Fever Break

The stress fever at work has, knock on wood, broken. I had a little time off at the end of last week and had a terrible time - the weather was great, people were around to have funtimes, I have a car, whatever - but it was pretty horrible. I just could not relax. And then I ended up with a migraine Sunday night so bad I barfed. I think I have been really stressed out by work. It's bizarre to think I don't necessarily recognize that that is what is the matter. It feels so cellular to be in a state of stress, less about what is stressing me out and more about how it feels and how much I want to feel differently.

The capacity to endure stress is really curious. The reasons we endure stress are particularly interesting - all of the justifications that comprise denial - driven by (generally) false imperatives of things like money, networking, contacts, health insurance, expenses, reputation, inclusion . . . they bolster our sense that whatever we are doing is the right choice, and this is our denial about how to live.

I wish I could endure more stress - oh the things I would get done if I didn't have to sit with my cup of tea for half an hour, or clean the house just so I can sit in a chair and enjoy the orderliness. I might have a magazine publishing law firm with music lessons and yoga classes in the community space. Ah, I see - so the justifications that comprise denial are fed from an egoistic center of ambition - and this sense of ambition is created from . . . what source of values? Family? Society? Capitalist conspiracy? So the chain is like this: values - ambition - justification/denial - stress. Maybe values and ambition are really the same thing. Anyway interesting to think about.

It's funny that I just said I wish I could endure more stress. As though all the tools of living that I engage in, like yoga, health and exercise stuff, socializing, therapy, acupuncture, or whatever, are supposed to help me adapt upwards to a way of living that is not suiting me. So of course I can blame exercise and diet for failing to support me enough, and then change my exercise and diet routine instead of the core issues. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about going for walks and eating vegetables, for sure. But in some ways even that stuff is just topical ointment, too, isn't it? I remember one of my yoga teachers talking about an article called "How Yoga Ruined My Life" that someone wrote about how after getting super into yoga, a lot of things from this person's life were shed because it was clear that some things were incompatible with his/her new perspective on life. I'm sure it must feel like total ruination to abandon staples of one's identity. It's hard to change the narrative once you've so fully adopted a story's trajectory.

I wonder what my adopted story trajectory is? I don't think I can see it clearly enough to tell. Take the lawyer thing - am I bold for rejecting a legal career (yes I can change the narrative!), or is this just part of some more buried story about how I will never have an actual job (I relentlessly and unconsciously pursue my built-in trajectory and rearrange the narrative to sound as cool as possible)? Tough to say.

So what will have to change in my world for work to be less stressful? I could always stand to work on myself, so that's a given. And I've been trying to be more clear and consistent with my supervise-ees at work, and that's been an incredible challenge, but is paying off. And more time for me me me, of course, my favorite.

Holy Blog Post

I have been sucked sucked sucked sucked into my job. That is the darn truth. And I miss ye olde blog, I really do. I think what I miss is the time set aside to force me to put my thoughts into complete sentences. I think it has residual benefits in my world.

Yes, clear articulation of thoughts/feelings is something that requires practice, and I am feeling a little out of practice. I have verily stumbled over my words lately, having the idea and intention fully formed in my head, but lacking the actual terminology to translate thoughts/feelings into sentences. Yes indeedy, practice is useful.

Let's see, what have I been stumbling over verbally lately? Ah yes. Personnel issues. My job is, let me repeat, easy and fun, but oh lordy my gracious what to do about those employees? Talk about letting go of control, yep, learning a lot about that. Can't be every player on the team. And how about explaining stuff that you never thought you would ever have to explain to someone over 18, like Fibbing is Bad, and Apologizing for Blunders is Good. Do all young people come half-raised these days? Christ-y I feel old.

But anyway, I need to re-direct my energy away from too much work and back into me me me, because I am much more balanced when I get to nurture myself. Seriously, I really thrive when I don't have a job. Seems ridiculous to say out loud, but the best possible thing for me is not working. So far, at least. So anyway I'm still trying to move toward a yoga-tastic version of life, which includes a Regular Yoga gig, hooray! It starts on Thursdays in August in a church community room - I will post a link when it's mega-officially a go. And I started a Yoga Sutras discussion group on Monday nights, and it's been two weeks, and I'm loving that so far. I hope it keeps up! And I got myself a couple of subbing gigs, which is wonderful experience.

Speaking of yoga subbing gigs - can we talk about the general public for a minute? My first subbing class someone walked out after 20 minutes, but that's fine - you can't be everyone's teacher. My second subbing gig someone came to class with a shoulder injury that prevented her from lifting her arm over her head or putting any weight on it. Of course, I had prepared an elaborate shoulder-based class, sigh. So she probably had a sub-par experience, but my feeling is kind of that she should have stayed home. Would you go to typing class with a broken hand? Probably not. Boy, I can't wait to see more of the general yoga-going public. It's completely different from teaching friends. I'm ready though, to repel who I repel and attract who I attract. We'll see!

Life Plans

I think I mentioned before that having a full-time job, even one that I like a lot, really highlighted for me that I’d rather be teaching yoga, and that I want to subsist teaching yoga. If anything is going to be demanding on my time in an exciting and challenging way, I want it to be yoga.

My friend is opening a store front in the town we live in to sell t-shirts and local music. Not exactly a big money-making enterprise. This was sort of amazing to me. How much money could it possibly cost to get a little space set aside to get going on a business if my crazy friend is doing it? I don’t know the answer to that question yet. But I’m hoping that it’s less than $600 a month. Then I think I could do it.
I would want a space that is geared toward yoga practice as well as yoga discussion and meditation. I feel like the overhead is pretty minimal – space rental, heat and electricity (no AC for me unless it’s pretty desperate), a major initial purchase of mats and straps and blocks and blankets, a little stereo, maybe some candles and pretty curtains. Bathroom and cleaning supplies. Insurance. I don’t know, seems manageable at the moment, especially since my friend is doing it.

There’s a neighborhood business improvement group that gives business-starting classes. There are a huge number of steps to be taken, which is pretty annoying, because since this occurred to me, I feel like I have to do this Right Now. I’ve checked out three yoga places in the area, and I think that I have something different to offer that could gather its own steam. And I want to make community. It’s certainly one thing to find and participate in community that appeals to me – but how about making one’s own? There might be a megalomaniacal, “my way or the highway” downside to this kind of thinking, but I hope my motives are pure. I don’t want permission or approval or acceptance from anyone to start sharing my yoga experience with my community. I guess I also don’t want to wait – and that’s something to think about in terms of purity of intention. Patience. “Deserving.” Mostly I’m nervous that someone else is going to open a yoga studio in my ‘hood that has a similar approach, and I’ll have missed the boat.

Oh lordy.

So anyway here’s a version of the plan: get a space and rent it, and take it easy for the first year. I’d teach two classes a week, and get a few other people interested in teaching one or two classes a week, and we’d start off with evenings. Hopefully it breaks even with rent, but even if it comes up a little bit short that’s fine. Then maybe eventually quit the job and teach a bunch of days a week. Sweet plan!

Vacation mit Parentzen

So I'm here in Germany on a vacation with my parents, which is a total throwback to days gone by on Cape Cod, chafing against the sand in my bathing suit, eating potato chips, and reading "just for fun" books.

My "just for fun" book for vacation is one of the Terry Pratchett Discworld books, dozens of which have been kicking around the house since I was as little as I recall - at least from my most early literate era (I brought The Brothers Karamazov with me, but I keep re-realizing that I am not much of a High Thinker, so I've put it down 20 pages in in favor of sci-fi-fantasy-humor). Terry Pratchett writes magical fantasy books with a comic twist, featuring lovable and fallible wizards-in-training, very well organized assassins' guilds, and, my personal favorite, death's apprentice named, of course, "Mort." So then, yes. I'm reading yet another of his delightful books, this time about sexism in the magical education system, and it's terrific, of course. And this got me to thinking about magic books and how much I liked them when I was little.

