Plymouth, Michigan.
Seated inside the cafeteria of the CTU, after a five (six?) year absence. The air is cold. Walking through this building, I have a peculiar feeling: familiar but mixed with alienation. Strolling through one's former home, amongst the new occupants. The windows, sinks, light switches remain in their places, found still, all these years, blind-folded or Midnight gloom, if necessary. Yet, the people changed other, mainly aesthetic details. The wallpaper replaced with a glossy ivory paint, curtains for wooden (faux?) blinds, the sectional that capably managed five flopping bodies gone - remember the two-inch tear at the back, caught on a ridiculous random piece of rust off of the UHaul door? - in its place a fashionable sofa made all of right angles and minimalist footprint. The people. Kind, but aloof. Aware they are of a stranger within their midst. Not a threat, though. No. A whimsical chap (chap??) indulging - with permission - a bout of nostalgia. Over there, he played board games with a sister after unwrapping Christmas present because in the then-too-small living room, only the space under the east-facing window allowed for a suitable spread-out experience (what's with the hyphens?). Inside the closet of the bedroom at the back and right (he did not ask to enter his parent's old bedroom and the present family shared to themselves the relief of not having to deny his entry) he found the birthday gifts from perhaps age 6. His parents did not bother wrapping or make any attempt to hide their son's bounty. The trusted him to keep the order all the siblings knew: never enter that room unless mom or dad is with you. The kids never asked to waltz into the room - though, quite a few debates held forth as to 1) why not? and 2) who would ask? For whatever reason(s), venturing into the mysterious-by-design back bedroom to the right never happened. Officially. He told the family about the possibly sixth birthday, days before the actual thing, he opened the verboten door. Verboten. He didn't use that word in his story, but briefly considered it. He opened the forbidden door, fearful, anxious. Inside the closet he saw the future cache. Delighted, he crept backwards into the hallway with a more focused attention to stealth than when entering two minutes prior. He had knowledge. Verboten knowledge. The current home owners made the requisite clucking and air-sucking sounds. They smiled and asked rhetorical questions.
I forget the purpose of this visit. A job interview. Today I drank too much coffee. Jittery. Earlier, I forgot the name of the woman interviewing me. The HR rep who conducted last week's phone interview saw me - no, he picked me out of a full-ish cafeteria, and told me to wait there.
Willow Run.
I do not believe that... I will not get the job. The interview conversation went well. Jeff asked whether it went better than the phone version: probably the same, I would answer had I not shut down the phone per Federal regulations. Context is crucial. The hiring manager's role involves a lot of public relations work. That surprised me. The NAIAS? Jesus. I made the best pitch for offering 'an alternative approach' to the position. She and I got on well, we had a pleasant dialogue. She intimated several times of my lacking experience. No commitment was made. She said "let's keep in touch." That's said to a mediocre date to avoid hurt feelings. Perhaps she conducted the interview as an obligation? My pessimism, probably. No... good (?) reason exists to believe otherwise that she gave me an honest shake. I hate feeling inadequate. However, she did offer several opportunities for engaging with her team and future projects. Write/research an article for the newsletter; volunteer at a company event. Exciting opportunities, indeed. Resume building blocks, excellent experience. The interview went well. The interview was the goal. Mission Accomplished.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
What happened
Mike moved into the guest room two weeks ago. He ‘lost’ and recovered Ryu on his first day living here The situation seems a win-win for both of us.
Sara no longer speaks with, or acknowledges me. The reasons remain unknown (plural, in case).
Derrick works a lot, sometimes in Ohio. Which seems unfair to him.
Two motorcycle experts (comparatively speaking) declared the Ninja ‘perfectly fine.’ The balancing problem was in my head, not with the bike. One part relief, one part alarm.
I gained some weight. I began lighting weights last month, specifically bench-press, in addition to the routine gym exercises. Unfortunately, I also eat more... a lot more carbs. Whether the source of this new weight (143lbs) is muscle or fat remains a mystery.
Last week a cold sore developed on both lips. A colleague suggested a Lysine product. The cold sore is nearly disappeared after seven days. That means the suggestion was a good one.
The company paid for the upcoming DELE exam. I’ve not put much effort into studying. Weekends. Weekends are for studying.
The department hired three people. My boss delegated to me the task of crafting an interview process. I enjoyed immensely the change of pace.
Pokémon Black and White released in Japan last week. I couldn’t tear away from serebii.net, pokebeach.net and 4chan’s
/vp/ boards.
Sara no longer speaks with, or acknowledges me. The reasons remain unknown (plural, in case).
Derrick works a lot, sometimes in Ohio. Which seems unfair to him.
Two motorcycle experts (comparatively speaking) declared the Ninja ‘perfectly fine.’ The balancing problem was in my head, not with the bike. One part relief, one part alarm.
I gained some weight. I began lighting weights last month, specifically bench-press, in addition to the routine gym exercises. Unfortunately, I also eat more... a lot more carbs. Whether the source of this new weight (143lbs) is muscle or fat remains a mystery.
Last week a cold sore developed on both lips. A colleague suggested a Lysine product. The cold sore is nearly disappeared after seven days. That means the suggestion was a good one.
The company paid for the upcoming DELE exam. I’ve not put much effort into studying. Weekends. Weekends are for studying.
The department hired three people. My boss delegated to me the task of crafting an interview process. I enjoyed immensely the change of pace.
Pokémon Black and White released in Japan last week. I couldn’t tear away from serebii.net, pokebeach.net and 4chan’s
/vp/ boards.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
The Crack-up
This post began on 19th of July. Several edits, revisions, periods of neglect spanning seven weeks lead to this addition on the Labour Day weekend.
