A Hard Place

I've been in a physically fine, emotionally hard place this past week and over the weekend. Working extra hours at my day job to compensate for the fact that my co-worker left, and feeling conflicted about it. As with many things in my life, it has to do with boundaries, and the kinds of obligations I tend to fall into over and over.  The obligations are such that perfect effort equals invisibility, and anything less than perfect effort--which includes perfect effort for too few hours--equals embarrassing results for others that are highly visible and have repercussions--if a guest speaker were to arrive and not have a hotel room booked, or a professor need syllabi for the first day of class and not have any copies.  Not earth-shattering, but the kind of thing where you might think the person responsible was doing a shitty job because it's such a small thing to do...except that there are a lot of small things and each one takes time.

I haven't fucked up anything yet, but if I were trying to do 65 man-hours of work (the amount of myself and my coworker combined) in 25 hours (my official work schedule), it would have happened already.  Instead, I am trying to do the 65 hours of work in 35-40 hours, and feeling resentful about it.

The resentment has to do with the way I didn't make anyone ask, but just took it on.  It has to do with the fact that when the new person starts, she will be paid about 20 cents less per hour than I am paid...after four years. I think they would pay more if they could, but fear that I will find out, as I happened to find out that my last co-worker's salary had surpassed mine after only a year.  Apparently I was hired at too low a rate four years ago, and they have seen the error of their ways and hired subsequent people at a higher rate, but because yearly raises are given as percentage of the rate you already get, that's an error that keeps giving...less, and makes me resent both the people who made the original offer--and makes me resent myself for being so naively trusting early on.

I took a part time job because I wanted to pursue my big writing dreams, but then I agreed to the hours that come closest to simulating a full-time job, and whenever someone is sick, or gone, or needs to go home early, I instinctively spread out to cover the hole...because I'm a team player, and I'm there.  But it happens over and over.  There's always someone else's drama that is more dramatic than my drama so I enable that and then I feel like I haven't really fought for what I want at all, and so maybe I don't deserve it because if I really wanted it enough I would fight harder.

And then I think, if this unrealistic dream thing isn't going to work out, and I'm not really fighting for it, then I should just get a full-time job and makes some money...because, hey, we could hella use some money...  And that makes me sad, because I feel like I didn't try hard enough yet...because of making the very decisions I'm describing right now.

It just goes round and round in a pretty spirally fashion. So that's the hard place I'm in at the moment.  It makes me a less than optimally fun person to hang out with because even when I contain the words coming out of my mouth, my energy is just sad and dark. So I'm trying to find the center and the bottom so I can start charting my way out.

Thinking About the Weather

Los Angeles current temperature: 93. Wednesday's high: 99. Thursday's high: 99. Friday's high: 95.
For some reason "Like the Weather" from 10 Thousand Maniacs popped into my head.  An old favorite back in the day.  I had a tape, but never watched the music video of the song. Would it have occurred to to me how incongruous the performance is with the subject of the song? Maybe she (they) figured no one wants to watch you sit around and be mopey.  Or maybe the exuberance of youth was just too strong to be squelched.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YelgLoQMLE?rel=0&w=420&h=315]

I lift my head from the pillow and then fall again

I get a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather
A quiver in my lip as if I might cry

And by the force of will my lungs are filled and so I breathe
Lately it seems this big bed is where I never leave
I get a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather
A quiver in my voice as I cry

"What a cold and rainy day
Where on earth is the sun hid away?"

I hear the sound of a noon bell chime, well I'm far behind
you put in 'bout half a day while here I lie
With a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather
A quiver in my lip as if I may cry

What a cold and rainy day
Where on earth is the sun hid away?

Do I need someone here to scold me?
Or do I need someone who'll grab and pull me out of?
Four poster, dull torpor pulling downward

For it's such a long time since my better days
I say my prayers nightly, this will pass away

The color of the sky is gray as I can see through the blinds
Lift my head from the pillow and then I fall again
I get a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather
A quiver in my lip as if I may cry

A cold and rainy day
Where on earth is the sun hid away?

