the circle game

There is always something terrifying about purchasing plane tickets, in all their stark finality:

September 12th- Fly from PDX to L.A.
- Visit Cara, Laura, other California people (Ana?)
September 16th- bus to San Luis Obispo to visit my Grandma
September 20th- bus to San Francisco
September 21st-25th- Intern training in San Francisco
September 26th- Fly from L.A. to Laredo
11pm that night CROSS BORDER INTO MEXICO (either that or sleep in the airport)
December 23rd- Fly from Laredo to PDX

August and September are gonna be some crazy months. Corey and I leave for England on August 17th. We get back on September 2nd. I work for one more week, and then I leave. AAAAAAH! Change can be scary. But change is good, I think.

I've been doing this thing since April where every day I write down in a little notebook What I Did That Day. No analysis, no introspection, just bare naked facts. My drive to record things amazes me, sometimes: how much do I really need? Paper journal, livejournal, this blog, and this notebook? Anyway, it's interesting to flip backwards and see What I Did on a certain day of the month. For example, here is What I Did on the 9th:

April 9th- sick day. Sleep a lot.

May 9th- Wake up early to go to coast with Solange and Aiden [visiting friends from Paris]. Long drive to Cannon beach. Play music from ipod. Beach windy, weather beautiful. Farmer's market in morning. Gumbo for dinner delish. Catch 4 fat mice in traps.

June 9th- Wake up from nightmare of falling in black void. Corey comforts me. Alarm at 6.20 AM. Roll out of bed and catch Max. Buy sandwiches at Safeway, $33. Big sandwich makes me sick, leave it by library for homeless. Arrive at work, program planning with Allie + Jose in Learning Center. All computers broken, I greedily grab #9, the only one that works. Trip to Starbucks with Alex for a soy latte. Talk about her caffeine overdose and hospitalization.

July 9th- Wake up late, 6.20. Bagel + coffee breakfast. Write sketch of book review and start typing up story. Take kids to Shute Park, Plaid Pantry field trip to buy seeds for bird feeders. Animal presentation by Zoo people underwhelming. Take 10-12 year olds to park in afternoon, Alexis left behind, cries. Long Max journey home. Caught without ticket by Max officer, given ticket. Cry hysterically on phone with Corey, feel better. Hang out with Laura at Laughing Planet and Hotboxx as she leaves for CA the next day.

And for an even more entertaining reference, here is What I Did in August of 2008, when we were in Ecuador!

August 9th- Rainy in morning. Wet boat ride to Cojimies, [seaside town where the Corvina or Sea Bass festival was taking place] meet up with Mariana [our tour guide friend]. 4-hour lunch. Beer and rum. [I didn't mention this, but Corey had the most amazing lunch, a soup filled with lobsters and crab and shrimp and Queen conch. Mmmmmmmmmmm.] B+J [Travel mates] leave for Quito. Corey and I watch volleyball game, dance to salsa band. Chris [other travel mate] harassed by drunk man. Bed early at 12:30pm.

Man, isn't the passage of time crazy?! I've been really fascinated with that lately: how time passes, who you were three months ago, three years ago, ten years ago. I was talking with my sister yesterday about 1999 and it's interesting the things we came up with when discussing what that year meant to us. The year we got really into movies saw Fight Club, American Beauty, Boys Don't Cry. The year we first started listening to Tori Amos. The start of 8th grade. Oh man. What do you think of, when you think of who and where you were in 1999?

Tori Amos' cover of Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game" started playing on my shuffle just now as I type this, which is a little eerie. "We're captive on a carousel of time," indeed. I like this quote from this NY Times blog on happiness, on the difficulty of happiness and being in time:

"To really live is to accept that you live “for the time being,” and to fully enter that moment of time. Living is that, not building up an identity or a set of accomplishments or relationships, though of course we do that too. But primarily, fundamentally, to live is to embrace each moment as if it were the first, last, and all moments of time... I find it impressive how thoroughly normal it is be so tentative about the time of our lives, or so asleep within it, that we miss it entirely. Most of us don’t know what it actually feels like to be alive. We know about our problems, our desires, our goals and accomplishments, but we don’t know much about our lives."

