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.
Friday, October 3, 2008
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.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
On the Four Leaf Clover Life, Part I
I have an aunt, one of whose many talents includes the uncanny ability to glance at a field of clover, even while standing upright, and pluck a four leaf one every single time. As a child, this feat always astounded me, and I would sit in the grass and sort carefully through all the ordinary clover, hoping to find a lucky one of my own. I never did, and in frustration I would beg her to tell me the secret. Without fail, her response was always to look only at those with four leaves. Although this sounds fantastic, like a slight of hand designed to impress a child but discernible to any adult, even now it is a riddle of the eye I cannot solve. What’s more, several years ago, when I was very ill, this aunt sent me one of these four leaf clovers for luck, and I keep it framed by my bed to this day.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this idea, this looking only at the four leaves, along with this post from my soul sister and fellow blogger. In particular, I have been thinking about the reference to the scene in Star Wars where Yoda explains to Luke how to use the force. Do, or do not. There is no try. Although it seems to me now that these ideas are the same, for years, such instructions seemed equally incomprehensible. How can I not see the three leaved ones? What do you mean, there is no try?
And yet now, I think there really is no other way. You either see the four leaves or you don’t. You either do or do not. The only way to have the life you want is to live it- without compromise, or stopping at the three leaf options. You are who you want to be or you are not. There is no other answer.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this idea, this looking only at the four leaves, along with this post from my soul sister and fellow blogger. In particular, I have been thinking about the reference to the scene in Star Wars where Yoda explains to Luke how to use the force. Do, or do not. There is no try. Although it seems to me now that these ideas are the same, for years, such instructions seemed equally incomprehensible. How can I not see the three leaved ones? What do you mean, there is no try?
And yet now, I think there really is no other way. You either see the four leaves or you don’t. You either do or do not. The only way to have the life you want is to live it- without compromise, or stopping at the three leaf options. You are who you want to be or you are not. There is no other answer.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
On Compulsion and Science
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the dichotomy between instinct and science. When I say instinct, I don’t mean the kind of genetic breading that causes all animals to eat and breath, or even the kind that causes my well-bread hunting spaniel to stand at shaking attention and point whenever he sees a pigeon. Rather, I am referring instead to the mysteries that cause us to know things, deep in the core of ourselves, even though they may appear to defy everyday logic and seeming possibility. The kinds of things that tell us that if we do A, B will happen in the future- even though A and B seem unrelated, or even that B seems completely impossible, or even undefined.
To give you an example of what I mean, I recently went on a volunteer trip to Zambia. To say that it was the sort of thing I had wanted to do for a long time is sort of an understatement. More accurately, it was something I felt compelled to do. It was a compulsion in the deepest sense, a virtual propulsion forward toward the moment I would set foot on the airplane, where a mystery force in the marrow of my bones told me something both unknown and right would begin.
To understand this, it probably makes senses to explain that this trip came for me at the end of the hardest two years of my life. Without going into detail, the two years previous can only be described as an emotional free fall of grief that began with a hasty move across country and spiraled into the end of the decade-long relationship I had with my spouse. I had been in the desert, a hinterland of pain that left me, at times, feeling as though I was hurtling fast toward a landscape I could neither see, nor identify. I had to find a parachute, and for reasons I cannot fully explain, when I finally did, and the sunrise began to illuminate the ground, that soil, the earth I could finally see coming up beneath my feet was somewhere in Africa. I don’t know why this was the case. It simply was, and moreover, once the vision was revealed to me, it seemed that it was one I had known all along. Looking backwards I could see the hints and the nudges that had been telling me for years to go to Africa, waiting only for me to read them, listen, and act.
So it had to be. It was predetermined to be this trip. This country. This moment. And I was right. There were things that happened on this trip, people I met and things I experienced, which have proven already to be the beginning of new things that feel right. I don’t know all of what is next, but I can see the outline now, I can make out the pathway under the stars, and I am more certain than ever that going marked a beginning of things that will shape my forward going life in important ways.
And yet, that isn’t the end of the story, because I read all that over and I think, in some ways, I sound like a crazy person, a new age meshuge who probably spent a few too many years in California, going soft. After all, destiny, fatalism, and pre-ordination are about as far from who I have always been as the moon is from New York City. I am not religious, and I am not accustomed to thinking of myself as even spiritual. I am analytical and logical, and I believe wholeheartedly in science. I am a social scientist by and within training. I was raised by a scientist to be both skeptical and questioning. The things I know, and the places I put my faith can be seen through the methods of repeated observation, and replication. I believe in good data and better methodology. I believe in answers that I can see. I believe in Darwin and a definition of the word “theory” that is rooted in testable hypotheses, and not the imaginings of charlatans, preaching about geologic timelines that have anything less than at least six zeros. That is who I am. Or is it?