I think about suicide, on average, once every week. I characterise the suicidal thoughts like radon gas: imperceptible, invasive, unwelcome and deadly. The thoughts usually lack a coherence. They permeate the structure of my consciousness seemingly from nowhere and without any dramatic fanfare. I notice their presence and then wave it away to disperse into the mental atmosphere. The whole dangerous event runs its inscrutable course fairly quickly, in about the time necessary to clear a traffic intersection. These incoherent thoughts also lack a tactic for execution. In other words, I don’t follow them through to a method of annihilation; rather, I feel a generic desire for an end without the means. Simply to end, to disappear like the moisture left upon a countertop by a damp rag: evaporating without mess, burden, or (in the context of modern bureaucracy) paperwork. Wishful thinking!
I relate to thanatos, the Greek concept of death desire, as a natural and manageable condition of my life. The narratives of patients managing terminal illness such as Aids or cancers inform the tactic (I cringe in apology for writing that). Like Hiv and tumours, the suicidal thoughts will not likely go away absent some kind of intervention. Medication, which I deplore on purely arrogant grounds, helps blunt the cutting edges that I occasionally bump up against. So I favour instead the recognition strategy: embracing this internal murderer, seeing exactly its terrible inference, and then showing it the exit doors. Sometimes that works, and -- like any pharmaceutical or philosophical intervention -- sometimes it does not. Those ineffective instances occupy the outliers of my experiences. I’m given to understand that one often finds life’s juicy lessons within the outliers. The piece of writing, that begins in the following paragraph, began -- or sprang up -- in the midst of a fierce onslaught of suicidal thoughts which lasted the major portion of a week. The doom desire clung to the air. Fear corroded the machinery.
---------------------------------
19 July 2010.
F Scott Fitzgerald wrote in 1936 that, of the varieties of emotional and mental damage one is vulnerable to suffer, the worst is “the blow from within... [from which] you realise with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again.” Fitzgerald worried, in the most public possible way, that the greatest apex of his professional potential could be seen only in the metaphoric rearview mirror. This anxiety had merit. Fitzgerald tumbled upwards through Princeton, living outrageously well during the 1920’s economic boom largely within the Euro-American public eye. The domestic public drew him to a ‘tie’ with Ernest Hemingway as America’s most popular living writer; yet, in 1936 he lived in a dingy hotel room with an overdrawn checking account. From that squalid hotel room, Fitzgerald wrote the confessional essay “The Crack-Up” for Esquire (the author submitted the essay under some duress, as the editor demanded something to publish when Fitzgerald pleaded for money). I don’t know a nuanced reaction to the essay series but the response from the ultra-masculine Hemingway is sufficiently delightful: he described Fitzgerald’s essay as “embarrassing to read.” Further, he made a personal offer to assist in the restoration of Fitzgerald’s dignity by arranging his murder in Cuba. I hate to agree with Hemingway but the essay is embarrassing.
“The Crack-Up” is a perverse triumph of human professional defeat. The essay makes a coherent case for the vertigo felt at the endpoint of loss: that ‘giving up’ is perhaps the best method of salvation because incoherence rules the days. Fitzgerald’s confessional reads as the best (if only?) professional suicide note I’ve ever encountered. And this is why I agree with Hemingway that the essay feels embarrassing, but not for man-of-steel Hemingway reasons. No, “The Crack-Up” embarrasses because it poses an uncomfortable paradox: that men of Fitzgerald’s staggering intellectual and creative calibre can create a new world on paper but cannot escape the crush of the real world. That sentence feels clumsy, so let me instead write that if Fitzgerald can experience and confess to a yawning crisis of confidence, it renders the mediocre men in similar circumstances such as myself (though eighty years later) feel near to goddamn hopeless.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” Fitzgerald famously defined, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” I ascribe that kind of intelligence to the survivors (endurers?) of the Nazi camps, those displaced by the South African apartheid state, Frantz Fanon’s colonial intellectual, and the Amnesty International organisation. These swaths of people fit Fitzgerald’s definition because they balance(d) some bitterly opposed binaries, such as death/life, exile/home, identity/alienation, liberty/confinement, yet retained the ability to function. I think -- I dare -- identify that what enables the machine of daily existence to continue operating is a lubrication named hope. Does this sound simplistic? Childish, even? Perhaps, but hope seems the sole common element present for a person or a group of people to want a better future than what the present promises. (Sidenote: I hope Sarah Palin accepts an offer at premature lionisation.) Nazi power seemed unstoppable in the 1940s, yet their appallingly high number of victims did not end their own lives; the South African National Party considered using a nuclear weapon upon domestic soil if necessary to maintain political control, yet citizens (within and uitlander) failed to collectively resign and flip through passbooks... you get my point, I hope? I point out Fitzgerald’s definition of intelligence and offer up hope as that which makes his definition functional because I feel the distinct lack of it.
Fitzgerald writes in “The Crack-Up” about receiving an unnamed diagnosis -- which given the evidence is clinical depression (or the 1930’s version of said). He describes the most profound effect of his condition as the jettisoning of a “consistent social circle” in favour of solitude. This makes sense. The depressed person is a selfish person. I don’t mean ‘selfish’ in the knee-jerk pejorative but in the denotative ‘focussed on the self.’ Reading Fitzgerald’s self-described diagnostic, I felt resentment and embarrassment. Wow, a whole social circle from which he can walk way? That must be nice. How terrible for the once rich and talented to have a coterie of friends and acquaintances. I’d like very much to have a social half-circle or social right-angle. Resentment. To walk away implies possessing a starting point, which Fitzgerald certainly did. I have no friends since moving to Holland (the one exception moved to Las Vegas in 2008). Acquaintances, yes. People whom I see frequently as part of a routine, yes. A list within a social network, yes. Friends, no. That’s embarrassing. I tried to compose a list of what can be forfeited upon the altar of giving up, and came up where I began: empty.
Two weeks ago I laid in a bath tub filled with warm water and two cups of dissolved Epsom salts. A white rag touched open wounds, congealed blood yielded slowly to the combination of pressure, temperature and chemicals; the water stayed clear, though. I cried because no person could hear me. When the crying stopped, I talked to myself to fill in the quiet. The bath tub seemed a metaphor for a casket, the house a tomb. Talking felt simultaneously silly and reasonable; reasonable because one should talk about a scary incident; silly because, aside from the very intelligent Ryu, I was very much speaking alone. At some point, I began responding to my voice with questions that were not rhetorical. These questions wanted answers, like the characters Gollum and Tyler Durden. Here are a few of the things I remembers saying:
You could have died, do you know that?
