So I haven't actually "spilled my guts" in this thing in awhile. It really is, and always has been, my online diary, though I did go through a phase when I wanted to gain wider readership for it. Far as I'm concerned now, that's not what a blog is for. It's where I stash that portion of my poetry and song lyrics which are not too private to keep hidden away in my notebooks at home, but a little too edgy, let's say, to post on Facebook.
Forget which movie this quote comes from, but I hear in my mind some British fellow saying "it's been a topsy fuckin weird year." That about sums it up. I still kinda have no idea where I am right now. Scratch that. I know exactly where I am--my neighborhood has become a part of my identity in a way no place ever has been before, my home in the sense that I've chosen to feel it so in addition to the fact that I reside here. But as for who I am and what I'm going to do with my life, that's still up in the air. Settling slowly like leaves in a light breeze.
Note to self: "settle groundward, slow" would be a great phrase to use in a poem.
A great sign of increased mental stability, though, is that I'm getting back both the urge and the ability to write. Not quite up to my four thousand word a day habit from former days. But Mom actually gave me a great metaphor for this yesterday. I was telling her how I'd been worried because lacking the fear motive which used to drive me towards writing, as a form of release from the internal pressure, had left me sort of adrift, hard pressed to find other sources of motivation. And she said, "If you've been driving a car 90 miles an hour in reverse and you want to go forward, first you have to come to a full and complete stop. Then you can start going forward--but at first you go slowly."
We also spoke about our family and the past in a general way. And I got to say something to her that I'd been meaning to say for awhile. Forgiveness means it's over. There were a lot of dark and scary times in our lives, but whatever happens in the future, the past will never return. Even if only because we're all different people now, tempered and matured through experience, and the things which were once unthinkably scary because there was no frame of reference for them will never be new again, never again be totally unexpected.
For a good thing to be familiar makes the joy in it deeper, richer and ever new again. For a bad thing to be familiar actually weakens its power. Even if you confront a terrible event from which there is no escape, if it's something known, something you understand, there's a place inside from which you can laugh at it. Not, of course, because it's any less terrible. Rather that even the terror of it can't eradicate you, can't take you away from yourself.
This, I think, is why I've always gone running towards the things that frighten me. To know, to have made the acquaintance, of anything in life, is to understand yourself in relation to it. And with this understanding comes the experiential boundary between self and threat source, the knowledge of just what it can and cannot take from you. Ultimately everything can be taken except the naked spark. Consciousness, soul, will--names sort of collapse into it--that part of ourselves with which we choose. But the sense in which, as I see it, we are made in God's image, is that a whole self can be built from that spark, just as in Genesis the whole universe is spawned from a single fiat, let there be. And there is is. And here I am.
Even now I have a problem with this, have trouble believing sometimes that I'm really here. I keep seeking out ways to strip myself down to it, as if to reassure myself that it's still there. Which can be as disturbing to anyone who's close to me as it is destructive to myself.
Showing posts with label ramblings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ramblings. Show all posts
want. not wish, not lack. want.
For a few minutes there I regarded this feeling with suspicion. Crazy, rising up from the depths of my mind to drag my attention away from real life and down unpleasant bunny trails, has felt similar. I'm writing from a place which combines powerful emotion with a great tightness of the intellect, mind like a long-tensed muscle. So please excuse the flowery, rather than correct, grammar et cetera.
This feels like impatience, anger, resolve. Angry, not crazy. I want whatever happens next to happen now, now, now now!
I want to mosh.
I want to get respectably educated about a loud angry band and go mosh.
I want to see Local H again.
Oh, this wanting, it is dangerous stuff.
Sometimes my brain calls up the memory of gun oil and for a moment, I smell it. It is a comfort; reminds me of Dad.
I want to start an organization, a congregation. I want disciples awesome enough to supplant me and leave me in place behind the scenes in an advisory role. Disciples only in the sense of people who are trying to figure out the same sorts of things I am trying to figure out. They may or may not start out by listening to me. At some point, though, I want them to have enough of their own opinions, informed by experiment and thought, that we can generate a common terminology and have debates about things which are otherwise almost impossible to speak of.
It is as if, by giving myself leave to actively desire, I have opened a skylight on a room full of long-dormant lush leafy vined things that, of a sudden, all began to sprout and grow. Violently. Which desires to prune back, and which to let climb, bud, flower. I wonder. Which flowers would bear nourishing fruits.
Reminds me of a dream I had recently. Of which I won't say anything except that it reminded me strongly of a Miller and Lee quote, a commonplace in the Liaden Universe: Can you nurture the children of your actions?
Another dream, last night, ended with me looking at myself in a mirror. Always a good thing, mental-health-wise, when you dream your face in a mirror and it is your own face.
I want a place I can go to play my music where people recognize me, expect me, know me by name, are familiar with my catalog, give me sass when I'm off my A game. I know, now, how to earn such a role. If the place were of the right character and the scene spacious enough or nascent enough for me to be that person there without supplanting someone else, which I would dislike.
I want people to walk away from me and say to each other, "you mean she's like this all the time?!" In a good way, though.
Life cycles through seasons, or rather, we in our dance with life throw ourselves into different things with different amounts and aspects of ourselves. It seems to me these changes are guided by what we are becoming, and how we go about it. I've gone through a long season of not writing out my changes as I go, not attempting to draw out a map behind me in words as I travel through time. I have been acting, doing, and when I've stepped back analyze I have kept it to myself. I want this season to end. And that will require a time of a different shape.
The burden and danger of desire is that what we desire, we do. What we do, we become. What we become, we stamp on the world around us, in the imprint of our presence on the people with whom we interact and the tasks we perform.
There are two ways in which you can believe you are unworthy to desire, and so shut off that place within yourself. You can believe, as I did for a time, that desire itself is a power you are inherently unfit to wield. That everything which grows from you must wither or spring up poisonous and thorned. Or you can believe, as I did for a time, that desire is too great a danger and a responsibility. That by taking it up you place in your hands a terrible weapon, which you dare not wield for fear of doing some great harm.
I do not think so much of myself, now, that I feel my mere desires to be a danger.
Fear--that formless, irrational terror that drives self away from self and out of reality--does not drive me anymore. Nor the smaller, more reasoned caution that served in its place, the extreme vigilance that kept fear itself in the background while I altered those parts of myself which generated it. Now it is not only acceptable to me to desire; it is necessary. Otherwise I would not have had the courage to attempt so risky a transformation!
I want to find out exactly how dangerous I am. The power that may be used to destroy may also be used to create, and a thing well-created serves and enriches far more than it consumes. I want to make things, and not only things which may be called art, works of the mind that each person must encounter in the quiet of his or her own awareness.
I want to turn locations into places. As in, "if you're looking for X, that is the place." I want to turn processes, interactions, people participating in groupthinks, into times. As in, "oh, those were the times when we were really getting X done."
I want to take some of this stuff I've learned how to do and use it.
This feels like impatience, anger, resolve. Angry, not crazy. I want whatever happens next to happen now, now, now now!
I want to mosh.
I want to get respectably educated about a loud angry band and go mosh.
I want to see Local H again.
Oh, this wanting, it is dangerous stuff.
Sometimes my brain calls up the memory of gun oil and for a moment, I smell it. It is a comfort; reminds me of Dad.
I want to start an organization, a congregation. I want disciples awesome enough to supplant me and leave me in place behind the scenes in an advisory role. Disciples only in the sense of people who are trying to figure out the same sorts of things I am trying to figure out. They may or may not start out by listening to me. At some point, though, I want them to have enough of their own opinions, informed by experiment and thought, that we can generate a common terminology and have debates about things which are otherwise almost impossible to speak of.
It is as if, by giving myself leave to actively desire, I have opened a skylight on a room full of long-dormant lush leafy vined things that, of a sudden, all began to sprout and grow. Violently. Which desires to prune back, and which to let climb, bud, flower. I wonder. Which flowers would bear nourishing fruits.
Reminds me of a dream I had recently. Of which I won't say anything except that it reminded me strongly of a Miller and Lee quote, a commonplace in the Liaden Universe: Can you nurture the children of your actions?
Another dream, last night, ended with me looking at myself in a mirror. Always a good thing, mental-health-wise, when you dream your face in a mirror and it is your own face.
I want a place I can go to play my music where people recognize me, expect me, know me by name, are familiar with my catalog, give me sass when I'm off my A game. I know, now, how to earn such a role. If the place were of the right character and the scene spacious enough or nascent enough for me to be that person there without supplanting someone else, which I would dislike.
I want people to walk away from me and say to each other, "you mean she's like this all the time?!" In a good way, though.
Life cycles through seasons, or rather, we in our dance with life throw ourselves into different things with different amounts and aspects of ourselves. It seems to me these changes are guided by what we are becoming, and how we go about it. I've gone through a long season of not writing out my changes as I go, not attempting to draw out a map behind me in words as I travel through time. I have been acting, doing, and when I've stepped back analyze I have kept it to myself. I want this season to end. And that will require a time of a different shape.
The burden and danger of desire is that what we desire, we do. What we do, we become. What we become, we stamp on the world around us, in the imprint of our presence on the people with whom we interact and the tasks we perform.
There are two ways in which you can believe you are unworthy to desire, and so shut off that place within yourself. You can believe, as I did for a time, that desire itself is a power you are inherently unfit to wield. That everything which grows from you must wither or spring up poisonous and thorned. Or you can believe, as I did for a time, that desire is too great a danger and a responsibility. That by taking it up you place in your hands a terrible weapon, which you dare not wield for fear of doing some great harm.
I do not think so much of myself, now, that I feel my mere desires to be a danger.
Fear--that formless, irrational terror that drives self away from self and out of reality--does not drive me anymore. Nor the smaller, more reasoned caution that served in its place, the extreme vigilance that kept fear itself in the background while I altered those parts of myself which generated it. Now it is not only acceptable to me to desire; it is necessary. Otherwise I would not have had the courage to attempt so risky a transformation!
I want to find out exactly how dangerous I am. The power that may be used to destroy may also be used to create, and a thing well-created serves and enriches far more than it consumes. I want to make things, and not only things which may be called art, works of the mind that each person must encounter in the quiet of his or her own awareness.
I want to turn locations into places. As in, "if you're looking for X, that is the place." I want to turn processes, interactions, people participating in groupthinks, into times. As in, "oh, those were the times when we were really getting X done."
I want to take some of this stuff I've learned how to do and use it.
the peace of hidden places
I have started and not finished a couple blog posts recently. There is much, so much to tell, but my internet time is ridiculously limited. And I spend it on KoL and keeping in touch with Dave, and am content. Maybe when I've successfully *left* the deli counter I can finally find a way to post things in my upcoming series "tales from the deli counter."
It's been almost six months, and I have finally reached the point where I am emotionally ready to leave.
Upstairs, behind the breakroom, there is a room where all the temperature control machinery flows. I've hung out there before, even played my guitar there once, but lately I have been sitting in there for a minute or so at the end of each shift. My heart knows it is time to begin the deep appreciation that comes before goodbye. Even though I have yet to actually find or get interviewed for another job, it's a fact that the decision to desire something makes one more effective at pursuing that thing. The magic of the decision rests in choosing the right moment.
The other day I was applying for a job online. It's a tedious process, since just about every company has their own website, and every website has a different application form into which a candidate must type his or her entire employment history. Typing it all in again brings back memories, of people I have known and buildings I have loved. Oh, granted, I love the people too. A building, though, you love in a different way.
People know they're interacting with you. They form opinions, make guesses, react to you, change their behavior based on how they perceive their relationship with you. This is a wonderful thing; from the process of getting to know people and be known by them, the whole rich symphony and dance of human life, sprung from passion and forged in necessity, emerges. It is exhausting, though. Some interactions fill you up emotionally, others wear you down. There's no predicting in advance which will be which, though you can hedge your bets a little by being bright and charming and easy to get along with. A building filled with machines, though, keeps right on being what it is, like a tree or a stone. Unlike a tree, though, it was built by humans for a purpose. And as long as people who understand that purpose expend their will and effort--even their love!--to keep it running, it will do what it is, be what it is, act out the essence of itself in every moment.
I like to sit in the machine room to listen. To feel in my bones the thrum of motors as the many strong pipes blast out cool, spread the chill that keeps food safe to eat, all through the departments of my store. I've looked at the pipes and I know some go to the deli, others to meat, some to produce, others to the frozen aisle, and I picture this river of cool branching out from that room, just as the electricity that keeps the lights on flows through different channels to keep all the lights burning. I listen to the song of the motors and it calms me, helps me think of the store as an organism in which moment-to-moment human uncertainties play a large role, a starring role, but cannot give life to the living thing that is a store all on our own.
To me a holy place is a place where things happen--specifically, things which change people's lives for the better. It's additive, cumulative, so a thousand little good things weigh in one sense, a few amazing good things weigh in another. Holy places which are unremarked, which don't attract attention, though, these I love for the peace I find in them. These are powerful metaphors for me for the parts of life, the parts of ourselves, which keep on working because they must, not because they are loudly praised. It brings me peace to love such places, to have had the opportunity to do so, even if I know that sooner or later I must leave them.
It's been almost six months, and I have finally reached the point where I am emotionally ready to leave.
Upstairs, behind the breakroom, there is a room where all the temperature control machinery flows. I've hung out there before, even played my guitar there once, but lately I have been sitting in there for a minute or so at the end of each shift. My heart knows it is time to begin the deep appreciation that comes before goodbye. Even though I have yet to actually find or get interviewed for another job, it's a fact that the decision to desire something makes one more effective at pursuing that thing. The magic of the decision rests in choosing the right moment.
The other day I was applying for a job online. It's a tedious process, since just about every company has their own website, and every website has a different application form into which a candidate must type his or her entire employment history. Typing it all in again brings back memories, of people I have known and buildings I have loved. Oh, granted, I love the people too. A building, though, you love in a different way.
People know they're interacting with you. They form opinions, make guesses, react to you, change their behavior based on how they perceive their relationship with you. This is a wonderful thing; from the process of getting to know people and be known by them, the whole rich symphony and dance of human life, sprung from passion and forged in necessity, emerges. It is exhausting, though. Some interactions fill you up emotionally, others wear you down. There's no predicting in advance which will be which, though you can hedge your bets a little by being bright and charming and easy to get along with. A building filled with machines, though, keeps right on being what it is, like a tree or a stone. Unlike a tree, though, it was built by humans for a purpose. And as long as people who understand that purpose expend their will and effort--even their love!--to keep it running, it will do what it is, be what it is, act out the essence of itself in every moment.
I like to sit in the machine room to listen. To feel in my bones the thrum of motors as the many strong pipes blast out cool, spread the chill that keeps food safe to eat, all through the departments of my store. I've looked at the pipes and I know some go to the deli, others to meat, some to produce, others to the frozen aisle, and I picture this river of cool branching out from that room, just as the electricity that keeps the lights on flows through different channels to keep all the lights burning. I listen to the song of the motors and it calms me, helps me think of the store as an organism in which moment-to-moment human uncertainties play a large role, a starring role, but cannot give life to the living thing that is a store all on our own.
To me a holy place is a place where things happen--specifically, things which change people's lives for the better. It's additive, cumulative, so a thousand little good things weigh in one sense, a few amazing good things weigh in another. Holy places which are unremarked, which don't attract attention, though, these I love for the peace I find in them. These are powerful metaphors for me for the parts of life, the parts of ourselves, which keep on working because they must, not because they are loudly praised. It brings me peace to love such places, to have had the opportunity to do so, even if I know that sooner or later I must leave them.
a bit of cta gossip
Amber, you are way, way right about the wry fondness.
