Shredded

Sometimes I want to take myself apart.  Think pulled pork or shredded beef.  I envision pulling my soul apart until it is nothing but strands of spirit – little shreds of soulness almost completely unlike anything resembling a real soul.  Just bits perfectly sized for someone else’s consumption.  Think about how little that shredded beef resembles a cow.  That is how apart I want to be.

I talk to friends about death and I listen to their interpretations of rebirth or of heaven and hell or whatever their belief structure entails and I’m afraid to tell them what I want, what I hope that death provides.  Nothing.  Pure absolute and complete nothing.  I want to cease to be.  As though I never was.

Just another typo.  Hit the delete key please.

So I know this is pathos and self -absorbed and all that shit.  I know.  I know that it is the depression speaking and I know it is reality and I know.  I know.  I just can’t do anything about it.  I try.  I try every day.  That is why I’m still sitting here in my wilted office chair typing on my wireless keyboard, listening to whatever Pandora is serving tonight.  I fail at taking myself apart.  But that doesn’t mean I succeed at life.  I just live.  It is different.

And it doesn’t change the want.

Tomorrow I go to say what will probably be my last goodbye to a dear friend.  She has cancer, and after fighting for a long time, she is ready to be done.  And you know what?  That is ok.  I understand.  I don’t want her to go, because she was one of the first to accept me for who I actually am – to not judge me by a set of standards that I had no part in setting.  She was honest with me, yet always optimistic.  She understood.  And that meant everything.  She knew it wasn’t my fault.  I was never perfect, but a lot of what happened wasn’t my fault.  And she never even suggested otherwise.  This is all my self-centered perception – my interpretation.  Because the part that meant the most was the part she gave to me.  I wish it could have been otherwise.  I wish I could have given a fraction back to her.

I am not a good friend.  My friends know this.  I disappear for days and weeks and sometimes even months.  I don’t return calls.  I flake out on parties.  I forget birthdays and holidays and anniversaries.  But I will drop everything to help a friend if they ask.  I will risk or give anything to those that I acknowledge as true friends.  And I will forgive just about anything from someone I know to be my friend.  Because, as careless as I am with my friends and as selfish as I am with my own pain and my own weaknesses, my friends still mean the world to me.  They are my family.  My reason for not taking myself apart.

They are my ground.

So losing one is like losing a bit of myself.  Like being bitten by a ravenous animal and having no recourse but to let that chunk of flesh go.   And no matter how much complaining I do about gaining weight, letting some beast take a pound of flesh is not the kind of weight loss I can get behind.

Tonight I was reminded that I do matter.  Maybe not the way that I wish I did, but still, there are people who think about me and who enjoy my presence.  Despite my doom and gloom here, I am not always – not even usually, a negative Nelly.  I tell jokes.  I act silly.  I smile and laugh and tease.  I engage.  For me, being around other people is like a drug.  It allows me to escape my own mind, my own neurosis.  I can act human and feel human and be human.  I’ve been alone for so long that sometimes I forget what human is.

Which brings me back to where I started.  I sit here by myself and I can hear the music and feel the chair and listen to the keyboard and all I can think about is how it would feel to be shredded – to be in so many pieces as to be unrecognizable.  To not be me.

I don’t want to say good bye to her.  It should be the other way around.  I mean, really, I’m not exactly doing anything amazing with this life.  Give it to someone who has something to contribute.  Give it to someone who can make others feel better about their struggles, about their humanity.

Because in the end, that is all we have.

And for what it is worth, I’m sorry.  I know that I am too late.  I’m always too late.  Still.  I’m sorry.  I’ll do better next time.  I promise.

Urban Wildlife

Last night I received a confirmation that I’d been hoping to avoid.  It is now official.  My house is infested with rats.

The responsibility for this situation is split.  On the one hand there is my neighbor who has absolutely no hesitation for storing large amounts of garbage and assorted bits of junk in his back yard.  He has even butchered animals back there – the bones of which occasionally show up on my side of the fence.  As of today it looks like he has cleaned up a bit, so that could be why the rats have suddenly gotten very interested in my house.

On the other had, the sub-c0ntractors who replaced my siding on my house did not seal the bottom of the concrete siding to the concrete stemwall beneath.  They left gaps big enough to fit my hand through – which is three times as big as a rat needs.  It was shoddy workmanship and the only reason that I haven’t had a problem with rats before now is that I’ve been so careful to keep the area around my house clean and clear – no bushed next to the siding, no trash, no construction debris.   I did this on purpose – because it protects the house and because it makes it more difficult for things to hide next to the house.  I live in a sketch neighborhood.  I do not want things unknown hiding next to my house.

So last night at 1 am I was awakended to the sound of a critter chewing through the floor.  This was not the quiet gnawing of  a hamster or pet rat in a cage.  It was the sound of serious construction happening beneath my subfloor as a number of rats – as in more than one or two – attempted to dismantle the repairs we made to the dryrot in the bathroom in order to access the inner walls – the ones not filled with insulation.

They made decent progress in the four hours that they were at it.  I know that they were at it for four hours because I was awake for the whole thing.  No only where the rats ridiculously loud, but I was sufficiently skeeved that there was no way I could sleep through the noise.  I’m a light sleeper with serious tendencies towards insomnia, so it doesn’t take much to keep me awake.  This is why I take sleeping drugs.  Not that they work.  Even the strongest drugs are no match for my insomnia on a bad day.  I know.  I’ve tried.

So I went to the gym and then to work and then to class and then to meet the exterminator today on three hours sleep.  I tried to work on my thesis afterward, but I was so tired and so brain fried – it was a total loss.

This is just another item in the list of things that have gone wrong this semester.  It is like Murphy is pulling out all the stops to see that his law is enforced.  Yet, I’m undaunted.

Over the weekend I made a private post – another entry of total self-loathing.  I’ve deleted a few, privated the rest, but after that one, I decided I was done.  I have friends with whom the only disagreement comes when they compliment me and I automatically discount it.  And I do automatically refute anything nice said about me – particularly regarding my appearance.  I do not know why.  I do know that I am tired of feeling that way about myself.