And so I come to the question of the day. How do I reconcile who I have always been with this new kind of data that has come to me from the deep inner workings of my heart? This new kind of knowledge that I cannot deny to be TRUTH in a way I feel is absolute and solid, but that I also cannot touch and examine and repeat?
I think the answer is to accept that there is a region of human experience that is beyond science, that is un-measurable, even if it is not unknowable. To see that this is the missing link, the thing that slips beyond our grasp, out past the world of language, and into the supernova. This is not religion, but it is God, Faith, The Universe, and Namaste- all rolled into one. And the one thing I’ve learned is that the only way to get there is to let go and feel it below the level of the eyeballs. Silence the voices above the ears shouting, explaining, and analyzing. Feel it in the toes and the cells of the nails. Lean forward and tumble. If you do, even if you don’t know where or how, the parachute will open, and your feet will point safely toward land that is somewhere.
To give you an example of what I mean, I recently went on a volunteer trip to Zambia. To say that it was the sort of thing I had wanted to do for a long time is sort of an understatement. More accurately, it was something I felt compelled to do. It was a compulsion in the deepest sense, a virtual propulsion forward toward the moment I would set foot on the airplane, where a mystery force in the marrow of my bones told me something both unknown and right would begin.
To understand this, it probably makes senses to explain that this trip came for me at the end of the hardest two years of my life. Without going into detail, the two years previous can only be described as an emotional free fall of grief that began with a hasty move across country and spiraled into the end of the decade-long relationship I had with my spouse. I had been in the desert, a hinterland of pain that left me, at times, feeling as though I was hurtling fast toward a landscape I could neither see, nor identify. I had to find a parachute, and for reasons I cannot fully explain, when I finally did, and the sunrise began to illuminate the ground, that soil, the earth I could finally see coming up beneath my feet was somewhere in Africa. I don’t know why this was the case. It simply was, and moreover, once the vision was revealed to me, it seemed that it was one I had known all along. Looking backwards I could see the hints and the nudges that had been telling me for years to go to Africa, waiting only for me to read them, listen, and act.
So it had to be. It was predetermined to be this trip. This country. This moment. And I was right. There were things that happened on this trip, people I met and things I experienced, which have proven already to be the beginning of new things that feel right. I don’t know all of what is next, but I can see the outline now, I can make out the pathway under the stars, and I am more certain than ever that going marked a beginning of things that will shape my forward going life in important ways.
And yet, that isn’t the end of the story, because I read all that over and I think, in some ways, I sound like a crazy person, a new age meshuge who probably spent a few too many years in California, going soft. After all, destiny, fatalism, and pre-ordination are about as far from who I have always been as the moon is from New York City. I am not religious, and I am not accustomed to thinking of myself as even spiritual. I am analytical and logical, and I believe wholeheartedly in science. I am a social scientist by and within training. I was raised by a scientist to be both skeptical and questioning. The things I know, and the places I put my faith can be seen through the methods of repeated observation, and replication. I believe in good data and better methodology. I believe in answers that I can see. I believe in Darwin and a definition of the word “theory” that is rooted in testable hypotheses, and not the imaginings of charlatans, preaching about geologic timelines that have anything less than at least six zeros. That is who I am. Or is it?
And so I come to the question of the day. How do I reconcile who I have always been with this new kind of data that has come to me from the deep inner workings of my heart? This new kind of knowledge that I cannot deny to be TRUTH in a way I feel is absolute and solid, but that I also cannot touch and examine and repeat?
I think the answer is to accept that there is a region of human experience that is beyond science, that is un-measurable, even if it is not unknowable. To see that this is the missing link, the thing that slips beyond our grasp, out past the world of language, and into the supernova. This is not religion, but it is God, Faith, The Universe, and Namaste- all rolled into one. And the one thing I’ve learned is that the only way to get there is to let go and feel it below the level of the eyeballs. Silence the voices above the ears shouting, explaining, and analyzing. Feel it in the toes and the cells of the nails. Lean forward and tumble. If you do, even if you don’t know where or how, the parachute will open, and your feet will point safely toward land that is somewhere.
This is my brain....ON
Although this is the inaugural post, the beginning of this blog is actually the result of a culmination of events that have led me to want to incorporate some kind of public writing in my life.