This emphasis on the present moment links in nicely with the quote from Rayuela which I used to close the last entry: "We must establish ourselves in the present once more." I think the central struggle of "Rayuela" (which I finally finished last week) is exactly that, how to fully enter the present moment of time. Oh god, I don't even know where to begin saying even a quarter of what there is to say about this book. (I feel like so many of my reviews begin with that sentiment.) I do know that I am definitely going to have to read this again. (Again, another phrase that is popping up more and more often here.) What do I say about Morelli, the author-like figure who dominates the 99 "expendable" chapters that readers "hopscotch" through?

My favorite thing about this novel was definitely the rapport between the groups of friends. Cortázar does an excellent job of capturing the rambling dialogue of friendships that have lasted a long time. This characteristic is closely related to the other aspect I liked best about the novel, which was how much it reminded me of Bolaño. As I wrote earlier, characters sitting around, drinking, bitching, wandering, pontificating: it all feels very relevant to the mid-20's, post-college lifestyle.

I have no idea where I read this (somewhere online--I swear!), but I read a quote by Cortázar, in which he said that "Rayuela" was his homage to people of his bohemian generation, and how they dealt with whole getting old and feeling irrelevant and purposeless. He also said that it was interesting that it was the young Latin American youth of the 60's who ended up really connecting with his book, as opposed to his generation. (I am gonna try to find the source for this quote, I swear.)

I dunno, it all makes me think of this letter from my favorite advice column, and how the advice he gives is really true. When I read old entries from this blog, or my paper journal, or my livejournal, or any of the 1001 ways that I've tried to record all the craziness that goes on in the small box of consciousness that I call Myself and My World, what keeps coming up for me, again and again, is how I've changed. In this case, change is definitely, definitely a good thing. I am so unspeakably and inexplicably glad and relieved that for whatever reason, over the past year I have significantly drifted away from the crushing pressure of the assumptions that Cary Tennis critiques in his column. Doing well at tasks does notbring us happiness. These preconceived, ridiculous standards and notions of what it means to "succeed" and be a successful college graduate are just... they make me want to vomit in my mouth a little. I'm smart enough to know now that it's not a game... but if it were, I'd definitely say that I'm winning. (And not in what you'd consider the traditional way, either.)

And so again: here's to not always looking to the future and instead embracing the prsent. It's Wacky Water Week with the 8 & 9-year-olds this week at the Club, and it's gonna be a week they'll never forget.

People Who Don't Know the Answers

If I could write fiction like any author, I'd want to write like Anne Tyler. The first Tyler novel I ever read was Saint Maybe, which my sister checked out of the Colegio Bolivar library. It's the same copy I have with me now; I guess one of us in an act out of an audacious sense of entitlement must have stolen it. If you look at the little flap of paper in the back (how old-fashioned and antique that seems now!), where the librarian would stamp the due date under FECHA DE VENCIMIENTO, the earliest date is 24 March 1998—more than ten years ago! Next to the due date we were supposed to write the grade we were in (who knows why), so there is also a historical record of the changes in my sister's handwriting as well as mine. The small squat sixes of sixth grade, the taller and more elegant eights of eighth grade. A single thin nine. I guess it was after ninth grade, once we realized that we were the only people checking the book out, over and over again, that we decided that we were the proper owners of the book. Sorry, Bolivar library, forgive us! If it's any consolation/defense, it has definitely found a loving home in our bookshelves.

