Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
I'm humming an obnoxious show tune in my head, complete with the Doris Day-like shout-singing of all good Little Orphans Annie. My computer arrives tomorrow, sometime before 12 PM, as in noon, which I'm embarassed to say has been a source of confusion for me ever since I was eight years old. I see the PM and I automatically think "night," an incorrect detour in the well-worn streets of my neural pathways that years of peer mocking has failed to correct. Thankfully, though, I caught this blunder before The Day My Mac Arrives, so now I'll have only 6 hours to fill whilst waiting for it rather than 12. I plan to enlist Pledge and caffeine to help in making the time fly.
It's hard to find anything else blogworthy today. This morning marked my second forray to the base gym, a place which received Arnold Schwarzeneggar's emphatically garbled Teutonic blessing when it opened. The place is nice-- all green glass and stainless steel archways, an intimidating effect immediately negated by the military's overbearing motherly signage: "If you have MUD on your feet or person, please REMOVE it before entering." Because I just mopped. Little warnings about heat exhaustion and slippery floors abound, as well as reminders to clean "bodily fluids" off all machinery after use. Why "bodily fluids" and not "sweat"? Or is this not stictly a gym...?
There's a nice lap pool outside, but I've avoided it thusfar because I'm still unclear on lane etiquette. Back in Florida, Pants and I swam laps for about two weeks in preparation for his "let's put on all your gear and see if you drown!" test. We always showed up at about the same time, so we started recognizing our fellow swimmers. One was a tiny Asian woman with a murderous breaststroke. This happens to be the only stroke I'm really any good at, so I used to subtly race her.
This subtle race thing-- I have a problem with it. I do it way more than is healthy, and I don't know if it's because I didn't get all the competitive sports burned out of me at a young enough age or what, but I seem to be unable to enjoy physical activity, except maybe running, for its own sake without inventing some elaborate internal fiction about who this other person is and why I've got to BEAT THEM. "Cold War Olympic Challenge" is a favorite scenario, as are "Alien Abduction Biometrics test" and the Ender's Game-inspired "High Ranker Fitness Test." Basically, nothing is too cheesy. And it never matters who the person is-- little old men, Marines, children-- doesn't matter. In fact, my success rate is quite poor, maybe 50/50 if I'm being generous, but all that does is fuel the fictional rivalry for next time. I've given grudging, narrow-eyed nods of respect to people who stare back at me in nervous puzzlement.
Back to the Asian breaststroker: she beat me night after night. 10 laps, 15 laps, 30. She kept handing me my ass and it was getting to me. One night I decided I would beat her, or at least match her, if it killed me. The pool was very crowded and people were doubling, and even tripling up in the lanes-- lots of different professions were having their "let's see if you drown" test in the next few days and people were cramming (which makes no sense for swimming, but whatever).
In retrospect, I realize I probably should have gotten out of the pool and let people who actually had something on the line have full use of the lane, but my fictive rivalry was such that I believed I did have something on the line. We started out matched in pace for the first 10 laps, but then both got company in our lanes and had to slow down. She had two freestylers (whom she still outpaced), but I got two doughy boys from Kentucky who were unfamiliar with any stroke beyond dog paddling, and who were also determined to hold a conversation as they paddled in single file. It was maddening. I've never felt like such a competitive jerk while also feeling I'd be entirely justified in dunking both of them repeatedly.
Needless to say, she completely obliviously handed me my ass once again, but the annoyance verging on rage I felt at the two doughboys made me leary of getting into a shared lane ever again. What if my lane-mate is someone with an imaginary axe to grind with a fellow swimmer? What if I'm driving the wedge of her delusion deeper with every leisurely frog kick, and the view of my moon-white tuchus is front of her makes her want to drown me?
Is it the mark of the truly insane that they imagine everyone else shares their peculiar hang-ups, or is the ability to at least partially imagine others' viewpoints, however incorrectly, still a saving grace, some proof that one is aware that a whole world exists outside of one's own mind? I don't know. Obviously I've spent my fair share of time exercising by myself in the last few years, but until I have indisputable proof-- I mean proof-- that it's making me spongy in the sanity department, I'll keep racing.
Showing posts with label neurosis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neurosis. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
In search of a good, therapeutic cry
I'm having "heartache" again. I've been getting mysterious but annoying chest pain for roughly the past four years during times of stress, and it's so not worthy of a whole blog post, but I don't know how to make it go away so I figured I'd try writing.
The first time I got "heartache" was in 2004 about a week after Pants went off to Officer Candidate School. I was pulling long commutes to a very stressful (but good) job, and planning our wedding and simultaneous relocation only a few months away, and drinking extravagant amounts of coffee. My shoulders had risen to ear level and the muscles had hardened and clenched so much that patches of my scalp would go numb for long periods. I was getting headaches from grinding my teeth, and all my nails were chewed and picked down to raw, pink stumps.
In other words, I was a lovely calming presence who didn't at all need a firm shaking and a large martini.
One day at work, shortly after Hurricane Ivan had stomped all over Pants and his terrified, half-starved OCS classmates and destroyed our future hometown, I started having chest pains, like someone had walked up and socked me right in the sternum-- in fact, right in the manubrium, a term I inexplicably remember from high school anatomy.* Everything I'd ever heard about having chest pains indicated that it was Bad, so for once, I actually disengaged myself from the permanent ass grooves in my squeaky work chair and went to a minor emergency center.
(* Mrs. Jacobs, if you're out there, you gave me a C but you're my hero. You taught me so much medical Latin, and the day you came tip-toeing over in your squeaky shoes and told me that mine was the most delicately dissected rat brain you'd ever seen, and then plunked it into a bottle of preservative, I positively glowed.)
Minor emergency centers, in my experience, are usually leisurely places with large waiting rooms, like the broad, stagnant places in a stream where debris eddies, lingers, spins, and waits for an indeterminate time before finally catching the current and moving on again. Even if, say, you are suffering the acute misery of a urinary tract infection, you will linger and suffer with the rest of the lingering and suffering readers of old issues of Parenting magazine until someone remembers you in your purgatory and at last calls your name.
But not, as it turns out, if you're experiencing chest pains. Chest pains are the golden ticket that whisk you right through the double doors and in to see a chipper, young Asian doctor, who will palpate, thump, probe, and squeeze various parts of you while asking a dizzying variety of questions. As it turned out, every test came up fine until she asked me if perhaps I was under any stress at home or at work, to which I replied, "Not that I'm aware of," and then suddenly, to both our surprise, burst into hiccuping tears.
After I'd explained briefly about the situation with Pants, the wedding, and the move, she laughed and said "I think what you've got is heartache," and advised that I try to relax a little.
Hayao Miyazaki is a brilliant maker of animated Japanese children's movies-- Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle are two of my favorites-- and his approach to children's animation is refreshingly anti-Disney. For instance, none of his characters are either all good or all bad, and all are shown to be capable of change, in contrast to Disney films where the moral line is drawn with fierce and unrelenting certainty. Other themes in Miyazaki movies include the spiritual and emotional benefits of performing daily chores (I would have hated that as a kid, but as an adult I find it comforting, and am suddenly grateful for my parents' long daily "to do" lists). And yet another yet recurring theme is the benefit of a good, soul-cleansing cry. At least once in each movie, the protagonist walks off into a meadow or crouches down in a private corner and bawls, just open-mouthed, barking wails. Soothing music plays, and eventually the protagonist sniffles a little, wipes his face on both his sleeves, and goes back to face the problem.
I think this is what I need to do. I need to have a good wail, with the snot and the tears, and the fragments of words. Dane Cook, by the way, has a hilarious bit in his routine about having a good, huge cry-- the lengths you go to to hide it, the things you say mid-cry, the sad life events you'll think up just to keep crying, and just how good it feels.
Think I may give it a try.
The first time I got "heartache" was in 2004 about a week after Pants went off to Officer Candidate School. I was pulling long commutes to a very stressful (but good) job, and planning our wedding and simultaneous relocation only a few months away, and drinking extravagant amounts of coffee. My shoulders had risen to ear level and the muscles had hardened and clenched so much that patches of my scalp would go numb for long periods. I was getting headaches from grinding my teeth, and all my nails were chewed and picked down to raw, pink stumps.
In other words, I was a lovely calming presence who didn't at all need a firm shaking and a large martini.
One day at work, shortly after Hurricane Ivan had stomped all over Pants and his terrified, half-starved OCS classmates and destroyed our future hometown, I started having chest pains, like someone had walked up and socked me right in the sternum-- in fact, right in the manubrium, a term I inexplicably remember from high school anatomy.* Everything I'd ever heard about having chest pains indicated that it was Bad, so for once, I actually disengaged myself from the permanent ass grooves in my squeaky work chair and went to a minor emergency center.