A cold and rainy day
I shiver, quiver, and try to wake

When Nothing Seems Fair, How We Cope

In my last post I mentioned my friend who is having issues with his health and posted on Facebook the status, "nothing seems fair anymore."  His post got an overwhelming response, because he has so many friends who love him, and also, i think because they are words that hit a cord with all of us.  Because we all suffer, and we all cannot help but notice that some of us seem to suffer more than others.  And what is that all about?  How can we reconcile that we want things, but we don't get the things that we want--other people get them.  And the things we have, other people want:  Jobs, respect, human rights, health, economic security, freedom from fear and pain.

Last night I attended this mindfullness group I sometimes go to on campus after work.  We had a guest speaker who was talking about--well, various things--but one of them was neuroplasticity, and how we can form new neural pathways and change our temperments and the way we think and feel about events and circumstances. Apparently, we (humans) through evolution, have developed a negative bias when we look at the world, because back in the day it wasn't as important to remember all the nights that you ducked into a empty cave and had a nice nap or campfire with roasted elk-meat as it was  to remember the one time you ducked into a cave and found a bear inside. While running like hell from the bear and sleeping shivering in the cold behind a rock was an unpleasant experience, you needed to remember that in order to avoid the bear cave in the future, and to stay vigilant for signs of bear when entering a new cave.

Nowadays, the "negative bias" doesn't always serve us so well. If twenty people compliment your outfit but one person makes a snide remark--focusing on the negative thing might be unnecessary for survival, and just plain bad for your mood. All else being equal, why not think about the nice things that people said, and be happier, and maybe because you're happier, you'll be nicer, and maybe that will lead to better relationships...etc.

The logic goes (according to this guest speaker's summary of several books I haven't read myself) that in order to think about the good things, you have to consciously practice, until, with enough practice, your brain starts doing it naturally. (It all sounded related (or the same as) cultivating gratitude, which I've been a fan of since being introduced to it  a few years ago.)

The speaker  gave an example of an exercise where you find something pleasant but overlooked to meditate upon, like "how nice it is to breathe, to have enough air."  When she said this, I thought, "that's right! It is pretty awesome to breathe."  But then she kept talking--and this was not so much the teaching as just a thought from her life I think-- she said, "I have a friend who has cancer, and when we talked the other day, he told me he was having trouble breathing, that he couldn't get enough air anymore."

I think this was supposed to just shine a little light on how air is something to appreciate, but it kind of spiraled for me.  As my niece once told me at age seven, "we don't compare, because it doesn't make anyone feel good."  When depositing monthly paychecks for people at work that equals my annual pay, I've found it isn't happy-making to dwell.  On the flip side, thinking of starving children in Africa has never helped my appetite either.  This is not to say that one should live one's whole life with blinders, or ignore injustices and societal ills because we don't like to think about them. But in some cases, there is nothing you can do.  I can't help her friend breathe better. I can only feel deep sympathy for her friend--not a bad thing--there are other exercises designed just to help us be more compassionate -- but I'm not sure that it sets up a strictly "positive" neural pathway.

Instead, it reinforces a neural pathway that I think I've pretty much worn smooth with use--the awareness of suffering--my own and that of others. Having survived cancer twice, I've experienced some pain, I am frequently--habitually--grateful for the absence of pain, for every test result that doesn't predict the necessity for more pain.  I'm thankful for my everyday life.  And at the same time. I'm acutely aware that my state of blessedness is both temporary and has a random quality to it.  Aware that while my pain went away, and I healed, there are people--some that I know--who deal with chronic pain, who are suffering even as I am not suffering.  And whatever I choose to be grateful for today can be taken away from me at any moment.* Toward the end of his life, my father complained about not being able to breathe. It's not a big leap for me to imagine a day when I might not be able to breathe.

It makes me sad.  I hope that with practice, by the time that day comes, I'll think, "but look at the sun outside the window--isn't it great to be able to see the light?" and genuinely feel grateful for that. Gratitude coexists with suffering. We suffer because we've been given the gift of being alive.
Still, it doesn't always seem fair.

