individual challenges and demons; likewise we all have unique gifts. What if we were to put aside the demons for a little while? Not pretend they don’t exist, just set them aside. What if we were to spend even one day celebrating the glory of our own lives and of those we love? What if we were to aggressively follow the advice of the copy machine as I first heard it: Hope! Take a day to celebrate hope. No, I didn’t say hop, but that might work, too. Have a happy, hopeful, hoppy Easter!
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Thursday, March 24, 2005
On anger and letting go
One explanation of depression is having one’s limbic system flooded. Anger or other strong emotion can cause a backlash into dullness or absence of feeling, as happened to me after yet another Dell meltdown yesterday afternoon.
So I get a memory error when the system powers down—is that any reason to propose yanking out the hard drive? That would be putting in the fourth hard drive in the second system in eighteen months, all in the futile attempt to get one operational system. We will draw a curtain over the events of the past three months, during which I spent many, many hours to rebuild my system. I was not at all pleased with the idea that I was going to have to start over from the beginning, and got even more agitated when the technical support guy suggested that perhaps he would just send out a system swap. When he couldn’t come up with a better solution, this first tech support guy proposed transferring us to another area, then promptly hung up on us.
Over my tearful protests, the next phone support technician took the onsite technician through one component at a time and discovered that the underlying problem was a wireless card, not even a Dell-installed component, a very easy problem to solve, and one that—thank heaven!—need not require further Dell involvement. I’m sure that Dell is as happy not to deal with me as I am not to deal with them.
But today, I still have the anger hangover. I feel grim and heavy and gray and touchy. And despite taking the precaution of eating carbs for lunch, I took out a couple of bystanders in collateral damage. Everything looks more dire when depression rules, even when you try to compensate for your gray-tinted specs. In truth, I should have called in sick, but it’s hard to get sympathy for an overstimulated limbic system.
I’m thinking now that maybe it is time to say goodbye to Dell, even with two years left on the warranty. The sheer stupidity of proposing a system replacement to solve a problem with a wireless card amazes, shocks and offends. But in the overall scheme of life and death, love and humanity, I can’t afford to waste a particle of energy on Dell. When the next problem with this system occurs—and I feel certain that it is when and not if—I think I will call my local support guys. If there is something that needs to be dealt with under the warranty, then I will pay someone else to call Dell. Or not. Honestly, life is too short for this. There has to be a better way.
Meanwhile, I find myself craving the support of my friends who are put together the same way I am, friends who are known for being difficult, prickly, obnoxious and angry. Today I was all those and worse, and now I want to rest in the company of someone who will say, “There, there. It will be better tomorrow.” I want to hear from someone who says, “I don’t care what other people say about you, I know you’re doing your best.” I want to be with people who aren’t always nice, because they are always trying to push a good cause one more step ahead, even on days when they don’t get the strategy just right. I want someone to make me a cup of tea and ask if I’m okay, then when I say “Well, sort of,” tell me funny stories to make me laugh or read me to sleep. All so that we can all get up and do it again tomorrow without the anger hangover, without the same nonsense, with our reserves rebuilt by the loving care of those who know us best.
So I get a memory error when the system powers down—is that any reason to propose yanking out the hard drive? That would be putting in the fourth hard drive in the second system in eighteen months, all in the futile attempt to get one operational system. We will draw a curtain over the events of the past three months, during which I spent many, many hours to rebuild my system. I was not at all pleased with the idea that I was going to have to start over from the beginning, and got even more agitated when the technical support guy suggested that perhaps he would just send out a system swap. When he couldn’t come up with a better solution, this first tech support guy proposed transferring us to another area, then promptly hung up on us.
Over my tearful protests, the next phone support technician took the onsite technician through one component at a time and discovered that the underlying problem was a wireless card, not even a Dell-installed component, a very easy problem to solve, and one that—thank heaven!—need not require further Dell involvement. I’m sure that Dell is as happy not to deal with me as I am not to deal with them.
But today, I still have the anger hangover. I feel grim and heavy and gray and touchy. And despite taking the precaution of eating carbs for lunch, I took out a couple of bystanders in collateral damage. Everything looks more dire when depression rules, even when you try to compensate for your gray-tinted specs. In truth, I should have called in sick, but it’s hard to get sympathy for an overstimulated limbic system.
I’m thinking now that maybe it is time to say goodbye to Dell, even with two years left on the warranty. The sheer stupidity of proposing a system replacement to solve a problem with a wireless card amazes, shocks and offends. But in the overall scheme of life and death, love and humanity, I can’t afford to waste a particle of energy on Dell. When the next problem with this system occurs—and I feel certain that it is when and not if—I think I will call my local support guys. If there is something that needs to be dealt with under the warranty, then I will pay someone else to call Dell. Or not. Honestly, life is too short for this. There has to be a better way.
Meanwhile, I find myself craving the support of my friends who are put together the same way I am, friends who are known for being difficult, prickly, obnoxious and angry. Today I was all those and worse, and now I want to rest in the company of someone who will say, “There, there. It will be better tomorrow.” I want to hear from someone who says, “I don’t care what other people say about you, I know you’re doing your best.” I want to be with people who aren’t always nice, because they are always trying to push a good cause one more step ahead, even on days when they don’t get the strategy just right. I want someone to make me a cup of tea and ask if I’m okay, then when I say “Well, sort of,” tell me funny stories to make me laugh or read me to sleep. All so that we can all get up and do it again tomorrow without the anger hangover, without the same nonsense, with our reserves rebuilt by the loving care of those who know us best.
Entropy?
I wrote this one morning a few weeks ago:
There is a level at which I find the concept of entropy comforting. Daily life is full of small defeats: peeling paint, computers that need repair, wrinkles and graying hair. Outside of the tale of Dorian Gray, however, the direction of change flows predictably in one direction. We know that if the paint peeled last summer, more of it will peel next summer, and it is important to think about what to do next. Never once has it happened to me that peeling paint repaired itself.
As sometimes happens, I got to the end of the paragraph and the flow of words stopped, usually a sure sign that there is something wrong with what I have written. I couldn’t immediately see where it had gone wrong, so I filed away this apparently inoffensive fragment for later, and a few days ago, it came into focus.
Dead wrong. The observation is simply wrong. It is rooted in the elegant pronouncements of physics, or rather the more superficial and dreary aspects of the mechanical world. This world is predictable, with bodies in motion tending to remain in motion…and all that. But plain old physics does not account for spring.
It’s early yet, so the snow is just going, the mud is still passable, and we don’t yet see green bursting forth all around, but already something in the air has changed. There is new energy all around, and it is neither dreary nor predictable, even though it happened to us just a year ago. Spring! What theoretical construct can account for it?
I used to know physicists, and the ones I esteemed were focused on the sub-microscopic world of particles. It still tickles me to remember that in that world, a particle might be one place, then somewhere else altogether—the “quantum leap” that is not tiny as in common parlance, but very, very large. If the laws of mechanics are dreary (if comforting in their predictable nature), the world of quantum mechanics is sheer possibility. Maybe that’s a better theoretical model for life as we know it, but still, how to explain spring?
As is probably clear by now, my science education was sketchy, and I am not really looking to re-immerse myself in biological mysteries like the Krebs cycle, which always made my eyes glaze. Even if I understood the science behind the rush of new life about to happen all around us, I don’t think it could possibly expand my delight that after a long winter of breathing in, now it is time to breathe out, to sing, to dance, to run up and down the hill back of my house in sheer exuberance and exultation that it is spring!
There is a level at which I find the concept of entropy comforting. Daily life is full of small defeats: peeling paint, computers that need repair, wrinkles and graying hair. Outside of the tale of Dorian Gray, however, the direction of change flows predictably in one direction. We know that if the paint peeled last summer, more of it will peel next summer, and it is important to think about what to do next. Never once has it happened to me that peeling paint repaired itself.
As sometimes happens, I got to the end of the paragraph and the flow of words stopped, usually a sure sign that there is something wrong with what I have written. I couldn’t immediately see where it had gone wrong, so I filed away this apparently inoffensive fragment for later, and a few days ago, it came into focus.
Dead wrong. The observation is simply wrong. It is rooted in the elegant pronouncements of physics, or rather the more superficial and dreary aspects of the mechanical world. This world is predictable, with bodies in motion tending to remain in motion…and all that. But plain old physics does not account for spring.
It’s early yet, so the snow is just going, the mud is still passable, and we don’t yet see green bursting forth all around, but already something in the air has changed. There is new energy all around, and it is neither dreary nor predictable, even though it happened to us just a year ago. Spring! What theoretical construct can account for it?
I used to know physicists, and the ones I esteemed were focused on the sub-microscopic world of particles. It still tickles me to remember that in that world, a particle might be one place, then somewhere else altogether—the “quantum leap” that is not tiny as in common parlance, but very, very large. If the laws of mechanics are dreary (if comforting in their predictable nature), the world of quantum mechanics is sheer possibility. Maybe that’s a better theoretical model for life as we know it, but still, how to explain spring?
As is probably clear by now, my science education was sketchy, and I am not really looking to re-immerse myself in biological mysteries like the Krebs cycle, which always made my eyes glaze. Even if I understood the science behind the rush of new life about to happen all around us, I don’t think it could possibly expand my delight that after a long winter of breathing in, now it is time to breathe out, to sing, to dance, to run up and down the hill back of my house in sheer exuberance and exultation that it is spring!
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Options
My compost methods (see previous post) are not, I think, so very unusual, and I don’t really beat myself up over the waste, which is not waste at all other than the money spent to purchase vegetables I don’t actually get inside myself.
You may notice that I make a concerted effort not to beat myself up over anything; rather, if I see that I am doing something that seems inappropriate or wrong, I just stop that behavior and replace it with more positive actions. Negative reinforcement doesn’t work on my staff, my dogs, or anyone else I have ever met—why would I want to try it on myself? Apologies are sometimes in order, but the exercise of public self-flagellation does not accomplish much, in my opinion.
Rather, I work hard to treat myself well, including organizing my life so that I can be strong and healthy, and that means having the option of good food at home. My diet is working very well these days, rich in high quality protein, whole grains and vegetables. Organizing food is different in rural Vermont from New York City, where greengrocers were on every other corner and one could purchase beautiful produce on the way home, no matter the hour at which one came home. In Vermont, I am home early and once home, I don’t want to leave my cozy nest. That means if I have good food—including vegetables—at home, I will eat them. If not, well, …not.
So I buy four or five vegetables a week, in addition to the basic onions, celery, carrots, garlic, coriander, and ginger. I figure I spend maybe ten dollars a week on vegetables, many of which end up in the compost. But some of them end up in me, and that is the goal of the exercise. I am paying ten dollars a week not for compost, but rather for the option on vegetables, the capacity to do something for my health every day that I would not have if I didn’t buy vegetables. And no, frozen won’t work—the holistic experience of peeling, slicing and cooking is part of the health benefit I am seeking.
Option preservation. This is something I first learned at business school, the concept that when choosing among alternatives, there is value in the one that keeps your options open, particularly when you have the ultimate alternative of compost. It’s a powerful guiding principle, particularly when dealing with people. Far too quick to draw lines between good and bad, we humans cope better when we create strategies that keep our options open. Do I dump the boyfriend? Write off the sibling or the friend who has been uncommunicative? Refuse to deal with the person who makes life difficult? Why? Aren’t we usually better off if we create an environment in which the annoying person has room to do the right thing, the creative thing, the loving thing? The observable fact that they don't often take it should not influence our willingness to create the right environment.
There are, of course, occasions when it is right and proper and even loving to make a clean break, but they are few in number. We tend to know them when we see them. For me, I find that when I think maybe I ought to make a clean break, I really need to redouble my efforts at bridge-building, even if bridge-building involves redefining the relationship in some fundamental way. Seeing the other person whole, speaking to the other person as an independent entity capable of making his or her own decision, and avoiding the trap of manipulating that person into doing what I want—all that practice often does redefine the relationship and makes room for shifting into new roles without the mutual flagellation that so often characterizes the ways we humans treat each other. I may not be able to see what the new options look like, but that should not prevent my pursuing new options in all faith that a better way will open up before me.
When I know--not think, but know--that it is time to make a break, then it is kindest to go ahead and do it, without second-guessing myself or pulling punches. But that’s only when I know, and that has happened only half a dozen times in my life, as compared to hundreds and hundreds of occasions of renewed bridge-building. More specifically, making a sharp break has only been necessary when the other person in the relationship has been unwilling to consider more than one option for dealing with me. If the game is defined from the other side as do-what-I-want-or-else, I will choose—with regret—to go for “or else.” This was the case when I left my husband twenty years ago, and also on the few occasions when I have needed to fire someone, and maybe a handful of other occasions. It appears that I don't take this step easily, and it may in fact be the challenge of this lifetime that I learn when it is time to let go.
There is a truism in dog training that in a group of dogs, the dog who barks is not necessarily the problem. If you look closely, you will find that there is another dog engaging in psychological warfare, egging on the hapless barker. The challenge for the trainer is to train the barking dog that he has the option to bark or not to bark, to enable him to ignore manipulative machinations and become a happy dog. Likewise, the goading dog needs to learn new ways to entertain himself and suppport his own self-esteem. It’s all about creating and preserving options, so that we can choose the right ones: there is always another way!
You may notice that I make a concerted effort not to beat myself up over anything; rather, if I see that I am doing something that seems inappropriate or wrong, I just stop that behavior and replace it with more positive actions. Negative reinforcement doesn’t work on my staff, my dogs, or anyone else I have ever met—why would I want to try it on myself? Apologies are sometimes in order, but the exercise of public self-flagellation does not accomplish much, in my opinion.
Rather, I work hard to treat myself well, including organizing my life so that I can be strong and healthy, and that means having the option of good food at home. My diet is working very well these days, rich in high quality protein, whole grains and vegetables. Organizing food is different in rural Vermont from New York City, where greengrocers were on every other corner and one could purchase beautiful produce on the way home, no matter the hour at which one came home. In Vermont, I am home early and once home, I don’t want to leave my cozy nest. That means if I have good food—including vegetables—at home, I will eat them. If not, well, …not.
So I buy four or five vegetables a week, in addition to the basic onions, celery, carrots, garlic, coriander, and ginger. I figure I spend maybe ten dollars a week on vegetables, many of which end up in the compost. But some of them end up in me, and that is the goal of the exercise. I am paying ten dollars a week not for compost, but rather for the option on vegetables, the capacity to do something for my health every day that I would not have if I didn’t buy vegetables. And no, frozen won’t work—the holistic experience of peeling, slicing and cooking is part of the health benefit I am seeking.
Option preservation. This is something I first learned at business school, the concept that when choosing among alternatives, there is value in the one that keeps your options open, particularly when you have the ultimate alternative of compost. It’s a powerful guiding principle, particularly when dealing with people. Far too quick to draw lines between good and bad, we humans cope better when we create strategies that keep our options open. Do I dump the boyfriend? Write off the sibling or the friend who has been uncommunicative? Refuse to deal with the person who makes life difficult? Why? Aren’t we usually better off if we create an environment in which the annoying person has room to do the right thing, the creative thing, the loving thing? The observable fact that they don't often take it should not influence our willingness to create the right environment.
There are, of course, occasions when it is right and proper and even loving to make a clean break, but they are few in number. We tend to know them when we see them. For me, I find that when I think maybe I ought to make a clean break, I really need to redouble my efforts at bridge-building, even if bridge-building involves redefining the relationship in some fundamental way. Seeing the other person whole, speaking to the other person as an independent entity capable of making his or her own decision, and avoiding the trap of manipulating that person into doing what I want—all that practice often does redefine the relationship and makes room for shifting into new roles without the mutual flagellation that so often characterizes the ways we humans treat each other. I may not be able to see what the new options look like, but that should not prevent my pursuing new options in all faith that a better way will open up before me.
When I know--not think, but know--that it is time to make a break, then it is kindest to go ahead and do it, without second-guessing myself or pulling punches. But that’s only when I know, and that has happened only half a dozen times in my life, as compared to hundreds and hundreds of occasions of renewed bridge-building. More specifically, making a sharp break has only been necessary when the other person in the relationship has been unwilling to consider more than one option for dealing with me. If the game is defined from the other side as do-what-I-want-or-else, I will choose—with regret—to go for “or else.” This was the case when I left my husband twenty years ago, and also on the few occasions when I have needed to fire someone, and maybe a handful of other occasions. It appears that I don't take this step easily, and it may in fact be the challenge of this lifetime that I learn when it is time to let go.