Like being loyal to the office of king/queen without having to like a particular monarch, I love the CTA's spiritual and practical role in the organism that is my city without necessarily approving of the way it is run.
Starting on Sunday, the CTA enacted massive cutbacks, eliminating 9 express buses and reducing frequency of service on 119 bus and rail lines. Prompted by this, today I had a conversation with a bus driver today which underlined that. Some of his (paraphrased and condensed) opinions and observations about the CTA follow.
It would not have been necessary to reduce service so drastically if the CTA did not manage their money so poorly. Every bus garage serves approximately 20 bus lines, yet each garage also boasts about 20 managers, who pull in manager salaries without actually driving buses themselves.
(I was aghast at this, since I work at a deli with around 20 employees which is run effectvely--albeit with a great deal of stress and hard work--by one manager and two assistant managers.)
In addition to possibly excessive amounts of managers, each garge also has a complement of supervisors, who drive around in official CTA vehicles to oversee buses and ensure they are on time.
Furthermore, even though the CTA has no official connection to the utility providers of gas, electricity, and water, all of them are run by the city. This means that when a CTA employee is late on his or her utility bills, the employee's name gets written up on a board in a public place in the garage, and they are required to go and talk to their manager about the status of the utility bills for their home. If the employee does not promptly get caught up on said utility bill, they are threatened with no longer being scheduled to drive buses.
(I was outraged by this, and said that was some freaky medieval crap that had to be illegal. Why couldn't they get their union to file a class action?)
The union itself is useless, and the so-called leaders of the union are themselves Daley cronies who won't say boo to actually support the workers.
In addition, the now-deposed head of the CTA, who is responsible for the current mess, has been moved to a position of authority in the Chicago Public Schools. The replacement person isn't helping the CTA much, but the idea of someone who created the mess the driver himself had lived through in charge of kids' education was worrisome to him.
(I agreed with this. Alas, at this point I'd reached my stop.)
So there's some stuff there that I really ought to fact check. Other stuff is more difficult to check. Still, it's a sweet but of gossip that wrinkles my lobes and makes me feel more informed. Even if I'm not.
Like being loyal to the office of king/queen without having to like a particular monarch, I love the CTA's spiritual and practical role in the organism that is my city without necessarily approving of the way it is run.
Starting on Sunday, the CTA enacted massive cutbacks, eliminating 9 express buses and reducing frequency of service on 119 bus and rail lines. Prompted by this, today I had a conversation with a bus driver today which underlined that. Some of his (paraphrased and condensed) opinions and observations about the CTA follow.
It would not have been necessary to reduce service so drastically if the CTA did not manage their money so poorly. Every bus garage serves approximately 20 bus lines, yet each garage also boasts about 20 managers, who pull in manager salaries without actually driving buses themselves.
(I was aghast at this, since I work at a deli with around 20 employees which is run effectvely--albeit with a great deal of stress and hard work--by one manager and two assistant managers.)
In addition to possibly excessive amounts of managers, each garge also has a complement of supervisors, who drive around in official CTA vehicles to oversee buses and ensure they are on time.
Furthermore, even though the CTA has no official connection to the utility providers of gas, electricity, and water, all of them are run by the city. This means that when a CTA employee is late on his or her utility bills, the employee's name gets written up on a board in a public place in the garage, and they are required to go and talk to their manager about the status of the utility bills for their home. If the employee does not promptly get caught up on said utility bill, they are threatened with no longer being scheduled to drive buses.
(I was outraged by this, and said that was some freaky medieval crap that had to be illegal. Why couldn't they get their union to file a class action?)
The union itself is useless, and the so-called leaders of the union are themselves Daley cronies who won't say boo to actually support the workers.
In addition, the now-deposed head of the CTA, who is responsible for the current mess, has been moved to a position of authority in the Chicago Public Schools. The replacement person isn't helping the CTA much, but the idea of someone who created the mess the driver himself had lived through in charge of kids' education was worrisome to him.
(I agreed with this. Alas, at this point I'd reached my stop.)
So there's some stuff there that I really ought to fact check. Other stuff is more difficult to check. Still, it's a sweet but of gossip that wrinkles my lobes and makes me feel more informed. Even if I'm not.
2009 wrapup: the name of the year
Starting in January 2008, I got in the habit of giving a name to every year. It was partly inspired by the way, in the book Redwall, the abbey's chronicler gives each year a name based on a memorable event which took place during that year. Except I give the name to the year ahead of time. Kind of like doing baseball pre-season predictions, except much more vague. And as we all know from newspaper horoscopes, fortune cookies etc., the more vague a prediction is, the more likely it is to seem accurate!
2008 was the Year of Great Change. I'd been hoping for the "good" kind of great, rather than the "your father dies and your life is altered irrevocably" kind. Still, it's important to have lots of ways in which to appreciate the irony of life when life is difficult. So that counted as a plus, to me, for the "name the years" idea, which is why I decided to keep doing it.
2009 is the Year Without Disaster. At the beginning of this year I was unemployed, living with Dave in the West Loop in an apartment too rich for my unemployment checks to cover. And, having gotten all the mileage I could out of the painful irony of 2008's name, I felt a strong desire to pick a more hopeful name, even at the expense of vagueness, because the facts on the ground were pretty grim.
As it turns out, Year Without Disaster was a fairly decent name for the year I've experienced. The closest call was when Dave and I had to move out of our place. However, thanks to Mom's help getting movers, Mom, Amber, Pearl and Paula helping us pack, and the surprising fact that I found a good housemate on Craigslist on short notice, it wasn't actually a disaster - just very, very difficult.
Rather than terrible events, my Year Without Disaster was instead characterized by things that were good, but still less than ideal. Getting free state-sponsored psychiatric care--for a few months. Getting a permanent job--at a grocery store. Writing better songs--less often, and with fewer opportunities to play them. Deepening my relationship with Dave--because he had to move back to his mom's and we both have to work harder at staying close. Oh, also things that were unpleasant but could have been much, much worse, though I won't enumerate those. That would be a bummer, and is beside the point.
So to come up with a name, a theme for myself for 2010, I've got to put my thinkin' hat on, step back, and ponder the current situation. It's impossible to know exact events ahead of time, of course. (At least, not without losing all touch with the context of the present, without which that information is meaningless.) The best insight you can hope for is something like the way a master chess player has a vague, intuitive hunch how the board will look twenty or twenty-five moves from now. You can, at most, find yourself a reference framework, a set of mental filters, a way of looking at what's around you that is likely to be useful in the times ahead.
So I will name 2010 the Year of the Cheese Procedure.
Oh, that would make so much more sense if I'd made a few "tales from the deli counter" posts. Maybe I will; I've got a little time off next week, though I'll be doing a cheese procedure (a sampling--excuse me, "dynamic selling"--event) till we close at 6 on Christmas Eve. However, it's late, I'm on the morning shift tomorrow, and I promised Dave and myself I'd get good sleep tonight. So a full contextual description will have to wait.
Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, joyous Eid (okay, okay, Eid was back in September, bu I don't think Islam has a December holiday), blessed Solstice, and wonderful winter family togetherness time to all. And to all a good night.
2008 was the Year of Great Change. I'd been hoping for the "good" kind of great, rather than the "your father dies and your life is altered irrevocably" kind. Still, it's important to have lots of ways in which to appreciate the irony of life when life is difficult. So that counted as a plus, to me, for the "name the years" idea, which is why I decided to keep doing it.
2009 is the Year Without Disaster. At the beginning of this year I was unemployed, living with Dave in the West Loop in an apartment too rich for my unemployment checks to cover. And, having gotten all the mileage I could out of the painful irony of 2008's name, I felt a strong desire to pick a more hopeful name, even at the expense of vagueness, because the facts on the ground were pretty grim.
As it turns out, Year Without Disaster was a fairly decent name for the year I've experienced. The closest call was when Dave and I had to move out of our place. However, thanks to Mom's help getting movers, Mom, Amber, Pearl and Paula helping us pack, and the surprising fact that I found a good housemate on Craigslist on short notice, it wasn't actually a disaster - just very, very difficult.
Rather than terrible events, my Year Without Disaster was instead characterized by things that were good, but still less than ideal. Getting free state-sponsored psychiatric care--for a few months. Getting a permanent job--at a grocery store. Writing better songs--less often, and with fewer opportunities to play them. Deepening my relationship with Dave--because he had to move back to his mom's and we both have to work harder at staying close. Oh, also things that were unpleasant but could have been much, much worse, though I won't enumerate those. That would be a bummer, and is beside the point.
So to come up with a name, a theme for myself for 2010, I've got to put my thinkin' hat on, step back, and ponder the current situation. It's impossible to know exact events ahead of time, of course. (At least, not without losing all touch with the context of the present, without which that information is meaningless.) The best insight you can hope for is something like the way a master chess player has a vague, intuitive hunch how the board will look twenty or twenty-five moves from now. You can, at most, find yourself a reference framework, a set of mental filters, a way of looking at what's around you that is likely to be useful in the times ahead.
So I will name 2010 the Year of the Cheese Procedure.
Oh, that would make so much more sense if I'd made a few "tales from the deli counter" posts. Maybe I will; I've got a little time off next week, though I'll be doing a cheese procedure (a sampling--excuse me, "dynamic selling"--event) till we close at 6 on Christmas Eve. However, it's late, I'm on the morning shift tomorrow, and I promised Dave and myself I'd get good sleep tonight. So a full contextual description will have to wait.
Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, joyous Eid (okay, okay, Eid was back in September, bu I don't think Islam has a December holiday), blessed Solstice, and wonderful winter family togetherness time to all. And to all a good night.
roseanne vs. the vma's
I'm just an ordinary average guy
my friends are all boring
and so am I
we're just ordinary average guys
~ Joe Walsh
I have a problem with envy.
Every year when awards season comes around, I gather my pettiness around me like skirts and flounce away from the TV. Or at least away from the channels where one may watch the Emmys, the VMAs, and various other musical award shows. I don't want to see droves of people who are, in my heart's reckoning, not quite as good at songwriting as myself, be fêted and fawned over and asked to give speeches--or even have the cameras pan over them while they watch with sour expressions as rivals give speeches.
The real reason they are there, of course, has more than anything else to do with merchandising. That is, the amount of money their CDs, mp3s, concert tickets and associated gewgaws are able to siphon into the pockets of their corporate sponsors. But supposedly--nominally--in theory--they are being honored for having created wonderful music. As the creation of wonderful music (though I lack the means to distribute it at the moment) is one of the central load-bearing pylons of my identity, this is maddening. I feel like the dog who must sit and watch while I, the foolish human, slowly devour a delicious-smelling steak which the dog is one hundred percent certain is rightfully his. Hence, I do not watch these shows, because I tend to act like an ass and sarcastically insult all the performers, even the ones I like, and detract from everyone else's enjoyment.
As I said, a problem. A problem for which a practical solution still evades me. All I can do on that front is bide my time, keep an alert eye and a grasping hand ready for any resources I can use for the purpose, and continue to get better at writing and playing songs. So that when I do find an opportunity to do more than nothing about it, the quality of music I can actually produce will be as high as freaking possible.
I used to have another, more serious problem with elitism--or, to use the wider-reaching Biblical term for it, pride. I touched on it briefly in my last post.
It came directly out of my extreme social awkwardness and low self-esteem; identity-wise, that sort of pride is a last-resort defense against loneliness. It says, I am not excluded from these social relationships because I am an unworthy ally, but rather because I am so special and different that it is important for me to hold out for something better. Which contains a couple of major untruths right on the face of it. First, the falsehood that certain kinds of people or relationships are somehow better or worse than others. After assuming the first falsehood, the second falsehood states that being unfit to have "lesser" kinds of relationships somehow gives you extra points or makes you more fit to have "better" kinds. Take the two wrong ideas together, and you get a burst of ego-soothing pride every time some incident takes place which ought to have made you feel ashamed. Like all fake "good feelings" that come from lies, though, the emotional energy for it had to get stolen out of another part of your personality. In this case, it comes from robbing yourself of the ability to like, respect and trust others.
Pernicious lies like the above are the sort which ruin otherwise decent personalities and make the people who exist through them impossible to like. All the self-loathing, acting foolish et cetera that I eat raw to try and shake them off are a very small price to pay, considering the risk. And the risk is not totally gone. I still have a somewhat shaky hold on self-respect, still have trouble holding on to friends once I've made them (though at least I can now make friends pretty easily because I like everyone and it shows), still catch myself mentally turning my nose up at things which I know are good and valuable and not to be scorned. It's like Jefferson said: The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Personality construction isn't architecture; it's flow mechanics. It's being able to maintain a standing wave with just enough curl that you can surf in it.
So yesterday evening Dave was channel-surfing and we ended up watching an episode of Roseanne. It was one of the big end-of-the-series ones where all the relationships have more or less stabilized and everyone's together twisting together loose strands of plot. So people were talking about the big stuff, relationships and love and the future, way more than in your typical sitcom episode.
I have no idea why, but when I was a lonely, ulcerous little kid, the Roseanne show stood for failure in my mind. I'd never watched it, just assumed that it was about people who'd given up striving for Greatness and Fame and a Chance to Earn a Place in History, and chosen to settle for being (ick!) an ordinary, average family. One of those nasty-assumptions-based-on-several-falsehoods that I didn't think about consciously, and wouldn't have recognized as such until I'd taken the trouble to drain out all the tributary falsehoods. That life isn't worth living unless at some point you attain Greatness and Fame. (And presumably Even More Ulcers.) That being part of a large, loving, occasionally squabbling family that still has each other's backs when it counts is somehow a bad thing, or an unimportant one. To name just a couple.
As I sat there and watched the show, saw all the plot threads come together as the fictional family reaffirmed their love and support for one another, I felt the same old gut-twist of envy that I normally expect from watching the VMAs. These fictional characters, for whom I used to feel casual, unexamined contempt, had something I desperately wanted. Not only the acceptance (howsoever grudging sometimes) and the togetherness (howsoever irritating sometimes), but the stability and means to enjoy and focus on those things. It's just a show about an ordinary, average family who has the freedom to sit around and live life and work out their relationships with each other, and the reasonable expectation that they can keep doing so. I want that, more intensely than I want a record deal, even. And at the moment, I'm about equally likely to be able to get either one.
Luckily I have a lot of practice appreciating the irony of moments like this. A way of life for which I once felt ill-thought-through contempt turns out to be one of my highest ambitions. A seemingly unattainable one, too, at least in the immediate term. Pass the salt and carve the crow, it's a typical dinner at my place.
Tomorrow Paula's going to be coming over to pick Dave up. Him staying here is not something I can afford with what I'm making now, and none of his job opportunities in the area panned out. I have no idea what's going to happen next. And this time that doesn't feel like a good thing.
my friends are all boring
and so am I
we're just ordinary average guys
~ Joe Walsh
I have a problem with envy.
Every year when awards season comes around, I gather my pettiness around me like skirts and flounce away from the TV. Or at least away from the channels where one may watch the Emmys, the VMAs, and various other musical award shows. I don't want to see droves of people who are, in my heart's reckoning, not quite as good at songwriting as myself, be fêted and fawned over and asked to give speeches--or even have the cameras pan over them while they watch with sour expressions as rivals give speeches.