Why practise Spanish; why do you care?
God does not exist and that’s OK.
What five accomplishments are you proud to claim?
I resent Steven Recker for being the man of my dreams, and a fascist.
You have no right to resent other people.
This is the moment, without a doubt, I began to crack-up. This is the moment of analogy: Fitzgerald in his grubby hotel room, I in my bath tub; Fitzgerald pleading for money, I pleading for a sanity; Fitzgerald wrote for Esquire, I lay shrivelling in salty water.
Last night, I sat on the terrace of the café in town reading a short story. I looked up in time to watch a flock of seagulls glide westward, in the direction and time of Lake Michigan embracing the sun. The east wind carried the smell of both into the city. The birds were indistinct shapes against the obtuse angles of weak sunlight and the few clouds I thought best defined as coloured “dusty pink.” After what was likely a few seconds of time, I lost sight of the birds in the tops of centuries-old oaks. I looked ahead then, where young people loitered around the sidewalk. Two people at separate terrance tables read academic-looking books. It seems that writers use scenes like this to express “This is Life.” Taking in this little civic scene upon a backdrop of another summer dusk, I heard to my right the ascending sound of a pair of footsteps. Seize the day, I closed my eyes and said a mental ‘good bye’ to no-one (Ryu?) wishing desperately that one of the footsteps would shoot me in the head. A quick end, no appeal. The walkers passed behind; nothing happened, of course, except Life as usual. I picked up the book, disappointed.
Cracking-up feels like a persistent insult. The cracking person contemplates ‘why do I feel this way?’ without getting a satisfactory answer because that question masks the more insidious question ‘how come others don’t feel like this?’ The latter question feeds a loopback of isolation. How one measures the space between the two rhetorical questions I leave to the reader, but to the questioner, the distance is calculated in units of selfishness. The second question inevitably brings resentment. The happiness, real or perceived, of other people arrives into the cracking-up mind in the form of a an accusation: happy people don’t know X or Y, or else that smile’d drain from their faces. X or Y invariably (pun!) connects to one’s own obsessions. That obsession is terrible to neutralise because of its contradictory nature: the horror of resenting other people is the horror of resenting one’s self. It feels great, it really really does, to mentally lash out at other people. The tingling sensation felt mocking their fashion, their boyfriends, their existence is intoxicating because it feels brave. Feeling brave counts as the trait in the shortest supply for the crack’d person. However, that delightful assurance it really is a form of idolatry. Bravery looks a lot like a golden calf; or, a golden scapegoat. I hate people because I hate myself; I hate myself because I hate people. The cracking-up mind target others for scorn happens at random: cracking up isn’t logical. Fitzgerald made this point, describing his bitterness towards such random objects as: the radio, magazine adverts, country silences, human softness and hardness, hating the night and the day -- for differing reasons --, Celts, blacks, and retail clerks. I lack any Celtic acquaintances, but feel this same bitterness every day. Married people make me angry. Their wedding rings feel like a slap in the face. More to the point, they have an (ostensibly) loving partner and I do not. A man and woman seated at a table enjoying each other’s company makes me furious. At whom or what?
To the aforementioned, Fitzgerald describes as “inhuman and malnourished... is the true sign of cracking up.” That feeling counts as the most troubling facet of a crack-up precisely because the path out of resentment parallels (more or less) the path to healthy thinking on the whole. It’s easy to resent people because the focus of that bitterness seems so separate, so alien from the self. That misdirected attention and energy can easily become malice. Remember the cartoon “Ducktales?” In one of the many episodes of which stealing Scrooge McDuck’s money bin forms the plot, a paint-by-numbers brutish thief takes hostage the plucky elderly plutocrat. The episode would be, and maybe is, forgettable save for one line of dialogue: the thief stares menacingly at Scrooge and growls in a baritone “you know why I hate rich people?” [he doesn’t wait for Scrooge to answer] “Because they’re rich and I’m not!” The happy couple at the restaurant table are happy and I am not. Their happiness throws my lack of it into contrast; their togetherness highlights my solitude. I want to burn them down.
The fatigue remains constant: less so, at times; more so, at others. Right now. I want desperately now to leave the café for home where I fancy reading on the couch until half an hour before bedtime. This morning I sat in the public library (for the first time in a year!) at a table well-placed adjacent the floor-to-ceiling windows on the building’s east side. Ten minutes after arriving, I fought the urge to flee: to slink back into bed for a “short nap” (at 1126a). I fight the urge to fall asleep in my chair at the office. The bag full of material I bring to the office every day -- from Spanish exercises, newspaper articles, essays, books, and Pokémon games -- sits on the desk unacknowledged, day after day, week after week. I mentally collate a list of excuses to avoid engaging any of the stuff: how about after lunch? the phone will interrupt me; I’m tired; other people’s voices are distracting; It’s too cold/hot in here; etc. Rinse, repeat. Oh, and I didn’t cut the crass for a month.
Whatever vitality Fitzgerald seized upon to manage his cracking mentality, I wish lamely for the same. It seems that vitality never ‘takes’ a person; either one has it or lacks it, like brown eyes or a baritone voice. I feel a terror that feelings trumped experience, what Fitzgerald described as the morass of “I felt, therefore I was.” A quicksand.
I think about suicide, on average, once every week. I characterise the suicidal thoughts like radon gas: imperceptible, invasive, unwelcome and deadly. The thoughts usually lack a coherence. They permeate the structure of my consciousness seemingly from nowhere and without any dramatic fanfare. I notice their presence and then wave it away to disperse into the mental atmosphere. The whole dangerous event runs its inscrutable course fairly quickly, in about the time necessary to clear a traffic intersection. These incoherent thoughts also lack a tactic for execution. In other words, I don’t follow them through to a method of annihilation; rather, I feel a generic desire for an end without the means. Simply to end, to disappear like the moisture left upon a countertop by a damp rag: evaporating without mess, burden, or (in the context of modern bureaucracy) paperwork. Wishful thinking!
