I have been having a wee bit of trouble sleeping lately. So when, the night before last, I got a full unbroken seven, I resolved to be more disciplined, early to bed early to rise, no more late night snacks or caffeine or skipping my morning trip to the gym.
Instead last night I discovered "Dollhouse" and stayed up till 3am.
I'm dumb.
It's a pretty good show, though.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Cleopatra dances the salsa
I had such a busy night in dreamland that I feel like I just was at a triple feature.
I was in a group of my friends, mostly couples, touring around the country in a little VW bus. It was a loose meandering agenda, ending nightly wherever we landed - motels on the freeway, cabins in the wilderness, with the occasional break to go into the nearest city to party like aging rock stars.
Most of my friends were straight but there was one other lesbian in the group. On day four our bus passed through the small town where her girlfriend lived. Before leaving to visit her girl she gave us directions to a dance hall where she had started taking lessons. We all got drunk, dressed up and set off for the hall.
On the way there the bus got a flat. One of the husbands hotwired a couple of motorcycles so that he and I could ferry people back to the hotel. It turned out most people were lukewarm about dancing so in the end I went a straight girlfriend, whose husband stayed behind with everyone else to watch a game on TV.
I met the salsa instructor and instantly hated her. She was a heavily made up 60-something woman with died orange hair. I asked if we could join the lesson - as it was the second week of beginner class and my friend hadn't danced in a while I wasn't sure. Some instructors won't accept drop-ins after week one. She looked at my friend and said "Oh. No problem. I can teach you everything you need to know right here." She grabbed my friend by both hands and began raising and lowering her in the stairwell. I saw that my friend was moving her shoulders too much and losing her frame but the instructor said nothing about it except, "Great. You're ready."
As we followed her down a hall, she became a stocky, energetic gay man in his 30s. He offered some rapid-fire dance-and-relationship advice. Right before we reached a door he turned to me and said, "You have very masculine energy. I'm gay but I'm flexible." Then he kissed my cheek and resumed her previous form.
She ushered us into a small, overly decorated waiting room lined with people, all over the age of 50, dressed as for an egyptian-themed ball. They wore silver masks or heavy white and black makeup, black or purple velvet robes and a great deal of metal jewelry and accessories. My friend was the most elaborately costumed of them all. I felt a momentary self-consciousness in my short salsa dress and red dance shoes.
One by one, the different instructors came into the room and called out for their dance students. People left to take waltz with a pot-bellied jovial man in a powder blue suit. A 20something guy with spiky black hair and a pin-stripe suit vest Pied Pipered out an entire troupe of 7-and-8-year-old brownies who had apparently been hiding in the waiting room foliage. They were dressed in uniform, badges and all, and emerged, holding hands in an unbroken line, like perfect brown paper dolls.
The salsa instructor had not reappeared, nor her queer male alter ego. The egyptians were getting restless, fanning and fanning themselves in the close air of the room. But nobody left. We just stayed, and kept on waiting.
I was in a group of my friends, mostly couples, touring around the country in a little VW bus. It was a loose meandering agenda, ending nightly wherever we landed - motels on the freeway, cabins in the wilderness, with the occasional break to go into the nearest city to party like aging rock stars.
Most of my friends were straight but there was one other lesbian in the group. On day four our bus passed through the small town where her girlfriend lived. Before leaving to visit her girl she gave us directions to a dance hall where she had started taking lessons. We all got drunk, dressed up and set off for the hall.
On the way there the bus got a flat. One of the husbands hotwired a couple of motorcycles so that he and I could ferry people back to the hotel. It turned out most people were lukewarm about dancing so in the end I went a straight girlfriend, whose husband stayed behind with everyone else to watch a game on TV.
I met the salsa instructor and instantly hated her. She was a heavily made up 60-something woman with died orange hair. I asked if we could join the lesson - as it was the second week of beginner class and my friend hadn't danced in a while I wasn't sure. Some instructors won't accept drop-ins after week one. She looked at my friend and said "Oh. No problem. I can teach you everything you need to know right here." She grabbed my friend by both hands and began raising and lowering her in the stairwell. I saw that my friend was moving her shoulders too much and losing her frame but the instructor said nothing about it except, "Great. You're ready."
As we followed her down a hall, she became a stocky, energetic gay man in his 30s. He offered some rapid-fire dance-and-relationship advice. Right before we reached a door he turned to me and said, "You have very masculine energy. I'm gay but I'm flexible." Then he kissed my cheek and resumed her previous form.