I liked magic books probably mostly because I hoped that my magical powers would be shortly revealed to me by a kindly witch/grandmother who'd been watching and waiting for the right moment to reveal me to myself, and then I would at last be ripped from my longing for specialness into a state of actual specialness. By ten or eleven I thought I had been doing a heroic amount of waiting and figured it was going to happen basically any day now. Oh how long it takes to shed dreams of our own significance.

I read other books, too, with other versions of magical children in them (no Harry Potter for me, though - I feel too old for those, somehow). There's always some version of using one's powers wisely, and that things go poorly for people who abuse their powers. Sort of along the lines of pointing a finger at someone means there's three pointing back at you blah blah blah. The full import of this magical approach to the golden rule didn't really gel for me until well into adulthood. I remember it coming up with road rage - I remember wishing I had the power to pop someone's tire from my car and inconvenience them, or that I could control their speedometer or otherwise use some magic to thwart them. I can't remember if I've blogged about this yet, but one day it occurred to me that if I really were a witch, and I popped someone's tires, then at least three of my tires would pop or some other equally inconvenient thing would happen right back to me, and I don't want that at all. But I would like to affect the meanness in the world . . . . So then, how to exact my revenge without incurring any negative effects? Why, a wise witch will use her power for good, yes? But if "punishing" the "evil" isn't clearly "good," then that changes things - maybe it's less for "good" (which requires a judgment call) and more "in a good way." So instead of wishing for people's tires to pop, I wish in my head that they feel more patient and less stressed out. That way it will hopefully come back to me times three that I feel patient and calm, and that would be very nice. This is a good game to play in all corners of life. It's hard to practice, though.

But anyway, I was reading this Pratchett book and it's about magic of course and one phrase in it was very nice: "Magic's easy, you just find the place where everything is balanced and push. Anyone could do it. There's nothing magical about it." Nice, yes? But I like this because I disagree (yoga stuff coming). In my Jivamukti book the authors say that it's much harder to put something together than take it apart - this makes sense to me - I could certainly unscrew a radio without thinking about it, but put it back together? Yeah, harder, right? And yoga is all about integrating and balancing oneself with oneself - that's the magic that yoga is getting at. It's taking things that are out of balance and pushing them into place. The study of it, the real academic part about it, is learning to identify imbalance, or to see where balance should be underneath all the veils and smoke and fog of life and of the mind. Because it's not easy to tell "what's wrong" and then make it right. Figuring out where things are imbalanced takes a lot of time, and it's easy to get sidetracked or obsessed with correcting one particular thing and then that ends up tipping the scales a different direction, and you need to be shaken sometimes to see that all your effort towards balance is taking you further away - it's a way of mistaking an attempt for balance with what is actually egotism and a desire for specialness.

So the good news that I'm getting from this is that I do have a chance to develop my magical powers, after all. And when I see imbalance at work in the world and how far away from center out efforts can take us, my fantasies about increasing my own specialness have been replaces by my gratitude for my ordinariness. Therefore, yoga is great, and sci-fi-fantasy-humor is great, and Germany is great. You can order beer bigger than your head anywhere you go, and drink it at 10 in the morning and nobody judges.

Finding a Locus for a More Hocus-Pocus Yoga Focus

So last week I went to yoga on Monday night at a local place that definitely appears to be the main center of happ-nin yoga around here, and took a Jivamukti class. Jivamukti is a type of yoga that two Manhattanite folks started in the ‘80s that focuses a lot on ahimsa, or nonviolence (very much in the form of vegan living), and has a pretty vigorous post-Ashtanga vinyasa-flow approach. Anyway. From what I understand, in order to call oneself a Jivamukti teacher, as opposed to someone who teaches yoga and was trained and certified by Jivamukti teachers, one must adhere to a certain kind of class structure and style. And I get this in one sense – Jivamukti needs to protect its brand, and it can’t have way off-base teachings with its name attached to it happening all over the place. So, sure. It was in the back of my head, though, at this class, that this teacher couldn’t fully be himself within the parameters of this method. It’s probably not true – there’s certainly lee-way available – but that was one distraction about the class for me. It felt so very by-the-book in terms of the little snippets of yoga wisdom that came out that I wondered if the teacher really felt it. Well, it’s also that he rambled a bit – like he knew what he should be offering up but didn’t really know how to say what he was trying to say. His chattiness ran a little long, which to me indicated a level of searching as he was talking, which meant his vision wasn’t concrete to him yet.

This is something I want to keep in mind for my own teaching. Sincerity is important. Lack of sincerity is extremely obvious, no matter how well you can “say” the words. And I’ve noticed this in the classes that I’ve been teaching – part of me feels like I need to hand out some kind of peace/love guidance thing to give to the class, and it’s pretty tough to articulate peace/love feelings genuinely. First of all, it’s hard to articulate them at all. “You know, peace and stuff.” Second, communicating one’s feelings genuinely and succinctly enough in a class context requires serious choice of words and clarity of thought, so you have to know and mean what you say. Third, hell to muffins I am no beacon of successful peace/love for someone to model and I don’t want to suggest that any yoga information I have to offer represents my confidence or achievement of something great.

Which leads to me to the fourth, which is that peace/love isn’t the primary thing for me in yoga right now. The teacher last week, in spite of my feelings about his convictions and his teaching, said something that really rang in my mind – he said that if you are doing yoga postures in a checklist kind of way to feel accomplishment then you are missing the point of yoga. And this is something I do. I am pretty caught up in the athleticism of yoga. I love feeling myself progress in postures that have been eluding me because they require more strength than I have, and I feel pretty pleased with myself when I notice I have gained the strength to do something. I am mostly motivated to do yoga by my desire to exert my energy and expand my vocabulary of movements so that I can really get sweaty. The sheer exertion feels like a huge relief, and I can purge some anxiety and shed the day away, but this mostly happens because of the physical fatigue, not because I connect with the Universal like a champ. Well, actually, I have usually considered my exertion to BE my connection with the Universal, but there is definitely an element of the inner world that is lacking right now, something I’m just not going for. I can feel transcendent etc. when I am doing my postures, and I do my final relaxation on the floor, and I sit still and try to focus on my breathing, but I’m not as gung-ho about it as I am the pure work-out part of it. So I’d like to up the ante a little bit on my spiritual hocus-pocus, so that maybe I’ll have something more genuine to offer to future classes about the inner-world aspect of yoga practice.

So What Was Law School About?

I was recently talking with a pal, well, a few pals really, about what law school was all about for me. A few things to get out of the way here - I definitely went to law school because by age 27 I felt that still having no idea what the hell to do with myself was a big problem that needed some kind of answer. It's funny to think about in retrospect because right around the same time I was thinking about doing yoga teacher training, but it ended in the fall and law school would start in the fall and it wasn't going to work out in time to do both. Hm. Second, I hated the bureaucracy of the world and felt pretty powerless and broke a lot of the time, and was tired of that; getting one blood test and a prescription for antibiotics from the hospital cost more than my rent and caused a serious panic about How Am I Going to Live at one point. Um, I also got a preposterous scholarship and my vanity was so ridiculously flattered that I was definitely going to get this bargain education even if I didn't really know what the hell I was doing it for. And of course, being a lawyer is sooooo versatile, yes? You do aaaaaanything with a law degree, right? Ha ha, that's funny. Anyway, being a lawyer certainly sounds like something indisputably worthwhile, skill-set wise. "Marketable" is the term we hear tossed around.

