Ten Goods in my Life, Five Not

Good: I am healthy, get quality sleep and exercise, and feel energetic most of the time.

Not: I am being lazy about writing and other forms of creativity, watching too much TV instead.

Good: My sweetheart and I are still together after distance dating for a year and 4 months.

Not: My kitten Gary Sparkle has gone missing.

Good: My kitten Turtle has stayed home and has got over her extreme anxiety.

Not: I have a constant hissing in my ears and probably some hearing loss.

Good: I get to teach 1st-5th grade Exploring Nature classes; we go outside each class in all weathers, and they love it. I get to incorporate drawing, music, and poetry.

Not: I don’t get to visit my family in Canada yet because of the pandemic.

Good: My family members are all COVID free so far.

Not: I am again teaching new high school curriculum and have to put in a lot of extra hours to stay ahead, without feeling that I am rising to excellence yet as a teacher.

Good: My children are all local and I get to see them regularly, because they’re all in controlled bubbles and being careful about avoiding COVID infection.

Good: I have a freezer full of fruits, apple juice, and organic chicken, a pantry full of staples, and a garden full of brassicas.

Good: I have cut expenses by cancelling or cutting back on unnecessary perks.

Good: Two of my kids have jobs and two have government support.

Good: My basement is no longer a swamp, and instead I have a pond and a rain garden in process.

 

The Second Date, and Since Then

I have a wonderful boyfriend. True story. He’s like no one I’ve ever known, including myself, and yet we have a tremendous amount in common.

A few months after we met over a year ago, I opened up a little in this post, but have not felt comfortable writing much else while things developed between us. And of course I was having so much fun being in love that wasn’t thinking deeply enough about other things to write much.

But now I want to celebrate, share some of my appreciation for my special guy. I will start at the beginning.

He was my second online date, and we met mid-way between our cities on a warm, pouring-rainy July afternoon at a pub. He warned me that he no longer had the curls and beard of his profile photo, as he had cut it all off.

Heading out I was relaxed and had few expectations, unlike at my first date, because I had landed a date with a third fellow a few days hence, and had high hopes for that one. According to his profile, he too was attractive and intelligent, as well as closer to my age.

I got to the pub first, looked around to see that there was no date yet, peeled off my red rain shell and looked around the space, cozy with large reclaimed wood tables and a nearby bar. I recognized one of the bartenders and told him so, and we figured out that he had formerly worked at my town’s food coop. A real friendly face, which felt good.

As we chatted while he polished glasses, someone strode by on my left, and I knew it was him–short hair tending to curly, graying, 5’8″. He turned back to scan my side of the room, he saw me and his smile got bigger, and there he was, coming at me with a hug. I smiled, said “Hi–oh, a hugger,” or something, and was embraced. It was to be the first of many embraces.

It was an immediate maybe. This surprised me, and I liked the feeling.

I slid onto a bench, and he slid in beside me, explaining that he could hear me better that way if there was noise in the room. He ordered an IPA, I a black currant cider, and the date was I guess a typical getting to know each other kind of thing, punctuated by French fries and, for me, a spreading feeling of relaxation from the cider.

Before telling more, I need to back up a bit and explain why I clicked “like” on his dating side profile in the first place, and continued the email dialog he then started.

First, his profile was a fun read. It was kind of random, included that he was liked by most animals, and highlighted some creative projects rather than possessions or financial status. In our emails, he was lighthearted, creative, and had a quirky sense of humor. He showed interest without eagerness. He gave me his phone number in bot-proof form to foil the site’s data collection system, and he described his self-perpetrated haircut as a failure. He told me he made things in his shop that float and spin, and that he looked forward to meeting me and doubted that we would irritate each other.

So I was expecting to meet a neat guy who was probably beyond my age range (I had clicked like and then noticed the eight year difference).

Right now as I write, I’m thinking of his smile, then, coming obliquely and warm. I’m folding my hands, smiling to myself, and biting my fingers. In fact I can’t stop smiling. I really like him.

I was attracted. He was attracted. I liked his smile, his eyes, his hands, his personality. He gave back good vibes. I wondered quite early what it would be like to kiss him.