I relate to thanatos, the Greek concept of death desire, as a natural and manageable condition of my life. The narratives of patients managing terminal illness such as Aids or cancers inform the tactic (I cringe in apology for writing that). Like Hiv and tumours, the suicidal thoughts will not likely go away absent some kind of intervention. Medication, which I deplore on purely arrogant grounds, helps blunt the cutting edges that I occasionally bump up against. So I favour instead the recognition strategy: embracing this internal murderer, seeing exactly its terrible inference, and then showing it the exit doors. Sometimes that works, and -- like any pharmaceutical or philosophical intervention -- sometimes it does not. Those ineffective instances occupy the outliers of my experiences. I’m given to understand that one often finds life’s juicy lessons within the outliers. The piece of writing, that begins in the following paragraph, began -- or sprang up -- in the midst of a fierce onslaught of suicidal thoughts which lasted the major portion of a week. The doom desire clung to the air. Fear corroded the machinery.
---------------------------------
19 July 2010.
F Scott Fitzgerald wrote in 1936 that, of the varieties of emotional and mental damage one is vulnerable to suffer, the worst is “the blow from within... [from which] you realise with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again.” Fitzgerald worried, in the most public possible way, that the greatest apex of his professional potential could be seen only in the metaphoric rearview mirror. This anxiety had merit. Fitzgerald tumbled upwards through Princeton, living outrageously well during the 1920’s economic boom largely within the Euro-American public eye. The domestic public drew him to a ‘tie’ with Ernest Hemingway as America’s most popular living writer; yet, in 1936 he lived in a dingy hotel room with an overdrawn checking account. From that squalid hotel room, Fitzgerald wrote the confessional essay “The Crack-Up” for Esquire (the author submitted the essay under some duress, as the editor demanded something to publish when Fitzgerald pleaded for money). I don’t know a nuanced reaction to the essay series but the response from the ultra-masculine Hemingway is sufficiently delightful: he described Fitzgerald’s essay as “embarrassing to read.” Further, he made a personal offer to assist in the restoration of Fitzgerald’s dignity by arranging his murder in Cuba. I hate to agree with Hemingway but the essay is embarrassing.
“The Crack-Up” is a perverse triumph of human professional defeat. The essay makes a coherent case for the vertigo felt at the endpoint of loss: that ‘giving up’ is perhaps the best method of salvation because incoherence rules the days. Fitzgerald’s confessional reads as the best (if only?) professional suicide note I’ve ever encountered. And this is why I agree with Hemingway that the essay feels embarrassing, but not for man-of-steel Hemingway reasons. No, “The Crack-Up” embarrasses because it poses an uncomfortable paradox: that men of Fitzgerald’s staggering intellectual and creative calibre can create a new world on paper but cannot escape the crush of the real world. That sentence feels clumsy, so let me instead write that if Fitzgerald can experience and confess to a yawning crisis of confidence, it renders the mediocre men in similar circumstances such as myself (though eighty years later) feel near to goddamn hopeless.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” Fitzgerald famously defined, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” I ascribe that kind of intelligence to the survivors (endurers?) of the Nazi camps, those displaced by the South African apartheid state, Frantz Fanon’s colonial intellectual, and the Amnesty International organisation. These swaths of people fit Fitzgerald’s definition because they balance(d) some bitterly opposed binaries, such as death/life, exile/home, identity/alienation, liberty/confinement, yet retained the ability to function. I think -- I dare -- identify that what enables the machine of daily existence to continue operating is a lubrication named hope. Does this sound simplistic? Childish, even? Perhaps, but hope seems the sole common element present for a person or a group of people to want a better future than what the present promises. (Sidenote: I hope Sarah Palin accepts an offer at premature lionisation.) Nazi power seemed unstoppable in the 1940s, yet their appallingly high number of victims did not end their own lives; the South African National Party considered using a nuclear weapon upon domestic soil if necessary to maintain political control, yet citizens (within and uitlander) failed to collectively resign and flip through passbooks... you get my point, I hope? I point out Fitzgerald’s definition of intelligence and offer up hope as that which makes his definition functional because I feel the distinct lack of it.
Fitzgerald writes in “The Crack-Up” about receiving an unnamed diagnosis -- which given the evidence is clinical depression (or the 1930’s version of said). He describes the most profound effect of his condition as the jettisoning of a “consistent social circle” in favour of solitude. This makes sense. The depressed person is a selfish person. I don’t mean ‘selfish’ in the knee-jerk pejorative but in the denotative ‘focussed on the self.’ Reading Fitzgerald’s self-described diagnostic, I felt resentment and embarrassment. Wow, a whole social circle from which he can walk way? That must be nice. How terrible for the once rich and talented to have a coterie of friends and acquaintances. I’d like very much to have a social half-circle or social right-angle. Resentment. To walk away implies possessing a starting point, which Fitzgerald certainly did. I have no friends since moving to Holland (the one exception moved to Las Vegas in 2008). Acquaintances, yes. People whom I see frequently as part of a routine, yes. A list within a social network, yes. Friends, no. That’s embarrassing. I tried to compose a list of what can be forfeited upon the altar of giving up, and came up where I began: empty.
Two weeks ago I laid in a bath tub filled with warm water and two cups of dissolved Epsom salts. A white rag touched open wounds, congealed blood yielded slowly to the combination of pressure, temperature and chemicals; the water stayed clear, though. I cried because no person could hear me. When the crying stopped, I talked to myself to fill in the quiet. The bath tub seemed a metaphor for a casket, the house a tomb. Talking felt simultaneously silly and reasonable; reasonable because one should talk about a scary incident; silly because, aside from the very intelligent Ryu, I was very much speaking alone. At some point, I began responding to my voice with questions that were not rhetorical. These questions wanted answers, like the characters Gollum and Tyler Durden. Here are a few of the things I remembers saying:
You could have died, do you know that?