I’ve decided to change my perspective – to revamp the way I see myself.  I know it sounds glib here, and it is not easy.  But changing my perspective is one of the few things that my personality is well suited for.  If I can do it for other things, I can do it for myself.

I have to give the exterminator’s treatment (he spread the equivalent of pepper jelly around my house) to encourage the rats to stop entering the crawlspace, and then this weekend I have to go in with steel wool and foam insulation and block it all off.  The time investment is going to be the most expensive part of this repair, but if it keeps me from laying awake listening to the sounds of rodent driven demolition, it will be worth it.  I do need to refocus though.  Time is ticking, and I don’t have much extra.

I cannot wait for the day when I can sit and watch a movie without the anxiety of my thesis or some midterm or paper hanging over my head.  It feels like I am constantly carrying a sack of bricks across my shoulders.  I’m ready to set it down.  I have a really good feeling about this summer.

Stuff, it is a changing.  🙂

The Future is Now

When I started Grad School I knew I was going to be putting my life on hold for a while.  There were the financial considerations for sure, but more than that, I knew that if I was going to do it right I was going to have to commit a huge amount of time.  Not just class time and reading time and writing time, but thinking time and understanding time.  That is about to come to an end.

Granted, it is going to get more intense before it is over.  I know that.  I’m prepared.  But I also know that I’m going to need a reset when this is over.  I haven’t had a real vacation – the kind where you don’t take work or textbooks with you – since 2005.  And those breaks I have had were short.  I think there was one time where I had five days in a row off.

It was between jobs.

Tonight I cleaned out my savings account and bought tickets to Rome.  I didn’t consult with anyone before doing this.  I didn’t ask my employer (it looks like I really will have a job with the City once my internship is finished in a couple of weeks).  I didn’t talk to any friends.  I haven’t told my parents.  There are a handful of logistic issues that will need to be addressed – Dog being the major one.  Three weeks – yes, three weeks – is a long time to leave Dog anywhere.  I don’t want to send her back to my brother’s house to be chained to the patio, but that is definitely an option.  So is boarding her at the vet’s.  They love her there.

I have no idea how I will finance the rest of the trip – the plane tickets cleaned me out.  It will all work out though.  I have a really good feeling about it.  And if worst comes to worst, I have a credit card – that I have once again paid off to 0.  Plus, I think I have a couple hundred euros around here somewhere from my first European trip.  I had food poisoning on the way back and didn’t have the patience to get the currency exchanged at the airport.  It’s been in a ziplock bag ever since.

There is a big change in the works.  I can smell it.  Or maybe that is Dog’s Frito Feet.  Either way, snacky!

I’ve realized two things in the last few weeks.  First, I really need to adjust my diet.  Second, I need to do something about my depression.

The diet – I’ve been on a severely calorie restricted diet for years now.  Most days of the week I ingest 1600 or fewer calories.  Considering that a 1000 calorie workout is not an unusual thing for me, you’d think I was rail thin.  No so.  I’m not overweight, but my body refuses to let go of the last layer of subcutaneous fat no matter what I do.  I’ve finally accepted that maybe that is because my body thinks it will starve to death if it does.  So this week I’ve started a new diet.  I’ve doubled my protein intake and cut my processed carbs and sugars by 70 or 80%.  So far it has been interesting.  I’ve had a little more energy, and, since the protein and veggies I’ve been eating are by default lower calorie than the carbs, I’ve allowed myself to eat more – to eat until I feel full.  I’m not used to eating until I feel full.  It usually only happens one meal a week or so.  Today it happened three times.  And while I did have the sugar craving, I didn’t have the between meals snack attacks that I usually have.  I’ll give it two more weeks to see how it goes – if I have any noticeable changes in my weight/energy levels/muscle tone before I re-assess.

The sugar is going to be the hardest part to give up.  I can already tell.

The other thing is that I’ve accepted that I have a serious problem with the depression.  It isn’t constant – I don’t constantly feel like ending my life.  But periodically, and usually about one week before my cycle, I come down with the kind of depression that could and probably should put me in the mental ward.  I do a pretty good job of hiding it in front of other people.  Then again, I do a pretty good job of hiding all emotion in front of other people.  Unless I make an effort to express anger or happiness or whatever other people generally don’t know.  I’ve learned to make an effort – particularly with positive emotions – because I think that makes other people feel more connected and it lets me experiment with being emotionally exposed.  Which is a good thing.

I was not always like this.  I think my emotions used to be much closer to the surface.  Things have changed a lot though.

But the depression is definitely a problem.  Another month like the last – and I’m not sure what might happen.  That is part of the reason for the trip – it is something to look forward to no matter what.  It’s paid for.  Done deal.  No backing out.  And if it comes down to having something to look forward to and drugs, I’ll take the something to look forward to.  I’m hoping that having that something will help me to keep some perspective when the hormones take over.  I’m also hoping that the dietary adjustment will help prevent some of the rollercoaster that my processed carb diet was fueling.  Mostly, though, if March is like February, I’ll be going to the doctor and doing whatever I need to do to get the uppers or downers or whatever it takes to make it through that pre-cycle week.

Stuff like that makes me wish I had the kind of PMS associated with bitchiness and chocolate cravings – instead of wanting to kill myself.  Yeah.

So, to sum up, I think I have a real job offer in the works.  I’ll know the details next week.  I’ve planned for my post-grad vacation – the one I promised myself I would take but kept putting off the planning until I was almost convinced not to take it.  I’ve changed my diet – hopefully for the better.  And I’ve accepted that if I don’t get a real grip on my emotional variations, I need to get professional help.

And I’m in the thick of my thesis.

There is a chalkboard at work that is on the mid-floor landing of the staircase leading to the second story.  Every month somebody writes something at the top and invites people cruising the stairs to write responses.  Last month was a question about goals for 2011.  I didn’t write anything.  This month the question is “What inspires you?”  This time I had an answer.

A Challenge.