*As an example--I 've often expressed gratitude for the fact that I am a great sleeper, and thought it would be awful to be one of those people who wakes up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep. I am writing this now because I woke up at 2:30 AM, and I haven't been able to go back to sleep. So far, it's not as bad as I feared--but then, I haven't yet had to get through the day tomorrow.

Related articles

Scroll back up and click on that "Neuroplasticity" link. It's a 2-minute video that's interesting.
The book being discussed by our speaker was called Hardwiring Happiness. (I haven't read it)
The author did a TED talk. (I haven't watched it because I don't want to wake up my husband)
You might be interested in this cliff's Notes Version (actually About.com) of the Buddha's views on suffering.

Here's an article suggested by this widget that's attached to my blog:
M I N D F U L N E S S

On Living

Today I opened a storage room that hadn't opened for a long time and found some boxes.  I opened the boxes, that had not been opened for an even longer time and found some tapes an journals.  I opened the journals, which might not have been opened since they were written in--and find I was much the same person twenty years ago as I am now--though perhaps better read than I recall being.
On October 22, in probably 1989 (I dated without years--I guess back then a year felt like a thing so big you would remember it) I copied this section of a poem I don't remember reading, called "On Living" by Nazim Hikmet.

III
This earth will grow cold
a star among stars
and one of the smallest--
a gilded mote on the blue velvet, I mean
I mean this,  our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a heap of ice
or a dead cloud even,
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch black space...
you must grieve for this right now,
you have to feel this sorrow now,
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say, "I lived."

Crickets, Passive Pain, Collogen and Whole 30

1) Last night we had a cricket* in our bedroom. Or perhaps in the wall of our room. The sound the cricket makes is just short of shrill, and the word "chirping" does not seem to do it justice**. And this one was incredibly loud. When crickets are loud outside in the trees, I think I generally attribute the volume to multiple crickets, but this, barring the improbable possibility of a highly synchronized family of crickets in our wall, was just one cricket. He chirped for hours, was still chirping when I went to sleep, but this morning he is silent. I think he is a night-cricket. Or he is dead.
The sound of the night cricket, if you stand in the middle of our room, seems to come from several directions at once. But once you have narrowed it down to a wall, you can stand right next to the wall, facing it, with your nose almost touching it, and definitely the sound is louder in your right ear. You can work your way along the wall to the sconce, which contains a light bulb, and it seems you have reached the apex of the sound. And if you touch and turn the flower-shaped glass shade the cricket stops for just long enough that you think maybe he was inside the shade, and now as sizzled, moth-like against the bulb. But then he starts again, and the wall theory comes to the fore yet again.

2) Today in yoga, after reading a book about kids who have cancer, I thought about pain. I was thinking about pain because of the pain depicted in the book about kids with cancer, and also because I was in pain. In yoga, the strength exercises bring one kind of pain, and the stretching exercises bring another. As I get older, the pain manifests with ever smaller increments of effort or extension, but also over the years, I have learned to play with the pain a little more--or play with the surrendering part of the pain. Which is what brought me to my exact thought--or the new thought--about pain, which is that I am better at passive pain. In moderate amounts of course. I can withstand pain, and even willing increase my own pain (in moderate amounts of course), when I am relieved of the responsibility of having to do anything else--like run, or pick up a kid and feed him, etc. And by "better," I guess I mean I can do it for longer. Because I run sometimes until it hurt and then I keep running...just not for very long. I guess I could increase my endurance with necessity. I now swim for longer that I did at the beginning of the summer, and sometimes the tedium and mild discomfort of the rhythmic breathing fades away. The activity becomes second nature, and so then it feels almost passive. Like downward dog. A little.