After our drink, as it had stopped raining, we took a stroll one the trail near the river, more small talk, and then parted with another hug. I said he might hear from me, that I had another date in a few days, and he wished me luck.

To be continued.

 

A storm charges and clears the air

Get used to me, little honey
Yeah, get used to me, my girl
Don’t  get broken up
When I just I can’t fill your cup
Your inflated expectations
Could ruin our relations
Accept what you got
What I am, and what I’m not
Yeah, get used to me, my girl

You have life to live, little honey
Free choices, they’re all yours
Quit looking to me
Or you won’t become free
You’ll have to make your own way
You have to see you’re okay
I’m not unsympathetic
But you’re just so frenetic
You have life to live, little honey

You’ve hurt me, but that’s all done, little honey
I won’t be keeping score
Life does that to us
There’s no need to fuss
There’s no real blame
No hangin’ on to shame
I’m fine, still lovin’
though you’re pushin’ and you’re shovin’
You’ve hurt me, but that’s all done, little honey

I’m proud of you, little honey,
So proud of you, my girl
The strength you show
Is needed, don’t you know
You’re a flame, you’re a force
Gonna go and set a course
People need your power
You’re gonna help them to flower
I’m proud of you, my girl

 

 

Self reflection

He tells me I am beautiful. His eyes are full of admiration and sincerity. Soon after, I go check. Am I? Six inches away from my reflection in the mirror. I can’t tell at all—in fact, I can only look at one section of my face at a time, and the view changes as I scan, and, what am I looking for? Am I beautiful? What does that mean, anyway? Do I compare to some ideal of beauty as represented in even an average homemakers’ or news magazine? Maybe one on the golden side of life–that would be a yes, I suppose, from what I’ve seen, though there are much more beautiful looking sixty year old women than I at fifty-three.

I turn from the medicine cabinet door to the wall-size mirror over the main sink. There I am, down to the hips, in a pink sweatshirt, hair down. Familiar, but I want to see more objectively, as familiarity has an innate acceptance I must get past, to assess and evaluate. I gently pull at the part of my perceptive self that could, if it was possible, step back and take an objective look. As I do, I begin to see a stranger. It is a strange and unfamiliar experience, and feels somehow not right.

I can’t do it. How could I? I in truth cannot see myself. Still, even after the new technological breakthrough called the mirror. Before the mirror, besides a few graphic facts revealed my a pond or glassy slate surface, there was no way of seeing oneself. And therefore, as far as self awareness and identity went, one was completely dependent on other people, whether many or few, far or near dead or alive, to determine a sense of who one was. By facial expression, body, sonic, and symbolic language, sending back the story of  value as an individual, a community member, a child, friend, lover, opponent, others tell us who we are.

A pond reflection… the mirror. A photograph. Tools to access the self as object, to truly observe as a scientist? I do not think so. But the curiosity still burns, the need for a self that somehow does not ebb and flow, surge, pressurize, froth. Become polluted. And sometimes, seemingly, drain away.

Or evaporate. Where is the self in sleep, if not temporarily departed, as in death?

 

The answer is: snore, yawn, lie, or say bless you.

Why do people…

Recently I dreamed up a group game (not yet piloted), where you come up with an opening phrase together, then each person makes a prediction, or several, of the suggested completions will be offered by the search engine to which it’s offered. Without checking first, my predictions for this one, in these times, are:

• “…get Coronavirus?”
• “…fail to observe social distancing in public?”
• “…think serious inconveniences experienced by them during the pandemic are signs of government incompetence?”

Okay, this last one is not likely, but it’s what I’m wondering. As I peruse narratives in the news and the social media posts of my family and friends, I observe a pattern of thinking that these things we hear happening to other people (and how unfortunate, but inevitable at the population scale, we dispassionately observe), will not and ought not happen to me personally. We can comfortably swap homie images, post humorous pandemic memes and count our blessings as we bide our time.