(* Mrs. Jacobs, if you're out there, you gave me a C but you're my hero. You taught me so much medical Latin, and the day you came tip-toeing over in your squeaky shoes and told me that mine was the most delicately dissected rat brain you'd ever seen, and then plunked it into a bottle of preservative, I positively glowed.)
Minor emergency centers, in my experience, are usually leisurely places with large waiting rooms, like the broad, stagnant places in a stream where debris eddies, lingers, spins, and waits for an indeterminate time before finally catching the current and moving on again. Even if, say, you are suffering the acute misery of a urinary tract infection, you will linger and suffer with the rest of the lingering and suffering readers of old issues of Parenting magazine until someone remembers you in your purgatory and at last calls your name.
But not, as it turns out, if you're experiencing chest pains. Chest pains are the golden ticket that whisk you right through the double doors and in to see a chipper, young Asian doctor, who will palpate, thump, probe, and squeeze various parts of you while asking a dizzying variety of questions. As it turned out, every test came up fine until she asked me if perhaps I was under any stress at home or at work, to which I replied, "Not that I'm aware of," and then suddenly, to both our surprise, burst into hiccuping tears.
After I'd explained briefly about the situation with Pants, the wedding, and the move, she laughed and said "I think what you've got is heartache," and advised that I try to relax a little.
Hayao Miyazaki is a brilliant maker of animated Japanese children's movies-- Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle are two of my favorites-- and his approach to children's animation is refreshingly anti-Disney. For instance, none of his characters are either all good or all bad, and all are shown to be capable of change, in contrast to Disney films where the moral line is drawn with fierce and unrelenting certainty. Other themes in Miyazaki movies include the spiritual and emotional benefits of performing daily chores (I would have hated that as a kid, but as an adult I find it comforting, and am suddenly grateful for my parents' long daily "to do" lists). And yet another yet recurring theme is the benefit of a good, soul-cleansing cry. At least once in each movie, the protagonist walks off into a meadow or crouches down in a private corner and bawls, just open-mouthed, barking wails. Soothing music plays, and eventually the protagonist sniffles a little, wipes his face on both his sleeves, and goes back to face the problem.
I think this is what I need to do. I need to have a good wail, with the snot and the tears, and the fragments of words. Dane Cook, by the way, has a hilarious bit in his routine about having a good, huge cry-- the lengths you go to to hide it, the things you say mid-cry, the sad life events you'll think up just to keep crying, and just how good it feels.
Think I may give it a try.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Total upheaval in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
If the military and I were tango partners, and relocations were one of those complicated, whip-lash-inducing interchanges, we'd still be bashing faces and kneeing each other in the groin. I use dance as a metaphor here, and the tango in particular, because it implies hope that I can one day master upheaval and clasp it to my heaving bosom in a passionate, complicated, synchronized embrace.
Right now, not so much.
Pants and I learned a few days ago that within the next two weeks, we are California-bound. It wasn't our first choice, but the more I think about it, I'm ashamed it wasn't. I'm looking forward to boasting about my adopted state's forward-thinking auto emissions requirements, and the fact that I was once terrified of our governor hunting me down with his exposed red robot eye. I'm also looking forward to getting carsick on Highway 1, taunting lemurs in San Diego, and goggling at trees wider at their base than the house I grew up in. There will still be plenty of Mexican immigrants to make me feel at home, but I'll also be within a couple hours' drive of world class drag shows and a nationally recognized dildo shop (inappropriate Christmas gifts!).
I have already warned a friend who lives near San Francisco that I've spent far too long away from my liberal hippie roots. Especially at our current post, things to do and places to go have been limited to dive bars and the local Chili's. I'm looking forward to ordering food I can't pronounce, seeing (intentional) performance art, and meeting people who pay for bizarre restorative treatments.*
*Very soon, Pants will have to sit in the equivalent of a giant salad spinner, whirling around a giant room until he passes out. The whole process, for some obscure and sadistic reason, will be videotaped. There's a reason for this, but it doesn't sound very convincing. Instead, I thought back to a co-worker of mine from a few years ago who paid $40 for blurry Polaroids of her aura, routinely hyperventilated while blindfolded with a group of "trance dancers," and spoke openly of the spiritual power of public nudity.
"How much do you think V____ would pay to ride the salad spinner if you told her it was purifying her chakras?" I asked. "More than $100?"
"Put it this way: probably not as much as the taxpayers pay for me to ride it, and all it does for me is make me puke and pass out," Pants replied.
For now I'm trying to focus on these good things, and not the part where I'm leaving another job I really liked and am about to engage in the crap-shoot hunt for a landlord in another state who doesn't harbor a grudge against military renters or indoor pets. Or the part where I get to frantically search for a job before the time bomb of my unemployment-based depression flattens me.
Right now, not so much.
Pants and I learned a few days ago that within the next two weeks, we are California-bound. It wasn't our first choice, but the more I think about it, I'm ashamed it wasn't. I'm looking forward to boasting about my adopted state's forward-thinking auto emissions requirements, and the fact that I was once terrified of our governor hunting me down with his exposed red robot eye. I'm also looking forward to getting carsick on Highway 1, taunting lemurs in San Diego, and goggling at trees wider at their base than the house I grew up in. There will still be plenty of Mexican immigrants to make me feel at home, but I'll also be within a couple hours' drive of world class drag shows and a nationally recognized dildo shop (inappropriate Christmas gifts!).
I have already warned a friend who lives near San Francisco that I've spent far too long away from my liberal hippie roots. Especially at our current post, things to do and places to go have been limited to dive bars and the local Chili's. I'm looking forward to ordering food I can't pronounce, seeing (intentional) performance art, and meeting people who pay for bizarre restorative treatments.*
*Very soon, Pants will have to sit in the equivalent of a giant salad spinner, whirling around a giant room until he passes out. The whole process, for some obscure and sadistic reason, will be videotaped. There's a reason for this, but it doesn't sound very convincing. Instead, I thought back to a co-worker of mine from a few years ago who paid $40 for blurry Polaroids of her aura, routinely hyperventilated while blindfolded with a group of "trance dancers," and spoke openly of the spiritual power of public nudity.
"How much do you think V____ would pay to ride the salad spinner if you told her it was purifying her chakras?" I asked. "More than $100?"
"Put it this way: probably not as much as the taxpayers pay for me to ride it, and all it does for me is make me puke and pass out," Pants replied.
For now I'm trying to focus on these good things, and not the part where I'm leaving another job I really liked and am about to engage in the crap-shoot hunt for a landlord in another state who doesn't harbor a grudge against military renters or indoor pets. Or the part where I get to frantically search for a job before the time bomb of my unemployment-based depression flattens me.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Shattered innocence, shattered camera
Say what you will about the Germans, but they're brilliant at coming up with complex emotional words. Here are a few of my favorites, (some courtesy of this BBC article):
Schadenfreude: n. pleasure derived from the misfortune of others
ex.: "And there she went, flying headlong into the muddy puddle in all of her Prada finery; I had to admit to a bit of schadenfreude.
Kummerspeck: n. literally translated, "grief bacon." The weight gained from emotion-related over-eating.
ex.: "What you're seeing here [grab tummy flab and wiggle it] is a bit of the ol' Kummerspeck from when Axle dumped me."
Drachenfutter: n. translates literally as "dragon fodder." The gifts with which guilty husbands try to appease their wives.
ex.: Sanjay's roses after the extended business trip to Thailand were immediately recognized for what they were: mere Drachenfutter."
Today I challenge the Germans to come up with a multi-syllabic humdinger for a brand new, highly complex emotion I have only recently experienced for the first time: the sickening feeling that comes from the realization that a friend, a confidant even, harbors a whole set of deeply held, deeply whacky, deeply uninformed political and social opinions that run completely counter to the pillars of your own moral identity.
If possible, Germans, include the element of not being able to say anything in reaction to this friend's crazy diatribe for fear of setting her off, or encouraging her to reveal her plan for widespread ethnic cleansing. If at all possible, this word should include a kind of meta-awareness of oneself while in the act of discovering this craziness, as in, "Does my face register the horror I'm feeling? Can she tell I'm about to fall off my seat into a pool of my own panic-induced vomit? Make a neutral face, make a neutral face..."
In addition, I turn to the Far East for help: Taiwan, would it be possible to develop a kind of purse-sized Roman candle that could be quickly and easily lighted as a distraction when conversations get way too heavy, way too fast? "Well, I think as far as Iran and Syria go, we should-- Whoa! Look! Fire!" They could even come in packs, like cigarettes. Maybe Marlboro would go in on this. "Social Distraction 100's: Create a diversion, escape, and then have a real cigarette."