She ushered us into a small, overly decorated waiting room lined with people, all over the age of 50, dressed as for an egyptian-themed ball. They wore silver masks or heavy white and black makeup, black or purple velvet robes and a great deal of metal jewelry and accessories. My friend was the most elaborately costumed of them all. I felt a momentary self-consciousness in my short salsa dress and red dance shoes.
One by one, the different instructors came into the room and called out for their dance students. People left to take waltz with a pot-bellied jovial man in a powder blue suit. A 20something guy with spiky black hair and a pin-stripe suit vest Pied Pipered out an entire troupe of 7-and-8-year-old brownies who had apparently been hiding in the waiting room foliage. They were dressed in uniform, badges and all, and emerged, holding hands in an unbroken line, like perfect brown paper dolls.
The salsa instructor had not reappeared, nor her queer male alter ego. The egyptians were getting restless, fanning and fanning themselves in the close air of the room. But nobody left. We just stayed, and kept on waiting.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Military porn star
I had a really long dream with an involved plot. And now all I can remember is that I was at a family reunion and ended up as the ad hoc mentor to my cousin who had been in the military a long time. She was queer but having gone from her fundamentalist family straight into the service, was only just coming out, now, at 43.
For the reunion we were all housed in a rustic Kansas farmhouse. The toilets didn't work so in the middle of the night you had to choose between peeing on the floor outside of your room or going outside. Either option was acceptable but women were encouraged to choose the indoor option for safety reasons. Every morning it was my chore to get up and clean puddles off the old wood floor.
My cousin and I shared a double bed. In the corner was a rocking chair in which, every night, a different porn star sat, still as a post, dressed in military fatigues. Neither of us knew the purpose of these women. I thought they might be a gift, to ease my cousin into the new queer chapter in her life. She thought they were a final warning from the military to look but don't touch. Her point during the ongoing argument about whether or not we could touch them was that there was far more evidence to support a military-industrial anti-lesbian conspiracy than the existence of a benevolent elder queer in our family. She routinely won this argument, so we would just get into bed and watch them, during the long minutes before sleep.
The women in the corner were beautiful and slutty and intimidating all at once. I tried to ask them questions but they wouldn't answer. Instead they just stared back, unblinking, enigmatic, and still as statues.
For the reunion we were all housed in a rustic Kansas farmhouse. The toilets didn't work so in the middle of the night you had to choose between peeing on the floor outside of your room or going outside. Either option was acceptable but women were encouraged to choose the indoor option for safety reasons. Every morning it was my chore to get up and clean puddles off the old wood floor.
My cousin and I shared a double bed. In the corner was a rocking chair in which, every night, a different porn star sat, still as a post, dressed in military fatigues. Neither of us knew the purpose of these women. I thought they might be a gift, to ease my cousin into the new queer chapter in her life. She thought they were a final warning from the military to look but don't touch. Her point during the ongoing argument about whether or not we could touch them was that there was far more evidence to support a military-industrial anti-lesbian conspiracy than the existence of a benevolent elder queer in our family. She routinely won this argument, so we would just get into bed and watch them, during the long minutes before sleep.
The women in the corner were beautiful and slutty and intimidating all at once. I tried to ask them questions but they wouldn't answer. Instead they just stared back, unblinking, enigmatic, and still as statues.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
I'm not a Buddhist but
I wouldn't call myself a Buddhist. I'm not an Anything-ist really, least of all that. I wouldn't be comfortable calling myself a Buddhist unless I'd spent a lot more time learning about it and walking the path. But of all the spiritual practises I've encountered, Buddhism is the one that I find most helpful in difficult times.
I've read a little bit, I know a few of the famous Buddhists by name, and unlike Presbyterianism, in which I was immersed for many years, several Buddhist teachings have had immediate concrete value in my life. As more than a few scholars have pointed out, many of the world's major religions have overlapping values. Indeed, I think many of the principles I've found helpful in Buddhism have equivalents in Christianity. But I never really connected with them until I heard them expressed from a Buddhist perspective.
In my admittedly very limited experience, Buddhism is more accessible and grounded in everyday experience than other paths. I also think it has aged well, maybe because there is less rigid dogma to try to lug into each new century. It's quite possible that with further exposure and study I could find the orthodox Buddhists who take ancient texts literally in contexts that no longer make sense or the practitioners who abuse their families or wage war in the name of a spiritual idea. I just haven't observed that yet.
This doesn't have all that much to do with dreaming, but in my defense I have been doing my level best to achieve REM for some hours now. I've been tossing and turning since 3am and as it is now 530, I thought I might stop struggling and embrace my current reality. This seems like a great time to share a Buddhist idea that has, quite literally, gotten me through the night.