If we are hit by a negative consequence, by God were not going to calmly accept it, acknowledging that it’s merely unfortunate, but equally inevitable at the population scale; nothing personal. No, by god, it must be someone’s fault. The government not taking quick enough action, or taking action too quickly, thus curbing my personal freedoms, seemingly being the favorite. Or, if blame cannot be assigned, then there’s a call to battle of some kind at least, starting with telling and retelling, and trying to follow the spidery threads of cause and effect, reaching out for solutions that might not be available.

Religious folks have the recourse of thinking that finding themselves in the negative subset of the odds is actually a message from the gods to wake up, count their blessings, not take their divine help for granted, repent and be healed, or acknowledge the power of karma and tighten up the ethical framework. The sects that consider themselves the chosen righteous will be content to consider these events part of an attack by the prince of darkness, a spiritual battle in the heavenly domains, to be overcome by prayer and fasting.

It’s all just human nature, the expressions of adaptive coping mechanisms that have evolved in the human collective psyche and therefore culture.

An attitude of accepting one’s fate is another way of responding. Modern Western culture calls this “victim mentality” and rejects it as dysfunctional, but because it is common and even prevalent in some cultures, it too must have adaptive value, says evolutionary theory. It can even be empowering in a different way, as it can lead to a ceasing of pointless (and/or dangerous) struggle and regaining of personal and social peace as well as a rationing of energies for more important things.

When my own life is more closely impacted (and odds are it will be), I will resort to my own ingrained (DNA plus nurture) ways of thinking and acting. In the past this has included all of the above, and I can see precursors of the same as I mentally extrapolate likely unfortunate scenarios of my future life. I also notice a reluctance to think of these scenarios at all, except as a stimulus to get ready. But one never can really get ready for a beloved elder to get sick and die, for someone we know or ourselves to get so sick it’s hard to breathe and we struggle to keep the house stocked with necessities or ask for help when one is infected. To picture a severe reduction in personal freedom, a descent into poverty and dependence of my children and friends, even myself, a future of limited opportunity in the ways we have had before, of the collapse of industries, housing values, retirement investments, power and resource grabs by wealthy one percenters or foreign entities enabled by the recession, these are not what my mind wants to dwell on, except as I may be able to mitigate the future vulnerability of those I love by taking action now.

For now I am comfortably  detached. My adult children are all around home, including the one who was in another state, two are still able to work, one is supported by Social Security child’s benefits, and I am a state employee and so far assured of a steady income despite the closure of my work place. This puts me in a position to offer some day labor and/or housing to my kids and/or their friends who are recently out of work until special emergency unemployment insurance provisions take effect. My regular necessary contacts are few, my elderly relatives are relatively self sufficient and/or well cared for by others. I live mortgage-free, can leave my retirement investments in their place in the hopes of recovery. I have a spacious yard and places to enjoy the outdoors safe from contamination. I am checking my privilege, and this is only part. I do have to urge the young adults in my life to follow social distancing protocol with any contacts who have other contacts, as the adaptive behavior among the young tens toward remaining as adventurous and free of restraint as possible.

The attitude I want to choose is still hope, mindful use of intelligence and compassionate instincts, of expectation and participation in a new flowering of resilience and creativity that will enable us to look back and say, “All in all, we rocked that time, that pandemic thing. And we can do it again when the next thing comes.” As far as I can say THIS IS THE RIGHT WAY TO THINK AND BE, I can say it about that. It’s right to be hopeful, whether it’s by complaining, sounding the alarm, accepting, battling, joking, grieving, keeping busy, waiting it out, plodding along, ignoring, creating, strategizing, sheltering, plunging in or running away. It takes all kinds to make a world in this already short, potentially beautiful life we live as individual souls and in community.

 

 

 

Review of Marriage Story by Noah Baumbach

Got my number of drafts down under forty, by trashing and/or revising and posting. Mostly trashing. Again I am not taking the discipline of writing daily seriously enough, I acknowledge for reasons I do not fins acceptable.