In other news, I damaged our camera over the weekend. Accidentally, but still. For a childless couple like Pants and I, this is the equivalent of saying "I dropped our newborn on its head." We reacted accordingly. If I were in kindergarten today and the teacher encouraged me to draw a picture of how I feel, I would draw a giant gray thunderhead spewing lightening bolts into a huge pile of poo.
I'm going to send the camera off to a place in Illinois to see if it can be fixed, but since it hit a concrete patio (since I hadn't put it in its case and wasn't watching out for it while it perched all lonesome by itself on the edge of a table at a wild party), the prognosis is sketchy. It still takes pictures and downloads them, but it won't zoom, scroll through previous pictures, or allow me to use any of its four (crucial) function buttons.
I once knew someone who broke his digital camera. He was a nice guy, but he was also much too confident in his own ability to fix tiny precision electronics, and I watched in tight-lipped anxiety as he ignored my warnings and took the camera apart. There are screws in these things that you could inhale and not know it, there are springs that look like electron shavings-- in short, there's no way in hell you would know whether you're looking at splinters of a broken part, or a perfectly fine, perfectly whole part. By the time this young man had finished his "repair" job, the only thing the camera did was flash, and even that was heroic.
So when I'm envisioning this repair facility in Illinois, I'm picturing a zero-gravity environment lit by massive klieg lights, everything else a brilliant, sterile white, with goggled technicians floating around wielding giant precision tweezers, and then a huge filtering apparatus for sifting the spare screws out of the piles of DNA sloughed off by the workers at the end of the day. Shit can't be cheap, in other words.
Schadenfreude: n. pleasure derived from the misfortune of others
ex.: "And there she went, flying headlong into the muddy puddle in all of her Prada finery; I had to admit to a bit of schadenfreude.
Kummerspeck: n. literally translated, "grief bacon." The weight gained from emotion-related over-eating.
ex.: "What you're seeing here [grab tummy flab and wiggle it] is a bit of the ol' Kummerspeck from when Axle dumped me."
Drachenfutter: n. translates literally as "dragon fodder." The gifts with which guilty husbands try to appease their wives.
ex.: Sanjay's roses after the extended business trip to Thailand were immediately recognized for what they were: mere Drachenfutter."
Today I challenge the Germans to come up with a multi-syllabic humdinger for a brand new, highly complex emotion I have only recently experienced for the first time: the sickening feeling that comes from the realization that a friend, a confidant even, harbors a whole set of deeply held, deeply whacky, deeply uninformed political and social opinions that run completely counter to the pillars of your own moral identity.
If possible, Germans, include the element of not being able to say anything in reaction to this friend's crazy diatribe for fear of setting her off, or encouraging her to reveal her plan for widespread ethnic cleansing. If at all possible, this word should include a kind of meta-awareness of oneself while in the act of discovering this craziness, as in, "Does my face register the horror I'm feeling? Can she tell I'm about to fall off my seat into a pool of my own panic-induced vomit? Make a neutral face, make a neutral face..."
In addition, I turn to the Far East for help: Taiwan, would it be possible to develop a kind of purse-sized Roman candle that could be quickly and easily lighted as a distraction when conversations get way too heavy, way too fast? "Well, I think as far as Iran and Syria go, we should-- Whoa! Look! Fire!" They could even come in packs, like cigarettes. Maybe Marlboro would go in on this. "Social Distraction 100's: Create a diversion, escape, and then have a real cigarette."
In other news, I damaged our camera over the weekend. Accidentally, but still. For a childless couple like Pants and I, this is the equivalent of saying "I dropped our newborn on its head." We reacted accordingly. If I were in kindergarten today and the teacher encouraged me to draw a picture of how I feel, I would draw a giant gray thunderhead spewing lightening bolts into a huge pile of poo.
I'm going to send the camera off to a place in Illinois to see if it can be fixed, but since it hit a concrete patio (since I hadn't put it in its case and wasn't watching out for it while it perched all lonesome by itself on the edge of a table at a wild party), the prognosis is sketchy. It still takes pictures and downloads them, but it won't zoom, scroll through previous pictures, or allow me to use any of its four (crucial) function buttons.
I once knew someone who broke his digital camera. He was a nice guy, but he was also much too confident in his own ability to fix tiny precision electronics, and I watched in tight-lipped anxiety as he ignored my warnings and took the camera apart. There are screws in these things that you could inhale and not know it, there are springs that look like electron shavings-- in short, there's no way in hell you would know whether you're looking at splinters of a broken part, or a perfectly fine, perfectly whole part. By the time this young man had finished his "repair" job, the only thing the camera did was flash, and even that was heroic.
So when I'm envisioning this repair facility in Illinois, I'm picturing a zero-gravity environment lit by massive klieg lights, everything else a brilliant, sterile white, with goggled technicians floating around wielding giant precision tweezers, and then a huge filtering apparatus for sifting the spare screws out of the piles of DNA sloughed off by the workers at the end of the day. Shit can't be cheap, in other words.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Dreamweaver, I believe you can screw my head up right...
Occasionally I go through periods where my dreams are incredibly intense and vivid, and seem to take almost more energy and attention from me than my waking life. Now is one of those times, and I'm exhausted and deeply weirded out. Plus, it doesn't make for much of a conversation starter.
Me: How was your weekend?
Acquaintance: Oh, you know, fine.
Me: Cool, cool. Mine involved dreams where I have to cough up all my teeth into ziplock baggies. And then I had to dig through a pile of dead soldiers to find mementos for their families. And then? I gave birth to a wolf.
Acquaintance: Wow. I have to go away now.
I know this can probably be easily explained by biological cycles, perhaps as yet another instance where I'm just receiving hormonal junk mail from my meddlesome uterus, but I've never been one to find much comfort in logic. Why believe in rational theories when one can panic over vague symbology?
Usually when I'm confused about something, or even just vaguely curious, I google it. I love, by the way, that "google" has become a verb, because only an action word could describe the close, sometimes-inappropriate relationship I share with this search engine. I rely on it for everything-- not just hard facts like addresses or the meaning of "retromingent"-- I also use it to clear up philosophical and emotional dilemmas, like, for instance, what the hell my dream about coughing up all my teeth was about.
Evidently, tooth loss is a fairly common dream theme, which is exciting for me in a way because typically when I share my dreams with other people, they cough uncomfortably and ask me how many drugs I did as a teenager. The bad news is that since a lot of people dream of losing their teeth, there are just as many explanations-- everything from undiagnosed eating disorders to fears of getting old/being unattractive to losing one's job to fears of marital infidelity to losing the ability to speak.
It's the last one that resonates with me. I think I'm afraid of losing my voice. This weekend I cooked a huge dinner for Pants and his buddies, cleaned the house, and continued work on my wifey projects in advance of Pants' military promotion. It was exhausting, and very little of it had anything to with me, in the strictest sense. At the same time, another blind relocation approaches, and the more I try to convince myself I'm fine with it, that I'm ready for a change, the more some subterranean part of me freaks out and concocts disturbing dreams.
As for this morning's dream about crawling across a mountain of dead soldiers whose bodies were concealed beneath a massive parachute, and digging through the wreckage in search of identifiable mementos to send home to their families-- who the fuck knows? Maybe that's less a symbol and more a reflection of the fact that I'm pretty close to open panic about the state of the war and Pants' guaranteed involvement in it. In fact, I find it more than a little disturbing how much I'm encouraged to work on some elaborate banner for him and how little substantive dialogue there's been among the spouses about what these guys are getting ready to do. I feel like I'm sitting in a room with a bunch of women quietly sipping tea while the hems of our jeans have all caught fire.
But maybe this is unfair-- maybe they're all dealing with it in their own healthy, private ways. Maybe somehow, magically, they've figured out the triple-lotus psychological contortion required to be completely OK with everything that's going on, who's in power, who's likely going to be in power next, and what exactly our husbands will be asked to do. Me though, I'm not there yet, and I'm going to have to give birth to a few more wolves and spit up a few more teeth before I am.
Me: How was your weekend?
Acquaintance: Oh, you know, fine.
Me: Cool, cool. Mine involved dreams where I have to cough up all my teeth into ziplock baggies. And then I had to dig through a pile of dead soldiers to find mementos for their families. And then? I gave birth to a wolf.
Acquaintance: Wow. I have to go away now.
I know this can probably be easily explained by biological cycles, perhaps as yet another instance where I'm just receiving hormonal junk mail from my meddlesome uterus, but I've never been one to find much comfort in logic. Why believe in rational theories when one can panic over vague symbology?