When I was younger, I was the kind of girl who was always writing in some way. In a journal, poems, and for the student newspaper in college. For a long time, I wanted to be a writer, but once I graduated college, the idea that I had no other talent or skills quietly bothered me. I lacked ego, and instead wondered, "Who was I?" and "Who cared what I thought?". I was young, and humble enough to think that that fact alone was not enough to recommend me. I also did not want to be a part of what I saw as the burgeoning memoir genre, full of works by authors who seemed to have little to offer, except a naval-gazing story of their own life. The world, the people, and the issues that comprise it were always as interesting and important to me as my own life, and I just didn’t feel qualified to write, or to make commentary, without some other verifiable store of knowledge, some objective level of expertise that could be measured with a scale other than my own perception. So I set out to do more, and to know more than the contents of my own head.
That desire led me to a socially and intellectually conscious career, and ultimately to doctoral level study, where I am now. I am still not an expert in my field, but I can say with confidence that I have a solid base of knowledge in an area that is of the world, and beyond the space between my own ears.
What I didn’t bet on was that the process of learning, seeing and ultimately knowing would completely shut down the written word for me. For more than a decade, I wrote next to nothing professional, personal, or otherwise. There are literally gaps of years in the journal I kept from August 1996 to July 2008. But by not indulging in the process of writing, I have realized that I was also living partially obscured from myself, because the mirror of the written word was missing.
Writing has always been the way I make sense of the world. For me it is truth serum, and the way I know my own heart. And although it was necessary to take the time to do all that evidence gathering in my study of life and subjects within, I have found that the time has come for me to stop researching, and start vetting. Start sorting and organizing the data of what I have seen, and what I have come to know. In writing. In solid, well-formed words on a page.
But why publicly? Why blog? I guess because although writing is an intensely personally act, for me it is also a craft. An art in which the pleasure of crystallization and refinement come only with the polish of creative license and the tantalization of an audience, real or imagined. Only then does it move from a mind purge or a rant to a performance- something of me, and created by me, and yet separate and apart from me at the same time.
So I’ve come to this blog. To write. To sense make. To know. And maybe even to be read. Besides, I have to stop emailing my friends beautifully written treatises and guest-posts for their blogs. Although it gives me pleasure to write them, I think it only makes people feel guilty for not responding in kind, when what I really want is an outlet, and a dress rehearsal. But now I find that it is time for my own opening night, to put my own performance piece on stage.
Lights! Camera! This is my brain….ON.
When I was younger, I was the kind of girl who was always writing in some way. In a journal, poems, and for the student newspaper in college. For a long time, I wanted to be a writer, but once I graduated college, the idea that I had no other talent or skills quietly bothered me. I lacked ego, and instead wondered, "Who was I?" and "Who cared what I thought?". I was young, and humble enough to think that that fact alone was not enough to recommend me. I also did not want to be a part of what I saw as the burgeoning memoir genre, full of works by authors who seemed to have little to offer, except a naval-gazing story of their own life. The world, the people, and the issues that comprise it were always as interesting and important to me as my own life, and I just didn’t feel qualified to write, or to make commentary, without some other verifiable store of knowledge, some objective level of expertise that could be measured with a scale other than my own perception. So I set out to do more, and to know more than the contents of my own head.
That desire led me to a socially and intellectually conscious career, and ultimately to doctoral level study, where I am now. I am still not an expert in my field, but I can say with confidence that I have a solid base of knowledge in an area that is of the world, and beyond the space between my own ears.
What I didn’t bet on was that the process of learning, seeing and ultimately knowing would completely shut down the written word for me. For more than a decade, I wrote next to nothing professional, personal, or otherwise. There are literally gaps of years in the journal I kept from August 1996 to July 2008. But by not indulging in the process of writing, I have realized that I was also living partially obscured from myself, because the mirror of the written word was missing.
Writing has always been the way I make sense of the world. For me it is truth serum, and the way I know my own heart. And although it was necessary to take the time to do all that evidence gathering in my study of life and subjects within, I have found that the time has come for me to stop researching, and start vetting. Start sorting and organizing the data of what I have seen, and what I have come to know. In writing. In solid, well-formed words on a page.
But why publicly? Why blog? I guess because although writing is an intensely personally act, for me it is also a craft. An art in which the pleasure of crystallization and refinement come only with the polish of creative license and the tantalization of an audience, real or imagined. Only then does it move from a mind purge or a rant to a performance- something of me, and created by me, and yet separate and apart from me at the same time.
So I’ve come to this blog. To write. To sense make. To know. And maybe even to be read. Besides, I have to stop emailing my friends beautifully written treatises and guest-posts for their blogs. Although it gives me pleasure to write them, I think it only makes people feel guilty for not responding in kind, when what I really want is an outlet, and a dress rehearsal. But now I find that it is time for my own opening night, to put my own performance piece on stage.
Lights! Camera! This is my brain….ON.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)