Okay so there's that. What did law school do for me? The way I found myself putting it over the phone to one friend is that, well, "I basically have the exact same life I had before I became a lawyer, except now, I really like my life." This sort of sounds like some version of "I punched myself in the face for while, and once I stopped, it was awesome." It's a little different than that, more like, I was filled with doubt about my choices, and having challenged them to the extreme with this five-year adventure, I can feel more confident about my choices. One thing I got out of law school is that I love to learn. I love it. Even though I'm not going to be a lawyer, getting my J.D. was super fun for me. I would go back to school for any number of things if money were no object. Philosophy, Spanish, Botany, Music, you name it, I would love to learn about it. I truly treasure my law school education for the new way of viewing the world that it provided me - I had no idea how the FCC is allowed to exist, I had never considered my "rights" under the Constitution, I had never had to bend my mind around the kind of reasoning that the law uses. It was pretty neat for all those reasons. Another thing I got out of it was finally getting over my own insecurities about my intelligence. Being smart is VERY highly prized by my family and I was always worried about being only sort of smart and how that doomed me to a meaningless life. Grandpa went to Yale, Uncle got a free ride to college because he's so super smart, cousins have perfect SAT scores . . . but I was always hovering well under the exceptional threshold as it's measured by the world - wasn't going to get into a great school, etc. At last, at last, I do not give a crap about that. Education pedigree is a shameful and exclusive and hierarchical measure of human worth that no one should subscribe to. I went to a low/medium crappy college, and I would have had a way better time at a state school meeting actually interesting and diverse students. But anyway. As for my own level of intelligence, I am totally fine with not being a genius. I did great in law school (yes it was not a well regarded school but whatever I'll take it), and I certainly keep that in my pocket as evidence that I am reasonably smart, but it's not just that - it's more like I have enough education and enough of a sprinkle of wisdom now to feel like I can trust my own analysis and intuition, and enough skepticism to be ready to change my mind when something better, clearer, or more persuasive comes along, and I know I will keep trying to learn new things. That's plenty, and I feel great about that.

And here's one more important thing about law school that really broadened my perspective, and it's pretty basic, so if this kind of thing has been obvious to you since birth then pardon this silly revelation. So, a lady adult in my life has been repeating the following anecdote for years to me: this lady adult goes to a job interview, and the interviewer immediately notes her haircut, and says something to the effect of, "I really appreciate a simple, no fuss haircut on a woman, it shows that your sense of practicality is sound." This haircut apparently was highly influential in getting a job. I walked around for a long time with this, and many other similar ideas, in my head - certain decisions we make have very clear messages to people, and one of those is that having a practical haircut means you are practical person. I think I still judge people with elaborate hairdos as having suspicious priorities. So anyway, I think it took me until I was in law school to understand that sets of facts are susceptible to multiple conclusions. This is basically the premise of arguing the law - with any given set of facts, which conclusion is best for you, and can you persuade someone of it? With respect to the haircut thing - why didn't the interviewer conclude that the haircut meant this lady had no concern for attention to detail? Or placed no value on self-care and beautifying herself and was therefore indifferent to pleasing others in a workplace setting? Or gets up really late and is super disorganized and can't handle anything beyond a wash and go haircut? (Most of all, why didn't this lady adult conclude, in spite of the observation coming in the form of a compliment, that the interviewer was inappropriate and superficial?! Seriously, the haircut?!) Feeling liberated from narrow conclusions was huge for me. I didn't know how to see beyond a certain way of thinking until I was forced to squeeze my brain out a lot. Now I feel like I can see unlimited kinds of conclusions in all things, every day, and it makes life so much more interesting, and much less severe, if you see what I mean.

And of course, participating in the corporate world was fascinating, and I could finally decide, based on my own experience, not just my own leftist prejudices, that it wasn't the right place for me. And that does go a long way in terms of my own contentment. So, onward and upward, further in and further up.

Oh My God Working is Like Pretty Annoying Y'all

Dude how do people live their lives AND go to work? I started my new job this week and I only did three days, but I feel like that should be enough for the month. Srsly. Everything I've been working on went out the window for the week, and I'm picking up the pieces of my brain right now to feel like I can keep going with everything. I have to find a place to live, first of all, which is like double varsity annoying to the exxxtreme, but once that's done it'll be great to have a place to live that I can pay for out of my working-girl salary. Kind of reassuring.

But I have to say that starting this job has really underscored the fantasy of yoga teaching as a life - I look forward to my little buddy-brunch yoga trip on Sundays like I don't look forward to anything work related. And of course the full-blown fantasy version is a little on hold right now since I have this job. And just to make the timing all the more frustrating, a three month apprentice-teaching program is happening with one of my favorite teachers right now, and I can't try to get into it because now I have a job. But I'm staying calm about it, the dream isn't disintegrating, it's just that another dream is taking shape right now and I need to turn my attention to this for a while, and I can maintain the thread of my yoga life after business hours, in my future apartment where I eventually will live and have all my books and junk all how I like them around my desk and I can work on my feminist manifesto autobiography.

Speaking of books and autobiographies: I am reading for fun right now Spalding Gray's book Sex and Death to the Age of Fourteen, and it's pretty interesting. He's that monologist whose life consisted of running around doing things and then telling audiences about what he did. This also sounds like an amazing life to me, and the stories are good mostly because he's incredibly neurotic. His story telling is pretty compelling, I admit, and it is definitely the result of his long relationship with improvisational and experimental theater, none of which I have ever done, but still, I think monologuing is an interesting undertaking. Blogging, just out loud, right? That's a thing I would like to try to do, write one monologue about something.

Anyway no one wants to read a blog that never posts, so we'll see how it goes trying to blog regularly and have a job. My entire NYC fan base was alarmed by my wrapping it up, and the fans are the most important thing.

Ashram Weekend: Residual Cold Issues

So I'm not really "sick" anymore but I have that chest congestion thing that leaves a lingering cough and makes sleeping a little difficult, which is pretty annoying. Our last weekend for yoga training is at an Ashram, and it's a sleepover, and I'm a little worried about coughing in the night and upsetting everyone's sleep and also of making everyone else worried about catching something.

Boo. Not cool. My ears are a little clogged, too. Lame. I do want to punctuate the experience with this weekend event but I don't want to be stupid about it.

Also thinking about calling the blog quits! If it stops now then I wrapped it up with some affirmative feverish love stuff instead of the usual miserable questioning, oh and an embarrassing shout-out, and I'll be a yoga teacher, and I'm moving, and OH YEAH I got a job which starts next week anyway, so this chapter of existence is sort of wrapping itself up, and maybe some other journally thing would be good to do instead.

Yay yoga weekend! Boo cough!

More Fevered Musings

Still sick. Sick blogging might be my equivalent of drunk dialing right now. Not advisable but here we go!!

So I'm supposed to assist a class for my final obligation before certification this weekend, and I get to give a little talk to open up the class, and here are my sentimental and feverish thoughts about it right now:

A yoga teacher this week said, "every stage of a pose is a pose." I loved this. Sometimes we feel like we aren't doing it quite right, and forget to feel the immediacy and beauty of our present version of ourselves. Bent knees in downdog? That's a downdog. Knees down in plank? That's a plank. Wherever you are, you're doing it.

This reminded me of waitressing, which I did for a long time. If I count the summer country club lunch counter and catering in high school, I did it for about 12 years. And then about six years total of full time, adult waitressing. Fun money as a teenager, rent money in college, and life money after college and before law school.