Usually when I'm confused about something, or even just vaguely curious, I google it. I love, by the way, that "google" has become a verb, because only an action word could describe the close, sometimes-inappropriate relationship I share with this search engine. I rely on it for everything-- not just hard facts like addresses or the meaning of "retromingent"-- I also use it to clear up philosophical and emotional dilemmas, like, for instance, what the hell my dream about coughing up all my teeth was about.
Evidently, tooth loss is a fairly common dream theme, which is exciting for me in a way because typically when I share my dreams with other people, they cough uncomfortably and ask me how many drugs I did as a teenager. The bad news is that since a lot of people dream of losing their teeth, there are just as many explanations-- everything from undiagnosed eating disorders to fears of getting old/being unattractive to losing one's job to fears of marital infidelity to losing the ability to speak.
It's the last one that resonates with me. I think I'm afraid of losing my voice. This weekend I cooked a huge dinner for Pants and his buddies, cleaned the house, and continued work on my wifey projects in advance of Pants' military promotion. It was exhausting, and very little of it had anything to with me, in the strictest sense. At the same time, another blind relocation approaches, and the more I try to convince myself I'm fine with it, that I'm ready for a change, the more some subterranean part of me freaks out and concocts disturbing dreams.
As for this morning's dream about crawling across a mountain of dead soldiers whose bodies were concealed beneath a massive parachute, and digging through the wreckage in search of identifiable mementos to send home to their families-- who the fuck knows? Maybe that's less a symbol and more a reflection of the fact that I'm pretty close to open panic about the state of the war and Pants' guaranteed involvement in it. In fact, I find it more than a little disturbing how much I'm encouraged to work on some elaborate banner for him and how little substantive dialogue there's been among the spouses about what these guys are getting ready to do. I feel like I'm sitting in a room with a bunch of women quietly sipping tea while the hems of our jeans have all caught fire.
But maybe this is unfair-- maybe they're all dealing with it in their own healthy, private ways. Maybe somehow, magically, they've figured out the triple-lotus psychological contortion required to be completely OK with everything that's going on, who's in power, who's likely going to be in power next, and what exactly our husbands will be asked to do. Me though, I'm not there yet, and I'm going to have to give birth to a few more wolves and spit up a few more teeth before I am.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Tell me your secrets
Tonight my brother is spending his first night in a place he can't talk about. He's gotten a job with a government agency and is about to begin a 6 week training program. I was just thinking about whether that's too much to reveal on the internet, but then I realized that that's all I know about the situation: government job, gone for 6 weeks. Probably lots more, "I can't tell you that" in the future.
That makes two of the people closest to my heart who have loyalties that overrule me. At least, that's one overly dramatic and petty way to look at it. Another would be: both my husband and my brother are using their rare and valuable skill sets to serve the country, and hopefully the greater good. Neither view really feels right though, neither fits.
I've always prided myself on being able to keep a secret. I look at them almost as actual things, maybe like river rocks, that I am trusted to hold safe and to tend in the moments when they get too heavy for another person to carry. It seems like a vote of confidence in my character, some tacit approval of me as a person, when one is handed to me. I trust you, it says.
I have plenty of secrets myself, and have calculated their relative value over the years as one might appraise particularly old pieces of jewelry. Some lose their value naturally over time as the people or situations involved loosen their holds on me and each other. Some lose their value with the telling, and sometimes this is a good thing-- one of the best ways to release a secret's hold on you, if it's truly yours to begin with, is to share it. There's relief in that.
But some you can't, shouldn't, let go of. Some you're stuck with, either because you promised to keep them for someone else, or because they're yours, but you know others would be hurt by your telling.
I think some people can live easily with the secrets others have entrusted to them stowed at the back of a dusty mental shelf, maybe even eventually forgotten. I can't-- I hold those given to me close, and think about them often. This is not an appraisal of their value like I would give them away, but rather an appreciation of a valuable gift. Trust is very much like love, and it's easy (and maybe not always harmful) to confuse the two.
When I first realized that my husband's job would require him to keep things from me, I was incredulous and a little exhilarated-- it was the feeling of being in a museum and never wanting to touch the sculpture until you see the sign that says "Do Not Touch," and then it's like your hand burns with the not touching, and the distance between the sculpture and your fingertips suddenly seems electrically charged and so easily breached. I could touch it, I'm just not supposed to. And why not? I'd be so careful, so gentle.*
*A 50 cent secret: I touched the tomb of Henry V in Westminster Abbey, even though the plaque said not to. That's always given me a little thrill.
The fact that there will be-- or maybe already are-- things my husband isn't allowed to tell me about his job is maddening. It's a boundary I'm committed to steering clear of, but not without a little twinge of resentment. After all, my job is telling my secrets-- much of writing is measuring out little chunks of secrets, like a bread crumb trail in a forest, and hoping they lead somewhere worth going, some place worth the price of admission. Secrets can explain who we really are, what it means to be human.
It makes sense, both in principle and in our particular case, for my husband and my brother to keep professional secrets from me. But it hurts. It hurts in the little kid way of being told you can't play, you're not allowed, and it hurts in a more adult way of being separated, in danger of disconnection. It also hurts in a whole different way because both my husband and my brother will conceivably face a significant level of danger, and I'm not allowed to know about it.
Joan Didion says writers are always selling someone out, but I disagree. In the end it's not the secrets themselves that I'll miss knowing (I imagine most of them are pretty boring anyway), it's the connection with the person holding them, the feeling of being trusted. In this case maybe it is harmful to confuse trust with love-- I know my husband's and my brother's love for me won't be diminished by the things they aren't allowed to tell me, and in fact maybe my respect for this boundary will lead to a deeper level of trust in each of those relationships. It's just hard not to worry.
That makes two of the people closest to my heart who have loyalties that overrule me. At least, that's one overly dramatic and petty way to look at it. Another would be: both my husband and my brother are using their rare and valuable skill sets to serve the country, and hopefully the greater good. Neither view really feels right though, neither fits.
I've always prided myself on being able to keep a secret. I look at them almost as actual things, maybe like river rocks, that I am trusted to hold safe and to tend in the moments when they get too heavy for another person to carry. It seems like a vote of confidence in my character, some tacit approval of me as a person, when one is handed to me. I trust you, it says.
I have plenty of secrets myself, and have calculated their relative value over the years as one might appraise particularly old pieces of jewelry. Some lose their value naturally over time as the people or situations involved loosen their holds on me and each other. Some lose their value with the telling, and sometimes this is a good thing-- one of the best ways to release a secret's hold on you, if it's truly yours to begin with, is to share it. There's relief in that.
But some you can't, shouldn't, let go of. Some you're stuck with, either because you promised to keep them for someone else, or because they're yours, but you know others would be hurt by your telling.
I think some people can live easily with the secrets others have entrusted to them stowed at the back of a dusty mental shelf, maybe even eventually forgotten. I can't-- I hold those given to me close, and think about them often. This is not an appraisal of their value like I would give them away, but rather an appreciation of a valuable gift. Trust is very much like love, and it's easy (and maybe not always harmful) to confuse the two.
When I first realized that my husband's job would require him to keep things from me, I was incredulous and a little exhilarated-- it was the feeling of being in a museum and never wanting to touch the sculpture until you see the sign that says "Do Not Touch," and then it's like your hand burns with the not touching, and the distance between the sculpture and your fingertips suddenly seems electrically charged and so easily breached. I could touch it, I'm just not supposed to. And why not? I'd be so careful, so gentle.*
*A 50 cent secret: I touched the tomb of Henry V in Westminster Abbey, even though the plaque said not to. That's always given me a little thrill.
The fact that there will be-- or maybe already are-- things my husband isn't allowed to tell me about his job is maddening. It's a boundary I'm committed to steering clear of, but not without a little twinge of resentment. After all, my job is telling my secrets-- much of writing is measuring out little chunks of secrets, like a bread crumb trail in a forest, and hoping they lead somewhere worth going, some place worth the price of admission. Secrets can explain who we really are, what it means to be human.
It makes sense, both in principle and in our particular case, for my husband and my brother to keep professional secrets from me. But it hurts. It hurts in the little kid way of being told you can't play, you're not allowed, and it hurts in a more adult way of being separated, in danger of disconnection. It also hurts in a whole different way because both my husband and my brother will conceivably face a significant level of danger, and I'm not allowed to know about it.
