Theatre d'Absurditie

     So the bomb scares during this past spring semester  at the University of Pittsburgh, one of my alma maters, were primarily generated by a Scottish separatist living in Ireland. He is not a young man, and he is in a wheelchair, and he has a history of bomb scares, primarily in England. That reads like the script of a dark comedy, very dark, for an indie movie that is secretly trying to depict absurdity. It seems like postmodernism come home to roost. Nothing about a man old young to be on Social Security in the United States, as well as on disability, terrorizing a university in another country in order to achieve liberation for his own country from yet another country makes any sense whatsoever. Sometimes human nature and emotions and thought processes are, indeed, stranger than fiction.

Falling Hard and Fast

     This was a day when I noticed how easily I yield to fears, and how quickly the reasonable exercise of asking myself what I am afraid of can become inflammation of fear beyond all reason. Impatience is one of my chief shortcomings, and I have been waiting and working for months toward a particular goal. I received notice late last week that goal should be realized sometime early this week. I have spent hours on this task, often dealing with frustrating individuals and institutions. Now, however, there is no work left for me. I have completed my part, completed it weeks ago in fact, and must wait for others to follow through. I do not like admitting it has been a fearful six weeks for me, when I have repeatedly convinced myself the goal would never be achieved and I would be let down by those whose cooperation I require. For the last two days, in an effort to uncover the nature of my fears, I let myself think events through to the worst possible scenario, and then found myself stuck there, unable to talk myself out of such an outrageous outcome. I am embarrassed by how crazy I became in a short period of time! No wonder I usually try to spend some percentage of each day with other people, rather than alone with my thinking!

Endless

Forgiveness is complicated. One day, the birds and clouds and sun all sing, while leaves dance to their tune, and I have finished forgiving you. I breathe and move free of the ravages of resentment, ready for shiny, unfettered life. Not only have I forgiven your specific actions, old and recent, I accept your limitations, my unending expectations.

The next day, or a week later, we talk on the phone, or I visit your house. We discuss your plan to remodel, or redecorate, or share a meal, or take a walk, perhaps we only have a conversation. Suddenly, in response to something you say, or don't say, one of those limitations that interferes with my expectations rears once more. In a moment I’m ensnared, like thickened and sour milk, resentment courses through me. Not only will you not change, a reality I thought I had accepted, you're running you  nails down the blackboard in my heart yet again. 

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Write Once, Edit Twice

      One of the disadvantages of having taught, edited and proofread English for years is I no longer notice errors by choice. People do not find it pleasant to go to the movies or watch TV with someone who involuntarily erupts in scorn when a plot anomaly or gross (or minor) discrepancy occurs. I heard rave reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, only to discover that the final chapters jumped the shark completely, like the last season of a once-good TV series. The main characters' actions made no sense and were impossible for those characters. The patriarch died and in a later chapter called a final meeting, whereupon he died a second time. Then I tried to determine why the book was so popular, and concluded that, given its daunting length, only ten people actually read it. The others just bought it, or only started it, or read it until the bad guy was captured and then quit. I decided copy editors--too many--tried to clean the draft, which the original author was unable to revise due to his unfortunate death days after dropping off the first draft. He needed to come back to fix his book and then die a second time.

     Sadly, that is just one example. One evening of television is usually enough to find a quiverfull of plot anomalies, especially on those crime thrillers that seem to believe the audience is more interested in which cop is dating another (or wants to), and whose heroin addiction is about to be exposed to the police force. With all the soapsuds, the writers forget which criminal has an ironclad alibi, or lacks any motive or means whatsoever. 

     What's upsetting to a word person who can't help being attentive to detail is the lack of care and effort taken. Whether in a book or a TV show (or anywhere--including newspapers), it's insulting to those who take the time to buy, read or watch. When it's performance, it's insulting to the actors, actresses, director, cameramen, boom person, and everyone involved. Ultimately, shoddy craft demeans media and literature. 

