Steppenwolf

I'm reading Steppenwolf. The back cover bills it as "a savage indictment of bourgeois society," and it's supposed to be a classic. I had trouble getting into it - the first 50 pages were really repetitive, describing again and again what steppenwolves are. I thought Hesse needed an editor. OK, OK, we know already that the Steppenwolf feels like an outsider in society!

But then it started getting really good. The main character, this lonely old guy who spends all his time reading literature and moping in his attic room, runs into an old acquaintance in the street, a professor he used to know. He doesn't have any friends and it's been so long since he even talked to anyone, that he feels really wooden and fake even standing there in the street talking to the guy. He feels like the "wolf" part of him is standing there laughing at him for trying to be sociable. When the professor invites him to dinner, he says yes but immediately starts freaking out about going. He knows the evening is going to be weird.

He goes back to his room to shower and dress, and the whole time he's wishing he could just stay at home and read his book - the evening looms ahead of him like a terrible chore. Eventually he forces himself to go, and yeah, it turns out pretty bad. He feels totally repressed throughout the whole meal because it's clear the professor's politics are the opposite of his, and he has to keep biting his tongue. After dinner, there's an awkward silence, and in desperation for something to say he ends up saying something insulting, and the professor gets upset with him, and he leaves in a huff.

The whole time I was reading this scene, I was enthralled. I know exactly how he felt. I am not a steppenwolf, but I am shy to a degree that I've never quite been able to overcome. If it was a pure and simple choice, I would much rather read a book than be social on any given evening. But I know being social, in the long term, makes me happier, so I usually talk myself into going. There have been many occasions where I basically browbeat myself into going to some party where I knew I'd be out of place, because I knew I needed the practice, and besides, if I didn't go out, how was I ever going to meet someone? I didn't usually insult anyone, but I'd generally go home afterwards feeling a combination of "whew, glad that's over" and "I'm so bad at this." It's so fascinating to me that Hesse was writing, in 1927, in German, something that speaks to me on a core level, something that makes me say, "ahh! He understands." Like he reached across the ages and squeezed my hand.

Americans and Loneliness

According to this survey, the average American has only one or two close friends, and most people confide only in their spouse. Twenty years ago, the average was three good friends and several confidants, including friends from the neighborhood or other groups outside the family. Commentary on the article speculates about why this is happening - there are plenty of places with social opportunities (the bus, the coffee house, the gym). But for the most part, we don't make connections with the people we see in these places. And in fact, if people approach us there, they're generally a little weird. It's safer, and more comfortable, to email people instead of talking to them, and watch NetFlix at home instead of going out.

Here are my theories about why:
- Transience. No one stays at the same address or job for long enough to really build connections. Maybe twenty years ago there were neighborhoods where people grew up together and all knew one another, like Sesame Street. Or companies where people started out at the bottom rung and spent their whole career working their way up. Now, you move into an apartment building and no one knows their neighbors. Even if you wanted to become friendly with them, it's not easy, either because of language barriers or just basic personality differences. And it's pretty common to change jobs every few years.
- Too many people. If you came in contact with just one or two strangers a day, it would be natural to strike up a conversation. You might be pleased if a stranger asked to share your bench in the park. But when you come in contact with perhaps a hundred strangers a day, it makes more sense to avoid connections. The ratio of "good" interactions with strangers, vs. bad, is pretty low. Now, chances are a stranger who approaches you in the park is a little mentally unhinged. Or wants money. Or both.
- Finally, the types of things we do for fun these days just aren't...well, fun any more. Like house parties where the music is so loud you spend all your time shouting "SO HOW DO YOU KNOW [host]?" and "WHAT?". Or happy hours with coworkers where you sip overpriced beer and try to pretend that these people are your friends. I think they cater more to edgy, kind of aggressive people who live and thrive on pop culture. Which, I think, is not most of us.

I'm not sure what would be better - but something that presents a comfortable environment and facilitates interactions. Something that the edgy cool people think is dumb, so they've replaced it with more demanding social activities where only they can compete. Maybe we need to bring back roller rinks and square dances.

Papering Over A Leak

I'm struggling a lot not to be envious of friends of mine who have real estate and kids. That's where I want to be, but I'm so far away from it right now, it seems like I'll never get there.

The real estate has to come first because our apartment is way too small to raise kids in - already we're tripping over stuff all the time. But we can't afford to buy a place right now, and probably never will, unless I can figure out how to get a job that pays about twice my current salary. Meanwhile, I'm scared of waiting because I worry that I might have trouble getting pregnant, and that childbirth might be more than I can handle...and it's only going to get harder as I get older.

But I made a decision just a couple days ago to stop fussing about this stuff. And I feel bad about even bringing it up in conversations because I don't want to stress out my husband. He has enough on his plate, getting his career going. This is supposed to be a chill time when we just relax and enjoy being married. I shouldn't be pushing him for more.

So, it's like constantly papering over a leak. There's a hose behind it, turned on full-force, but I keep laying fresh sheets of paper over it, trying to calm myself down. "Everything is fine."

The Call

It was 4:30 am and the phone was ringing. I leaped out of bed with my heart pounding, but it turned out to be just someone outside at the call box, wanting to be let in. She said, "Lemme in, I forgot my key." Lightning pause while I digested this. I thought of the episode in Seinfeld where Elaine says, "I didn't know it was a jewel thief," and the other girl lisps, "That'th why there'th a buzzer!" and about reciprocal altruism, how the costs of helping her were low, and the benefits for her high. I felt irritated with people who aren't together, who have kind of a disorganized hedonistic lifestyle and come home at 4:30 am without their keys. On some level, I think I knew it was the girl next door, who's always blasting her music at all hours and keeping us up. All this happened in an instant. Then I said, "I'm sorry, I don't know you," and hung up.

It turned out it was her, because we heard her coming in a few minutes later - I guess someone else let her in. I haven't met her face-to-face but I hear her through the wall a lot. She's really loud, she always seems to be having these angry confrontations with people on the phone. She also likes to have the music blaring and TV on at the same time, in competition with one another. I probably would have let her in if she had apologized for calling at that hour. Or if she wasn't so loud all the time. The thing is that she knows which apartment she called, and now she's probably thinking black thoughts about me. But I don't care.

My husband rolled over in bed and laughed at me. "You're funny," he said. "You said, 'I don't know you.' It's like...'I don't even know who you are any more!'"

The Deluge

Yesterday I decided to walk home, which is about three miles. About halfway there, the skies opened up and I got caught in a terrific downpour. I didn't have an umbrella so all I could do was just keep walking. Pretty soon I was soaked to the skin. Water was coursing down my face and into my eyes, my shoes were squelching with every step, and my clothes were totally plastered to my skin. It reminded me of times when I was a little kid and I would run out and play in the rain for the sheer joy of it. Being caught outside made me feel like a kid too - all the grownups were riding in their cars, or had sensibly checked the weather report and brought their umbrellas, but I was heedlessly out in the rain. After I got home and dried off, apparently my will-power had also retreated to juvenile levels, because I immediately tore into the bag of potato chips I'm not supposed to eat. They were really yummy.

I'm going to make an effort to stop worrying about finances and housing and my job and the tick of the tell-tale biological clock, and just take my pleasure in simple things. Life's too short to worry so much.

Feeling Humble

One day last week, I reread Lord of the Flies, which was assigned reading in high school. I always liked "children on their own, without grown-ups" adventure stories as a kid - The Boxcar Children, Five Children and It, the Narnia books, and the wonderful Far-Distant Oxus*. Those are happy-go-lucky stories, of course, and Lord of the Flies is really dark. But I still liked it.

The second time through, I particularly appreciated the writing. The descriptions of the tropical heat, the shimmering of the humidity on the beach, and the intense quality of the light, are so vivid. You really feel like you're there. Golding describes the beach as being "fledged with palm trees, their green feathers a hundred feet up in the air" coconuts being "skull-like", a wild sow "fringed with piglets," and those are such interesting, fresh words to use. Simon's encounter with the Beast is so spookily written you almost hear a hypnotic kind of drone in your ears as you read it. All of this is just icing on the cake, though, for the moral message the book is trying to get across, which is heavy enough to provide grist for any number of English class essays.

It's so much better than anything I think I could write. I could write something decorative and of interest to a few people, I think, but I'd have to really push myself to get the descriptions up to that calibre. And I just don't think I have it in me to write a "great" book that deals with human morality and society. Golding tosses it off like that's the whole point of writing. I'm awed.


* Far-Distant Oxus: No one has heard of this book, but it's really great. It's about six English children in the summer holidays riding their ponies around the countryside, totally unsupervised and having a glorious time. It's a good read by any account, but especially considering that it was written and illustrated by two girls who were 15 and 16 at the time of publication.

Filing And Its Discontents

Life is all about filing things. I've realized that's pretty much all I do, in my job, and at home. File the budget paperwork in the purchases folder. File the newsletters in the envelopes. File the groceries in the fridge. File the clean socks in the sock drawer. File the guinea pig poops in the trash. On my tombstone, it will read "She worked against entropy, a lot."

Entropy always wins in the end though. And while it gives me some measure of satisfaction to clean and organize things, I feel like these aren't really worthy activities I should be spending my time on. So what if the floor needs sweeping? I should be reading great works of literature (and writing same), improving myself instead of making these incremental gains in household orderliness that will only be lost over the course of the coming week. I often clean as a method of procrastination, because it's easier than self-improvement. But I ought to break myself of that - and at the same time, of the nagging desire to clean when I see something that should be cleaned. So what if the trash is overflowing? I ought to be able to ignore it and do more important things, instead of filing it down the trash chute. Someday, I'll regret that I spent time keeping things orderly instead of wildly, exuberantly, living.