There is a truism in dog training that in a group of dogs, the dog who barks is not necessarily the problem. If you look closely, you will find that there is another dog engaging in psychological warfare, egging on the hapless barker. The challenge for the trainer is to train the barking dog that he has the option to bark or not to bark, to enable him to ignore manipulative machinations and become a happy dog. Likewise, the goading dog needs to learn new ways to entertain himself and suppport his own self-esteem. It’s all about creating and preserving options, so that we can choose the right ones: there is always another way!
Monday, March 21, 2005
I Think I’ll Call Him Harvey
Most people buy their compost at the garden store or by the pickup-truck-load. I buy mine at the grocery store. I buy cauliflower and eggplant, kale and cabbage, apples and oranges and lemons. Then I put them in the refrigerator and wait. Sometimes I cook them, put them back in the refrigerator and wait. After the appropriate time has passed, I pull them out of the refrigerator and add them to my compost bucket, which during these winter months sits right in the kitchen. A full bucket prompts a trip up to the compost pile the far side of the garden, and these days I make that trip on snowshoes.
The dogs and I headed up to the compost pile yesterday—it is one of their favorite outings, but then what isn’t? that’s why you gotta love dogs—and found a flurry of tiny tracks around the coffee grounds emerging from the snow. Aha!
In these days of early spring, we have had a visitor, an unusual white skunk, or so it appears to be. Some authoritative sources opine that it is a skunk with such wide white stripes that it only appears to be white. Sometimes he likes the garage, sometimes the barn across the road, but the dogs are mightily offended that he thinks he can hang around here, and they are intent on teaching that intruding critter a lesson, so I am keeping them a little closer to home.
Having done a little research into what one does about visiting skunks, I have chosen to take refuge in fiction and hope. I don’t actually know that this is a boy skunk, but I choose to believe so. I would prefer to believe that it is a boy skunk on his early spring trip through the neighborhood looking for girls rather than a girl skunk about to settle in to have babies in the garage. I have no basis for this belief, but cling to it nevertheless.
People have a lot of theories, ranging from shooting the skunk in the head to trapping it then putting a blanket over the cage, but all of the theories fall apart around the general topic of skunk spray. None of these approaches seems really practical, and I don’t really (yet) have anything against old Harvey, named for his appearance as a harbinger of spring.
The dogs and I headed up to the compost pile yesterday—it is one of their favorite outings, but then what isn’t? that’s why you gotta love dogs—and found a flurry of tiny tracks around the coffee grounds emerging from the snow. Aha!
In these days of early spring, we have had a visitor, an unusual white skunk, or so it appears to be. Some authoritative sources opine that it is a skunk with such wide white stripes that it only appears to be white. Sometimes he likes the garage, sometimes the barn across the road, but the dogs are mightily offended that he thinks he can hang around here, and they are intent on teaching that intruding critter a lesson, so I am keeping them a little closer to home.
Having done a little research into what one does about visiting skunks, I have chosen to take refuge in fiction and hope. I don’t actually know that this is a boy skunk, but I choose to believe so. I would prefer to believe that it is a boy skunk on his early spring trip through the neighborhood looking for girls rather than a girl skunk about to settle in to have babies in the garage. I have no basis for this belief, but cling to it nevertheless.
People have a lot of theories, ranging from shooting the skunk in the head to trapping it then putting a blanket over the cage, but all of the theories fall apart around the general topic of skunk spray. None of these approaches seems really practical, and I don’t really (yet) have anything against old Harvey, named for his appearance as a harbinger of spring.
Friday, March 18, 2005
More old friends
So, did you miss me? I missed blogging, but my laptop was in need of a little loving care. Sadly, I’m not sure it has recovered from its display (heh, heh..) of temperament, manifested by flickering screen and a weird bluish overlay of random pixels. But at least I know where to take it now, and I have discovered that I actually can survive a weekend offline.
In one way, my survival technique displayed just another maladjustment in my wiring—I went in to work last Saturday and again on Sunday, something I have not done for a few years. The lingering effect of my hard drive crash in December is just now subsiding, and I am beginning to dig out of the giant hole into which I fell. I am making progress.
It is also a sign of progress that I don’t like working on weekends. I view this realization as an indicator of health. There were years and years during which I simply did not allow myself to question whether I liked to work weekends—it was a given. Had to be done. And I paid a price in deteriorating health, which is now slowly being restored by exposure to the glorious Vermont countryside, attention to the rhythm of seasons, and the company of beloved old dogs. Even work—in an appropriate measure—is part of the cure.
Having worked so much on the weekend, and having spent far too much time with the legislature in recent weeks (not that they aren’t lovely people and committed and all), I felt justified in hunting down an old friend for lunch on Wednesday. Hooray! Not only could he make it, he introduced me to Royal Orchid in Montpelier, a blessedly warm, wonderful, little place with delicious and inexpensive Thai food. I can imagine working my way down the menu with repeat visits, and I am likely to do just that when they open up a new location half a block from my office. I am very, very happy with this news.
I am even happier to have rediscovered a friend from over twenty years ago. As a young bride of twenty-three, I had left Georgia (the state, not Georgia, Vermont…as I have learned to say) to follow my husband to Boston. Barely I can remember how intimidated I was by this cold and busy northeastern city. I made my husband go with me on the “T” the first time, and when the train came in, I was sure I would be sucked in front of the train, dying in a sad, unrecognized and unintended imitation of Anna Karenina. I still sometimes feel very Anna Karenina in subways, but I am no longer intimidated by the biggest cities, not after twenty years in New York.
In Boston, with the best part of a masters in comparative literature completed, I was almost unemployable, but found work as a archivist. It is an obscure profession, so I will explain that this work is something like being a librarian, but with lots and lots of loose paper, with most items being unique. My boss was the first full-time archivist hired by the illustrious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her charge was to develop programs to document the development of contemporary science and technology, with particular attention to MIT’s role.
Oh, what a great time we had! There were only a few of us, and as the baby of the group, I spent most of my time in the basement unwrapping brown paper packages—the relicts of a previous part-time archivist who had collected rooms (rooms!) of material that was uncataloged and unidentified. It was like Christmas every day.
We had a tiny collection of letters from three generations of geologists, including one who wrote back from Sherman’s march through Georgia (the state) about interesting rock formations along the way. We had the obligatory papers of the founder, William Barton Rogers about whom I no longer remember anything other than bits of doggerel. One day I found an Isaac Newton holograph. We had papers of cancer researcher David Baltimore and physicist Victor Weiskopf and strobe photographer Harold Edgerton and of an all-women’s architecture firm from the turn of the last century. And to put it all in some kind of historical perspective, we had the imposing historian, Gregory Sanford.
Yes, that Gregory Sanford. The one who is now the Vermont State Archivist. He was already imposing, as anyone who has met Gregory can imagine. He is very tall, even when he tries to compensate with self-effacing demeanor. And when he braided his mustache into that enormous coal black beard, then to me as a young woman of twenty-three, fresh from Georgia…it was terrifying. Or would have been if Gregory had not been so obviously and completely a sweetheart.
Gregory was working on grant funding to do an oral history project with some of the outstanding scientists and thinkers at MIT. His own passion was for his work with George Aiken, and nobody was surprised when the grant ran out and he returned to Vermont. “Have to,” he said, never using too many words. “God’s country, doncha know.” Years later when I thought of moving to Vermont, Gregory’s comment—one of those gruff, off-hand comments that mask deep feeling—went into the mix.
We heard later that he had become State Archivist and everyone agreed what a wonderful thing, that Gregory who loves Vermont so dearly should be the person officially charged with preserving state activities and functions in paper and in bits and bytes. It’s the perfect job for Gregory, and he is the perfect man for the job. I’ll tell you that my stock went up mightily when I mentioned to friends that I was having lunch with the State Archivist (capital letters required). One friend’s eyes got big, as she gasped, “He’s wicked interesting!” and another requested a real Vermont story, just for her.
But for me, the joy of Wednesday’s lunch was neither Thai food nor consorting with a Vermont icon. It was the deep pleasure of seeing an old friend again, a friend who is very much the same as he was over twenty years ago. Gregory is still tall (6’6” although he always seems taller to a short person like me), but the beard is white now, and not quite so intimidating. The habit of running his hands through his beard while he talks is the same, and the eyes are the same. The energy of a man who loves his life and his work are exactly the same.
In many ways we don’t know each other at all. Gregory is now a family man, with long established relationship and teenage daughters, about whom he is clearly besotted. I no longer have the husband I had twenty years ago. Gregory has spent most of his years in Vermont and in love with Vermont. I have lived and worked a lot of places, and my twenty years in love with New York City are clearly a complete mystery to Gregory. But I still see the shy, oversize man who noticed when he intimidated the 23-year old me, and was kind. Maybe we each conquered our shyness—to the extent we have—in radically different ways, Gregory by embracing the home that he loved, and me by embracing change. Whatever the rational backdrop, I still see a friend. And what a gift that is!
In one way, my survival technique displayed just another maladjustment in my wiring—I went in to work last Saturday and again on Sunday, something I have not done for a few years. The lingering effect of my hard drive crash in December is just now subsiding, and I am beginning to dig out of the giant hole into which I fell. I am making progress.
It is also a sign of progress that I don’t like working on weekends. I view this realization as an indicator of health. There were years and years during which I simply did not allow myself to question whether I liked to work weekends—it was a given. Had to be done. And I paid a price in deteriorating health, which is now slowly being restored by exposure to the glorious Vermont countryside, attention to the rhythm of seasons, and the company of beloved old dogs. Even work—in an appropriate measure—is part of the cure.
Having worked so much on the weekend, and having spent far too much time with the legislature in recent weeks (not that they aren’t lovely people and committed and all), I felt justified in hunting down an old friend for lunch on Wednesday. Hooray! Not only could he make it, he introduced me to Royal Orchid in Montpelier, a blessedly warm, wonderful, little place with delicious and inexpensive Thai food. I can imagine working my way down the menu with repeat visits, and I am likely to do just that when they open up a new location half a block from my office. I am very, very happy with this news.
I am even happier to have rediscovered a friend from over twenty years ago. As a young bride of twenty-three, I had left Georgia (the state, not Georgia, Vermont…as I have learned to say) to follow my husband to Boston. Barely I can remember how intimidated I was by this cold and busy northeastern city. I made my husband go with me on the “T” the first time, and when the train came in, I was sure I would be sucked in front of the train, dying in a sad, unrecognized and unintended imitation of Anna Karenina. I still sometimes feel very Anna Karenina in subways, but I am no longer intimidated by the biggest cities, not after twenty years in New York.
In Boston, with the best part of a masters in comparative literature completed, I was almost unemployable, but found work as a archivist. It is an obscure profession, so I will explain that this work is something like being a librarian, but with lots and lots of loose paper, with most items being unique. My boss was the first full-time archivist hired by the illustrious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her charge was to develop programs to document the development of contemporary science and technology, with particular attention to MIT’s role.
Oh, what a great time we had! There were only a few of us, and as the baby of the group, I spent most of my time in the basement unwrapping brown paper packages—the relicts of a previous part-time archivist who had collected rooms (rooms!) of material that was uncataloged and unidentified. It was like Christmas every day.
We had a tiny collection of letters from three generations of geologists, including one who wrote back from Sherman’s march through Georgia (the state) about interesting rock formations along the way. We had the obligatory papers of the founder, William Barton Rogers about whom I no longer remember anything other than bits of doggerel. One day I found an Isaac Newton holograph. We had papers of cancer researcher David Baltimore and physicist Victor Weiskopf and strobe photographer Harold Edgerton and of an all-women’s architecture firm from the turn of the last century. And to put it all in some kind of historical perspective, we had the imposing historian, Gregory Sanford.
Yes, that Gregory Sanford. The one who is now the Vermont State Archivist. He was already imposing, as anyone who has met Gregory can imagine. He is very tall, even when he tries to compensate with self-effacing demeanor. And when he braided his mustache into that enormous coal black beard, then to me as a young woman of twenty-three, fresh from Georgia…it was terrifying. Or would have been if Gregory had not been so obviously and completely a sweetheart.
Gregory was working on grant funding to do an oral history project with some of the outstanding scientists and thinkers at MIT. His own passion was for his work with George Aiken, and nobody was surprised when the grant ran out and he returned to Vermont. “Have to,” he said, never using too many words. “God’s country, doncha know.” Years later when I thought of moving to Vermont, Gregory’s comment—one of those gruff, off-hand comments that mask deep feeling—went into the mix.
We heard later that he had become State Archivist and everyone agreed what a wonderful thing, that Gregory who loves Vermont so dearly should be the person officially charged with preserving state activities and functions in paper and in bits and bytes. It’s the perfect job for Gregory, and he is the perfect man for the job. I’ll tell you that my stock went up mightily when I mentioned to friends that I was having lunch with the State Archivist (capital letters required). One friend’s eyes got big, as she gasped, “He’s wicked interesting!” and another requested a real Vermont story, just for her.
But for me, the joy of Wednesday’s lunch was neither Thai food nor consorting with a Vermont icon. It was the deep pleasure of seeing an old friend again, a friend who is very much the same as he was over twenty years ago. Gregory is still tall (6’6” although he always seems taller to a short person like me), but the beard is white now, and not quite so intimidating. The habit of running his hands through his beard while he talks is the same, and the eyes are the same. The energy of a man who loves his life and his work are exactly the same.
In many ways we don’t know each other at all. Gregory is now a family man, with long established relationship and teenage daughters, about whom he is clearly besotted. I no longer have the husband I had twenty years ago. Gregory has spent most of his years in Vermont and in love with Vermont. I have lived and worked a lot of places, and my twenty years in love with New York City are clearly a complete mystery to Gregory. But I still see the shy, oversize man who noticed when he intimidated the 23-year old me, and was kind. Maybe we each conquered our shyness—to the extent we have—in radically different ways, Gregory by embracing the home that he loved, and me by embracing change. Whatever the rational backdrop, I still see a friend. And what a gift that is!
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Exuberants Anonymous
Ever since I finished Kay Redmond Jamison’s new book, Exuberance: The Passion for Life, I have been googling around in the expectation that at any minute affinity groups will spring up on the net. Can’t you just imagine the array?
XA: Exuberants Anonymous, in which participants learn to accept that we are exuberant personalities, that we aren’t always as organized as others might wish, and that we have a tendency to bounce in other people’s parts of the Forest. We might go through the exercise of visiting people on whom we have bounced and asking their forgiveness.
X-Anon, for people who love (most of the time) exuberants, but would like to teach them some basic manners without crushing their spirits or would like to figure out how to get a little help loading the dishwasher, preferably the same way every day.
X-a-Teen, for early-identified exuberants, to address the special needs of teenagers who are more teenager than most, perhaps preventing those early painful losses of friendship that can recur through life.
ACX: Adult Children of Exuberants, who can get together to vent about how distressing that Mom is still irrepressible, that Dad won’t stay home, and that when either of them comes to visit, locking the study door for a couple of hours a day is the only option that really works.
I don’t mean it to sound silly, least of all because I do greatly appreciate the work accomplished by various twelve-step groups. But it is kinda silly from a few points of view.
First, exuberance is a character trait as well as a set of behaviors. It is largely innate, although some thoughtful exuberants think there is an element of nurture as well. Although we may be clumsy and unwittingly intrude on others parts of the Forest, our character is not an illness like alcoholism or a pathological behavior. The negative effects of abuse of alcohol or many different drugs are well recognized and dwarf the impacts of the most outrageously bad over-exuberant behavior.
Second…anonymous? Yeah, right.
Third, there are many, many affinity groups on the net for us exuberants. We can read about gardening and about the slow food movement. We can get directions on how to reupholster a chair…then proceed to do it over the next fourteen hours. Those of us who are isolated geographically can find the most cosmopolitan and interesting friends, while luxuriating in the beauty of the Vermont countryside.
Finally, and most important, while we may need to learn to be more polite or more organized or even how to stand up for ourselves—we don’t need comfort for being made as we are. We are what we are…and it is glorious. I certainly don’t think I have been deprived of the melancholy end of the mood spectrum, leaving me with plenty of common experience with other humans. Occasionally, I have wished that life were more….even. Still, resilience of mood has carried me out of many a low period and eased many a touchy social situation. I, for one, would not want to be any different.
XA: Exuberants Anonymous, in which participants learn to accept that we are exuberant personalities, that we aren’t always as organized as others might wish, and that we have a tendency to bounce in other people’s parts of the Forest. We might go through the exercise of visiting people on whom we have bounced and asking their forgiveness.
X-Anon, for people who love (most of the time) exuberants, but would like to teach them some basic manners without crushing their spirits or would like to figure out how to get a little help loading the dishwasher, preferably the same way every day.