I started re-reading Anne Tyler at exactly the right time. I've been sick since Sunday with an upper respiratory tract infection. TMI Warning I've been producing all this absolutely grotesque green phlegm, with the consistency of yogurt End TMI. It's equal parts fascinating and disgusting—I am kind of amazed that something like this could come out of my body. On Friday night I took some Dayquil, drank some Visoda and bravely went out on the town with Corey for a birthday night of dancing at the 80's dance night at the Crystal Ballroom. In the middle of "Burning Down the House," I slipped on a puddle of water and dislocated my left knee, the same knee I've been injuring chronically since high school. This is at least the fourth time it's been sprained. It's much better today than yesterday, but it still feels weird, all stretched and unsteady. I'm taking Matt's joints rehabilitation vitamin pills and icing it a lot. I can sort of hobble now, which is a big improvement.

Thus it feels like subconscious psychic foreshadowing on my part that I had the foresight to check out all these Tyler novels last week, like The Accidental Tourist and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. I re-read Tourist , lived vicariously through Macon's injury and recovery and am now plunging eagerly through Dinner, which I'm not sure if I've ever read completely. I have this weird deja-vu feeling reading it, so I'm thinking that maybe I started reading it at some point, but just never finished.

There is something so wonderful and comforting about an Anne Tyler novel. When I'm keeping an injured leg elevated about heart level to encourage reduced swelling while reaching for the roll of toilet paper and hacking my guts out, I can't think think of any other author I'd rather read. "The perseverance of human beings suddenly amazed him," realizes one of the characters in Dinner. It's this perseverance and doggedness that Tyler is particularly skilled at highlighting. Or as a character in Tourist observes,

'You ever wonder what a Martian might think if he happened to land near an emergency room? He'd seen an ambulance whizzing in and everybody running out to meet it, tearing the doors open, grabbing up the stretcher, scurrying along with it. 'Why,' he'd say, what a helpful planet, what kind and helpful creatures.' He'd never guess that we're not always that way; that we had to, oh, put aside our natural selves to do it. 'What a helpful race of human beings,' a Martian would say. Don't you think so?'

It's just really nice to read books about people who are genuinely trying to be good, even if their actions don't always make it seem that way. Tyler has a lot of love for her characters and it shines through in a way that makes me think of that famous quote about Salinger, that he loved his characters more than God loved them. (Further research led me to learn that this quote was by John Updike, and was meant as a criticism of Salinger. I never liked your writing anyway, Updike.)

Saint Maybe particularly hit home for me at this point in my life, mainly because it's about a character who spends most of the book taking care of children who are not his own. Ian's wry observations about taking care of children had me nodding my head vigorously, yes, yes:

He wondered how people endured children on a long-term basis—the monotony and irritation and confinement of them.
You could never call it a penance, to have to take care of these three. They were all that gave his life color, and energy, and... well, life.
It wasn't easy. A lot of it was just plain boring. Just providing a warm body, just being there; anyone could have done it. And then other parts were terrifying. Kids get into so much! They start to matter so much. Some days I felt like a fireman or a lifeguard or something—all that tedium, broken up by little spurts of high drama.

The other part of the book that drew a straight line between my heart and the pages were the sections about the incertitude of knowing. A lot of the book is about learning how people who seem to "know all the answers" really, well, don't. In fact, nobody does. Understanding the meaning of someone or something in your life is eventually understood as something that's ultimately impossible to do:

Apparently, he thought, there were some people in this world who simply never came clear. Reverend Emmett, Mr. Brant, the overlapping shifts of foreigners... In the end you had to accept that the day would never arrive when you finally understood what they were all about. For some reason, this made him supremely happy.

It's the "happy" part that's key. Ian's main conflict in this book is kicked off by the "arrogant certitude" with which he informs his brother that his wife is cheating on him. At the time, he feels like he definitively "knows" this as a fact, but over time he has to admit that no, he really doesn't know it at all. More than anything else, this book seems to me now to be about surrendering that need for possessive control, to "know" how things are and how things are going to turn out. In the opening pages, Ian is described as someone who is always imaginng his life as seen from a distance, as observed by an outsider:

There were moments when he believed that someday, somehow, he was going to end up famous. Famous for what, he couldn't quite say; but he'd be walking up the back steps or something and all at once he would imagine a camera zooming in on him, filming his life story. He imagined the level, cultured voice of his biographer saying, 'Ian climbed the steps. He opened the door. He entered the kitchen.'