Birdies

Today the weather is the type that makes me feel glad to be alive. It's summery with a light breeze, and most importantly the air smells good - warm and fresh like clean sheets. I went outside for lunch and sat in the park, where there was live music, and where there were sparrows dust-bathing. They are so adorable. I love the way they hunker down in a patch of bare soil and vibrate all over, shivering their wings in the dust. They almost look like wind-up toys gone nuts.

Worry, With a Side of Doubt

I've been worrying a lot about money lately. It's all just because I've moved up in the life bracket. Like tax brackets - you jump up to the next income level and suddenly the taxes are a lot fiercer. I was in the late-twenties-young-professional bracket, which is characterized by intermittent employment, a lot of transient living situations, Internet dating, and periodically having to go back to your parents' house to do laundry and pick up your mail. Not a lot of expectations because you're figuring things out.

Now I'm in the just-married-nesting bracket, which is all about investing in real estate and parenthood. I feel way behind the other people in this bracket. They already have their big houses in the suburbs and their pre-schoolers. I don't think we can afford to have either for a while. My job isn't prestigious enough, so I don't earn enough to pay my share of a mortgage, let alone childcare. And when I floated the idea of staying home with my kids to a friend, she just burst out laughing. "Honey, she thinks she can afford to stay home with the kids, and live in this area!" she told her husband, who also started laughing. Maybe that is only something Midwesterners can afford to do.

I never used to care about having a "prestigious" job. I guess before, it didn't matter because it was just me. Suddenly now I have responsibilities to my husband, to hold up my end of the finances, and to our future kids. Not earning very much money suddenly isn't OK any more.

The Perfect Job

I wonder, does anyone ever really like their job? I mean, in the sense that they actually enjoy being there, and would choose it over leisure activities, at least some of the time. I'm not sure I can imagine a job that I would prefer to go to over, say, sweeping the floor or clipping my nails or some other mundane task like that.

Right now I'm sure there are people out there who would say they genuinely like their jobs. Even people with jobs I would consider really hard and socially stressful, like youth camp counselor or reporter or public relations agent. But these are the sorts of blandly happy people who are just a lot more sunny about everything. I'm not sure I can trust their pronouncements, their happiness scale is so far out of whack from mine. These are people who run marathons for fun and give blood all the time, and are good at teaching martial arts to four-year-olds.

I always think that it's just a matter of finding the right job, that fits my personality and skills just perfectly. So I make lists of things I like doing. The lists usually have things on them like this:

- talking to and interacting with (gentle) animals
- cleaning, in moderation
- reading fiction
- being outdoors at least some part of each day
- being around people who are smart, but not competitive
- watching animals
- learning about structure/function in the natural world, and taxonomy
- writing, in moderation
- not having to be "on" - aggressive, competitive, concerned with hierarchy, politically aware, ready to defend policies, etc.

So this would basically qualify me to be some kind of Victorian naturalist or maybe run a nature center in a secluded location that no one visits.

I pretty much like my current job except it doesn't pay very much, and it does sort of carry a requirement for me to be "on". Which I am working on, but I'm awful at it. And afterwards I just go home and feel like I'm trying to shake some kind of poison out of my system from having had to act that way. So maybe I just have to accept that work is something you don't like doing (that's why they pay you), and just get through each day with the minimum of friction.

A Meeting at Dusk

Sorry my posts have been erratic lately. I had to travel for work, and then I got food poisoning, so I've been out of commission this week. My in-box is sky-high. But I want to write about the donkey I met a few days ago.

I was wandering around in the twilight, feeling kind of out of place and sad, and found this farm with a pasture (actually more of a mud-pit). I leaned on the fence railing watching the inhabitants - a horse, a mid-size pony, a donkey, a mule, a Shetland pony, a Holstein, and a boar - sharing a pile of hay. I've never seen such a diverse group of farm animals housed together before. The Shetland was kind of a rabble-rouser, starting up play-fights with the pony and sometimes the mule. They would cavort around the pasture together, chasing each other and even rearing up on their hind legs. It was adorable to see this little pony, just a muzzle poking out from under a haystack of mane, charging playfully at the bigger animals and then racing away. All the equines and the pig came over to see me at some point, but wandered off when they saw I had no food.

Except for the donkey. She was a sad-looking creature (like all donkeys), spotted brown-and-white, with a swayback and terribly overgrown hooves. I noticed the hooves right away because she was stumbling with each step as she made her way toward me. They were so long they were starting to turn upwards, and she had to practically walk on her pasterns. I felt a lump of tears in my throat looking at her - her suffering was so apparent, and borne so patiently. She was very cautious about approaching me, she'd come forward a step and then just wait, watching me, so it took about ten minutes for her to get close enough for me to touch her. I started rubbing around behind her ears and scratching her shoulder, and she just leaned into the touch. Every time I paused, she would press her head against my hand, so I kept going. She seemed totally starved for affection.

It was getting dark, but at some point I decided, "I'm not going to walk away from her. Everyone else walks away from her, but I'm going to stay with her, until she decides to leave me." So I stayed there talking to her and petting her for an entire hour. I felt kind of a sympathy with her because she was the out of place one in her group, too (the other equines occasionally acted aggressive toward her, laying back their ears and snaking their heads as they passed her; each time she flinched and jumped away, then came back to me). Plus, we both have foot problems. She still had such longing for human contact, even though she's being neglected and crippled by some farmer who can't be bothered to give her the care she needs. Finally it was full dark, and I was kind of worried about being out so late, so I said goodbye to her, gave her a final pat, and walked away. She lifted her heavy head up and rested it on the top rail of the fence, rolling her big eyes to watch me go. It was a look to break your heart.

I don't even know whose farm it was, but if anyone had walked around the corner of the barn and offered to sell her to me, I would've bought her on the spot. It's so sad to me that now that she's at the end of her useful life, they're just going to ignore her and let her be crippled - when one visit from a farrier could turn her quality of life around. It's so wrong.

Repeat Performances

Since we got back, lots of people have been clamoring to hear about the trip. We had a wonderful time, we loved Australia. I was excited to tell my family all about our adventures. But after spending a day talking with them, I kind of got my fill of talking about it. Now after a couple dozen repeat performances for the benefit of people at work, friends, and even neighbors and random acquaintances who want to know where I've been, I'm getting a little burned out on talking about it. I feel like I've recited our travel itinerary, and the major things we did, and the fact that we had fun, about a million times already - and we have yet to get together with most of our friends.

The clamoring for pictures is particularly strident. Before we left, everyone at the wedding, and my coworkers, and other random friends, all said, "Congratulations! Have fun in Australia! Take lots of pictures!" (like, those exact words, over and over and over on the day of the wedding) and we said, "Thanks! We will!" and now it is coming back to haunt us because they all want to see said pictures. There almost seems to be an obsession with the pictures. It's about the first thing people say to us now. ("So how does it feel to be married?" comes first actually.) Then in short order, "I want to see pictures of your trip!" We did take some, but I'm already tired of doing the show-and-tell narration, and I've only done it once. I am probably going to start telling people that we focused on the experience and didn't take that many pictures, to throw them off.

This is why I can't be a professional musician or actor (well, besides the talent thing) - I just can't do repeat performances. I do it once, and then if I have to keep doing it, I just feel interminably bored, and frustrated. But, everyone is really nice, and it's nice of them to take an interest, so I am doing my best to keep answering with a sunny smile, "Yeah, we had a great time!" and run through the whole thing, and agree to show them the *#&% pictures.

How It Feels

Everyone keeps asking me if it feels any different being married. I usually say, not really. We've known each other and have been living together for a long time, so it's not as though it really changes the fabric of everyday life. But, there is a subtle difference. I feel more like we are a team now, more confident about making decisions together. I feel happy looking forward to our future, knowing that there will be one. Every time I look at him and see that ring on his finger - or hear him say the words "my wife" - I feel proud and excited, that we've made this commitment together.

There used to be a tension and an underlying feeling of sadness in our relationship, I think, that had to do with me wanting to move forward and being afraid he didn't feel the same way, and worrying that all the little things I did that were annoying or dumb were ultimately being tallied up against me in some cosmic subconscious decision-making process. He never gave me any reason to worry - it was just that I never knew where we stood, and I was afraid of thunderbolts from the blue. Now, that tension is gone, and I just feel simply...happy.

Happily Married

The whole past month has been wonderful. First the wedding, which was a glorious day - I almost cried walking up the aisle and seeing all the beaming faces of my friends who had come to wish me well - then the honeymoon, a whirlwind tour of Australia through Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Cairns, and Melbourne.

Australia has always been on my list of must-visit places, but now that I've been there I can't cross it off - I have to go back. In fact we were so smitten with Sydney that we talked about living there. I don't know how the logistics would work - I just know we loved being there. Especially the harbour. And the Blue Mountains. Walking around the Opera House when it was all lit up at night, seeing flying foxes in the palm tree outside our window in Cairns, getting to touch a joey at a zoo in Adelaide, are all experiences I'll treasure. We were struck with how friendly and open and nice all the Aussies were. You'd think they would get burned out with tourists, but they were great. Now I have delusions of saying "to hell with it" about my job here, and the two of us moving to Australia so I can work with flying foxes. It's a delusion because I could never bear to be that far away from my family - especially if we start one of our own. But it's nice dreaming about it.

The best part of the trip was just having all that time to spend together. After the stressful weeks leading up to the wedding, it was lovely just being able to spend each day as we liked, exploring and eating at nice restaurants and having fun. Going back to work today has been hard just because it's the first time we've been separated for more than a couple of hours, since we got married more than three weeks ago.

Two Days

Almost there. The past week has been rushed, and the past few days have really been a crunch-time. I had lots of stuff I was going to do in my lunch hour, last-minute wedding planning, and it just didn't happen because I didn't have a lunch hour. Hopefully I will accomplish a lot tomorrow. Well, even if I don't, all the major stuff is in place.