3) Tangentially related to the increasing difficulty of stretching, I've started taking a collagen supplement. Three days so far, so I can't say if it's having much effect, although I imagine in certain light that the backs of my hands look a little plumper and smoother. The supplement is a powder, so must be mixed with a liquid. For best results, one should drink it on an empty stomach and not eat for a half an hour afterward. I've just drunk it while writing this post. In a little while, I'll make breakfast--which I've decided will be a kind of fried-rice concoction, except with no rice, because of the whole thirty. I will saute shredded cabbage, and then add scrambled eggs and little pieces of duck meat left over from dinner last night. Yeah, I know. But it sounds good to me. Whole 30 is going okay. This is like day ten I think. Sometimes I resent the lack of options and bread and chocolate, but I enjoy seeing the incremental change to the shape of my body. I've lost between four and six pound, depending on the time of day. So there is discipline involved, with denying myself the pleasure of eating certain things, but often there is not that much discipline, more distracting myself with the other pleasure--that little rush that comes with accomplishing something. Also, there are not restrictions on quantity of allowed things, so I find I eat quite a lot of almond butter. I don't know exactly how that relates to anything, but I'm just saying.

* Or it could be a cicada. I don't quite understand the difference, and I'm feeling too lazy to look it up right now. Maybe if you come back to this post later, I'll have added something informative.

** As I write this, I really want you to hear the cricket chirp, so I make the effort to listen to some cricket sound effects online, but none of them really sound like our cricket. If he is still alive and lively tonight, I WILL make a short recording and add it here.

Related articles

• The Cricket as a Thermometer (alexanderszewczak.wordpress.com)

Nothing Seems Fair Anymore

"Nothing Seems Fair Anymore."
This yesterday's Facebook status update of a friend from both college and LA.  He is funny, talented, goodhearted.
He has cancer.
Several months ago, he went into hospice, but has continued, on social media, to be the source of upbeat quotes, photos, and memes.
Most of our mutual friends have moved away, and we have not remained in touch directly, though we have made plans for a visit, it has been the LA kind of plan-- where you set a date, and one person has to cancel, and the other doesn't quite follow up, because:life, and so the plan fades away. I tell myself I don't know if his days are too filled or too empty, if I, after being absent for so long, would be a good use of his time and energy, when both are  in limited supply.  But think of him often. I think of him when I sit to meditate, which isn't often enough.  I think of him every time I scroll by one of his posts, and click "like."  And now, for awhile at least, when I think of him, I will think of these words, which went straight to my heart and have brought tears to my eyes, several times over the past couple of days.
Here's a video he and his wife made a decade or so ago.
http://youtu.be/zufK6CufVhA

Should I Be Embarrassedd?

In one of the "lighter" of the several excruciatingly awkward moments of Girls this last week (Season 2, Episode 9), Marnie decides to do an impromptu performance of her own arrangement of Kanye's "Stronger," at the party of her ex-boyfriend phone-app start-up.  Her voice is good.  The arrangement is interesting.  The moment and the audience were both ill-chosen, and witnessing the whole event was so very very painful. 

When it's all over, her boyfriend takes her into his office, and she says, "Should I be embarrassed?"

The possibility of these kinds of moments terrify me, and the the reality of them horrifies me. Right now I have flashbacks to the lingering camera angles on all the hipsters in the office watching her performance with pained expressions.  It's not just an embarrassing thing that happen like a strap breaking and a boob flopping loose during your ballet recital.  That's embarrassing, of course, but it's an accident that happens within a prescribed setting, in the course of a prescribed activity.  Especially if your ballet teacher chose the costume, none of it is a result of your bad choice.  It's not because you just don't get it.

Fear of being that person who just doesn't get it is the monkey that I've carried on my back for almost as long as I can remember. In fifth grade, a large portion of my friends were mortified that that one girl didn't wear socks with her loafers.  It didn't matter an iota about her socks.  I was only mortified that such a large number of people were voicing mortification and that the girl knew nothing about it.  Fuck, if it could happen to her, over this--it could happen to anyone, over anything.  And it did.  Clear through adolescence, as one might imagine--and into adulthood. There were people who spoke up at the wrong times at meetings, and people who spoke to the wrong people on set.  They didn't understand the dynamics of power, the etiquette of being near, but not of,  celebrity. They just didn't get it.