One of the most helpful things I've learned from Buddhism is how to be grateful. Many religions have this as a core tenet in some form so I don't have a snappy explanation for why I like the Buddhist version better. I tried for many years to practise Christian gratitude - I prayed and said Grace and counted my blessings, and I intellectually understood the value in these rituals. But at least for me, the whole endeavor was pretty loaded with "should"s that generated a distracting and oppressive sense of duty, and since my efforts did not achieve any significant sense of peace I was also saddled with a constant sense of guilt that I must not be doing it sincerely enough.
Buddhism does not ask you to combat bitterness, despair or anger with gratitude because you "should", because religious leader so-and-so said to, or because you are going to Hell and the Grand Being will turn His back on you forever if you don't. The message from Buddhism about gratitude is that it WORKS. It says here is a tool, accessible to anyone who wants suffering in their personal life and the world around them to be less.
I do want to proffer the semantic caveat that this idea is not generally labeled "gratitude" in Buddhist parlance. The Buddhist idea I'm referring to has many names and teachers but since these teachings translated as Gratitude to me for reasons I will explain later on, I call it Buddhist gratitude.
Buddhist gratitude is about accepting the current situation without making excuses for it. It's about welcoming all of the potential good in any moment, however uncomfortable. It does not require you to make any promises, barter your future good behaviour for some immediate peace, turn a blind eye to injustice or ignore pain.
If I am in distress, this kind of gratitude calms my craving mind that is wishing things were different than they are and is feeling simultaneously entitled and unworthy. It allows me to recognize the things in my life that are already sustaining and could be helpful in the current situation. It also helps me to acknowledge and troubleshoot the things that are not working well, without getting all bent out of shape that these challenges exist in the first place.
Buddhist gratitude allows me to welcome the present moment and encourages me to view the situation with ruthless honesty, knowing that by doing so I am most likely inviting yet more challenges into my life. It is not a Pollyanna form of denial, nor is it an attempt to guilt myself into happiness by comparing my circumstances to the less fortunate. The intention is not to cover up or outweigh the bad things in life by focusing on the good. It is about removing the labels "good" and "bad" from experience altogether, and just calling it "now".
Some might call this acceptance but I don't - because it does not bring me to a place of either apathy or peace. It is a more active thing, though more natural and gentler than any of the efforts I made to Thank God as a Christian, which I found contrived and forced. The other reason I don't call it acceptance is that I don't associate it with maintaining the status quo. Sometimes gratitude has allowed me to react to discomfort or pain by deliberately going into an experience that I know will be even "worse" - only to discover that it is a place I always wanted to be. The magic of Buddhist gratitude in my life is that it alchemically transforms the scariest, hardest, most challenging parts of lived experience into joy.
My second caveat in this post is a spiritual one. Once the Buddhist gratitude idea sank in and I began to use it, I recognized it - I think it's embedded in many religious traditions and I have close friends who talk about their relationship to God (or Jesus Christ if they are born again) ((or Higher Power if they are in AA)) as the doorway through which they can access this tool, whatever you want to call it. I have heard it described as a sense of being deeply cared about by a powerful being, who will accept them unconditionally and has set them on a special and important road, upon which they have constant access to a loving travel companion.
Armed with this knowledge, regardless of the specific origin of their faith, I have seen these people face hardships with grace, courage and strength, offering help and comfort to other people along the way. I think that's wonderful, I really do, with no satire or sarcasm in sight. It makes me glad. It just does not work for me. I don't consider this a failing of mine or of the Christian religion in which I was raised. And I also don't lose any sleep trying to understand why that's so. I find it entirely unsurprising and also immensely comforting that me and someone else can reach what appears to be the exact same place through two different routes.
It would make dogmatics of every major world religion roll over in their respective unmade graves but I think this empirically supports something I've long thought, which is that the world is better off if there are lots of religions in it - the more the merrier, a kind of spiritual diversity at least as important to human health as ecological diversity. I think we should all have access to unlimited spiritual education. Find the path that resonates and follow it. It's tough to embrace this if you think there really is only one true path and I'm sorry - that is where fundamentalists and I will forever disagree - if they don't kill me first for being a heretic.
Now THAT was a little joke; if there's one thing I can't stand it's a spiritual practise with no sense of humor... No, I don't feel threatened for realsies; I consider myself lucky to live in a place where it is not an obstacle to life or liberty if you don't subscribe to the geographically dominant religion. I deliberately left out happiness as I have observed many people shunned by their fundamentalist relatives for various reasons that make no sense to me and which leave deep grooves of grief on both sides of that fence. To me this seems unnecessary and frankly tragic.