Last night I made myself watch a movie, so that I could get out of the going to bed too early & getting up too early routine. I clicked on one that looked like a pleasant enough story, but turned out to be badly acted and corny. While searching for another I saw the auto-play trailer of another that started with the the same distracted-by-circumstances-while driving-and-swerving-to-avoid-a-honking-semi-ending-up-in-the ditch opening scene. The woman in the first film got a forehead bruise, the man in the second got more seriously banged up, so apparently that’s psychologically equivalent, scars and limps being, apparently, too alarming or less attractive in the weaker sex. What I then happened upon turned out to be the subject of this post, though I didn’t start intending to write a review.

I found “Marriage Story,” which I selected on the strength of the two lead actors, Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver (saw him in Paterson, story of a poet bus driver and his wife), and the opening writing. It’s a sad, deep story that starts and ends with expressions of affection and honor for each other, but also starts and ends with a breakup that neither rally wants. The split is over what I think is a common problem—the inability to nurture the individuality of both partners while they are in an intimate partnership, even where there is love and good intentions. What could bring an even higher and more fulfilling level of that individuality instead results in one, often a woman, discovering that they have never grown into her full personality and gifts, and yet feeling guilty in their efforts to make changes, especially when the spouse cannot or will not make the necessary sacrifices, is completely blind to this opportunity to love more deeply and maturely.

The writer explored this de-selfing for love theme in a nuanced way, with no cheap allocation of fault or trite conclusion. Even the lawyers, engaged reluctantly but seemingly by necessity, do not appear to be the villains. Though their fees cost the couple their young son’s college savings, put the mother/mother-in-law (who loves both spouses) in debt and eats away at the husband’s theater grant and the wife’s new acting pilot salary, only seem to be doing their jobs so that the financial and psychological pain that must, apparently, result, is equally shared. Which it is in the end.

But the wife and husband, though bereft of each other and left with the complexities of shared custody of their young son, are left with the beginnings of something perhaps worth all the pain: she has a career that celebrates and nurtures her talent in her own right, and he with a chastening, a recognition of an aspect of his personality—the film didn’t portray is in a black-and-white manner as a flaw—that blocked his and his wife’s happiness and allow him to grow in a whole new way. And here I am seeing it that way, having experienced something similar in my own child rearing years and after. It could be seen as a chastening of the wife, as she has chosen to pursue her own goals rather than sacrifice them for the preservation of the marriage and family.

 

 

Moving toward creativity, one snow day at a time

That was an entire garlic clove I just ate, and it could have been too much, but it’s baked down to a musky, comforting zing. A sip of cool water, a bite of cheesy crust, and I keep on typing, going back to correct thumb-fingered type-o’s every third word. The zing is still there on the left side of my tongue. And the slight headache I had when I woke up, too warm from piling on blankets to get through the subfreezing nights that came after the snow fell. The temperature rose last night and soon there would be dripping and slush for ice and muffled silence.

School will be on again tomorrow, I am sure. One day before a long weekend and following three snow cancellations, it will be an adjustment. Fortunately, Fridays are building cool stuff for fun and learning, this time from spaghetti and marshmallows, so nothing too heady and theoretical to deal with.

The bay was bluegreen, with rich, barely translucent waves rolling slantwise toward the shore and splashing up the concrete steps down to the tiny cove by the trail. I took a short video to post online. A king tide, a passerby told me. Snow, a shrubby windswept pine, wild rose bush tipped with dried rosehips, and the marvelous bluegreen sea, which changes color depending on the angle at which I gaze out over it. Marvelous.

Mt usual coffee shop is close. Yes, the cost benefit would not balance on a day like this, when passersby need all wheel drive or yak trax to make it there. I am disappointed, as I am a summer, snow day, and weekend regular now. Only one of the baristas greets me with friendly recognition that is more than professional customer service, but that is enough. I’m the type of person who prefers to have preserve a degree of anonymity, though never invisibility.

When I return today, I’ll tackle the next layer of my creative pile. Yesterday I washed all the fabric scraps and sections, musty from long storage, and they are looking hopeful in their fresh, folded stacks. Then I fixed three pairs of jeans, hemmed a pair of dress pants, restored the elastic waistband on a pair of sweats, resized a pillowcase and mended a glove.