The real reason they are there, of course, has more than anything else to do with merchandising. That is, the amount of money their CDs, mp3s, concert tickets and associated gewgaws are able to siphon into the pockets of their corporate sponsors. But supposedly--nominally--in theory--they are being honored for having created wonderful music. As the creation of wonderful music (though I lack the means to distribute it at the moment) is one of the central load-bearing pylons of my identity, this is maddening. I feel like the dog who must sit and watch while I, the foolish human, slowly devour a delicious-smelling steak which the dog is one hundred percent certain is rightfully his. Hence, I do not watch these shows, because I tend to act like an ass and sarcastically insult all the performers, even the ones I like, and detract from everyone else's enjoyment.
As I said, a problem. A problem for which a practical solution still evades me. All I can do on that front is bide my time, keep an alert eye and a grasping hand ready for any resources I can use for the purpose, and continue to get better at writing and playing songs. So that when I do find an opportunity to do more than nothing about it, the quality of music I can actually produce will be as high as freaking possible.
I used to have another, more serious problem with elitism--or, to use the wider-reaching Biblical term for it, pride. I touched on it briefly in my last post.
It came directly out of my extreme social awkwardness and low self-esteem; identity-wise, that sort of pride is a last-resort defense against loneliness. It says, I am not excluded from these social relationships because I am an unworthy ally, but rather because I am so special and different that it is important for me to hold out for something better. Which contains a couple of major untruths right on the face of it. First, the falsehood that certain kinds of people or relationships are somehow better or worse than others. After assuming the first falsehood, the second falsehood states that being unfit to have "lesser" kinds of relationships somehow gives you extra points or makes you more fit to have "better" kinds. Take the two wrong ideas together, and you get a burst of ego-soothing pride every time some incident takes place which ought to have made you feel ashamed. Like all fake "good feelings" that come from lies, though, the emotional energy for it had to get stolen out of another part of your personality. In this case, it comes from robbing yourself of the ability to like, respect and trust others.
Pernicious lies like the above are the sort which ruin otherwise decent personalities and make the people who exist through them impossible to like. All the self-loathing, acting foolish et cetera that I eat raw to try and shake them off are a very small price to pay, considering the risk. And the risk is not totally gone. I still have a somewhat shaky hold on self-respect, still have trouble holding on to friends once I've made them (though at least I can now make friends pretty easily because I like everyone and it shows), still catch myself mentally turning my nose up at things which I know are good and valuable and not to be scorned. It's like Jefferson said: The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Personality construction isn't architecture; it's flow mechanics. It's being able to maintain a standing wave with just enough curl that you can surf in it.
So yesterday evening Dave was channel-surfing and we ended up watching an episode of Roseanne. It was one of the big end-of-the-series ones where all the relationships have more or less stabilized and everyone's together twisting together loose strands of plot. So people were talking about the big stuff, relationships and love and the future, way more than in your typical sitcom episode.
I have no idea why, but when I was a lonely, ulcerous little kid, the Roseanne show stood for failure in my mind. I'd never watched it, just assumed that it was about people who'd given up striving for Greatness and Fame and a Chance to Earn a Place in History, and chosen to settle for being (ick!) an ordinary, average family. One of those nasty-assumptions-based-on-several-falsehoods that I didn't think about consciously, and wouldn't have recognized as such until I'd taken the trouble to drain out all the tributary falsehoods. That life isn't worth living unless at some point you attain Greatness and Fame. (And presumably Even More Ulcers.) That being part of a large, loving, occasionally squabbling family that still has each other's backs when it counts is somehow a bad thing, or an unimportant one. To name just a couple.
As I sat there and watched the show, saw all the plot threads come together as the fictional family reaffirmed their love and support for one another, I felt the same old gut-twist of envy that I normally expect from watching the VMAs. These fictional characters, for whom I used to feel casual, unexamined contempt, had something I desperately wanted. Not only the acceptance (howsoever grudging sometimes) and the togetherness (howsoever irritating sometimes), but the stability and means to enjoy and focus on those things. It's just a show about an ordinary, average family who has the freedom to sit around and live life and work out their relationships with each other, and the reasonable expectation that they can keep doing so. I want that, more intensely than I want a record deal, even. And at the moment, I'm about equally likely to be able to get either one.
Luckily I have a lot of practice appreciating the irony of moments like this. A way of life for which I once felt ill-thought-through contempt turns out to be one of my highest ambitions. A seemingly unattainable one, too, at least in the immediate term. Pass the salt and carve the crow, it's a typical dinner at my place.
Tomorrow Paula's going to be coming over to pick Dave up. Him staying here is not something I can afford with what I'm making now, and none of his job opportunities in the area panned out. I have no idea what's going to happen next. And this time that doesn't feel like a good thing.
authenticity
The entrance to the place was clogged with sweating courtiers--not the sleek top-level ones but the dented, scarred, slightly too old and slightly too ugly ones who actually got everything done.
~ Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver, p.168
"I just lost my best friend on Dead Man's Curve!"
"What's Dead Man's Curve?"
"It's an incredibly dangerous curve in the fake highway we built."
"Why would you build an incredibly dangerous curve in a FAKE highway?"
"Authenticity!"
~ Upright Citizens' Brigade, the episode with the space dolphins
Authenticity is dangerous, elusive--necessary. Pundits cross verbal swords over what the "real America" is or isn't, hipsters chase an ever-receding horizon of cool, philosophers and theologians argue over the original intent of ancient texts, governments attempt to demonstrate the connections between their mechanisms of power and the will of the people they rule and, supposedly, represent. And very little of this, when I boil it down to its syrupy essence, has much to do with my life in practical terms.
I spent probably more than half my life in an attempt to win free of a deep-seated, irrational self-loathing. And just as, in this man's army, the reward for a job well done is another job, the success of that project cascaded into another project: self-respect.
Looking into how people put our personalities together has led me to observe some things about norms--the expectations and standards of behavior we use to judge the worth, the coolness, the desirability of various actions and behaviors. We also use norms to create and, unconsciously at least, rank the categories into which various types of persons may fall. A norm is, structurally, a collection of memes which we have invested with belief.
I've got some of the classic ivory-tower intellectual norms about blue-collar jobs. You could call it prejudice, naivete, or even something nicer if your norms lean in the same direction. Namely, deep in the bottom of my brain, I feel that people who work with their hands and the strength of their backs are in some weird way nobler and more connected to reality than people who sit at desks and crunch numbers or wrangle legalese.
Since most of my jobs have been the sitting-at-desks kind, I've experienced an interesting tension between pride in my work and shame that it's not "honest" labor. Now, however, I'm in a place where I don't just feel like an authentic, hardworking American laborer, I actually am one. I work (when I'm lucky) eight hours a day, on my feet, slicing meats and cheeses. I make salads, help customers find items, even make sandwiches or pizzas on occasion, and at the end of the night I take deli slicers apart and clean them, mop floors, and turn out the lights when I leave.
And I'm friggin' loving it. I actually do feel more connected to reality, and even if it's only an illusion created by my preconceptions, it's a useful illusion and I cultivate it. This teeny tiny job in this one grocery store is where the rubber meets the road. The whole corporate hierarchy of the company which owns "my" store, all the people who have desk jobs crunching numbers and wrangling legalese, exist so that I can have a side of beef or turkey or ham to slice up, tag, bag, hand to a customer and say, "Would you like some cheese with that?" Call me crazy, but I've been here almost three months now and it's still exhilarating.
The coolest part about it is really the human aspect. There's a camaraderie among people who work together with their hands that just doesn't exist in an office. We spend a shift together, or at least within eye contact of one another, performing the same mind-numbing and back-straining tasks, over and over, getting hassled by the same hilarious (in retrospect) customers, staring at the backs of the same item tags and watching to see when our trays and dishes need to be refilled. And when there's a lull in business, when it's time to mop up at the end of the day, when we're outside catching a cancer stick on break, we connect like real human beings. We swap war stories about crazy customers, talk about our kids/parents/significant others/roommates, and just generally bask in mutually earned respect.
Far from having my old norms dispelled by a rude shock of horrible reality, I find them confirmed and solidified. It matters that I can spend a shift pushing pizzas and squirming my whole torso in under the counter to scoop up precise weights of potato salads and still walk out the door smiling. It makes a difference in somebody's day that I gave them their turkey sliced to the thickness they wanted, got them a sample, and still found the energy to joke about the weather. If I want to be a bodhisattva when I grow up (even if that is just a collection of ideals I've assembled in my brain! or like a saint, but with more arms--both good!), then this is a step I absolutely could not have afforded to skip. This is freaking important.
Sure, I spend a lot of time worrying about money. That, too, is part of being a real authentic blue-collar American. At $8.20 an hour (per union contract for new hires--did I mention I'm in a union now? how cool is that?), the difference between 27 and 30 hours a week is the difference between not quite being able to pay my rent and being able to pay it and also buy bus fare and maybe some eggs, bread and beer. My manager is cool about it--she schedules me for the first seven hours of an eight-hour shift, so that if, at the end of the night, I find there's enough work to keep me there a bit longer, I can call in to the person-in-charge and get me an extra half-hour or so for the night. Gives me a chance to juice the clock from 27 hours up to 30 or so, in other words. Me being an awesome worker and high-energy customer service guru is the difference between getting that consideration and getting scheduled for the union-contract-minimum 16 hours per week--which would most definitely not be enough to pay for my rent, bus fare and food.
I work at a nexus in the maelstrom of commercial exchange, but subsist on a very narrow margin between the income I can produce and what I must consume in order to continue eating and living indoors. Every day is a balancing act. Sure, I could get the employee-discounted coffee for $0.83--but do I have that much in my bank account? Will I need it later for rent or bus fare? Or do I actually need to get it, to get a cash-back amount of less than $20 (the minimum ATM withdrawal) so that I can recharge my bus card in order to be able to get to work tomorrow?
It's kind of weird. I worry about this stuff every day, I run the numbers over and over in my head to reach the same sums, and then I take a step back into the philosophical, metagaming sphere which is my native realm. And I ask myself things like, "In what do you actually believe?" or "What gives you strength and keeps you going?" or "Whence comes your help?"
People.
Relationships.
Love.
Magic.
I am reformatting my personal definitions of all those things with every step I take, with every slice I push through with the strength of my arms, with every cent I spend. Authenticity, as I conceive it, is a thing you earn by living in spite of difficulty, through effort, by meeting challenges for which failure is not an option. It is the triumph of the spark in the ashes of the phoenix, the extra twenty minutes you put on the clock, the quarter you find in the gutter that makes bus fare home out of not quite enough. It is the difference between independent life and living under a bridge hoping for a handful of someone else's change. It is so very little, and in the final analysis, everything.
~ Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver, p.168
"I just lost my best friend on Dead Man's Curve!"
"What's Dead Man's Curve?"
"It's an incredibly dangerous curve in the fake highway we built."
"Why would you build an incredibly dangerous curve in a FAKE highway?"
"Authenticity!"
~ Upright Citizens' Brigade, the episode with the space dolphins
Authenticity is dangerous, elusive--necessary. Pundits cross verbal swords over what the "real America" is or isn't, hipsters chase an ever-receding horizon of cool, philosophers and theologians argue over the original intent of ancient texts, governments attempt to demonstrate the connections between their mechanisms of power and the will of the people they rule and, supposedly, represent. And very little of this, when I boil it down to its syrupy essence, has much to do with my life in practical terms.
I spent probably more than half my life in an attempt to win free of a deep-seated, irrational self-loathing. And just as, in this man's army, the reward for a job well done is another job, the success of that project cascaded into another project: self-respect.
Looking into how people put our personalities together has led me to observe some things about norms--the expectations and standards of behavior we use to judge the worth, the coolness, the desirability of various actions and behaviors. We also use norms to create and, unconsciously at least, rank the categories into which various types of persons may fall. A norm is, structurally, a collection of memes which we have invested with belief.
I've got some of the classic ivory-tower intellectual norms about blue-collar jobs. You could call it prejudice, naivete, or even something nicer if your norms lean in the same direction. Namely, deep in the bottom of my brain, I feel that people who work with their hands and the strength of their backs are in some weird way nobler and more connected to reality than people who sit at desks and crunch numbers or wrangle legalese.
Since most of my jobs have been the sitting-at-desks kind, I've experienced an interesting tension between pride in my work and shame that it's not "honest" labor. Now, however, I'm in a place where I don't just feel like an authentic, hardworking American laborer, I actually am one. I work (when I'm lucky) eight hours a day, on my feet, slicing meats and cheeses. I make salads, help customers find items, even make sandwiches or pizzas on occasion, and at the end of the night I take deli slicers apart and clean them, mop floors, and turn out the lights when I leave.
And I'm friggin' loving it. I actually do feel more connected to reality, and even if it's only an illusion created by my preconceptions, it's a useful illusion and I cultivate it. This teeny tiny job in this one grocery store is where the rubber meets the road. The whole corporate hierarchy of the company which owns "my" store, all the people who have desk jobs crunching numbers and wrangling legalese, exist so that I can have a side of beef or turkey or ham to slice up, tag, bag, hand to a customer and say, "Would you like some cheese with that?" Call me crazy, but I've been here almost three months now and it's still exhilarating.
The coolest part about it is really the human aspect. There's a camaraderie among people who work together with their hands that just doesn't exist in an office. We spend a shift together, or at least within eye contact of one another, performing the same mind-numbing and back-straining tasks, over and over, getting hassled by the same hilarious (in retrospect) customers, staring at the backs of the same item tags and watching to see when our trays and dishes need to be refilled. And when there's a lull in business, when it's time to mop up at the end of the day, when we're outside catching a cancer stick on break, we connect like real human beings. We swap war stories about crazy customers, talk about our kids/parents/significant others/roommates, and just generally bask in mutually earned respect.
Far from having my old norms dispelled by a rude shock of horrible reality, I find them confirmed and solidified. It matters that I can spend a shift pushing pizzas and squirming my whole torso in under the counter to scoop up precise weights of potato salads and still walk out the door smiling. It makes a difference in somebody's day that I gave them their turkey sliced to the thickness they wanted, got them a sample, and still found the energy to joke about the weather. If I want to be a bodhisattva when I grow up (even if that is just a collection of ideals I've assembled in my brain! or like a saint, but with more arms--both good!), then this is a step I absolutely could not have afforded to skip. This is freaking important.
Sure, I spend a lot of time worrying about money. That, too, is part of being a real authentic blue-collar American. At $8.20 an hour (per union contract for new hires--did I mention I'm in a union now? how cool is that?), the difference between 27 and 30 hours a week is the difference between not quite being able to pay my rent and being able to pay it and also buy bus fare and maybe some eggs, bread and beer. My manager is cool about it--she schedules me for the first seven hours of an eight-hour shift, so that if, at the end of the night, I find there's enough work to keep me there a bit longer, I can call in to the person-in-charge and get me an extra half-hour or so for the night. Gives me a chance to juice the clock from 27 hours up to 30 or so, in other words. Me being an awesome worker and high-energy customer service guru is the difference between getting that consideration and getting scheduled for the union-contract-minimum 16 hours per week--which would most definitely not be enough to pay for my rent, bus fare and food.
I work at a nexus in the maelstrom of commercial exchange, but subsist on a very narrow margin between the income I can produce and what I must consume in order to continue eating and living indoors. Every day is a balancing act. Sure, I could get the employee-discounted coffee for $0.83--but do I have that much in my bank account? Will I need it later for rent or bus fare? Or do I actually need to get it, to get a cash-back amount of less than $20 (the minimum ATM withdrawal) so that I can recharge my bus card in order to be able to get to work tomorrow?