I've been having wrestling with the monkey lately, maybe because I've been trying to put myself out there when I can--be as honest as I can, give all I can when I think I have something to give, navigate the treacherous territory of social media. Lately, I've been making some mistakes (or, alternatively, lately I have tottering self-esteem and think I've made mistakes even when I haven't, or maybe I have), and sometimes  I can feel the mortified looks. Too often I feel like a ridiculous white girl trying to cover Kanye to a room full of unforgiving eyes. And whatever I have just done, I have to grapple with the fact that the people who have witnessed it may never see me again without remembering it. And I have to engage in the spinning self-interrogation that seems obligatory in the wake of faux pas.  What was my intention?  What was I trying to do?  Was I being arrogant, self-important, above myself? Was I compensating for insecurities? Was I trying to prove something?  There are so many possibilities, it seems impossible to even admit the possibility of altruistic motives.

At the same time, again, for almost as long as I can remember, I've realized that at some level--the real level-- these social mistakes don't matter at all. Loafers without socks--don't matter--it's just a construct.  So are all the aspects of "knowing your place" that are imposed on people based on gender, ethnicity, class, and around here, the Hollywood class/power structure.  It goes without saying, that kind perpetual second-guessing is really non-conducive to doing good creative work or just being a happy individual. 

So then I have to breathe for awhile and put my mistakes into perspective.  After several minutes of breathing I can accept that in vast scheme of things,  my sins are usually about the equivalent of coming to school in loafers with no socks--social sins that carry the same weight of punishment as a crime in a world of fifth-grade fashion aficionados, but in the moral universe are almost utterly unremarkable.

In other news, there was no yoga teacher to teach class at the gym today, so I got up and led the class. I tried to do a good job, to be clear, set a good tone.  Some people walked out early on, as I often want to do when another student gets up to teach. Some people seemed genuinely pleased and grateful--they'd driven through traffic to get to class, and they got to have class.  I think I did it because I have a love for yoga, and thought I had enough experience to be able could give something of value where nothing was being given.  But if you said I wanted the limelight, on what grounds could I refute that? After all, what else is a blog but a platform for a spotlight to shine on, a tacit admission for one's need for attention?  Should I be embarrassed?

Materials vs. Pattern

You're crossing the ocean on a wooden ship. One of the boards rots, so you replace it with another that you've stored on your hold. It is still the same ship? Most people will agree that it is. But what if, bit by bit, as you make your journey, your ships sustains more and more damage, so that by the time you reach your destination, you have substituted each piece with its counterpart and not a single piece remains unreplaced. Now is it the same ship? Why or why not? How much of a thing is its pattern and how much its physical material? *

They say that our cells die and regenerate at a pace such that every seven years they are completely replaced.  Seven years from today there will be nothing of us that is here today, but everything that is there then will look and function like what is here now.  So we will be like a replicants of ourselves, with implanted memories from our former selves.

If each of us has a soul that resides within us somewhere, lubricating the space between the quarks perhaps, does it simply remain through this changing of the guard?  Does the soul differentiate between the old and the new material?  Does it remember and perhaps mourn the distinct identity of cells that once were?  Does it feel abandoned? Does it tire of greeting endless parade of new cells, each believing it is authentic and that knows more than it does?




(*Quoted from Kevin Brockmeier in the anthology, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.)

Waiting to Inhale

The kid  stands near the door of the bus, unlit cigarette one hand, his lighter in the other. He turns the lighter over in his hand, puts it in his pocket, takes it out again. He looks ahead to the stop.  In a minute, after this red light, after this car passes, and the next--in a moment we'll make it there, and the doors will open.

Things They Found in the Attic Part 2

Here is a story I wrote at the age of ten, called I WISH I WERE A DOG.  I had completely forgotten this, and I have to say seeing it fresh, I was pretty impressed with my ten-year-old self.

One sunny day a dog named Arto walked up the steps of the house he lived in with a little boy named Tommy and his mother and father.  Arto scratched at the door and barked to remind everyone it was time for lunch.  Tommy let him in and gave him some dog food. Tommy made a sandwich for himself.  As Tommy ate his lunch he looked at Arto and though. Then he went into the other room where his mother was sewing.  He said to her, "I wish I were a dog."  

