It has been one year since the truck drove away- one half of our life piled in the back, and me left standing in the apartment with the rest. One year since that beautiful, sunny, cherry blossoms-in-the-park day, obscene to me in its shining pink aliveness. It was a day not unlike today, a day to start shiva, and the only time I thought I might literally never get up again.
One year later and I’ve walked continents of the earth and mind alike. Yet today the thought is oddly similar. An echo that says simply and firmly, I cannot do this. I cannot. In the last year I learned to traverse the loneliness, like the stoic bare forest in winter, loneliness like the middle of the sea. I hopped the knife-edge of this thing and balanced, learned to walk without cutting my feet. I know now that I will fall to neither side- not insanity on the left, not self-immolation on the right.
And yet, this next thing comes like a wall, like Check Point Charlie without any papers, and I don’t know how to slip through.
You see, I do not know how this is done. How one reaches across the ravine and picks up the hand of another. Again. It is a combination of forgetting, and having never really known how. I have forgotten how to get it out there, put it on, and pile it high. Forgotten how to catch a glimpse, to wink, to look slyly and smile. I have forgotten how to banter, to exchange wit, to touch an arm and laugh. And more so, I have forgotten what it feels like to want these things, not in the abstract of a late-night insomniac musing, but in the instant that it actually occurs. To want them with the carefree spontaneity that comes when it’s all reciprocal, and right there, in the moment of happening.
At the same time, I have never really known how, at least not as it must be now, when it has to be about wanting, more than needing. When it must be, for me, as much about being the chooser as the chosen. I don’t know the steps one takes as a woman, rather than as a girl, or how one plays while lacking tolerance or taste for games- when the whole thing is cast everywhere, from the online sites to the bars, as a giant game of catch-as-catch-can.
I don’t know how to do this.
I don’t know how to do this when the truth is, I am afraid that I may be permanently broken. I have a fissure now, like a hairline crack or the faded imprint of a letter across my chest. I will never be new again. On the good days my failure gives me clarity, depth, and an air of worldly knowing. On the bad days, it puts me at the back of the shelf, dusty with all the other chipped bits of crockery.
I don’t know how to do this when the truth is, my internal compass, my gut, my instinct for these things seems to always fail me. Since junior high it seems sometimes, too much time wasted on false dopamine-high-crushes that turned out to be no more than patterns in the wind. And now, at either extreme, the needle fails still, reading kindness as bewitchery, and interest as lechery. I need a GPS but have been given a sun-dial instead.
No, I cannot do this.
Oh, winter! Won’t you just rain some more? Let me stay wrapped inside a little longer, content with my books, my cups of tea, and the dog snoring next to me.
Ahh, but the truth is, the daffodils are nodding and insistent, and the tulips are rioting in their beds. Jacket-less arms swing on Broadway, the playgrounds overflow, and today I saw the chairs out, stacked and ready, at the outdoor bar in Riverside Park.
It is Spring and I must learn to step outside, into the warm evening air.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
On New Year and Old Year
As a fairly lapsed Jew, what I know about Judaism could maybe fit on the head of a pin. But one thing that has always stuck in my head from a high holiday service I once attended is learning the origin of the term “scapegoat”. On the Jewish calendar the end of the year comes in Autumn, and is followed nine days later by Yum Kippur. This day of atonement is supposed to be a time to reflect and cleanse oneself of all the misdeeds of the previous year, before going forth into the new one. The term scapegoat comes from an old Yum Kipper story in which villagers tied a red scarf around the neck of a goat before throwing it off a cliff. As the goat fell to its death, the scarf turned white, meaning that all the bad from the previous year had been washed clean, and the new one could be embraced fully, and without regret.
Although I always hated the solemnity of Yum Kipper, this year, at what is still the beginning of our New Year, I see the wisdom of looking back and taking stock of what I learned in the last 12 months before stepping firmly forward. 2008 was a tumultuous year for me personally, as well as for the nation, and although I am looking forward to what will hopefully be a more even year, I am mindful that the peace I seek is a road walked, and one I can only see clearly if I remember to mark the milestones along the way. So to that end, I find myself with an impossible year finally behind me, able to say that although I lost much, I also learned a few hard, hard truths about myself, the world, and the human heart. By listing a few of them here, I tie my own proverbial red scarf, release it away on the wind, and hope that when it lands it will be a bright white spot on the valley floor.
Winter:
Grief is like sitting under water and breathing through the nose. And the only way to get through is to sit and wait for the waters to recede. At times it is a test of will- you, the water, and can I find a reason to stand up today, and today, and today? Now I understand all human frailties- addiction, compulsion, prayer, and plain old denial - in the face of grief. I would not wish it on my worst enemy, and I will never again presume to know another’s lonely road walked in its wake.