X-a-Teen, for early-identified exuberants, to address the special needs of teenagers who are more teenager than most, perhaps preventing those early painful losses of friendship that can recur through life.
ACX: Adult Children of Exuberants, who can get together to vent about how distressing that Mom is still irrepressible, that Dad won’t stay home, and that when either of them comes to visit, locking the study door for a couple of hours a day is the only option that really works.
I don’t mean it to sound silly, least of all because I do greatly appreciate the work accomplished by various twelve-step groups. But it is kinda silly from a few points of view.
First, exuberance is a character trait as well as a set of behaviors. It is largely innate, although some thoughtful exuberants think there is an element of nurture as well. Although we may be clumsy and unwittingly intrude on others parts of the Forest, our character is not an illness like alcoholism or a pathological behavior. The negative effects of abuse of alcohol or many different drugs are well recognized and dwarf the impacts of the most outrageously bad over-exuberant behavior.
Second…anonymous? Yeah, right.
Third, there are many, many affinity groups on the net for us exuberants. We can read about gardening and about the slow food movement. We can get directions on how to reupholster a chair…then proceed to do it over the next fourteen hours. Those of us who are isolated geographically can find the most cosmopolitan and interesting friends, while luxuriating in the beauty of the Vermont countryside.
Finally, and most important, while we may need to learn to be more polite or more organized or even how to stand up for ourselves—we don’t need comfort for being made as we are. We are what we are…and it is glorious. I certainly don’t think I have been deprived of the melancholy end of the mood spectrum, leaving me with plenty of common experience with other humans. Occasionally, I have wished that life were more….even. Still, resilience of mood has carried me out of many a low period and eased many a touchy social situation. I, for one, would not want to be any different.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Exuberance!
On this beautiful Vermont Sunday morning, I am finishing up Kay Redmond Jamison’s Exuberance: The Passion for Life, a wonderful book chock-a-block with insight and love. Moody creature that I am, I have long held Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind as one of the very few books I must own. Ironically, I have given away many copies, but I don’t think I currently have one in the house.
Where that book was a declaration of the problem, sometimes raw confessional and sometimes hesitating hypothesis, this new Exuberance is the mature work of a gifted mind and a generous spirit. It makes me happy to count myself among the exuberant and it inspires me to apply that gift honorably and compassionately in the daily challenges of my own life.
I haven’t yet reached the end of Jamison’s book but already I have one big payoff. Those of us who are exuberant, who love life…we are different from others. The benefits of being made this way are many, and if we had a choice to make, we might choose to be exactly as we are. But there are undeniable shadows: the tendency to depression, the threat that we may merely skitter from one dilettantism to the next, and—perhaps most painful, the social judgments and penalties we suffer, even from those who claim to cherish us.
Early in the book, Jamison caught my attention by harking back to the efforts of Pooh, Piglet and Rabbit to take Tigger down a notch.
"[T]he other animals, who are more usually overshadowed by the ebullient Tigger…gather power from the need to reestablish order and to exert moral authority. The ballasting animals act out of concern, outrage and often a trace of envy as well. When necessary, they band together to take the erring animal in hand.”
“Rabbit, for one, in the wake of suspicions that Tigger has bounced Eeyore into the river, determines that Tigger is ‘too bouncy.’ He goes further: ‘It’s time we taught him a lesson.’ The problem with Tigger is that ‘there’s too much of him, that’s what it comes to.’ Eeyore, the aggrieved, is indeed offended: ‘Taking people by surprise. Very unpleasant habit. I don’t mind Tigger being in the Forest,’ he says, ‘because it’s a large Forest, and there’s plenty of room to bounce in it. But I don’t see why he should come into my little corner of it, and bounce there…”
“Rabbit concocts a plan for Piglet, Pooh, and Rabbit to take Tigger to a place he has never been before, to lose him, and then find him again the next morning. He will be, Rabbit assures Piglet and Pooh, ‘a different Tigger altogether…he’ll be a Humble Tigger…a Sad Tigger, a Melancholy Tigger, a Small and Sorry Tigger, an Oh-Rabbit-I-am-glad-to-see-you Tigger.’ Tigger will be deflated, unbounced, newly appreciative, and cut down to size: ‘If we can make Tigger feel Small and Sad for five minutes,’ explains Rabbit, ‘we shall have done a good deed.”
“Far from losing Tigger in the Forest, of course, Pooh, Piglet and Rabbit themselves become hopelessly lost in the mist. Tigger effortlessly finds his way out. Pooh and Piglet, after much aimless and anxious wandering about, eventually make their way to the clearing, but Rabbit remains stranded, unable to navigate back to safety. The maligned and still very much bounced Tigger bounces to Rabbit’s rescue, and into a different perspective: ‘Tigger was tearing around the Forest making loud yapping noises for Rabbit. And at last a very Small and Sorry Rabbit heard him. And the Small and Sorry Rabbit rushed through the mist at the noise, and it suddenly turned into Tigger; a friendly Tigger, a Grand Tigger, a Large and Helpful Tigger, a Tigger who bounced, if he bounced at all, in just the beautiful way a Tigger ought to bounce. “Oh, Tigger, I am glad to see you,” cried Rabbit.’” (Exuberance, pp. 74-75)
Known in the intimacy of my family circle by the nickname Pooh-bear, I was never properly recognized as more of a Tigger, but I have suffered Tigger’s fate repeatedly over the years until at last I learned the central lesson that all Tiggers must learn—to cherish my own bounce. Suppose the other animals had succeeded in de-bouncing Tigger. What is a Tigger without a bounce? Certainly no longer a Tigger. How unkind!
Now when someone tries to “take me down a notch,” I try to respond with patience and politeness. Where originates the impulse to rein in my behavior? Have I stepped on toes? Have I been insensitive? Is it time to take a breath and recognize that my own enthusiasms are not the only good ideas in the world? Compassion is a daily practice, not a character trait.
Accepting this shadow side of my character is productive, but allowing even the best-intentioned friends, lovers and colleagues to “take me down a notch” is not. In this central power struggle, I have racked up heavy losses, not willfully as so many perceive, but because I know one fundamental truth: that I cannot be different from how I was made.
Already crowding into my brain, I hear the attacks. Remember? I have heard them all my fifty years. “You can be different if you want to. If you loved me you would be different.”
Yes, I can try to be more organized, although given my phalanx of to-do lists and computer-aided productivity tools, I am already pushing the limits of carving time into tiny, purposeful bites. These tools serve one important purpose: to help me remember to do what I have said I would do.
Yes, I can devise tricks and schemes to keep my ebullience in check, to keep from bouncing all over other peoples’ parts of the Forest. This is the reason that I bring knitting to meetings—how it works, I cannot explain, but it does keep me quiet. Thank heaven for Vermont, where knitting in meetings is tolerated, if not exactly welcomed.
Yes, I can try to be sensitive to others’ needs. I can carve out time and intention to ask what others need or want. Still, I don’t think it is really fair to require that I read minds or take on managing the happiness of other people. My ex-husband used to play a particularly nasty game called Guess-what-will-make-me-happy-no-that’s-not-it. Attempts to elicit some inkling of what would make him happy were met by stony silence and another game called If-you-persist-in-being-yourself-I-will-declare-you-BAD. Maybe it’s true that he couldn’t do any better, but neither could I. In the end there was nothing I could do but leave, and it still breaks my heart.
The same story has played again and again with family, friends and lovers. I’m very bad at leaving, but the major lesson of my first fifty years of life has been learning to say goodbye, learning to say, “I do love you, but if you can’t accept me for who I am, then I will have to accept…finally…that I can’t be around you.” I can only hope and pray that I may get a different cosmic assignment sometime soon.
For all the changes I can make, all the changes I have made with respect to how I operate in the world, I cannot change my central character as a person of exuberance. The times I have allowed someone dear to me to convince me to try…have taken me down a road to disaster. Now I see any such attempt to change me as arrogant, flinging back into the face of God the gift of who I am. Now I see that I have limitations on what I can do with these very particular, very specific gifts. Bound by the laws of time and space, also by the looser bonds of probability and of human frailty, I need to choose carefully where I invest my talents. I pick my battles more consciously now, and I recognize that the decision rules have less to do with optimization and more to do with heuristics. Having moved past the stage of defining what my values ought to be, and even past the stage where I feel obliged to impose my value on others, I am now in a stage where what counts is the daily practice of applying my values to my own life.
So what’s today’s big challenge? On this Sunday morning, like most mornings, it is taking the time to center myself, to thank my Creator for making me just the way I am, and to think through what adjustments I may need to make in my own outlook and behavior in order to find the most loving solutions in the world. Let’s start with gratitude to Kay Redmond Jamison for sharing her life (how personal a gift!) and her work. She encourages me to treasure the gifts that I have and to invest some few precious hours in thinking, writing and play.
I have a friend who is fond of saying that there are two ways of dealing with people in the world—you can build them up or tear them down—and he chooses to build people up, speaking to their best selves and drawing out their highest impulses. I think he is absolutely right, but it is the way of the world to want to tamp down exuberance. We exuberant ones are the cheerleaders, but who will cheer us on? Bouncy creatures that we are, even Tiggers need to be built up from time to time.
Thank you, Dr. Jamison, for daring to publish a book as edgy and unfinished as An Unquiet Mind. Thank you for coming back to us with your later, mature thoughts on how to live with Exuberance. You cannot imagine how you have touched my life, how you have inspired me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Where that book was a declaration of the problem, sometimes raw confessional and sometimes hesitating hypothesis, this new Exuberance is the mature work of a gifted mind and a generous spirit. It makes me happy to count myself among the exuberant and it inspires me to apply that gift honorably and compassionately in the daily challenges of my own life.
I haven’t yet reached the end of Jamison’s book but already I have one big payoff. Those of us who are exuberant, who love life…we are different from others. The benefits of being made this way are many, and if we had a choice to make, we might choose to be exactly as we are. But there are undeniable shadows: the tendency to depression, the threat that we may merely skitter from one dilettantism to the next, and—perhaps most painful, the social judgments and penalties we suffer, even from those who claim to cherish us.
Early in the book, Jamison caught my attention by harking back to the efforts of Pooh, Piglet and Rabbit to take Tigger down a notch.
"[T]he other animals, who are more usually overshadowed by the ebullient Tigger…gather power from the need to reestablish order and to exert moral authority. The ballasting animals act out of concern, outrage and often a trace of envy as well. When necessary, they band together to take the erring animal in hand.”
“Rabbit, for one, in the wake of suspicions that Tigger has bounced Eeyore into the river, determines that Tigger is ‘too bouncy.’ He goes further: ‘It’s time we taught him a lesson.’ The problem with Tigger is that ‘there’s too much of him, that’s what it comes to.’ Eeyore, the aggrieved, is indeed offended: ‘Taking people by surprise. Very unpleasant habit. I don’t mind Tigger being in the Forest,’ he says, ‘because it’s a large Forest, and there’s plenty of room to bounce in it. But I don’t see why he should come into my little corner of it, and bounce there…”
“Rabbit concocts a plan for Piglet, Pooh, and Rabbit to take Tigger to a place he has never been before, to lose him, and then find him again the next morning. He will be, Rabbit assures Piglet and Pooh, ‘a different Tigger altogether…he’ll be a Humble Tigger…a Sad Tigger, a Melancholy Tigger, a Small and Sorry Tigger, an Oh-Rabbit-I-am-glad-to-see-you Tigger.’ Tigger will be deflated, unbounced, newly appreciative, and cut down to size: ‘If we can make Tigger feel Small and Sad for five minutes,’ explains Rabbit, ‘we shall have done a good deed.”
“Far from losing Tigger in the Forest, of course, Pooh, Piglet and Rabbit themselves become hopelessly lost in the mist. Tigger effortlessly finds his way out. Pooh and Piglet, after much aimless and anxious wandering about, eventually make their way to the clearing, but Rabbit remains stranded, unable to navigate back to safety. The maligned and still very much bounced Tigger bounces to Rabbit’s rescue, and into a different perspective: ‘Tigger was tearing around the Forest making loud yapping noises for Rabbit. And at last a very Small and Sorry Rabbit heard him. And the Small and Sorry Rabbit rushed through the mist at the noise, and it suddenly turned into Tigger; a friendly Tigger, a Grand Tigger, a Large and Helpful Tigger, a Tigger who bounced, if he bounced at all, in just the beautiful way a Tigger ought to bounce. “Oh, Tigger, I am glad to see you,” cried Rabbit.’” (Exuberance, pp. 74-75)
Known in the intimacy of my family circle by the nickname Pooh-bear, I was never properly recognized as more of a Tigger, but I have suffered Tigger’s fate repeatedly over the years until at last I learned the central lesson that all Tiggers must learn—to cherish my own bounce. Suppose the other animals had succeeded in de-bouncing Tigger. What is a Tigger without a bounce? Certainly no longer a Tigger. How unkind!
Now when someone tries to “take me down a notch,” I try to respond with patience and politeness. Where originates the impulse to rein in my behavior? Have I stepped on toes? Have I been insensitive? Is it time to take a breath and recognize that my own enthusiasms are not the only good ideas in the world? Compassion is a daily practice, not a character trait.
Accepting this shadow side of my character is productive, but allowing even the best-intentioned friends, lovers and colleagues to “take me down a notch” is not. In this central power struggle, I have racked up heavy losses, not willfully as so many perceive, but because I know one fundamental truth: that I cannot be different from how I was made.
Already crowding into my brain, I hear the attacks. Remember? I have heard them all my fifty years. “You can be different if you want to. If you loved me you would be different.”
Yes, I can try to be more organized, although given my phalanx of to-do lists and computer-aided productivity tools, I am already pushing the limits of carving time into tiny, purposeful bites. These tools serve one important purpose: to help me remember to do what I have said I would do.
Yes, I can devise tricks and schemes to keep my ebullience in check, to keep from bouncing all over other peoples’ parts of the Forest. This is the reason that I bring knitting to meetings—how it works, I cannot explain, but it does keep me quiet. Thank heaven for Vermont, where knitting in meetings is tolerated, if not exactly welcomed.
Yes, I can try to be sensitive to others’ needs. I can carve out time and intention to ask what others need or want. Still, I don’t think it is really fair to require that I read minds or take on managing the happiness of other people. My ex-husband used to play a particularly nasty game called Guess-what-will-make-me-happy-no-that’s-not-it. Attempts to elicit some inkling of what would make him happy were met by stony silence and another game called If-you-persist-in-being-yourself-I-will-declare-you-BAD. Maybe it’s true that he couldn’t do any better, but neither could I. In the end there was nothing I could do but leave, and it still breaks my heart.
The same story has played again and again with family, friends and lovers. I’m very bad at leaving, but the major lesson of my first fifty years of life has been learning to say goodbye, learning to say, “I do love you, but if you can’t accept me for who I am, then I will have to accept…finally…that I can’t be around you.” I can only hope and pray that I may get a different cosmic assignment sometime soon.
For all the changes I can make, all the changes I have made with respect to how I operate in the world, I cannot change my central character as a person of exuberance. The times I have allowed someone dear to me to convince me to try…have taken me down a road to disaster. Now I see any such attempt to change me as arrogant, flinging back into the face of God the gift of who I am. Now I see that I have limitations on what I can do with these very particular, very specific gifts. Bound by the laws of time and space, also by the looser bonds of probability and of human frailty, I need to choose carefully where I invest my talents. I pick my battles more consciously now, and I recognize that the decision rules have less to do with optimization and more to do with heuristics. Having moved past the stage of defining what my values ought to be, and even past the stage where I feel obliged to impose my value on others, I am now in a stage where what counts is the daily practice of applying my values to my own life.
So what’s today’s big challenge? On this Sunday morning, like most mornings, it is taking the time to center myself, to thank my Creator for making me just the way I am, and to think through what adjustments I may need to make in my own outlook and behavior in order to find the most loving solutions in the world. Let’s start with gratitude to Kay Redmond Jamison for sharing her life (how personal a gift!) and her work. She encourages me to treasure the gifts that I have and to invest some few precious hours in thinking, writing and play.
I have a friend who is fond of saying that there are two ways of dealing with people in the world—you can build them up or tear them down—and he chooses to build people up, speaking to their best selves and drawing out their highest impulses. I think he is absolutely right, but it is the way of the world to want to tamp down exuberance. We exuberant ones are the cheerleaders, but who will cheer us on? Bouncy creatures that we are, even Tiggers need to be built up from time to time.