I really liked doing it once I got the hang of it. Clearly I liked it or I would have quit, just like I've quit a million other jobs that weren't right for me. Waitressing always stuck. Because I like it. Also it's the best money for the time. But here's the thing - I never really let myself like it. It was always part of the mythology of my temporary self; it was something I was doing on the way to doing something else, or just to make money while I supported my "real" life. I had some nasty upper middle bourgeois ideology crap in my head that made me think what I was doing could never be treated as adequate for me. I didn't really let myself like it until someone else pointed out to me that I could, legitimately, really like it. A woman came into the restaurant one night, right at year 6 of adult waitressing, and told me how much she liked waitressing when she was younger. She had done it pretty seriously - an American woman server in fancy restaurants in Paris in the 1960s-70s - she was no joke (she was no joke about anything, though - she was also an accomplished mime and attorney at the Department of Justice). Anyway, it really hit home, the fact that she, this super sharp and credible person, said that she liked waitressing - and not in that stupid nostalgic way that forgetful and oblivious people think college and childhood were great, but with a real sense of ownership, she proclaimed unambiguously her love of waitressing. This prompted a pretty astounding revelation for me. Her confidence was all the credibility her life needed. Suddenly I knew that I could give myself permission to love my life just the way it was. I wasn't really ready to actually do it, I mean, I still went to law school and everything, but that's another story. But it was there, this idea that I could own my life joyfully, even though it didn't look like it was supposed to look.

So then, flash forward 5+ years. Every stage of a pose is a pose. There is no need to postpone your life, or think of your real Self as something that will come together "later." Every expectation and feeling of inadequacy and insecurity, once shed, can reveal to you a pose, or life, that you already love, and can relish, and feel the immediacy and import of if you let yourself do it - even if it doesn't look like it's "supposed" to look. Love, love, love, love, love your life, especially when it doesn't look like it's "supposed" to look. It might be that all you have to do is give yourself permission.

A little simplistic, I know, but it's the fever talking. Love!!!

Micro and Macro Happiness

The disciplines I've been checking out, Buddhism and yoga, focus a lot on inner happiness, and disciplining oneself to regulate the fluctuations of the mind so that we aren't all slaves to our fidgeting brains and insecurities and egos. This stuff is pretty great, and I really like it, but let's think about external reality for a minute.

I once chided my friend for moving across the country to make a change in her life, telling her, essentially, wherever you go, there you are. In general, I believe this - why run when the sickness is inside you? When she moved, my friend identified for me many many tangible external realities that affected her inner world, demonstrating that her location did have meaningful impact on her "self." And I also believe this is true. For example, I know that access to nature noticeably improves my sense of well-being. I feel great that I have a nutty, loving spouse. I absolutely must have A Room of My Own in order to sustain my happiness. Stressful and sedentary work makes me suicidal - I don't care how hard I work at my mental equanimity and inner peace, I can't have an office job.

But isn't the purpose of disciplining our minds to protect our happiness from the endless unpredictable and uncontrollable circumstances of life? I might not be able to live somewhere with easy, daily access to nature. My spouse could decide to leave at any second. I might need to take an office job to survive. I might not be able to afford a room of my own or it might have to be sacrificed to other life exigencies. Shouldn't I be able to maintain a happy state of mind no matter what? Isn't that the point of what I'm working on?

I don't think so. Feminist reading has been pretty provocative for me these days. I'm pretty sympathetic to counter-cultural approaches to existence - in a full-blooded American way, too - the Declaration of Independence after all is premised on the idea that when a way of life no longer works for people, their natural human right is to change it from the top down and just start over. But there are so many forces that we are mired in that we may not realize are congesting our human potential for happiness and self-realization. I wrote recently (a few post ago) about feeling oppressed by the feeling of being the "dinner-maker" in my feminine, nuclear familial role, and how I do it to myself, and how ingrained the dinner-maker role and identity are within me, and yet how limiting and stressful it is, too.

Changing these ingrained parts of myself is a multi-step process. Here are some ideas I have about identifying and changing basic things about life, off the top of my head:

1) realize that something about it is making me unhappy. This is easier said than done. I don't think we're very in tune with what is actually affecting our moods and health. There are a lot of veils in the way that don't point us to things that are right in front of us. Hey-o, yoga and meditation are great for tuning in on these issues and sensitizing yourself to the impact of your daily reality on your Self.

2) figure out what is making me unhappy about it. What is it? The amount of time? The expectation? Lack of reciprocation? The lighting, the smell? What is making me unhappy about a particular activity? Do not underestimate the power of just stopping the activity. Don't automatically blame yourself or your "attitude" for your discontent, a la, "I just have to adjust my expectations/approach/outlook."

3) imagine a version of the activity that brings more happiness. What has changed? Is it in my head, the atmosphere, or outside of myself?

4) imagine not doing this activity anymore. How does it affect life FOR ME, not for anyone else (ie, disappointing or angering someone is NOT a good reason to keep doing something that is not contributing to your well-being)? This helps me figure out if I am doing something out of obligation, or role-assumption, or a sense of being beholden to some situation or person. (Germaine Greer observes that all too frequently, "Women are self-sacrificing in direct proportion to their incapacity to offer anything but this sacrifice." Ladies, keep an eye on your own martyrdom as a way of substituting identity and meaningful work - I definitely do this.)

5) be completely okay with a version of life that unfolds without trying to keep the old activity as part of it.

Okay so that's just thinking about it right now, any additional ideas about perspective and analysis are extra-welcome.

At the moment I am most troubled by the prospect of a future life built around the structure of the nuclear family. It sucks. It is isolated and inefficient: no one should be alone with the same five people most of the time, all up in their business, and there is no reason each tiny family bungalow needs its own lawn mower and washing machine - nuclear isolation is good for corporations, by the way, but that's another rant for later (yes, Greer is all about this, too). And the limited universe of the nuclear family doesn't help social progress, either, but that's good for the moneyed classes, too. Greer says it thusly: "[T]he function of the patriarchal family unit in capitalist society" is that it "immobilizes the worker, keeps him vulnerable, so that he can be tantalized with the vision of security. It gives him a controllable pattern of consumption to which he is thoroughly committed. His commitment is to his small family and his employer not to his community."

My role as a woman in the nuclear scenario is not okay with me. I don't want to be a dinner-maker, not just on principle, but because the reality of it is soul-sucking. So this is one of those assumed role things that I'm trying to picture for myself - I want inner happiness no matter what, yes, but creating my own mental reality is just the micro version of manifesting a truly sincere, macro, outer reality of happiness.

I have to be careful about this stuff, though - can't just run around rejecting responsibilities out of liberated self-realization.

New Fantasy: The Job I Interviewed For; Also What's Up With Unwelcoming Spiritual Stuff?

Lordy but it is hard to want things you cannot actively get. It's out of my hands now whether or not I get the job I interviewed for, but I kind of really liked my volunteer day, and the people, and the whole thing, and I think I could do this job and be good at it and stay there for a long time. Wow, it's like dating! "I like you, do you like me, trust me we should definitely date, even if you aren't sure I am completely sure so let's do it." Sort of an insecure place to be, though. There's another person in the running who, by reliable accounts, the Big Boss prefers, so it's kind of a long shot at the moment.

But the best thing about this is that I feel like either outcome - getting the job or not getting the job - is completely fine. The versions of life that unfold in my head when I picture either outcome are both totally fine with me, and that's a nice thing to notice. Whatever happens is fine. I think this is a sign of maturity, maybe? Or is it immature to think that you are mature?

Anyway - tonight me and a yoga friend are going to the Yoga Sutras discussion group in Rhinebeck together and I am super pumped about it! I really like the discussion group and I am excited to have a playmate come with me. One of the things that I felt bummed about initially with the yoga training is that I was sort of isolated, having my own little experience, with no one to bounce my thoughts off of or hear about their experience. But now I get a full car ride there, a discussion group, and a car ride back to talk about yoga with another yoga person, and I'm pretty excited about it.