I’m feeling pretty inspired.  🙂

Cross Purposes

Tonight I watched the film “Bridge on River Kwai”.  It’s considered a classic, for good reason.  The story is fictional, but with chunks of truth thrown in to keep you guessing.  It is a long movie, and I’d be lying if I claimed that my ADD didn’t kick in a few times and lead to random wandering around the house.  But it is also a very watchable movie – the storyline does not bog down, and the acting, while very theatrical (you can totally see Alec Guinness’s theatre roots) is still engaging.  You end up caring about the characters.  Even the unlikable ones.  But one of the most telling things about the film, and its cultural heritage is that even if you’ve never seen it, you know it.  Or at least you know this part of it.

But that isn’t what I wanted to write about here.  Iconic whistles aside, there is a much deeper and more meaningful lesson in this film.  In fact, I think it should be required viewing at the beginning of each congressional season, before anybody starts to think about a government budget, and at the initiation of any joint governmental effort.  The rest of this post is a spoiler, so, if you’re like me and 1957 was a bit before your time and you’ve yet to expose yourself to this film in a serious way, and if you have any intention of doing so and would like to not have the whole plot ripped open before you get that chance, then stop reading now.  In fact, go log in to your Netflix account, put it at the top of your que, and come back in a week.  It’s ok.  I’ll wait.

The film goes like this.  There are a group of captured British soldiers who are brought in to work on a Japanese railway bridge in Burma during WWII.  After some resistance and power plays, they manage to improve their lot and actually build a damn fine bridge.  But, at the same time over at the British Commando Headquarters in Ceylon, another group of British soldiers are planning on destroying that same bridge with explosives so that the Japanese cannot use it to further their war goals.  They also do a damn fine job.  Which goes to say that if you are going to do something, then you might as well do a damn fine job of it.

The problem, though, comes in the part where not only does the left hand have no idea what the right hand is doing, but neither hand has any sort of view of the big picture.  The British soldiers building the bridge have no clue that there are other British soldiers planning on blowing it up, and the British soldiers planning to blow it up have no idea that it was built by British soldiers in captivity.  More than that though, this is a bridge in Burma.  Nobody on the Asian continent at the time liked the Japanese.  They did not tread lightly as they moved through the mainland in their Asian domination plan.  There was a unified goal on the Asian continent to slow them down as much as possible.  Now I know this is a fictional film, but the setting is true, and that means something.  Particularly for what I’m going to infer next.

So we in America have this two-party government.  In theory they are us.  I mean we have different beliefs and different methods, but our ultimate goals – to live well and to create a future for our children (speaking in a purely survival of the species sense since I have no intention of having any children for which a future will be necessary) are universal.  Yet it so often seems like the two parties of our government are hell-bent on blowing up each-others bridges.  No sooner does one party manage to do something that they believe to be meaningful than the other party comes along and sabotages it.  And all too often there is that stunned silence among the actual constituency that comes when they realize that all of their hard work is being undone by their own people.  Our own people.

I’m not attaching party labels to this because both parties are guilty of this kind of behavior.  And like children on the playground who cannot tolerate even the slightest sense of inequity, these building and destroying cycles escalate.  Until someone, like Alec Guinness maybe, realizes the big picture and takes one for, well, not the team, but definitely the future.  And what is the big picture?  That a bridge may offer short-term advantages to a specific group (say the Japanese military) but will bring incredible long-term advantages to a much greater population (like the country of Burma)?  Or is the big picture that only by preventing any sort of advancement at all can the status quo be maintained – no bridge for anyone?

And do we want to maintain the status quo?  How can we be sure that the evil we know is not worse than the evil we don’t know?

This harkens to my current situation at my job.  There may be a future there – a chance to do something meaningful and worthwhile – if not in that city, than in another city with the experience gained in that city.  It’s a chance to build a bridge.  At the same time the State of California is rewiring its budget in a way that will sharply curtail any future development for any cities for a long time to come.  They want to keep the status quo – even if it means blowing up a bridge or two.

And I am back in limbo – or still in limbo since I never really left.

I have no tolerance for politics of this sort.  I do not expect everyone to agree all the time – it would be folly if they did.  But this build and destroy and build and destroy cycle is so wasteful – so inefficient.  Not just of resources and money and time, but of human lives and futures and effort.  The cost of anything is not simply monetary – money is nothing but a symbol of effort – much of it human.  The fact that that effort has become warped and twisted through the years as income inequality has increased does not mean that the vast majority of that effort does not still exist – that it does not still means something to someone.  Maybe you, maybe me.

When it is all said and done I find myself standing on the bridge next to Alec Guinness as he examines his life’s work, asking myself a very similar question.  Do I want to be a person who builds bridges – damn fine bridges at that, or do I want to be a person who is very skilled at blowing them up?  As glamorous as black grease paint and plastic explosives are, I think I’ll take up the hammer please.

A Bit of Fiction

A friend of mine likes to share the familiar saying – what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.  I like to follow that up with “yeah, or leaves you scarred and horribly disfigured.” but that is just me.  It’s a cliche, the whatever doesn’t kill you saying.  Things become cliche for a reason.  Usually because of their proximity to a truth.

Today I went to my second ever office holiday party.  The first holiday party where I wasn’t deeply wishing there were some sort of spirits to provide some social lubrication – or to at least quiet some of the voices in my head – the voices that are in charge of reminding me that there is so much work to do and so little time to do it and what am I doing at a “party” when I should be writing papers.  Like I would confess to the other voices here.  Whenever I go to a social event like this, I’m always worried that somebody is going to ask me about myself.  A person doesn’t have to ask  very many questions before the answers start to get very awkward.  And I’m not even talking about specific questions.  General questions lead to very strange places in my life.

In the past I’ve been evasive, too truthful, played dumb, just plain lied, and changed the topic when the subject was me.  I can be subtle at this or very obvious.  But the reality is, I like the people I work with now.  They are good people.  And I don’t want to put myself in a position where I have to maintain an overly complicated story.  For instance, when somebody asks me how I know how to do this or that or the other, I don’t want to have to try to remember how much of my story I’ve told them – or worse, which of my stories I’ve told them.