Thank you, Dr. Jamison, for daring to publish a book as edgy and unfinished as An Unquiet Mind. Thank you for coming back to us with your later, mature thoughts on how to live with Exuberance. You cannot imagine how you have touched my life, how you have inspired me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Saturday, March 05, 2005
Living large
Kay Redmond Jamison’s new book Exuberance has to strike a chord with anyone who…well almost anyone. The childlike love of the whole wide world blessedly comes to most of us, if not all, and for some of us, it persists throughout out life. I count my blessings every day that I am a person of enthusiasms. As much as my moods can irritate more even-tempered friends and colleagues from time to time, mostly they appreciate my up moods, particularly in contrast to the times my anxieties betray a need to crawl back into my introvert’s shell for renewal.
Some days it seems that being upbeat is a social burden. People like to be around me when I am bubbly and fun and outgoing and extroverted…and not really entirely myself. Or rather it is myself, but it is the version that I choose to show to the world. In astrological terms, it would be the ascendant (Sagittarius) or mask that I must learn to wear as an interface to the outside world. With a sun sign in confident Leo and three or four planets in soupy, sensitive Cancer, I desperately need some kind of mask to interpose between my stormy self and the outside world.
Astrology or psychology or myth, like most people I try on stories (adult child of an alcoholic? Sagittarius rising? smart aleck kid? just plain bad? child of God?) that explain who I am and what I am in the great big world out there. Kay Redmond Jamison’s book is a compelling version: I am a person of exuberance.
I recall the exact moment some twenty years ago or more when I became aware that I simply must leap from passion to passion. A brainy child, I was horrified by this insight into my character. It was as if I inhabited someone else’s life. But I remember the moment, complete with where I was standing in a hallway in my white-painted, parquet floored Brooklyn apartment, the very moment when I accepted that my intellect was not the driver of my life, even if I could count on it as a governor of my wildest urges. And I have been happier since I accepted this truth about myself.
It explains a lot. Like how a kid from a tiny town in North Georgia found herself working on Wall Street. Funny, when I graduated from college, my greatest aspiration was to be competent at something, anything. Now I don’t think it is immodest to claim that I am extremely competent on a number of fronts, not that I don’t fail from time to time, not that I am perfect. But the lessons I learned on Wall Street built on the insight of exuberance as driver: live large, think big, …because what you can imagine, you can build. You start with a plan, a strategy, a concept and you keep putting pieces in place until it is time to change the plan, the strategy, the concept.
An important piece of the puzzle is the b-school concept of option preservation. I have an idea of how things can be, and I know what some of the pieces are, so I work on those. Sometimes I don’t really completely understand how all the pieces fit together, but I recognize that certain pieces keep the dream alive, so I work on those. Thus does faith work in support of passion, even in the absence of intellect.
Another important piece is learning to scope a problem on a large enough scale. As an analyst, I followed basic industries including paper, steel, chemicals, commodities, and I learned how to approach high fixed costs. Old-fashioned industries require major leaps of faith just to make investments to stay even on the competitive front. Hundreds of millions of dollars, recouped pennies at a time. I think of the new air-laid non-woven paper machine that went into one client’s factory and of the product manager’s prediction that over the coming years we would see numerous new products using this technology. And so it has come to pass: Clorox wipes, furniture polish wipes, wipes for nail polish remover, wipes that carry shoe polish, LED screen cleaner wipes, antibiotic wipes…and now the newest Preparation H wipes.
It is truly a big, wide, wonderful world with millions of tiny steps to pay for multi-million dollar machines. It all starts with a concept, a strategy and with exuberant embracing of the dream. It continues with hard work to keep options open, fed every day by more exuberant enthusiasms and passions. This is the stuff that life is made of, at least my life. How about yours?
Some days it seems that being upbeat is a social burden. People like to be around me when I am bubbly and fun and outgoing and extroverted…and not really entirely myself. Or rather it is myself, but it is the version that I choose to show to the world. In astrological terms, it would be the ascendant (Sagittarius) or mask that I must learn to wear as an interface to the outside world. With a sun sign in confident Leo and three or four planets in soupy, sensitive Cancer, I desperately need some kind of mask to interpose between my stormy self and the outside world.
Astrology or psychology or myth, like most people I try on stories (adult child of an alcoholic? Sagittarius rising? smart aleck kid? just plain bad? child of God?) that explain who I am and what I am in the great big world out there. Kay Redmond Jamison’s book is a compelling version: I am a person of exuberance.
I recall the exact moment some twenty years ago or more when I became aware that I simply must leap from passion to passion. A brainy child, I was horrified by this insight into my character. It was as if I inhabited someone else’s life. But I remember the moment, complete with where I was standing in a hallway in my white-painted, parquet floored Brooklyn apartment, the very moment when I accepted that my intellect was not the driver of my life, even if I could count on it as a governor of my wildest urges. And I have been happier since I accepted this truth about myself.
It explains a lot. Like how a kid from a tiny town in North Georgia found herself working on Wall Street. Funny, when I graduated from college, my greatest aspiration was to be competent at something, anything. Now I don’t think it is immodest to claim that I am extremely competent on a number of fronts, not that I don’t fail from time to time, not that I am perfect. But the lessons I learned on Wall Street built on the insight of exuberance as driver: live large, think big, …because what you can imagine, you can build. You start with a plan, a strategy, a concept and you keep putting pieces in place until it is time to change the plan, the strategy, the concept.
An important piece of the puzzle is the b-school concept of option preservation. I have an idea of how things can be, and I know what some of the pieces are, so I work on those. Sometimes I don’t really completely understand how all the pieces fit together, but I recognize that certain pieces keep the dream alive, so I work on those. Thus does faith work in support of passion, even in the absence of intellect.
Another important piece is learning to scope a problem on a large enough scale. As an analyst, I followed basic industries including paper, steel, chemicals, commodities, and I learned how to approach high fixed costs. Old-fashioned industries require major leaps of faith just to make investments to stay even on the competitive front. Hundreds of millions of dollars, recouped pennies at a time. I think of the new air-laid non-woven paper machine that went into one client’s factory and of the product manager’s prediction that over the coming years we would see numerous new products using this technology. And so it has come to pass: Clorox wipes, furniture polish wipes, wipes for nail polish remover, wipes that carry shoe polish, LED screen cleaner wipes, antibiotic wipes…and now the newest Preparation H wipes.
It is truly a big, wide, wonderful world with millions of tiny steps to pay for multi-million dollar machines. It all starts with a concept, a strategy and with exuberant embracing of the dream. It continues with hard work to keep options open, fed every day by more exuberant enthusiasms and passions. This is the stuff that life is made of, at least my life. How about yours?
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Town Meeting Day
Yesterday was my second Town Meeting Day in Vermont, and it passed companionably and uneventfully. I attended two Town Meetings yesterday—the Town where I live and the largest Town in the county—and spent my time as others did, chatting, laughing, and comparing knitting. I am pleased that I learned just yesterday how to do double knitting and how to make mittens with thumbs.
The experience was different from last year’s introduction. Last year, I just soaked up the atmosphere of this amazing tradition, a pure democratic process in which everything that needs the stamp of voter approval is put forth, discussed, and voted by the people who attend. I was impressed by the skills of moderators, the broad acceptance and observation of Robert’s Rules of Order, and the overwhelming courtesy of all participants, even those who got excited about their particular concerns. This year, I was able to sit back and observe more clearly that in Town Meeting, like any other effectively managed meeting, most of the hard work and decisions have already been structured for the voters, making the meeting itself almost a formality. Almost.
Since the tiny non-profit I represent receives funding appropriations from nine area towns, I go to Town Meeting in the mostly unrealistic fear that my organization’s funding may be questioned, or worse, that my neighbors may start pelting me with rotten vegetables that they have been hoarding just for this occasion. Truly, Vermonters are more polite and reserved than that, but you never really know what public outburst of some private disappointment may surface unexpectedly. Over the coming weeks, I will hear if appropriations in the other seven towns survived, but for now, like my neighbors, I can turn my attention to starting seeds and looking to spring. Town Meeting Day is the traditional day to start seeds indoors.
I have also come to see Town Meeting Day as useful allegory for decision-making. In my ongoing struggle to establish boundaries for myself or for other people who seem heck-bent on intruding on mine, Town Meeting Day provides a happy model. To the person who has strong opinions about how I run my personal life, I say, “That’s very interesting. You are of course entitled to your opinion, but since you are not a resident of the Town of Karen, you do not have a vote.” The sputtered, “But-but-but…you can’t do that!” is countered with a calm, “Thank you for your input.”
It also works as I try to change how I make my own decisions. You see, lots of people have input into the decisions that are made at Town Meeting, but the final decisions are made only by the people who show up. There were many years in my life during which the Kid and the Grown-up struggled over decisions. The Kid would whine, “But I want to play more,” while the Grown-up overruled with, “First, we pay the bills.” The Kid would then compromise by getting the Grown-up to agree to have ice cream for dinner. It was the Kid who got the Grown-up to agree to have a house and a dog. It was the Grown-up who exulted in the delight of intellectual stimulation of work and tamped down looming health issues. The Body’s requirements, whether for rest or exercise or relief of stress, were simply ignored. Now that the Body shows up for Town Meeting, the overall decisions are better. Proposals to have ice cream for dinner are roundly voted down by both the Grown-up and the Body, but the Body and the Kid gang up on the Grown-up (who can be an old grouch) and get more physical activity into the mix. We are all happier in this new system. We are all happier in Vermont.
The experience was different from last year’s introduction. Last year, I just soaked up the atmosphere of this amazing tradition, a pure democratic process in which everything that needs the stamp of voter approval is put forth, discussed, and voted by the people who attend. I was impressed by the skills of moderators, the broad acceptance and observation of Robert’s Rules of Order, and the overwhelming courtesy of all participants, even those who got excited about their particular concerns. This year, I was able to sit back and observe more clearly that in Town Meeting, like any other effectively managed meeting, most of the hard work and decisions have already been structured for the voters, making the meeting itself almost a formality. Almost.
Since the tiny non-profit I represent receives funding appropriations from nine area towns, I go to Town Meeting in the mostly unrealistic fear that my organization’s funding may be questioned, or worse, that my neighbors may start pelting me with rotten vegetables that they have been hoarding just for this occasion. Truly, Vermonters are more polite and reserved than that, but you never really know what public outburst of some private disappointment may surface unexpectedly. Over the coming weeks, I will hear if appropriations in the other seven towns survived, but for now, like my neighbors, I can turn my attention to starting seeds and looking to spring. Town Meeting Day is the traditional day to start seeds indoors.
I have also come to see Town Meeting Day as useful allegory for decision-making. In my ongoing struggle to establish boundaries for myself or for other people who seem heck-bent on intruding on mine, Town Meeting Day provides a happy model. To the person who has strong opinions about how I run my personal life, I say, “That’s very interesting. You are of course entitled to your opinion, but since you are not a resident of the Town of Karen, you do not have a vote.” The sputtered, “But-but-but…you can’t do that!” is countered with a calm, “Thank you for your input.”
It also works as I try to change how I make my own decisions. You see, lots of people have input into the decisions that are made at Town Meeting, but the final decisions are made only by the people who show up. There were many years in my life during which the Kid and the Grown-up struggled over decisions. The Kid would whine, “But I want to play more,” while the Grown-up overruled with, “First, we pay the bills.” The Kid would then compromise by getting the Grown-up to agree to have ice cream for dinner. It was the Kid who got the Grown-up to agree to have a house and a dog. It was the Grown-up who exulted in the delight of intellectual stimulation of work and tamped down looming health issues. The Body’s requirements, whether for rest or exercise or relief of stress, were simply ignored. Now that the Body shows up for Town Meeting, the overall decisions are better. Proposals to have ice cream for dinner are roundly voted down by both the Grown-up and the Body, but the Body and the Kid gang up on the Grown-up (who can be an old grouch) and get more physical activity into the mix. We are all happier in this new system. We are all happier in Vermont.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Home Improvement
I don’t understand the concept of professional decorators. In every house I have owned, it was essential that I live in the house for quite some time, sometimes years, before I knew what the house wanted me to do to bring it back to its full glory. On Staten Island, the process of bringing back a shaggy monster to a presentable but loving creature took me a decade, and truly the process was barely begun when I handed the house over to other caretakers. In that house, like this one in Vermont, I was a newcomer.
The Staten Island house was near the ferry to Manhattan, in a neighborhood that was up and coming a hundred and fifty years ago. In a neighborhood of Victorians, my house stood out as old fashioned. It was brick, probably originally painted brick, with a mansard roof and the floor plan of a classic New York brownstone with front and back parlor on the first floor, kitchen in the basement with an entrance out back for disposal of slops. The second floor boasted two large and two small rooms, with hardwood floors laid on the diagonal and a sixty-year-old bathroom. An almost identical floor plan prevailed on the third floor, originally servants’ quarters even in this middle-class structure, which showed only wide-plank subfloors and distressing glimpses of sky through gaps around windows and skylight.
Already outdated architecture when built, the house featured four slate fireplaces painted to look like marble, wood moldings always meant to be painted, doors painted to look like woodgrain and exquisite plaster crown moldings in the first floor parlor. It was a bourgeois dream, an imitation in affordable materials of loftier architecture for wealthier patrons.
Originally built by Orlando and Lydia Lee around 1862, the house was sold in the 1890’s. When Orlando Lee failed to return from the Civil War, one can only imagine what happened to Lydia’s hopes and dreams of a home on the north shore of New York’s now forgotten borough. For the next ninety-some years, the house was in one family, until a local man purchased it along with others on the block and turned it into cheap apartments. The best one can say of his stewardship—and it is a positive thing—is that he didn’t do too much harm before it passed to a local developer and then to me.
Of Italian extraction, local guy Tony lived sometimes on the North Shore with the “Irish broad” next door and their kid and sometimes on the South Shore with his wife. An old man when I knew him, Tony had at one time owned most of the houses on my block, including a multi-family renovated by a gay couple who had since moved on to other houses and other loves.
One sunny afternoon, prompted by too much wine, one of the guys traded notes with me about Tony’s renovation techniques. “Ya see, he didn’t like to put too much money into these things,” Edward confided, “and when we finally had to replace the boiler, we found that it had a big crack in it. Tony had just jammed a tree—yes, a big chunk of a tree branch—into the crack and plastered all around with furnace cement. The amazing thing is that it held for another ten, twelve years until we had to replace the whole furnace. But you gotta wonder what else he did.”
[NOTE: Do NOT try this at home. It was very lucky that this patch held as it did. It was never a good idea. Call a professional to fix your furnace. Muck around with something less dangerous.]
I was able to contribute some other things that Tony’s imagination—or lack of it—brought to the party. Take the large third floor front bedroom in my house. Once I ripped down all the layers of sheetrock on top, I was able to see a sweetly curved plaster wall that tracked the line of the mansard roof. That curve, along with the three-quarter round molding on casement windows that originally swung open to the inside, bespoke architectural details that broke my heart. They were beautiful, livable, and if it weren’t for Tony’s admittedly ham-handed use of sheetrock, I would never have known they were there. With a lot of hours and a cunning amalgam of plaster and joint compound, I was able to reconstruct that one room.
I had some other wins in that house. I paid someone thousands of dollars—I do remember what it was like to have money for such frivolous projects—to rebuild a twelve-foot chunk of the twining, three-floor banister. And then I searched through antique stores and salvage yards to find balusters that matched close enough in cut, and the staircase was reclaimed. I also paid to have water-damaged floors on the second floor relaid, using the original diagonal plan in oak with a simple border of cherry. Two sets of pocket doors on the second floor were unusual for today’s usage of rooms, but they were what the house wanted. And in the short time I lived there, they made for wonderfully flexible space.
Some projects were simple. My memory flashes back to talking to a Tokyo colleague late at night and wondering…what are those big lumps in the sheetrock on the back wall of the second floor? I probably should have waited until the phone call was finished before sticking a pin in one, only to discover that the leaking roof had allowed water to come in, travel down the wall and get trapped between the sheetrock and its paper cover. Eeeeyuck. Mold. Disgusting. But just one of the things that is solved with a judicious mixture of joint compound, plaster, and mold-resistant shellac-based primer.
Taking down the ornate plaster rosette in the first floor front parlor was not complicated, but it was an adventure, involving me—alone on a ladder—and two sofas to catch the pieces. Ultimately, the reconstructed plaster painted in ornate colors was re-installed to a sheet of secure plywood and re-integrated into the ceiling, complete with those wonderful twelve-inch-deep plaster crown moldings lined out in gold and cream and white.
Other projects were more involved, including the reconstruction of the first floor bathroom ceiling, after the second-floor bathroom plumbing exceeded its useful life. It turns out, you see, that old cast iron pipes have a life of about sixty years before they start to “pinhole.” Once that happens, they leak into the walls and floor and ceiling, with the inevitable result that eventually the whole soggy mess comes crashing down. I learned to be grateful that the compromised beams had not come down along with the twenties-vintage cast iron bathtub. So we (the plumbers and carpenters and me) pulled out the second floor bathtub, reinforced the beams, re-did the plumbing, put in new tile floors and walls, and the whole room should be good for another century.