Joan Didion says writers are always selling someone out, but I disagree. In the end it's not the secrets themselves that I'll miss knowing (I imagine most of them are pretty boring anyway), it's the connection with the person holding them, the feeling of being trusted. In this case maybe it is harmful to confuse trust with love-- I know my husband's and my brother's love for me won't be diminished by the things they aren't allowed to tell me, and in fact maybe my respect for this boundary will lead to a deeper level of trust in each of those relationships. It's just hard not to worry.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Principles of Friendship
Last week I had a student give me a smug little parting shot as she walked out of my class for the last time. This is nothing out of the ordinary, and usually these types of things are far outweighed by the other small gratitudes students cast off at semester's end. But it was the little laugh she made as she walked out, this little "mmm-hmm," which was entirely concealed behind a close-lipped, sphinx-like smile, that stopped me cold.
I remember this laugh because my best friend from elementary school laughed exactly the same way.
You know how there are some relationships that, when you experience them, seem on their surface like one thing, and then in retrospect you realize they were something else entirely? My formative experience of the girlhood Best Friend, the BFF, the one who writes L.Y.L.A.S. ("love you like a sister") at the ends of her complicated folded up notes, the one whose sleep-overs always included a de facto invitation to me, was one of these shape-changing relationships, and the more I reflect on how I actually felt around her, and how she treated me as the years went on, the more I feel this sick sinking sense in my stomach.
In short, bold strokes, our friendship looked like this: we met in the first grade and were friends until the sixth, more or less. She was from a very wealthy family and I was not, and this fact played a larger and larger role in our friendship as we grew up. Her family went to a wealthy Baptist church, and I was not even baptized. What started out as genuine companionship evolved, I think, into more of a complicated patronage. I can recall several poignant moments when A. used her buddy-buddy relationship with Jesus to bring me to tears of shame. I also recall feeling increasingly as though I were some sort of foil, the not-rich heathen kid, by which A. graciously exhibited and then retracted her powers of generosity and grace.
Finally, in the end, she forgot me. I moved to another town 30 miles away and wept myself hoarse at having to leave her, only to find that she could never be bothered to return my phone calls. Two years of silence passed between us before I called her to tell her my family was moving to the Middle East. She seemed shocked, but that was all.
My lasting impression, the one I can still remember as if I were standing there, was her bedroom. It was massive, and always a total wreck. It had its own attached bathroom, and a T.V., VCR, and telephone; her bed was king-sized; her closet spewed clothing in great undulating heaps. Everywhere, everywhere, were toys-- those expensive Breyer horses, Barbies, My Little Ponies, dolls, all with ratted hair and missing pieces, and pile after pile of Sweet Valley High books, which I now recognize as providing the social recipes for cold, viper-like feminine behavior. A.'s room was like an archaeological layer cake of decadent wealth, and every time I saw it I had this horrible, itching urge to clean it all up before she got in trouble, which, of course, she never did. A.'s world didn't work like that.
And yet, I missed her terribly. On some level I still do. If dreams tell the truth about us, then mine say I still wish that I could have held her attention, made her like me even though in so many ways she seemed to find me deficient, even embarrassing. I dream often of being a kid again and desperately trying to make A. laugh, which often seemed like the only thing I could do right, though with diminishing results as we got older.
In the third year of college I saw her again. She worked at the book store where I'd gotten a job, and I hoped, briefly, that she'd offer some satisfying explanation for why she'd dropped me so completely. I even thought about asking her-- perhaps the girl I'd considered her polar opposite, my girlhood foe, J., with whom she later became close friends, had lied to her about me. In the end though, she continued to be lukewarm to me, not even mildly interested in where I'd been in the years since we'd last spoken. She had some boyfriend she was really into, and soon she quit the job.
My last contact with anything having to do with her was brief and bittersweet. I saw her mother at the funeral of one of my other childhood friends. A. couldn't make it. I'd always loved A.'s mom wholeheartedly-- even when A. would go into a snit on some expensive family vacation where I'd been invited to tag along, A.'s mom was always warm and kind to me. She even wrote me letters when I went away to summer camp, though A. did not. At the funeral, A.'s mom hugged me with all the warmth of a long lost friend, and encouraged me enthusiastically to contact A., reconnect, but by then I knew I wouldn't. Some things hurt too much to keep doing them.
I'm writing about this because I'm at a point in my life where I really need my friends, old and new, and I'm starting to look at the structure and scaffolding of friendships with a more critical eye. There are principles of friendship, and I would be wise to understand that not everyone's are the same, even though I've assumed for most of my life that they are.
For instance, in the military, there are ranks and destinations. Someone might not be part of the same working community as you, and they may look at this information with the practical concern of, "how much effort is this friendship worth if we're not going to be stationed in the same city in the near future?" I find this incredibly depressing, but I can see how such a question might have value.
On the other hand, questions of rank and stature absolutely infuriate me because they hearken back to the time when A. used to lord it over me that she had new dresses for church when I had to wear the same one over and over if I spent the night at her house on a Saturday. I realize that's it's not possible, and even potentially unwise, to completely disregard information about a person's military rank, or their spouse's rank, but it grates on me like sand on a sunburn to remember the toadyism required to stay in A.'s good graces.
Despite these limitations, I have managed to cultivate a few good friendships within the community, and often I'm torn between wanting to lean on them and confide about the stresses in my life, or hold them at arm's length and be pleasant because you never know what might come back to bite you in the ass, even seemingly innocuous things, like I found out on two separate occasions this weekend. There are rituals and formalities here, and I'm trying to work up the guts to learn them through trial and error.
Outside the military is another world of equations. I feel much more comfortable interacting on my own terms, (i.e. not worrying if what I say is going to jeopardize my husband's career or standing among his peers) but I run into the same problem there that I do with trying to find work: I'm not going to be here forever. In fact, I may be leaving soon. As such, I feel like there's this discount tag on my friendship, a caveat to potential friends that I have some sort of shelf life. Remembering the cavalier way A. tossed me onto her heap of broken toys without a backward glance, this also gives me pause.
None of this would be a problem if I didn't need friends or gainful employment, but the fact is, I've tested both ideas and the results are drastic slides in my mental health and general tolerability. For now, I'm feeling kind of clueless and vulnerable, which is familiar.
I remember this laugh because my best friend from elementary school laughed exactly the same way.
You know how there are some relationships that, when you experience them, seem on their surface like one thing, and then in retrospect you realize they were something else entirely? My formative experience of the girlhood Best Friend, the BFF, the one who writes L.Y.L.A.S. ("love you like a sister") at the ends of her complicated folded up notes, the one whose sleep-overs always included a de facto invitation to me, was one of these shape-changing relationships, and the more I reflect on how I actually felt around her, and how she treated me as the years went on, the more I feel this sick sinking sense in my stomach.
In short, bold strokes, our friendship looked like this: we met in the first grade and were friends until the sixth, more or less. She was from a very wealthy family and I was not, and this fact played a larger and larger role in our friendship as we grew up. Her family went to a wealthy Baptist church, and I was not even baptized. What started out as genuine companionship evolved, I think, into more of a complicated patronage. I can recall several poignant moments when A. used her buddy-buddy relationship with Jesus to bring me to tears of shame. I also recall feeling increasingly as though I were some sort of foil, the not-rich heathen kid, by which A. graciously exhibited and then retracted her powers of generosity and grace.
Finally, in the end, she forgot me. I moved to another town 30 miles away and wept myself hoarse at having to leave her, only to find that she could never be bothered to return my phone calls. Two years of silence passed between us before I called her to tell her my family was moving to the Middle East. She seemed shocked, but that was all.
My lasting impression, the one I can still remember as if I were standing there, was her bedroom. It was massive, and always a total wreck. It had its own attached bathroom, and a T.V., VCR, and telephone; her bed was king-sized; her closet spewed clothing in great undulating heaps. Everywhere, everywhere, were toys-- those expensive Breyer horses, Barbies, My Little Ponies, dolls, all with ratted hair and missing pieces, and pile after pile of Sweet Valley High books, which I now recognize as providing the social recipes for cold, viper-like feminine behavior. A.'s room was like an archaeological layer cake of decadent wealth, and every time I saw it I had this horrible, itching urge to clean it all up before she got in trouble, which, of course, she never did. A.'s world didn't work like that.
And yet, I missed her terribly. On some level I still do. If dreams tell the truth about us, then mine say I still wish that I could have held her attention, made her like me even though in so many ways she seemed to find me deficient, even embarrassing. I dream often of being a kid again and desperately trying to make A. laugh, which often seemed like the only thing I could do right, though with diminishing results as we got older.
In the third year of college I saw her again. She worked at the book store where I'd gotten a job, and I hoped, briefly, that she'd offer some satisfying explanation for why she'd dropped me so completely. I even thought about asking her-- perhaps the girl I'd considered her polar opposite, my girlhood foe, J., with whom she later became close friends, had lied to her about me. In the end though, she continued to be lukewarm to me, not even mildly interested in where I'd been in the years since we'd last spoken. She had some boyfriend she was really into, and soon she quit the job.