More clearing away for creativity. Ideas are floating around my head, but I still need to warm up with more mundane, tactile tasks, so today it will be finishing my daughter’s equestrian-themed quilt. A gift I started eight years ago and which now has bittersweet associations, as her riding came to a halt over financial and logistical burnout on my part and a desire to have a less focused and goal-oriented lifestyle on hers. The elimination of this activity from the budget has been a relief, but the extra free time has had its negative repercussions–my daughter is no longer the blue ribbon 4-H leader and mentor but is muddling through a rather messy stage of individuation that involves vocally asserting her desire to have nothing to do with a mom who never did anything for her ever, as well as becoming know to law enforcement. If I give her the quilt these days, it could end up anywhere.

After that, I have an idea for a few fun gifts for my sweetheart–useful things with some character, and something from our story so far together that will bring a smile. I’m also exploring the possibility of making a lot of strong cotton grocery totes, some plain and some with words and/or images, for gifts and possible to add to my stock to sell one day . A Bernie for President one, perhaps, and maybe one with a half-baked Trump quote. Another with a favorite poem.

For a break from sitting at the sewing machine, I might pick up some rolls of insulation and install them under the floor in the crawl space, or maybe figure out how to set up my garage space as a shop creative space now that my daughter has moved out. I have a kind of idea that if I set it up nice, I can invite her over to do some woodworking of her own. She always was handy with the tools, and creative.

 

Becoming with

My daughter and I have observed that many people, on discovering their Enneagram type, sink into it like a warm bath, as if they finally know that the way they experience the world and express themselves in it is valid. I’m Okay, You’re Okay. Or, maybe it’s in knowing that they are, in a way, part of a set of people that would understand them, to which they in a sense belong. These people are out there somewhere waiting to be discovered, in their own extended family, book club, work place, regular coffee shop, in nonrandom places all over the world throughout history.

Because one of the problems with diversity, as essential for the survival and well being of community as it is,– neurodiversity overlaid by diverse patterns of nurture and experience, is that we all, in some sense, are living in a different “language,” and are unique, like snowflakes. That can be lonely. Most of us, except for sociopaths, make constant and minute efforts to adjust our communications to meet others part way, leaning into norms of acceptable discourse as best we understand them. In the process, we create understanding that would not otherwise have existed, sometimes surprising ourselves in the process. This takes practice–something that comes home to me every time I am too little connected with others and those social skills slide, feel more outside than usual. Just like what happens to the body without regular exercise, we can get weaker, less flexible, and more limited in our energy for social interaction, and gravitate toward easier relationships. I am on the introvert side, so I don’t want lots of close interaction in general, but a combination of infrequently deep interactions (which can include a good book), and friendly but less personal connections (greetings along a walking trail, coffee shop banter, joking in staff meetings) keep me in enough practice most of the time.

We also, in the process of these social interactions, become more like one another in some ways. This socialization of priorities and traditions allows us to get along within our communities on the one hand, and go to battle with other communities with a clear conscience and/or righteous indignation, on the other. All social species have evolved instinctive behaviors to socialize the young and continually socialize one another, pushing for a certain degree of conformity for the good of the community. But genetic and epigenetic diversity comprise a fail-safe system to counter the extremes that may result.

Social scientists try to step outside of this system in order to describe it more “objectively,” and maybe to figure out why they often don’t feel like they easily fit into the system they describe. A perfect fit would mean the system would be invisible to oneself, like water to a fish. Water of a perfect salinity, temperature, pressure, I mean. Fishes do notice water when any of these changes and cause a challenge to their equilibrium, so that they can make behavioral and physiological adjustments, aiming for homeostasis.

 

Clearing away for creativity

My sweetheart is down in his shop making Christmas presents for his kids as I sit writing on his pink velour couch in the front room, overlooking a beautiful valley, foothills, mountains view listening to Radio Paradise.The band sander buzzes periodically through the floor boards as I sip coffee from the mug with the rabbit orgy motif.