So every time I prepare to go to a social event I plan out exactly how much of my story I will tell.  Just in case.  Sometimes I don’t need it, but more often than not I’m the new person, and the new person is responsible for providing new stories.  This morning, on the way to the holiday party, I prepared my story.  I didn’t need it, thank goodness.  I’m much happier right now being in the background.  I don’t think things will always be this way.  I know they won’t.  But for now I don’t put my name on anything.  I claim no credit, no responsibility, no accolades.  I do my best to be solidly in the margin.

The story I prepared this time is different than all of the other stories I’ve told.  Not in content, because the events are what they are.  But it is different in perspective.  It is not a victim story – I’ve way outgrown that phase.  Besides, still playing the prey when you’ve actually become the predator is difficult to convincingly pull off.  Nor is it still the “I’m responsible for everything” story.  I think I’ve finally accepted that there have been a lot of things in my life that I simply had no control over.  These are things that even stunted my range of reaction.  I did what I could with what I had.  It might have taken me longer, and I might have done it the hard way, but really, I didn’t have a lot else to work with.

This new story is that my life right now is the results of a combination of my choices and my luck.  And neither have been all that great.  At the same time, I’m starting to understand why people come to me when they are trying to figure something out or when they need additional information or a new perspective.  A lot of that has to do with my bad choices and my bad luck – because that is what taught me the most.  Which gives me a new perspective about my choices and luck.  I have been cursing both – I feel like I should be established by now.  But the chances are very good that I’ll never be established – at least not in the way I think I should be.  And maybe I should learn to be OK with that.

In the break room today I was asking questions about what triggered ground cover requirements for recently cleared land.  Yeah, I’m a real ball of fun.  Anyway one of the people I was talking to inquired why I was asking.  I told him about the abandoned houses that have recently been demolished in my neighborhood and how the lots are now sitting open and bare at the start of the rainy season, and how I was hoping they wouldn’t turn into huge muddy messes.  Of course they will, but I’m still stuck on a time in my life when the ground froze during winter, so don’ t hold my optimism against me.  The person who asked me why sat for a minute after I explained the bulldozed houses and then he asked me where I lived.  I gave him my neighborhood and he stared laughing.  “You take the whole living the adventure thing all the way home, eh?”  And I smiled.  “I like to be consistent.”  Which is a total lie, but it sounded witty in the moment.

I’m getting closer to the truth about myself.  The more I’m around other people, the more I talk to them and listen to them and think about them the more I understand my choices and my luck and my role in my own life.  I’m unusual, an outlier even.  But I’m not the only one.  Which is helping me to understand that while I’m sure I am deeply scarred and grossly disfigured, I’m also much stronger than I give myself credit for.  Turns out, all those bad bits didn’t kill me after all.

I know.  I’m as surprised as you are.

Self-Help Thru Whuppins

In an attempt to maintain some sort of sanity (and to prevent every conversation from devolving into a rant about my thesis) I’ve been trying to read books about things other than land use policy.  Do not fear, I still read a great deal of land use policy. Piles of it. And it still gets me riled up. But, as a medium for personal growth, land use policy is generally lacking.

I read a lot this summer. I’m still reading a lot – generally reading has superseded my other “relaxation” activities (knitting and re-watching movies) and I have found that much in the same way that I stand in front of the open pantry wishing I had a bit of cookie or licorice after dinner, I will stand in front of my bookshelves and search for something to satisfy my literary craving. I have a lot of books, so this would seem like a desire that could be met in-house. Not so, as evidenced by the piles of new books stacked on every flat surface of my living room (and some not so flat, as Dog has discovered).

These new books fit one of three genres. They are crime/assassination thrillers with complex good/bad guys and a realistic approach to fighting, evasion, and investigation. I care not for long descriptions of physical appeal (how rippling were those abs?) and prefer detailed depictions of the procedure necessary to determine that one is not being followed. Or they are books about how we are messing up our planet by eating unsustainable foods and living in unsustainable neighborhoods and using unsustainable transportation and how all of that is connected and how it has been subsidized and fundamentalized and become such a part of our existence that we can’t imagine not living that way, even though our lives could arguably be healthier, happier, and more meaningful. Or, because the first kind of book gets me excited, and the second kind of book gets me angry, I read books about how to be a better person.

I’ll be straight with you. I’ve started one book on how to be a better person, which almost immediately triggered my gag reflex, and I just finished one book that was technically about how to survive violence that felt like the author knew me – didn’t just know my personality and my experiences, but my thought process and the words that I needed to hear. To be honest, it caught me by surprise. And now I’m reeling a bit. I expected the book about learning to let go (which is what I will get tattooed on my wrist as soon as I am done having surgery on it – an odd tattoo for a climber to be sure, but there you have it) to tell me the things I needed to hear. Apparently either I’ve already moved farther along in the letting go process than I thought, or I am not in the right place for that book because it just made me aggravated. When books start throwing out the “self-love” terminology I find my skepticism kicks into overdrive. When books talk about acceptance AND self-love I start to get that bile in the throat taste. I have never been an acceptor. I do not want to accept – or at least, I do not want acceptance to be my default state. Not for myself, not for the world around me, not for my life.

Change does not happen through acceptance. Change happens through action (and sometimes there is a good bit of resistance too – which is generally a waste) by choice and by recognition that the status quo is Not Good Enough. I remember the first time my therapist told me that I was good enough – he was trying to help me establish some sense of self-worth. He asked if I understood and then if I agreed. I told him I understood but that I didn’t agree, not then, but I’d keep working on it. He took that to mean I’d keep working on acceptance. I meant that I’d keep working to make myself better, stronger, calmer, smarter, more confident, more social, more empathetic, a person who is good enough.

I have a very good friend who is deep into acceptance and finding inner peace. She gets frustrated by me because my reaction to perceived setbacks is often self-denigrating, and she can become infuriated at my emotional flailing at what she identifies as problems inherent in the human experience. This is because I will not simply accept conditions as they are. First I will try to outsmart them, then I will try to get around them, then I will try to overpower them, then I flail. I will not accept until it is obvious that there is no alternative. And even then I will pout.