Spring:
I want, therefore I am. Desire. Vision. The snapshots that live in the mind’s eye. Or the thing that awakens with a start, unexplained but right, when we meet a person we recognize for the first time. It is in these moments and deeply personal hungers where our wants become ourselves. The actual achievement or possession of these things does not matter. The fact that we saw- a glimpse of a life, an idea, or even a person that we want- and knew- this is solipsism. It is these aches that tell us who we are. We may never achieve the ability to grasp, and hold close, but the fact of wanting, sometimes that is enough.
Summer:
I have always had a love affair with language. Words chosen with care, a phrase imbued with just the right twist of irony and double entendre- and, oh! Swoon! So it was with gravity that I conceded the caveat to Spring is Do or Do Not. There are limits to language- actions, movements, effort- these simply weigh more. You. Me. What do we do? The things we devote our attention to, these are the things we are made of. Like a key in a lock, it really is that simple.
Fall:
In the first semester of my PhD, what I learned was that knowledge is not a pinnacle, but a cliff’s edge, and once I got here, I realized that I will never really know. Each question begets an answer begets another question. True knowledge is a letting go, and an embrace of uncertainty. To be an intellectual is not to have access to an elite store of information, rather it is knowing enough to be humbled by all that is not known. And its opposite is not lack of education or lack of learning, but lack of curiosity, lack of willingness to learn, to think, to change. It is intractable. It is dogma.
The lesson I have only begun to discover. The bridge or the resolution for 2009:
The trick to finding happiness and contentment is to hold faith, but to not expect. Like an optical illusion- eyes open, don’t focus, and eventually the vision, the thing to find will be revealed. Release entitlement, release fairness, release what ought to be. Live only for what is, and know that all of life’s gift and all of life’s disappointments are the circumstances, but not the definition of a life. All I get is to put one foot in front of the other, to be mindful, and trust that all security, all tethers and all compass points are rooted in my own toes. The rest is beyond my grasp.
Although I always hated the solemnity of Yum Kipper, this year, at what is still the beginning of our New Year, I see the wisdom of looking back and taking stock of what I learned in the last 12 months before stepping firmly forward. 2008 was a tumultuous year for me personally, as well as for the nation, and although I am looking forward to what will hopefully be a more even year, I am mindful that the peace I seek is a road walked, and one I can only see clearly if I remember to mark the milestones along the way. So to that end, I find myself with an impossible year finally behind me, able to say that although I lost much, I also learned a few hard, hard truths about myself, the world, and the human heart. By listing a few of them here, I tie my own proverbial red scarf, release it away on the wind, and hope that when it lands it will be a bright white spot on the valley floor.
Winter:
Grief is like sitting under water and breathing through the nose. And the only way to get through is to sit and wait for the waters to recede. At times it is a test of will- you, the water, and can I find a reason to stand up today, and today, and today? Now I understand all human frailties- addiction, compulsion, prayer, and plain old denial - in the face of grief. I would not wish it on my worst enemy, and I will never again presume to know another’s lonely road walked in its wake.
Spring:
I want, therefore I am. Desire. Vision. The snapshots that live in the mind’s eye. Or the thing that awakens with a start, unexplained but right, when we meet a person we recognize for the first time. It is in these moments and deeply personal hungers where our wants become ourselves. The actual achievement or possession of these things does not matter. The fact that we saw- a glimpse of a life, an idea, or even a person that we want- and knew- this is solipsism. It is these aches that tell us who we are. We may never achieve the ability to grasp, and hold close, but the fact of wanting, sometimes that is enough.
Summer:
I have always had a love affair with language. Words chosen with care, a phrase imbued with just the right twist of irony and double entendre- and, oh! Swoon! So it was with gravity that I conceded the caveat to Spring is Do or Do Not. There are limits to language- actions, movements, effort- these simply weigh more. You. Me. What do we do? The things we devote our attention to, these are the things we are made of. Like a key in a lock, it really is that simple.
Fall:
In the first semester of my PhD, what I learned was that knowledge is not a pinnacle, but a cliff’s edge, and once I got here, I realized that I will never really know. Each question begets an answer begets another question. True knowledge is a letting go, and an embrace of uncertainty. To be an intellectual is not to have access to an elite store of information, rather it is knowing enough to be humbled by all that is not known. And its opposite is not lack of education or lack of learning, but lack of curiosity, lack of willingness to learn, to think, to change. It is intractable. It is dogma.
The lesson I have only begun to discover. The bridge or the resolution for 2009:
The trick to finding happiness and contentment is to hold faith, but to not expect. Like an optical illusion- eyes open, don’t focus, and eventually the vision, the thing to find will be revealed. Release entitlement, release fairness, release what ought to be. Live only for what is, and know that all of life’s gift and all of life’s disappointments are the circumstances, but not the definition of a life. All I get is to put one foot in front of the other, to be mindful, and trust that all security, all tethers and all compass points are rooted in my own toes. The rest is beyond my grasp.