I'm so happy. I still don't really believe this is going to happen. All day I've had a TMBG song in my head, "These things happen to other people...", a line I've often thought of whenever something particularly wonderful and unlooked-for came my way. Marriage is one of those things that I always really hoped would happen for me, and was secretly afraid would not. I still shouldn't count those chickens. But barring major catastrophes, it looks like everything is good to go.

I'll write again when we get back from the honeymoon - end of May. Cheerio!

Three Days

Lots of parties over the last week - I've eaten a lot of cake and said many thank yous, and the wedding hasn't even happened yet. I wasn't expecting everyone to be as generous and supportive as they all have been. Most of my friends are already married and I thought it would be old hat to them. And I thought people at work might even be grumpy about it, because they're not married, most of them, and sometimes it's hard to be happy about someone else's good situation when you're not there yourself. But that's just my bias speaking, assuming that everyone wants to be married, just because I've always wanted to. Perhaps it was ungenerous of me not to expect them to be so generous.

I'm nearly in the home stretch now. All I have to do is plow through the mountain of work on my last day before (nearly) a month off, and get through one final day of frantic shopping and cooking. Then - yippeeee!

Four Days

So much to remember. My brain is racing. I'm fairly organized, and I have lots of help, like I said, but even so this wedding planning business is a challenge. I keep getting hit with flashes like "what about money in Australia? we have to remember to change funds before we go" and "who will pick up the appetizers?" and "need to mail directions to those four people" and "got to look at the proofs for the wedding programs" and "did I call to confirm the cake order?" and a million other things. I'm not the type to stress over trying to make the day perfect, either. If anything, I think I'm too lax - I keep saying "It'll be fine," and then my mom or someone says, "Yes. But we still need to make this decision." I think the stress is getting to the boy, too - I've seldom seen him so busy and worried. I look forward to being married and being able to just spend relaxed time with him again.

Five Days

Today I'm just feeling happy, and lapped in friendship. Everyone is being wonderful. Though we tried to plan a really small, simple wedding, it turns out there are still a lot of things that have to be done, and it's more than we could do ourselves. I'm so grateful to my friends who are helping us with the music, lending us plates and chairs, picking up the food from the caterer the morning of the wedding, helping set up, doing the wedding programs, singing at the wedding, etc. My friends from home planned a great bachelorette party, and my friends at work gave me a surprise party this morning. Meanwhile my lovely fiancé is working hard to get all the music and other arrangements ready. Ahhh...it's going to be wonderful.

Dumb & Smart

Yesterday I was assigned to take notes during a meeting when I didn't know what was going on. It was just a barrage of acronyms, glancing references to coalitions I'm not familiar with, and meeting-speak phrases like "we'll leverage that issue" or "let's finesse our dialogue with him." Even if I understood all the words of the discussion, without knowing context I couldn't take good notes - so I had to either guess at what it meant, or copy down exact sentences - and I couldn't write fast enough to keep up with the pace of conversation. Why can't they take their own notes? Or at least "context it" for me? But if I interrupt to ask questions, they get annoyed at having to take time out to bring me up to speed. The whole situation made me feel pretty dumb.

I like it, on the other hand, when my speech patterns influence other people. If I can manage to use a particular word in conversation and it gets stuck in someone else's head and they inadvertently use that same unusual word a few minutes later, it makes me feel smart. It comes down to a battle of wills - who has the most dominant speech patterns? Maybe I am just an egotistical maniac for enjoying that. But cut me a little slack. Honestly, I have so little power in my life, the only beings I can control are my guinea pigs, and sometimes not even then. They flounce away from me in defiance if I don't come bearing treats.

How to be Happy

I read recently that many people confuse pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is a fleeting sense of joy in response to a sensation, while happiness is the underlying state of being. The book went on to note that people who are habitually optimists tend to be happier, and they live longer. It advised that you should practice thinking optimistic thoughts and consciously become a happy person.

I'm not so sure it works that way. Maybe your personal capacity for happiness is something you are born with, like brown hair or attached earlobes - not what you strive to be, but who you are. (Of course, maybe I think that because I am not practicing optimism hard enough!)

But really, it seems foolish to practice thinking these optimistic thoughts, if they are not my true feelings about a situation, or especially if they will hold me back from recognizing real problems and doing something about them.

It reminds me of the parenting strategy I witnessed once, of a couple who would not give their young daughter things she wanted unless she professed to be happy. "I'm haaaapppy!" she would sob, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Take The Long Way Home

I had a great walk home yesterday. I took a different route, through a lively urban shopping district. Here are some things I saw along the way:

Ben & Jerry's free scoop day. I tried vanilla Heath bar crunch - yum.

Two shoe stores. I've never been in a shoe store that didn't have all the different sizes stacked up on the shelves, in boxes - but both these stores had just a single model of each shoe style on display. You had to ask the clerk to try it in your size. Actually in the first store I thought all they had was size sixes for little-foot people, so I left, but when I saw the same thing going on at the second store, I thought, "wait..they must have other sizes." I guess I have never purchased shoes anywhere but Payless. And probably won't break that streak any time soon. All the shoes I saw cost $400 and up.

Bridge over the park. In the midst of urban wilderness, suddenly there was a glimpse of real wilderness - at least, a sea of treetops, and the glimmer of a creek down below. Joggers leaned on the railings breathing in the fresh wind while cars rushed by on the highway behind them. Far off in the distance, I could see the towers of the cathedral near where I live. It looked like a fairytale castle.

Candle vigil for Tibetan victims. Twenty-some people sitting in circles around flickering candles, holding signs and pictures of victims, some of whom were just children. They were all silent and it was really eerie. I felt a pang thinking of all the awful things that happen in the world, that I am insulated from through luck, not merit.

Quick detour through the zoo. It was an hour before closing time, and the gates were open. I got to see the kangaroo, the emu, the maned wolves, and a pile of cheetahs lying together in the grass. The wolves were the best. I've always really liked them, even with the smell. The way they move, they look more horsy than doglike - they have long necks and a horse-like way of swinging their heads around and swivelling their ears, and narrow sloping shoulders, and long legs. I sneaked up on them very quietly and stayed just out of view so I could watch them playing together - gently pouncing at each other. The way they walk, both legs on a side moving together, looks so alien.

Library, to drop off my books. I found a literature discussion group that my dad might want to join posted on the bulletin board.

Pet store, to get guinea pig stuff.

And home at last.

Superdreams

Things I want next time around, when I'm reincarnated as a superhero like Meg:

- wings (duh) - or actually, just flying ability. It must be hard to find clothes that fit if you have wings.
- finger-zapper of death to vaporize vexers
- stretchiness like the mom in The Incredibles
- Jedi mind tricks so I could cause a person to experience the same sensations they are causing in someone else - including good stuff
- built-in Babel fish
- ability to rewind

That's probably enough to start with. Wow, I'd have a great time racing around the world, reforming agriculture and correcting the balance of power. Oh and one more:

- an anti-nemesis force-field! Having to fight off a nemesis all the time must be such a drain on your productivity.

A Cause Without Rebels

Today, dodging the inevitable protesters handing out flyers near the subway station, it occurred to me how blase we are about free speech. There are protests and rallies going on all the time, people chanting and marching and handing out stuff. In many countries in the world, people who do those things are risking their lives - they could be arrested, tortured or even put to death. I get Amnesty International reports of people who have been imprisoned for twenty years, for doing less.

Yet, although we have the right to speak out about injustice, it's hard to get anyone to listen. In more authoritarian countries, anyone with a bullhorn on a street corner handing out flyers would be surrounded by an amazed crowd - people would listen, consider the words seriously, and perhaps join up. Here, busy commuters duck to avoid being handed things, or brush the protesters aside. Everyone is too accustomed to them to care any more - and there are so many causes worth fighting for, they all blend together. We're all blitzed by advertising and don't have room to think about anything more.

So whether governments choose to repress or allow free speech, it ends up having the same effect - nothing really ever changes.

Men

Occasionally I cross paths with guys who just make me glad to be female and heterosexual. I love men in the way that sculptors love curves, and painters love blue distance. They are just endlessly fascinating, a theme I can't help returning to. I can understand, if I think about it, what makes women attractive, but admiring men comes so much more easily to me.

Today I was buying a book, and the cashier had smoldering dark eyes and Bambi lashes. He kept looking at me - we looked frankly into each other's eyes and held eye contact the whole time as we were waiting for the machine to process my credit card. Maybe he liked the look of me, too. Maybe he just always does that. I feel totally in love with my fiance, and giving up other men is something I can do easily, in exchange for a life with him. But it still makes me happy to live in a world full of these other interesting men, and to see my life ahead filled with random encounters with them.

Turn, Turn

Today I've got that Quaker song in my head, "Tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free, tis the gift to come down where you ought to be..." I am not quite where I ought to be. I need to be someplace where I'm not judged all the time - or at least, if I am being judged, then judged on something reasonable and considered to be doing well. I have fantasies of being somewhere where nothing is expected of me - like, just walking through a field of flowers. Doing such a fantastic job of being in that field. Or, feeding my guinea pigs, and their squeaks of approval are all that matters.

Being Soft, Reconsidered

I realized being soft isn't enough to save me from being yelled at. In fact, I think some people take advantage of it. If I want people to be nice to me, maybe I should inspire them with a bit of healthy fear by acting like a complete bitch.

Or, maybe I should just look for a new job. There are days when I really enjoy this one - opportunities to learn new stuff, in line with my interests, helping "save the world", a good group of people for the most part, etc. But there are other days when I'm bored to death doing menial tasks, and other days when people yell at me. More and more often, I find myself wondering why I put up with it.

Dang! Never fails - just as I get to the point in a job where I'm earning more than the minimum number of vacation days, it turns sour.