It's far from perfect, of course. The inciting incident--Tommy looking at Arto and realizing his desire to be a dog--is a little vague.  It might have been better to have Tommy stressed out by piles of homework or chores, or getting beat up by the town bully, so that we could really see the contrast of his perception of Arto's relaxed dog lifestyle to his own--but the MOMENT is there. Tommy thinks (internal) and then he immediately goes and expresses his thought to his mother (external) and he has a very clear and actionable want--which is something that I had apparently completely forgotten how to do between writing this and when I finally went to grad school for writing decades later.

The opening scene of carefree Arto coming home to be fed--is very nice and expressive. It could go over the opening credits, or be intercut before or after Tommy's trials. Mostly I'm impressed by the the POV transition here from Arto to Tommy. See how Arto trots up and into Tommy's world?

Later that day, Tommy and his mother went to see the town fairy. When they got there and told her what Tommy wanted she waved her wand and said, "Tomorrow when the sun comes up you will be a dog."  As Tommy and his mother were going out the door the fairy added, "The spell will only last a week, so when the spell wears out if you still want to be a dog I will change you into one permanently."

A pretty good Act 1 / Act 2 break: When the sun comes up, Tommy will be a dog, and that his dog-ness will last a week. We know that Act 2 is going to be about whether Tommy likes being a dog, and that Act 2 will end at the end of the week.  We understand the stakes involved-- Tommy might decide to become a dog permanently.  We might already have some sense of hope and fear for Tommy-- we might want him to get what he wants--to become a dog. Or we might fear that he'll make a momentous decision that he'll regret later, leaving behind his awesome mom who takes him to the town fairy and such.

And note the staging: The town fairy doesn't just have a block of dialogue, it's interspersed with "business," She gives us the most pertinent piece of information--that he's going to get his wish, and then, "as Tommy and his mother were going out the door" she adds more details and stakes.

The end--this is a spoiler-- is  a little predictable--After a week of misadventures Tommy decides not to be a dog. And after that, there's not really much of an Act 3--probably because we didn't set it up in Act 1.  My rewrite might include Tommy learning to deal with the bully or his stress levels by using some piece of information he learned while he was a dog.  

I look at this and I think--hell yeah, the person who wrote this at age 10, could become a writer, which is encouraging. 

But I also kind of wonder "what happened?"  How did I get so distracted for so long, and did I burn through the years where I might have been fresher and bolder--and just better? The answer to that is not really a puzzler.  The answer is yes. Yes I lost material during those years. Just by looking at journal entries or emails written during that time I can tell you that the voice and the perspective that I had then is not something that I can recapture.  It would never occur to me to write I Wish I Were a Dog now, even though I find it delightful. You can't step in the same stream twice.

The more open question is, what's left?  Is there enough freshness and imagination there--that combined with a great enough degree of craft and skill--it can make the hours that I spend productive for me, and to make what I produce worthwhile for other people?

What is Forgotten, What is Blessed

Forget movies, too, the Hollywood trash in which nothing happened 
      though they were loud and fast, and when they were over
time had passed, which was a blessing in itself.  O blessed 
     is Wong Kar Wai and his cities of blue and rain.
Blessed is David Lynch, his Polish prostitutes juking 
     to Locomotion in a kitschy fifties bungalow.  Blessed
is Jeff Buckley, his Hallelujah played a thousand times in your car
     as you drove through Houston, its vacant lots
exploding with wild flowers and capsized shopping carts.

From Ode to Forgetting the Year
by Barbara Hamby

Grandeur

When I was young, my dad asked what I was thinking of becoming when I grew up.  I said I wanted to be a librarian.  I liked reading books very much, and thought I'd be good at leading story hour.

My Dad said if I wanted to be a librarian, I should be a librarian on a space station.  This would have been the very early days of the shuttle program, and my dad had a book by a man who predicted we would soon have a space station near the moon.  Space was where it was at, my dad said--I should specialize in something that would be needed--I should be part of the future.

In any case, I should reach for something higher than just being a librarian.  And if the space thing didn't work out,  I should plan to leave our small town, and small thinking behind.