Friday, October 3, 2008
On Auld Lang Syne
In a strange juxtaposition of events, in the last week figures from both the best and worst moments of my youth have reappeared rather suddenly in my life in some capacity or other. The contrast of what these gentlemen (and I mean that in the truest sense of the word, all of them) have meant to me has been so stark that my head has been spinning a little. I am left a little breathless this Friday afternoon, checking the contents of my closet, and wondering about my psychic housekeeping.
As someone with naturally itchy feet, who has always been seeking, questing after some unknown vision that is always just ahead, I have had both the privilege and the burden of living my life as a series of disconnected short shorts, rather than as contiguous chapters or an easily discernable plot line. I have moved through life, shedding moments and experiences like a snake sheds skin, all the while both wondering and unclear about what all I have left behind.
This week, in sharp relief, what has come to me is the indelible marks left by the people I knew when. I have outgrown many skins in the inter-rim, but we are nevertheless bonded, locked together in life in some way, simply because these are the people with whom I shared singular defining moments and periods in time.
On the one hand, two friends unseen for twenty-plus years, unchanged to me from the boys who live in my minds eye, delicious in the adolescent awkwardness of the best and last true summer of our childhood. A summer that lives for me in pre-fall Milton-esque beauty, abuzz with the combined pleasures of swimming, sunshine and the first taste of gently broken rules. A gang of us so hyper-awake in our bodies, we could have had sexual tension with the elms, and so in love with each other and being alive, it seems now an endless series of hugs, and laughter so big it must surely still be hanging over the branches in Madison, CT. For me, nothing if not out of place in my own hometown, that summer just before high school was a respite, an oasis of acceptance that helped buoy me through what would become a four-year prison of relentless monotony, teenage disaffectedness and angst. And today, the residue remains. Over a shared basket of French Fries somewhere near mid-town, words spoken with a casual gentleness- “You were always a bit like that…”- and the unspoken gift- “and we didn’t care.”
On the other hand, a person from a darker moment all together made electronic contact. This was a person who, just two short years later, injured me in one of those moments so fraught with mutual stupidity and false belief in a maturity we didn’t posses, that it nevertheless precipitated my long fall forward into adulthood. This is a person who hurt me deeply, but from whom I eventually received the most wrenching, eloquent and humble apology to which I am ever likely to bear witness. I can’t say at present that I have a friendship with this person, but we too are bonded by the accidental pipeline of transgression, regret and the true divinity of forgiveness.
With these events, I have thought much this week about what it means to loose and find. With the advent of easy access to networks and communication, my generation is likely the last, at least here in our linked-up, look-at-my-face, instant-friend-request-for-life society, to know what it means to truly loose a person. To go forward into the world, your life moving past you like traffic, not knowing if you’ll ever find your way to reunion or making amends- to question whether your loose ends will ever get tied.
For me, I am grateful for the opportunity to go back after all, and see if any of the old skin still fits.
As someone with naturally itchy feet, who has always been seeking, questing after some unknown vision that is always just ahead, I have had both the privilege and the burden of living my life as a series of disconnected short shorts, rather than as contiguous chapters or an easily discernable plot line. I have moved through life, shedding moments and experiences like a snake sheds skin, all the while both wondering and unclear about what all I have left behind.
This week, in sharp relief, what has come to me is the indelible marks left by the people I knew when. I have outgrown many skins in the inter-rim, but we are nevertheless bonded, locked together in life in some way, simply because these are the people with whom I shared singular defining moments and periods in time.
On the one hand, two friends unseen for twenty-plus years, unchanged to me from the boys who live in my minds eye, delicious in the adolescent awkwardness of the best and last true summer of our childhood. A summer that lives for me in pre-fall Milton-esque beauty, abuzz with the combined pleasures of swimming, sunshine and the first taste of gently broken rules. A gang of us so hyper-awake in our bodies, we could have had sexual tension with the elms, and so in love with each other and being alive, it seems now an endless series of hugs, and laughter so big it must surely still be hanging over the branches in Madison, CT. For me, nothing if not out of place in my own hometown, that summer just before high school was a respite, an oasis of acceptance that helped buoy me through what would become a four-year prison of relentless monotony, teenage disaffectedness and angst. And today, the residue remains. Over a shared basket of French Fries somewhere near mid-town, words spoken with a casual gentleness- “You were always a bit like that…”- and the unspoken gift- “and we didn’t care.”
On the other hand, a person from a darker moment all together made electronic contact. This was a person who, just two short years later, injured me in one of those moments so fraught with mutual stupidity and false belief in a maturity we didn’t posses, that it nevertheless precipitated my long fall forward into adulthood. This is a person who hurt me deeply, but from whom I eventually received the most wrenching, eloquent and humble apology to which I am ever likely to bear witness. I can’t say at present that I have a friendship with this person, but we too are bonded by the accidental pipeline of transgression, regret and the true divinity of forgiveness.