My last contact with anything having to do with her was brief and bittersweet. I saw her mother at the funeral of one of my other childhood friends. A. couldn't make it. I'd always loved A.'s mom wholeheartedly-- even when A. would go into a snit on some expensive family vacation where I'd been invited to tag along, A.'s mom was always warm and kind to me. She even wrote me letters when I went away to summer camp, though A. did not. At the funeral, A.'s mom hugged me with all the warmth of a long lost friend, and encouraged me enthusiastically to contact A., reconnect, but by then I knew I wouldn't. Some things hurt too much to keep doing them.
I'm writing about this because I'm at a point in my life where I really need my friends, old and new, and I'm starting to look at the structure and scaffolding of friendships with a more critical eye. There are principles of friendship, and I would be wise to understand that not everyone's are the same, even though I've assumed for most of my life that they are.
For instance, in the military, there are ranks and destinations. Someone might not be part of the same working community as you, and they may look at this information with the practical concern of, "how much effort is this friendship worth if we're not going to be stationed in the same city in the near future?" I find this incredibly depressing, but I can see how such a question might have value.
On the other hand, questions of rank and stature absolutely infuriate me because they hearken back to the time when A. used to lord it over me that she had new dresses for church when I had to wear the same one over and over if I spent the night at her house on a Saturday. I realize that's it's not possible, and even potentially unwise, to completely disregard information about a person's military rank, or their spouse's rank, but it grates on me like sand on a sunburn to remember the toadyism required to stay in A.'s good graces.
Despite these limitations, I have managed to cultivate a few good friendships within the community, and often I'm torn between wanting to lean on them and confide about the stresses in my life, or hold them at arm's length and be pleasant because you never know what might come back to bite you in the ass, even seemingly innocuous things, like I found out on two separate occasions this weekend. There are rituals and formalities here, and I'm trying to work up the guts to learn them through trial and error.
Outside the military is another world of equations. I feel much more comfortable interacting on my own terms, (i.e. not worrying if what I say is going to jeopardize my husband's career or standing among his peers) but I run into the same problem there that I do with trying to find work: I'm not going to be here forever. In fact, I may be leaving soon. As such, I feel like there's this discount tag on my friendship, a caveat to potential friends that I have some sort of shelf life. Remembering the cavalier way A. tossed me onto her heap of broken toys without a backward glance, this also gives me pause.
None of this would be a problem if I didn't need friends or gainful employment, but the fact is, I've tested both ideas and the results are drastic slides in my mental health and general tolerability. For now, I'm feeling kind of clueless and vulnerable, which is familiar.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Feathers
Turns out I'm not a hunter.
This is something most people who know me could have probably guessed, but now we have official confirmation. Over the Labor Day weekend, my husband and I went on a dove hunting trip. Despite not having obtained a hunting license, I was fully prepared to enjoy the spectacle of doves spiraling crazily out of the sky for the simple fact that they have regularly spackled my car with shit for past 6 months. They have also hurled their thick, soft bodies directly against the windows of my house at the exact moments when I have been carrying something scalding hot and/or breakable, and each time I have spectacularly dropped whatever it was I was holding.
So when my husband said he wanted to buy a canvas pouch in which to store dead, bleeding doves around his waist, I made a terrible face but I agreed.
The hunt itself was even rather peaceful, given that I sat in a folding chair in the shade of a mesquite tree and read a book through most of it, only glancing up occasionally amid the thunder of shotguns and the intermittent soft thuds of doves landing among the grain stalks. The hard part came at the end of the day, when the clouds drew together and a stiff wind raked across the field as everyone gathered to clean their birds.
My husband handed me one and began to explain how to clean it, first pulling out the soft belly feathers. That was as far as I got. The dove in my hand was still warm, its head gently dangling and flopping over the back of my hand. Its eyelids were translucent gray and closed, and as I took hold of the first layers of feathers, they fell away easily and scattered in the wind in front of me, like rice at a wedding. Laid bare, the dove's breast was a mottled purplish color, thinly concealing the dark muscles and veins beneath. I laid my hand over it and felt the warmth draw away.
I don't know if you've ever found yourself here: standing in front of a blue plastic barrel full of bloody dove entrails, flanked on either side by people knuckle deep in bird, and suddenly realizing, with equal parts shame and tenderness, that you can go no further, you just can't break the skin. My reaction was to stall for time, spreading the dove's wings and manipulating its scaly red toes and acting as though I was pondering the finer points of avian anatomy, when really I was wondering whether I have any right to eat meat at all if I can't clean a dove.
Hunting is honest, and, done right, it's respectful of animal life. There can be a certain elemental reverence in cleaning a carcass, one that honors sacrifice and abhors waste, and as it turns out, this is an honesty I haven't mastered. I relished filet mignon on the night my husband and I got engaged, chicken is the cornerstone of my diet, and I firmly believe that bacon should be classified as an antidepressant, but there was something about that shower of delicate, white feathers blowing away from me, some catching in the grass and the barbed wire, that held me still for a moment, half scared, half sad, and for the first time, fully connected to what it means to kill and eat something.
I'll save you any suspense-- I immediately fell back into my dissembling ways and had a huge turkey sandwich yesterday, but the limits of honesty are on my mind. Just how much am I willing to gloss over in order to maintain my own comfort? The gas devoted to my heinous daily commute certainly comes with a price far greater than what shows at the tank. And as a military wife, I am constantly juggling the shifting, and sometimes conflicting, realities of what I believe, whom I support, and how I show my support. Sometimes though, it's all I can do to hold together all these scattered alliances and keep them from blowing away from me and losing all meaning.
This is something most people who know me could have probably guessed, but now we have official confirmation. Over the Labor Day weekend, my husband and I went on a dove hunting trip. Despite not having obtained a hunting license, I was fully prepared to enjoy the spectacle of doves spiraling crazily out of the sky for the simple fact that they have regularly spackled my car with shit for past 6 months. They have also hurled their thick, soft bodies directly against the windows of my house at the exact moments when I have been carrying something scalding hot and/or breakable, and each time I have spectacularly dropped whatever it was I was holding.
So when my husband said he wanted to buy a canvas pouch in which to store dead, bleeding doves around his waist, I made a terrible face but I agreed.
The hunt itself was even rather peaceful, given that I sat in a folding chair in the shade of a mesquite tree and read a book through most of it, only glancing up occasionally amid the thunder of shotguns and the intermittent soft thuds of doves landing among the grain stalks. The hard part came at the end of the day, when the clouds drew together and a stiff wind raked across the field as everyone gathered to clean their birds.
My husband handed me one and began to explain how to clean it, first pulling out the soft belly feathers. That was as far as I got. The dove in my hand was still warm, its head gently dangling and flopping over the back of my hand. Its eyelids were translucent gray and closed, and as I took hold of the first layers of feathers, they fell away easily and scattered in the wind in front of me, like rice at a wedding. Laid bare, the dove's breast was a mottled purplish color, thinly concealing the dark muscles and veins beneath. I laid my hand over it and felt the warmth draw away.
I don't know if you've ever found yourself here: standing in front of a blue plastic barrel full of bloody dove entrails, flanked on either side by people knuckle deep in bird, and suddenly realizing, with equal parts shame and tenderness, that you can go no further, you just can't break the skin. My reaction was to stall for time, spreading the dove's wings and manipulating its scaly red toes and acting as though I was pondering the finer points of avian anatomy, when really I was wondering whether I have any right to eat meat at all if I can't clean a dove.
Hunting is honest, and, done right, it's respectful of animal life. There can be a certain elemental reverence in cleaning a carcass, one that honors sacrifice and abhors waste, and as it turns out, this is an honesty I haven't mastered. I relished filet mignon on the night my husband and I got engaged, chicken is the cornerstone of my diet, and I firmly believe that bacon should be classified as an antidepressant, but there was something about that shower of delicate, white feathers blowing away from me, some catching in the grass and the barbed wire, that held me still for a moment, half scared, half sad, and for the first time, fully connected to what it means to kill and eat something.