It's kind of weird. I worry about this stuff every day, I run the numbers over and over in my head to reach the same sums, and then I take a step back into the philosophical, metagaming sphere which is my native realm. And I ask myself things like, "In what do you actually believe?" or "What gives you strength and keeps you going?" or "Whence comes your help?"
People.
Relationships.
Love.
Magic.
I am reformatting my personal definitions of all those things with every step I take, with every slice I push through with the strength of my arms, with every cent I spend. Authenticity, as I conceive it, is a thing you earn by living in spite of difficulty, through effort, by meeting challenges for which failure is not an option. It is the triumph of the spark in the ashes of the phoenix, the extra twenty minutes you put on the clock, the quarter you find in the gutter that makes bus fare home out of not quite enough. It is the difference between independent life and living under a bridge hoping for a handful of someone else's change. It is so very little, and in the final analysis, everything.
now live from under a local bridge!
Okay, not under a bridge. It was a close thing, though, and without much and prodigious help, that is where we would be right now.
Moving is complete!
Well, technically, moving was complete last Saturday. Mom, Amber and Paula all came to help us finish getting packed. And Mom, in a burst of extreme generosity and very good sense, hired some movers to do the actual loading, driving and unloading. Since after all the packing etc., just watching them made me feel tired, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been possible for the few of us to do it all in less than three days! Even with a UHaul.
So to Mom and Amber and Paula, you have our great thanks! And Mom, you gave us the getting-married present we wanted and needed most!
Our new place is pretty awesome. We have a roommate named Don, who's a cool guy and is already being a good influence on us in terms of neatness. The place wasn't just cleaned-up and nice looking for the potential renters, as it turns out. He really keeps it this way all the time. Also, he has a dog named Oliver.
:) <--- me, learning we get to live with a dog
:-D :*-) ) <----- Dave, learning we get to live with a dog
O_O >_< x_x;; <---- Shashi, our cat, learning we now live with a dog
Having experimented a bit, I've found that my new commute, if I hit all my buses, is actually only an hour. As opposed to the hour and a half it was before. Except on Sundays, when one of the buses I need doesn't run past 9pm. That, however, is okay, since Don's cool with picking me up from the bus station as long as I take a phone with me and call. And I can always explain to my manager that it'd really be better for me to not work Sunday nights.
Dave is looking for a job closer to new home, and plans to make a day of it tomorrow. This week up till now has been a flurry of (for me) work, unpacking, and various move-in chores. Like, for example, getting our wireless router hooked up to Don's internet. It works way better than the DSL at the apartment did, lemme tell ya.
So, yeah. Got new place to live. Made beef stew. Arranged furniture in bedroom. Played some KoL. All in all, a very good week so far!
Oh, and I finished [in the middle of it]. I don't think it's all that good, but at least it's done. Made me think maybe I could put together an album of "riddle songs", where each song is about an abstract concept or state of mind which is danced around but never explicitly stated in the song. (Edit 4-28-10: Actually this song IS really good. Took me awhile to notice.)
can't get me moving
unless I'm dragged up by the chains of duty
but if I stand still
I can't wave my hand and call forth beauty
gotta find what's left of me
at the end of the live-long day
gotta hope it's enough
enough, enough to give away
beloved
I'm in the middle of it
beloved
I'm in the middle of it
beloved
come get some, come get some from it
I loved a neighborhood
it showed me how to run and when to stand
and when I had to leave
it helped me find a solid place to land
you get so tired
of having something to prove
but underneath is fire
so you've always got to move
beloved
I'm in the middle of it
beloved
I'm in the middle of it
beloved
come get some, come get some from it
and it's a waste of breath
not to have a little talk on it
and it's a waste of time
not to give it every hour
and it's a waste of ground
not to lay a little rock on it
honey, you've got to sweat
to be empowered
beloved
I'm in the middle of it
beloved
I'm in the middle of it
beloved
come get some, come get some from it
Moving is complete!
Well, technically, moving was complete last Saturday. Mom, Amber and Paula all came to help us finish getting packed. And Mom, in a burst of extreme generosity and very good sense, hired some movers to do the actual loading, driving and unloading. Since after all the packing etc., just watching them made me feel tired, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been possible for the few of us to do it all in less than three days! Even with a UHaul.
So to Mom and Amber and Paula, you have our great thanks! And Mom, you gave us the getting-married present we wanted and needed most!
Our new place is pretty awesome. We have a roommate named Don, who's a cool guy and is already being a good influence on us in terms of neatness. The place wasn't just cleaned-up and nice looking for the potential renters, as it turns out. He really keeps it this way all the time. Also, he has a dog named Oliver.
:) <--- me, learning we get to live with a dog
:-D :*-) ) <----- Dave, learning we get to live with a dog
O_O >_< x_x;; <---- Shashi, our cat, learning we now live with a dog
Having experimented a bit, I've found that my new commute, if I hit all my buses, is actually only an hour. As opposed to the hour and a half it was before. Except on Sundays, when one of the buses I need doesn't run past 9pm. That, however, is okay, since Don's cool with picking me up from the bus station as long as I take a phone with me and call. And I can always explain to my manager that it'd really be better for me to not work Sunday nights.
Dave is looking for a job closer to new home, and plans to make a day of it tomorrow. This week up till now has been a flurry of (for me) work, unpacking, and various move-in chores. Like, for example, getting our wireless router hooked up to Don's internet. It works way better than the DSL at the apartment did, lemme tell ya.
So, yeah. Got new place to live. Made beef stew. Arranged furniture in bedroom. Played some KoL. All in all, a very good week so far!
Oh, and I finished [in the middle of it]. I don't think it's all that good, but at least it's done. Made me think maybe I could put together an album of "riddle songs", where each song is about an abstract concept or state of mind which is danced around but never explicitly stated in the song. (Edit 4-28-10: Actually this song IS really good. Took me awhile to notice.)
can't get me moving
unless I'm dragged up by the chains of duty
but if I stand still
I can't wave my hand and call forth beauty
gotta find what's left of me
at the end of the live-long day
gotta hope it's enough
enough, enough to give away
beloved
I'm in the middle of it
beloved
I'm in the middle of it
beloved
come get some, come get some from it
I loved a neighborhood
it showed me how to run and when to stand
and when I had to leave
it helped me find a solid place to land
you get so tired
of having something to prove
but underneath is fire
so you've always got to move
beloved
I'm in the middle of it
beloved
I'm in the middle of it
beloved
come get some, come get some from it
and it's a waste of breath
not to have a little talk on it
and it's a waste of time
not to give it every hour
and it's a waste of ground
not to lay a little rock on it
honey, you've got to sweat
to be empowered
beloved
I'm in the middle of it
beloved
I'm in the middle of it
beloved
come get some, come get some from it
We're in the process of getting married! And moving!
That's us, yesterday, at Ronny's Original Chicago Steakhouse. Steaks and Buds for both of us were only $20, because Ronny's was having a sale. The piece of paper I'm holding in the photo is a marriage license, which cost twice that. (Dave found a fellow restaurant patron who was willing to get our picture using Dave's phone, because it seemed to me that you-all would be slightly mollified if we at least had a picture.) So we have between now and Nov. 14th to get it signed by a judge or cleric and sent in to the Cook County officials. Perhaps we will keep the actual date a secret for awhile after the fact--but we are most certainly keeping it a secret before. This is going to be the most non-secret elopement it's possible to have, but it's still going to be an elopement. Because that's what we want to do. So there. At some point after the actual documents are official, when we can afford it and have agreed on a design, we're probably going to find us a good tattoo parlor and get our wedding rings. :D
Immediately after food, we went north to see an apartment which I can actually afford on the money I'm making working at the deli. And as Dave pointed out, if he found a job in the neighborhood, we would be making significantly more than would be necessary to survive. We could, in other words, start doing cool stuff like debt service and savings. We'd still be living right next to a train line--just a different one. The one I take to get to work. Much, much closer to work. In a neighborhood that's actually slightly nicer than the one in which we currently reside. So depending on how fast we can get an appointment to see the leasing agent (and whether our execrable and/or nonexistent credit is adequate) we could, in theory, start moving our stuff into it while it's still September, and start paying rent Oct 1.
Now, if I were you, and if I read this from the other side of the interscreen, I can tell you what I'd be thinking right about now.
(And by "you" I mean "our friend or loved one, who quite likely knows us in real life and would have been invited to our large, public ritual for the acknowledgement of heterosexual life-partnerment, such as the one shown in the above photo I copied without permission from the website of a photographer apparently named Ian Haring, if in fact we were having one, which we are not, at least not at the traditional time in the process.")If I were "you", I'd be thinking:
"Huzzah, good for them, and about freaking time!"
"Those sneaky jerks have forgone a large public ritual, thereby denying me and everyone else who knows them the opportunity for the vast exchange of social-structure and relationship information which the organization and performance of such a ritual exists, in large part, to expedite! How very rude, even if it is monetarily practical at the moment!"
See, this is why elopement is both frowned upon and attractive, depending on one's feelings about large, complex social relationships among large numbers of people. When many different relationships, some very intense, between a whole lot of people at the same time are all going to be altered by a single event, it makes good sense to mark that event with a public ritual. Just in terms of emotional and mental economy. That way everyone who has a stake in the event can symbolically communicate to everyone else involved what the event means to them, how their relationships with various other involved parties are going to change, and (just for garnish!) how they feel about the fact that it is happening. Furthermore, because these changing social realities are acknowledged publicly, simultaneously and symbolically, everyone has a much better chance of remembering who now means what to whom afterwards. The form of the ritual itself acts as a mnemonic device: common ceremonial elements serve as shorthand to describe relationships even to persons not within the social group but familiar with the culture. "Oh, do you know them well?" "Why yes, I [did X] at their wedding."
Also, too, it gives people an opportunity to express their love and support* in a highly condensed and reasonably approachable way.
So, if you feel you absolutely must do something to express your love and support**, by all means, please come and help us pack, help us move, come over and find stuff we're not going to be able to take with us and take it back to your dwelling with you***. Or you can, y'know, wait for us to give in to the inevitable and start planning a post-matrimonial party of some kind. Haven't talked it over with Dave yet, but I'm thinking Firstiversary Party. Has a nice sound to it, and is sufficiently far away****. ;)
Love and pez be unto all of you.
I for one am exceedingly***** happy.
* or their hatred and opposition
** or hatred and opposition
*** or call our prospective landlord and tell him nasty things about us, sneak into our current apartment at night to unpack our boxen, and leave behind large, badly damaged pieces of furniture
**** also, it now occurs to me, announcing a Firstiversary Party would require revealing the date of the actual marriage, which would be fun
***** but not, I think, excessively
she slices, she dices...she is finally blue-collar
On my last day off, which was Thursday, I went up to my old college to try and get the last bits of paperwork done which were keeping me from my degree. Mom stepped in like a champion, got leave from her work to go visit their plant up in the area so she could give me a ride there, and even paid the last couple little fees I had on my account at college, though she could ill afford to do so. I am greatly in her debt!
Tomorrow, however, is my second off day in this week, so I can afford to spend a little time blogging. Ah, the comfort of the written word. Even generating 3000 words in five hours did not sate me. I must write more, for the peace of my mind. So I write.
These days I am reminded of Idle Theory, a concept delineated by a fellow named Chris Davis as one of the factors in determining evolutionary fitness. I wish I could find his original page, which had some nice diagrams and such, but I will explain briefly. Idleness is the amount of time and energy which an organism has left over after it has satisfied the basic requirements of immediate survival--food, sleep, etc. Think of it as the profit margin of effort. Organisms with a very small amount of idleness are vulnerable to environmental changes. A small change in the requirements for immediate survival can mean the difference between life and death for something living on the edge. In contrast, living things with high levels of idleness can afford to spend their extra time and effort seeking out interesting mates, scouting out new territories, playing internet games, et cetera. Societies, which are themselves organisms in a sense, also change their behaviors based on idleness. Societies with low idleness tend to emphasize virtues such as hard work, thrift and rule-following--because if those virtues are not practiced by most individuals most of the time, that society will burn through its "profit margin" of available effort and collapse.
For me, personally, this is the lowest level of idleness I've ever attempted on an ongoing basis. Oh, I had some worse period at Aigre Doux (now defunct, Clarissa tells me, so I suppose I can use its name!), but those were periodic, not continuous. Let me show you some deli-counter-worker math:
8 hours per day at work
3 hours per day in transit (1.5hr train + walk time)
8 hours per day sleeping
leaves
6 hours per workday for other activity.
See, at the office-type jobs I've had in the past, internet access was part of worktime, to a limited extent. I could play my KoL turns, make the occasional blog post (in bits and pieces, by keeping the window open behind other work), and read random stuff to keep my imagination sizzling. I sat on my butt and typed and talked on the phone and spoke a lot of doublespeak.
Now my day is spent on my feet. I lift meats and cheeses out of the counter, on and off the slicers, work the slicers with hitherto-unused arm, shoulder and back muscles. I often lean my entire torso into the cold salad case to carefully scoop out, say, potato salad, without smearing tuna salad or curry on my apron or elbows in the process. It is like a combination of contortionism, spelunking, constructing a stone wall out of smallish rocks, and playing an endless game of tug-of-war with a gaggle of children. And I haven't even been on the café side and learned to make sandwiches or fry chicken in super-hot grease yet!
The thing is, though--I am happy. I feel like the guy at the end of Office Space. I'm doing something constructive and real. So what if my back feels like it has a knife stuck in it between the hours of seven and nine pm most nights? So what if the customers ask me to thin-shave a full pound of our messiest, juiciest meat at 8:45pm when I'm supposed to be disassembling and cleaning the slicers and sweeping the floor, when the auto-slicer is done for the night and I must do it by hand? I can hack that. That is no frickin problem. I sing while I slice, I banter with customers, I try to convince the nice ladies from the café side of the counter to teach me Bosnian. I've only been here a couple weeks, but I can weigh by the quarter-pound with either hand now and I know half the item codes by heart. And apparently all my coworkers like me, because I like them and think they're cool, and I'm sunny and polite and work like a fiend and sing.
For some reason, my day-to-day sense of identity is tied up in my work to a fairly large extent. Maybe it's because so much of how I remain socialized is a conscious process; the personas I use in daily life are assembled "by hand" rather than by instinct. And much of my consciousness is swept up in the self-check routines by which I create and assure my continued sanity, functionality. So there's not a whole lot of tolerance in me for identity concepts not directly supported by incoming data.
Oh, there is a residue. Life events and decisions leave a mark, little permanent records which say "you rose to X challenge to Y extent. you reacted to A crisis with B level of competence." Each little possible area of life I am able to approach with what I deem to be honor and nobility, by that increment is my heart eased and my childhood certainty weakened--the certainty that I am useless and without value. Not sure where it came from. Perhaps that knowledge is down in my spaghetti memory somewhere, safe to recall only when its poison is nullified.
Nobility is being equally comfortable, confident, competent, equally able to belong, in all places and all circumstances. Heinlein has a quote about it, a quote which I don't recall verbatim that ends "specialization is for insects." Honor is integrity in action: that you behave at all times and in all ways so that the world you wish to experience is the world which your actions make more possible.