Why practise Spanish; why do you care?
God does not exist and that’s OK.
What five accomplishments are you proud to claim?
I resent Steven Recker for being the man of my dreams, and a fascist.
You have no right to resent other people.
This is the moment, without a doubt, I began to crack-up. This is the moment of analogy: Fitzgerald in his grubby hotel room, I in my bath tub; Fitzgerald pleading for money, I pleading for a sanity; Fitzgerald wrote for Esquire, I lay shrivelling in salty water.
Last night, I sat on the terrace of the café in town reading a short story. I looked up in time to watch a flock of seagulls glide westward, in the direction and time of Lake Michigan embracing the sun. The east wind carried the smell of both into the city. The birds were indistinct shapes against the obtuse angles of weak sunlight and the few clouds I thought best defined as coloured “dusty pink.” After what was likely a few seconds of time, I lost sight of the birds in the tops of centuries-old oaks. I looked ahead then, where young people loitered around the sidewalk. Two people at separate terrance tables read academic-looking books. It seems that writers use scenes like this to express “This is Life.” Taking in this little civic scene upon a backdrop of another summer dusk, I heard to my right the ascending sound of a pair of footsteps. Seize the day, I closed my eyes and said a mental ‘good bye’ to no-one (Ryu?) wishing desperately that one of the footsteps would shoot me in the head. A quick end, no appeal. The walkers passed behind; nothing happened, of course, except Life as usual. I picked up the book, disappointed.
Cracking-up feels like a persistent insult. The cracking person contemplates ‘why do I feel this way?’ without getting a satisfactory answer because that question masks the more insidious question ‘how come others don’t feel like this?’ The latter question feeds a loopback of isolation. How one measures the space between the two rhetorical questions I leave to the reader, but to the questioner, the distance is calculated in units of selfishness. The second question inevitably brings resentment. The happiness, real or perceived, of other people arrives into the cracking-up mind in the form of a an accusation: happy people don’t know X or Y, or else that smile’d drain from their faces. X or Y invariably (pun!) connects to one’s own obsessions. That obsession is terrible to neutralise because of its contradictory nature: the horror of resenting other people is the horror of resenting one’s self. It feels great, it really really does, to mentally lash out at other people. The tingling sensation felt mocking their fashion, their boyfriends, their existence is intoxicating because it feels brave. Feeling brave counts as the trait in the shortest supply for the crack’d person. However, that delightful assurance it really is a form of idolatry. Bravery looks a lot like a golden calf; or, a golden scapegoat. I hate people because I hate myself; I hate myself because I hate people. The cracking-up mind target others for scorn happens at random: cracking up isn’t logical. Fitzgerald made this point, describing his bitterness towards such random objects as: the radio, magazine adverts, country silences, human softness and hardness, hating the night and the day -- for differing reasons --, Celts, blacks, and retail clerks. I lack any Celtic acquaintances, but feel this same bitterness every day. Married people make me angry. Their wedding rings feel like a slap in the face. More to the point, they have an (ostensibly) loving partner and I do not. A man and woman seated at a table enjoying each other’s company makes me furious. At whom or what?
To the aforementioned, Fitzgerald describes as “inhuman and malnourished... is the true sign of cracking up.” That feeling counts as the most troubling facet of a crack-up precisely because the path out of resentment parallels (more or less) the path to healthy thinking on the whole. It’s easy to resent people because the focus of that bitterness seems so separate, so alien from the self. That misdirected attention and energy can easily become malice. Remember the cartoon “Ducktales?” In one of the many episodes of which stealing Scrooge McDuck’s money bin forms the plot, a paint-by-numbers brutish thief takes hostage the plucky elderly plutocrat. The episode would be, and maybe is, forgettable save for one line of dialogue: the thief stares menacingly at Scrooge and growls in a baritone “you know why I hate rich people?” [he doesn’t wait for Scrooge to answer] “Because they’re rich and I’m not!” The happy couple at the restaurant table are happy and I am not. Their happiness throws my lack of it into contrast; their togetherness highlights my solitude. I want to burn them down.
The fatigue remains constant: less so, at times; more so, at others. Right now. I want desperately now to leave the café for home where I fancy reading on the couch until half an hour before bedtime. This morning I sat in the public library (for the first time in a year!) at a table well-placed adjacent the floor-to-ceiling windows on the building’s east side. Ten minutes after arriving, I fought the urge to flee: to slink back into bed for a “short nap” (at 1126a). I fight the urge to fall asleep in my chair at the office. The bag full of material I bring to the office every day -- from Spanish exercises, newspaper articles, essays, books, and Pokémon games -- sits on the desk unacknowledged, day after day, week after week. I mentally collate a list of excuses to avoid engaging any of the stuff: how about after lunch? the phone will interrupt me; I’m tired; other people’s voices are distracting; It’s too cold/hot in here; etc. Rinse, repeat. Oh, and I didn’t cut the crass for a month.
Whatever vitality Fitzgerald seized upon to manage his cracking mentality, I wish lamely for the same. It seems that vitality never ‘takes’ a person; either one has it or lacks it, like brown eyes or a baritone voice. I feel a terror that feelings trumped experience, what Fitzgerald described as the morass of “I felt, therefore I was.” A quicksand.