Whine

The gym was too crowded and there were no cardio machines.
My watermelon is too hard.
My writing time has not generated good solutions.
The house is messy.
I ate too much bread today and it's making me irritable.

Desiderata

Here is something I never knew until alerted to the fact by my friend Rosie's recent blog post . The poem to follow was written by a man named Max Ehrmann, who lived in my home town of Terre Haute, Indiana.

Whenever I come across this poem--or line from it, on a greeting card or whatever--I am always fond of it.  The advice and observations are so nice and straightforward: "do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.  Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness."  That's so true!  As I get older I find that so much of life is simply recognizing, over and over again, that certain things are true.  The are usually quite obvious things, that I "know" already.  And yet, on some level, in order to live a good life, it helps to be reminded.  Again and again.  Which is I guess why we have certain poems and mantras that we pass on and repeat and write on greeting cards, motivational posters or our Facebook status.

But anyway, the point of this post is to note that this person, who lived in Terre Haute, where I was born, who went DePauw University, where my father went to school, who was a lawyer and a man who worked in the  unglamorous but steady fields of meatpacking and overalls production and left these things at a certain point to write--and who thus probably had many of the same thoughts as any writer who gives up one identity to embrace another where one's achievements, or public notice of same, is uncertain--wrote this:

Desiderata

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its shams, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy. 


As a note for those who like me do not speak Latin -- Desiderata  means "things wanted or needed, longed for, desired." It could be that each little piece of advice is something that the writer feels we all need.. Or it could be that they are ideals he desires to emulate. 

Mimic Octopus

In conjunction with some writing research, someone recently sent me this video of an octopus that is awesome. You should click on the link, even though I can't figure out how to make it look enticing by embedding the image.

Animated GIF!!

Today I went to this festival at USC called "Get Your Hands Dirty with the Arts." I signed up to learn how to make an animated Gif. We were supposed to bring an object, so I brought some clay. This other woman in my group also brought clay, so we were on the same page.

The results of our efforts was this:


Kind of creepy, but I'm still pretty proud of myself. I did most of the clay work-we only had about 20 minutes. I'd originally planned to make the brown head look more like Paul--with curly monster hair, but one of the other women in group made this beautiful braid--she said she had three daughters and used to braid their hair, so we went with that. I had already made the other head look like ("look like" in the broadest sense) me, so we ended up with a doubly non-traditional relationship between our heads.

Animated Gif!

Bloody Tuesday

Although I am not a big fan of fruit teas, I am choosing them more since my supervisor bought me this creature cup for my birthday. It's like the creature is bleeding.

2012, A Shared Space Odyssey

Our housemate of two years moved out last night. A new housemate will arrive during the upcoming month (her stuff in January, she in February.)

Since moving back to L.A., Paul and I have been lucky with our housemates--they have been responsible and reliable and entertaining. But--and this is combined with all the "housekeeping" stuff referred to in my last post--given a new year and a new start, I'd like to try to improve my environment, and, because I don't live alone, I need to figure out how to do that in conjunction with others.

I've read that with the recent economic downturn, adult kids are moving back in with their families. I think, especially in high-rent urban centers--more people are also sharing their habitations with people who are NOT their families. More people are getting housemates (or as the Brits say, more accurately, "flatmates.") Even before the economy became dire, most of my friends shared apartments after graduation and for most of their 20s.

So it was a surprise to me, when I started looking, with I didn't find any books with advice on living with other adults with whom you aren't romantically involved. There are a few books for couples combining households, and some articles on how to be a good roommate--aimed at kids sharing dormrooms, but no "Living with Friends without Destroying Your Friendships," no "Sharing a Household for Dummies," no "Everything I Learned about Living with Others I Learned in Kindergarten."

I did finally settle on this book: Sharing Your Place Without Losing Your Space.
It is also aimed at couples, but it looked like some of the advice might apply--and of course, I am part of a couple. And to be upfront, our differing views on cleaning and clutter have, over the years, caused some of the deepest riffs in our generally good relationship, and any housemate we have has to integrate into that, which is a good reason to spend our roommate-free month trying to see how much of that we can resolve.