In previous jobs, then, I have demonstrated to myself that I can be white-collar, that I can be an egghead amongst eggheads. That I can type numbers into a screen all day and night and still have the wherewithal to go to altavista's babelfish and crib enough Spanish to tell the dishwasher that his money was direct-deposited to his bank account and he should have it within three business days. That I can research the doings of a city which I have never visited, through news clippings and random statistical journals, well enough that my supervisor can go to that city's government and ask the right pointed questions about how they handle their finances. That I can shout down an aged building owner, whose concept of how business is done was cemented in the fifties, in a vain attempt convince him to pay for renovations required by fire safety regulations passed into law in the nineties. All these things I know about myself.
But now, now if I can keep this job for enough months to satisfy myself, I will have proved to myself that I can put in eight hours of real work, like a real person. Oh, the mad mad lengths to which we go for self-respect. It is worth it.
Besides, my unemployment was about to run out. There is some irony, as this back-aching job pays only $8.20 an hour, and thus nets me per week exactly the same amount as I used to get from unemployment, for doing nothing.
Still. I am happier, because even in a time of extremely low idleness, I am happier doing something than nothing.
Tomorrow, however, is my second off day in this week, so I can afford to spend a little time blogging. Ah, the comfort of the written word. Even generating 3000 words in five hours did not sate me. I must write more, for the peace of my mind. So I write.
These days I am reminded of Idle Theory, a concept delineated by a fellow named Chris Davis as one of the factors in determining evolutionary fitness. I wish I could find his original page, which had some nice diagrams and such, but I will explain briefly. Idleness is the amount of time and energy which an organism has left over after it has satisfied the basic requirements of immediate survival--food, sleep, etc. Think of it as the profit margin of effort. Organisms with a very small amount of idleness are vulnerable to environmental changes. A small change in the requirements for immediate survival can mean the difference between life and death for something living on the edge. In contrast, living things with high levels of idleness can afford to spend their extra time and effort seeking out interesting mates, scouting out new territories, playing internet games, et cetera. Societies, which are themselves organisms in a sense, also change their behaviors based on idleness. Societies with low idleness tend to emphasize virtues such as hard work, thrift and rule-following--because if those virtues are not practiced by most individuals most of the time, that society will burn through its "profit margin" of available effort and collapse.
For me, personally, this is the lowest level of idleness I've ever attempted on an ongoing basis. Oh, I had some worse period at Aigre Doux (now defunct, Clarissa tells me, so I suppose I can use its name!), but those were periodic, not continuous. Let me show you some deli-counter-worker math:
8 hours per day at work
3 hours per day in transit (1.5hr train + walk time)
8 hours per day sleeping
leaves
6 hours per workday for other activity.
See, at the office-type jobs I've had in the past, internet access was part of worktime, to a limited extent. I could play my KoL turns, make the occasional blog post (in bits and pieces, by keeping the window open behind other work), and read random stuff to keep my imagination sizzling. I sat on my butt and typed and talked on the phone and spoke a lot of doublespeak.
Now my day is spent on my feet. I lift meats and cheeses out of the counter, on and off the slicers, work the slicers with hitherto-unused arm, shoulder and back muscles. I often lean my entire torso into the cold salad case to carefully scoop out, say, potato salad, without smearing tuna salad or curry on my apron or elbows in the process. It is like a combination of contortionism, spelunking, constructing a stone wall out of smallish rocks, and playing an endless game of tug-of-war with a gaggle of children. And I haven't even been on the café side and learned to make sandwiches or fry chicken in super-hot grease yet!
The thing is, though--I am happy. I feel like the guy at the end of Office Space. I'm doing something constructive and real. So what if my back feels like it has a knife stuck in it between the hours of seven and nine pm most nights? So what if the customers ask me to thin-shave a full pound of our messiest, juiciest meat at 8:45pm when I'm supposed to be disassembling and cleaning the slicers and sweeping the floor, when the auto-slicer is done for the night and I must do it by hand? I can hack that. That is no frickin problem. I sing while I slice, I banter with customers, I try to convince the nice ladies from the café side of the counter to teach me Bosnian. I've only been here a couple weeks, but I can weigh by the quarter-pound with either hand now and I know half the item codes by heart. And apparently all my coworkers like me, because I like them and think they're cool, and I'm sunny and polite and work like a fiend and sing.
For some reason, my day-to-day sense of identity is tied up in my work to a fairly large extent. Maybe it's because so much of how I remain socialized is a conscious process; the personas I use in daily life are assembled "by hand" rather than by instinct. And much of my consciousness is swept up in the self-check routines by which I create and assure my continued sanity, functionality. So there's not a whole lot of tolerance in me for identity concepts not directly supported by incoming data.
Oh, there is a residue. Life events and decisions leave a mark, little permanent records which say "you rose to X challenge to Y extent. you reacted to A crisis with B level of competence." Each little possible area of life I am able to approach with what I deem to be honor and nobility, by that increment is my heart eased and my childhood certainty weakened--the certainty that I am useless and without value. Not sure where it came from. Perhaps that knowledge is down in my spaghetti memory somewhere, safe to recall only when its poison is nullified.
Nobility is being equally comfortable, confident, competent, equally able to belong, in all places and all circumstances. Heinlein has a quote about it, a quote which I don't recall verbatim that ends "specialization is for insects." Honor is integrity in action: that you behave at all times and in all ways so that the world you wish to experience is the world which your actions make more possible.
In previous jobs, then, I have demonstrated to myself that I can be white-collar, that I can be an egghead amongst eggheads. That I can type numbers into a screen all day and night and still have the wherewithal to go to altavista's babelfish and crib enough Spanish to tell the dishwasher that his money was direct-deposited to his bank account and he should have it within three business days. That I can research the doings of a city which I have never visited, through news clippings and random statistical journals, well enough that my supervisor can go to that city's government and ask the right pointed questions about how they handle their finances. That I can shout down an aged building owner, whose concept of how business is done was cemented in the fifties, in a vain attempt convince him to pay for renovations required by fire safety regulations passed into law in the nineties. All these things I know about myself.
But now, now if I can keep this job for enough months to satisfy myself, I will have proved to myself that I can put in eight hours of real work, like a real person. Oh, the mad mad lengths to which we go for self-respect. It is worth it.
Besides, my unemployment was about to run out. There is some irony, as this back-aching job pays only $8.20 an hour, and thus nets me per week exactly the same amount as I used to get from unemployment, for doing nothing.
Still. I am happier, because even in a time of extremely low idleness, I am happier doing something than nothing.
from Lamuella, with love
Hi everybody!
I've been working nights in the deli this week (2-9), so I'm still getting myself adjusted to the new schedule. Mostly I've been doing my writing on my hour-plus CTA commute where none of y'all can see it, so nyah for now. Next week, because I seem to be working out well and have full availability, I'll be getting the full 40 hours! The week after that I'll be switched over to the café side of the counter, where I get to (anticipatory cringe) learn to fry chickens, in addition to learning how to create sandwiches and pizzas. The accompanying happy sandwich-making and pizza-making songs, however, I will not need to learn how to create. So either I'll learn how to make shorter evening-time posts, or I'll get used to getting up a little earlier and making my long, long posts in the morning.
Either way I'm hoping to stay at this job at least long enough to qualify for union health insurance, explore setting up my 401(k) with at least partially company stock, get caught up on rent, start untangling my various debt service obligations, develop a sufficiently strong and healthy musculature to not be in constant pain from all the lifting and slicing, and get forged in the crucible of the holiday deli/café counter rush. It is an ambitious plan, but a refreshingly unambiguous one.
I like having a nice predictable work routine. I am an exceedingly non-territorial person--to an extent pathologically so. Most of my territorial instincts are, were, or have been sublimated into various things which are carried with me wherever I go. So for me temporal feng shui is, I think, even more important than spatial feng shui, in terms of its ability to promote calm and ordered processes of emotion and thought. And I think I'm getting better about physical space habitation as well. These sorts of things are all connected: time management, learning to be comfortable and belong wherever you are, taking ownership of space and self, developing the confidence to make decisions, etc.
Blog is a secondary consideration in all this. Though I do regret that my new schedule has planted my work hours squarely on top of those hours when I would normally be talking to people on the phone. Perhaps I should add a cell phone to my list of things to get back or fix up, so I can at least have brief convos on the train around 10pm at night. We shall see!
In the meantime, here's a sonnet I've been working over the last couple train rides. I'm not wholly satisfied with it--it's only the first full revision, and poems are rarely polished until the third. But hopefully it's a nice read anyway. :)
[building materials]
To build a soul, a solid cornerstone
can give straight lines, square edges to its walls.
Each brick and board is one true thing you've known
forever. Mine get tangled where they fall,
just like my hair when I've walked in the rain,
wet, hatless, wrestled by the wild, cold wind.
If I can tame this snarled and dripping mane,
I'll know what's in it, and how to begin.
What's good will anchor firmly where it's set;
what's wicked snaps the moment it is tugged.
I'll plumb, with the best measures I can get,
each stone, and fill these trenches I have dug.
Up from its edges, planted right, below,
a true home for my waking soul will grow.
I've been working nights in the deli this week (2-9), so I'm still getting myself adjusted to the new schedule. Mostly I've been doing my writing on my hour-plus CTA commute where none of y'all can see it, so nyah for now. Next week, because I seem to be working out well and have full availability, I'll be getting the full 40 hours! The week after that I'll be switched over to the café side of the counter, where I get to (anticipatory cringe) learn to fry chickens, in addition to learning how to create sandwiches and pizzas. The accompanying happy sandwich-making and pizza-making songs, however, I will not need to learn how to create. So either I'll learn how to make shorter evening-time posts, or I'll get used to getting up a little earlier and making my long, long posts in the morning.
Either way I'm hoping to stay at this job at least long enough to qualify for union health insurance, explore setting up my 401(k) with at least partially company stock, get caught up on rent, start untangling my various debt service obligations, develop a sufficiently strong and healthy musculature to not be in constant pain from all the lifting and slicing, and get forged in the crucible of the holiday deli/café counter rush. It is an ambitious plan, but a refreshingly unambiguous one.
I like having a nice predictable work routine. I am an exceedingly non-territorial person--to an extent pathologically so. Most of my territorial instincts are, were, or have been sublimated into various things which are carried with me wherever I go. So for me temporal feng shui is, I think, even more important than spatial feng shui, in terms of its ability to promote calm and ordered processes of emotion and thought. And I think I'm getting better about physical space habitation as well. These sorts of things are all connected: time management, learning to be comfortable and belong wherever you are, taking ownership of space and self, developing the confidence to make decisions, etc.
Blog is a secondary consideration in all this. Though I do regret that my new schedule has planted my work hours squarely on top of those hours when I would normally be talking to people on the phone. Perhaps I should add a cell phone to my list of things to get back or fix up, so I can at least have brief convos on the train around 10pm at night. We shall see!
In the meantime, here's a sonnet I've been working over the last couple train rides. I'm not wholly satisfied with it--it's only the first full revision, and poems are rarely polished until the third. But hopefully it's a nice read anyway. :)
[building materials]
To build a soul, a solid cornerstone
can give straight lines, square edges to its walls.
Each brick and board is one true thing you've known
forever. Mine get tangled where they fall,
just like my hair when I've walked in the rain,
wet, hatless, wrestled by the wild, cold wind.
If I can tame this snarled and dripping mane,
I'll know what's in it, and how to begin.
What's good will anchor firmly where it's set;
what's wicked snaps the moment it is tugged.
I'll plumb, with the best measures I can get,
each stone, and fill these trenches I have dug.
Up from its edges, planted right, below,
a true home for my waking soul will grow.
Now available at the deli counter! Also content update. Will explain.
All righty righty.
So I may have mentioned earlier (or you may have seen my profile update, or Facebook update if you know me irl and have my Facebook) that I has a part-time job! It is part-time only in the sense that my manager isn't allowed to schedule me more than 35 hours a week. But given my total availability and her perptual short-handedness, I will always get those 35 hours. Since I have no second job and am not in school, I will be earning slightly more than I've been getting from unemployment very, very soon. Which is extremely good news for me and my future debt-reduction plans.
I am now a deli person at [major chain grocery store]. Which, if I have mentioned it by name earlier, I must go and edit it out. Because major chain grocery stores tend not to like "true confessions" employee blogs. Especially ones which say things like "oh, we only wash the dishes twice instead of three times like it said in the training videos, and I only switch plastic gloves when going from deli cuts to salads instead of between every item."
Oh yeah. The above things are true. Heehee. I even had to learn the hard way not to speak with my head inside the deli counter, on my very first day. The look of mute horror on the customer's face when a teensy weensy bit of spit flew from my mouth into the edge of a dish will, alas, stay with me forever. I console myself that this particular dish was one which must be taken home and re-heated before consumption--but still, I did not throw away that entire dish of food. Instead I left it there. *cue scary music*
Still, I like working in a deli. In sharp contrast to most other jobs I've had, it feels like real work. And it only makes my back hurt and my feet hurt, not my soul. (Mind, emotions, personality, whatev.) I don't have to make any sketchy moral compromises to get my job done--apart from the abovementioned hygiene things. Which are negligible in an emotional-impact sense. I don't have to deliver any worse bad news than "sorry, we don't have any by-the-pound ricotta cheese." And every one of my co-workers knows exactly what she is doing and is perfectly happy to help me out because I'm nice and energetic and catch on quickly. Yes, "she"--I've only met one male deli worker so far, not counting the sushi guy. Who, by the end of day one, I'd already forgotten was there, since he does his own thing and has his own station and supplies and all. His sushi's pretty good; I had some today.
But at this job, I feel like Arthur Dent making sandwiches, or that guy in the Dean Koontz book whose day job as a fry cook at a diner gave him the emotional stability necessary to problem-solve for ghosts in his free time. Not that I deal with ghosts. Happily that talent, if indeed such exists, is one I lack. In terms of what's on top of my theory stack regarding ghosts, I'll give you a quick summary:
a) If there is such a thing as ghosts, they are part of a natural ecosystem which extends further than human science can currently measure. Whether it was designed that way by a knowledgeable entity or happened thusly for some other reason, if our ecology extends into the invisible, then I can assume the invisible side of it is structurally comparable to the visible side. Meaning it has lots of stuff for people and things to do.
b) If visible people deal with invisible people to any extent, it is at most (when done sensibly) an extremely tiny part of incarnate life. Thus, if there are invisible people, and things for them to do, it should follow that dealing with visible people would constitute an extremely tiny part of discarnate life.
c) Therefore those ghosts who have nothing better to do than hang around and bother those incarnate people who can see them are the spiritual equivalent of the homeless beggars one sees on street corners or in subways. They are there to take what they can get and should not be expected to have much of value to contribute. Because if they did, y'see, they would be off doing whatever it is alleged invisible people ought to be doing.
So ghosts neither frighten me nor concern me much. I don't perceive them myself, but if they exist, they are at worst nuisances and at best opportunities for benevolence.
What a bunny trail that was!
On to content update, and a word of explanation beforehand. I commend to your attention the internet monk, who may or may not be a monk, but is certainly a cool Christian guy with a thoughtful blog. He has recently been working on a series called "The Evangelical Liturgy" which is quite good: the latest post has links to the earlier ones.
However, a slightly less recent post of his entitled The Devil's Sermon inspired me to write a song. It was one of those things that I read which struck an instant chord. "Yes!" I said to myself. "This is the sort of thing which makes me so very angry!" After having had some time to digest and process those feelings, the following song emerged. It is a poor, poor shadow of a thing compared to Ravel at the war. It is whiny and small. The guitar chords that go along with it are grungy and make it sound a little less small, but still. I hope I can write more things in the future which, like "Ravel", are more about inspiring stories and less about my own frustrations. But I'm back on the horse (the songwriting horse) after more than a month's hiatus. So I wrote this and you get to read the lyrics if you wish, and perhaps you will enjoy them or at least find them interesting.