This passage really hit home for me with a particularly sharp pang because I used to do the same thing as a really little kid. I'd make lists of all the novels I was going to write. Sitting on the toilet or high up in the mango tree in the yard, I'd talk to myself and answer questions about my life, pretending I was being interviewed on a talkshow or by a reporter. Yeah, I was a particulary imaginative kid, but more than that, I had this ambitious, feroscious drive in me that I had to *BE* someone, you know? My ego was a hungry-hungry-hippo, and it wanted to feed. It still does.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about ego lately (thanks Siddhartha!). When you graduate from college, you're really forced to think about what you want to do in a grandiose, epic fashion: "so are you going to be one of those people who are going to *BE* somebody??" the ego hungrily, greedily chatters at you. "You're not just going to waste and fritter your days/years away, right? You're going to *DO* something, right?? You're going to be GREAT!!" Sometimes this voice is helpful, because it can drive you to do things you wouldn't normally do. Other times, it can be quite exhausting. Your ego is always demanding knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, defitive plans, facts, schedules. Sometimes you just can't have that in life, though.

In Saint Maybe, another one of the main lessons that Ian learns is about "leaning into his burden." About viewing it as a gift, rather than a weight. This is the only life you'll have. So you might as well not get stressed out about things, you know? Next week I won't be working as a prestigious research assistant with a really important professor in a well-known university, but I will be building submaries with third graders. And for now, that's enough. It's enough for now to listen to Alex Murdoch's "Orange Sky" and the Dixie Chicks' "Travelin' Soldier" on Corey's pandora country music station and daydream about the piece of bread with melted cheese I'm about to get up and make myself in a minute. Maybe this afternoon I'll work on some applications for some potentially cool summer/fall stuff. And maybe learn the Higitus Figitus.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”

--T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone (found on Slate's The Happiness Project blog, my latest fascination/addiction)

The Empire Never Ended

Man, it's been hard for me to feel relaxed lately! It's been a little hard for me to figure out why...

1 – I have first-day of school anxieties about running the Mad Science camps during spring break at the B&G Club this week. Oh, it just goes on and on, doesn't it? Trying to get the printer to work so that I can print out the instructions. Finding the time with Corey at some point this week to make sure I actually know how to build a bottle rocket before I go about trying to teach 30-40 children how to do so.

2 – This has been true for the past week or so, but lately it feels like the long commute is really getting me down. When I take the Max from my house (as opposed to downtown), it takes me an hour and a half to get to work, as opposed to forty minutes. An hour and a half!! That's something like 15 hours a week, just spent sitting on the Max, to and fro. That's like another part-time job, right there. I dunno, I never really planned on doing this job forever, just because it's neither all that challenging or well-paid. It's good for now; it's definitely better than nothing. I mean, the people with master's in education who work there and get paid just as much as me definitely helps puts things in perspective re: the current job market economy blah blah blah. And if that doesn't do it, then the chirping crickets and tumbleweeds blowing through the job postings on craigslist and idealist will definitely do it for ya.

3 – I applied for a fellowship to work/volunteer abroad, but apart from that I really haven't been doing anything. I mean, I check Americorps every week, craigslist every couple of days... I feel like I'm making an effort to keep looking. There's some journalism internships in D.C. and a non-profit internship in San Francisco that look interesting, but the idea of moving to these brand new expensive cities for an unpaid position just makes me feel like stale jam on the inside. The deadline to teach in Spain still hasn't passed. I dunno, I'm not really into applying for things just for the sake of applying for them anymore (though that's how I got this job and got saved from unemployment). I guess I'm going to just keep doing what I'm doing: keep my eyes open, scan things once a week but not really get too stressed out about it. If I don't get the fellowship Corey and I might just take off to South America and WWOOF it for a while.