Monday, July 5, 2010
I bought a motorcycle
Motorcycles scared hell out of me. I wouldn’t touch the Triumph bike that my friend Adam bought last summer. I carried around the reconisably preposterous assumption that a motorcycle will, if given a chance, fall upon or mug me. Adam insisted that he felt anxious about motorcycles too previous to completing the Motorcycle Safety Foundation Course -- the operative word here being ‘previous.’ The course, he told me, assuaged a good deal -- not all -- of his unease about these powerful compact machines. He gushed about the confidence the course gives a rider; he fell reticent when I asked about the issue of other road drivers. He rallied back at the 4 day course price : $25. I’m ashamed to admit that $25 sits perfectly within my cost horizon of self-improvement. I pay less than that for a good dinner, so why not invest it towards abolition of a phobia? When the 2010 course registration opened in February, Adam sent me the web link. I signed up within hours, taking the first May weekend course. And so the man terrified of motorcycles (which I admitted to the course instructors) received top marks on the Motorcycle Safety Foundation Program written and road exams, the gold standard for new rider training. Pat on the back, OK?
I didn’t think much about which motorcycle to buy. The Kawasaki Ninja fits my personality and needs seemingly perfectly. It helped a lot that I know a Ninja owner who gave good reviews. Tiffany had a lot of good things to say about her Ninja 250 (which she bought practically new from a woman in Kansas City). The N250 receives near universal praise as the gold-standard ‘beginner’s bike.’ I wondered in the long-term whether the Ninja 500 made greater sense. Would I ‘outgrow’ the N250 as many motorcycle reviews cautioned? I did research into this question and largely chased my own tail -- thanks, Internet! So, I asked breathing humans.
I brought up the bike search to a student. He was enthusiastic. A relative of his buys and sells bikes, and he will enter the buying market when finished with school. I mentioned the Ninja and he kept up the enthusiasm until I said that I’d get a 250; he actually recoiled, as if a spider walked over my shoulder, and lectured me (a disconcerting reversal) which I paraphrase for brevity and grammar: “a 250 makes no sense, professor. If you buy it new, the dealer will rip you off for a thousand dollars over the MSRP; a used bike you never know how the owner abused or neglected it and you’ll still over-pay.” OK, I countered, but a car buyer faces the same problems. These scams are inherent to any purchase. “True,” he replies, “but the N250 is the bottom of the bike heap. You’ll sell that bike next year for a more powerful bike like a N500 anyway and never get for the N250 what you paid.” I found this argument hard to parry. He saw his advantage and pushed forward, “look on Craigslist, professor; everybody sells their 250." I felt pretty stupid, but I respected this wisdom. Passing a safety course readied me for the motorcycle world in the way that learning to swim prepares one for life in the Navy. Seductive and wholly inadequate. That night I looked at the Craigslist entries and felt additionally stupid. The student spoke the truth: the N250 is overwhelmingly represented in sales to the N500. Still, I couldn’t join his conclusion that the N250 equals a bad investment. What I saw in the student/Craigslist experience was a classic correlation/causation relationship. Further research clearly needed conducted because I had to admit lots of riders know things that I do not.
I talked to three colleagues about the N250 v N500 debate. Each of them set me at ease that no meaningful difference in maintenance/mechanics/logistics exists to justify spending more on the N500. That settled, I moved on to the desire to ride into either Chicago or Detroit (both approximately 150 miles away). The responses, if I didn’t know better, could have been scripted: they each said “get the N500." What? They each cited the vague notion of ‘power’ when pressed on the reason. Each assured me moments ago that no meaningful difference existed between the bikes except for, of course, the N500’s larger engine. Now, a 150 mile drive necessitates the additional $2000 towards the N500? I felt lost, so, back to the Internet! A handful of motorcycle review websites make similar claims about highway use. None of the websites though make specific mechanical/logistic reasons for advising away N250 riders from the highway. It especially bothered the researcher/critic in me, that those knowledgeable in the cycling field cannot give a better example than ‘highway = power = 500.’ I don't drive into either city but once per month as it is; still, I find it hard to square that idea of a 150 mile drive bringing ruin down on a modern-day N250. But, back to what I might not know... putting down three to four thousand dollars on a bike not wisely driven into the cities would make me a mighty disappointed man.
Wednesday night I found a Craigslist post for a Ninja 250 in Holland.
Thursday afternoon I found the website Ninja 250 Rider’s Club. I signed up as a new user to their forum area and posted a summary of my dilemma. I expected very little. What I received instead was a response tsunami -- some anecdotal, some hard-core mechanical. The forum users took patience with a newbie and wrote thoughtful responses; whereas I worried like hell about getting the 4chan treatment. The most valuable response directed me to the Ninja 250 Wiki. Reading through it for hours, I went to sleep Thursday feeling certain that the N250 qualified as the best fit.
Friday morning I secured a loan through my credit union. The purchase of the motorcycle took most of Friday, of which I can complain not one bit.
Two related notes of embarrassment: during the test ride with the seller and Adam watching nearby, I couldn’t remember how to start a motorcycle. I accepted a swift reminder, curved away through the seller’s neighbourhood where an eighth mile away the bike stalled. The lessons from the MSF class took hold: don’t panic, cycle through the checklist of fuel, clutch, gears, engine cut-off, Choke. I remembered/found the Choke after 5 minutes of standing stupidly on the road’s shoulder but only after making a distress call to the seller.
Friday afternoon the bike legally belonged to me. It's a beauty: 2008, 1800 miles, no physical damage, red, stock.
When I walked out of the Secretary of State's office, I chatted with Derrick over the phone and the reality of owning a motorcycle -- my first -- hit like a punch. A punch of awesome.
The seller drove the bike to my house and I returned him home. Back at my place, with the bike and I alone for the first time, I secured the license tag with anxious relish. The neighbours and I chatted about the bike (Mark thinks I’ll pop wheelies and attend Bike Week events, Kim thinks I’ll be conservative to keep insurance premiums down. She’s the most accurate of the two). I took the bike around my neighbourhood streets to practice the very basics: shifting, stopping, turning, etc. I stalled it twice though didn’t need five minutes and a sheepish phone call to resolve the problem. After half an hour of confidence building manouevres, I moved onto moderate streets at 35m/h. I recall Adam’s comment earlier that day “you’ll feel you’re driving 80m/h, only to look down and see the speedometer at 40m/h” because he was right. Driving along State Street (speed limit 35m/h) I felt certain the bike hurtled along at 50m/h and shocked to see the needle fluttering at 30m/h. Wow. Motorcycles make a reasonable person feel like an old car driver: normal speeds seem excessive. I eventually progressed to a 50m/h three-lane street -- with stop lights! -- which served a great excuse to accomplish two things, both on Holland’s north side: dinner and a visit to Adam and Tiffany. (Credit where due: Adam accompanied me all through the purchase process, like a good friend!). Tiffany hadn’t yet returned from work, so he and I chatted while he attempted to repair a problem with her 2005 N250. The sun fell lower and lower. I realised that, whether I wanted it or not, I was going to get my first night drive. Of course, I arrived home safely and happy: 47 miles in a few hours on the first day of motorcycle ownership.