I have also been at ground zero where the impact of some gianormous Christian fundamentalist organization on things that are very important to me was being felt in a deeply personal way. So yes, there are aspects of the big, organized religions I have been exposed to that are a personal turnoff, I do have opinions about what aspects of those traditions might be obstacles to human happiness in general, and I have grave concerns about fundamentalists of any stripe. I don't know enough about Buddhism to determine whether that kind of judgement is frowned upon but my guess would be there is some very practical reason that being more compassionate and less offended by what I perceive to be other people's crazy, even abusive, antics is just good sense, and would make me more effective at reducing my own suffering and the suffering of other beings.
So I'm not a Buddhist, at least not yet. But I am very grateful that it's out there, in the world, and we're getting to know each other.
I've read a little bit, I know a few of the famous Buddhists by name, and unlike Presbyterianism, in which I was immersed for many years, several Buddhist teachings have had immediate concrete value in my life. As more than a few scholars have pointed out, many of the world's major religions have overlapping values. Indeed, I think many of the principles I've found helpful in Buddhism have equivalents in Christianity. But I never really connected with them until I heard them expressed from a Buddhist perspective.
In my admittedly very limited experience, Buddhism is more accessible and grounded in everyday experience than other paths. I also think it has aged well, maybe because there is less rigid dogma to try to lug into each new century. It's quite possible that with further exposure and study I could find the orthodox Buddhists who take ancient texts literally in contexts that no longer make sense or the practitioners who abuse their families or wage war in the name of a spiritual idea. I just haven't observed that yet.
This doesn't have all that much to do with dreaming, but in my defense I have been doing my level best to achieve REM for some hours now. I've been tossing and turning since 3am and as it is now 530, I thought I might stop struggling and embrace my current reality. This seems like a great time to share a Buddhist idea that has, quite literally, gotten me through the night.
One of the most helpful things I've learned from Buddhism is how to be grateful. Many religions have this as a core tenet in some form so I don't have a snappy explanation for why I like the Buddhist version better. I tried for many years to practise Christian gratitude - I prayed and said Grace and counted my blessings, and I intellectually understood the value in these rituals. But at least for me, the whole endeavor was pretty loaded with "should"s that generated a distracting and oppressive sense of duty, and since my efforts did not achieve any significant sense of peace I was also saddled with a constant sense of guilt that I must not be doing it sincerely enough.
Buddhism does not ask you to combat bitterness, despair or anger with gratitude because you "should", because religious leader so-and-so said to, or because you are going to Hell and the Grand Being will turn His back on you forever if you don't. The message from Buddhism about gratitude is that it WORKS. It says here is a tool, accessible to anyone who wants suffering in their personal life and the world around them to be less.
I do want to proffer the semantic caveat that this idea is not generally labeled "gratitude" in Buddhist parlance. The Buddhist idea I'm referring to has many names and teachers but since these teachings translated as Gratitude to me for reasons I will explain later on, I call it Buddhist gratitude.
Buddhist gratitude is about accepting the current situation without making excuses for it. It's about welcoming all of the potential good in any moment, however uncomfortable. It does not require you to make any promises, barter your future good behaviour for some immediate peace, turn a blind eye to injustice or ignore pain.
If I am in distress, this kind of gratitude calms my craving mind that is wishing things were different than they are and is feeling simultaneously entitled and unworthy. It allows me to recognize the things in my life that are already sustaining and could be helpful in the current situation. It also helps me to acknowledge and troubleshoot the things that are not working well, without getting all bent out of shape that these challenges exist in the first place.
Buddhist gratitude allows me to welcome the present moment and encourages me to view the situation with ruthless honesty, knowing that by doing so I am most likely inviting yet more challenges into my life. It is not a Pollyanna form of denial, nor is it an attempt to guilt myself into happiness by comparing my circumstances to the less fortunate. The intention is not to cover up or outweigh the bad things in life by focusing on the good. It is about removing the labels "good" and "bad" from experience altogether, and just calling it "now".
Some might call this acceptance but I don't - because it does not bring me to a place of either apathy or peace. It is a more active thing, though more natural and gentler than any of the efforts I made to Thank God as a Christian, which I found contrived and forced. The other reason I don't call it acceptance is that I don't associate it with maintaining the status quo. Sometimes gratitude has allowed me to react to discomfort or pain by deliberately going into an experience that I know will be even "worse" - only to discover that it is a place I always wanted to be. The magic of Buddhist gratitude in my life is that it alchemically transforms the scariest, hardest, most challenging parts of lived experience into joy.