4 – #3 is tied in with #4, the whole thinking/pondering/reflecting about the future (I don't want to put worry! Why worry, right?). I think a lot of this general anxiety may have to do with the fact that Laura is thesising, and so she's pretty much constantly stressed out and/or on very little sleep. I was talking to Emily on the phone the other day and I said that when I think about my spring break last year, I almost feel like I have PTSD: my heart starts pounding, my mouth tastes slightly acidic, my hands feel trembly like I've drunk too much coffee, I feel nervous for no discernible reason. Maybe it's because Laura is thesising that I've inevitably started thinking about mine. I dunno, I was reading some Onetti short stories and I picked up Faulkner's The Wild Palms... long story short, I need to easier on myself.

I am trying to learn about my “self” and what that “self” is.... I dunno, in my postmodern fiction class we talked a little about how modernity can really fracture and damage the self... I think the term I ended up using the most in my papers was the “decentered” self. That sounds about right: something not in its right place, teetering uneasily on the edge. And then in some of my yoga classes, the teacher mentioned thinking about our “divine” selves. All this sounds really woo-wooh, but bear with me a little. It was such a mind-blowing, weird concept to me: this idea that I have this self inside of me who is already perfect, already full formed, and the point of my life is to gradually and carefully peel away as many layers as I can in order to get as close to this perfect self as possible. I think of someone who is calm, mostly happy every day, peaceful and positive and satisfied with herself and life. Yeah, this is the self I am trying to approach.

It is so weird to try to think about this “self” in me. It's like trying to get to know a stranger. I'm like asking this self, so what do you do? Are you a writer? An academic? Do you teach in a university? Do you sit at home with your garden and write novels with your laptop in your lap? Do you teach English in a foreign country? Do you work as a journalist and write articles with sharp precise language about important issues? What do you do? What do you want? I want to reach the point where I know this person well enough to greet them as a friend, as opposed to an enemy or uneasy awkward acquaintance, when the day arrives. It t is all really very mind blowing, indeed.

It's hard to balance thinking about things in the long-term, but then also doing the day-to-day stuff that is necessary. Putting healthy food in your belly. Trying (unsuccessfully for two days now) to get your computer back from your boyfriend's sister, after you left your bag in your car, so that you can finally get started on revising your silly nanowrimo, which is so silly, but god help us, you find it so fun and fulfilling and entertaining anyway. Working the day job, making money so that you can pay your rent so that you can live with your lover and save up money to visit your parents in South America and your family in England. My grandmother just turned 93 in January and I really, really need to go see her. My aunt and uncle lost their house to the bank, victims of foreclosure. Yeah, family is important. No matter the anxiety that capitalism trains us to feel when our checking or savings account is suddenly and drastically emptier. What am I saving this money for, if not to go see friends and family now?

This really hit home in a powerful way:
you are going to have to go on a kind of journey.

You're going to have to do certain things and trust that answers will come to you. That involves letting go of a certain amount of control. It involves not doing what you have been doing. It involves change.
I mean, I'm confident that you're going to be fine, and I'd like you to trust me on that, but I'm not saying it will be easy, because lurking in this issue are some subtle concepts about the self and the world that you can only really get through emotional experience.
Just sit with your dreams and desires. Exempt them from the feasibility study. Regard them with interest. Allow yourself to feel the way you feel about them.
This sounds really woo-woo. But, hey. There is no shortcut. You're going to have to head in a new direction.
It takes courage to set out doing things in a new way. You're not going to know, right away, exactly where you're headed. So I suggest that you visualize, or dream, or speak from the heart, or sketch on a piece of paper, what you actually want -- where you want to be right now, what you want to be doing, what you want to own. I guess, eventually, if you find that you really want certain things, then you will be allowed to move to the stage of getting them. But for now, my opinion is that you have been doing too much getting and not enough wanting. So stick to wanting for a while. See if that doesn't relieve some of the anxiety about getting. Let go of getting. Just stick with wanting.