This reminds me of something I was talking about several posts ago, how everybody always seems to have their own little extra credit spiritual thing going on, and how it's kind of annoying sometimes. Well I think maybe it's because I feel excluded, first of all - probably no mystery there. I've noticed that no one wants to invite you to their spiritual events (except Xtians and the Buddha people, which is kind of nice). For instance, when I went to a singing event that entailed chanting to a guru considered to be a living deity a few weeks ago, we were chatting afterwards and someone asked if I was a "follower" and I said "nope," and someone else said "you're a free agent" and I laughed and said "or a lost sheep" and that got some laughs. But no one said anything even approaching something like "there are more things to learn about this, want a pamphlet?" I certainly get that people try not to be pushy or cultish about these things, but declining to extend a hand or branch or whatever, even when I'm sitting in the middle of an event about which I was clearly both interested and ignorant, just reeks of smugness.

We talked about this in yoga training last weekend with reference to students' needs, how they can tend toward guru-ification of their yoga teachers and put you in a role you don't want to be in or which at least takes more of you energy than you feel you can give. It makes sense to me to be cautious of boundaries, especially in a setting where you are representing yourself as an authority with respect to body-mind experience, for sure. People are in a lot of pain in their lives. Yoga might be the only place they hear the words "good job," or get touched in a nice way, or get to think about their peace of mind - as the yoga teacher you are facilitating this experience, and it can feel extremely intimate. I know this from my own feelings about some yoga teachers, and I can empathize with the idea that you don't want to end up being a guide for other people if you are working on your own path and that's enough for you. But I do remember the feeling of being really let down when I realized that the sacredness I felt in my relationship with one of my favorite yoga teachers only went one way, from me to her. Not that I didn't matter, but that certainly the feeling of connectedness was stronger on my end, which makes sense as the receiver of the experiences she created for her classes. Ha, this is also like insecure dating! "You don't even know how best of friends we will be when you let me latch on to your life, I totally get what you are saying all the time and we should really talk about everything together, you GET me!"

Maybe contentment is just a lonely path.

One Yoga Weekend Left

Well this past weekend was the second to last yoga teacher training weekend. Someone asked me today what I'm going to do next, asking, "are you going to do another training?" I thought this was a joke, but it was not. Not that I'm averse to continuing education, it is my favorite way of pulling a large blanket over my head to hide from the world, but I want to let this thing settle in a little bit. Plus, you know how much further yoga information costs? Approximately a million dollars, give or take. Everything is so expensive. Observing how expensive everything is, is a terrible habit, and can lead only to depression.

In other news, my feminism reading is leading me down a different type of observation about myself, besides the usual toxic merry-go-round of my head, I am now enjoying new awareness of my insanities as they pertain to my internalized lady role. First on the docket: dinner.

Dinner time is kind of oppressive. I love to cook, by the way, so that's not really the problem. It's the timing of the whole thing, this family socialization gesture that requires wrangling people into the same room at the same time to appreciate your cooking while practicing their manners. I find that the logistics of being the dinner-maker, as the women in my life have all been, means that I have to proactively worry about who is going to be where and when so that I can executive produce a dining experience that is delightful. This process creates a series of expectations revolving around my terrific dinner-making "altruism" (Germaine Greer's term) that actually converts my gesture into a transaction of sorts: I am the dinner maker, you therefore owe me some kind of reciprocity; if you just say "thanks" and continue on with your life, well then, where is MY I-made-this-for-you in this situation? Altruism is sneaky here; it isn't pure. Plus, contractually this does not stand - I cannot ask for something in return for my dinner-making, which is really a gift. But it doesn't feel completely like a gift, it feels like I am doing "my part," and that I will get something in return. Yes I love cooking, and sharing time with family, and eating delicious dinner, but there is a role-fulfillment that takes up too much of my identity. There is so much ancillary mental effort put into it - preparation, scheduling, cooking, the dining, and then the clean-up - and then what happens afterwards? Does the family go back to what they were doing in their own lives, with their actual preoccupations or work, and I merely continue to be the dinner-maker with no dinner to make until tomorrow?

It's hard to separate oneself from the society of the family space - the feeling of never being along is inimical to self. Once the family society has converged, leaving it requires a shutting of door, a deliberate space of aloneness which now has a seed of exclusion in it which is harder to initiate or feel at ease in than merely being alone. Dinner time always sets the scene for this dissolving of self for me - it's hard to excuse myself from the interacting, and thusly it is the end of day's productivity and self-inquiry, and if that's the case, then I may as well be drunk, too. But I don't like that version of things, it depresses the hell out of me - but I don't necessarily like a version of life wherein everyone in the household makes dinner for him or herself and retreats to their respective incubation spaces in order not to have to interrupt their own projects. Maybe just "dinner-dinner" once a week or something, a la Sunday dinner. Regularly scheduled dinner is so leaden and binding.

Buried Longing

I think I described my doing this yoga training as my attending to a buried longing. This is true, I’ve wanted to do it for a while, or at least I felt that I had started something with yoga that I never finished, and doing this training class puts a finishing coat on top of the little back yard deck I was building. And now that I'm almost fully equipped for yoga grilling on the deck, as it were, it feels pretty nice.

And this week at Yoga Sutras discussion group in Rhinebeck, we talked about the 11th sutra, which is translated from the Sanskrit in my edition as follows: “when a mental modification of an object previously experienced and not forgotten comes back to consciousness, that is memory.” “Memory” is one of the five mental functions that the Yoga Sutras identifies – the others being sleep/stupor, misconception, verbal delusion, and right knowledge. Seems sort of like there’s only one good one out of those, but whatever. So, one of the scholarly expositions of the “memory” sutra explained that our mind returns again and again to past events when they are in some way incomplete experiences in our mind. That made sense to me; I definitely think more about things that don’t feel completed, or over yet (and thinking about them again and again of course makes them continue to feel “not over”). Either because my ego was injured, or I felt misunderstood, or I had some expectation of how things should have gone (but they didn’t go that way), or it was upsetting in a way that left a lingering sense of vulnerability that leaves a feeling of exposure within me, (which is a kind of incompleteness of my own comfort), I certainly spend some time revisiting memories.

Where does finishing what one started fit into this feeling? I think that I have go-to-South-America fantasies mostly out of a sense that my Spanish-speaking is only okay, and I know how much better it could be, but I haven’t managed to find the space in my life yet to finish that project. It’s not complete for me. I mean I’ll be fine if I never work on my Spanish again, really – even though it’s excellent to be taking care of the yoga stuff, the feeling of “completeness” isn’t some magical filler making that part of me feel done. But it’s good. So having started something and have it not be wrapped up in the way I imagined has created this sort of memory-repetition for me; it would be good to finish what I started so it can feel complete.

Buh, Job, Meh, Bluh; also The BaB Project

Job job job. I have to get a job. Sort of. The new fuel powering my personal clown car is: Buy a Building ("BaB")! The BaB Project requires, as you might imagine, participating in all the above-ground operations of Satan himself, including relationships formed with banks, realtors, and local government, as well as considerations of school districts, zoning limitations, code enforcement, and property taxes. I want to get on a plane just thinking about it.

On the other hand, the vision of The BaB Project imagines a space that would support personal autonomy with respect to incubation space - you know, shut the door, play music loudly, have friends over, use the space for yoga classes or fixing gear or a recording studio, you know, the usual. Yes indeed that is the fantasy - a work/live space designed to support my and my darlin's things that we do. Which, for me, is basically that I like to stare into space and let my thoughts connect. Also do some yoga. And generally read whatever seems interesting that day and then maybe blog it out.