With these events, I have thought much this week about what it means to loose and find. With the advent of easy access to networks and communication, my generation is likely the last, at least here in our linked-up, look-at-my-face, instant-friend-request-for-life society, to know what it means to truly loose a person. To go forward into the world, your life moving past you like traffic, not knowing if you’ll ever find your way to reunion or making amends- to question whether your loose ends will ever get tied.
For me, I am grateful for the opportunity to go back after all, and see if any of the old skin still fits.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
On Having No Words To Say
This is for Hector. May you have finally found peace in the core of your own deep heart. We loved you.
The Lake Isle Of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
-William Butler Yeats
The Lake Isle Of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
-William Butler Yeats
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
On Yoga and Geometry
After 7 years of somewhat sporadic yoga practice, I am finally beginning to understand it on a meditative, as well as a physical level. To see how the practices of the body are linked to the processes of the mind.
In Iyangar, the style of yoga I practice, every pose is a lesson in concentration and adjustment- a tweak of the wrist, or a slight extension of a muscle- each small stretch or twist is a step in the process of reaching the goal of pose completion. A version of many poses (asanas) can be achieved from day one, but most take somewhere between weeks and years to master. Luckily, in yoga, it is the journey of the body and mind that matter, rather than mastery itself.
Although handstand is an asana that doesn’t get covered in every class, when it does, I am always one of the people who needs the instructor’s help to swing my legs completely up over my head. Once I’m in the pose, I can balance quite steadily on my palms, but getting my heels to kick up over my hips of my own volition is something I have failed to do, over and over again.
One thing every instructor has told me though is that failure to complete this inversion is not physical. It is about fear. Fear that your arms won’t support you and your head will crash into the ground, perhaps. Or fear of being upside down, and seeing the world from a different angle. Yet, neither of these are my fear. I can balance on top of my head in headstand quite happily for as long as 4 or 5 minutes, so seeing the world toes-on-top doesn’t bother me. And I know my arms can support me, and do, when I have help getting the legs to go over. No, my fear is about something else entirely.
Every time I fail to do handstand, I think of the line “Where I live, there’s a lady who walks everywhere on her hands, she don’t trust where her feet want to take her” from the Belly song Judas My Heart. This morning was no different. After 20 minutes of kicking upwards and toes ungraciously slamming onto the floor- the lyric trailing in my brain- rather than accepting the standard trepidations as my own, I asked myself what my fear is really about. After all, what is the difference between standing on hands, standing on head, and standing on feet? What do each of these mean on a metaphorical level, and why can I easily do two of them, while the third remains the elusive place I just can’t get?
The metaphor of standing on your own feet is obvious, but if I relate it to the lyric, it implies something more. Not just the ability to stand and support oneself, but to truly be upright, one must also trust that the steps taken and the roads traveled on those feet will lead to places that are just and right. And although it hasn’t always been thus, these days my steps are steady and strong, and in both yoga and in life, I’ve learned to spread my toes a little, making the base of my foot wider, rooting me ever more firmly in place.
And what of the head? What does it mean to stand solidly on the crown? I used to think that to be an expert at something, one had to know and do everything in a particular area. What I’ve learned is that expertise is relative, and that what separates the adept is simply a passion and openness for the learning process. The capacity for wonder, and acceptance of discomfort, these are the markings of the truly able. In my own desire to know I have moved from undergraduate English major, to doctoral level quantitative analysis. I looked both Calculus and Statistics in the eye, and although I was not perfect or even uniquely talented at either of them, I still won. So standing on my head simply means that I have accepted that the world is big, and although I will always strive to know more, everywhere I go, and everything I learn is also already enough (For more on this, see this guest post).
Ah, but then I come to my hands, and my arms, for what do I use these? Hands and arms are for carrying and holding, pulling forward, and release. They are for caress and embrace and for things all together more tender then those that are the purview of the feet and the mind. Arms are the embody of love. And although I can stand on them once I am there, letting the head hang, suspended in air, and letting the feet swing out free to get there, this is where my fear lies. It is in this process of letting go the feet and the head, the moment of ambiguity when the weight is in mid-shift and balance moves from one point to the other, this is the instance where I fail. But why?
They say that the triangle is the strongest shape. Its three points are interdependent, with each side pressing on the vertices to create angles that cannot be bent or pushed out of shape. At the same time, they work in tandem and no one angle can maintain its solidity without the other two. Like triangles, I think that each of us must have three major points upon which we rely for strength, and that these three are different for everyone. For me, the three points of my triangle are my head, my feet, and my hands- in all their figurative meanings. It has taken me a long time to learn how to stand firmly on two of them. But the third, the third is an asana I still have yet to learn. To allow myself to stand on my hands, let my arms do the work of holding me, knowing that the release of the others will not result in collapse of the whole, this is the challenge. And this is the fear. Someday I’ll get there. I’ll find the point where love is in balance with head and feet, and when I do, I know it will be because all of me has swung free, lifted from the ground, and seen the world in a new way.