Taking stock that night before bed, I learned three things: 1) people -- pedestrians and inside cars -- stare at bike riders. 2) the four wheel automobile drivers, are appallingly inconsiderate. 3) motorcycle riders acknowledge each other using hand or head gestures.
Saturday afternoon, I rode to Grand Haven to visit a colleague who invited me to do so if I bought the bike. The trip challenged me on a few fronts: unfamiliar roads, wind gusts, lots of traffic. I confess to losing ever so slight control of the bike on a left curve. The wind pushed from the right and I failed to adequately slow down. My bike went a few inches over the shoulder’s white line. I felt embarrassed. That would qualify as a penalty within the MSF exam. I cleared my mind of anxiety as the class instructs riders to practice and continued on my ride (though making the mental note to practice these curves in future).
Saturday night, I rode into Saugatuck and Douglas along the back roads (32nd to 64th St) and loved it. Lovely straight country roads and summer sunshine. No errors in handling that time. You know who made errors? GODDAMN tourists who can’t figure out what the hell they’re doing DESPITE their GPS units providing soothing instructions. Turn signals, assholes; can you use them?
So ends the first twenty-four hours of being a bike owner. Adam reminds me that I’m not yet a Jedi. No, I need the proper gear: two jackets, one mesh and one leather. Then, perhaps I’ll be properly ordained. He’s one to talk, though; that guy hasn’t yet taken his bike onto the highway. Can’t blame him. That shit is scary.
I didn’t think much about which motorcycle to buy. The Kawasaki Ninja fits my personality and needs seemingly perfectly. It helped a lot that I know a Ninja owner who gave good reviews. Tiffany had a lot of good things to say about her Ninja 250 (which she bought practically new from a woman in Kansas City). The N250 receives near universal praise as the gold-standard ‘beginner’s bike.’ I wondered in the long-term whether the Ninja 500 made greater sense. Would I ‘outgrow’ the N250 as many motorcycle reviews cautioned? I did research into this question and largely chased my own tail -- thanks, Internet! So, I asked breathing humans.
I brought up the bike search to a student. He was enthusiastic. A relative of his buys and sells bikes, and he will enter the buying market when finished with school. I mentioned the Ninja and he kept up the enthusiasm until I said that I’d get a 250; he actually recoiled, as if a spider walked over my shoulder, and lectured me (a disconcerting reversal) which I paraphrase for brevity and grammar: “a 250 makes no sense, professor. If you buy it new, the dealer will rip you off for a thousand dollars over the MSRP; a used bike you never know how the owner abused or neglected it and you’ll still over-pay.” OK, I countered, but a car buyer faces the same problems. These scams are inherent to any purchase. “True,” he replies, “but the N250 is the bottom of the bike heap. You’ll sell that bike next year for a more powerful bike like a N500 anyway and never get for the N250 what you paid.” I found this argument hard to parry. He saw his advantage and pushed forward, “look on Craigslist, professor; everybody sells their 250." I felt pretty stupid, but I respected this wisdom. Passing a safety course readied me for the motorcycle world in the way that learning to swim prepares one for life in the Navy. Seductive and wholly inadequate. That night I looked at the Craigslist entries and felt additionally stupid. The student spoke the truth: the N250 is overwhelmingly represented in sales to the N500. Still, I couldn’t join his conclusion that the N250 equals a bad investment. What I saw in the student/Craigslist experience was a classic correlation/causation relationship. Further research clearly needed conducted because I had to admit lots of riders know things that I do not.
I talked to three colleagues about the N250 v N500 debate. Each of them set me at ease that no meaningful difference in maintenance/mechanics/logistics exists to justify spending more on the N500. That settled, I moved on to the desire to ride into either Chicago or Detroit (both approximately 150 miles away). The responses, if I didn’t know better, could have been scripted: they each said “get the N500." What? They each cited the vague notion of ‘power’ when pressed on the reason. Each assured me moments ago that no meaningful difference existed between the bikes except for, of course, the N500’s larger engine. Now, a 150 mile drive necessitates the additional $2000 towards the N500? I felt lost, so, back to the Internet! A handful of motorcycle review websites make similar claims about highway use. None of the websites though make specific mechanical/logistic reasons for advising away N250 riders from the highway. It especially bothered the researcher/critic in me, that those knowledgeable in the cycling field cannot give a better example than ‘highway = power = 500.’ I don't drive into either city but once per month as it is; still, I find it hard to square that idea of a 150 mile drive bringing ruin down on a modern-day N250. But, back to what I might not know... putting down three to four thousand dollars on a bike not wisely driven into the cities would make me a mighty disappointed man.
Wednesday night I found a Craigslist post for a Ninja 250 in Holland.
Thursday afternoon I found the website Ninja 250 Rider’s Club. I signed up as a new user to their forum area and posted a summary of my dilemma. I expected very little. What I received instead was a response tsunami -- some anecdotal, some hard-core mechanical. The forum users took patience with a newbie and wrote thoughtful responses; whereas I worried like hell about getting the 4chan treatment. The most valuable response directed me to the Ninja 250 Wiki. Reading through it for hours, I went to sleep Thursday feeling certain that the N250 qualified as the best fit.
Friday morning I secured a loan through my credit union. The purchase of the motorcycle took most of Friday, of which I can complain not one bit.