So anyway, JOB. I had a job interview this week at a job that I could really really like - second interview next week! Some hints: it is not a job at which I would get fat in my chair with the phone against my head. Another hint: not very much money! Can you guess? You'll never guess, and I'll never tell. Unless I get the job and then I will tell each of my readers individually over coffee.

So anyway I really like not having a job, and I could get by for a while yet without getting a job, but I am excited about having a life-plan-dream to work towards, and about helping make it come true. Yay to purpose, booo to responsibilities and possible work stress. Oh conundrum, oh The BaB Project, how you require present sacrifice for future gain.

And let's touch briefly upon the first part of The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer. Wow. This book is awesome, but not in a Betty Friedan blow-the-lid-off-this-society kind of way, it's way more subversive (and therefore less susceptible to mass adaptation/awakening). So this is in the early 70's, I think about eight years after Friedan - and Greer throws around the f-word a lot, and gives a brief critique of the heterosexual sex act, which is fascinating, and tears down the quality of feminine aesthetics (dipilation is crude, curves are social constructs, Twiggy is a socio-economic phenomenon!). It's pretty awesome. She appears to want to dismantle society as the only way to be truly free as humans (well, more than appears, she clearly wants to do that), and says the refusal to be more radical was where the suffragettes "failed," ha ha, yeah, they failed. I can dig on the next class revolution, for sure - I love feminism.

Bein' a Lady, Buddha's Aaight Reprieve, More Preposterous Life Fantasies

I just heard Hilary Clinton’s Women’s Rights are Human Rights speech from September 4, 1995 at the 4th World Conference on Women Plenary Session in Beijing, China. Something is going on with me and the woman stuff – I am pretty interested in it lately. I finished The Feminine Mystique, of course, and currently on the docket is The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer; I also just wrapped up Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness by Ariel Gore. It feels a little bit cosmic to have heard Clinton’s speech replayed on the radio today, and about a month ago I also heard a show about Eleanor Roosevelt and her life – which, to be brief, was basically kick-ass. I feel like a little spark of time/place is settling over me, a neat dimension to my identity that isn’t just who, but when, I am (yay corniness!).

So let’s consider the Bluebird book for a minute – this book definitely is in favor of an Action Girl approach to female happiness. (Action Girl is also, by the way, an excellent comic book that all should enjoy.) She is in favor of confronting what it is you truly want to do, and trying to do it, even when it isn’t what you are “supposed” to be doing. This kind of tough-self-love appears frequently to revolve around relationship-ending narratives, a la “screw this house-dog-car-job scene, I’m going to chart the seasonal fecal change of snowbirds” or whatever. I get this – I think a lot of people spend their youths trying to feel safe and secure by finding love and purpose to attach to, and then once they are fully adult and feel actually safe and secure, they realize they are being held back by the love and purpose that they were once so desperate to tether themselves to for fear of floating away. It seems like a natural life progression, actually – like a second childhood cycle. As babies and kids we need need need direction and instruction and safety, and then as teenagers we resist and rebel and deny all direction and instruction so we can become a different, independent self. Then we do it all again, probably dozens of times in our adult life: attach, rebel; attach, rebel.

Anyway Gore is in favor of bold and radical happiness action, and I think that is great, and I completely agree – it has that seed of Friedan’s call to arms to resist “adjusting” to your expected role that I really love. She also examines the problem of fearfulness – the opposite of happiness is anxiety, she says, and one of the cures for anxiety? – why, meditation, of course. I was thinking that while I don’t feel like I’m a Buddhist exactly, and that I think it’s a bad idea to try to find yourself by finding something religious to hold on to, I have to give a little bit of credit to the path of self-via-spirituality – I do think that investigating my spiritual side a little did give me access to ways of viewing my life that have functioned as little launch pads for further self-discovery . . . like balancing (or reconciling) the feelings that, one the one hand, I am exactly where I need to be at any given moment on any given day, and on the other hand, I should strive for change and growth and the feeling of using and expanding my capacities. Every reasonable point of view is a paradox, isn’t it? Including that one! Ha ha, both reasonable and paradoxical, nice.

But anyway willingness to take radical action and intellectualized balanced approaches notwithstanding, this still leaves most of us with the question of What Am I Supposed to be Doing? The feeling of infinite choice and the problem of choosing one thing to the exclusion of several others – as well as the influence of circumstance, inclination, funding, time, and everything else over what even feels possible or practical among the infinite - it can all be so very paralyzing. I am still distilling myself – I keep having fantasies lately of going to South America again, only this time, going for longer and taking a language class and having the “experience” I had always wanted – I mean, it’s been so wonderful to take care of this one buried longing – yoga certification – that I think I’d really feel relieved in a check-list sort of way if I did that. But it would really interrupt everything else that is unfolding right now – my guitar lessons start this week, and yoga is going really well, and my reading is really engaging, and my husband and I are thinking it’s time to buckle down and buy a piece of real estate to set up all our wacky projects in. Well, anyway, you can see how going to South America for six months would postpone all these things that are in progress - and even though I appreciate Gore's happiness prescription, making oneself happy isn't permission to follow whim or totally cave into one's panic about life and aging, to me. So could I do it in a few years? What if there’re babies in my life? Then what? It makes me a little sad to think about shelving the South America dream, but really, one thing at a time.

New Fantasy: Holistic Physical Therapist

So one new future version of my big non-existent life direction is to become a physical therapist after the yoga stuff, and then use yoga and, you know, science, to make people feel good in their bodies. One of the things I already like about practicing the yoga classes on my friends is trying to attend to their particular quirks. It takes some serious actual knowledge (which I don't yet have) to really "prescribe" yoga to someone in a way that helps them heal. I know that for my back problem, I have been incredibly reluctant to give up or adjust certain yoga postures that were not helping me. In particular, I love getting into wheel pose (big ol' back bend), and doing pigeon pose (really big hip stretch). Especially with respect to the hip stretches - which I thought must be really good for me since I have hip problems - I need to cut way back. With my hips and back, extending my hip flexibility is the opposite of what I should do; I need to stabilize and strengthen my hips. Again, it has taken me about ten years, two orthopedists, three chiropractors, at least one physical therapist, an acupuncturist, and an extra astute yoga teacher to convince me that this is the right thing for me. That is ridiculous. My intuition with respect to my hips was just wrong - stretching is always good, right!? Do all the poses the yoga teacher says to do! DO THEM ALL OR YOUR EXPERIENCE IS SUB-PAR.

That's the weirdest thing to think about - physical yoga is really supposed to be about tailoring movement to your body, not just trying to do things regardless of how they react with you. But it takes so long to be able to tell what is happening and what is helping and what is hurting. I still can't totally "feel" the hip/back stuff in a way that leads me to the same conclusion as all the other people who told me the useful hip/back information, but I am getting better, so the dots are starting to connect (ah direct experience is frequently the precursor to crediting authoritative advice or knowledge - but what happens when your direct experience is a misconception? well, in my case, you keep doing pigeon and wheel even though it is a bad idea). And then there's the feeling that by attending a class, you are submitting yourself to an experience that it would, at the very least, be rude to disregard in favor of just doing your own thing for some of the poses. And the trust and respect I think I should be expressing for the yoga teacher and the class structure s/he has designed makes me hesitant to skip things that I shouldn't do. And I might think that I'm shortchanging myself in a cosmic full-body yoga kind of way if I skip stuff because all the poses have magical yogic hocus-pocus that I need to experience or something.

So anyway yoga anatomy weekend is this weekend and I sent the guest speaker a bunch of questions and she wrote me back some interesting and illuminating anatomical responses, and it made me day dream about being someone who really knows the functions of the body and who can use yoga to really help people move in a way that is healing and helpful and challenging, and empower people to tailor their yoga practices to their own bodies. And of course the way that I thought I could do this in a highly credible and career-oriented way was to become a licensed physical therapist with a happy/spiritual holistic yoga-physical-therapy practice.