Wavering Resolve

I'm doing a terrible job of keeping my New Year's resolutions. They were:
1. Learn Spanish
2. Learn calculus
3. Find some kind of exercise to replace running
4. Don't buy any junk food

So far I have
1. Maintained a Spanish textbook in pristine, unopened condition on the bookshelf for three months until my coworker, from whom I had borrowed it, asked for it back.
2. Opened a calculus textbook exactly twice. Did all the homework for chapter one (graphs!) and half the homework for chapter 2 (functions!). Am now using the book to keep the Spanish textbook's spot warm.
3. Been running, haphazardly.
4. Been surviving nicely on the large stores of junk food that I socked away at the end of last year. The only thing I ran out of was potato chips, midway through January. Ahh! Then, last week, they were on sale and I bought two bags. I have not opened them. Perhaps it's OK if I just don't eat them. Honestly, how can I be expected to resist half-price chips?

Being 'Soft'

I wage an intermittent war with myself about being too much of a pushover. I'm a habitual avoider of confrontation, even the mild sort like delegating work to someone else to do - it just makes my heart pound to think about it. I'd rather do it myself than give orders. I think it hurts me in the long run because lots of people think they can walk over me - and they are so right. They can. At times I practically lie down in the road and say, "c'mon, step right there," all to avoid being yelled at.

It's not a totally self-defeating strategy, from an animal behavior point of view. I will never make it very far up the ranks. But, it does give me a reputation for being easy to work with. And it seems to win me friends among the other low-ranking females. I went to dinner with an old friend the other night, a really nice girl who, like me, is shy to an extreme. We were having a heart-to-heart and she told me that she feels "very safe" with me. And hearing that just made me so happy. Who cares about being the alpha? I would rather be trusted, any day.

Could It Really Be That Simple?

Could the solution to all my problems indeed lie in a simple haircut? A sweeping move that, along with my hair, takes away all of my insecurities, leaving me elegant, sleek, and always shevelled?

Why I Wouldn't Be A Good Farmer

I used to want to be a farmer when I was little. I liked the idea of living in tune with the seasons, completely supporting myself by growing everything I ate, and being surrounded by rolling pastoral landscapes.

Now I know enough about farming to understand how incredibly hard it is - and how it's not the kind of life you can buy into, from outside. Plus, for a small, independent farmer, having a second job to support the farming "hobby" is almost a necessity. So I just write about farming, instead of doing it.

Anyway, I realized today that there's an even more fundamental reason why I'd be bad at farming. I was working in my garden, which at the beginning of the week was entirely swamped in weeds. I've cleared half of it, and today I planted beans, tomatoes, and larkspur. Most of the weeds I ripped out were vetch - a nitrogen-fixer, good for the soil, and bearing tiny purple blossoms that feed lots of insects. As I cleared them, spiders and centipedes and beetles went scurrying out, looking for cover. I realized I was basically taking out a complete little ecosystem, which supported far more wildlife than my vegetable garden was going to, and replacing it with a monoculture. The land was more valuable to more species and certainly far more productive before I started "improving" it. Now I wonder if I shouldn't just leave the other half of the garden to be wild.

So there you have it - incurable idealism about the farming life has given way to incurable idealism about the value of undisturbed habitat.

Feeling Good

Great headline from yesterday's paper: Millions Rally to Support Aliens. Almost Onion-worthy.

Yesterday evening I planted three rows of cilantro in my new community garden. It's the first garden I've ever had that was all mine, and those are the first seeds I've planted in it. It was so lovely kneeling in the soft dirt with the pink sunset falling behind the trees, listening to birds settle down to roost and to the cathedral bells chiming (I was skipping practice). Later, I lay on the floor petting my guinea pig as she made little cheerful oinking noises, and listening to Tracy Chapman's "Baby Can I Hold You Tonight," and I just felt ridiculously happy.

Christine

I had an interesting conversation while stuck in an interminable line at the post office today. It started, as these things usually do, with an exchange of comments and some eye-rolling at the slowness of the line, between me and the girl standing behind me. Two of the post office clerks were apparently on break, leaving just one on duty to deal with a line that stretched out the door. Then she made an interesting remark about how a private company wouldn't tolerate such delays in service, and how this represented a failure of the free-enterprise system. I like it when people talk smart like that. Makes me feel like I'm back in college.

She was younger than me, and a lot more together-looking, with great cheekbones and the kind of straight, sleek, mousy-brown hair that doesn't need anything done to it. Though her English was perfect, she spoke with a faint accent. It turned out she was born in Macedonia. She came to the U.S. at the age of sixteen, and put herself through college all on her own. I said that it must be hard to be so far from your family. I said it genuinely, but also somewhat automatically. To my surprise, she reacted as though people had rarely said it to her. She got a far-off look in her eyes and said, "It is really hard. You never stop missing your family. You learn to survive with that ache, but it never goes away."

We compared jobs. She was an investment banker, one year out of college, working herself to the bone with twelve hour days. I said I liked my non-profit work, but was finding it very non-profit, and sometimes felt that I should have taken a more lucrative career path. She asked what I was earning (with apologies, but I didn't mind telling her - like all confessions, it was easy to tell a stranger). Her salary was quite a bit higher. "Must be nice to be able to leave work at five," she said wistfully. "Must be nice to earn what you do," I said, and we grinned at each other. Maybe someday we'll each get the chance to experience the other side.

After a pause, she said the thing that stuck with me. She said, "I didn't realize until this conversation how lonely I really am."

I wanted to reach over and hug her. She seemed a hair's breadth from crying. Instead I said something like, "It's hard, isn't it." It's even hard for me, and I grew up here, and I get off work at five. She said, "I just have no time for my own life, and I have no one here."

Then she straightened and said, "I hate it when I get like this, feeling sorry for myself." "Everyone is allowed to feel that way sometimes," I said. She nodded and said, "Anyway, I'm leaving in a couple months. I'm moving to California to live with my boyfriend."

We talked some more, about life plans and families and careers. We were just getting into that endlessly rich topic of how to balance childbearing with a career, when we finally reached the front of the line.

In parting, we wished each other well and said we were glad to have met. I hope things work out for her and the boyfriend. Maybe she can take him home to meet her parents in Macedonia sometime.

Expectations

It seems like a lot of people are suddenly laying expectations on me, that I never asked for (or expected, ha). Mi amigo, who now starts work earlier in order to waylay me and try to get me to speak Spanish, asks every time he sees me whether I have been studying, and tells me that I need to. Why?? Yeah, it would be nice if I could say more than "Hola" and "no comprendo," but why, out of all the people at my office, did he decide I need to learn Spanish? and why would I anyway - just so I could chat more with him? when I already tense up every time I see him, and wish I could sneak out the back door?

Then there's religious expectations - which, granted, are up a notch this week because it's holy week. But they're just going to intensify as it gets closer to the wedding and the forces of Catholicism and Episcopalianism duke it out over my soul.

Then there are general work-related expectations - that I do all the assignments first, that I give everybody's work top priority, and do it all with a smile. The bombardment goes up and down in intensity, but never quite goes away.

I wish I had an office with a door I could close, so I could control my work environment better. My territory is public space, and people use it as such - sitting on my desk, leaving their things there, and talking to me as long as they want (not as long as I want). That's more or less what it's like to be an introvert in all walks of life, I think. Other people use you. They control the conversation, not you, and they decide when you are allowed to leave. They even say things like "you're nice" or "you're easygoing" or "thanks for your patience." I'm not nice. Or patient. If I had a choice, I'd leave. Or yell at them. Someday there's going to be a breaking point, and some person will be innocently talking at me about their day and ignoring all my efforts to escape, and I am just going to scream, "Fuck you!!!" and run away.

Only A Month Away

Planning a wedding is really complicated. I think I should have started earlier. I keep making lists, and spending entire evenings online researching options, but I'm not making much progress. People tell me to enjoy my engagement, and I do get flashes of pure joy and anticipation, but then I come back to reality - ever-present worry and fear that indeed it will not get done.

So far I have bought a dress, booked the church, and picked out a man.

So far we have not gotten rings, a photographer, food, cake, music, a marriage license, passports, shoes, a suit, flowers, candles, or readers.

Luckily I have an awesome mom who is pitching in, and four more weekends to run errands and try to get some of this stuff done. Wish me luck!

900,000 Chickens A Week

Yesterday I toured a poultry slaughterhouse. We followed along watching as the carcasses, hanging from hooks on a traveling assembly line, were defeathered, chilled, and sliced into meat cuts. It's very state-of-the-art with machines transferring and deboning the carcasses, and workers inspecting and slicing them up. I was OK seeing everything after the birds were dead, because after that point there's no suffering. It was a little eerie, kind of like a sci-fi thriller, watching the ranks upon ranks of thousands of carcasses, traveling across the ceiling and down into giant machines. They kind of looked like dead baby dolls, headless, hanging by their stubby legs.

We also visited the kill room, and that was hard for me. Seeing the live birds in crates ready to go onto the conveyer belt, seeing them strung up by their feet and flapping to try to get away, and seeing them continue to flap and struggle after their necks were slit, was pretty disturbing. I just felt like what was happening to them was so awful and so undeserved. And not even in aid of any fine or noble cause - just to make chicken nuggets. I wanted it to be over for them as soon as possible. Knowing as each second passed that they were still alive and suffering was the worst part. We saw chickens with blood all over their wings and breasts, still flapping and trying to get away. I couldn't tell if it was reflex, or if they were really conscious and experiencing every moment of that.

I think as slaughterhouses go, this was one of the better ones. It was designed with worker comfort and humane guidelines in mind (for example, the chickens are hung onto the hooks in a darkened room, so they stay calmer). We talked a lot about how the chickens are raised, and this company is head-and-shoulders over the others in the business. But no matter how well you do it, it's still a terrible industry. At the end of our tour, the rest of my group was very enthusiastic about the facility, so I gather that others are much worse. If that's true, then I don't think I have it in me to see any others.