Yet, for the first time I actually understand why I do what I do and why I cannot ease into acceptance – and I can say with some confidence that it is very unlikely that I ever will.

I just finished Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts by Rory Miller. The book is full of pointers and concepts created to not only explain what happens during a violent encounter, but how to prepare, avoid, engage, and survive one if need be. It is not a macho book. It does not glorify or romanticize violence. Nor does it feed the paranoia. What it does do, though, is explain how violence really happens, and what really needs to be considered before a person finds themselves in a violent situation. How unfortunate it is that the only way to learn what needs to be discovered before being thrust into a violent situation is having experienced a violent situation without that preparation.

At the close of my marriage – when the abuse was still too fresh in my memory to have become part of my story, I joined a martial arts school and began training. I never told my instructors about the abuse. I never even hinted. But one thing was obvious, I was aggressively hunting for change. Not only did I not want to be a victim in my story, but I did not want to be a victim in reality – not ever, and change – a fundamental adjustment to my personality – was the only way to make sure that didn’t happen.

But change is not easy. It hurts. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. It is like going through a box of mementos of your life and tossing the stuffed animals and the spelling tests with gold stars and the greeting cards and school photos. They become things that belong to someone else, and while it is often heart-wrenching, it is also liberating. The key is to stick with it – to keep pushing the change – to not give up. Because giving up is anathema to change. Because acceptance may be less painful, but it doesn’t actually alter the situation.

I realize now that I am someone who would rather hurt and work (fight even) toward altering a situation rather than someone who can find peace in acceptance. I’m not looking for peace – at least not as a permanent fixture. I don’t want drama or war or violence, but I do want the conflict and challenge inherent in change. I want to grow and push myself against my boundaries because I realize that the boundaries I find so limiting are almost always of my own creation. Because that is how I overcome them, through conflict – and that is where I get as close as I ever will to peace.

I’ve been frustrated for a while now because I could not figure out how to get “past” my need to constantly push myself. Frustration leads to punishment (seriously – Meditations had some of the best treatment of “punishment” and its worthlessness as anything other than an expression of sadism (or in my case masochism) that will give me a lot to think about for a while) which ultimately leads to injury or damage or exhaustion or any other of a dozen blocks that stop my progress. The problem isn’t the pushing, the problem is the frustration – the expectation that I should be working out my issues some other way, that what I’m doing isn’t right or best or even beneficial. The reality is that maybe, just maybe I should accept that acceptance isn’t for me. And maybe I should quit thinking of change as a unilateral motion – that can only be accomplished one way.

Like the book said, it isn’t the technique that means the difference between survival and failure, it is the preparation, committment, and intent that are going to be the determining factors. I think I just got a glimpse of the forest through the trees.

Vacancy and the New Social State

I promised myself when I started this that two things wouldn’t happen.  First, I wouldn’t devolve into a state of constant self-pity and “woe-is-me”ism.  Because that just sucks.  Unless you are Faulkner or Wilde or someone else much cleverer than I.  Second, I wasn’t going to just let it be – ignore it for months on end for the random post.  It was going to be regular.  Yeah…  We see how that turned out.

I went to see a film about city revitalization tonight.  It was supposed to be an inspirational film about what is possible – if you can wrangle up a series of public/private partnerships worth $1.2 billion – with a “b”.  Having spent my summer chasing $3.6 million – with a “m” in federal and state grants, and recognizing a fraction of the effort and need and sheer luck involved, the financial obstacle of revitalizing an abandoned city core is overwhelming.  I can see what needs to happen.  I can see how and when it needs to happen.  I just can’t see who will pay for it.  Even if it is more cost-effective in the long run, even if it saves fuck-loads of trees and frogs and owls, even if it means that our grandchildren can actually drink their water without boiling it first, even if it means not spending our senior years wearing masks to protect us from the air particulate, even if it means making our cities and our neighborhoods and our homes more livable and sustainable and enjoyable – I cannot see who will pay for it.  Or more correctly, who can pay for it.  I will pay.  I do pay.  And so do you.  But our money does not go to solving the problem – to the wholesale re-connection to the urban fabric necessary to start the healing process.  Instead our money goes toward keeping the terminal status-quo on life-support.

And it is bankrupting us.  Or at least it is bankrupting me.  How’s your bank account looking these days?  Yeah…

I walked out of the film conflicted.  They had a lot of good points, about walkable neighborhoods and mixed use and using existing infrastructure – and my heart raced a bit when the rest of the audience cheered at the clip of the bulldozer taking down a section of elevated freeway.  By default the film drew people who “get” it – who understand the problem, at least superficially (though I know that many of them had a much deeper grasp than that) and who are at least willing to consider different options.  That part gave me hope.

Then there was the part based in reality – the reality of a bankrupt (morally and financially) state, of local governments saddled with an unsustainable infrastructure that they must maintain, of the short-sighted NIMBYism of the groups (“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.” MIB) of people too self-centered to call themselves a neighborhood, but coincidently aligned in their dislike for whatever it is they think will do them (or more accurately, their property values) (as-if) harm, the reality of a growing class of people disenfranchised and impoverished and lacking any of the skills, benefactors, or luck necessary to get them out of their situation  – the reality that shapes our relationship with our cities.

How do you promote a solution when you can’t even get people to recognize the problem?  How bad do things have to get before they are obvious enough for action?  How much has to be wasted?

I can’t abide waste.

The film didn’t talk much about the affordability issue – or even the housing issue of rebuilding cities.  It is great and all to put in stadiums and arenas and bars and restaurants and offices and whatnot.  But if your main housing component is high-end “lofts” (god, where did the traditional “loft” go?  I see one more condo advertised as a “loft” and I’m gonna puke up my brandy all over my keyboard.  Seriously.  Call a dog a dog, you dogs.) and fancy townhouses then you are not meeting the housing needs of your demographic – that being the total people necessary to run a city – from janitors to waitresses to clerks to CEOs.  If your waitresses still have to live out in the suburbs (which, mark my words, are well on their way to becoming the new ghettos) and drive into the city to work, then the revitalization of the core is not long-term sustainable.