And here's the real point of this post! School is expensive!! I looked at the program closest to me in Troy, NY, and it was listed as a three year program for a doctor of physical therapy degree (no info about just a masters so far), and it was $790 per credit hour, and a 120 credit program. That's over $94,000 dollars. That's absurd, right? It should definitely not cost that much money. I am really bummed out by that information. I feel like the strangle-hold on information and education is pretty evil. Yeah I know I have a library card and everything, but really, people need a syllabus, and opportunity for discussion and to ask questions, and clarification and help and all that stuff. Feels unfair to put such a high price tag on access to these things. It's classist, too, which bothers me. You have to be able to afford to know and learn and grow. And then the government gets involved and needs to touch your education with a magic wand for you to be able to legally use and make a living off of your knowledge (yes there is an up and a downside to this). So there goes that little fantasy, at least in that form.

Sidetracked for a Moment

I recently said that I am a little tired/overwhelmed by the endless number of possible re-revelations available and that I’d like to remind myself to scale it back and take things one thing at a time. I’ve made a little side-trip on that simplification mission to read a few books recommended by friends.

The first book I just finished – it was a quick read – was Women Food and God by Geneen Roth. This appeared to me to be a self-help book that I would never in a million jillion years have sacrificed my pride to read, but I sort of had to. My friend “Ladypants,” whom I love and respect, had it on her couch when I went to visit her this week. And of course, even though I am waaaaay too good for self-help books, I actually really like them, and of course this book appeared to be about food and women and who doesn’t have at least some kind of dark and damaged relationship with food on some level? So I picked it up and asked her what it was about. She said it was basically about the title, but then she also said that by page five she was in tears, and that she read the book with a box of tissues and would just read and cry and read and cry. Compelling book review, Ladypants. Sold.

Okay first things first – I’ve been thinking about The Feminine Mystique and Betty Friedan’s articulation of the mass purposelessness of women in the 1950’s. I’ve been thinking about happiness and wondering what makes someone happy – is it working really hard to be content with what one has (a la Buddha and meditation?), or is it working really hard to shape and influence one’s reality in a way that is personal to your own sense of self and your own individual passions (a la The Feminine Mystique)? Am I describing the same thing in two different ways (and contentment does not foreclose meaningful change), or are these two approaches incompatible with each other (happiness and striving cannot co-exist)? One seems to require the elimination of self and ego and ambition, and the other requires the cultivating and refining of self and ego and ambition. And when do we know to endure drudgery and misery with a “contentment” state of mind and when to rail against drudgery and misery as a fruitless waste of our precious life and passion in a “save myself” state of mind? I can’t tell. And I am still in the process of re-writing my understanding of my own journey into a really draining career situation that I thought I was toughing out in a “contentment” kind of way which eventually gave way to quitting the job in a “save myself” way (that career situation was corporate lawyering).

So the first sort of case-study that Geneen Roth provides in the book is, you guessed it, a letter of desperation from a first-year litigation associate at a big law firm who goes home and eats every night to numb her pain. (I, by the way, gained 17 pounds in six months at my job by filling myself with cheesy starches and red wine every night to kill the pain.) Lordy lordy lordy. So what was the author’s prescription to this girl? Not so much about finding one's purpose - it was all about Live In The Moment. Observe the hallway lights and the glorious humanity of your “aggravating” situation. Feel the sensation of the emptiness you find so terrifying that you want to numb it with food every night; disentangled this emptiness for yourself and feel, observe, feel, observe.

Dude, QUIT YOUR JOB and find a better outlet for you energy. See, the author offered a sort of Buddha-esque solution, and I offer Betty Friedan, so we can see where my current inclinations lie.

I guess quitting her job is not really necessarily the answer though. Being a quitter is bad, right? – when push comes to shove you can’t just hide under the bed, like me. And sometimes people have to endure crap to get to somewhere good, right? Like dues-paying? Be broke and write off-off-Broadway for thirty years and then get to be head writer for Sex and the City like Michael Scott King. That’s a bad example, because ostensibly theatrical writing is a passion-based job and money wouldn't matter. I guess the law can be passion-based, too, and maybe the miserable chick was really dedicated to being a big lawyer someday but I don’t recognize that as a legitimate goal for anyone to pursue so there’s a problem with me getting her situation completely.

Okay whatever I don’t have a cogent conclusion to draw from this example except that for me, rolling with the drudgery and observing my own pain wasn't going to work while I was at that job – I had to quit, and I am having trouble telling the difference right now between what I should endure and what I should not endure according to which approach of viewing life.

Another interesting insight I got from Women Food and God was about searching for answers, and how seeking answers can be just another form of self-evasion:

“One month it’s about white foods. Then it’s about brain chemistry. Finding the right drug. The fat gene. Being addicted to sugar. Eating for our blood type. Alkaline- and acid-forming foods. Although attending to one or some of these issues might indeed ease our struggle, we use the hunt for answers to abdicate personal responsibility – and with it, any semblance of power – for our relationship with food.”

Well, if I could summarize my concerns about my life any more succinctly, I would. I wrote in THIS post that I am conscious of externalizing my problems – I am spending time learning and thinking blah blah blah in order to further postpone confronting the challenges of actual life. Buddhism as escapism. Education as escapism. Self improvement in general as escapism. It sounds tautological (because it is), but searching for what I am supposed to be doing is a great way to abdicate responsibility for what I am supposed to be doing . . . which is . . . what? Earning some money? Getting to know myself? Meditating? Starting an underground newspaper? Shouldn’t I be looking outside myself to test my relationship against things that may or may not be great for me to do/know/think/achieve, since how else am I going to know what to do with myself? But on the other hand, can I even know how to direct myself purposefully, and sincerely, without letting go of ambition, and of all the ways in which I wish I were different and all the work I keep doing (or failing to do) to make myself into someone I really like and respect, at last (gourmet chef, speak Portuguese, better clothes, get into Harvard, win an award)? Do I have to stop trying to be something in order to be something? Is this the intersection of Betty Friedan and Buddha?

Okay anyway if that made any sense you can let me know. The next book I’m going to be happily side-tracked with is “The Happiness Project.” Another friend mentioned it and it was at the library, and I loooove reading the same book as someone and then getting to talk about it, yay!!

Excuse me Professor Buddha, can we go over again why living in the moment is so great?

Regarding the past, I can definitely get down with letting go of being hounded by regrets and anger and stuff like that. Regarding the future, I can understand completely how fruitless it is to think any version of “I’ll be happy when . . . .” I can roll with happiness-as-gratitude-and-a-sense-of-ongoing-marvel and that feeling thankful for all that I have is very important. Etc. Also that thing that nun said about how it doesn’t really help peace on Earth to scream at other people to change their ways really made a lot of sense to me. AND on top of this I really get a lot out of sitting quietly and focusing on my breathing and hoping for peace on Earth, it’s pretty awesome. But really, why am I supposed to live in the moment again? What moment? This one? Hum of the fridge, sound of a dried leaf scratching a window, fall of shadows from the retractable overhead light. Yeah yeah, I am certainly capable of contemplative appreciation for the simple things etc. And I know I could die any second now for any one of a zillion random reasons, but if life is going to make any sense, I need my personal concept of a future to exist. In order to shower, to better myself, care about others in a real-life, secular humanist empathetic way, I need to keep tomorrow, and next week, and ten years from now in mind. Am I just taking this moment-living thing too literally? It's just that I hear this idea batted around an awful lot and if I’m supposed to define it for myself or something, well then, living in the moment includes a touch of future, because it has to in order to have any meaning. Betty Friedan wrote that “It is precisely this unique human capacity to transcend the present, to live one’s life by purposes stretching into the future---to live not at the mercy of the world, but as a builder and designer of that world---that is the distinction between animal and human behavior, or between the human being and the machine.” I see her point.