(Upon reflection I've decided to leave the s-word in the chorus unbleeped. So be warned, if you do not like reading it, because it is there.)
[it's not fair]
the Jesus
you tell me about
has nothing to do
with the fire in your eyes
forgive me
I'm starting to doubt
your words as
half substitutions and lies
if he's really there
if he really cares
why should I dig through
all this bullshit
it's not fair
the Jesus
I've read all about
didn't judge so harsh
he loved everybody
forgive me
I'm figuring out
just what is
so much worse about me
if he's really there
if he really cares
why should I dig through
all this bullshit
it's not fair
the Jesus
I started to see
till you pulled back
and your friends were laughing at me
forgive me
cause I do not know
if I want
to find Christ then where should I go
if he's really there
if he really cares
why should I dig through
all this bullshit
it's not fair
So I may have mentioned earlier (or you may have seen my profile update, or Facebook update if you know me irl and have my Facebook) that I has a part-time job! It is part-time only in the sense that my manager isn't allowed to schedule me more than 35 hours a week. But given my total availability and her perptual short-handedness, I will always get those 35 hours. Since I have no second job and am not in school, I will be earning slightly more than I've been getting from unemployment very, very soon. Which is extremely good news for me and my future debt-reduction plans.
I am now a deli person at [major chain grocery store]. Which, if I have mentioned it by name earlier, I must go and edit it out. Because major chain grocery stores tend not to like "true confessions" employee blogs. Especially ones which say things like "oh, we only wash the dishes twice instead of three times like it said in the training videos, and I only switch plastic gloves when going from deli cuts to salads instead of between every item."
Oh yeah. The above things are true. Heehee. I even had to learn the hard way not to speak with my head inside the deli counter, on my very first day. The look of mute horror on the customer's face when a teensy weensy bit of spit flew from my mouth into the edge of a dish will, alas, stay with me forever. I console myself that this particular dish was one which must be taken home and re-heated before consumption--but still, I did not throw away that entire dish of food. Instead I left it there. *cue scary music*
Still, I like working in a deli. In sharp contrast to most other jobs I've had, it feels like real work. And it only makes my back hurt and my feet hurt, not my soul. (Mind, emotions, personality, whatev.) I don't have to make any sketchy moral compromises to get my job done--apart from the abovementioned hygiene things. Which are negligible in an emotional-impact sense. I don't have to deliver any worse bad news than "sorry, we don't have any by-the-pound ricotta cheese." And every one of my co-workers knows exactly what she is doing and is perfectly happy to help me out because I'm nice and energetic and catch on quickly. Yes, "she"--I've only met one male deli worker so far, not counting the sushi guy. Who, by the end of day one, I'd already forgotten was there, since he does his own thing and has his own station and supplies and all. His sushi's pretty good; I had some today.
But at this job, I feel like Arthur Dent making sandwiches, or that guy in the Dean Koontz book whose day job as a fry cook at a diner gave him the emotional stability necessary to problem-solve for ghosts in his free time. Not that I deal with ghosts. Happily that talent, if indeed such exists, is one I lack. In terms of what's on top of my theory stack regarding ghosts, I'll give you a quick summary:
a) If there is such a thing as ghosts, they are part of a natural ecosystem which extends further than human science can currently measure. Whether it was designed that way by a knowledgeable entity or happened thusly for some other reason, if our ecology extends into the invisible, then I can assume the invisible side of it is structurally comparable to the visible side. Meaning it has lots of stuff for people and things to do.
b) If visible people deal with invisible people to any extent, it is at most (when done sensibly) an extremely tiny part of incarnate life. Thus, if there are invisible people, and things for them to do, it should follow that dealing with visible people would constitute an extremely tiny part of discarnate life.
c) Therefore those ghosts who have nothing better to do than hang around and bother those incarnate people who can see them are the spiritual equivalent of the homeless beggars one sees on street corners or in subways. They are there to take what they can get and should not be expected to have much of value to contribute. Because if they did, y'see, they would be off doing whatever it is alleged invisible people ought to be doing.
So ghosts neither frighten me nor concern me much. I don't perceive them myself, but if they exist, they are at worst nuisances and at best opportunities for benevolence.
What a bunny trail that was!
On to content update, and a word of explanation beforehand. I commend to your attention the internet monk, who may or may not be a monk, but is certainly a cool Christian guy with a thoughtful blog. He has recently been working on a series called "The Evangelical Liturgy" which is quite good: the latest post has links to the earlier ones.
However, a slightly less recent post of his entitled The Devil's Sermon inspired me to write a song. It was one of those things that I read which struck an instant chord. "Yes!" I said to myself. "This is the sort of thing which makes me so very angry!" After having had some time to digest and process those feelings, the following song emerged. It is a poor, poor shadow of a thing compared to Ravel at the war. It is whiny and small. The guitar chords that go along with it are grungy and make it sound a little less small, but still. I hope I can write more things in the future which, like "Ravel", are more about inspiring stories and less about my own frustrations. But I'm back on the horse (the songwriting horse) after more than a month's hiatus. So I wrote this and you get to read the lyrics if you wish, and perhaps you will enjoy them or at least find them interesting.
(Upon reflection I've decided to leave the s-word in the chorus unbleeped. So be warned, if you do not like reading it, because it is there.)
[it's not fair]
the Jesus
you tell me about
has nothing to do
with the fire in your eyes
forgive me
I'm starting to doubt
your words as
half substitutions and lies
if he's really there
if he really cares
why should I dig through
all this bullshit
it's not fair
the Jesus
I've read all about
didn't judge so harsh
he loved everybody
forgive me
I'm figuring out
just what is
so much worse about me
if he's really there
if he really cares
why should I dig through
all this bullshit
it's not fair
the Jesus
I started to see
till you pulled back
and your friends were laughing at me
forgive me
cause I do not know
if I want
to find Christ then where should I go
if he's really there
if he really cares
why should I dig through
all this bullshit
it's not fair
Miércoles con los Amigos Invisibles vol. 19: have a frank and productive Zaraday!
I have many things about which I wish to write. I will briefly name a few before getting on with this post: My new job as a part-time deli worker at Dominick's. (Back and feet very unhappy, brain very happy indeed.) These three posts at Bruce Droppings, wherein an ex-pastor talks about how the way Christianity is practiced in America today can exacerbate or even cause mental illness (with thanks to Geds for recommending them). A post at barkingreed which contains a wonderful, beautiful Wendell Berry poem, from which I selected my new "about me" quotation. It is a lengthy quote: originally I was torn between either the first two sentences or the last three. Since I think it is heinous, outside of strict academic writing, to post bits of a poem with "[...]" for a piece cut out, I included the whole section. And am quite pleased with it.
On with the post.
Earlier today Dave was asking me, "what do those letters in your blog subtitle stand for?" My answer--really the only sensible answer--is that "they are Discordian mumbo-jumbo which mean whatever a given individual takes them to mean, which more or less means that they mean nothing." More nothing, if one takes them to mean nothing, and less nothing if one takes them to mean something.
I did not go on to tell him that technically, they stand for "Paratheoanametamystikhood Of Eris Esoteric" and "Keeper of the Sacred Chao" (Chao is pronounced cow), respectively. I was quite pleased with myself for my restraint. Which of course now I have ruined, by going on to explain it anyway, in the less-useful literal way rather than the more-useful roundabout one. Alas.
On a whim arising from this exchange, I Googled Zarathud a few minutes ago and found that today is actually the holyday of Zarathud, patron saint of the season of Bureaucracy! Which, again, means more or less nothing. There are of course no hints anywhere as to how a dutiful student of a given Apostle is to celebrate said Apostle's day: this is only right and proper. My own view is that a ritual has value to oneself in direct proportion to the degree of participation one exerted in the design and execution of said ritual. By this measure, a ritual designed entirely by oneself but performed entirely by another is of the same value as a ritual designed entirely by another but peformed by oneself.
I feel I must mention a very important caveat, however. The "design" of a ritual includes not only the external components--words, gestures, costumes, props etc.--but also the psychological and emotional machinery by which one invests those components with the energy of one's will. So let's say that the outward plan for carrying out a ritual, as well as the symbol set in which it is framed, were authored by others. If a dutiful student were to design the whole internal part of this ritual for themselves and then perform the ritual themselves, it would have at least three-quarters as much value as a ritual of comparable potency which was that person's own creation from beginning to end.
When I use the word ritual above, the definition I have in mind is #8 on the dictionary.com list: "any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner." Yes, this can and does include rituals performed in a religious context. However, my remarks are meant to refer to ritual in the broadest possible sense, as it is my personal belief that all things are holy. Not all actions, thoughts or ideas are holy, but all things are holy. And persons are also things and thus holy in essence, though persons, by the power vested in them, may generate unholy actions and ideas from time to time.
Questions such as "what kind of 'value' should I take this to mean?" and "how am I meant to compare the 'potency' of one ritual to that of another?" are beyond my expertise to answer. If you are interested in how I came up with my own usable-but-incomplete answers to those questions, the story is almost certain to be longer than you would enjoy reading. Therefore I will not explore these matters further at the moment. For a similar reason I also will not, just now, undertake to answer the question "what do you mean by 'holy'?"
Instead, I will move on to another subject. No one is going to ask me about it, but I have thought about it carefully and have an answer prepared. Question in next paragraph, answer in the following paragraph, discussion to follow.
A quick read-about of the Discordian Saints, plus a more than passing acquaintance with yours truly, would seem to make it clear that the saint whose personality I most resemble is Sri Syadasti. This is the patron of the season of Confusion, whose full name is said to translate, "All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense." The impression I have of myself is that I confuse as I breathe--constantly, with little effort and only occasional awareness. Confusion is natural and comfortable to me. It is my native habitat, the territory from which many of my perspectives on life and humanity arose.
Therefore it would be of very little use to me to consider myself a student of Sri Syadasti. We do not take the name of a religion in order to remain as we are. We take such names into our identities in order to become what we yearn to be. We do not, unless we are lazy to a truly unholy degree, become students of those who would teach us the things we already know.
One impression I have of the five seasons*, the five apostles**, the five elements***, etc., is that they are symbolic depictions of how human beings react to change. Let me give you as quick rundown using the seasons:
1. Chaos. "This new thing is totally cool. It's, like, awesome. Everyone should have some. Here, try it. No, seriously! C'mooon, it'll be fun. Please? Just listen to me tell you about this thing for just a sec--"
2. Discord. "Hey, this is MY thing! UR DOIN IT WRONG! No one ever said there was more than one side to this thing, so my side is the only correct one! Gyaah!"
3. Confusion. "Wait, this thing isn't just your thing and my thing. It's, like, like a lot of different things. There's more to this thing than meets the eye, man. It's almost like it's a thing, but it's really not a thing, or else it is but not exactly, and it's all mysterious, or something..."
4. Bureaucracy. "This thing is a thing in the following ways. (List appended.) The number of ways may be subject to change without notice in the following circumstances, known and unknown. (See chart.) Persons with appropriate qualifications may pronounce expert opinions regarding the thingness of stuff when their opinion is called for, and even though experts disagree regarding which experts are experts, their opinions shall be recorded as fact."
5. Aftermath. "The experts have all become liars. The stuff doesn't really involve things anymore. The mysteries became puzzles whose answers some jerk scrawled in pen all over the front of the workbook. And their spelling was bad, so the answers didn't even make sense. This sucks. I'm outta here."
The idea I have about this is, if one is aware that this series of states is going to happen, one has a better chance to adequately prepare for them.
It is much like Douglas Adams' description of astrology. Picture the universe as a piece of blank paper with very slight grooves in its surface. These grooves are largely invisible to the naked eye, and to feel them with a fingertip would crinkle the paper and alter them. But if you sprinkle sand or iron filings or pepper on the paper and give it a little shake, the granules will settle into the grooves, making them visible. So if the universe is the paper, then the symbol set one chooses is the granulated substance. And the little shake is the application of thought and effort.
Thus, when I sprinkled the abovementioned symbol set and gave it that shake, a useful thought occurred to me. Since my experience of life in general tended to be characterized by one phase of the process more than any of the others--namely Confusion--it would be most beneficial for me to focus my efforts on learning the lessons of the next phase--namely Bureaucracy.
Of course, using different "granulated substances" produce different ways of describing the subjective life experiences I am trying to understand. One of the things I think it is important to be able to do is to filter the same data through many different symbol sets, many different perspectives. I'm pretty confident this skill is one of the things Discordians are rather encouraged to do, although given the nature of Discordianism, it isn't really possible to be certain.
Now, if one can enter into a given perspective with complete sincerity--believe in its principles and precepts honestly and with unambiguous favor--then the information one gets from its use will be of a much, much higher quality. (See the discussion of rituals above for my reasoning on this point.) This holds true, albeit in a lesser degree, even if the belief is entered into temporarily and for the sake of argument. Any way you go about it, the more of yourself you can put into a belief system, the more its recommendations for your life will prove useful and have personal significance for you. The more you are able believe, the better will be the results you get from believing.
So, by putting as much of myself as possible into a given filter while I am using it, I get the best results. The more filters I am able to use, the more information I can get on a particular issue.
And in my view, the best course of action on any given issue is an action which is recommended by every filter I am able to use. That happens when, no matter which perspective, which set of beliefs I enter into, a particular choice is always among those recommended. This is the situation I refer to as "turtles all the way down."
Edward Current, an extremely sarcastic and parodic fellow, has a video entitled "I've converted to every religion (just in case)". He came up with it as a way to mock Pascal's wager. But I would do it, I swear to dog I would, in all seriousness, just for the lovely lovely information. Mmm...information. And the turtles, oh yes. The pretty happy turtles, of whom there are more every time I turn around and all of whom say they will be my friends. Just like the rocks on the beaches of Santraginus V! My capacity for belief is getting bigger all the time, always just barely behind my capacity to suspend disbelief and just barely ahead of my capacity for disbelief. Someday, if these trends continue, someday I do so hope I can give even the mighty Gödel's theorem a run for its money.
:D
------------------
* Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy, Aftermath.
** Hung Mung, Dr. Van Van Mojo / Patamunzo Lingananda, Sri Syadasti, Zarathud, Malaclypse the Elder.
*** Sweet, Boom, Pungent, Prickle, Orange -- or as they are known in the Kingdom of Loathing, Sleaze, Hot, Stench, Cold and Spooky.
On with the post.
Earlier today Dave was asking me, "what do those letters in your blog subtitle stand for?" My answer--really the only sensible answer--is that "they are Discordian mumbo-jumbo which mean whatever a given individual takes them to mean, which more or less means that they mean nothing." More nothing, if one takes them to mean nothing, and less nothing if one takes them to mean something.
I did not go on to tell him that technically, they stand for "Paratheoanametamystikhood Of Eris Esoteric" and "Keeper of the Sacred Chao" (Chao is pronounced cow), respectively. I was quite pleased with myself for my restraint. Which of course now I have ruined, by going on to explain it anyway, in the less-useful literal way rather than the more-useful roundabout one. Alas.