Friends

So yesterday I went to dinner with some new friends from work, and glibly confessed my aspirations to someday have a family and a house in the suburbs, and my worries that I'm not going to get there doing environmental work. I always fall into the trap of assuming that because people are treating me warmly and like I've known them for years, that I can relax and be open with them. Like I've already passed the test. But - Erin! You have not passed! This IS the test, going on right now! So I say things like that and the mood turns against me, almost like a temperature change. And I suddenly realize I'm not in the company of bosom buddies, at all, and that I just shot myself in the foot, and from now on there's always going to be a kind of frosty reserve in their eyes when they speak to me.

Yesterday my downfall started when someone asked if I partied a lot in college, and I said that I hardly ever went out, that I wasn't very cool in college, and then someone else asked what kind of music I liked, and I said that lately I've been enjoying classical (strike two), and then I wrapped it up with my confessions about the suburbs, after which there was a poignant pause and then someone said, "I'm really anti-all that. It's so terrible, environmentally. That's not how I would ever choose to live." Which was when I suddenly woke up and realized these weren't my friends, at least not yet, and perhaps now wouldn't ever be. The thing is, they're nice people. But you do have to keep up a facade of coolness as you get to know new people, and say what they want to hear, and later after they've decided you're in, you get to be yourself. I know that. I just forget to do it.

Money

Today I'm feeling frustrated in my career. It started when I saw, quite accidentally, an ad for a public transportation services communication assistant (yes, I know that doesn't mean much - but essentially they wanted someone to help soothe angry people when the trains are running slow, and write little articles for the internal newsletter). The qualifications were a bachelor's degree and the salary was three times what I make.

I didn't realize, when I chose to go into environmental, non-profit work, exactly how non-profit it was. I always wanted to have an environmental career, and I loved studying ecology in college, and I turned down a couple of soulless jobs so that I could hold out for one that I felt would help me make a difference.

Now I have that job, and most days it's great. But. I am earning less money than anyone I know. I am earning less money than before I went to grad school. It frustrates me because while my fiance is on a good career track, I don't want to count on him financially. I should be capable of paying my own way - but I am not, and it's not a matter of not working hard enough or not being smart enough, because I do work hard, and I am bright, but I'm still not earning enough money for us ever to qualify for a mortgage (his paycheck isn't enough to make up for mine being so far below average). And as important as the environment is to me, having a home and a family is also important to me. I feel upset thinking that I may not be able to have those things, and it's my own damn fault.

Looking for a Pattern

Sophia has an interesting entry in her blog about originality/redundancy of thoughts. I know I blog about a lot of the same things, over and over. But I kind of like it when I look back through my blog and start to see themes emerging. It makes me feel like I am one step closer to developing my Theory of Everything.

When I was a kid, I was always generating sentences that began "All of life is about...", trying to capture the essence of existence. Then I'd check back in a few days to see if it still rang just as true. There was probably some kind of progression as I got older, from thoughts like "All of life is about being told to do things by other people" through "All of life is about longing for things you can't have" to "All of life is about jostling for rank in the social hierarchy" or "All of life is about trying to find other people to love you."

Love and Marriage

Here’s a question for you: If, after marriage, you could flip a switch and never feel romantically attracted to anyone again except for your spouse...would you? Or would you let that part of you stay alive?

It’s tough because while marriage is the dividing line after which people (ideally) don’t experience intimacy with anyone other than their spouse, interest in other people doesn’t go away. At least, I don’t think it will. Any attraction I’ve felt to others has been muted for the past few years because I’m happy in my relationship. But will it be muted forever? What if boredom strikes a few years down the line? Or what if I meet someone sparky, someone who, if I was single, I would like to date? Or someone with lots of flaws – just different flaws from the ones I’m familiar with. No matter how committed I am to never crossing the line, it seems unrealistic to expect that I would never have a desire to. So in a way, being able to flip that switch would be a relief. I could relax and stop policing. On the other hand, those flickers of excitement when you have a crush on someone or even just a passing interest are one of the great joys of human experience. It seems wrong to neuter yourself.

How come pre-marital classes never cover things like this?

Not Just a Job

Today I watched a crossing-guard tweeting her whistle at a car, in increasingly strident blasts, and finally, when it became clear the car was not going to stop at the crosswalk, actually throw herself up onto its hood. The car slammed on its brakes and she rolled off the hood, cussing at the driver. She put her head close to the driver side window and screamed at him, pointing at the pedestrians. She was so mad she kept muttering and twitching even after he had driven away. It’s really noble when you think about it, to be that invested in your job – to have the safety of strangers so paramount in your mind that you apparently take any threat to them personally. All the pedestrians were just watching her in awe.

Too Late

This morning, my bus was just starting to pull away from a stop when a girl ran up alongside, calling, “Wait!” A bunch of people on the bus called out on her behalf: “Hold it!” “Wait!” but the bus driver, after a moment of hesitation, put his foot down hard on the pedal and pulled away from the stop. I felt sorry for the girl, who would never know that she had a bus-full of advocates. Such is the way of the world – it doesn’t matter how many people you have on your side if they are powerless.

The Sensational Nightingale

I'll never be as good a writer as Billy Collins. Sometimes I like to take refuge in thinking that I am young, still developing my abilities - Grandma Moses didn't start painting until she was in her seventies. I have good ideas stored up, some things that, if I can get them recorded properly, might make people try to smile and cry at the same time - the hallmark of the best writing, in my opinion. But Billy Collins does that to me with practically every poem. I can see the trajectory ahead, and I can see I'll fall short, perhaps disastrously short. I should just sigh and be grateful that there is a Billy Collins out there, producing all of the poems I wish I could.

Indecent Exposure

I just took my clothes off for a total stranger, and let him look at me and touch me all over. And I even paid him to do it.

This blatant exhibitionism was triggered by a friend's cancer scare - she was urging everyone she knew to get screened at a dermatologist. So I made an appointment, not really thinking about what screening would entail. I got a better sense of what was coming when the nurse asked me to disrobe and put on one of those paper gowns. Then the doctor came in. He was young and handsome, which ironically helped - made me feel less like what was happening was perverted. He asked me to take my robe off and I stood there stark naked in front of a full-length mirror, while he looked me over. We had a brief conversation about some freckles on my ass, with him staring at them from a distance of about a foot and me looking at them in the mirror. He was kind enough not to mention the hearts with arrows through them which my fiance had drawn all over my hip, and which I had forgotten to wash off. Then he removed a mole on my back that I've had since childhood. It was very quick - I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye.

Afterwards, when I was dressing, I was sort of stunned by my lack of embarrassment. I felt like the encounter should have shaken me up a little more than it did. Either his superb professionalism put me at ease, or I really am a shameless exhibitionist, or I am finally getting to the point where I'm just not embarrassed about any part of my body. It's about time.

A Lovely Film

Once in a while I get a flash of just pure happiness. The other night, I almost didn't get into the film screening - I found out about it half an hour before it was going to start, and it was being shown at a location nearly two miles away from my apartment (hence, the racing). When I got there, I hadn't RSVPd and the screening was booked up. I hung around in the entryway, trying to look pitiful and stand kind of in the way so that the organizers would want to let me in, to get rid of me. Finally they nodded and said I could go in, just as the film was starting. Yessss.

The film was wonderful. It was about a year in the life of a tiny farm in the Netherlands, that a couple in their 70s still work all by themselves. Long, paced shots of the old man doing patient work: milking cows, melting the ice in their trough with hot water from a kettle, carrying hay bales, sowing by hand, tasting the grain kernels to see if the grain was ripe for harvesting. Everything he did, he did with the skill of a lifetime of experience, but also with obvious effort - a lot of it was really heavy work, especially for a man his age. Meanwhile, his wife did the cooking and laundry (by hand), and pored through farm catalogs at their tiny kitchen table. I could tell how the kitchen would smell, how everything in the house would have that musty, old-person, comfortable smell. Their nostalgic commentary on the problems of overproduction, subsidies, the mechanization of agriculture, and social change was fascinating to me. I also loved seeing how they did things - watching her pluck and prepare a chicken, watching him pitch hay to make a haystack. I've never seen anyone do these things before, and I feel like they're something of a dying art. Overlaid on these themes was the pathos of the fact that no one would inherit their farm, their son having chosen not to become a farmer - so they were farming it, in her words, "for no one," just working every day until the inevitable time when one of them would suffer an accident or ill health. Although it was obviously a hard life, they both said they wouldn't have chosen any other. And the farm itself was beautiful - long landscapes with straight rows of trees marking the field divisions, flooded with pure, clean light like in Vermeer paintings. I came out of the film glowing.

As if that wasn't enough, afterwards they served us wine and there were trays piled with cheese and green grapes. I stood there sipping my wine feeling just really happy and grateful that I got that experience.

Racing

I've been racing a lot lately. Last week I was meeting my friend for lunch at noon, but I was stuck in a meeting and couldn't leave when I was planning to. So I ended up running a mile and a half to the restaurant - weaving in and out of pedestrians, catching my breath on street corners when the light was against me. I arrived right at noon. I was happy that I got there on time, kind of proud I guess, but seeing her there - composed and perfectly calm, having arrived early and without rushing - made me wish I could be more like her. Why do I always have to rush all the time? Why, over the weekend, did we have to rush to return the rental car, rush to get to church on time, rush to the cake-tasting, rush to meet our friends? Why did I have to run two miles yesterday to get to a film screening? Why am I going to have to run another mile and a half today in order to get to my doctor's appointment, which I can't leave early for?

I want to blame it on my job, since I'm often required to work through lunch and don't have time for myself, or on having too many things to do, or on poor scheduling. In general I'm just starting to feel like too much is expected of me. I want to fall asleep some night without racing through the whole long checklist of things done, undone, priorities for tomorrow, etc. I want to spend a weekend doing what I want, instead of frantically trying to get as many things off the list as possible. I want to *walk* to an appointment sometime. I'm just...tired.