The kitchen was another such project. When I moved in, there were two kitchens, one in a first floor addition extending out into the back yard, but unaccountably with no actual exit into the back yard. The house was a legal two-family, and the other kitchen was in a front room on the second floor, and as soon as I could afford not to have a tenant, I took back the whole house and started to reclaim the first floor kitchen. I really didn’t have a choice. The window at the far end of the galley kitchen was leaking badly and the frame had rotted. A door to the garden seemed to be an obvious replacement.
But if I was going to replace the window with a door, I needed to move the stove which currently snugged up to the window. And if I was moving the stove, I might take the opportunity to paint the cabinets and replace the (horrible, nasty!) counter and backsplash. But if I was going to pull out the cabinets for repainting and reconfiguring…it would be the right time to do some insulation in this substandard and chilly structure, and maybe some new outlets and lighting would be a good idea? I didn’t even know what to do with the pantry that appeared to have been a dumbwaiter to the basement in a previous life.
By this time, I was down to the studs, and my brother was crooning, soothingly, into the phone….”You pulled a thread on the sweater, didn’t you?” Well, yes. I did.
How did I get into this mess? I didn’t have enough intellectual stimulation at work. Note to self: watch that.
And I really, really wanted to learn some of these skills: painting, plastering, planning, being the general contractor. Thousands and thousands of dollars later, I had a really great time, even though I didn’t always recognize it as such and even though I didn’t even come close to getting my money back when I sold the house. But for entertainment value, you just can’t beat the experience of figuring out how to put back that sweet curve to a wall (water on a paint roller applied to a double layer of eighth-inch sheetrock to enhance the curve) or rediscovering the exact right colors for a house. I wouldn’t trade the experience for any amount of money or for anything else I can imagine.
I would also think twice before buying another house with as many major problems. Water damage will forever be a big red flag for me. Having a roof right now is nice, but I lived through moldy walls, crumbling woodwork, compromised beams, the incredible collapsing bathroom, and the bizarre image of water pooling inside the glass bells of my front hall chandelier. Can you spell short circuit?
My Chattanooga house required nothing more from me than new wallpaper in the bedroom and living room and a little paint, mostly in a nice green-tea color. If I had stayed longer, something would have had to be done about those birds on the entryway wallpaper…but I wasn’t there long enough to worry with them. I did manage to eradicate the dreaded and dreadful hostas from the front flower beds, but not the hydrangea that still threatens Chattanooga.
Here, life is not so frightening. The guy who sold me the house had an ex-wife who delighted in wallpaper with tiny floral prints—ick! Last summer, I disposed of her above-ground pool (this summer it will be an herb garden) and miles of nasty, cheap tan carpet. Even though the house is chillier this year without it, my spirit is warmed to see the fourteen-inch maple boards that run right through to my study, and my new gas stove offers a focal point and cheerful warmth in the living room. Living room (maroon floral stripe), kitchen (two varieties of tiny floral print divided by a border “chair rail”—who ever thought this was a good idea in a room with uneven floors and only seven-foot ceilings?) and upstairs bathroom (straw hats with blue ribbons—I am speechless with horror) wallpaper have been replaced, and I would have sworn that the next priority was the dining room. Or possibly painting the faux wood paneling upstairs. Maybe even rebuilding the walls to the stairwell—not even a challenge—and painting them to match the soothing blue-green of the living room
Until today. I walked into the downstairs bathroom and within minutes, without the aid of any tool other than my fingernails and my distaste for tiny-print-floral-wallpaper, much of the wallpaper was gone. I hate when that happens.
But you have to listen to what comes next. If it is the bathroom wallpaper that needs to be shredded, who am I to argue?
The Staten Island house was near the ferry to Manhattan, in a neighborhood that was up and coming a hundred and fifty years ago. In a neighborhood of Victorians, my house stood out as old fashioned. It was brick, probably originally painted brick, with a mansard roof and the floor plan of a classic New York brownstone with front and back parlor on the first floor, kitchen in the basement with an entrance out back for disposal of slops. The second floor boasted two large and two small rooms, with hardwood floors laid on the diagonal and a sixty-year-old bathroom. An almost identical floor plan prevailed on the third floor, originally servants’ quarters even in this middle-class structure, which showed only wide-plank subfloors and distressing glimpses of sky through gaps around windows and skylight.
Already outdated architecture when built, the house featured four slate fireplaces painted to look like marble, wood moldings always meant to be painted, doors painted to look like woodgrain and exquisite plaster crown moldings in the first floor parlor. It was a bourgeois dream, an imitation in affordable materials of loftier architecture for wealthier patrons.
Originally built by Orlando and Lydia Lee around 1862, the house was sold in the 1890’s. When Orlando Lee failed to return from the Civil War, one can only imagine what happened to Lydia’s hopes and dreams of a home on the north shore of New York’s now forgotten borough. For the next ninety-some years, the house was in one family, until a local man purchased it along with others on the block and turned it into cheap apartments. The best one can say of his stewardship—and it is a positive thing—is that he didn’t do too much harm before it passed to a local developer and then to me.
Of Italian extraction, local guy Tony lived sometimes on the North Shore with the “Irish broad” next door and their kid and sometimes on the South Shore with his wife. An old man when I knew him, Tony had at one time owned most of the houses on my block, including a multi-family renovated by a gay couple who had since moved on to other houses and other loves.
One sunny afternoon, prompted by too much wine, one of the guys traded notes with me about Tony’s renovation techniques. “Ya see, he didn’t like to put too much money into these things,” Edward confided, “and when we finally had to replace the boiler, we found that it had a big crack in it. Tony had just jammed a tree—yes, a big chunk of a tree branch—into the crack and plastered all around with furnace cement. The amazing thing is that it held for another ten, twelve years until we had to replace the whole furnace. But you gotta wonder what else he did.”
[NOTE: Do NOT try this at home. It was very lucky that this patch held as it did. It was never a good idea. Call a professional to fix your furnace. Muck around with something less dangerous.]
I was able to contribute some other things that Tony’s imagination—or lack of it—brought to the party. Take the large third floor front bedroom in my house. Once I ripped down all the layers of sheetrock on top, I was able to see a sweetly curved plaster wall that tracked the line of the mansard roof. That curve, along with the three-quarter round molding on casement windows that originally swung open to the inside, bespoke architectural details that broke my heart. They were beautiful, livable, and if it weren’t for Tony’s admittedly ham-handed use of sheetrock, I would never have known they were there. With a lot of hours and a cunning amalgam of plaster and joint compound, I was able to reconstruct that one room.
I had some other wins in that house. I paid someone thousands of dollars—I do remember what it was like to have money for such frivolous projects—to rebuild a twelve-foot chunk of the twining, three-floor banister. And then I searched through antique stores and salvage yards to find balusters that matched close enough in cut, and the staircase was reclaimed. I also paid to have water-damaged floors on the second floor relaid, using the original diagonal plan in oak with a simple border of cherry. Two sets of pocket doors on the second floor were unusual for today’s usage of rooms, but they were what the house wanted. And in the short time I lived there, they made for wonderfully flexible space.
Some projects were simple. My memory flashes back to talking to a Tokyo colleague late at night and wondering…what are those big lumps in the sheetrock on the back wall of the second floor? I probably should have waited until the phone call was finished before sticking a pin in one, only to discover that the leaking roof had allowed water to come in, travel down the wall and get trapped between the sheetrock and its paper cover. Eeeeyuck. Mold. Disgusting. But just one of the things that is solved with a judicious mixture of joint compound, plaster, and mold-resistant shellac-based primer.
Taking down the ornate plaster rosette in the first floor front parlor was not complicated, but it was an adventure, involving me—alone on a ladder—and two sofas to catch the pieces. Ultimately, the reconstructed plaster painted in ornate colors was re-installed to a sheet of secure plywood and re-integrated into the ceiling, complete with those wonderful twelve-inch-deep plaster crown moldings lined out in gold and cream and white.
Other projects were more involved, including the reconstruction of the first floor bathroom ceiling, after the second-floor bathroom plumbing exceeded its useful life. It turns out, you see, that old cast iron pipes have a life of about sixty years before they start to “pinhole.” Once that happens, they leak into the walls and floor and ceiling, with the inevitable result that eventually the whole soggy mess comes crashing down. I learned to be grateful that the compromised beams had not come down along with the twenties-vintage cast iron bathtub. So we (the plumbers and carpenters and me) pulled out the second floor bathtub, reinforced the beams, re-did the plumbing, put in new tile floors and walls, and the whole room should be good for another century.
The kitchen was another such project. When I moved in, there were two kitchens, one in a first floor addition extending out into the back yard, but unaccountably with no actual exit into the back yard. The house was a legal two-family, and the other kitchen was in a front room on the second floor, and as soon as I could afford not to have a tenant, I took back the whole house and started to reclaim the first floor kitchen. I really didn’t have a choice. The window at the far end of the galley kitchen was leaking badly and the frame had rotted. A door to the garden seemed to be an obvious replacement.
But if I was going to replace the window with a door, I needed to move the stove which currently snugged up to the window. And if I was moving the stove, I might take the opportunity to paint the cabinets and replace the (horrible, nasty!) counter and backsplash. But if I was going to pull out the cabinets for repainting and reconfiguring…it would be the right time to do some insulation in this substandard and chilly structure, and maybe some new outlets and lighting would be a good idea? I didn’t even know what to do with the pantry that appeared to have been a dumbwaiter to the basement in a previous life.
By this time, I was down to the studs, and my brother was crooning, soothingly, into the phone….”You pulled a thread on the sweater, didn’t you?” Well, yes. I did.
How did I get into this mess? I didn’t have enough intellectual stimulation at work. Note to self: watch that.
And I really, really wanted to learn some of these skills: painting, plastering, planning, being the general contractor. Thousands and thousands of dollars later, I had a really great time, even though I didn’t always recognize it as such and even though I didn’t even come close to getting my money back when I sold the house. But for entertainment value, you just can’t beat the experience of figuring out how to put back that sweet curve to a wall (water on a paint roller applied to a double layer of eighth-inch sheetrock to enhance the curve) or rediscovering the exact right colors for a house. I wouldn’t trade the experience for any amount of money or for anything else I can imagine.
I would also think twice before buying another house with as many major problems. Water damage will forever be a big red flag for me. Having a roof right now is nice, but I lived through moldy walls, crumbling woodwork, compromised beams, the incredible collapsing bathroom, and the bizarre image of water pooling inside the glass bells of my front hall chandelier. Can you spell short circuit?
My Chattanooga house required nothing more from me than new wallpaper in the bedroom and living room and a little paint, mostly in a nice green-tea color. If I had stayed longer, something would have had to be done about those birds on the entryway wallpaper…but I wasn’t there long enough to worry with them. I did manage to eradicate the dreaded and dreadful hostas from the front flower beds, but not the hydrangea that still threatens Chattanooga.
Here, life is not so frightening. The guy who sold me the house had an ex-wife who delighted in wallpaper with tiny floral prints—ick! Last summer, I disposed of her above-ground pool (this summer it will be an herb garden) and miles of nasty, cheap tan carpet. Even though the house is chillier this year without it, my spirit is warmed to see the fourteen-inch maple boards that run right through to my study, and my new gas stove offers a focal point and cheerful warmth in the living room. Living room (maroon floral stripe), kitchen (two varieties of tiny floral print divided by a border “chair rail”—who ever thought this was a good idea in a room with uneven floors and only seven-foot ceilings?) and upstairs bathroom (straw hats with blue ribbons—I am speechless with horror) wallpaper have been replaced, and I would have sworn that the next priority was the dining room. Or possibly painting the faux wood paneling upstairs. Maybe even rebuilding the walls to the stairwell—not even a challenge—and painting them to match the soothing blue-green of the living room
Until today. I walked into the downstairs bathroom and within minutes, without the aid of any tool other than my fingernails and my distaste for tiny-print-floral-wallpaper, much of the wallpaper was gone. I hate when that happens.
But you have to listen to what comes next. If it is the bathroom wallpaper that needs to be shredded, who am I to argue?
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Object Lessons
My old coffee maker died a couple of months ago, and I replaced it with a small, cheap one from the grocery store, which pumped hot water and coffee grounds all over the counter this morning. Harking back to a conversation with my brother, who had recently re-discovered the joys of the French press, I turned away from the mess in my kitchen in favor of mainlining caffeine as quickly as possible. I have a small French press coffeemaker in the cupboard. I’m sure there are instructions somewhere in my large cookbook collection, which fills one floor-to-ceiling bookcase and part of another, but it is quicker to go online for simple directions.
Ah. Ready. Two tablespoons finely, freshly ground coffee for each six ounces of water brought to a boil and allowed to cool just a few degrees. I even warmed my mug in hot water while I waited for the coffee to steep for four minutes. It is darned cold in this Vermont farmhouse this morning, and I need hot coffee.
While it steeps, let me note that I bought this particular French press coffee maker for some tiny amount of money (two dollars? or was it three?) many years ago because it was cute. It is a beaker with a bright yellow plastic piece on the bottom to stabilize it and protect a table surface and a yellow plastic top with a perky ball knob handle. As I fit the lid onto the beaker, I try to align it properly with the pouring spout of the beaker. I don’t really see how this is supposed to work, but maybe it will all come clear once the plunger is depressed. After all, my engineering skills are not at their best before coffee.
Steeping, steeping. Depress the plunger. Ah, that coffee really does look good. I can see a snowy Vermont hillside right through the coffee and my kitchen window.
Now if I could only get the coffee out of the beaker….
Sure enough, this particular French press has a design flaw. You can make the coffee, but the only way to get it out of the beaker is to take off the lid, releasing plunger and coffee grounds. After I strain the longed-for brew through a conventional coffee filter, I have to admit, it is a superior cup of joe. Perhaps that happy result is what makes it possible for me to move on to philosophize about my morning adventure.
Many years ago, I dated a psychologist who went to great pains to teach me that frustration is not an emotion but a state of fact. Many people use the word “frustrated” as a synonym for “angry,” but this usage is incorrect and misleading. This morning I was frustrated by my flawed possession, but I was never angry. Why waste good psychic energy being angry at an inanimate object? It has been what it is since it was made, and my emotional response to it does not change the object at all. The same can be said of people in our lives.
If not angry, how was I feeling? Fuzzy and in need of coffee. Bemused: how does this thing work? Pleased that my newly rebuilt computer has internet access and Google delivers the goods. Amused at myself for having carted around for a couple of decades a cute little pot that simply does not work. All the more amused because I have made several major efforts to pare back the number of possessions I cart around, and this pot has made the cut every time…even though it is completely dysfunctional. I wonder what character traits are the same.
It is an object lesson to me. That rule that organizers have about throwing something out if you haven’t used it in the last year…it’s probably a good rule. I probably should not let cuteness or familiarity override that rule.
Simplifying my life is an ongoing goal for me. When I left the house I occupied on Staten Island for ten years, I left behind rooms of stuff which I hired someone to take away. He was an unreformed packrat (it is good to know those when you are trying to simplify) and wanted some things, but I suspect that many ended up in the infamous, oddly named landfill at Fresh Kills, perhaps right alongside the remains of the World Trade Center. Many other things likely remain in his junkyard or his antique store or his B&B, waiting their turn to go to the landfill. Many people really enjoy their relationships to stuff; I have spent decades learning that I am not one of them.
When I left Chattanooga, I sold, gave away, or threw away huge amounts of stuff. And when I left New York City for Vermont, all my stuff had to fit in a twenty-foot truck. It was tight, and in my view, I still have way too much stuff.
Of all the things I left behind, I have only missed a few—my sweet little gas grill, which my mother adopted then returned to me here in Vermont, and my power tools, with which my brother did likewise. Like I said, when you are trying to simplify, it is good to know packrats, particularly good-hearted, generous ones. From time to time, I think wistfully of certain pieces of furniture that needed repair or refinishing, but honestly, it is easy to find more projects. The clear, clean openness of my home and my life are far more important to me than any of the things I have divested.
Clearly, I should have given away more! Each successive purge increases the risk that I will get rid of something I will regret, but experiences like this morning’s remind me that I still have way, way too much stuff. Imagine. A coffee maker that doesn’t work, and I have stored it, washed it several times, packed it in paper so it wouldn’t break for four moves, unpacked it…but never used it. Because if I had ever used it, I would surely have noticed that it does not work.