On a whim arising from this exchange, I Googled Zarathud a few minutes ago and found that today is actually the holyday of Zarathud, patron saint of the season of Bureaucracy! Which, again, means more or less nothing. There are of course no hints anywhere as to how a dutiful student of a given Apostle is to celebrate said Apostle's day: this is only right and proper. My own view is that a ritual has value to oneself in direct proportion to the degree of participation one exerted in the design and execution of said ritual. By this measure, a ritual designed entirely by oneself but performed entirely by another is of the same value as a ritual designed entirely by another but peformed by oneself.
I feel I must mention a very important caveat, however. The "design" of a ritual includes not only the external components--words, gestures, costumes, props etc.--but also the psychological and emotional machinery by which one invests those components with the energy of one's will. So let's say that the outward plan for carrying out a ritual, as well as the symbol set in which it is framed, were authored by others. If a dutiful student were to design the whole internal part of this ritual for themselves and then perform the ritual themselves, it would have at least three-quarters as much value as a ritual of comparable potency which was that person's own creation from beginning to end.
When I use the word ritual above, the definition I have in mind is #8 on the dictionary.com list: "any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner." Yes, this can and does include rituals performed in a religious context. However, my remarks are meant to refer to ritual in the broadest possible sense, as it is my personal belief that all things are holy. Not all actions, thoughts or ideas are holy, but all things are holy. And persons are also things and thus holy in essence, though persons, by the power vested in them, may generate unholy actions and ideas from time to time.
Questions such as "what kind of 'value' should I take this to mean?" and "how am I meant to compare the 'potency' of one ritual to that of another?" are beyond my expertise to answer. If you are interested in how I came up with my own usable-but-incomplete answers to those questions, the story is almost certain to be longer than you would enjoy reading. Therefore I will not explore these matters further at the moment. For a similar reason I also will not, just now, undertake to answer the question "what do you mean by 'holy'?"
Instead, I will move on to another subject. No one is going to ask me about it, but I have thought about it carefully and have an answer prepared. Question in next paragraph, answer in the following paragraph, discussion to follow.
A quick read-about of the Discordian Saints, plus a more than passing acquaintance with yours truly, would seem to make it clear that the saint whose personality I most resemble is Sri Syadasti. This is the patron of the season of Confusion, whose full name is said to translate, "All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense." The impression I have of myself is that I confuse as I breathe--constantly, with little effort and only occasional awareness. Confusion is natural and comfortable to me. It is my native habitat, the territory from which many of my perspectives on life and humanity arose.
Therefore it would be of very little use to me to consider myself a student of Sri Syadasti. We do not take the name of a religion in order to remain as we are. We take such names into our identities in order to become what we yearn to be. We do not, unless we are lazy to a truly unholy degree, become students of those who would teach us the things we already know.
One impression I have of the five seasons*, the five apostles**, the five elements***, etc., is that they are symbolic depictions of how human beings react to change. Let me give you as quick rundown using the seasons:
1. Chaos. "This new thing is totally cool. It's, like, awesome. Everyone should have some. Here, try it. No, seriously! C'mooon, it'll be fun. Please? Just listen to me tell you about this thing for just a sec--"
2. Discord. "Hey, this is MY thing! UR DOIN IT WRONG! No one ever said there was more than one side to this thing, so my side is the only correct one! Gyaah!"
3. Confusion. "Wait, this thing isn't just your thing and my thing. It's, like, like a lot of different things. There's more to this thing than meets the eye, man. It's almost like it's a thing, but it's really not a thing, or else it is but not exactly, and it's all mysterious, or something..."
4. Bureaucracy. "This thing is a thing in the following ways. (List appended.) The number of ways may be subject to change without notice in the following circumstances, known and unknown. (See chart.) Persons with appropriate qualifications may pronounce expert opinions regarding the thingness of stuff when their opinion is called for, and even though experts disagree regarding which experts are experts, their opinions shall be recorded as fact."
5. Aftermath. "The experts have all become liars. The stuff doesn't really involve things anymore. The mysteries became puzzles whose answers some jerk scrawled in pen all over the front of the workbook. And their spelling was bad, so the answers didn't even make sense. This sucks. I'm outta here."
The idea I have about this is, if one is aware that this series of states is going to happen, one has a better chance to adequately prepare for them.
It is much like Douglas Adams' description of astrology. Picture the universe as a piece of blank paper with very slight grooves in its surface. These grooves are largely invisible to the naked eye, and to feel them with a fingertip would crinkle the paper and alter them. But if you sprinkle sand or iron filings or pepper on the paper and give it a little shake, the granules will settle into the grooves, making them visible. So if the universe is the paper, then the symbol set one chooses is the granulated substance. And the little shake is the application of thought and effort.
Thus, when I sprinkled the abovementioned symbol set and gave it that shake, a useful thought occurred to me. Since my experience of life in general tended to be characterized by one phase of the process more than any of the others--namely Confusion--it would be most beneficial for me to focus my efforts on learning the lessons of the next phase--namely Bureaucracy.
Of course, using different "granulated substances" produce different ways of describing the subjective life experiences I am trying to understand. One of the things I think it is important to be able to do is to filter the same data through many different symbol sets, many different perspectives. I'm pretty confident this skill is one of the things Discordians are rather encouraged to do, although given the nature of Discordianism, it isn't really possible to be certain.
Now, if one can enter into a given perspective with complete sincerity--believe in its principles and precepts honestly and with unambiguous favor--then the information one gets from its use will be of a much, much higher quality. (See the discussion of rituals above for my reasoning on this point.) This holds true, albeit in a lesser degree, even if the belief is entered into temporarily and for the sake of argument. Any way you go about it, the more of yourself you can put into a belief system, the more its recommendations for your life will prove useful and have personal significance for you. The more you are able believe, the better will be the results you get from believing.
So, by putting as much of myself as possible into a given filter while I am using it, I get the best results. The more filters I am able to use, the more information I can get on a particular issue.
And in my view, the best course of action on any given issue is an action which is recommended by every filter I am able to use. That happens when, no matter which perspective, which set of beliefs I enter into, a particular choice is always among those recommended. This is the situation I refer to as "turtles all the way down."
Edward Current, an extremely sarcastic and parodic fellow, has a video entitled "I've converted to every religion (just in case)". He came up with it as a way to mock Pascal's wager. But I would do it, I swear to dog I would, in all seriousness, just for the lovely lovely information. Mmm...information. And the turtles, oh yes. The pretty happy turtles, of whom there are more every time I turn around and all of whom say they will be my friends. Just like the rocks on the beaches of Santraginus V! My capacity for belief is getting bigger all the time, always just barely behind my capacity to suspend disbelief and just barely ahead of my capacity for disbelief. Someday, if these trends continue, someday I do so hope I can give even the mighty Gödel's theorem a run for its money.
:D
------------------
* Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy, Aftermath.
** Hung Mung, Dr. Van Van Mojo / Patamunzo Lingananda, Sri Syadasti, Zarathud, Malaclypse the Elder.
*** Sweet, Boom, Pungent, Prickle, Orange -- or as they are known in the Kingdom of Loathing, Sleaze, Hot, Stench, Cold and Spooky.
dude. seriously. cool.
Okay, okay, I know I'm posting like some kind of a...a thing that posts way too much today.
Partly it's because I will, as of Friday, almost certainly be employed at Dominick's. I've never worked in a deli before! And as of next Wednesday, I may very well be employed at an outbound call center. It involves reading from a script, getting stockholders to cast their proxy votes. If I am lucky, I will be able to simultaneously surf the internet, at least for KoL purposes. If not I will at least get to experience the Zen of scripted phone conversation.
But a few posts ago, my girl kisekileia suggested some of my issues seem to match up with Asperger's Syndrome. As a smart lady and an Aspie herself (is that one of those things you can say about other people? or only okay if you're a member of the category?) her suggestion carries weight with me. So I looked into it.
This article over at the Autism Society of America is a good introduction.
But what really piqued my interest was this page, which has diagnostic criteria. I'm'a copy-paste Gillberg's criteria, and bold those things which either do apply to me, or definitely did when I was a kid, before I started to do serious overhaul of how I interacted with people.
The "imposition of routines and interests" thing still counts, I think, even though which routines and interests I focused on would change from time to time. Obviously I don't know if my motor skills were up to developmental par. On the other hand, I've always been kind of bad at sports, or anything that required non-choreographed coordinated movements.
Yeah, I know, it's dangerous to self-diagnose anything. Especially neuropsychological stuff, where a host of different symptoms can be readily applied to different disorders. And the psychologists I've had over the years never brought this up. On the other hand, since most of the criteria involve social interactions with peers, they wouldn't have really had a chance to observe it, and would have had to rely on the information I gave them.
It would be nice, though, to be able to point to some faulty brain wiring as one of several causes for the social awkwardness that caused me so much trouble. Very nice indeed. After the hard part's over, too, so I'm in much less danger of getting a complex about it.
Partly it's because I will, as of Friday, almost certainly be employed at Dominick's. I've never worked in a deli before! And as of next Wednesday, I may very well be employed at an outbound call center. It involves reading from a script, getting stockholders to cast their proxy votes. If I am lucky, I will be able to simultaneously surf the internet, at least for KoL purposes. If not I will at least get to experience the Zen of scripted phone conversation.
But a few posts ago, my girl kisekileia suggested some of my issues seem to match up with Asperger's Syndrome. As a smart lady and an Aspie herself (is that one of those things you can say about other people? or only okay if you're a member of the category?) her suggestion carries weight with me. So I looked into it.
This article over at the Autism Society of America is a good introduction.
But what really piqued my interest was this page, which has diagnostic criteria. I'm'a copy-paste Gillberg's criteria, and bold those things which either do apply to me, or definitely did when I was a kid, before I started to do serious overhaul of how I interacted with people.
1.Severe impairment in reciprocal social interaction
(at least two of the following)
(a) inability to interact with peers
(b) lack of desire to interact with peers
(c) lack of appreciation of social cues
(d) socially and emotionally inappropriate behavior
2.All-absorbing narrow interest
(at least one of the following)
(a) exclusion of other activities
(b) repetitive adherence
(c) more rote than meaning
3.Imposition of routines and interests
(at least one of the following)
(a) on self, in aspects of life
(b) on others
4.Speech and language problems
(at least three of the following)
(a) delayed development
(b) superficially perfect expressive language
(c) formal, pedantic language
(d) odd prosody, peculiar voice characteristics
(e) impairment of comprehension including misinterpretations of literal/implied meanings
5.Non-verbal communication problems
(at least one of the following)
(a) limited use of gestures
(b) clumsy/gauche body language
(c) limited facial expression
(d) inappropriate expression
(e) peculiar, stiff gaze
6.Motor clumsiness: poor performance on neurodevelopmental examination
(All six criteria must be met for confirmation of diagnosis.)
The "imposition of routines and interests" thing still counts, I think, even though which routines and interests I focused on would change from time to time. Obviously I don't know if my motor skills were up to developmental par. On the other hand, I've always been kind of bad at sports, or anything that required non-choreographed coordinated movements.
Yeah, I know, it's dangerous to self-diagnose anything. Especially neuropsychological stuff, where a host of different symptoms can be readily applied to different disorders. And the psychologists I've had over the years never brought this up. On the other hand, since most of the criteria involve social interactions with peers, they wouldn't have really had a chance to observe it, and would have had to rely on the information I gave them.
It would be nice, though, to be able to point to some faulty brain wiring as one of several causes for the social awkwardness that caused me so much trouble. Very nice indeed. After the hard part's over, too, so I'm in much less danger of getting a complex about it.
mister fox, what time is it?
What do those women expect? When you sign a contract with Fox, you know you're gonna be betrayed and humiliated.
~Bart Simpson
Ah, so many of the blogs I follow seem to be taking time to look at complex social and political issues. Things larger than themselves. I salute them for it. But as for me and my blog, I will keep it up with the diary entries. Because that's what I need it for right now.
Today's topics: job search, money stuff, psych stuff, and American Idol.
Still applying for jobs over the internet. Not with the same manic intensity as in the first few days, but I've kept it up and hopefully will stay in the habit this time. There's a snag with my state of Illinois applications, though, which may delay my ability to be hired by the state. Apparently when I was filling out my online form, I checked "Yes" for "did you graduate" but "No" for "do you have a degree." This was because of my apparently not-uncommon situation: I've earned enough credit hours to be awarded a degree, but it can't be released to me because of an unpaid institutional loan. The state worker who emailed me said I need to go back and check "No" on both questions. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure this means I'll have to wait thirty days to re-apply with the corrected version of my application. Arrrgh. Such are the Catch-22s of modern poverty. Have to get the job to be able to afford to wait long enough to get the job. Have to get the job to pay for the loan to get the degree which will get me the job. Et cetera.
Next week, Dave and I will be heading over the the DHS for our appointment where they determine if, and how much, we can get in terms of welfare and food stamps. Props to Dave for taking the initiative and filling out the online application for us. We should have done this months ago. Apparently none of the aid they give you can be used to pay rent, which is a bummer. Looks like we'll still be going through the apartment to find things to sell. But if I'm not spending my precious, precious unemployment bucks on, say, utility bills and groceries, that leaves more to pay rent. Not enough to catch up, but enough to remain at the same level of behind-ness.
Due to various reasons, the two of us are now on the same meds. I'm finishing up week two; he's working up to a full dose while transitioning off the first one. With pretty much the full dosage in my bloodstream, I'm feeling more like my normal self. And the early side effects have pretty much cleared up, which is good.
On a possibly related note, we've both been having vivid, complex dreams, and I want to write down a couple of mine. I would log them in detail, but they're kind of...obvious. So I'll summarize. There was one where, at the beginning, a sort of evil shadow dog/seal type thing (like a Kingdom of Loathing seal, only in 3D) was standing in front of me, and every time I moved it would sidle forward and bite me. It really hurt. Later, I was wandering around through various buildings. In each one, at some point I'd turn a corner and there'd be a closed metal gate with a shadowy monster behind it. It would scare me, but it'd be behind the gate, so I could keep going. Basically this one is all about how deep down, I'm convinced Bad Things is definitely about to happen, and that fear is repeatedly hurting me and stopping me from moving forward. But on a conscious level I'm able to stop myself from being constantly aware of it.
Then I had one, last sleeptime, where I tried to buy some iced coffee and a chocolate-covered strawberry, but the strawberry (from which the chocolate had somehow fallen off) was super expensive and more than I had in my account. When my debit card was declined, the card reader shredded it. I had to leave the coffee and the strawberry behind, but I kept casting longing looks at the coffee over my shoulder on my way out. Needless to say I made myself coffee as soon as I got up. Yay coffee.
Today and tomorrow are registration for American Idol, and auditions are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Registration and auditions are all being held at the United Center. Which I can see from my apartment. It is literally walking distance. Which is the only distance that I am currently able to afford to go, at least for any non-job-search-related reason.
But my feelings are profoundly mixed. I don't really like or enjoy the show; I just follow along with it while Dave watches it. Which has given me a lot of time to think out all the Boolean algebra in my mind. But I've never really written it down, so here goes.
If I don't get selected for the first round, I have to live with the letdown of having my voice and persona judged unmarketable by four highly famous professionals, and the frustration of having wasted two days of my life standing in lines. That's actually not so bad; I could even work out the self-esteem thing in therapy.