A Survivor Responds to the Sandusky Conviction

I wept when I read the headline: “Jerry Sandusky convicted on 45 counts” related to sexually abusing children. I wept in gratitude, sadness, and too many other emotions to count. You see it happened to me too, though I never met Sandusky. Twenty years after my first memory, my family is not interested in knowing about it. In addition, my fellow writing students and professors sixteen years ago generally discouraged me from writing what they called “confessional” material (as if I had some sin to confess with regard to this). One professor quoted a poet in class who had written “We’ve had enough incest poems.” I even had one acquaintance explain that her adolescent sexual relationship with her father wasn’t incest because she enjoyed it. Granted, that was a unique response, but most of the people I know have reacted at best with embarrassment, most often with disinterest, and, at worst with disbelief or outright rejection.

There is an unreality to remembering long-forgotten memories, and while God has placed individuals in my life who helped me honor those memories, the reactions described above have contributed to an ongoing disconnect, or rather, several huge disconnects. First, I feel unknown by the members of my family of origin, and vice versa. They seem like exotic species that I visit occasionally and with whom I have few points of connection. Similarly, at my church, my other primary community, I feel that with all but a handful of people, I have shown them only a thin reed of myself every week. Even my close friends there have experienced at best a little of me. The biggest aching gap is between my head, where I generally live, and my body, which is a distant country of which I have little awareness.    

Beings an abuse survivor is not the only truth of my existence, but the wounds created when I was sexually abused as child have not completely healed, after twenty years of living with the memories, getting counseling, and seeking recovery. What I experienced does not explain all my struggles. Still, when I realized someone had been convicted, that a court system and a jury listened to and believed his victims, I felt gratitude. The foggy unreality of walking through memories clears. It is a victory, and, lives remain scarred, trust remains broken, and there is nothing to celebrate.

Approaching Vulnerability by Degrees

Today was hot, and I was overly tired from both the heat and some medicine. I tried to write but couldn't think hard. How did the ancient people who lived in hot climates manage to think? Maybe they had air conditioning systems without electricity based on technologies we have lost, lived their lives at night. Maybe they only wrote in their cooler seasons. 

Someone described me today. He said he used to start fifty projects at once and pour himself completely into them, only to lose steam, drift, fail to finish. Why does it help me feel better about myself when someone reports suffering from the same insanity I do? It doesn't make me more sane, but it feels so good, like seeing someone else with a lousy haircut, only bigger, like a hidden wound has been dressed, like hope. Knowing it makes someone else feel that good could encourage me to share my peculiar failings, if I can remember how the good felt at the right moment, when I am actually speaking. 

Thoughts and Intentions of the Heart

            A voice in my head that’s been there for as long as I can remember makes two types of statements in tandem in group and similar situations: “Look at/listen to me/pick me” and “They never look at/listen to/pick me.” Usually I talk back to this voice, or try to drown it out by talking to the people around me. Sometimes I remind it repeatedly that I don’t want the task, job or responsibility being discussed. While it may be quiet for a short time, this voice has not ceased its prattle.

            Today I read in Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Bible, The Message, “My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God” (Galatians 2:19-20). While this may describe Paul, and a few people I have met in my life, my guess is most people do want to appear righteous—or appear something—in front of others, as least more than occasionally.

            How does on, how do I, get from the voice in my head needing recognition to having my ego no longer be central? How do I make the need to be noticed disappear? Is it merely a question of drowning out that voice (when I can) and trying hard or longer to do so until I succeed? Can a trip to a healing service or conference and enough inner healing silence the needy voice forever? Is this the sort of problem that counseling solves? Perhaps a spiritual discipline, or several, or the twelve steps can accomplish it. Probably several of the listed tasks are required. 

Another Look at Holidays

            As Father’s Day approaches this year, I miss my father, but more, I miss not enjoying him more on Father’s Day. We were not estranged, but we were distant. Distance is too powerful a theme in my family. How does one, how do I, go about breaking that theme, creating a new reality? Often it seems easier to attempt such change with friends rather than family, and to build close relationships there instead. I have found that somewhat effective, but it doesn’t solve the problem of holidays or meals.