Probably there was some overlooked manufacturing step that would have pierced the lid’s inner rim to allow coffee to flow. I really, really like this little pot (don’t ask me why?), so I am actually considering getting out my power drill and putting a hole or two in the rim. I am also considering weeding my beloved but unwieldy cookbook collection.
If we can’t get my relationships to things right, how can we ever hope to get relationships with people or—as the Buddhists would say—with sentient beings right? I am working toward simplicity and compassion in my life. I think of how hard it is to love anyone properly: just look at what I put Max and Toby through in the name of reaching out to help puppies.
Right now it seems to me that my major challenges are acceptance of my own limited capacities and the need for vigilant awareness of the importance of being present in the moment. We are all constrained by the laws of time and space. Some days it is entropy that bugs me most; some days it is aging; some days it is the intricacies of human relationships in which none of us can ever do or be enough for the others of us. If I take the time to get centered, I see…again and again…that the world is things whirling in space, time having its way with objects. The greatest blessing in my life, for which I am deeply grateful, is the faith that however difficult it is for me to accept constraints, in the end what I have is enough.
Ah. Ready. Two tablespoons finely, freshly ground coffee for each six ounces of water brought to a boil and allowed to cool just a few degrees. I even warmed my mug in hot water while I waited for the coffee to steep for four minutes. It is darned cold in this Vermont farmhouse this morning, and I need hot coffee.
While it steeps, let me note that I bought this particular French press coffee maker for some tiny amount of money (two dollars? or was it three?) many years ago because it was cute. It is a beaker with a bright yellow plastic piece on the bottom to stabilize it and protect a table surface and a yellow plastic top with a perky ball knob handle. As I fit the lid onto the beaker, I try to align it properly with the pouring spout of the beaker. I don’t really see how this is supposed to work, but maybe it will all come clear once the plunger is depressed. After all, my engineering skills are not at their best before coffee.
Steeping, steeping. Depress the plunger. Ah, that coffee really does look good. I can see a snowy Vermont hillside right through the coffee and my kitchen window.
Now if I could only get the coffee out of the beaker….
Sure enough, this particular French press has a design flaw. You can make the coffee, but the only way to get it out of the beaker is to take off the lid, releasing plunger and coffee grounds. After I strain the longed-for brew through a conventional coffee filter, I have to admit, it is a superior cup of joe. Perhaps that happy result is what makes it possible for me to move on to philosophize about my morning adventure.
Many years ago, I dated a psychologist who went to great pains to teach me that frustration is not an emotion but a state of fact. Many people use the word “frustrated” as a synonym for “angry,” but this usage is incorrect and misleading. This morning I was frustrated by my flawed possession, but I was never angry. Why waste good psychic energy being angry at an inanimate object? It has been what it is since it was made, and my emotional response to it does not change the object at all. The same can be said of people in our lives.
If not angry, how was I feeling? Fuzzy and in need of coffee. Bemused: how does this thing work? Pleased that my newly rebuilt computer has internet access and Google delivers the goods. Amused at myself for having carted around for a couple of decades a cute little pot that simply does not work. All the more amused because I have made several major efforts to pare back the number of possessions I cart around, and this pot has made the cut every time…even though it is completely dysfunctional. I wonder what character traits are the same.
It is an object lesson to me. That rule that organizers have about throwing something out if you haven’t used it in the last year…it’s probably a good rule. I probably should not let cuteness or familiarity override that rule.
Simplifying my life is an ongoing goal for me. When I left the house I occupied on Staten Island for ten years, I left behind rooms of stuff which I hired someone to take away. He was an unreformed packrat (it is good to know those when you are trying to simplify) and wanted some things, but I suspect that many ended up in the infamous, oddly named landfill at Fresh Kills, perhaps right alongside the remains of the World Trade Center. Many other things likely remain in his junkyard or his antique store or his B&B, waiting their turn to go to the landfill. Many people really enjoy their relationships to stuff; I have spent decades learning that I am not one of them.
When I left Chattanooga, I sold, gave away, or threw away huge amounts of stuff. And when I left New York City for Vermont, all my stuff had to fit in a twenty-foot truck. It was tight, and in my view, I still have way too much stuff.
Of all the things I left behind, I have only missed a few—my sweet little gas grill, which my mother adopted then returned to me here in Vermont, and my power tools, with which my brother did likewise. Like I said, when you are trying to simplify, it is good to know packrats, particularly good-hearted, generous ones. From time to time, I think wistfully of certain pieces of furniture that needed repair or refinishing, but honestly, it is easy to find more projects. The clear, clean openness of my home and my life are far more important to me than any of the things I have divested.
Clearly, I should have given away more! Each successive purge increases the risk that I will get rid of something I will regret, but experiences like this morning’s remind me that I still have way, way too much stuff. Imagine. A coffee maker that doesn’t work, and I have stored it, washed it several times, packed it in paper so it wouldn’t break for four moves, unpacked it…but never used it. Because if I had ever used it, I would surely have noticed that it does not work.
Probably there was some overlooked manufacturing step that would have pierced the lid’s inner rim to allow coffee to flow. I really, really like this little pot (don’t ask me why?), so I am actually considering getting out my power drill and putting a hole or two in the rim. I am also considering weeding my beloved but unwieldy cookbook collection.
If we can’t get my relationships to things right, how can we ever hope to get relationships with people or—as the Buddhists would say—with sentient beings right? I am working toward simplicity and compassion in my life. I think of how hard it is to love anyone properly: just look at what I put Max and Toby through in the name of reaching out to help puppies.
Right now it seems to me that my major challenges are acceptance of my own limited capacities and the need for vigilant awareness of the importance of being present in the moment. We are all constrained by the laws of time and space. Some days it is entropy that bugs me most; some days it is aging; some days it is the intricacies of human relationships in which none of us can ever do or be enough for the others of us. If I take the time to get centered, I see…again and again…that the world is things whirling in space, time having its way with objects. The greatest blessing in my life, for which I am deeply grateful, is the faith that however difficult it is for me to accept constraints, in the end what I have is enough.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
February
You will suffer some kind of setback today, and for an hour or two you may be rather depressed about it. However, you are not the sort to despair for long and by the end of the day you will be planning your next major move. Sooner or later, one of your big ideas is going to pay off - that's why you must never give up.
Setback? Setback? I’m really not in the mood.
How did I manage to forget that it is February? There are all sorts of rational explanations for it, but the observed truth is that February has always been a challenging month for me. I have my therapy lamp and my cherished daily routines to prop me up, but still February nags and annoys.
Each year, I slide into February with hope that it will be different. No, that’s wrong. I always forget that February is like this. This year I thought it was the legislative rough-and-tumble that was bugging me. I mean, really, what is it that happens under the dome to transform people of good will and better intentions into single-issue monomaniacs clinging to party affiliations over the common good of Vermonters?
Personally, I don’t even recall which party—if any—I registered. I have been registered as an independent most of my life, except when I lived in Philadelphia during Frank Rizzo’s attempted comeback and I really, really, really wanted to register an anti-Rizzo vote in the primary. Perhaps this means that I don’t have a grasp of the larger issues or the long term. Perhaps I don’t understand how to make a politically expedient trade. Or perhaps I just have a fundamental objection to the junior high cliques and transactions of our political process. Whispers of even more adolescent activities among our legislators simply make my skin crawl. Register me for the Idealist Party, please, or for whichever party is actually tackling the fundamental issues facing Vermont and Vermonters. I believe in fairness and courtesy and the ability of grown-ups to work together, and it distresses me when I don’t see that kind of behavior among people I thought better of.
I do understand that legislators and those swirling around their footfalls in the halls of law-making are humans, generally principled and well intentioned ones, but the collective exercise of legislation…who was it who said it resembles sausage making? So that, my friends, is the primary driver of my miserable mood these days—the requirement that I participate in politics to a far greater degree than I ever intended. But it really has nothing to do with Montpelier or with the specific issues facing my friends and colleagues, it really has nothing to do even with absence of sunshine, not even with new demands piled on in our busiest season, nor yet with old dogs whose failing bladders get me up in the middle of the night.
It’s just flippin’ February. Every year it gets me. I forget it is lurking out there and wham! It lays me out with psychic blow after nagging annoyance. My horoscope for today notwithstanding, a setback is simply not an acceptable addition to this mix. If I have a major setback today, I will be forced to go home, crawl under the covers and not come out until Town Meeting Day next Tuesday. Maybe that is my best strategy.
I could come to view Town Meeting Day (first Tuesday in March) as a major holiday, an occasion for celebration, a last hurrah of political struggle before we turn our attention back to starting seeds and looking for the return of the sun.
Setback? Setback? I’m really not in the mood.
How did I manage to forget that it is February? There are all sorts of rational explanations for it, but the observed truth is that February has always been a challenging month for me. I have my therapy lamp and my cherished daily routines to prop me up, but still February nags and annoys.
Each year, I slide into February with hope that it will be different. No, that’s wrong. I always forget that February is like this. This year I thought it was the legislative rough-and-tumble that was bugging me. I mean, really, what is it that happens under the dome to transform people of good will and better intentions into single-issue monomaniacs clinging to party affiliations over the common good of Vermonters?
Personally, I don’t even recall which party—if any—I registered. I have been registered as an independent most of my life, except when I lived in Philadelphia during Frank Rizzo’s attempted comeback and I really, really, really wanted to register an anti-Rizzo vote in the primary. Perhaps this means that I don’t have a grasp of the larger issues or the long term. Perhaps I don’t understand how to make a politically expedient trade. Or perhaps I just have a fundamental objection to the junior high cliques and transactions of our political process. Whispers of even more adolescent activities among our legislators simply make my skin crawl. Register me for the Idealist Party, please, or for whichever party is actually tackling the fundamental issues facing Vermont and Vermonters. I believe in fairness and courtesy and the ability of grown-ups to work together, and it distresses me when I don’t see that kind of behavior among people I thought better of.
I do understand that legislators and those swirling around their footfalls in the halls of law-making are humans, generally principled and well intentioned ones, but the collective exercise of legislation…who was it who said it resembles sausage making? So that, my friends, is the primary driver of my miserable mood these days—the requirement that I participate in politics to a far greater degree than I ever intended. But it really has nothing to do with Montpelier or with the specific issues facing my friends and colleagues, it really has nothing to do even with absence of sunshine, not even with new demands piled on in our busiest season, nor yet with old dogs whose failing bladders get me up in the middle of the night.
It’s just flippin’ February. Every year it gets me. I forget it is lurking out there and wham! It lays me out with psychic blow after nagging annoyance. My horoscope for today notwithstanding, a setback is simply not an acceptable addition to this mix. If I have a major setback today, I will be forced to go home, crawl under the covers and not come out until Town Meeting Day next Tuesday. Maybe that is my best strategy.
I could come to view Town Meeting Day (first Tuesday in March) as a major holiday, an occasion for celebration, a last hurrah of political struggle before we turn our attention back to starting seeds and looking for the return of the sun.
Monday, February 21, 2005
Flat Out
There’s something about this time of year. It seems we are all working too hard and too much of the time, and unlike other turns of the calendar, this one doesn’t yield to an agricultural metaphor. Some people say it’s that we aren’t getting enough light and it makes us cranky. Some say it’s the push to spring, that we are putting our shoulders into it, hoping to drive through into that welcome season of new life. Some are avowedly crabby; some relish the rough-and-tumble of legislative highjinks. As for me, I just can’t keep up.
Whatever it is, I’m tired. The long weekend—complete with another blogfirst, meeting in person blogger Robert of Beginner’s Mind—was fun, but not so very long once I added in shopping on Saturday and a catch-up day in the office today, during which I accomplished….oh, maybe 25%...of what I intended.
Robert introduced me to a cozy coffee shop that could have been right in New York, complete with good Greek favorites. We had a lot in common, including that we both found it a little spooky to be getting to know someone already well known in many ways. I’m looking forward to meeting wife Karen and comparing gardening notes as spring advances. We gossiped like old friends, then Robert adjourned to get his car fixed, and I moved on to Costco and beyond.
I really needed clothes, and it was great fun to hit the holiday sales. As I agonized between the gray shirt and the lavender one, at last I threw caution to the winds and bought both! At $3 each, it’s a cheap thrill. $7 pants and $11 blazers round out the flagging wardrobe.
Sunday’s big accomplishment was a nap; today’s was rebuilding my office computer. I guess that I can finally declare the hard drive crash of December 21 resolved, a full two months after the fact. Is this what a warranty is meant to achieve? Maybe it’s just because I am crabby that I don’t think so. Never buy a Dell. I know, I KNOW, I had several with no problems at all. I was a loyal Dell customer. But once you hit the customer dis-service meatgrinder, you never want to go back there.
Tomorrow it’s back to the routine. What can I do to break up this grind of expectations unmet? How can I rise above my to-do list? It’s not that life is boring, not exactly, but somehow I am stressed, scattered and very tired. It’s a comfort to know that this phase will pass, that no matter what I do, spring will come. Hurry, springtime!
Whatever it is, I’m tired. The long weekend—complete with another blogfirst, meeting in person blogger Robert of Beginner’s Mind—was fun, but not so very long once I added in shopping on Saturday and a catch-up day in the office today, during which I accomplished….oh, maybe 25%...of what I intended.
Robert introduced me to a cozy coffee shop that could have been right in New York, complete with good Greek favorites. We had a lot in common, including that we both found it a little spooky to be getting to know someone already well known in many ways. I’m looking forward to meeting wife Karen and comparing gardening notes as spring advances. We gossiped like old friends, then Robert adjourned to get his car fixed, and I moved on to Costco and beyond.
I really needed clothes, and it was great fun to hit the holiday sales. As I agonized between the gray shirt and the lavender one, at last I threw caution to the winds and bought both! At $3 each, it’s a cheap thrill. $7 pants and $11 blazers round out the flagging wardrobe.
Sunday’s big accomplishment was a nap; today’s was rebuilding my office computer. I guess that I can finally declare the hard drive crash of December 21 resolved, a full two months after the fact. Is this what a warranty is meant to achieve? Maybe it’s just because I am crabby that I don’t think so. Never buy a Dell. I know, I KNOW, I had several with no problems at all. I was a loyal Dell customer. But once you hit the customer dis-service meatgrinder, you never want to go back there.
Tomorrow it’s back to the routine. What can I do to break up this grind of expectations unmet? How can I rise above my to-do list? It’s not that life is boring, not exactly, but somehow I am stressed, scattered and very tired. It’s a comfort to know that this phase will pass, that no matter what I do, spring will come. Hurry, springtime!
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Learning to Lose
I still am fascinated by Saffron Gates, most particularly by the passion that inspired Christo and Jeanne Claude to persist in the face of numbing bureaucracy and outright opposition. Averse to conflict as I am, I come back again and again that the small number of failures I have experienced in my life may insinuate a different kind of failure, shortness of vision or lack of courage.
I don’t enjoy failure, no, not at all, at all. Anyone who has been subjected to my latest round of self-questioning about my divorce twenty years ago might suspect I take some sort of perverse pleasure in it, but eventually even I look at the situation…again…and say “There were two of you in the situation. You both tried and came up short. You both did your best. It happens. Get over it. The sin would be to let it rule your life. Who do you think you are to expect that you will never fail? How arrogant!”
One can argue about whether this process should happen in a year or three or twenty; conceptually one can argue that we should never let go of marriages. The truth is probably that it is less about what we oughta do in a situation and more about recognizing the reality that has occurred. That process takes whatever time it takes, and there is really no point in beating ourselves up for not meeting some imagined, self-imposed timetable.
What if we were to accept failure, really allow that it does happen in our lives? What if we put less energy into recasting situations as just another victory in disguise? What if we threw ourselves fully into each envisioned victory. Each project, throughout its life from birth to resolution, is in some sense a failure right up to the moment it is achieved or abandoned. When Christo and Jeanne Claude say they have eighteen completed projects and thirty-eight not yet realized…are the thirty-eight failures, or are they still live battles, successes still in process of being achieved? I suspect there is a mixture of campaigns in process, battles properly fled, and some that are inactive, resting as the artists store up energy to rejoin the fray, or simply wait for more hospitable conditions.
If we accept failure, we clear the decks for more attention to the issues that deserve our best efforts. If we accept failure, we learn from what didn’t work and try a different approach on some new project, maybe one that is stronger and truer from inception. If we accept failure, we stop focusing on the same old battles and move on to something new: we grow. If we accept failure, we accept ourselves. If we accept failure, we recognize the truth that we are like the rest of God’s children, fundamentally flawed but unconditionally loved, glorious in our capacity to envision the new and pursue it with passion. The number of failures in our lives then becomes a scorecard that reflects how completely we threw ourselves into this brilliant game we call life.