But if I do get selected for the first round, I'd have to go to Hollywood. Since the initial Hollywood rounds, before America gets to vote, are not done live, I have no idea if this would be an immediate trip or something that happens this fall. Either way is really bad. If I leave now, I'm not here looking for a job, applying for welfare, and selling off my stuff to try and catch up on rent. Meaning we'll lose the apartment, and Dave and our families and friends will have to move our stuff and our cat and put it somewhere while I'm off in California singing covers with a bunch of crazy teens. If I leave in the fall, in order to do it I'll have to likely quit a job that I've had for at most a couple of months and that I desperately need to keep. Because, c'mon, what's Fox going to do, pay my rent for me? Give those of my peeps who can leave Chicago an apartment in Hollywood so they can be in my audiences? Not for the friggin' first round.
So, okay. Best case scenario. I get selected for the first round, we somehow in an orderly fashion move everything and everybody out of this apartment and that all works. I make it through group week somehow, and get to the part where America gets to vote. You know what that means? That means being part of the Idol "family." For starters, that means being contractually obligated to show up to any Idol-related event at which they want X-place contestants to show up. Having all the fame and none of the money, if I'm one of the early eliminations. Finishing anywhere in the top ten means having to be in the Idol tour next summer, at minimum. In any case it means losing my anonymity everywhere except on the internet. And I like anonymity! A lot!
The good part, the only real good part about it, would be getting a recording contract and getting to record my own stuff on somebody else's nickel, with the help of a professional band. Sure, I'd be paying for it by giving away a lot of my privacy, by giving control over the use of my face and voice and big chunks of my time to Fox. But it's not like I'd be taking all that time away from a lucrative career and a house with a mortgage on it and a bunch of babies. Just people I would really, really miss and who would miss me. And I'd be putting my geeky self out on television where, if I make a fool of myself, it'd be a matter of public record. And anyone who knows me knows I have a knack for making a fool of myself.
Those are all my doubts and misgivings. They are rational and valid and all of that stuff.
But as people close to me have pointed out repeatedly, I might as well go and try. If I don't, I'll regret it, and wonder what might have been. So I'm pulling yet another all-nighter--my second of the week!--so I can go stand in line for when registration opens. Probably I'll head over there in a couple of hours. It's been rainy and chilly tonight, so only the die-hards will be out in front of me. Hopefully I'll be awake enough to read all the fine print before I sign anything.
I don't know whether or not I want anybody to wish me luck, even. I just hope that whatever happens, I'll be able to appreciate the irony.
~Bart Simpson
Ah, so many of the blogs I follow seem to be taking time to look at complex social and political issues. Things larger than themselves. I salute them for it. But as for me and my blog, I will keep it up with the diary entries. Because that's what I need it for right now.
Today's topics: job search, money stuff, psych stuff, and American Idol.
Still applying for jobs over the internet. Not with the same manic intensity as in the first few days, but I've kept it up and hopefully will stay in the habit this time. There's a snag with my state of Illinois applications, though, which may delay my ability to be hired by the state. Apparently when I was filling out my online form, I checked "Yes" for "did you graduate" but "No" for "do you have a degree." This was because of my apparently not-uncommon situation: I've earned enough credit hours to be awarded a degree, but it can't be released to me because of an unpaid institutional loan. The state worker who emailed me said I need to go back and check "No" on both questions. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure this means I'll have to wait thirty days to re-apply with the corrected version of my application. Arrrgh. Such are the Catch-22s of modern poverty. Have to get the job to be able to afford to wait long enough to get the job. Have to get the job to pay for the loan to get the degree which will get me the job. Et cetera.
Next week, Dave and I will be heading over the the DHS for our appointment where they determine if, and how much, we can get in terms of welfare and food stamps. Props to Dave for taking the initiative and filling out the online application for us. We should have done this months ago. Apparently none of the aid they give you can be used to pay rent, which is a bummer. Looks like we'll still be going through the apartment to find things to sell. But if I'm not spending my precious, precious unemployment bucks on, say, utility bills and groceries, that leaves more to pay rent. Not enough to catch up, but enough to remain at the same level of behind-ness.
Due to various reasons, the two of us are now on the same meds. I'm finishing up week two; he's working up to a full dose while transitioning off the first one. With pretty much the full dosage in my bloodstream, I'm feeling more like my normal self. And the early side effects have pretty much cleared up, which is good.
On a possibly related note, we've both been having vivid, complex dreams, and I want to write down a couple of mine. I would log them in detail, but they're kind of...obvious. So I'll summarize. There was one where, at the beginning, a sort of evil shadow dog/seal type thing (like a Kingdom of Loathing seal, only in 3D) was standing in front of me, and every time I moved it would sidle forward and bite me. It really hurt. Later, I was wandering around through various buildings. In each one, at some point I'd turn a corner and there'd be a closed metal gate with a shadowy monster behind it. It would scare me, but it'd be behind the gate, so I could keep going. Basically this one is all about how deep down, I'm convinced Bad Things is definitely about to happen, and that fear is repeatedly hurting me and stopping me from moving forward. But on a conscious level I'm able to stop myself from being constantly aware of it.
Then I had one, last sleeptime, where I tried to buy some iced coffee and a chocolate-covered strawberry, but the strawberry (from which the chocolate had somehow fallen off) was super expensive and more than I had in my account. When my debit card was declined, the card reader shredded it. I had to leave the coffee and the strawberry behind, but I kept casting longing looks at the coffee over my shoulder on my way out. Needless to say I made myself coffee as soon as I got up. Yay coffee.
Today and tomorrow are registration for American Idol, and auditions are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Registration and auditions are all being held at the United Center. Which I can see from my apartment. It is literally walking distance. Which is the only distance that I am currently able to afford to go, at least for any non-job-search-related reason.
But my feelings are profoundly mixed. I don't really like or enjoy the show; I just follow along with it while Dave watches it. Which has given me a lot of time to think out all the Boolean algebra in my mind. But I've never really written it down, so here goes.
If I don't get selected for the first round, I have to live with the letdown of having my voice and persona judged unmarketable by four highly famous professionals, and the frustration of having wasted two days of my life standing in lines. That's actually not so bad; I could even work out the self-esteem thing in therapy.
But if I do get selected for the first round, I'd have to go to Hollywood. Since the initial Hollywood rounds, before America gets to vote, are not done live, I have no idea if this would be an immediate trip or something that happens this fall. Either way is really bad. If I leave now, I'm not here looking for a job, applying for welfare, and selling off my stuff to try and catch up on rent. Meaning we'll lose the apartment, and Dave and our families and friends will have to move our stuff and our cat and put it somewhere while I'm off in California singing covers with a bunch of crazy teens. If I leave in the fall, in order to do it I'll have to likely quit a job that I've had for at most a couple of months and that I desperately need to keep. Because, c'mon, what's Fox going to do, pay my rent for me? Give those of my peeps who can leave Chicago an apartment in Hollywood so they can be in my audiences? Not for the friggin' first round.
So, okay. Best case scenario. I get selected for the first round, we somehow in an orderly fashion move everything and everybody out of this apartment and that all works. I make it through group week somehow, and get to the part where America gets to vote. You know what that means? That means being part of the Idol "family." For starters, that means being contractually obligated to show up to any Idol-related event at which they want X-place contestants to show up. Having all the fame and none of the money, if I'm one of the early eliminations. Finishing anywhere in the top ten means having to be in the Idol tour next summer, at minimum. In any case it means losing my anonymity everywhere except on the internet. And I like anonymity! A lot!
The good part, the only real good part about it, would be getting a recording contract and getting to record my own stuff on somebody else's nickel, with the help of a professional band. Sure, I'd be paying for it by giving away a lot of my privacy, by giving control over the use of my face and voice and big chunks of my time to Fox. But it's not like I'd be taking all that time away from a lucrative career and a house with a mortgage on it and a bunch of babies. Just people I would really, really miss and who would miss me. And I'd be putting my geeky self out on television where, if I make a fool of myself, it'd be a matter of public record. And anyone who knows me knows I have a knack for making a fool of myself.
Those are all my doubts and misgivings. They are rational and valid and all of that stuff.
But as people close to me have pointed out repeatedly, I might as well go and try. If I don't, I'll regret it, and wonder what might have been. So I'm pulling yet another all-nighter--my second of the week!--so I can go stand in line for when registration opens. Probably I'll head over there in a couple of hours. It's been rainy and chilly tonight, so only the die-hards will be out in front of me. Hopefully I'll be awake enough to read all the fine print before I sign anything.
I don't know whether or not I want anybody to wish me luck, even. I just hope that whatever happens, I'll be able to appreciate the irony.
Futility Friday vol. 5: This post is not about sports
Job search update.
I've now taken 3 civil service exams, and gotten As on them. Next week I shall go back to the Thompson Center and take more. I've also started applying for things online again, partially filled out (but did not hand in) applications for local Starbucks' and greasy spoon, and today completely overhauled my resume. It is now much more detailed and hopefully enticing to recruiters. Intellectually I think I should be fuming, as Local H put it:
"you wanna jerk me around
with my resume around my neck?"
However, I know it's largely my own hole that I dug, by spending all those months in what was, but did not always feel like, a depressive funk. Hedonism in the microcosm can mask big-picture problems. I think the decision to get therapy, on the one hand, and the decision to get medicated on the other, were a my way of giving myself a wake-up call.
When the shrink gave me my meds she said the standard warning: short-term studies have found that all antidepressants may increase the risk of suicide. And I said, ah yes, I've read about these studies. (Looked around on Curator's blog for a bit, but couldn't find the link I was thinking of. If I come across it later I'll update the post!) Essentially, sometimes a person has been so depressed for so long that they are committed to the idea of killing themselves, but are so paralyzed by their depression that they can't summon up the will to act on their intent. So such a person gets meds, feels the temporary relief of their lethargy, and finds themselves finally able to do it. It's a sad thought, wondering how many people in that situation might have experienced even greater relief, changed their minds, and decided to go on living, if they'd waited awhile longer.
I was really glad I'd had occasion to remember the idea, however. Maybe it's placebo effect, maybe my system's just really sensitive to new chemicals--I'm not sure. Maybe it was the phone conversation I had with my landlord on Tuesday. In any event, three things have been happening over the past couple of days:
1. My stomach is all acid-refluxy like it hasn't been since high school. (A side effect of which I was advised.)
2. Falling asleep is noticeably less easy. (Another expected side effect.)
3. I feel completely terrified about my job and money situation. Filled with panic. Like I haven't been since high school.
Then, instead of going into the old panic feedback loop--panicking about panicking about panicking--I remembered the above sad factoid. And I thought, "Aha! This is the feeling the depression was preventing me from feeling!" Knowing what it was did not automatically make it fixed, of course.
But it did give me a starting point from which to figure out what I could do about it. Panic does two things: it revs up and it paralyzes. The useful and the destructive aspects of fear, both at the same time. Way I see it, the important thing is to find some way to deal with the emotional paralysis so that all that spicy fear energy can be put to use.
To the extent I'm able to accomplish this, every time I start to worry, I do something. Something constructive. If I do enough of those things, not only will it get easier to make the response into a habit, it might eventually resolve some of the problems that are making me scared in the first place.
Now here are a couple of fun quotes!
' Roose still tries to pray every day. He says the act of prayer changes him, referring to the writings of Christian author Oswald Chambers."He said that it's not so much that prayer changes things as that prayer changes me — and then I change things[.]" '
--Undercover at an Evangelical University, an interview with author Kevin Roose (thanks to kisekileia for the link!)
' Even a slight ability to change oneself is more valuable than any power over the external universe. '
--Liber MMM, Peter Carroll
(And a postscript. Thanks to a very cool friend of Paula's who's a whiz at tinkering with computers, I has the laptop back. Though he recommended some steps to get the keyboard back to 100%, I haven't yet taken them. All this to say, this entire post was written without functioning "n" or "b" keys. Instead, I copied "nb", and whenever I need one of those two letters, I hit ctrl-v and erase the one I'm not using. I'm not sure why I felt the need to explain this to you; it was kind of a dumb thing to do. Especially since Dave's computer, right over there, has a fully functioning keyboard. And "n" is the second most common letter in the English language. I have my suspicions. Stupid bad habits.)
I've now taken 3 civil service exams, and gotten As on them. Next week I shall go back to the Thompson Center and take more. I've also started applying for things online again, partially filled out (but did not hand in) applications for local Starbucks' and greasy spoon, and today completely overhauled my resume. It is now much more detailed and hopefully enticing to recruiters. Intellectually I think I should be fuming, as Local H put it:
"you wanna jerk me around
with my resume around my neck?"
However, I know it's largely my own hole that I dug, by spending all those months in what was, but did not always feel like, a depressive funk. Hedonism in the microcosm can mask big-picture problems. I think the decision to get therapy, on the one hand, and the decision to get medicated on the other, were a my way of giving myself a wake-up call.
When the shrink gave me my meds she said the standard warning: short-term studies have found that all antidepressants may increase the risk of suicide. And I said, ah yes, I've read about these studies. (Looked around on Curator's blog for a bit, but couldn't find the link I was thinking of. If I come across it later I'll update the post!) Essentially, sometimes a person has been so depressed for so long that they are committed to the idea of killing themselves, but are so paralyzed by their depression that they can't summon up the will to act on their intent. So such a person gets meds, feels the temporary relief of their lethargy, and finds themselves finally able to do it. It's a sad thought, wondering how many people in that situation might have experienced even greater relief, changed their minds, and decided to go on living, if they'd waited awhile longer.
I was really glad I'd had occasion to remember the idea, however. Maybe it's placebo effect, maybe my system's just really sensitive to new chemicals--I'm not sure. Maybe it was the phone conversation I had with my landlord on Tuesday. In any event, three things have been happening over the past couple of days:
1. My stomach is all acid-refluxy like it hasn't been since high school. (A side effect of which I was advised.)
2. Falling asleep is noticeably less easy. (Another expected side effect.)
3. I feel completely terrified about my job and money situation. Filled with panic. Like I haven't been since high school.
Then, instead of going into the old panic feedback loop--panicking about panicking about panicking--I remembered the above sad factoid. And I thought, "Aha! This is the feeling the depression was preventing me from feeling!" Knowing what it was did not automatically make it fixed, of course.
But it did give me a starting point from which to figure out what I could do about it. Panic does two things: it revs up and it paralyzes. The useful and the destructive aspects of fear, both at the same time. Way I see it, the important thing is to find some way to deal with the emotional paralysis so that all that spicy fear energy can be put to use.
To the extent I'm able to accomplish this, every time I start to worry, I do something. Something constructive. If I do enough of those things, not only will it get easier to make the response into a habit, it might eventually resolve some of the problems that are making me scared in the first place.
Now here are a couple of fun quotes!
' Roose still tries to pray every day. He says the act of prayer changes him, referring to the writings of Christian author Oswald Chambers."He said that it's not so much that prayer changes things as that prayer changes me — and then I change things[.]" '
--Undercover at an Evangelical University, an interview with author Kevin Roose (thanks to kisekileia for the link!)
' Even a slight ability to change oneself is more valuable than any power over the external universe. '
--Liber MMM, Peter Carroll
(And a postscript. Thanks to a very cool friend of Paula's who's a whiz at tinkering with computers, I has the laptop back. Though he recommended some steps to get the keyboard back to 100%, I haven't yet taken them. All this to say, this entire post was written without functioning "n" or "b" keys. Instead, I copied "nb", and whenever I need one of those two letters, I hit ctrl-v and erase the one I'm not using. I'm not sure why I felt the need to explain this to you; it was kind of a dumb thing to do. Especially since Dave's computer, right over there, has a fully functioning keyboard. And "n" is the second most common letter in the English language. I have my suspicions. Stupid bad habits.)
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