            Many of the single people I know treat the holiday firmly like any other day—some work, others read or watch TV, what they would do on any other day off. Reading or watching TV while eating resolves a lot of meals for single people. Others eat standing up. I have realized that, in addition to the previous, I have developed the habit of eating astonishingly fast: minimizing the problem by shortening the time I’m faced with it. Except, of course, these habits solves nothing. I am not writing this to garner invitations. The few meals and holidays I have spent as the sole guest of someone else’s family have generally felt hopelessly awkward. Open houses and large gatherings are more congenial for this single person, but a lot of work for whoever hosts them—and a lot of faith—it’s a lot of work to undertake on a holiday if most people would rather be home with their families.

            Back to Father’s Day—I tend to duck this one altogether. As a single mother, my kids were always with their Father. My father was always thousands of miles away. Over the years, I began to skip church that day. Two years in a row Father’s Day became central to the sermon, and it was painful. So now I skip church the week of Father’s Day, or go at another point in the week if the option presents itself. This year, I may try cooking a serving a meal at a church which attracts many homeless people. I may. No promises yet.    

Failures to Love

            Today I met with two fellow writers from a recent poetry class for lunch and to read some recent work we’d all written. We give each other comments that perplex, misread, reveal our own prejudices, and still somehow help each other. I don’t know these other writers well yet. One wrote about how she wants those she loves to celebrate her life by using body after she dies. She is bothered that our bodies are just wasted when we die. The other woman used examples from nature to introduce her view that we should work for the collective good rather than our individual happiness. My poem was both more and less ambitious.

            Criticism rolls too easily off my tongue. I fight the tendency to do what the teachers I disliked in poetry workshops did when I was in graduate school. I don’t agree with every philosophy, metaphor, or concern, nor do I find all of them worth making the subject of a poem. Still, that is different than ascertaining what a writer is trying to say and whether or not she/he has done so—or said something else, or switched point of view or something similar—or, most common for many of us, tried to write two or three poems at once in one poem.

            I had a discussion with them about religion, prompted by my Mere Anglicanism t-shirt, which one of them asked me to explain. She asked me if I was liberal, which she assumed because there is a graphic of a griffin on the shirt. I forgot to ask her why she thought a griffin would equate one with liberal religious beliefs. The conversation turned too rapidly, as she explained to the other writer present that the Pope has just called someone, I quote, “a witch” who should be “burned at the stake” for writing a book called Just Love which advocated the acceptance of same-sex marriages.  

            Sometimes I don’t act in a way that is caring, don’t love enough to challenge error. No description of the communication between the Pope and Sr. Margaret Farley has included the word “witch” or suggested that she be burned anywhere. Really, at this point in the conversation I should have returned to the topic of why a griffin reminded her of liberal Christianity. Instead, I left the table in pursuit of a glass of water. I returned my dishes to the small café’s owner, whereupon she asked me what my shirt meant. After I explained it, she looked directly at me and said, “Religion is the opiate and the bullet of the people.”

            At this point I decided it would have been a better morning to stay home. I finished the workshop, commented on poems, and went home without challenging anyone.   

How Debt and Overeating Are Alike in My life

            Why is it so hard to stay out of debt in American society? Let me rephrase that: “I find it difficult to eliminate debt from my life and then keep it from returning.” My premise is that other people also struggle, informed by viewing one too many pie charts/graphs.

             I was free of all debt in 2009. Graduate school and a family emergency reintroduced it, but I escaped debt again in 2011. Perhaps the lack of debt itself emboldened me. I became impatient to do the things I had postponed. I wanted to go on a vacation and actually travel last summer. Afterwards, I cleared the debt again. Then I convinced myself I needed a few things for my new house. Between that and stuff for my son who is studying overseas travel for seven months and more debt ensued. But the big hit was when my car failed to pass inspection. I guess I could have driven it for awhile longer, lived a little dangerously with an expired sticker. I definitely could have replaced it for a car similar to it, rather than for a all-but new hybrid.