Opposites Are Attractive

A great and I think unappreciated category of pleasures in life is the luxury of contrasts. It's particularly relevant with temperature. For example, sitting in a hot tub on an outdoor porch when it's January and snow is falling. Your body is immersed in nearly scalding hot water, but you have icy air washing your face and shoulders. It's terrible from an environmental perspective - all that energy! - but it sure feels nice. Or sitting outside on a porch glider while it's snowing, wrapped in a comforter with a mug of hot chocolate. Being really thirsty, and drinking, at the same time, is related but not quite what I mean.

Tough Love

One of the most useful things anyone ever said to me was in college, when my roommate said, one afternoon when I was lovesick and miserable, "Well, for starters, you could stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself." Nothing like a bucket of ice water in the face to wake you up. She'd never spoken to me like that before, and never has since. It really did help.

Sharing the News

I finally told people at work that I'm getting married. I don't know why I've been weird about telling people. From the start, I had a hard time sharing the news, because it seemed too much like boasting. I always used to hate it when I was single and girls went around talking nonstop about their boyfriends. Once, a girl I knew who was married chipped into a conversation about bad dates with, "I'm soo glad I'm married and I don't have to go on dates any more!" The rest of us just felt like crap when we heard that. Like we didn't want to be married, too - or weren't trying our hardest to meet someone so we could stop going on bad dates.

Anyway, I'm sensitive enough to it that it still rubs me the wrong way when I hear people going seemingly out of their way to mention their relationships, and it's still hard for me to say the words "my boyfriend" or "my fiance."

I also had the sense that people at work wouldn't be particularly happy for me, because most of them aren't in relationships. Maybe that was unfair of me to assume that. Anyway, I finally had to say something because I need to ask for time off for the honeymoon. They were very happy and excited for me, and even told me I should feel more free to celebrate these things.

I'll probably be just as weird about it when/if I get pregnant - put off saying anything until I look like I have a beach ball under my shirt.

In the Tradition of Good, Fast, Cheap

Clean, fed, rested: Why is it that I can never manage to be more than two of these at any given time?

Disdain at the Doctor's

I was in the waiting room at the doctor's office when I saw, encapsulated in the space of three seconds, a marriage I wouldn't want. A woman in her seventies was shuffling out from having seen the doctor, to the window where you have to pay for your visit. As soon as she was within sight of her husband, who was waiting in the lobby, she barked, "Getcher coat on." Then she turned her attention to the secretary.

He quietly put his coat on and shuffled over to join her, and together they fussed and mused over the new phone number for the office that was posted on the window, trying to figure out whether it was the same one they had written down. (It was, but they went back and forth for several minutes confirming it, in the slow, muddled way of old people.)

They've probably been married for fifty years, twice as long as I've been alive, so it's not my place to say anything about their relationship. But I hope my marriage never degenerates to that level of disdain. It just made me sad.

Why I Am Not A Sommelier

Wine is confusing to me for several reasons. I love reading the descriptions of different wines: "rich apricot overtones", "hints of melon and cantaloupe", "smoky oak", "jasmine and vanilla notes", "creamy follow-through", "approachable tannins," etc. I can never taste any of those things when I drink wine though. To me it's tart, somewhere along a sweet/bitter continuum, with an alcoholic bite. Where is the cream? or the vanilla? The other thing is that it never tastes the way the color looks. I keep buying pink wine, thinking it will taste like peaches and nectar, or red wine, thinking it will be like pomegranate, but it never is. Clearly, I'm going to need more civilizing than Beethoven alone can accomplish.

People-Watching

The weather's too nice for me to feel sad for long. I ate lunch outside in the park today and saw, within a short period of time, the following interesting people:

- A woman wearing a weird knee-length skirt/pants thing - like capri pants, but wide; like a skirt, but split into trousers. A hard look to pull off. She had paired it with knee-high leather boots.
- A pair of businessmen walking slowly together, both in blue shirts and black pants, looking like confident alpha males as they patrolled their domain.
- A girl confiding to her friend, "She got a big-ass stomach."
- A woman wearing a professional-looking suit and sporting a severe mullet: short, curly gray hair all over her head, then about two-thirds of the way down, long straight gray hair cascading down her back. Yikes.
- Two harassed-looking teachers trying to get a bunch of six-year-olds to play kickball. At one point, one of the teachers was getting them to raise their hands in the order that they were going to kick, and clearly forgot one of the kids' names: "So Ashley's next, who's after Ashley? Blake, okay, who's after Blake? Umm... you, who's after you?"
- A couple of lovers walking hand-in-hand, not talking, just looking at each other and smiling.

Depressed Like a Mouse

Today I'm feeling beaten down. It has to do with having a job that isn't up to my intellectual ability, and being the lowest-ranking person in my department. While most days I like my job, occasionally I get these flashes of fear - like where is my career going? is it going to stall out at the administrative level, when I am capable of doing so much more? and - how will I ever progress, if I am repeatedly given these low-ranking assignments that don't allow me to develop any experience to prove that I can handle more?

In studies where mice were repeatedly confined with more dominant and aggressive individuals, they became withdrawn and exhibited symptoms of depression. They actually experienced permanent changes in brain chemistry reflecting greater susceptibility to depression, fear, and other emotions related to low social rank. I am afraid this is happening to me. All through school, I was one of the brightest and best, and I still have that intelligence and drive and creative power and passion. It's just not getting any outlet, and instead I am repeatedly handed menial tasks, and getting disciplined about my place in the hierarchy every time I try to take initiative. My self-esteem is flagging, and I'm worried that over time all that promise that I had is just going to dry up.

I Will Be Cultured!

I spent two days walking around with a theme from a piece of classical music in my head. Yesterday I finally called my dad to find out if he knew what it was. All I had to do was hum a couple of bars, and he said, "Beethoven, 7th Symphony, Allegretto." I was so impressed. I want to be able to do that. I'm on a classical music kick now, got out all my old CDs (and bought Beethoven's 7th) and am going to listen to them over and over (lying on the floor with headphones on, conducting at the ceiling), until I really know them by heart.

I also need to learn some foreign languages, take a dance class, read about art history, etc. There are such huge gaps in my cultural competence. What was I learning, all those years in school?

Side note: I like both Beethoven, and beets, very much. Coincidence??

Hot Air on a Cold Day

I went to lunch with a blow-hard. I'm not sure if I made that term up, or if it's in common use - anyway, I mean a person who dominates the whole conversation. Blow-hards always seem to have an agenda for what they want to talk about, and (sometimes very entertaining, but ultimately scripted) rants about specific issues. The challenge for me is trying to insert enough of my perspective in during a rant that it might actually get incorporated into the script and I'll recognize it next time it comes around - "Ooh! That's mine! that bit right there.."

Another friend of mine was there and she knows what he's like, so she was taking him in stride, but I felt sorry for her husband, who seemed a bit overwhelmed. He didn't get a chance to say anything the entire meal.

I know this is the nth rant about people who talk too much. I'll try to cut back on talking so much about people who talk. It just really irritates me. It's clear to me that I don't have any telepathic powers, because if I did, they would surely be getting my mind-blasts: "Stop. Stop talking. Let me go. I want to leave." etc.

A Paradox

It's funny that sometimes you get angry about a situation only after the fact. You'd think the anger would come first, then the desire to get out, then the getting out. Instead, there have been a couple of situations in my life where it didn't kick in until months later. I wondered at first if it was 'false' anger - figured if I had a genuine reason to feel aggrieved, I would have felt that way earlier. But now I think there is a kind of self-preservation instinct that blocks aggression when you're in the thick of things. Acting upset then just draws fire from the aggressors. It's only later, when you're extricated, that you have the emotional distance to react, in safety.

A Bunion is Small Fry

A lot of people I know are suddenly dealing with scary illnesses. One of my friends has ulcerative colitis, and another was recently hospitalized with an antibiotic-resistant staph infection. A friend who is only my age was just diagnosed with melanoma (which has a 30% survival rate, but hopefully she caught it in time). My other friend's boss was diagnosed in January with uterine cancer, given six months to live, and died last weekend, and I heard today that the security guard who always used to talk to me has a pretty far advanced form of some kind of cancer. It's sad and unsettling to hear.

Speaking Up

So much of life is about making choices between doing what you need to do to make things better, and keeping other people happy and treating you nicely. This has relevance to the entry from a couple days ago, too, I think - re speaking up about cruelty. Actually it's relevant to any activism and, broadly speaking, any social situation. Why is it that doing the right thing is so seldom met with social rewards?

The Top Ten List

I read a lot about childbirth. Not because I'm excited about having kids, like my friend Rachel, or planning to do so imminently. Mostly because I'm scared to death of it, and for me, having more information about something tends to make me feel better equipped to cope with it. I keep hoping to read a childbirth story that says, "It's not that bad." Instead, I just seem to be accumulating tales of excruciating pain and terrifying complications. I'm sure it will all be worth it in the end, that the pain will be fleeting compared to the excitement and enormity of raising a child, yada yada yada. But I still have so many questions about the experience, that nothing I've read has answered. Such as:

10. Why does it hurt? Flexing other muscles in the body doesn't hurt.
9. Why does it take so long? I don't understand why the cervix can't just open in the space of a few minutes, like opening your mouth - what is going on that makes it take hours or even days?
8. Where does all the blood come from? Is the uterus bleeding from the force of the contractions? Unless there is a wound, nobody should be bleeding, right?
7. Is a contraction the whole uterus squeezing to push the baby out? or is it the muscles around the cervix flattening out?
6. What is the physiological basis for the common feeling during transition of wanting to give up?
5. Does it still hurt during transition, after the cervix is open?
4. Why are doctors so mean to women who want a natural birth? So many stories I've read are about doctors screaming at women, doing unrequested procedures on them, ignoring their requests, etc. It's almost like they resent a woman who is educated about the birth process and wants to do the best thing for herself and her child.
3. Why do some fetuses develop heads that are bigger than their mothers' pelvic openings (before the advent of C-sections, they would have automatically died, and their mothers too)?
2. Why do some women have life-threatening problems with blood pressure? Why do their bodies respond to pregnancy in such a dangerous way?
and my top question that nothing has answered:
1. Will I be able to do it?