My second caveat in this post is a spiritual one. Once the Buddhist gratitude idea sank in and I began to use it, I recognized it - I think it's embedded in many religious traditions and I have close friends who talk about their relationship to God (or Jesus Christ if they are born again) ((or Higher Power if they are in AA)) as the doorway through which they can access this tool, whatever you want to call it. I have heard it described as a sense of being deeply cared about by a powerful being, who will accept them unconditionally and has set them on a special and important road, upon which they have constant access to a loving travel companion.
Armed with this knowledge, regardless of the specific origin of their faith, I have seen these people face hardships with grace, courage and strength, offering help and comfort to other people along the way. I think that's wonderful, I really do, with no satire or sarcasm in sight. It makes me glad. It just does not work for me. I don't consider this a failing of mine or of the Christian religion in which I was raised. And I also don't lose any sleep trying to understand why that's so. I find it entirely unsurprising and also immensely comforting that me and someone else can reach what appears to be the exact same place through two different routes.
It would make dogmatics of every major world religion roll over in their respective unmade graves but I think this empirically supports something I've long thought, which is that the world is better off if there are lots of religions in it - the more the merrier, a kind of spiritual diversity at least as important to human health as ecological diversity. I think we should all have access to unlimited spiritual education. Find the path that resonates and follow it. It's tough to embrace this if you think there really is only one true path and I'm sorry - that is where fundamentalists and I will forever disagree - if they don't kill me first for being a heretic.
Now THAT was a little joke; if there's one thing I can't stand it's a spiritual practise with no sense of humor... No, I don't feel threatened for realsies; I consider myself lucky to live in a place where it is not an obstacle to life or liberty if you don't subscribe to the geographically dominant religion. I deliberately left out happiness as I have observed many people shunned by their fundamentalist relatives for various reasons that make no sense to me and which leave deep grooves of grief on both sides of that fence. To me this seems unnecessary and frankly tragic.
I have also been at ground zero where the impact of some gianormous Christian fundamentalist organization on things that are very important to me was being felt in a deeply personal way. So yes, there are aspects of the big, organized religions I have been exposed to that are a personal turnoff, I do have opinions about what aspects of those traditions might be obstacles to human happiness in general, and I have grave concerns about fundamentalists of any stripe. I don't know enough about Buddhism to determine whether that kind of judgement is frowned upon but my guess would be there is some very practical reason that being more compassionate and less offended by what I perceive to be other people's crazy, even abusive, antics is just good sense, and would make me more effective at reducing my own suffering and the suffering of other beings.
So I'm not a Buddhist, at least not yet. But I am very grateful that it's out there, in the world, and we're getting to know each other.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Putting the fun back in...
Some years ago I took a memoir writing class. It was nothing short of life-changing. I wrote a lot of pieces, the best of which achieved the lofty exposure of being read before my ENTIRE writing class of 11 people - and my sister, who came to the reading for much-appreciated moral support.
In that class (and since) I learned two things.
First, that there is nothing more satisfying than taking the facts and distilling from them the emotional truth, or at the very least an entertaining distortion; my true calling may have been editing reality TV. (A corollary: the more loaded and haunting the facts, the more cathartic to purge them in a fierce literary construction.)
Second, that it is very tricky to write about real people and events without getting in trouble for writing about real people and events. So for instance some people would advise against calling your family dysfunctional; at least in a public forum.
Since I hail from Canada, the chances of my parents going all Billy Ray to my Miley are slim to none. Even if it was not the case that We are a relatively non-litigous society, They have too much dignity and reserve for that.
On the other hand, I harbor a great deal of Protestant guilt. This is much much worse than Catholic guilt because in my childhood religion there isn't much of an emphasis on forgiveness. It's not that it's frowned upon or anything. It's just not really on the agenda. I've dated enough Catholic boys to know that confession is one of the major headlines from the Vatican Press. There is no equivalent sacrament available to Presbyterians; instead forgiveness is on the second to last page, sandwiched between the classifieds and the porn advertisements.
I chalk this up to the fact that we drink grape juice instead of communion wine. There may be nothing worse than an unflinchingly sober interpretation of scripture. Particularly when absorbed from the hard bleacher in a cold, fluorescently lit gymnasium echoingly too big for its diminutive, fiscally restrained, community congregation.
But I digress.
I have collected a number of female mentors over the years. Written down that sounds a lot more stalker serial killer than the reality. I hope. Anyway, my Nia instructor and occasional ad hoc life coach is one of the most loving, positive people I know. She is also the only person who has been able to pull off this adage without sounding either trite or annoyingly didactic: "unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die." From her it sounds... well... just true.