I'll save you any suspense-- I immediately fell back into my dissembling ways and had a huge turkey sandwich yesterday, but the limits of honesty are on my mind. Just how much am I willing to gloss over in order to maintain my own comfort? The gas devoted to my heinous daily commute certainly comes with a price far greater than what shows at the tank. And as a military wife, I am constantly juggling the shifting, and sometimes conflicting, realities of what I believe, whom I support, and how I show my support. Sometimes though, it's all I can do to hold together all these scattered alliances and keep them from blowing away from me and losing all meaning.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Custom markings
One block south of the town square, there is a small shop over which a faded yellow plastic sign hangs that reads, simply, "Shoe Repair." Inside, a man named Felipe Mejia makes incredible, handmade custom cowboy boots for people all over the state. His counters are stacked with photo albums containing pictures of his finished works-- boots with elaborate threaded scrollwork and punched-out leather designs of ranch brands, prickly pears, broncos, guitars, angels, hawks, roses, barbed wire, lightning bolts, skulls, crosses, hearts, longhorns, and volumes of initials. His boots are short, tall, pointy-toed, square-toed, rounded, high-heeled, flat-heeled, medium-heeled, and made from all types of leather in a rainbow of colors, all stacked in giant fragrant rolls in an unruly heap behind the counter.
This weekend was my husband's second visit to the store and my first. He and Mr. Mejia were striking up a deal on the pair of custom boots my husband has long dreamed of-- boots that will accommodate his "duck feet," which are broad in the front and almost dainty in the heel, and will also somehow solidify my husband's identity as a non-native, but enthusiastic, Texan. They converse easily and quickly in Spanish despite my husband's bashful request for patience as he "practices," and I flip through albums trying not to appear strained as I concentrate on understanding.
Like many things in this town, the boot shop is old. A yellowed notice on the wall announces the October 1985 tax rate change, and much of the ceiling is patched with crumbling cardboard to catch the leaks. Mr. Mejia has been working out of this shop for 25 years, and making boots since he was 9 years old. He's easily in his late sixties now, if not older. Flipping through volumes of lovingly made boots, it's easy for me to see that this man is an artist and a craftsman, an original, and when he's gone, there will likely be no one to replace him.
The inevitability of decline in this town, its slow and constant decay, is no longer novel and poetic to me-- if anything it's grown irritating and tends to make me feel even more isolated. The long list of what's not available here, from organic hippie macaroni and Asian pears to bookstores and Argetinian wine, grows longer by the day, and less funny. But in things like the boot shop, things that are unique to this part of the country and saturated with its history of struggle, migration, and its ties to the cycles of nature, the process of loss and decay seems much sadder. Something will really be missing when we lose this.
My husband has decided on chocolate brown leather, calfskin for its softness instead of the wrinkled, weathered look of bullskin. He's chosen a personalized logo, a symbol of his occupation that he's proud of, and has found the perfect color of leather and stitching for it. Mr. Mejia traced and measured both of his feet onto a long white sheet of paper, six different measurements per foot, and scribbled notes to himself in Spanish in the margins. He's even adding a special tuck in the leather of one heel to accommodate the massive callous my husband has from years of ill-fitting footwear.
Well satisfied, they both turn to me with the question I've been dreading: what type of boots would I like?
I'm stuck here. For all the reasons of beautiful craftsmanship and one-of-a-kindness, I'd like a pair. Plus, we've agreed that moving around so much brings with it the pleasant responsibility of finding one nice thing per posting that really reflects that place, and to invest in it as a way of keeping track of each place and honoring the time we spent there. Boots definitely fit that definition.
My problem is this: being from Austin, I've never quite felt comfortable in flexing my Texan-ness among other Texans. Out of state is another story-- in Florida I caught my accent thickening when I was totally clueless and needed help with something, the implicit message being, "Cut me some slack-- I'm not from around here." Out of sheer homesickness, I even bought a shirt online that says, "Fuck Y'all, I'm from Texas," and wore it to dive bars and drunken Marine parties.
But every time I go back home, the message is clearer-- Austin is different from most of Texas. With every anti-Bush bumpersticker, every cross-dressing hobo, and every vegan diner I pass, I realize that what used to look like normal old city to me is in fact consciously, and even aggressively weird compared to much of the rest of the state. So for me to don something as Texan as cowboy boots is cause for more than a moment's cognitive dissonance-- am I allowed to do this? Does this look pitifully wrong on me?
Added to this is the pressure of personalization. What image symbolizes Me? I've wrestled with this one for years, even back in the comforting bizarro world of Austin, because there everyone has at least one visible tattoo. The utterly blank canvas of my skin has nothing to do with chasteness or notions of future employability-- it simply reflects profound indecision and the inability to identify something important enough to want it carved into my flesh with a vibrating needle. And this is not for lack of looking-- I'd guess that I've weighed ideas for a tattoo at least five times a week since I was 16. It's just that nothing has tipped the scales.
I've even designed tattoos for other people and sat in during the disturbing moments when my drawings were permanently etched into someone else's hide. But when it comes to me? To my translucent Irish skin? Suddenly up comes the image of local police on the evening news, having to identify my lifeless body by a silly tattoo; or of me trying to blend seamlessly into Latin America after having committed some terrible crime and being given away by my tattoo; or being captured by hostile terrorists, stripped naked, and trying to pretend I'm not American, only to be betrayed by a tattoo; and, perhaps the most improbable scenario, me on the red carpet of some gala event, dressed in Prada and bearing a tattoo that long ago lost all its significance to me but remains trapped under my skin until I can pony up the money for lasers.
Why does all of this come up when I'm considering whether or not to get a pair of custom cowboy boots? Because they're expensive, and I know someone will work hard on them. Because this man, who will not be around forever, will spend four months on them, leaving his personal mark on them, for me, and I'd like to think that if he's going to do that, I could do him the courtesy of choosing a design that has some meaning for me.
And why is it so hard to choose something? I know pretty much who I am and what I like in this world, and I like to think that in some ways I'm unique. Perhaps the problem is the editor in me, the overthinker with the big red pen who loves to cross out huge sections of my past with the margin notes, "overwrought," and "muddled-- needs direction." The editor in me always holds back, reminding me that "there's a better way to say that," or "this particular issue will get clearer with some perspective-- best to wait a while and see what develops." Especially now, when I know there are things about myself I'd like to change, and when every eight months forces huge change anyway, committing to any kind of identifying marker, even if it is a special treat, is difficult and anxiety-producing.
What I'd like to know, from anyone who's gotten a tattoo, from "traditional" and "non-traditional" Texans, from anyone who's ever struggled with identity or wondered what the hell they're doing in life, is how do you know when you've hit that sweet spot of finding something purely "you"? And how do you hold on to it?
This weekend was my husband's second visit to the store and my first. He and Mr. Mejia were striking up a deal on the pair of custom boots my husband has long dreamed of-- boots that will accommodate his "duck feet," which are broad in the front and almost dainty in the heel, and will also somehow solidify my husband's identity as a non-native, but enthusiastic, Texan. They converse easily and quickly in Spanish despite my husband's bashful request for patience as he "practices," and I flip through albums trying not to appear strained as I concentrate on understanding.
Like many things in this town, the boot shop is old. A yellowed notice on the wall announces the October 1985 tax rate change, and much of the ceiling is patched with crumbling cardboard to catch the leaks. Mr. Mejia has been working out of this shop for 25 years, and making boots since he was 9 years old. He's easily in his late sixties now, if not older. Flipping through volumes of lovingly made boots, it's easy for me to see that this man is an artist and a craftsman, an original, and when he's gone, there will likely be no one to replace him.
The inevitability of decline in this town, its slow and constant decay, is no longer novel and poetic to me-- if anything it's grown irritating and tends to make me feel even more isolated. The long list of what's not available here, from organic hippie macaroni and Asian pears to bookstores and Argetinian wine, grows longer by the day, and less funny. But in things like the boot shop, things that are unique to this part of the country and saturated with its history of struggle, migration, and its ties to the cycles of nature, the process of loss and decay seems much sadder. Something will really be missing when we lose this.
My husband has decided on chocolate brown leather, calfskin for its softness instead of the wrinkled, weathered look of bullskin. He's chosen a personalized logo, a symbol of his occupation that he's proud of, and has found the perfect color of leather and stitching for it. Mr. Mejia traced and measured both of his feet onto a long white sheet of paper, six different measurements per foot, and scribbled notes to himself in Spanish in the margins. He's even adding a special tuck in the leather of one heel to accommodate the massive callous my husband has from years of ill-fitting footwear.
Well satisfied, they both turn to me with the question I've been dreading: what type of boots would I like?
I'm stuck here. For all the reasons of beautiful craftsmanship and one-of-a-kindness, I'd like a pair. Plus, we've agreed that moving around so much brings with it the pleasant responsibility of finding one nice thing per posting that really reflects that place, and to invest in it as a way of keeping track of each place and honoring the time we spent there. Boots definitely fit that definition.
My problem is this: being from Austin, I've never quite felt comfortable in flexing my Texan-ness among other Texans. Out of state is another story-- in Florida I caught my accent thickening when I was totally clueless and needed help with something, the implicit message being, "Cut me some slack-- I'm not from around here." Out of sheer homesickness, I even bought a shirt online that says, "Fuck Y'all, I'm from Texas," and wore it to dive bars and drunken Marine parties.