The Words You Can't Say

Last night I said goodbye to my brother, who's moving to England, at least for the time being. If he likes it and finds a job he enjoys, he might be there for years. As we hugged goodbye, we both wanted to say, "I love you." But you can't say that to someone who's going on a long trip, because in that context it doesn't just mean "I love you", it conveys all your fear that there will be a tragedy and the person will never come home and you want them to know, in case it's the last time you see them, that you love them. Those things are too scary to think about. You have to just say it with your eyes, and know that they know.

Empathology

I went to an interesting talk yesterday about empathy - its importance in a world that is growing more interconnected, why people feel it sometimes and not other times, the need to overcome "us/them" distinctions in order to feel empathy for people we don't know, etc. The speaker suggested that empathy is something we not only want, but need - we spend a significant part of our lives looking for a partner we can count on to empathize with us, and often the simple experience of receiving empathy from someone is enough to heal emotional wounds.

It reminded me of the Prisoner's Dilemma in game theory - when facing a competitor for resources, you each have a choice to play nice or cheat. If you both play nice, you both benefit. If you both cheat, you both lose. But if you cheat and they play nice, you get a huge benefit, and if you play nice and they cheat, you take a huge loss. Lots of applications for ecology and for human behavior. For a game with repeated play, the best strategy is to start off playing nice, and then after your first turn just copy everything your opponent does. If the game is long-term enough and if you are consistent in rewarding nice play and punishing cheating, your opponent will eventually play nice all the time. It's harder with a short-term game though (a competitor you will only interact with a few times).

Anyway, the connection with empathy is that when you offer empathy to someone who does not intend to empathize back, someone who doesn't share your philosophy or is just mean or is, say, funded by the pharmaceutical industry, it really stings when they don't return the favor. It feels like the worst outcome in the Prisoner's Dilemma. And the playing field is often unequal - if they have economic or political power and you don't, you don't have the option to punish them in your next turn.

I think one way to overcome that is to not expect empathy back. We get so outraged when we bend over backwards to be nice to people and they ignore us or take advantage. When you're up against someone who you know is not going to return the favor, you just have to school yourself not to expect anything back - to look at the encounter as an information-gathering exercise, or building credibility for the future, or just life experience on the path to enlightenment.

A Vision

Riding home on the bus yesterday, I heard a woman sitting behind me say to her friend, "Oh, look at the cathedral. It looks like Monet's Rouen." It was bathed in pink light from the sunset, every carved detail of the stonework on the towers standing out clear. I wish I was intellectual enough that my friends and I would say things like that to one another.

Cruelty

There is some sneaky, terrible, but undeniable aspect of the human psyche that gets a little kick of pleasure out of watching someone else be frustrated. I was thinking about it today in the context of cruelty to animals. To my mind there's nothing more despicable than animal cruelty; it's something that I passionately hate. Yet I have to admit that I'm not immune to feeling, on occasion, that flicker of satisfaction from watching an animal be frustrated. It can be as mild as holding my guinea pigs on their backs, where their little legs frantically churn the air as they try to flip over. Every time, I have to laugh - they're so cute. But at the same time, I feel bad. I shouldn't enjoy it, and the fact that I do disturbs me.

The other day, my friend saw some kids teasing a horse. They would hold up a handful of hay to the horse, then jerk it away as the horse reached for it. Each time they did this, the horse got more upset - stamping its feet and fussing - and each time the kids laughed harder. My friend stepped in and yelled at them. The oldest kid said, "We were just having fun." But why is it fun? Is it something about the horse's gullibility - falling for the same trick over and over? Is it funny because the horse can't predict they will jerk the hay away, so they get to feel superior? or because the horse is getting upset over such a little thing? I can't put my finger on it.

I don't think that holding a guinea pig on its back or teasing a horse with hay is actually cruel. It's obnoxious, and over time it could have consequences like making the guinea pig more skittish and less willing to be held, or making the horse into a biter, but it doesn't cause true suffering or anguish to the animal. But the sense of enjoyment that drives these mild situations is the same as the one that shows up in cases of real cruelty.

I've read stories of animal abuse from the Humane Society that literally keep me awake at night - cases where people deliberately set out to hurt or torture an animal. For most people, the distress they would feel from seeing an animal in real pain would eclipse any pleasure they'd get from the incident. But for a few, I guess the emotional wiring is off and that sneaky little kick of pleasure is magnified. I wish I could put my finger on why it brings people pleasure, so we could figure out how to short-circuit the process. What could be more important, of all the things we could teach a child, than an aversion to causing suffering?

One Writer...Nine Editors

Like an unruly child, the article I put to bed keeps popping up again. Each time I am more peremptory with it; the first few times I tolerate long rambling discourses from the various reviewers on detail and context and underlying messages, entertaining these potential changes in direction as I might smile benevolently at a small child's suggestions to be allowed to stay up late, sleep in my room, etc. But over time, I allow the course of the story to deviate less and less. I make smaller adjustments, spend less time composing tactful replies to my editors (who, after all, are responsible for the story's refusal to go to bed; they are the loud siblings who are playing some game thundering up and down the stairs, giving the toddler ideas). My vision for the story hardens. As it peeks nervously out of its bedroom for the umpteenth time, I bellow, "Into your bed! Now!" and it vanishes. I hear its feet scurrying back across the floor, then moments later a squeak of bedsprings and rustle of covers. All is peaceful at last.

Water

I was washing the dishes yesterday, thinking that running water is really a nice thing to have. It's amazing when you think about it, how you can be in an apartment ten stories up and turn on the faucet and water comes out - no delay, no sputtering, just a nice steady stream of water that is clean and safe to drink. In some areas of the world, women spend half their day walking back and forth between their homes and the nearest waterhole (which can be an hour away) to fetch water for their families. For them, being able to turn on the tap and get water - as much of it as you want - would seem like a miracle.

If I had to fetch all my own water, on foot, I don't think I could do it. Especially in the heat. I'd probably use up all the water I was bringing back, just drinking it.

Fire

Great excitement last night - we had a fire in our apartment building!

The alarm jolted us awake at about 3:30 am. I knew it was a real fire right away because I could smell the smoke. I had a moment of panic - what do we do? - and then fell back on my years of conditioning from fire drills in elementary school - oh yeah, get out of the building! and line up on the playground outside! I grabbed some sneakers and a coat, and caught the surprised guinea pigs and put them in their traveling case. Their reaction to the whole thing varied between confusion and disbelief. They wrinkled their noses at me: "You have to be joking!"

When we stepped into the hallway, the smoke was stronger - kind of a thick, yellow smell like burned toast or overheated dryer, but much more concentrated. It was worse in the stairwell. Luckily we were only on the fourth floor. We got down to the lobby and spilled outside with the rest of the population. I was hoping some people would be wearing interesting pajamas, but everyone was pretty much in sweat pants and jackets. A couple women had big fluffy pink slippers. The quintessential gentleman who lives on the second floor and never goes anywhere except in a three-piece suit with a carnation in his lapel, was wearing - a three-piece suit. He probably doesn't own any other kind of clothing.

After a few minutes the police arrived, and ten minutes after the alarm first sounded, the fire trucks pulled up. It was very exciting to see those big flashing trucks parked right next to us on the sidewalk, and the firemen unrolling hoses into our building. We heard a police woman calling out the apartment number to the firemen as they went in - it was on the second floor. I walked around to try to see it, but nothing was apparent from the outside. Shortly thereafter they let everyone who didn't live on the second floor go back indoors. We opened all the windows to get the smoke out, and went back to sleep.

This morning, because I was curious, I called the resident manager to find out how the fire got started. She said that a woman was cooking a midnight snack and left the stove on by accident, then went to bed. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

So that's the story of the Great Fire!

God's Dogs

I read an article today about urban coyotes. Apparently they're living in lots of cities in the U.S., even thriving. Urban coyotes need less land to survive (only about a sixth of the land area that rural ones need) and they live longer. A coyote in urban Chicago has a 60% chance of surviving for one year, compared to a 30% chance for a rural coyote. Imagine if your chance of living until next year was only 60% - and if that was considered good!

When Hope Ryden studied coyotes in Yellowstone, they were so fearful of humans that she couldn't risk being seen by them - they would have abandoned their den. Any disturbance in their environment freaked them out. She parked a truck on the next hill over from their den, shuttered all the windows, and spent six weeks lying in darkness inside the truck watching them through a tiny telescope. She had to pee in jars and couldn't heat any of her food or even move around much, for fear that they would hear her. They still got upset enough that they moved the pups to a new den, but she was able to follow them and they tolerated the truck's presence long enough for her to complete her observations. It's hard to believe that these shy, skittish creatures could be the same species as urban coyotes that coexist with traffic, noise, and a constantly changing environment.

Olympians

I've finally reached an age where nearly all the athletes in the Olympics are younger than me, which seems incredible to me. I guess I have the rest of my life to get used to it. I guess for most people, watching the Olympics is a week of being astonished by the feats of youngsters. It's weird to be on the other side of it, though, looking back. I always felt in the back of my mind that it was natural for them to be stronger and faster and more amazing than me, because they were older (never mind that you have to start training around the time you're born, so by the time I was in elementary school I was probably already out of the running).

I still don't think I'll ever lose my wonder at what they're capable of. In fact, knowing how young they are might even enhance it for me - remembering where I was at age 19, or 22, and comparing it with where they are.

I really felt for a couple of the skaters last night who muffed their jumps. They looked so crushed afterwards, getting their marks. I don't think I'd want all the pressure and risk that comes with being a skater...but I wish I had speed-skater legs.

A Novel Point of View?

I read a couple things recently that hit home: In The Mind-Body Problem, Rebecca Goldstein refers kind of sarcastically to "one's first novel (you know, the autobiographical one?)". In Beverly Cleary's My Own Two Feet, she remarks on the triteness of writing about a young woman's coming of age.