Yay that people are starting to understand that there is a problem.  Boo to the fact that they are approaching the solution to the problem the same way that they approached the situation that caused the problem.  Technology will not absolve us of our sins.  Nor will it fix our colossal Boo-Boos.  It might, just might, back us up as we readjust our understanding of our relationship with our homes and our cities and our regions and our environment.  Maybe.

Really?  Thinking about this makes chasing those $3 million with a “m” grants so much more attainable.  I’m pretty sure the govt just draws straws anyway.  How else would you be able to decide which poorly planned, under served, impoverished neighborhood should get the money to pull itself together?  Let alone the fact that reviving one neighborhood alone is a lot like digging a moat around your sand castle in the illusion that it will keep the sea from leveling it the second you turn your back.  Whoooosh.

I don’t know if it was the film that left me feeling frustrated and nihilistic (almost a contradiction there!) or if it was the social context of the showing.  I’ve been struggling with social contexts lately.  I’ve realized a few very critical aspects of my personality that need some acclimatization before I resume any sort of social interaction.  I have spent an inordinate amount of time feeling awkward and unattractive and unintelligent and just plain “wrong” this summer.  It is a sign of change, I know that.  But I’m getting tired of feeling like an adolescent every time I run across some change.  Let’s grow up already!

God knows we need some maturity in figuring out what to do next.

Pending…

It seems like my life tends to ebb and flow at a remarkable rate.  Maybe this is true for everyone.  But, I haven’t been anyone else, so all I know is what happens to me.  And lately?  That’s been a lot.  If this is more of a rundown than a thoughtful interpretation, well, I’ve spent more time this last week sitting in front of a computer than anything else – including sleeping.  Especially sleeping.  If this thing was anywhere else, I’d be there instead of here.  But here it is, so here I am.

First of all, I have a new job.  An internship really.  No benefits.  A slight cut in pay.  And a set of tasks that are truly challenging.  Yes, there is a lot of mundane.  But there is more that is interesting and important and just plain challenging.  Best of all, what I’m doing is what I’ve been learning to do.  It’s helping – albeit helping from a municipal position.  Which is a bureaucratic position.  Which is its own problem.  But that’s the system as it exists.  It is entrenched.  So entrenched that any change is going to come from within.  And I’m within a pretty good place.

I will say that I’m not used to working with so many people.  I’m at this workstation that is mostly open to the room, and there is constant traffic.  The first couple of days I found that I was having a ridiculously hard time keeping any sort of focus.  It’s gotten better, but I’m still astounded by the amount of walking and talking people do – while at the same time getting a pretty impressive amount of work done – or at least that is my impression.  The overall vibe is amazingly positive.  People are there because they want to be there – it is their career.  I think once I settle in, I’ll do well.  As it is, I’m still finding my stride.  Which has been more difficult than usual.

This is finals week.  I never thought that getting a Master’s degree would be easy.  However, even I’m impressed with the quantity and quality of information I’ve absorbed so far.  I keep running across people who are also pursuing post-graduate degrees.  I’ve started judging their programs by the number of bags under their eyes.  The darker the circles, the more sincere the education.  I’ve yet to rigorously test this theory, but I imagine I will.  I seem to be in that mode lately.

Anyway, this week has been one of the most intense I remember.  I mean, I can remember weeks where I had more homework, but then I was already stable in my job.  And I remember being new to my job, but it was the start of the semester and easy-going.  Both at the same time should be sending me right over the edge.  On top of that I haven’t had the time to get into the gym like I usually do.  Nor have I been exercising in the mornings like I’d planned.  I get up at the crack of dawn, work until dusk, go to class, go home, and then crash.  And the day’s I don’t work are the same, only I study.  Yet I’ve been surprisingly stable.

I think part of it is the new job.  It feels like I’m finally on the right path.  Even the hives have started to clear up.  And I know that part of it is that I’m simply getting used to this.  And I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I’ll be able to breathe come Tuesday.  Four days.  I can stand most anything for four days.

But I think the biggest change has been my new housemate.  Her name is Ryder and she’s an 80 lb Akita that belongs to my brother.  There are a lot of reasons that she ended up living here with me.  I mean, my house is not that big, and that is a lot of dog.  Plus, she’s 5 years old, which is middle age for Akitas.  Beyond that, she’s never really been a house dog – or even a suburban dog for that matter – let alone an urban critter.  She’s lived most of her life in a kennel out on a large piece of property in the country.  She was in the kennel not because she is aggressive or unstable, but because she is a natural hunter, and for prey is anything smaller than she is – and some things considerably larger.  After killing quite a few chickens, harassing enough cats, and playing with a goat until it could no longer walk, my brother had to keep her locked up.

So when somebody jumped my fence one night a few weeks ago while I wasn’t home, and after repeated eggings, and now that I’ve started noticing a lot of new people wandering around my neighborhood and a growing stream of obviously drugged out folks loitering around the abandoned duplex across the way, I finally started seriously thinking about getting a dog.  I had only to mention this to my brother and he offered to bring her here on a trial basis.  Here there are no chickens to kill (at least not anymore) or goats to play with, and I’m totally ok if she wants to chase the cats out of the yard.  It’s a small yard.  And she’s already filled it full of holes hiding buried tennis balls and rawhide bones.  But I’m ok with all of that.  I’m ok with the amazing quantities of hair.  I’m even ok with the lingering scent of dog that follows here everywhere she goes.  I don’t mind picking up poop.  And so far, I’ve been amazingly consistent with feeding times and water checking.  And I’m calm.  Even though I can feel the need to get to the gym growing, even though I’m under an incredible amount of pressure with new job and finals and papers and healthcare and money problems and far too much social isolation, I’m calm.

I talk to her constantly, which makes sense because she follows me around the house like a paranoid sycophant.  Actually she looks more intelligent than that.  She watches everything I do, as though she’s taking notes.  And she’s curious about everything.  The best part about a mature dog is that when she encounters something new, she doesn’t need to be taught over and over what the allowed behaviors are.  I had to tell her twice not to put her paws on the counter (she’d never been in a house before, so she didn’t know) and now she doesn’t even think about it.  She walks away from food when I tell her to.  She stops the seconds I say “no”, or even “nuh uh” which is more my style.  I save the “no” for the serious stuff, like paws on the counter, or the white chair.