In Iyangar, the style of yoga I practice, every pose is a lesson in concentration and adjustment- a tweak of the wrist, or a slight extension of a muscle- each small stretch or twist is a step in the process of reaching the goal of pose completion. A version of many poses (asanas) can be achieved from day one, but most take somewhere between weeks and years to master. Luckily, in yoga, it is the journey of the body and mind that matter, rather than mastery itself.
Although handstand is an asana that doesn’t get covered in every class, when it does, I am always one of the people who needs the instructor’s help to swing my legs completely up over my head. Once I’m in the pose, I can balance quite steadily on my palms, but getting my heels to kick up over my hips of my own volition is something I have failed to do, over and over again.
One thing every instructor has told me though is that failure to complete this inversion is not physical. It is about fear. Fear that your arms won’t support you and your head will crash into the ground, perhaps. Or fear of being upside down, and seeing the world from a different angle. Yet, neither of these are my fear. I can balance on top of my head in headstand quite happily for as long as 4 or 5 minutes, so seeing the world toes-on-top doesn’t bother me. And I know my arms can support me, and do, when I have help getting the legs to go over. No, my fear is about something else entirely.
Every time I fail to do handstand, I think of the line “Where I live, there’s a lady who walks everywhere on her hands, she don’t trust where her feet want to take her” from the Belly song Judas My Heart. This morning was no different. After 20 minutes of kicking upwards and toes ungraciously slamming onto the floor- the lyric trailing in my brain- rather than accepting the standard trepidations as my own, I asked myself what my fear is really about. After all, what is the difference between standing on hands, standing on head, and standing on feet? What do each of these mean on a metaphorical level, and why can I easily do two of them, while the third remains the elusive place I just can’t get?
The metaphor of standing on your own feet is obvious, but if I relate it to the lyric, it implies something more. Not just the ability to stand and support oneself, but to truly be upright, one must also trust that the steps taken and the roads traveled on those feet will lead to places that are just and right. And although it hasn’t always been thus, these days my steps are steady and strong, and in both yoga and in life, I’ve learned to spread my toes a little, making the base of my foot wider, rooting me ever more firmly in place.
And what of the head? What does it mean to stand solidly on the crown? I used to think that to be an expert at something, one had to know and do everything in a particular area. What I’ve learned is that expertise is relative, and that what separates the adept is simply a passion and openness for the learning process. The capacity for wonder, and acceptance of discomfort, these are the markings of the truly able. In my own desire to know I have moved from undergraduate English major, to doctoral level quantitative analysis. I looked both Calculus and Statistics in the eye, and although I was not perfect or even uniquely talented at either of them, I still won. So standing on my head simply means that I have accepted that the world is big, and although I will always strive to know more, everywhere I go, and everything I learn is also already enough (For more on this, see this guest post).
Ah, but then I come to my hands, and my arms, for what do I use these? Hands and arms are for carrying and holding, pulling forward, and release. They are for caress and embrace and for things all together more tender then those that are the purview of the feet and the mind. Arms are the embody of love. And although I can stand on them once I am there, letting the head hang, suspended in air, and letting the feet swing out free to get there, this is where my fear lies. It is in this process of letting go the feet and the head, the moment of ambiguity when the weight is in mid-shift and balance moves from one point to the other, this is the instance where I fail. But why?
They say that the triangle is the strongest shape. Its three points are interdependent, with each side pressing on the vertices to create angles that cannot be bent or pushed out of shape. At the same time, they work in tandem and no one angle can maintain its solidity without the other two. Like triangles, I think that each of us must have three major points upon which we rely for strength, and that these three are different for everyone. For me, the three points of my triangle are my head, my feet, and my hands- in all their figurative meanings. It has taken me a long time to learn how to stand firmly on two of them. But the third, the third is an asana I still have yet to learn. To allow myself to stand on my hands, let my arms do the work of holding me, knowing that the release of the others will not result in collapse of the whole, this is the challenge. And this is the fear. Someday I’ll get there. I’ll find the point where love is in balance with head and feet, and when I do, I know it will be because all of me has swung free, lifted from the ground, and seen the world in a new way.
Friday, August 29, 2008
On Cynicism and Idealism
The other day I wrote that my vote for Hillary in the primary was a vote for me. And it was. Although I believe deeply that the personal is political, and the political is personal, last night, watching Obama, I realized- I think for the first time- that I can cast another kind of vote. I can vote for my country.