I don’t enjoy failure, no, not at all, at all. Anyone who has been subjected to my latest round of self-questioning about my divorce twenty years ago might suspect I take some sort of perverse pleasure in it, but eventually even I look at the situation…again…and say “There were two of you in the situation. You both tried and came up short. You both did your best. It happens. Get over it. The sin would be to let it rule your life. Who do you think you are to expect that you will never fail? How arrogant!”
One can argue about whether this process should happen in a year or three or twenty; conceptually one can argue that we should never let go of marriages. The truth is probably that it is less about what we oughta do in a situation and more about recognizing the reality that has occurred. That process takes whatever time it takes, and there is really no point in beating ourselves up for not meeting some imagined, self-imposed timetable.
What if we were to accept failure, really allow that it does happen in our lives? What if we put less energy into recasting situations as just another victory in disguise? What if we threw ourselves fully into each envisioned victory. Each project, throughout its life from birth to resolution, is in some sense a failure right up to the moment it is achieved or abandoned. When Christo and Jeanne Claude say they have eighteen completed projects and thirty-eight not yet realized…are the thirty-eight failures, or are they still live battles, successes still in process of being achieved? I suspect there is a mixture of campaigns in process, battles properly fled, and some that are inactive, resting as the artists store up energy to rejoin the fray, or simply wait for more hospitable conditions.
If we accept failure, we clear the decks for more attention to the issues that deserve our best efforts. If we accept failure, we learn from what didn’t work and try a different approach on some new project, maybe one that is stronger and truer from inception. If we accept failure, we stop focusing on the same old battles and move on to something new: we grow. If we accept failure, we accept ourselves. If we accept failure, we recognize the truth that we are like the rest of God’s children, fundamentally flawed but unconditionally loved, glorious in our capacity to envision the new and pursue it with passion. The number of failures in our lives then becomes a scorecard that reflects how completely we threw ourselves into this brilliant game we call life.
Sunday, February 13, 2005
More Gates
No, Zen Mama (see comment to previous post), I won’t be calling you crazy, not on any subject, but especially not on this one. And did you hear the coverage on NPR today (http://www.wnyc.org/studio360/show.html ), linking the Gates project for sheer scale of effort to the Gaudi temple in Barcelona and the musical work of William Bolcom inspired by William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience? Fascinating stuff. I love the concept of a penitential temple that will only be finished when penitence inspires enough people to give enough money to support its completion, even if that takes generations. We have eternity to get it right: how uplifting is that?
But with respect to Gates and these other efforts, first, let me say that my response is as a lover of the arts, as a loving and trained critic and consumer of inspired and crafted expression of the human soul. I’m not a supporter of all the arts, only the art that speaks to me, and if that makes me an elitist, so be it. Like Snoopy, I love mankind, it’s people that bug me, but there are certain people I love. If Snoopy were commenting on art, I think he would agree that the arts are a good thing, but most artists bore me; still there are certain efforts that touch my soul. The Gates project is in that category.
Second, let me say that my response is as a lover of the arts, not in my role as budget-minded economic development professional. The Gates achievement, to me, is all the more startling because it was funded, organized and pushed through bureaucratic challenges by the artists themselves. No NEA boondoggle, this was not the result of some half-baked social dropout getting hold of other people’s money to put up a monument to “what we all agree on.” The Christo/Jeanne Claude vision is almost aggressively personal. And I mean that in a good way. The two artists drove that vision to completion. They felt so strongly about the work’s impact that they worked for twenty-six years to make it happen.
In the NPR interviews, they point out that they have “only” completed some eighteen projects, that there are thirty-eight visions that have not come to life. They see “only;” I see eighteen large-scale life-changing projects. Eighteen. Wow.
In the end, this particular vision has come to life because Christo/Jeanne Claude’s efforts finally intersected with Michael Bloomberg’s term as mayor. Michael Bloomberg, entrepreneur extraordinare, whose concept of a system to aggregate information for traders was almost as ill-received, almost as difficult to execute as the Gates project. I’m not sure I would like Michael Bloomberg much if I met him in person, but I respect the person who has been able to build a computer system that is so critical on Wall Street, in London and in professional trading rooms everywhere that traders simply cannot do business without a “Bloomberg.” One has to wonder if Michael Bloomberg’s own experience driving his passion to product generated a sympathetic response when he saw the Gates proposal. I think it had to, and I think that Bloomberg is—in his own milieu—an artist.
To me, the personal passion behind this project—extending to its self-financed execution—is part of the art. The location in New York City is also part of the art, and the people who visit this installation are and will always be part of the art, as it will always be part of their experience and of who they are.
I want to see it, too. I want to remember it. I want to learn from it.
But with respect to Gates and these other efforts, first, let me say that my response is as a lover of the arts, as a loving and trained critic and consumer of inspired and crafted expression of the human soul. I’m not a supporter of all the arts, only the art that speaks to me, and if that makes me an elitist, so be it. Like Snoopy, I love mankind, it’s people that bug me, but there are certain people I love. If Snoopy were commenting on art, I think he would agree that the arts are a good thing, but most artists bore me; still there are certain efforts that touch my soul. The Gates project is in that category.
Second, let me say that my response is as a lover of the arts, not in my role as budget-minded economic development professional. The Gates achievement, to me, is all the more startling because it was funded, organized and pushed through bureaucratic challenges by the artists themselves. No NEA boondoggle, this was not the result of some half-baked social dropout getting hold of other people’s money to put up a monument to “what we all agree on.” The Christo/Jeanne Claude vision is almost aggressively personal. And I mean that in a good way. The two artists drove that vision to completion. They felt so strongly about the work’s impact that they worked for twenty-six years to make it happen.
In the NPR interviews, they point out that they have “only” completed some eighteen projects, that there are thirty-eight visions that have not come to life. They see “only;” I see eighteen large-scale life-changing projects. Eighteen. Wow.
In the end, this particular vision has come to life because Christo/Jeanne Claude’s efforts finally intersected with Michael Bloomberg’s term as mayor. Michael Bloomberg, entrepreneur extraordinare, whose concept of a system to aggregate information for traders was almost as ill-received, almost as difficult to execute as the Gates project. I’m not sure I would like Michael Bloomberg much if I met him in person, but I respect the person who has been able to build a computer system that is so critical on Wall Street, in London and in professional trading rooms everywhere that traders simply cannot do business without a “Bloomberg.” One has to wonder if Michael Bloomberg’s own experience driving his passion to product generated a sympathetic response when he saw the Gates proposal. I think it had to, and I think that Bloomberg is—in his own milieu—an artist.
To me, the personal passion behind this project—extending to its self-financed execution—is part of the art. The location in New York City is also part of the art, and the people who visit this installation are and will always be part of the art, as it will always be part of their experience and of who they are.
I want to see it, too. I want to remember it. I want to learn from it.
Saffron Gates
Christo’s installation of 7,500 gates along 23 miles of footpaths in Central Park is just the kind of thing that makes New York City the incomparable, experiential organism that I love. New York’s gift to visitor or long time resident is its capacity to deliver over and over again experiences that linger. I have many such experiences stored up in my memory: the laughing monks I wrote about a few days ago, seeing the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloons rise from puddles of vinyl to come to life as giant cartoon characters at 4 am, hearing artistic debates in the subway…only to realize that it was two subway graffiti artists comparing how to have the greatest impact, seeing ballet or theatre so piercingly, emotionally real that I came away feeling my life changed, …the list goes on and on and on.
The list goes on and on because New York is so big and so diverse and so wild and so unmanageable that once you know the city, you have to fall in love with it. It is like a wild child, untamed and untameable. You don’t always like it, but there is much to love.
I remember a conversation with a much older woman as we rode the Staten Island Ferry to work one day. She was a bird watcher, and she was pointing out how the tides’ different levels in the harbor brought out different birds. As we observed this wildness, we also chatted about looming drastic changes in city government, including major layoffs of city personnel in the department where she worked. I asked whether she thought the changes were right, whether they moved in a direction of more control of the big issues. Her answer stopped me cold. “Well,” she said, “it’s not like it really makes much difference. I mean, after all, everybody has their ideas about how to make New York better, but it is fundamentally unmanageable. This administration will find that out eventually.”
Partly her answer was politically motivated, aligned as she was against the incoming Giuliani administration. But the part that got to me was that she’s right. New York is unmanageable. Untamable. Wild. A collection of millions of hearts and minds on millions of collision courses, and this is what frightens many tourists, many who would never set foot in the city and even many who live or work on that crowded island. But if we look only at the scariness of New York, we miss its wonder.
The wonder of New York is that even in the most extreme circumstances, the human spirit finds ways to reach out and to rise up. Human connections are made, and the divine is celebrated.
I have been missing this celebration of wildness in Vermont, and there must be something in my perspective that has gone wrong. Vermonters know that nature is wild and untameable and ultimately to be celebrated. But lately I have wondered if they know that people are the same—wild and untameable and ultimately to be celebrated. It’s the political process that is getting to me, particularly the aspects that suggest that people can be controlled and managed and regulated and regimented into a set of common goals. Healthcare issues, environmental issues, job creation are just of few of the swirling human needs and wants that collide under Montpelier’s dome and in its halls, and that the political process can never fully address. Administrative skill, good humor, and courtesy help enormously, but we have to recognize that we will never be able to achieve agreement on the goals, much less lockstep march to their execution. We might be happier if Vermonters, like New Yorkers, accepted that like New York, Vermont is a living thing, wild and ultimately uncontrollable.
Then again, maybe it’s me. Maybe I am just trying to get others to accept my worldview—just another attempt on my part to control the world. Maybe instead I need to back off, reflect, then take my place in the dance.
Just reading about The Gates makes me happy. It makes me want to see it. It makes me want to be again in a place where I can walk and walk and find outrageous and unexpected things three times on each and every block. It makes me want Indian food and Vietnamese food and Ukrainian food and really good sushi. It makes me want new cheap Chinese shoes from Chinatown, along with a red bean bun stamped for good luck. It makes me miss turn-of-the-century skyscrapers shrouded in the morning fog. It makes me miss historical context cheek by jowl with the newest and most startling innovation. It makes me miss the bustle and the good-natured clarity of Wall Street’s focus on making a buck. It makes me fall in love with New York all over again, even from this remote outpost in northern Vermont.
The list goes on and on because New York is so big and so diverse and so wild and so unmanageable that once you know the city, you have to fall in love with it. It is like a wild child, untamed and untameable. You don’t always like it, but there is much to love.
I remember a conversation with a much older woman as we rode the Staten Island Ferry to work one day. She was a bird watcher, and she was pointing out how the tides’ different levels in the harbor brought out different birds. As we observed this wildness, we also chatted about looming drastic changes in city government, including major layoffs of city personnel in the department where she worked. I asked whether she thought the changes were right, whether they moved in a direction of more control of the big issues. Her answer stopped me cold. “Well,” she said, “it’s not like it really makes much difference. I mean, after all, everybody has their ideas about how to make New York better, but it is fundamentally unmanageable. This administration will find that out eventually.”
Partly her answer was politically motivated, aligned as she was against the incoming Giuliani administration. But the part that got to me was that she’s right. New York is unmanageable. Untamable. Wild. A collection of millions of hearts and minds on millions of collision courses, and this is what frightens many tourists, many who would never set foot in the city and even many who live or work on that crowded island. But if we look only at the scariness of New York, we miss its wonder.
The wonder of New York is that even in the most extreme circumstances, the human spirit finds ways to reach out and to rise up. Human connections are made, and the divine is celebrated.
I have been missing this celebration of wildness in Vermont, and there must be something in my perspective that has gone wrong. Vermonters know that nature is wild and untameable and ultimately to be celebrated. But lately I have wondered if they know that people are the same—wild and untameable and ultimately to be celebrated. It’s the political process that is getting to me, particularly the aspects that suggest that people can be controlled and managed and regulated and regimented into a set of common goals. Healthcare issues, environmental issues, job creation are just of few of the swirling human needs and wants that collide under Montpelier’s dome and in its halls, and that the political process can never fully address. Administrative skill, good humor, and courtesy help enormously, but we have to recognize that we will never be able to achieve agreement on the goals, much less lockstep march to their execution. We might be happier if Vermonters, like New Yorkers, accepted that like New York, Vermont is a living thing, wild and ultimately uncontrollable.
Then again, maybe it’s me. Maybe I am just trying to get others to accept my worldview—just another attempt on my part to control the world. Maybe instead I need to back off, reflect, then take my place in the dance.
Just reading about The Gates makes me happy. It makes me want to see it. It makes me want to be again in a place where I can walk and walk and find outrageous and unexpected things three times on each and every block. It makes me want Indian food and Vietnamese food and Ukrainian food and really good sushi. It makes me want new cheap Chinese shoes from Chinatown, along with a red bean bun stamped for good luck. It makes me miss turn-of-the-century skyscrapers shrouded in the morning fog. It makes me miss historical context cheek by jowl with the newest and most startling innovation. It makes me miss the bustle and the good-natured clarity of Wall Street’s focus on making a buck. It makes me fall in love with New York all over again, even from this remote outpost in northern Vermont.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Snow!
Getting work done on Friday was just not possible—we had snow! Thursday afternoon and continuing for several hours, the result was several inches of new fluffy white stuff, the best kind for skiing and playing. I don’t know about the rest of Vermont, but most people in my town took off at least the afternoon to play in the snow. Return e-mails—pah! Paperwork—bah, humbug! Not when the snow is like this.
Snow! We haven’t seen much of it this year. Groundhog Day has come and gone, and we hardly feel as if we have had winter. As much as we moan about it, we all love the snow. You would too if you were here. I hardly dare confess that my first winter here was over all too soon. I had barely gotten used to what to expect when the dandelions were out, and summer hiking was the order of the day.
This is my third winter here. It hasn’t had the early snow of my first—Brooklyn based movers were not amused to work in heavy, wet snow as they moved me into my first Vermont home late on Thanksgiving weekend. They finished after ten at night, then some of them curled into the back of the truck cab, planning to take turns driving back through heavy weather. And there I was. In Vermont. In the winter. I seriously considered the life-threatening aspects of winter before I moved up here, and that first night I wasn’t sure I was ready to cope.
The second winter had lots and lots of snow, and long weeks of subzero, which I tolerate less well than glorious snow. I learned that my car starts at thirty below, but will not start at forty below. I first learned that the dishwasher freezes in subzero temperatures, along with the washer drain. I learned why there are only two tiny windows on the north-facing back of my house, compared to the welcoming window-rich front of my house. The cold north wind was my frequent visitor last winter, but not so frequent as this year, with little snow to insulate my floorboards.
Snow! The boys and I went out for a romp today. I was wearing snowshoes, and I have been told that it is okay to walk across the fields across the road from my house. In Vermont, apparently, neighbors still expect that neighbors will walk across their fields, that dogs from neighboring houses will meet in the middle for romps. I’m still so new as to be respectful of boundary lines, but my neighbor Tim—who sold me his family home—tells me it is okay to walk out back of his family’s old barn, across the fields and into the woods. So today we went out.
Forty-five minutes, and I am tired. Deep snow, yes, and I could be in better shape, but I put my weariness down to the effort of walking with a large German Shepherd trying to stand on the backs of my snowshoes. You try it!
We’ll be back out tomorrow. So what if I am constitutionally unsuited for skiing or other sliding sports, my formative years in the Deep South having left me unprepared for winter here. Snowshoes are a blast, and who can miss this snow!
Snow! We haven’t seen much of it this year. Groundhog Day has come and gone, and we hardly feel as if we have had winter. As much as we moan about it, we all love the snow. You would too if you were here. I hardly dare confess that my first winter here was over all too soon. I had barely gotten used to what to expect when the dandelions were out, and summer hiking was the order of the day.
This is my third winter here. It hasn’t had the early snow of my first—Brooklyn based movers were not amused to work in heavy, wet snow as they moved me into my first Vermont home late on Thanksgiving weekend. They finished after ten at night, then some of them curled into the back of the truck cab, planning to take turns driving back through heavy weather. And there I was. In Vermont. In the winter. I seriously considered the life-threatening aspects of winter before I moved up here, and that first night I wasn’t sure I was ready to cope.
The second winter had lots and lots of snow, and long weeks of subzero, which I tolerate less well than glorious snow. I learned that my car starts at thirty below, but will not start at forty below. I first learned that the dishwasher freezes in subzero temperatures, along with the washer drain. I learned why there are only two tiny windows on the north-facing back of my house, compared to the welcoming window-rich front of my house. The cold north wind was my frequent visitor last winter, but not so frequent as this year, with little snow to insulate my floorboards.