            The truth is, I knew for close to a year that the 1996 Corolla was not long for the world. I had heard the words “exhaust system,” and “catalytic converter more than once,” but I still denied the reality of coming doom, crossed my fingers, and spent funds the ways I wanted rather than saving for a car—like on that vacation, on other travel, on an upgrade to smart phones, on items for my house, and on a “shiny” Christmas/house blessing party. Actually, the real reason for the party was to share my joy about this house, but as I was planning the party, it rapidly became about impressing people. I could have kept the party simpler, kept the vacation simpler, waited another year to travel, waited on the smart phones, or purchased a more used, cheaper car.

            Given my track record, getting out of debt is not that hard. It’s staying that way that’s hard, as hard as it is to say no.   

Not likely to be a popular post

            Whoever you are, man or woman, gay or straight, once you knew he or she was married and you sensed some attraction, why did you even hit that, or try to, or consider it, or continue it? Same goes for the married one. Pleasure is not the highest principle, and infatuation definitely isn’t. What is impossible with man is possible with God, and God’s transforming power can heal any kind of mess, but make no mistake: that is a lot of mess.  

One Kind of News That Makes Me Angry

            I read a news story yesterday about dozens of schoolgirls and their teachers in Afghanistan being poisoned by toxic chemicals that were apparently sprayed on their schools. The girls and their teachers were hospitalized with nausea, vomiting and headaches, treated and then released. The Taliban has been accused of the poisonings, but has denied responsibility, but local Taliban groups are hypothesized as possibly have acted on their own in this. Similar poisonings happened a year or so ago. A few have argued this was a case of mass hysteria, but the numbers involved are seen as making that unlikely. While I react to many news stories with sadness, this one filled me with rage, as did a similar story about the Boko Haram burning schools in northern Nigeria.

            Several people who commented online to these stories equated such violence with the current cuts to education budgets in the United States. That made me angry too. I think turning every horrifying act anywhere into an example we can use to bolster our own domestic political arguments is a noxious form of self-centeredness. Every bad thing that happens everywhere is not an excuse for me to discuss my pet peeves, valid as they may be.

            As a student of psychology, mass hysteria is an extremely rare phenomena, and is usually limited to a handful of individuals. The principle of Ocham's Razor is helpful here, the mostly likely explanation is the simplest one: the schoolgirls and their teachers got sick because they were poisoned.  

            When I was teaching at Pitt a few years ago, I remember repeatedly seeing a woman in a burqa studying at the table between the elevators outside the English Department. She wore a full burqa, with her hands in gloves and only slits for her eyes. I wondered how she could possibly see well enough to read her textbooks, or how she could take notes in class wearing those gloves. Sadly, it also occurred to me that she could be concealing any manner of weapons under such drapery; although, I did not think that she was doing so. I just recognized a fear that I felt ashamed of. While she could have been an American convert to Islam, I felt it likely she was not. If not, I now marvel at what miracles brought her to the University of Pittsburgh at all. 

Several Thoughts That Are Unrelated to One Another

      I have some friends who believe in reincarnation and who resolved issues from past lives while under hypnosis. Each of them seem to have been rather upper class in their previous lives, the majority were of noble or even royal birth. This causes me to wonder whether nobility and royalty were rather more common in previous eras, as it is all but statistically impossible all my friends were of such high estate in their former lives unless the overall proportion of nobility and royalty was considerably higher than it is today or than is depicted by history textbooks.

     I tested the hypothesis that I could find a blog topic for today inside my refrigerator (while standing in front of its open door and staring into it) enough times today that I can with confidence report that a blog topic does not reside there.

     It is a mixed blessing when the other people at the gym are gregarious and want to share their weekend experiences during a workout. 