Where is the human progress in contentment and happiness? Friedan’s book (The Feminine Mystique, of course) is about how at a certain point in our culture, women were epidemically suppressing their potential and sense of self in order to “adjust” to society. This is why housewives ran screaming down the street in the middle of the night. Not because housewifing is dumb in and of itself, but because culturally we’re outgrowing the apron role as our only possibility – to have only one true option is a limitation and can’t be forced back in to those old clothes. Friedan wrote about this fifty years ago, and I feel like this is what I see not just in me but in everyone, all the time now – misery and confusion from trying to adjust to cultural circumstances that do not have the same shape as the true self: offices, huge grocery stores, cars, air conditioning, offices, offices, offices. Thoreau in “Economy” (in Walden) says that “most men lead lives of quiet desperation,” and that “resignation is desperation confirmed.” He said this in reference to the relentless slaving and over-hoarding of his working contemporaries. Friedan then says 100 years later, about the oppression of women, “The adjusted, or cured ones who live without conflict or anxiety in the confined world of home have forfeited their own being; the others, the miserable, frustrated ones, still have some hope.” I do truly dig what you're saying about living in the moment, Buddha man, but can personal evolution really be a by-product of contentment? Should I not want personal evolution?

Okay here’s the other thing that is bothering me about Buddha stuff. I already am kind of bummed about the priestly hierarchy stuff – my friend said he abstains from a lot of this stuff since he really doesn’t want “bigger parents.” I agree. Also, why should a be-robed “master” seem to be important to me? He and/or his lifestyle certainly don’t represent the goal of practicing dharma to me (sort of in that way that a psychiatrist somehow represents the successful end of psychotherapy, at least from the point of view of the patient – but you’d never want to model your life after a shrink, they ALWAYS have the most f***ed up kids, have you noticed?). What the be-robed Buddha man represents to me is retreat from life into total abstraction and a career choice that just won't work for me. I know they mop floors and eat cookies or whatever and are supposed to be grounded, but they sure as hell aren’t trying to live among society in a way that I can understand – and isn’t this what they’re supposed to be helping? Regular folk? I really love that Iyengar rejected monk-hood, explicitly with the idea that yoga and enlightenment are paths meant to be compatible with checking the mail and walking the dog and going to work and paying the mechanic . . . oh that reminds me, one of the monks had a dog. I’m exaggerating the priestly thing a bit, probably.

But upon whom, please, should I be modeling my concept of myself?

Hmm. Well, this is the very guidance that all paths lack, isn’t it? I mean we already all know that we cannot take our identities from the generation before us – would anyone like to be his or her parents? I didn’t think so. For a long period of life the whole point of parents is to have someone’s image to reject in order to form your own identity. But where is the example being set that I want to follow? I don’t think it exists, and that’s what’s so unnerving. There is no shape in the world exactly my size that I can fit myself into; we have all outgrown everything that can be known because it is already over; there is only the unknown – the future. Who and how we are is constantly evolving because we cannot be content to repeat what we have outgrown – I mean, maybe there is no “now.” We need the future and discontent to have identities, and identity is what gives us our future and sense of discontent – and I know ego and identity are all supposed to be bullsh*t and the very cause of my suffering but I’m not convinced.

Keeping Stuff Around

I have a book somewhere around here someplace that I am keeping for no reason. I keep a lot of books around for no reason, if I think about it even a little bit. But this particular book is a copy of Pride and Prejudice. It’s a paperback copy of the book that I bought in England in 1996 as part of a class I was taking on Austen’s P&P and Mansfield Park. It has a price tag sticker on the cover for 5 British pounds. I studied both books for basically a whole school year, so the book is well finger-trod – the pages are pretty soft, and it wasn’t the world’s best paperback copy to begin with, so it might even be shedding pages away from the binding by now. It has oodles of pseudo-intellectual markings in it from a whole year of churning over it page by page as a teenager. It’s safe to say I will not read this particular copy of P&P again, since the loosening of the binding would make the book sort of inconvenient to enjoy, and the note-taking of that teenager would distract me and probably embarrass me in front of myself a little.

Why do I have this book? Am I acting in some kind of self-archivist role here by holding on to this thing, as though future generations of Martha studiers will draw conclusions from the book about the pivotal, most substantive moments of my life in an attempt to recreate my life path? What I mean to say is that nothing like this will ever happen, ever. If that book makes it with me to my death, it will be put in a box and sent to the Salvation Army, or probably thrown away, since it’s not really useful for anyone anymore. Or at most, some guilty next-generation relative will take it home and keep it in a box or on a shelf where it will continue to inform and delight no one.

Why oh why do I have this book? And I’m definitely not going to throw it away, let me be clear about that. I suppose it is a remembrance? Is it then just like a snap shot of something that I use to remember that certain events in my life actually happened? Is it a little memory jogger that helps to place me in space-time within the linear narrative of my life story? I suppose I am an archivist of myself, aren’t I? But to what end? Something about that book makes me feel interesting to myself. I did something a long time ago and it’s fun to remember it sometimes. This seems like kind of a lame, self-indulgent reason to keep crap around (vanity!). I mean, I’m not going to forget that once upon a time I went to England and read a book. And if I do forget, what of it? So do I keep is as proof? As evidence of my own interesting-ness to myself? To others?

I have sooooo many books hanging around in various parents’ garages and spare rooms. Tons and tons of comic books, too. The comics books are a special case, though. These are not library-card items. The fantasy attached to the comic books is that since they are clearly awesome, someday my offspring will be old enough to read them and they will have the same happy experience of the comics’ awesomeness, and I will be really happy that we both will have enjoyed them, and won’t that be awesome. This is my literal hope for those comic books. Also that I like to read and re-read them. I’ve probably read most of them at least 4 times each, and there is really a huge number of them. Yep, I keep them so that 15 to 20 years from now I might get someone who doesn’t, and may never exist, to read them too.

In my future there is a big accumulation of crap belonging to previous generations. None of it is organized. None of it does anything for me except in a strange, far-off, anecdotal sense that requires an older person from my life to contextualize. I would like to lengthen my memory of my own family, I think that’s important. I asked various branches of the family for family trees a long time ago but they have not been forthcoming. I’m sort of annoyed about that, actually. Where’s my freakin’ family tree? You people have all this crap and numerous stemware and china sets (complete service for 24, sweetheart! Oh but don’t use it it’s too valuable, fragile, and sentimental) and rusty 1800’s ice skates that I’m supposed to treasure and I have no context for them. Get it together, people. I’m planning the yard sale right now.

Seriously what am I going to do with all the faux-historical stuff that I’m going to end up with someday? I ‘m just going to throw it away, donate it, or give it to the local historical society and then replace it with my own bizarre stuff. That’s what’s going to happen. Man, I’m not even interested in the effort required to evaluate and sell potentially valuable items. I can even get myself pre-worried about the future about this issue. What do you think, Buddha, is this worrying a waste of time? Yes. Yes it is.

But back to the important question: what is this compulsion to self-archive? Some stuff I love. I love photos of my parents when they were young. I love photos of them with us as babies and toddlers. I can’t think of anything else that I’m pumped about ephemera-wise. Old clothes? Nah. Nobody in my life has vintage Valentino my size and there will never be anywhere to wear something like that, Lord knows. I’d probably just rather sell it, anyway. Thoreau calls stuff an animal trap – we drag it around, clamped down on our tails – animals will chew off their own legs to be free . . . . well anyway stuff suxx and it’s awesome, I’m highly conflicted about it.