It took a few days but I’m getting used to having another critter in the house.  I still wake up when she moves around, but I’ve noticed that my overall anxiety about sleeping has reduced.  There’s something about having another set of ears on that lets me drop my guard a bit.  It’s a relief, really.  Because lately I’d been jumping every time the fridge switched on.

There is another component to this experiment with the dog.  Beyond the security and the company, I’m testing the waters of attachment.  I’ve decided to let myself learn to really care about this animal.  I have become a master of detachment.  It is a long story, but with the exception of a very few people who have either been grandfathered in, or who, by some cosmic fluctuation managed to find me at the right time, I’ve learned to meet people, associate with them, and then leave when the leaving time came – all without the emotional turmoil and grief usually associated with such activities.  And I haven’t been emotionally engaged with an animal since I was 16.  It’s occurred to me that if I intend to ever actually use my heart, I’d best break it out of the safe it’s been hibernating in.  This is me cracking the combination.

So my life has been in high turmoil.

I’m so ready for this summer.  I have plans.  Grand plans, because really, should there be any other kind?

My Inverted World

My life has taken several rather peculiar turns.  Few things have remained constant, not my friends, or my relationships with my family, or my plans for myself.  In fact, just about everything I’ve ever known about myself has changed at some point or another. 

With one major exception.

I experience the world through an inverted relationship with the mundane.  Let me explain. 

I am one of those people for whom the average is exceptionally problematic but for whom the difficult is often surprisingly easy.  Now maybe this sounds like a good thing.  Ah, don’t kid yourself.  It is most unfortunate.

This is because the vast majority of our mundane daily existence is in the realm of average – the grocery shopping and gas getting and mail posting and bill paying and going here and going there and the house cleaning and the scheduling and all of the thousands of little tasks we do every week to make our lives livable are all average.  And I struggle with them so much that it is often comedic, occasionally tragic, and a constant source of frustration. 

On the other hand, if you need a particularly tricky computer problem solved, or if you need help with a serious social problem, or if your baby is about to be eaten by dingoes, I’m your gal.  Need instant access to esoteric information and don’t have access to a computer?  I’m on it!  Need a soundboard for a major life changing decision?  Gotcha covered.  Has your car broken down in the middle of the desert and all we have to fix it with is a wire clothes hanger and a roll of toilet paper?  Don’t even worry about it.  We’re good.

Need that letter mailed, the gas tank filled, and some salsa from the grocery store?  Uh… Houston, we have a problem. 

For instance, (and what would life stories be without instances?) this morning I needed to get gas before I went to work.  I had planned to fill up the night before, but first I forgot, then I couldn’t find my wallet, then it got late and I got tired and I decided I’d do it first thing this morning. 

A tangent, I know that decision is never a good one.  I have a very hard time functioning in the morning.  I’m almost never early.  I’m frequently late.  I’m almost always cranky.  And the difficulty factor of any specific task is magnified by 10 first thing in the morning.

So when I walked out the door 5 minutes early, thinking that was enough time to stop on the way to work and get gas, I didn’t consider that the first station would be closed while the fuel trucks were filling the tanks and some guys were repairing the pumps.  Nor did I realize that the second station, where there was a line of cars, would have problems with their pay at the pump machines and would be requiring everyone to pay inside where there was an even longer line of people waiting impatiently while the cashier tried to figure out how to run a credit card.  Nor did it dawn on me that the third station would be so far out of my way that I’d have to take a new route to work in which I would get stuck in gnarly traffic. 

The funny thing?  It should have.  I should have known it would be all but impossible to get through the mundane this morning.  Because that is how things go.  It is how thing have always gone.  It is probably how they will always go.  And I’m slowly starting to figure it out.

It is that understanding that give me confidence about my thesis and keeps me calm in tense situations and allows me to test well.  It is why I don’t have a fear of public speaking or rock climbing or getting stuck in tough neighborhoods.  Because those are unusual things – out of the ordinary.  Beyond average.  That is where I function smoothly.

But don’t ask me to get groceries.  Because that has FAIL written all over it. 

Reason number 87 why I need a personal assistant.  Or at least someone to hold my hand and tell me it will all be ok when my gas tank nears empty.

Filmography – three movies that you’ve probably already seen

It is a fine line between accepting things the way they are and falling into the trap of self-fulfilling prophecy.  There is no way to maintain any sort of stability or functionality but to accept things the way they are.  But accepting the status quo can easily become stultifying, stunting, a committment – however unplanned or undesired – to the way things are now, which is one tiny step away from self-sabotage, from preventing yourself from exploring and taking risks and pushing away from the mooring of the known to venture on the high seas of the unknown, the unknowable.

It’s a scary world out there.

I’ve been watching movies during my spring break.  I’d planned on going out and having drinks and conversations and possibly hangovers.  Instead I’ve been predominantly sober (excepting tonight) and spending a lot of time ripping seams on thrift store clothes and imagining fascinating (to me) new ways of combining materials and gorging on movies and short stories.  While I have a constant stream of the latter running through my head, just waiting for the day that I have the patience and stamina and inspiration to write them down, the other, the films, have had me thinking.  So here is a rundown.

I saw Greenberg last Monday with a friend.  It is a wonderfully acted film.  The characters feel so incredibly real – it is like you could walk to the local coffee shop and there they are, standing in line, waiting, a little unsure about their choice, but prepared to make their order and accept the fact that they will not be exactly happy about it, that it won’t be the perfect drink, that it will not completely satisfy whatever it is they are needing, but that it will be enough.  Which is exactly how life is.  A continuous and occasionally monotonous series of enoughs.  Never more than.  Often less than.  But seldom critically insufficient.  Just the bare minimum to maintain the status quo.