     

The Persistence of Philosophy

            At my church, in Pittsburgh, Church of the Ascension, we just concluded a set of four talks on  New Atheism and Christian responses to it. The talks were held as a pub, which is part of a new outreach program based on the assumption, as I see it, that people would rather talk about deep matters while drinking beer (and possibly eating well-prepared food). While I do not partake of the beer, the logic of that assumption is clear. Our clergy may argue for more lofty explanations for the sites of these and similar talks, but I believe it's largely due to the beer and good food. I gather most of the New Atheists and virtually all historical philosophers, past and present, have shared that affection for beer and good food.

            During one of the talks, or possibly two of them, passing comments were made that philosophy and reflection, which we were discussing and using, could not be argued to be of any evolutionary advantage. Only a brief example was given, but I immediately imagined a sort of chase scene involving a hungry or threatened carnivore and a human who was highly reflective, and for us to imagine such a scene was what the speaker intended. Extrapolating only slightly, a great migration due to inclement weather, say drought, could hardly be imagined to proceed well if anyone was stopping to contemplate, and even contemplatives who manage to continue walking can be a hindrance when others are in a hurry. No, for getting what needs to be done accomplished, philosophers and writers and artists and meditative types are rarely picked first to form the team. If Darwin were completely accurate about how evolution proceeded, virtually all us with such tendencies would have been set adrift on ice floes, sent on peculiar errands while the rest of the tribe left for higher ground, or pushed to the outskirts of the herd for prey to pick off. I would argue that our ability to survive, and even, at times, produce offspring, argues for some power other than natural selection at work.  

The Problem with Letting Myself Know What I see

            This weekend I was troubled again when I ran into an old friend, not a close friend, but someone I have known socially for decades and also worked with. This person is brilliant, no question, and truly gifted in his/her profession. I run into him/her socially several times a year, on holidays and for special event. The thing is, the last several times that we have met, this person has been, well, some degree of drunk, and at a time and place when others were not. We are past a certain age. Wild parties are more than infrequent. Several events where we met were dry. Isn’t the definite smell of alcohol and any degree of immoderate behavior more troubling at such? 

            I am also troubled by my response, as least to date. I have said nothing, to anyone. My history makes me sensitive—aware of drunkenness, both the extreme fraternity sort and the quiet, continuously pickled sort. It’s easy to discount what I notice because I am sensitive—that perception problem again. The other side of "sensitivity” is being able to recognize when someone may well be on a road I have been down before, and watched my loved ones walk? But it’s so unpleasant, so difficult to say something. And, really, how does one say such a thing? Surely not at a party, and not to someone who’s already been drinking. Following through, moving from the beginning created by acknowledging my concerns to myself and in writing is to attempt a private conversation about them with this person.

            I cannot tell myself such a habit is probably harmless. And, yes, a glass of wine with dinner smells differently on a person than does a daily bottle of wine, or whatever spirits are someone’s pleasure. I have seen the end from the beginning. I could be wrong that this person’s on that road, but I could also be right. I need to act on what is troubling me in a way that is discreet but definite. As I post this, I am secretly hoping someone I know will read it, know who I am talking about (thereby affirming my perception), and offer to go with me. Probably not. Since this blog is not currently linked to my facebook, certainly not.More likely, there’s some other troubling drinker my readers know that they need talk with.    

Perception, Honesty and Simple, Hard Answers

            Maybe this blogging is working. I am now bored with examining the same small set of behaviors, and did not feel like engaging them yesterday. Three pink ribbons of cloud cross the sky outside my window, echoes of what may well have been an amazing sunset. Working for myself, I haven’t yet figured out how to start early enough to end before sunset. I’ve been thinking about honesty today, and how it’s limited by the filters on our perception. If your glasses are filthy, you will see dirt.

            I have spent a fair amount of time lately with someone convinced every authority figure this person has ever come into contact with is insane, abusive or both. Granted, quite a few people with power are both. I don’t like authority figures much either (to be honest), but when I have difficulties with someone, I have been taught to question myself, including my perception, which is not to say discount it. I just have all these people in my life who keep asking me what my part is in frustrating relationships. What especially takes my breath away is when one of my sons says the equivalent. How did they get so wise? It's such a simple phrase to write--"question my perception but don't discount it." Isn’t it astonishing that some of the most difficult tasks to accomplish can be stated so simply, like "Love your enemies.”