Snow! The boys and I went out for a romp today. I was wearing snowshoes, and I have been told that it is okay to walk across the fields across the road from my house. In Vermont, apparently, neighbors still expect that neighbors will walk across their fields, that dogs from neighboring houses will meet in the middle for romps. I’m still so new as to be respectful of boundary lines, but my neighbor Tim—who sold me his family home—tells me it is okay to walk out back of his family’s old barn, across the fields and into the woods. So today we went out.
Forty-five minutes, and I am tired. Deep snow, yes, and I could be in better shape, but I put my weariness down to the effort of walking with a large German Shepherd trying to stand on the backs of my snowshoes. You try it!
We’ll be back out tomorrow. So what if I am constitutionally unsuited for skiing or other sliding sports, my formative years in the Deep South having left me unprepared for winter here. Snowshoes are a blast, and who can miss this snow!
Another Twist or Several
Perhaps it is because I am doing lots of computer housecleaning that I am looking back over the full history of Vermont Diary and finding fascinating shifts and turns in audience and intent of my writing here. Last July, it was from several motivations that I started writing to an e-mail list of friends and family. Because I am new here in Vermont, I am conscious of my impressions of the place as being particularly fresh and strong, and I wanted to store up the experience to revisit in the future. And I thought others might enjoy it.
Because I am new here, life can be lonely far from friends, and I found it personally helpful to reach out with messages, whether or not responses were forthcoming. It also gave me a mechanism to reach out to family members, who for whatever reason, don’t communicate with me. It took some time to work through various issues associated with the e-mail list—sorting out assumptions about what communications were personal and what could be shared, making sure that I respected others’ assumptions as far as possible, assuring people that I really did care about their views even if I chose a “Christmas letter” sort of mechanism in order to communicate more often and sometimes more deeply than they might have expected. The process was not without mis-steps.
Finally, I have long had a sense—as I have probably expressed here before—that writing would overtake me in middle age (that would be now). And so it has. I refer you to Fiction? (http://vtdiary.blogspot.com/2005/02/fiction.html )
In October, I started the blog. I felt a need to shift the perspective a bit, to make my writing more for a public audience, even though content is undeniably personal. I don’t want my friends and family to get the wrong idea, but I have experienced more real personal interchange in years of e-mail than I did in decades of cards, letters, phone calls, and personal visits. Maybe my experience is shaped by the twin facts that I live—by my own choice—a long distance from many of the people I love, and that I am oriented to written exchange.
In a different lifetime, I would have been one of those literary spinsters cranking out letters every morning or afternoon, crafting a spider-web legacy of words weaving together the thoughts of my acquaintance, whose smallest acts would take on outsized historical significance simply because they were recorded while countless others were not. By recording the tiniest facts of my life, I create a world entire, peopled by my friends and colleagues, my family and the slightest acquaintances. A world that is both real and fiction.
Here’s where it all gets really interesting. While we all create such fictional worlds, we owe truth to ourselves and to others. Absolute, rock bottom truth. Getting to truth is not a trivial exercise. We think we know the truth about ourselves, but then someone points something out to us…and we wilt. How could we have missed the obvious? We think we know the truth about another person, but however much we may care for another person, it is impossible to enter into another’s reality. We owe each other the rights to have our own stories, gloriously separate but interlocked by compassion and love.
Now I refer you again to Fiction? (http://vtdiary.blogspot.com/2005/02/fiction.html ) and to Dan’s comment at the end of that piece. I responded off-blog via e-mail to Dan saying that I really didn’t view the call to write in the same upbeat way he had described it—more like being pursued by black flies.
This is, I realize, a Vermont reference, which I may need to explain for readers who have not visited the Northeast during mud season. Black flies are tiny insects that go for any particle of exposed skin and bite, bite, bite. The pain they inflict far exceeds their size. Clouds of black flies in the spring have been known to drive seasoned hikers to beat their heads against tree trunks in a maddened effort to make the pain stop. If the Furies came to Vermont, they would come as black flies.
I didn’t think any more of the exchange until I read Dan’s posting several days later at http://oestreichassociates.blogspot.com/2005/02/its-ego-thing.html . If you haven’t read Dan’s stuff yet, you may want to. He has been nominated for Best Business Leadership Blog. On the other hand, Dan is another intuitive introvert like me, but more intellectual, so you may find his stuff heavy going. This particular entry—about being trapped by a “reformed” work-a-holic on a plane—seemed a bit uncharacteristic of Dan, and I was concerned enough to write back off-blog as follows (edited):
Dan...I sympathize with how distressing it is to have people talk to you on planes, also with the annoyance of learning from someone you don't particularly warm to at the same time you are grateful for the lesson. Funny, though, I would have pegged you for someone who didn't need to have the heart attack.
Dan replied (edited) to reassure me that he did not need the heart attack to jolt him into an authentic life, then added this followup:
I'm still thinking about the black flies line. It bothers me because it wasn't just ironic -- at least that isn't the way it came across -- but also as a defeat of the gift that you are bringing with your wonderful observations and sensitive dialogue with the world. I'm not much for derision of such a precious thing. What was it you were saying about losing something precious? (Can you hear this?)
And I wrote back (edited):
Thanks for that cheerful message! I certainly feel better about you, and you are right, we keep learning the same damn lesson over and over again. But I do believe that we get it better each time, and eventually we really get it.
Don't worry about the black flies. I hear your comment, but please know that I accept my fate cheerfully--I am leaning into it and exploring bit by bit how to get on up the trail despite the little monsters.
You know, it's funny...despite how much I have learned from blogland, this is one of very few real exchanges I have experienced. I write in response to a lot of people who appear to be aware questioners, sometimes in response to pain between the lines, but generally to people I perceive as grown-ups. Most often I never hear back, and sometimes I hear back that I didn't get it right at all, how dare I empathize with that person! Okay. Maybe I am writing from a projection of my own situation, but I prefer to think of it as empathy, fellow feeling with another human. If what I have to say is not heard, well, okay. I'm not going to force my viewpoint on anyone. Contrariwise, I have come to recognize that the more adamant the response that I didn't get it right at all...the more likely I did, and hit a sore spot. Compassion is a narrow path between the sore spots; compassion is knowing when to say "that's ok, you are just like the rest of us," and when to leave it alone to fester or to heal, whatever rightly comes next. One of my other big lessons is learning how to avoid the arrogance of being Little Miss Fix-It. Implication for my writing is that it must avoid any tendency to the didactic.
Now isn’t this interesting? Full circle from e-mail to blog and back to e-mail, which I have now shared with you via blog. Amazing how authentic an interchange is possible via blog, amazing how seldom we hear each other no matter what medium we choose.
Meanwhile, I am working through an issue that is so deeply personal that I can deal with it only off-line and through fiction I have shared with only two friends—Dan, a blog-friend, and Jon, a personal friend for the last twenty-two years. In the end, there are only the people we love, however we come to know them, and we can deal with the deepest issues only in the most personal contexts, never in blogland, never for display.
Because I am new here, life can be lonely far from friends, and I found it personally helpful to reach out with messages, whether or not responses were forthcoming. It also gave me a mechanism to reach out to family members, who for whatever reason, don’t communicate with me. It took some time to work through various issues associated with the e-mail list—sorting out assumptions about what communications were personal and what could be shared, making sure that I respected others’ assumptions as far as possible, assuring people that I really did care about their views even if I chose a “Christmas letter” sort of mechanism in order to communicate more often and sometimes more deeply than they might have expected. The process was not without mis-steps.
Finally, I have long had a sense—as I have probably expressed here before—that writing would overtake me in middle age (that would be now). And so it has. I refer you to Fiction? (http://vtdiary.blogspot.com/2005/02/fiction.html )
In October, I started the blog. I felt a need to shift the perspective a bit, to make my writing more for a public audience, even though content is undeniably personal. I don’t want my friends and family to get the wrong idea, but I have experienced more real personal interchange in years of e-mail than I did in decades of cards, letters, phone calls, and personal visits. Maybe my experience is shaped by the twin facts that I live—by my own choice—a long distance from many of the people I love, and that I am oriented to written exchange.
In a different lifetime, I would have been one of those literary spinsters cranking out letters every morning or afternoon, crafting a spider-web legacy of words weaving together the thoughts of my acquaintance, whose smallest acts would take on outsized historical significance simply because they were recorded while countless others were not. By recording the tiniest facts of my life, I create a world entire, peopled by my friends and colleagues, my family and the slightest acquaintances. A world that is both real and fiction.
Here’s where it all gets really interesting. While we all create such fictional worlds, we owe truth to ourselves and to others. Absolute, rock bottom truth. Getting to truth is not a trivial exercise. We think we know the truth about ourselves, but then someone points something out to us…and we wilt. How could we have missed the obvious? We think we know the truth about another person, but however much we may care for another person, it is impossible to enter into another’s reality. We owe each other the rights to have our own stories, gloriously separate but interlocked by compassion and love.
Now I refer you again to Fiction? (http://vtdiary.blogspot.com/2005/02/fiction.html ) and to Dan’s comment at the end of that piece. I responded off-blog via e-mail to Dan saying that I really didn’t view the call to write in the same upbeat way he had described it—more like being pursued by black flies.
This is, I realize, a Vermont reference, which I may need to explain for readers who have not visited the Northeast during mud season. Black flies are tiny insects that go for any particle of exposed skin and bite, bite, bite. The pain they inflict far exceeds their size. Clouds of black flies in the spring have been known to drive seasoned hikers to beat their heads against tree trunks in a maddened effort to make the pain stop. If the Furies came to Vermont, they would come as black flies.
I didn’t think any more of the exchange until I read Dan’s posting several days later at http://oestreichassociates.blogspot.com/2005/02/its-ego-thing.html . If you haven’t read Dan’s stuff yet, you may want to. He has been nominated for Best Business Leadership Blog. On the other hand, Dan is another intuitive introvert like me, but more intellectual, so you may find his stuff heavy going. This particular entry—about being trapped by a “reformed” work-a-holic on a plane—seemed a bit uncharacteristic of Dan, and I was concerned enough to write back off-blog as follows (edited):
Dan...I sympathize with how distressing it is to have people talk to you on planes, also with the annoyance of learning from someone you don't particularly warm to at the same time you are grateful for the lesson. Funny, though, I would have pegged you for someone who didn't need to have the heart attack.
Dan replied (edited) to reassure me that he did not need the heart attack to jolt him into an authentic life, then added this followup:
I'm still thinking about the black flies line. It bothers me because it wasn't just ironic -- at least that isn't the way it came across -- but also as a defeat of the gift that you are bringing with your wonderful observations and sensitive dialogue with the world. I'm not much for derision of such a precious thing. What was it you were saying about losing something precious? (Can you hear this?)
And I wrote back (edited):
Thanks for that cheerful message! I certainly feel better about you, and you are right, we keep learning the same damn lesson over and over again. But I do believe that we get it better each time, and eventually we really get it.
Don't worry about the black flies. I hear your comment, but please know that I accept my fate cheerfully--I am leaning into it and exploring bit by bit how to get on up the trail despite the little monsters.
You know, it's funny...despite how much I have learned from blogland, this is one of very few real exchanges I have experienced. I write in response to a lot of people who appear to be aware questioners, sometimes in response to pain between the lines, but generally to people I perceive as grown-ups. Most often I never hear back, and sometimes I hear back that I didn't get it right at all, how dare I empathize with that person! Okay. Maybe I am writing from a projection of my own situation, but I prefer to think of it as empathy, fellow feeling with another human. If what I have to say is not heard, well, okay. I'm not going to force my viewpoint on anyone. Contrariwise, I have come to recognize that the more adamant the response that I didn't get it right at all...the more likely I did, and hit a sore spot. Compassion is a narrow path between the sore spots; compassion is knowing when to say "that's ok, you are just like the rest of us," and when to leave it alone to fester or to heal, whatever rightly comes next. One of my other big lessons is learning how to avoid the arrogance of being Little Miss Fix-It. Implication for my writing is that it must avoid any tendency to the didactic.
Now isn’t this interesting? Full circle from e-mail to blog and back to e-mail, which I have now shared with you via blog. Amazing how authentic an interchange is possible via blog, amazing how seldom we hear each other no matter what medium we choose.
Meanwhile, I am working through an issue that is so deeply personal that I can deal with it only off-line and through fiction I have shared with only two friends—Dan, a blog-friend, and Jon, a personal friend for the last twenty-two years. In the end, there are only the people we love, however we come to know them, and we can deal with the deepest issues only in the most personal contexts, never in blogland, never for display.
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Laughing monks in saffron robes
Thanks to cable tv, I just watched the beautiful movie Seven Years in Tibet, a depiction of the young Dalai Lama. In many ways, the movie is very sad, showing the fall of Tibet to the Chinese Army, but it brought back memories of the Dalai Lama’s visit to New York City. Deborah, a junior high friend, with her sister Colleen, are among the dearest friends of my life, and Deborah braved New York to see the Dalai Lama.
I don’t remember the year, but I remember that it was November and it was freezing cold. Girl-like, I remember the exact coat I was wearing, and that there were not nearly enough layers below it. We were up early to get to Central Park by the time the monks’ meditation began. Very early, very cold.
We parked on the west side and walked into the park. It was early, cold, frosty, and as we approached the Sheep Meadow, we could hear the monks’ horns. We came closer and could see those wonderful orange curlicue hats that look like a Mohawk cut. Lots and lots of monks. The park was silent, except for the monks’ horns and distant traffic. As the appointed hour approached, we were all squirming from cold and wishing we had remembered to pee one more time before leaving home. We didn’t know what to expect.
Suddenly, there he was: the Dalai Lama. Diffident, relaxed, he walked forward and sat down. There was not a sound. In all of Central Park, it seemed in all of New York, there was silence. He began to chant and the monks joined in, and all of the huge crowd was as one in meditation. It went on for, oh…half an hour or so…then, he bowed, stood and thanked everyone.
It was a wonderful experience, one of my top ten New York memories, maybe in the top three. Who could have imagined that one man could have such an impact? I will never forget the contemplative silence in Central Park that morning, nor will I forget the mournful tribute of those horns.
There is a story about the Dalai Lama traveling through the US, that in one city, a troubled and agitated man tried to reach him backstage. The security people kicked into high gear, only increasing the intruder’s anxious flailing. Suddenly, the Dalai Lama appeared out of the crowd, walked over to the man, and seized both his hands in a warm clasp. “Thank you!” he exclaimed, looking straight into the troubled man’s heart. “Thank you for coming to see me.” And then he quietly moved on. Having met the Dalai Lama across Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, that’s exactly how he seemed to me.
That day in New York, we went on to join a group from the Zen Center for lunch, and each group hosted a visiting monk. We fed ours Chinese food, and he ate quite a lot and laughed a lot. It was a very good day.
I don’t remember the year, but I remember that it was November and it was freezing cold. Girl-like, I remember the exact coat I was wearing, and that there were not nearly enough layers below it. We were up early to get to Central Park by the time the monks’ meditation began. Very early, very cold.
We parked on the west side and walked into the park. It was early, cold, frosty, and as we approached the Sheep Meadow, we could hear the monks’ horns. We came closer and could see those wonderful orange curlicue hats that look like a Mohawk cut. Lots and lots of monks. The park was silent, except for the monks’ horns and distant traffic. As the appointed hour approached, we were all squirming from cold and wishing we had remembered to pee one more time before leaving home. We didn’t know what to expect.
Suddenly, there he was: the Dalai Lama. Diffident, relaxed, he walked forward and sat down. There was not a sound. In all of Central Park, it seemed in all of New York, there was silence. He began to chant and the monks joined in, and all of the huge crowd was as one in meditation. It went on for, oh…half an hour or so…then, he bowed, stood and thanked everyone.
It was a wonderful experience, one of my top ten New York memories, maybe in the top three. Who could have imagined that one man could have such an impact? I will never forget the contemplative silence in Central Park that morning, nor will I forget the mournful tribute of those horns.
There is a story about the Dalai Lama traveling through the US, that in one city, a troubled and agitated man tried to reach him backstage. The security people kicked into high gear, only increasing the intruder’s anxious flailing. Suddenly, the Dalai Lama appeared out of the crowd, walked over to the man, and seized both his hands in a warm clasp. “Thank you!” he exclaimed, looking straight into the troubled man’s heart. “Thank you for coming to see me.” And then he quietly moved on. Having met the Dalai Lama across Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, that’s exactly how he seemed to me.
That day in New York, we went on to join a group from the Zen Center for lunch, and each group hosted a visiting monk. We fed ours Chinese food, and he ate quite a lot and laughed a lot. It was a very good day.
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