Our encouragement and inspiration of one another in being creative is a good thing, among many, about this relationship. We breakfasted on yesterday’s restaurant omelettes and strong coffee, discussing the possibilities of the day. How to display the cool shaped dwarf cherry tree we cut down last week because it was crowding other plants and sending up shoots yards away—upside down suspended from a tree, or bolted to a pole upright? Covered with what color of lights? Green to go with the Green Globe of Happiness lamp in the front yard? Lit up with a laser to look like a flying saucer? Fixed or spinning in the wind?

After a trip upstairs I come down with a new song idea, with the refrain “it ain’t no fair that nobody likes my facial hair,” and how to make a sort of back and forth between a guy and a woman celebrating and bemoaning the productivity of the facial follicles, including the ones that send stiff little curls right into the nostrils if not kept in check, he reports. To make it clear that those ones are outside my experience. Then we talk about developing a simple device to absorb the sound of a coffee grinder and look good on the counter. After he finishes making a series of bottle-opening kitchen mallets of laminated maple and walnut, and I finish off a quilt that’s been in progress for over a decade.

Some of this part of life is more ordinary, just clearing away debris, some individually and some together. Making way for the creativity and productivity by getting rid of stuff that had value at one time, but, unboxed and visited in a new time, not always still a compatible old friend. Relationships ended or changed, no longer needing physical storage space. Dump and donation runs, Craigslist postings, requests for pickup or for permission to disposed of. All part of life’s rhythm, and best done ASAP rather than passed on to the next generation to complicate their lives. As we consider the value others will discover in this or that blanket, chair, bag of craft materials or backpack, it’s good to know all is not lost.

 

 

“We’re still working on the requirements”

This is what my sweetheart said in relation to his work as an artist/ engineer, but it makes a good metaphor. Metaphor being sometimes the only way we can angle in to touch on a truth like seeing a faintly twinkling star better in peripheral vision. Relationship requirements: we are still working on these in our private hearts, and obliquely in our conversations, while we enjoy our time together one day at a time.

I am in the habit of writing to figure out what I think, feel, or even to change what I think or feel. A combination of story telling, logical analysis, poetry, and dream reflections helps me decide on next steps, examine my way of being and my road to growth and future developments I can face, embrace, or bring about.

How do I write about him, about us? He deserves his privacy, but also deserves to know that I’m a writer, and see if he’s comfortable with sometimes being a subject. This public forum (such as it is, without SEO) isn’t my journal, so rest assured I won’t be revealing any secrets, but I want to share some of the aspects that might strike a common cord, raise useful questions, provide hope or encouragement, tell a happy story, for a few readers.

I think I wrote a few months ago about re-awakening to the joys of life, how the phrase “I love my life,” with or without dating success, kept coming as I started building my life alone. That love of life just as is, without a strong leaning into anyone else’s or dependence on anyone else, I want to preserve. It seems to be a common thing, among women at least, to allow too much a loss of self in the process with joining lives with another. Although connecting in any profound way with another person is transformational and should be, and especially when we take years to create a family and raise children, I feel that in this part of my life I want to build an interesting life that is more grounded and centered in my own identity as it has been developed so far. I don’t want to be needed in the same way as I was as mother and homemaker.

But being alone with myself, with marginally special people only on the fringes and remaining dispensable to them is not what I want. I see that as a somewhat cowardly existence, and not fulfilling in the sense of what it means to be fully human. I don’t want to be that widow who says, okay I did relationships and sometimes they were pretty hard, so I’ll keep the writer’s group, work friendships, phone calls holidays with my grown children and a social media presence, but from now on all I want is my tidy house or apartment, Pilates class, my routine and my loyal, simple-minded, housebroken, hypoallergenic Labradoodle.

So, I’m in love, and, yes, willing to build a new one-of-a-kind relationship that sends ripples into the whole rest of my life. If he lives in another city, maybe one or both of us will change jobs and move to be together. Our kids and previous in-laws will be affected. Our friendships are and will continue to be affected. Our routines and how we pursue leisure, personal goals, and create will be affected.

How will it be? How do we want it to be? Will it be? We are still working on the requirements.