The Habit of Desire

            So many times a day I think I want some thing (usually, in my case, something to eat) when I probably don’t, in fact, want anything. As a child I watched hours of TV each day, and I remember wanting every shiny thing I saw—Matchbox cars, Barbie’s beach house, McDonald’s Happy Meals, Twinkies. Today I watch almost no TV, incognito subversive that I am, yet the residual longing remains--desiring some thing almost constantly. I do suspect TV impacted that, and even the layout of stores and ads in the newspaper. Despite my efforts to leave it, I belong to a culture infected with longing, with insatiable desire, a culture where the answer is always more. Sadly, my  late night snacks, nibbling throughout the day, and compulsive eating at parties and other public functions attest to the power of that culture in my life. All this yearning I reduce to something material, always to some thing. The alternative is terrifying—a longing I cannot assuage by my own efforts. But perhaps the longing is false, more a tic or habit.    

All the Pretty Little Carbs

            At least half a dozen times last week I decided to stop eating sugar and white flour and snack cracker-y foods until the first week of July. I want to lose some weight before I visit my son, and the traveling was so pleasant last year when I had been away from carbohydrates for most of a month. I had no congestion or headache on the planes or in the airports. I keep making these “vows” with myself and God because the reality is that I keep eating these foods whenever I see them. The promises and the eating are crazy-making and make me feel disgusted with myself. The process threatens to become the only--or too large--an item in my brain.

            Surely there is more to my life than this! My garden is amazing this year, if I do say so myself. All but too of the perennials and annuals I planted is blooming. I can’t remember when I’ve had such good odds (and well-deserved after all the turning of soil and adding of compost and breaking up of clumps of clay). After twenty years of avoiding the sting of rejection, I have been revising and submitting poems. I have even been exercising regularly. But saying the changes needed in my eating will follow naturally does not work, nor do artificial diets that establish a constant state of obsession. 

Size Switching

I have been noticing size 0 and size 2 selections at department stores for awhile now. I don't remember ever seeing either of those sizes on the racks at Kaufmann's or JCPenney's as a child. Kaufmann's is gone now, bought by Macy's, but I don't recall seeing those sizes at Macy's until recently. This does not seem to be a phenomenon that portends well. Did those sizes even exist in the 1970's or even the 1980's? Who are they for? I haven't noticed an increase in small women, and every statistic indicates that the latter is the case. Are ten year old girls now shopping the Misses section? Is it all a nefarious plot to sell diet plans and food and exercise equipment, but just how would such sales benefit Calvin Klein or Ann Taylor?

Van Gogh: the Mistral vs. mental illness

     I grow wary of the ways some of us reduce others and their achievements by a formula or a statement or two. After studying psychology for years, I believed I knew what motivated people, or how to discover what did. I was wrong. Yet even museum directors yield to such. On 4/20/2012, I visited the Van Gogh Up Close exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and dutifully listened to the recording provided, which frequently urged viewers to notice signs of mental illness in the paintings. For example, the diagonal brushstrokes that create movement in Van Gogh’s paintings are often attributed to anxiety. In fact, Arles, where many were painted, is so windy they have a name for the wind, Mistral, whose strength produces the area's luminous sunshine. Yet nowhere have I heard or read that the shifting quality of Van Gogh’s landscapes could be a portrayal of what he saw. Van Gogh was mentally ill, and both art critics and psychiatrists have failed to consider that he may also have been a careful planner and a craftsman. Art is attributed to impulse, emotion, anxiety, trauma, rather than to skill, effort or intention. To see how careful Van Gogh and all the impressionists and post-impressionists were in crafting their art, I had to view the paintings from several distances, and especially from across the gallery. Once I saw how the "impressionist" and abstract organized itself into near photographic representation from a distance, I realized every brush stroke was the result of craft and planning.