Although this seems extremely obvious, it is the kind of voting that in my lifetime, I have only ever heard tell about, but never actually witnessed. I was born in the midst of the first accusations over the Watergate scandal. My earliest political memories are of my father scowling at the TV news, and shushing me so he could hear as the government cynically and selfishly betrayed a generation of people who had, up until then, believed that even if they disagreed with it, they would not be lied to- at least not for something as meager as hubris. Furthermore, coming as it did at the end of a decade of political outrages and heartbreaks that were so much bigger and more important in scope, I think Watergate ushered in cynicism in the worst way possible- not with a bang, but with Eliot’s pathetic whimper. All the passion and meaning and Big Ideas of the 60s died with a scandal so dry it didn't even contain any women- let alone any sex, or anything else that might possibly have made it worthy of the grand and lofty dreams it actually crushed.
Since then, every subsequent election has only been a greater and bigger partisan pissing match, with neither party quite able to own up to its own part in the mess created by those turbulent years. It is as if each president since Kennedy has been a way for the two parties to hide their own mistakes in the transgressions of the other, with the result being playground style mine-is-better-than yours politics for more than four decades.
It’s no wonder my generation has simply been called X. We were the first to come of age in a post-modern political landscape, and no one has known better how to define a generation weaned in a climate in which apathy has been the most appropriate response to a thinly veiled subtext of win one for your team, for the next election cycle, and your place in the books. It has never been about what kind of country we might want to live in, or what we might actually be willing to do to get there. Rather the most we have dared to ask has been temporary respite from the other- an incremental, four or eight year pendulum swing in our direction, so we’ll at least have the chance to even the score. Trickle down and Iran Contra: 2 for you. A balanced budget and Kenneth Star: 2 for me.
Overall though, expecting much from any politician has just seemed naïve, foolhardy, or at least dorkish and extremely uncool. Government has always been such a disappointment that cynicism has really been the only intelligent response.
So when Barak Obama first announced his bid for the presidency, with his fine, fluffy speeches and his scant C.V., I was the first to raise my world-weary eyebrows and say “Um-hmm. Pretty package, but underneath he must be the same-old, same-old”, simply because they all are. I have never dared to hope that I could get even a fraction of the things I’d like from my government so I supported Hillary because, whatever else, she could give me one thing I wanted very badly- a smart woman at the helm.
But then something happened. Last night, as Barak Obama spoke, for the first time ever I began to feel what it will be like to cast a vote, not just for one or two things I want, but for an idea and a dream of a country I gave up on, almost before I was old enough to know that I had.
Patriotism stirs in strange ways and with this speech, given in the midst of our darkest political era to date, idealism for what we can be has lifted off and floats in my peripheral vision, delicate and perfectly formed like a soap bubble in the sun. At the same time, I am still a little afraid to turn my head and look at it full on, lest my gaze causes it to burst.
The cynic in me, honed with years of practice, wonders if this is like one of the moments on the 405 in L.A, when you pass a nasty back up. As you drive on you eventually see the cars on the other side who are still going full speed, zipping along all California cool, blissfully unaware of the hopeless mess ahead. I always wish that I had the power to shout, at 75mph and across eight lanes, “Don’t do it! Get off now while you still can!” And I always wonder too if they are looking at me, thinking the same thing.
For now, for today, for the first time, I am happy to just drive on.
Although this seems extremely obvious, it is the kind of voting that in my lifetime, I have only ever heard tell about, but never actually witnessed. I was born in the midst of the first accusations over the Watergate scandal. My earliest political memories are of my father scowling at the TV news, and shushing me so he could hear as the government cynically and selfishly betrayed a generation of people who had, up until then, believed that even if they disagreed with it, they would not be lied to- at least not for something as meager as hubris. Furthermore, coming as it did at the end of a decade of political outrages and heartbreaks that were so much bigger and more important in scope, I think Watergate ushered in cynicism in the worst way possible- not with a bang, but with Eliot’s pathetic whimper. All the passion and meaning and Big Ideas of the 60s died with a scandal so dry it didn't even contain any women- let alone any sex, or anything else that might possibly have made it worthy of the grand and lofty dreams it actually crushed.
Since then, every subsequent election has only been a greater and bigger partisan pissing match, with neither party quite able to own up to its own part in the mess created by those turbulent years. It is as if each president since Kennedy has been a way for the two parties to hide their own mistakes in the transgressions of the other, with the result being playground style mine-is-better-than yours politics for more than four decades.
It’s no wonder my generation has simply been called X. We were the first to come of age in a post-modern political landscape, and no one has known better how to define a generation weaned in a climate in which apathy has been the most appropriate response to a thinly veiled subtext of win one for your team, for the next election cycle, and your place in the books. It has never been about what kind of country we might want to live in, or what we might actually be willing to do to get there. Rather the most we have dared to ask has been temporary respite from the other- an incremental, four or eight year pendulum swing in our direction, so we’ll at least have the chance to even the score. Trickle down and Iran Contra: 2 for you. A balanced budget and Kenneth Star: 2 for me.
Overall though, expecting much from any politician has just seemed naïve, foolhardy, or at least dorkish and extremely uncool. Government has always been such a disappointment that cynicism has really been the only intelligent response.