Does anybody out there have reading recommendations, advice or opinions based on experience about how to create a happy, companionable, shared household with one or more other persons? I'm all ears!

Change ALL The Things!

One on my favorite posts from Hyperbole and a Half is this one.
In the beginning she decides to fix her whole life by acting like a responsible adult, being organized, etc.

This is my current mindset. It's been building for a few weeks. Maybe it's because:
I just had a birthday, or
it's a new year, or
my day job is about to change to less hours which will bring in less money, so I feel I need to justify the fact that I have given myself three extra hours a day, or
maybe, as my husband says, my desire to organize my environment is due to lack of organization and peace inside my head--although everything he says is suspect, as he is not above playing to my quasi-Buddhist leanings and innate feelings of inadequacy so that I'll go meditate and stop asking him to help with household chores.

Regardless of the reasons, for the last few weeks every time I look at a shelf or a drawer, I want to clean and organize. When I pass my keyboard, I want to sell it (Korg SP-100 with 88 weighted keys, natural piano sound, plus some others--let me know if you're interested and local) because I don't play it anymore. I want to move everything from the hall closet into the garage, and when I see the garage I want to blow it up.

However, I have been through this before, and I know that when you start a massive project at three in the morning, by the harsh light of the noon sun, the vision can seem a little less radiant. I'll start to feel tired, and start to get realistic, and I'll feel more like this:


And then I'll think about how much time I've spent and will need to spend on the massive project, and wonder if those hours are the exact hours when I would otherwise write the most awesome story or screenplay ever that incidentally would make me so much money that I could hire a team of magical elves to do the project and also fix everything else in my life, and I think about the Erma Bombeck quote that no one looks back at the end of their life and thinks "I wish I'd spent more time cleaning."*

But there is this--I think I might look back at the end of my life and say, "I wish I'd spent less time looking for keys or my right shoe or and driving back home for missing documents, and arguing with living companions and feeling suffocated by living with what is essentially debris." So maybe, in a way, I will wish I had spent more time cleaning--with cleaning being the stand in word for a lot of other things. "Housekeeping" at big meetings, is what they call all the little logistical details that need to be covered in order for things to run smoothly.

So 2012 may be the year of housekeeping--and all the things that implies, or that I decide it implies as the year goes on. Updates to follow (unless that starts to seem too hard).


*I have no idea if Erma Bombeck ever said that.

Eggies--The Birthday Post

Happy birthday to me...

Okay, to be honest, I'm a bit in the doldrums morale-wise, still getting over a cold, slammed at work, there's the taking account of one's life's accomplishments, etc--but let's leave all that aside for a moment and talk about my birthday present!

Some of you may know that I occasionally become obsessed with certain items of the "As-Seen-on-TV" variety. (SLANKET!)

This year I've had my eye on another product, and when I woke this morning, it was on the table waiting for me. (Thanks, Paul!)
You crack the egg, and put it in an egg shaped container, and boil it. Results: A hardboiled egg you don't have to peel.

Because I am naturally lazy, but try to be frugal, I often boil five or six eggs at the beginning of the week, and throw them in my bag for work. Although I will occasionally overcook and have to spend too much time peeling--that is not why the Eggie seduces me. I actually think the peel is convenient because a naked egg would need some kind of baggie or wrapper, which is sometimes beyond me.

No, for me, the appeal of the Eggie is that I have this idea that I can make a STUFFED hardboiled egg. Hardboiled egg with a piece of avocado inside! Hardboiled egg wrapped around cheese! I just want to see if I can. And Paul had another idea, what if you put the egg in the cup pre-scrambled? Like a marbled-egg! The possibilities are endless!

Does It Work Wednesday did a review that I have to say was not all that flattering, but, really, from the beginning it was prejudiced. Complaining that you have to break the plastic parts apart? That's not part of the everyday experience of the product... so I'm going to assume that criticism of the later steps in the process could also be biased.

Perhaps I should be swayed by the 119 one-star reviews on Amazon...but I'm determined to give Eggies a chance.