This is not about forgiveness, so much as it illustrates her point of view which I have found helpful on occasion. As for instance, today, it helped me frame what I want to say in a way that will not get me sued either legally or emotionally.
I was at work, having a less than stellar day - mostly because I'm PMSing, having an unusually prolonged existential crisis AND it's Day 537,562 without sun in The Rainy City (now that can't possibly be TRUE can it? This must be memoir!)
My temporary gloom had nothing to do with being at work; I am lately in the habit of thinking that going to my job is a privelege rather than a chore. Not long ago a former boss did the equivalent of crash and burn my little work family by driving our financial bus into a brick wall, and terminating my position about three years ahead of schedule. In this uncertain economy where many gifted friends are unemployed, I was very grateful last month to land a new job, and even happier to discover that my colleagues all quite sane.
On this day of unwonted out-of-sorts-ness I was standing three feet from my new boss, whom I am daily, shamelessly, trying to impress, when I very nearly destroyed a multi-thousand dollar piece of equipment.
This is what happened: I accidentally spun a fragile glass tube at thousands of rpms so that seconds after I pressed "start" and the machine began whirling up to its target speed, there was a horrible noise. Immediately I hit "stop" and lifting the lid, observed that the tube had literally disintegrated into thousands of tiny glass pebbles. Lest you forget the proximity of my boss, I could have reached out and touched her. I had visions of my paycheck being garnished for the next six months to pay for the damage, or worse yet, being fired for incompetence.
I casually scooped out the rubble, wiped down the interior, vacuumed up residue, and carried on an uneventful conversation, all with the smell of burning rotor in the air.
To give credit where credit is due, I must give a shout out to my family: thanks for the decades of experience that have taught me how to appear completely calm and collected in a situation that is, in fact, totally fucked up.
In that class (and since) I learned two things.
First, that there is nothing more satisfying than taking the facts and distilling from them the emotional truth, or at the very least an entertaining distortion; my true calling may have been editing reality TV. (A corollary: the more loaded and haunting the facts, the more cathartic to purge them in a fierce literary construction.)
Second, that it is very tricky to write about real people and events without getting in trouble for writing about real people and events. So for instance some people would advise against calling your family dysfunctional; at least in a public forum.
Since I hail from Canada, the chances of my parents going all Billy Ray to my Miley are slim to none. Even if it was not the case that We are a relatively non-litigous society, They have too much dignity and reserve for that.
On the other hand, I harbor a great deal of Protestant guilt. This is much much worse than Catholic guilt because in my childhood religion there isn't much of an emphasis on forgiveness. It's not that it's frowned upon or anything. It's just not really on the agenda. I've dated enough Catholic boys to know that confession is one of the major headlines from the Vatican Press. There is no equivalent sacrament available to Presbyterians; instead forgiveness is on the second to last page, sandwiched between the classifieds and the porn advertisements.
I chalk this up to the fact that we drink grape juice instead of communion wine. There may be nothing worse than an unflinchingly sober interpretation of scripture. Particularly when absorbed from the hard bleacher in a cold, fluorescently lit gymnasium echoingly too big for its diminutive, fiscally restrained, community congregation.
But I digress.
I have collected a number of female mentors over the years. Written down that sounds a lot more stalker serial killer than the reality. I hope. Anyway, my Nia instructor and occasional ad hoc life coach is one of the most loving, positive people I know. She is also the only person who has been able to pull off this adage without sounding either trite or annoyingly didactic: "unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die." From her it sounds... well... just true.
This is not about forgiveness, so much as it illustrates her point of view which I have found helpful on occasion. As for instance, today, it helped me frame what I want to say in a way that will not get me sued either legally or emotionally.
I was at work, having a less than stellar day - mostly because I'm PMSing, having an unusually prolonged existential crisis AND it's Day 537,562 without sun in The Rainy City (now that can't possibly be TRUE can it? This must be memoir!)
My temporary gloom had nothing to do with being at work; I am lately in the habit of thinking that going to my job is a privelege rather than a chore. Not long ago a former boss did the equivalent of crash and burn my little work family by driving our financial bus into a brick wall, and terminating my position about three years ahead of schedule. In this uncertain economy where many gifted friends are unemployed, I was very grateful last month to land a new job, and even happier to discover that my colleagues all quite sane.
On this day of unwonted out-of-sorts-ness I was standing three feet from my new boss, whom I am daily, shamelessly, trying to impress, when I very nearly destroyed a multi-thousand dollar piece of equipment.