So when Barak Obama first announced his bid for the presidency, with his fine, fluffy speeches and his scant C.V., I was the first to raise my world-weary eyebrows and say “Um-hmm. Pretty package, but underneath he must be the same-old, same-old”, simply because they all are. I have never dared to hope that I could get even a fraction of the things I’d like from my government so I supported Hillary because, whatever else, she could give me one thing I wanted very badly- a smart woman at the helm.
But then something happened. Last night, as Barak Obama spoke, for the first time ever I began to feel what it will be like to cast a vote, not just for one or two things I want, but for an idea and a dream of a country I gave up on, almost before I was old enough to know that I had.
Patriotism stirs in strange ways and with this speech, given in the midst of our darkest political era to date, idealism for what we can be has lifted off and floats in my peripheral vision, delicate and perfectly formed like a soap bubble in the sun. At the same time, I am still a little afraid to turn my head and look at it full on, lest my gaze causes it to burst.
The cynic in me, honed with years of practice, wonders if this is like one of the moments on the 405 in L.A, when you pass a nasty back up. As you drive on you eventually see the cars on the other side who are still going full speed, zipping along all California cool, blissfully unaware of the hopeless mess ahead. I always wish that I had the power to shout, at 75mph and across eight lanes, “Don’t do it! Get off now while you still can!” And I always wonder too if they are looking at me, thinking the same thing.
For now, for today, for the first time, I am happy to just drive on.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
On What Hillary Meant To Me
Let’s get one thing straight. I think anyone who can honestly look themselves in the mirror and say, without any trace of irony, that they think they are the best person to be President of the United States, by definition, kind of has to be a sycophantic asshole. American politics being what they are, I think it just really takes a supremely self-involved, pompous panderer to make it through a full campaign season, especially this one.
I also want to say straight out that I will vote Obama/Biden come November. Unequivocally.
All those caveats aside, however, after Hillary’s speech at the DNC last night, I found myself on my couch sobbing. And I don’t mean graceful little tears gently trickling down my cheeks. I mean great big heaving, blubbering sobs of frustration and defeat. Sure, I voted for her in the primary but alone in my apartment, even I thought I was being a bit melodramatic. At the same time, I couldn’t stop myself. I probably cried for an hour.
So what was all this about anyway?
This may come out kind of cheesy, so just bear with me. Basically, thanks to that episode of Sex and The City when Miranda compares Big and Carrie to Hubble and Katie, the characters in The Way We Were, I have borrowed the analogy as an apt metaphor for my own life, and many of my own struggles.
In the movie, Hubble (Robert Redford) is a real campus all around. The kind of good-looking guy to whom pretty much everything comes easily- sports, friends, women, and everything else. He also happens to have a natural talent for the written word. But in spite of all these gifts, he lacks a certain depth of character. He has no quirks or hard edges. Nothing about him either offends, nor endears- at least not on any deep level. Katie (Barbara Streisand), on the other hand, is hard working, earnest and passionate to a fault. She’s the sort of somewhat annoying person who actually commits herself to causes, with a capital C; the sort of woman who has wild, untamable hair, and a slightly disheveled appearance. She cares deeply about things, and can never quite let them go, least of all for the sake of social propriety. She’s irritating in her passions, but ultimately she proves herself to be much more substantial than he.
In the movie- even though Katie can be trying to a cringe-worthy degree, I nevertheless identify with her. Like her, I too have been blessed (or cursed) with a Jewfro of hair. Like her, I have been known to take on causes and work hard for things that I believe. And also like Katie, I have been accused on many occasions of being too passionate, too outspoken, and all together too much for other people’s comfort. The result being that I have struggled with myself, wishing and trying to be some other girl- one who would fit neatly into a world made for affable, easy-going Hubble-type people.
But like Katie, most of the time I just can’t keep my true nature from coming to the surface. Although I have tried hard, something always happens, some horrible comment, some terrible action, and I find myself speaking up, and defending my ideas. Invariably, the rest of the room goes quiet and I know I’ve done it again. In my passion to say what I think, I’ve inadvertently stepped over some line I can never seem to see, made other people uncomfortable, and ruined the party.
And that is sort of how I feel about Hilary. I don’t like her per se, but the reasons she makes me uncomfortable are because her awkwardness, at times, cuts a little too close to the bone. She is not pretty, and let’s be honest- the orange suit and red lipstick didn’t do her any favors. At times she laughs like a witch, or says things that are wrong, misplaced, hypocritical, or just uncouth.
But the thing is, at the heart of it, she is a deeply intelligent woman, believes strongly in causes that I think are important, and she is earnest and hard working. But she is not popular with the cool kids. She is the nerdy girl, and she is not adept at playing the game of being liked. She is like me. She is a Katie.