Darn. But that's really what I want to write about. And not in a self-absorbed way, like my life and my growing-up story are so fascinating everyone should want to read about them. More because even if it's an age-old story, no one has ever told it the way I plan to. And besides, college was one of the richest and most interesting periods of my life so far. I have the sense that even if I tried to write about something else, it would devolve into a college story - one of the characters would start hanging out at a local campus, or something.

But still. It's a little eerie that these two women, whose writing I admire so much, are already "on" to me.

Having Your Cake, and Weeping Too

Even when you have everything, it's still possible to feel depressed. I don't know why. These bleak, hollow-you-out-from-the-inside moments just come out of nowhere. Any way you look at it, I have a good life - I've had every advantage growing up, and all my ducks are pretty much in a row now. I'm looking forward to marrying a wonderful man. Everything is good. Yet, while I am nearly always conscious of these things and grateful for them, I still manage to feel swamped by a wave of sadness from time to time, for no apparent reason. Then I feel guilty for feeling sad, when I have so much. It's ridiculous.

Inevitable Imperfection

Yoga is so hard. I always get inspired to try to "do it perfectly" and for the first five minutes of my yoga DVD, I succeed - I am breathing perfectly, standing with my toes spread perfectly, my wrists aligned. Today is going to be a wonderful practice. Then the yoga teacher stands on one foot and holds onto the toe of the other and stretches the whole leg up straight pointing to the ceiling, and that's it for me. From that point on, I'm just imitating her the best I can. My hamstrings are so tight that my legs stay bent, while hers stretch out long and straight. Plank pose and boat pose are the hardest, my muscles tremble the whole time. But she talks right through it like she's comfortable. She is amazing!

Therapy Conversations

One job I wouldn't want is that of therapist. It's so much work trying to pull people up, when they're intent on dragging themselves down. I know what it's like from the other side, of course; I've spent lots of energy trying to 'prove' how miserable everything was, while patient friends argued with me. It feels weirdly satisfying, like biting a hangnail - hurts, but in a tingly way you want to explore, not in a way that makes you want to stop. Anyway, things are better now and I'm more often on the pulling-up side of the equation.

Talking to my dad today, I just kept wanting to say, "Don't look at it that way. Assume they will like you, and if they don't, so what? To hell with what they think!" etc. Actually most of my therapy-advice boils down to "Why do you care what other people think?" which is such a great mantra for life (yea Feynman). I mean, really. We're all so self-conscious and neurotic all the time. We would all be a lot happier if other people's opinions didn't matter so much to us. But I know that just deciding not to care isn't an option when you're in the situation (and this applies to me too). I guess a good therapist knows what to say so that people will find their own way to being capable of not caring. From where I am, it's like someone is asking for help getting over a brick wall, and I can't see a wall so I just keep saying unhelpfully, "Pretend there is no wall!"

Inevitable Perfection

The essence of being good at something - anything - is to make it look like it couldn't be any other way. Like having skin so good it looks like it can't break out. A girl in my dorm had skin like that, smooth and golden-tan and somehow thicker-looking than other people's. We all envied her because even when our skin was technically clear, it still looked likely to break out at any moment. Or ice-skating with such strength and skill that it's like the jumps are pulling you up and whirling you around, and the edge of your skate is drawn back to the ice like a magnet - like there couldn't be any other way for you to land. There's a world of difference between a skater like that and a skater who lands the jumps but it looks like work, and you're all clenched up watching them afraid that they will fall.

I have mastered this only as far as traffic lights. When you're waiting at a light, instead of willing the light to turn green and being frustrated that it's still red, you should imagine the light on the cross-street being inexorably drawn to turning yellow, like it just can't help it. The difference is pulling in your imagination, instead of pushing, and seeing the change not so much what you want, as inevitable. Thinking of it this way makes the time pass faster than if you're trying to force it to happen. I have not yet been able to transfer this trick to skin or skating.

Year of the Dog

Yesterday I went to the Chinese New Year parade downtown - dragon dancers, red banners, drums, and lots of people throwing poppers in the street. The crowds lining the street were five and six people deep, and the windows of restaurants and shops overlooking the parade route were packed with people watching. After the parade, everyone spilled into the street and milled around while they set up a giant six-story string of firecrackers suspended from a crane.

As we were waiting for them to light the firecracker, we suddenly heard some commotion behind us. I turned around and a man was saying "My son! Where's my son?!" He was staring around frantically. A few people asked, "What does your son look like?" but the man was so distraught he seemed incapable of answering. He cried out, "He was right here, right here beside me!" I glanced around but there were no little kids in sight, just a forest of grown-ups. Someone asked, "What color coat was he wearing?" "I don't know!" the father said. "He was right here! Oh my God, my son!!" He started dashing back and forth, wild-eyed. His face looked like a caricature, his mouth wide open like he wanted to bawl. His terror communicated itself to me so completely that I started feeling sick. I could see that his mind was already leaping ahead to encompass the magnitude of the tragedy - his son was lost; someone had taken him; he was one of the thousands of kids that go missing every year; the rest of this man's life would be looking back in regret and horror at these few minutes that were transpiring before us right now, this critical time.

Someone grabbed the father and said, "What's your son's name?" "Sammy!" the man replied. "SAMMY!" he suddenly bellowed. He plunged back and forth, yelling, "SAMMY!" A few other people called "Sammy" halfheartedly, but most turned their attention back to the firecracker preparations. "Think: what color coat was he wearing?" someone asked again. Next to me, my mother murmured, "No. What kind of shoes is he wearing. Whoever takes him will take that coat off first thing." Her comment made me feel sicker - the father and I weren't the only ones thinking, not just lost, but taken. "Blue!" the father burst out finally. "It was blue!" A few people nearby scanned around looking for blue.

Just then the firemen arrived, and the dragon dancers started beating their drums. The crowd gave a cheer of pleasure. Their happiness formed a counterpart to the father's desperation - just like all those classic movie scenes that blend a giddy amusement park atmosphere with sinister and terrible things. His cries of "Sammy!" were harder to hear over the drums and cheering. He tried to push through the crowd, but people were surging closer to the firecracker and wouldn't let him through.

Finally, just before they lit the firecracker, he found Sammy. We saw him hurrying past holding his son, a little boy who looked about four years old, in his arms. His face was still crumpled with grief, but the crowd clapped when they saw him. I swallowed the tears that were piled up in my throat. Sometimes, I'm afraid to have kids.

Beware of the Stare

Today I was reading about the thousand-mile stare. Apparently if you're in a bar fight, you should watch out if the other guy gets this look on his face, because he's about to punch you. "The thousand-mile stare" is what cops call it. I tried doing it, staring unfocused into space and imagining I was looking at some guy, and it was amazing how it worked. I could feel the rage simmering to a head; it was like I was so angry I couldn't even look at him straight, just through him at where I was going to sink my fist. I think it's a real physiological phenomenon that allows people in a confrontation to dissociate themselves from the personal reality of their opponent, so they can overcome the social taboo of touching another person in order to - beat the crap out of him.

Labyrinthine

Last night I walked the labyrinth at the cathedral. It's painted on a canvas cloth that they unroll once a month for Labyrinth Night - the cathedral stays open late and they play dulcimer music while people shuffle around the paths in their socks. I used to be really interested in labyrinths, I visited cornfield and stone labyrinths, and once helped paint one. This is the first time I've walked the one at the cathedral though.

The good thing about it is the feeling of peace that radiates from everyone - they're all in a New Agey frame of mind, and if you make eye contact with someone they give you a warm, accepting smile. The bad thing is that you can feel like you are supposed to have deep thoughts, and it's frustrating if you don't.

Here are some thoughts I had while I was walking:
- Mine were the worst socks in the room. Most people had nice, thick wool socks. My socks were dingy white and had holes in the toes that I mended with brown thread. I should just throw them out, but they're still wearable so I'd feel guilty.
- If the journey through the labyrinth is supposed to represent your life, and the way you walk it reflects who you are, then two things about me are that I am fast and non-confrontational. I walked as slowly as I could, but it was still about twice as fast as everyone else. I couldn't help it. I also couldn't stand being behind someone. I had to get around all those slow-shufflers and have a clear path ahead. And every time I came to a point where someone else was walking toward me on the same path, I was the one who dodged to the side. I think fast and non-confrontational are very much the way I am in the rest of my life. It's worked so far, but what will happen as I get older, and I can't simply speed away?
- Men don't hug each other very much. I saw lots of women hugging, but only one hug between men, and they looked like very old friends. Why is that? Do men not enjoy hugging as much? Maybe they don't get the same rush of endorphins from it? It always seemed kind of unfair to me that kids run to their mothers for a hug and don't seek out their dads the same way - the dads are usually hovering awkwardly in the background, as though waiting to be included. Do they wish their kids would hug them? or are they frankly embarrassed by the whole thing?
- It's easy to feel pure and clean and spiritually at peace when everything in your life is pretty much okay. What's hard is remembering that feeling and calling it up in times of crisis.
- In the same vein, I thought as I walked around how affectionate I felt toward the people in my life, how if anyone I knew was there, I would be glad to see them, and would readily forgive whatever there was to forgive between us. Today, that spell has worn off and I feel as aggrieved as ever toward certain individuals.
- So much of life is beyond our control. The ability to enter a "state of denial", as a mother told me recently, about the constant danger to loved ones, is vital - or you could never bear to let them out of your sight. I used to wish I could gather together everyone I loved and have us all live together in a kind of dormitory - just so I'd know they were all safe. But even then I wouldn't be able to protect everyone. You just have to hope, and take the precautions you can, and try not to think about a lot of things. It almost makes me feel like I shouldn't have kids, because it will only mean more people to worry about and potential for devastation if anything happens to them.

And that's it for my labyrinth thoughts.