This is what happened: I accidentally spun a fragile glass tube at thousands of rpms so that seconds after I pressed "start" and the machine began whirling up to its target speed, there was a horrible noise. Immediately I hit "stop" and lifting the lid, observed that the tube had literally disintegrated into thousands of tiny glass pebbles. Lest you forget the proximity of my boss, I could have reached out and touched her. I had visions of my paycheck being garnished for the next six months to pay for the damage, or worse yet, being fired for incompetence.
I casually scooped out the rubble, wiped down the interior, vacuumed up residue, and carried on an uneventful conversation, all with the smell of burning rotor in the air.
To give credit where credit is due, I must give a shout out to my family: thanks for the decades of experience that have taught me how to appear completely calm and collected in a situation that is, in fact, totally fucked up.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Movie plots
I was asleep in a motel room recently and I woke from such a perfect new movie plot. It was unusual, but not too far-fetched. There were plot twists and crises. It had a mildly science fiction feel, but near future, so accessible for non-geek audiences. I sat up and wrote down what now appears to be a poetic but rather hallucinogenic dream sequence that is entirely unusable as a screenplay.
Still, I had such a strong sense of purpose, such a passionate certainty that my little dream was about to morph into an award-winning film that rather than put the nail in that coffin, I e-filed it where I put all my writing ideas that have potential legs. Since almost every one of these ideas comes to me immediately post-REM, this file is metaphorically bulging with bright hopes yet to be doused by the cold water of 9am.
I have no such illusions about last night's dream, though it was powerful and the emotions pull on me still. I was knee-deep in water talking to a long lost high school friend when the sun went down and a storm came up. He was on a fishing boat and one huge wave separated us. I frantically swam backwards to catch up and by sheer force of will, landed us both on a nearby beach.
Ten yards ahead in the sand was an authentic thai restaurant. My friend was local. We began walking up the dirt path to the lean-to and I noticed that my swimsuit was dripping so I stepped to one side and began wringing it out. Looking down I saw that I was watering their local garden with my swim wear. Looking up, I saw my friend, nearly at the hut entrance, observing my behaviour with obvious horror.
He walked back to me and began steering me away from the building by the elbow. "What are you doing?" I asked. When he wouldn't answer I pulled away and said, "Look. I know I'm an embarassing gringo here. But that's who I am. I assure you there's no place you can take me where you will be safe from my cultural slips and blundering faux pas. I'm hungry. We eat here. We eat now." I tugged his arm and reluctantly he followed me back to the shack on the beach, where I ordered, smiling as much as I could and trying not to step on/lean against or brush past anything that might be fragile or precarious.
The meal was delicious.
Still, I had such a strong sense of purpose, such a passionate certainty that my little dream was about to morph into an award-winning film that rather than put the nail in that coffin, I e-filed it where I put all my writing ideas that have potential legs. Since almost every one of these ideas comes to me immediately post-REM, this file is metaphorically bulging with bright hopes yet to be doused by the cold water of 9am.
I have no such illusions about last night's dream, though it was powerful and the emotions pull on me still. I was knee-deep in water talking to a long lost high school friend when the sun went down and a storm came up. He was on a fishing boat and one huge wave separated us. I frantically swam backwards to catch up and by sheer force of will, landed us both on a nearby beach.
Ten yards ahead in the sand was an authentic thai restaurant. My friend was local. We began walking up the dirt path to the lean-to and I noticed that my swimsuit was dripping so I stepped to one side and began wringing it out. Looking down I saw that I was watering their local garden with my swim wear. Looking up, I saw my friend, nearly at the hut entrance, observing my behaviour with obvious horror.
He walked back to me and began steering me away from the building by the elbow. "What are you doing?" I asked. When he wouldn't answer I pulled away and said, "Look. I know I'm an embarassing gringo here. But that's who I am. I assure you there's no place you can take me where you will be safe from my cultural slips and blundering faux pas. I'm hungry. We eat here. We eat now." I tugged his arm and reluctantly he followed me back to the shack on the beach, where I ordered, smiling as much as I could and trying not to step on/lean against or brush past anything that might be fragile or precarious.
The meal was delicious.
Friday, March 2, 2012
You'll poke your eye out! (with a pineapple)
Last night was short on sleep or dreams. But something noteworthy did happen today - I poked myself in the eye with a pineapple, which is certainly a personal first.
The day did not have a particularly auspicious beginning. I woke into a rather conventional existential panic: omg i'm not living up to my potential and i'm forty and what is the meaning of life the planet's going to shit and shouldn't i be doing something important or useful instead i'm boring and tired all the time and my iq points are dropping right and left maybe i'm supposed to have kids after all but it's too late and i used to be good at writing but now i don't know if i'm good at anything i'm always afraid my boss will decide i suck at my job and i'll become unemployablee and destitute unable to support even my cats and so die alone ETCETERA)
So I took a breath, gave myself a tough love pep talk and decided the weight of the world's problems and my neuroses could wait for another thirty minutes, since it was 6am and I had not managed to fall asleep till 1am.