Barak Obama, on the other hand, is a Hubble. He is a gifted speech-maker, and he is someone with the grace and easy manner that puts a room at ease. He always says the right thing and never makes people uncomfortable. He is popular with the cool kids. But I can’t help thinking that things have just come a little too easily for him.
So when I voted for Hilary in the primary, it was a vote for every person who has ever put their foot in their mouth, or ever said what they thought, despite the consequences. It was also a vote for every girl whose been told, through word or look, that she is too smart to be lady like, or too smart to date. It was a vote for everyone who kept on being themselves, and for every person who ever chose the hard road, rather than the road of least resistance. It was a vote for hard work, rather than luck. It was a vote for me.
I understand that right now America’s spirit and image in the world are probably more in need of affable and soothing leadership. The kind only a true Hubble can deliver. That is why I will vote for Obama and why I think, in some ways, at this place and time in history, it is right that he won the nomination.
At the same time, I wept last night because, just once, I wanted Katie to be popular. I wanted her to win.
I also want to say straight out that I will vote Obama/Biden come November. Unequivocally.
All those caveats aside, however, after Hillary’s speech at the DNC last night, I found myself on my couch sobbing. And I don’t mean graceful little tears gently trickling down my cheeks. I mean great big heaving, blubbering sobs of frustration and defeat. Sure, I voted for her in the primary but alone in my apartment, even I thought I was being a bit melodramatic. At the same time, I couldn’t stop myself. I probably cried for an hour.
So what was all this about anyway?
This may come out kind of cheesy, so just bear with me. Basically, thanks to that episode of Sex and The City when Miranda compares Big and Carrie to Hubble and Katie, the characters in The Way We Were, I have borrowed the analogy as an apt metaphor for my own life, and many of my own struggles.
In the movie, Hubble (Robert Redford) is a real campus all around. The kind of good-looking guy to whom pretty much everything comes easily- sports, friends, women, and everything else. He also happens to have a natural talent for the written word. But in spite of all these gifts, he lacks a certain depth of character. He has no quirks or hard edges. Nothing about him either offends, nor endears- at least not on any deep level. Katie (Barbara Streisand), on the other hand, is hard working, earnest and passionate to a fault. She’s the sort of somewhat annoying person who actually commits herself to causes, with a capital C; the sort of woman who has wild, untamable hair, and a slightly disheveled appearance. She cares deeply about things, and can never quite let them go, least of all for the sake of social propriety. She’s irritating in her passions, but ultimately she proves herself to be much more substantial than he.
In the movie- even though Katie can be trying to a cringe-worthy degree, I nevertheless identify with her. Like her, I too have been blessed (or cursed) with a Jewfro of hair. Like her, I have been known to take on causes and work hard for things that I believe. And also like Katie, I have been accused on many occasions of being too passionate, too outspoken, and all together too much for other people’s comfort. The result being that I have struggled with myself, wishing and trying to be some other girl- one who would fit neatly into a world made for affable, easy-going Hubble-type people.
But like Katie, most of the time I just can’t keep my true nature from coming to the surface. Although I have tried hard, something always happens, some horrible comment, some terrible action, and I find myself speaking up, and defending my ideas. Invariably, the rest of the room goes quiet and I know I’ve done it again. In my passion to say what I think, I’ve inadvertently stepped over some line I can never seem to see, made other people uncomfortable, and ruined the party.
And that is sort of how I feel about Hilary. I don’t like her per se, but the reasons she makes me uncomfortable are because her awkwardness, at times, cuts a little too close to the bone. She is not pretty, and let’s be honest- the orange suit and red lipstick didn’t do her any favors. At times she laughs like a witch, or says things that are wrong, misplaced, hypocritical, or just uncouth.
But the thing is, at the heart of it, she is a deeply intelligent woman, believes strongly in causes that I think are important, and she is earnest and hard working. But she is not popular with the cool kids. She is the nerdy girl, and she is not adept at playing the game of being liked. She is like me. She is a Katie.
Barak Obama, on the other hand, is a Hubble. He is a gifted speech-maker, and he is someone with the grace and easy manner that puts a room at ease. He always says the right thing and never makes people uncomfortable. He is popular with the cool kids. But I can’t help thinking that things have just come a little too easily for him.
So when I voted for Hilary in the primary, it was a vote for every person who has ever put their foot in their mouth, or ever said what they thought, despite the consequences. It was also a vote for every girl whose been told, through word or look, that she is too smart to be lady like, or too smart to date. It was a vote for everyone who kept on being themselves, and for every person who ever chose the hard road, rather than the road of least resistance. It was a vote for hard work, rather than luck. It was a vote for me.
I understand that right now America’s spirit and image in the world are probably more in need of affable and soothing leadership. The kind only a true Hubble can deliver. That is why I will vote for Obama and why I think, in some ways, at this place and time in history, it is right that he won the nomination.
At the same time, I wept last night because, just once, I wanted Katie to be popular. I wanted her to win.
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