This has been my experience this recession – a perpetualization of the bare minimum.  I wonder how this prolonged exposure to living at the edge (by American standards – though not that far off by many other standards either.  I mean, I have food and shelter and a computer and a car.  But I also live alone, on my own, and I’m always two weeks away from moving in with my parents or my friends or living out of my car.  I recognize that is different than starving in Ethiopia or living under a tarp in Haiti, or walking among roadside bombs in Afghanistan, but it is still unstable, still scary, still a constant source of stress.  Because, and I can officially say this from experience, living out of your is not easy.  It is similar to living in a tent, only you never get to fully stretch your legs out when you sleep.  So this edge I’m on, this edge is valid.  It may not be fatal, but it certainly is not inconsequential.) I wonder how living on this edge will change me in the long term.  I suspect that it will not be that much different than the people who survived the great depression, who in their 70’s and 80’s still hoarded canned food, and refused to buy new furniture or clothes when the old were still serviceable, and who left considerable sums of savings to their spouses and children – not because they were investing geniuses or because they somehow struck it rich, but because they lived a lifetime of frugality.  I think about what it would be like to earn enough money to cover my bills and then some and I don’t imagine the vacations I would take and the clothes I would buy and the cars I would drive, I imagine how much money I could save by living as I do now, how quickly I could pay off my student loans, how rapidly I could contribute to my retirement – only without the stress of homelessness lurking behind every paycheck.  I have a hard time imagining otherwise.

That is not what the movie is about though.  The movie is about what happens when life doesn’t live up to our expectations.  It’s about what happens when we must face that discrepancy – when we have to reconcile what is with what we thought would be.  There is a fair amount of irony in this – particularly if you take a fourth wall/metaphysical view.  I mean, here is Ben Stiller, an actor who has had the skill/karma/sheer luck of being successful in one of the handful of industries in which success guarantees wealth, portraying a character who is facing the reality that he will never be successful, at least, not in the modern cultural definition of success.  That he does it convincingly is a testament to the skill aspect of his success.  That it is impossible to forget that one is watching a movie about the reality of reality is probably the film’s main downfall.  It asks unanswerable questions, and leaves the ends untidy.  That is its charm.  It presents its characters realistically and includes their flaws and neurosis.  That is its interest. But it is a film.  An art project for the rich and famous.  And that is its challenge, and ultimately, it’s failure.

Still.  I say go and see.  It is not a bad way to spend an afternoon, and it will raise questions – the questions that we least like to have raised and most often should be asking.

Last night I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshal.  I have to confess that I have a slight crush on Jason Segel.  I try not to.  He’s exactly the kind of guy that I break.  Into itty bitty pieces.  But still, there he is, vulnerable when he should be impervious, obtuse when he should be acute, and as accessible as a Reader’s Digest abandoned in your grandmother’s bathroom.  During a funereal.  He does more damage to my perception of males (sidebar – I am a total misogynist – I freely admit this.  But I am also a misandrist – in that I am always amazed when men express sincere emotions or show any sort of real interest or appreciation for others.  This does not apply to my male friends, who never fail to surprise me with their humanity, just as my misogyny does not apply to my female friends.  Yet from everyone else, I will confess now, I expect the worst.  And sometimes I even expect it from my friends – which gives them lots of leeway when it comes to living life as it is instead of as Disney has told us it should be.) than any other public figure I can think of.  Yet he couches it in the realm of comedy.  Which is good, I guess.  I mean, without the permission to break the tension with the occasional chuckle, the strain of awkwardness would be unbearable.  And that is pretty much how the whole movie runs.  It is continuously awkward, and intentionally so.  But the comedy, the over-the-top-ishness, the behavior that is so obviously that of a character and so completely removed from any experience (I’ve had) of reality keeps the film moving – makes it worth watching.

Another tangent.  Am I the only one to notice how much of our daily interaction seems scripted these days?  Or is it simply the fact that I’m living a very stunted life right now – perpetually on a short micro managed leash?  I’m astounded when I have a conversation that steps outside the parameters set by reality TV and Fashion Magazines and Wireless commercials.  Maybe I’m just too out of touch.  Maybe I’m spending so much time hiding with my textbooks and peer-reviewed articles and thesis statements that I’m the one who isn’t holding up her end of the human interaction.  But I don’t think so.  I spend a great deal of every day out there, moving around in the world.  And the only thing that keeps me from being continually disappointed is the fact that I have such low expectations to begin with.  What do I do about that?  What can I do about that?

End Tangent.

Tonight I watched (500) Days of Summer.  Of the three films, I would most strongly recommend this one.  There are two scenes that speak to me so sincerely in this film – both of them questioning the paradigm of romance on which we build our perceptions of inter-gender relationships – that cut to my core.  I find that I have asked the same questions – not out of heartbreak or simple disillusionment, but because I can see no real evidence of the thing that our culture, our history, and our friends and family insist exists.  Love?  What is that?  A word, for sure, but what does it mean?  What does it actually stand for?  I remember before I was to get married when a younger friend of mine asked me what it felt like to be in love, and I said to her “you’ll know it when it happens” which was one of the biggest lies I’ve ever told.  I wasn’t in love then – and I knew it – I didn’t know what love did feel like, but I was pretty damn clear on what it didn’t feel like.  To have a film approach this subject head on and unflinchingly is refreshing.  In many ways it reminded me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  Both films are a juxtaposition of the expected and the remembered with the real.  Expectations are simply imagined memories, and, as a rule, fair badly against the banality that is reality.  It (life) will not go the way we expect.  It (and it doesn’t matter what it is) won’t.  That is real.

Of the three films, the acting (and the actors) are most watchable in (500) Days of Summer.  But all three deserve the time they require.  All three approach relationships from a real, but not unappealing point of view.  All three make genuine and novel contributions to the library of romantic fiction.  But they are still movies.  Still stories.  Still fiction.

Someday I would like to see a film about what happens when somebody decides to opt out – to ignore the instinctual drive to couple.  What happens to those people who live their lives alone?  Ok.  That is enough from me.  I can feel the vodka blending my brain cells together into a pastey gray mush.  Time to go be unconscious.

And tomorrow maybe I’ll see a movie.