The morning got busy with teaching duties, lab experiments, a meeting. At 1136am I was puzzling over data when I suddenly remembered a lunchtime team fitness event I was signed up for. But it was in less than an hour, on another campus, and I had not brought any sweat-friendly clothes.
I ran the six blocks to the carpark, hopped on the freeway, thanking several minor deities that off peak traffic in Seattle is not bad at all. It took only 25 minutes to get from lab door to home. I grabbed tights, hoodie, tennis shoes, and another frantic freeway interlude later, made it to the Pineapple Express start site with three minutes to spare.
My team of four donned leis and lugged pineapples through four stations dotted across campus, where we faux-swam, climbed stairs, lunged, crunched, and hopped around all in the name of fitness. And on the very last rep of the very last exercise at the very last station, I bent over and poked myself in the eye with the leafy hairdo of my own pineapple.
It hurts to poke yourself in the eye with sharp foliage. Naturally I wondered if I had made myself blind, scratched my cornea, given myself an infection with some menacing pineapple bacteria, or was about to discover that - notwithstanding the fact that I eat pineapple mutliple times a week at the workplace salad bar without incident - I have a previously undetected and very severe allergy to pineapple leaves.
Since I don't trust eyewash stations, I got back in my car and took my reddening eye to Bartell drugs. Three rinses with Bausch & Lomb Eye Relief and it still hurt but not as much and I managed to talk myself down from imminent blindness and imagined corneal surgeries. Instead, I went back to work, pausing only for late lunch (pho) and much later a snack (soda machine).
And work is where you will find me still, looking at worms under the microscope, furrowing my brow over cloning diagrams, and a little bit dreading the pop quiz I have to write for my students' 8am lab tomorrow. But I have a bottle of saline and a bottle of Gatorade, which is enormous wealth by some standards. So I should be content.
The day did not have a particularly auspicious beginning. I woke into a rather conventional existential panic: omg i'm not living up to my potential and i'm forty and what is the meaning of life the planet's going to shit and shouldn't i be doing something important or useful instead i'm boring and tired all the time and my iq points are dropping right and left maybe i'm supposed to have kids after all but it's too late and i used to be good at writing but now i don't know if i'm good at anything i'm always afraid my boss will decide i suck at my job and i'll become unemployablee and destitute unable to support even my cats and so die alone ETCETERA)
So I took a breath, gave myself a tough love pep talk and decided the weight of the world's problems and my neuroses could wait for another thirty minutes, since it was 6am and I had not managed to fall asleep till 1am.
The morning got busy with teaching duties, lab experiments, a meeting. At 1136am I was puzzling over data when I suddenly remembered a lunchtime team fitness event I was signed up for. But it was in less than an hour, on another campus, and I had not brought any sweat-friendly clothes.
I ran the six blocks to the carpark, hopped on the freeway, thanking several minor deities that off peak traffic in Seattle is not bad at all. It took only 25 minutes to get from lab door to home. I grabbed tights, hoodie, tennis shoes, and another frantic freeway interlude later, made it to the Pineapple Express start site with three minutes to spare.
My team of four donned leis and lugged pineapples through four stations dotted across campus, where we faux-swam, climbed stairs, lunged, crunched, and hopped around all in the name of fitness. And on the very last rep of the very last exercise at the very last station, I bent over and poked myself in the eye with the leafy hairdo of my own pineapple.
It hurts to poke yourself in the eye with sharp foliage. Naturally I wondered if I had made myself blind, scratched my cornea, given myself an infection with some menacing pineapple bacteria, or was about to discover that - notwithstanding the fact that I eat pineapple mutliple times a week at the workplace salad bar without incident - I have a previously undetected and very severe allergy to pineapple leaves.
Since I don't trust eyewash stations, I got back in my car and took my reddening eye to Bartell drugs. Three rinses with Bausch & Lomb Eye Relief and it still hurt but not as much and I managed to talk myself down from imminent blindness and imagined corneal surgeries. Instead, I went back to work, pausing only for late lunch (pho) and much later a snack (soda machine).
And work is where you will find me still, looking at worms under the microscope, furrowing my brow over cloning diagrams, and a little bit dreading the pop quiz I have to write for my students' 8am lab tomorrow. But I have a bottle of saline and a bottle of Gatorade, which is enormous wealth by some standards. So I should be content.
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