But every time I go back home, the message is clearer-- Austin is different from most of Texas. With every anti-Bush bumpersticker, every cross-dressing hobo, and every vegan diner I pass, I realize that what used to look like normal old city to me is in fact consciously, and even aggressively weird compared to much of the rest of the state. So for me to don something as Texan as cowboy boots is cause for more than a moment's cognitive dissonance-- am I allowed to do this? Does this look pitifully wrong on me?
Added to this is the pressure of personalization. What image symbolizes Me? I've wrestled with this one for years, even back in the comforting bizarro world of Austin, because there everyone has at least one visible tattoo. The utterly blank canvas of my skin has nothing to do with chasteness or notions of future employability-- it simply reflects profound indecision and the inability to identify something important enough to want it carved into my flesh with a vibrating needle. And this is not for lack of looking-- I'd guess that I've weighed ideas for a tattoo at least five times a week since I was 16. It's just that nothing has tipped the scales.
I've even designed tattoos for other people and sat in during the disturbing moments when my drawings were permanently etched into someone else's hide. But when it comes to me? To my translucent Irish skin? Suddenly up comes the image of local police on the evening news, having to identify my lifeless body by a silly tattoo; or of me trying to blend seamlessly into Latin America after having committed some terrible crime and being given away by my tattoo; or being captured by hostile terrorists, stripped naked, and trying to pretend I'm not American, only to be betrayed by a tattoo; and, perhaps the most improbable scenario, me on the red carpet of some gala event, dressed in Prada and bearing a tattoo that long ago lost all its significance to me but remains trapped under my skin until I can pony up the money for lasers.
Why does all of this come up when I'm considering whether or not to get a pair of custom cowboy boots? Because they're expensive, and I know someone will work hard on them. Because this man, who will not be around forever, will spend four months on them, leaving his personal mark on them, for me, and I'd like to think that if he's going to do that, I could do him the courtesy of choosing a design that has some meaning for me.
And why is it so hard to choose something? I know pretty much who I am and what I like in this world, and I like to think that in some ways I'm unique. Perhaps the problem is the editor in me, the overthinker with the big red pen who loves to cross out huge sections of my past with the margin notes, "overwrought," and "muddled-- needs direction." The editor in me always holds back, reminding me that "there's a better way to say that," or "this particular issue will get clearer with some perspective-- best to wait a while and see what develops." Especially now, when I know there are things about myself I'd like to change, and when every eight months forces huge change anyway, committing to any kind of identifying marker, even if it is a special treat, is difficult and anxiety-producing.
What I'd like to know, from anyone who's gotten a tattoo, from "traditional" and "non-traditional" Texans, from anyone who's ever struggled with identity or wondered what the hell they're doing in life, is how do you know when you've hit that sweet spot of finding something purely "you"? And how do you hold on to it?
Monday, August 14, 2006
Lysol for the soul
Right now, surgeons could operate on my kitchen floor. Babies could eat out of my bathtub. People with no immune systems could crawl face down across my living room carpet, inhaling deeply, and there would be nary a sneeze. Why?
This is what I do when things get on top of me-- I go hunting the source of my discomfort with a bottle of bleach and an old toothbrush. Surely it's the scum around the bathtub drain that's making me feel like this! Or the dust on the window sills! Or the crumb tray in the toaster! Whatever it is, I'm convinced that if I look hard enough, and scrub hard enough, I'll find it.
Right now the floors are so spotless they squeak under my feet, and somewhere off at the other end of the house, the cat is sneezing out carpet freshener from his hiding place under the bed. As for the dog, her shepherding ancestry is keeping her vigilant-- something is wrong with one of the flock, and she tails me from room to room, ears flat, eyes sharp, waiting.
I've seen my psychologist once, about a month ago, and until the end of this month, I'm to wait out scheduling conflicts and his yearly vacation, and keep a journal of my emotional responses to food, stress, all the usual suspects.
Usually journal writing is something I'm good at, and something that helps, but lately it's felt like the unsettling equivalent of milking a rattlesnake's fangs into a glass-- what do you do with the venom if you can't figure out the cure?
The journal I'm writing in has a painting on the front that used to be one of my favorites:
The full title of the painting is "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening," and next to "The Temptation of St. Anthony," it's my favorite Salvador Dali painting. I read that what he did for this painting, and for many others, was to sit in a comfortable chair with a key in his hand, and a saucer on the floor directly beneath his hand. Then he'd nod off. When he was relaxed enough for his hand to drop the key, it would hit the plate and waken him, and he'd immediately paint whatever messed up dream image was in his head right at that moment. Hence, a woman being menaced by a rifle coming out of two tigers coming out of a fish coming out of a pomegranate with a spindly-legged circus elephant strolling in the background. Happens to me all the time.
But last night as I was unable to sleep and trying desperately to milk the venom out of my own head, I saw something new in the painting that disturbed me. In so many ways, it's an accurate picture of bulimia-- all kinds of hidden menaces rocketing out of a single piece of food and mounting a direct attack on the exposed body, a body which seems blissfully unaware of what's about to hit it. And the elephant in the background-- when you look at "The Temptation of St. Anthony," those circus elephants seem to represent all kinds of impossibly sinful decadence, the frightening excesses that tempt us all. Thin enough, pretty enough, strong enough-- the promises that draw me further and further out.
I stopped writing last night, unsure of whether it's a good idea to relax and let the key drop. What if the ultimate answer in all of this is that I'm just not equipped to handle the life I've chosen? Would I be willing, then, to let go of the compensation of fixating on food and weight if it meant I had to look harder at how I deal with stress (which seems to be the one element of the equation that's not going anywhere)?
Maybe I'm reading too much into this. Judging my aggressively sparkling house, I am reading too much into this. One thing I've learned though-- one morning of slinging bleach is no match for years of built up grime.
This is what I do when things get on top of me-- I go hunting the source of my discomfort with a bottle of bleach and an old toothbrush. Surely it's the scum around the bathtub drain that's making me feel like this! Or the dust on the window sills! Or the crumb tray in the toaster! Whatever it is, I'm convinced that if I look hard enough, and scrub hard enough, I'll find it.
Right now the floors are so spotless they squeak under my feet, and somewhere off at the other end of the house, the cat is sneezing out carpet freshener from his hiding place under the bed. As for the dog, her shepherding ancestry is keeping her vigilant-- something is wrong with one of the flock, and she tails me from room to room, ears flat, eyes sharp, waiting.
I've seen my psychologist once, about a month ago, and until the end of this month, I'm to wait out scheduling conflicts and his yearly vacation, and keep a journal of my emotional responses to food, stress, all the usual suspects.
Usually journal writing is something I'm good at, and something that helps, but lately it's felt like the unsettling equivalent of milking a rattlesnake's fangs into a glass-- what do you do with the venom if you can't figure out the cure?
The journal I'm writing in has a painting on the front that used to be one of my favorites:
The full title of the painting is "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening," and next to "The Temptation of St. Anthony," it's my favorite Salvador Dali painting. I read that what he did for this painting, and for many others, was to sit in a comfortable chair with a key in his hand, and a saucer on the floor directly beneath his hand. Then he'd nod off. When he was relaxed enough for his hand to drop the key, it would hit the plate and waken him, and he'd immediately paint whatever messed up dream image was in his head right at that moment. Hence, a woman being menaced by a rifle coming out of two tigers coming out of a fish coming out of a pomegranate with a spindly-legged circus elephant strolling in the background. Happens to me all the time.
But last night as I was unable to sleep and trying desperately to milk the venom out of my own head, I saw something new in the painting that disturbed me. In so many ways, it's an accurate picture of bulimia-- all kinds of hidden menaces rocketing out of a single piece of food and mounting a direct attack on the exposed body, a body which seems blissfully unaware of what's about to hit it. And the elephant in the background-- when you look at "The Temptation of St. Anthony," those circus elephants seem to represent all kinds of impossibly sinful decadence, the frightening excesses that tempt us all. Thin enough, pretty enough, strong enough-- the promises that draw me further and further out.
I stopped writing last night, unsure of whether it's a good idea to relax and let the key drop. What if the ultimate answer in all of this is that I'm just not equipped to handle the life I've chosen? Would I be willing, then, to let go of the compensation of fixating on food and weight if it meant I had to look harder at how I deal with stress (which seems to be the one element of the equation that's not going anywhere)?
Maybe I'm reading too much into this. Judging my aggressively sparkling house, I am reading too much into this. One thing I've learned though-- one morning of slinging bleach is no match for years of built up grime.
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