Two related notes of embarrassment: during the test ride with the seller and Adam watching nearby, I couldn’t remember how to start a motorcycle. I accepted a swift reminder, curved away through the seller’s neighbourhood where an eighth mile away the bike stalled. The lessons from the MSF class took hold: don’t panic, cycle through the checklist of fuel, clutch, gears, engine cut-off, Choke. I remembered/found the Choke after 5 minutes of standing stupidly on the road’s shoulder but only after making a distress call to the seller.
Friday afternoon the bike legally belonged to me. It's a beauty: 2008, 1800 miles, no physical damage, red, stock.
When I walked out of the Secretary of State's office, I chatted with Derrick over the phone and the reality of owning a motorcycle -- my first -- hit like a punch. A punch of awesome.
The seller drove the bike to my house and I returned him home. Back at my place, with the bike and I alone for the first time, I secured the license tag with anxious relish. The neighbours and I chatted about the bike (Mark thinks I’ll pop wheelies and attend Bike Week events, Kim thinks I’ll be conservative to keep insurance premiums down. She’s the most accurate of the two). I took the bike around my neighbourhood streets to practice the very basics: shifting, stopping, turning, etc. I stalled it twice though didn’t need five minutes and a sheepish phone call to resolve the problem. After half an hour of confidence building manouevres, I moved onto moderate streets at 35m/h. I recall Adam’s comment earlier that day “you’ll feel you’re driving 80m/h, only to look down and see the speedometer at 40m/h” because he was right. Driving along State Street (speed limit 35m/h) I felt certain the bike hurtled along at 50m/h and shocked to see the needle fluttering at 30m/h. Wow. Motorcycles make a reasonable person feel like an old car driver: normal speeds seem excessive. I eventually progressed to a 50m/h three-lane street -- with stop lights! -- which served a great excuse to accomplish two things, both on Holland’s north side: dinner and a visit to Adam and Tiffany. (Credit where due: Adam accompanied me all through the purchase process, like a good friend!). Tiffany hadn’t yet returned from work, so he and I chatted while he attempted to repair a problem with her 2005 N250. The sun fell lower and lower. I realised that, whether I wanted it or not, I was going to get my first night drive. Of course, I arrived home safely and happy: 47 miles in a few hours on the first day of motorcycle ownership.
Taking stock that night before bed, I learned three things: 1) people -- pedestrians and inside cars -- stare at bike riders. 2) the four wheel automobile drivers, are appallingly inconsiderate. 3) motorcycle riders acknowledge each other using hand or head gestures.
Saturday afternoon, I rode to Grand Haven to visit a colleague who invited me to do so if I bought the bike. The trip challenged me on a few fronts: unfamiliar roads, wind gusts, lots of traffic. I confess to losing ever so slight control of the bike on a left curve. The wind pushed from the right and I failed to adequately slow down. My bike went a few inches over the shoulder’s white line. I felt embarrassed. That would qualify as a penalty within the MSF exam. I cleared my mind of anxiety as the class instructs riders to practice and continued on my ride (though making the mental note to practice these curves in future).
Saturday night, I rode into Saugatuck and Douglas along the back roads (32nd to 64th St) and loved it. Lovely straight country roads and summer sunshine. No errors in handling that time. You know who made errors? GODDAMN tourists who can’t figure out what the hell they’re doing DESPITE their GPS units providing soothing instructions. Turn signals, assholes; can you use them?
So ends the first twenty-four hours of being a bike owner. Adam reminds me that I’m not yet a Jedi. No, I need the proper gear: two jackets, one mesh and one leather. Then, perhaps I’ll be properly ordained. He’s one to talk, though; that guy hasn’t yet taken his bike onto the highway. Can’t blame him. That shit is scary.
Monday, June 14, 2010
A golden age
The concept developed with stealth. When I noticed its presence, driving southbound US-31 from lunch, it seemed perfectly benign in the context of philosophy: a natural part of the mental décor, like a bathmat or planter to a house. I live right now in a personal golden age. That sounds awfully grand; pretentious, even, and if so perhaps due its immediacy on the page. The idea, as mentioned, must have developed organically over time as not to cause alarm when noticed. Maybe my brain built a defence mechanism? Anyway, like the best clichés, the threat of its going away helped to notice that I had a golden age at all.
A ‘golden age’ is identified by contrast: how one characterises the ages before and after the one under inquiry. Those of Anglo extraction commonly trace a link to the reign of Elizabeth I of England. That era of English history is known as England’s ‘golden age’ for its relative domestic peace and prosperity. A lovely allegorical portrait of said qualities exists right here. The time before good ‘ole Bess sat her ass on the throne is noted by historians as gruesome religious/civil violence. Guess what defining qualities are best remembered in the era after Bess’ throne warming ass?
If I split the term ‘age’ into a calendar year, the most recent -- starting with the house purchase exactly one year ago -- two words apply completely, honestly and beautifully: Peace and Prosperity. Meaning, that... oh shit. Something’s going to happen. Before pessimism gets the better of me (hah!), some detail needs attention.
When living in a golden age, one wants what one wants when one wants it and on one’s own terms. Why? Because the good days will seemingly never end.
Last month my boss announced at a department meeting that our hours of operations may return to 24/7 from their present 16/5. I had a goddamn fit. Retaining a ‘normal,’ reliable schedule count as one of the greatest benefits of working in this department. Losing the schedule to something far more capricious - and to a process best described as an internecine melée - sends my brain into a spiral of melancholy. Yet, some context changes the manner of my response. In the intimate context, in my immediate family I am lucky to have full-time employment. My mother and one brother remains unemployed well over a year. The other brother recently lost (maybe regained) his job. My dad (luckily?) can no longer work due to a medical problem and will remain on disability for the rest of his life. In a larger social context, I live in the state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate (14.9%). Considering a possible work schedule change from either of these perspectives gives me pause; nobody in these hypothetical schedule revision meetings mentioned a thing about layoffs, so what exactly are the reasons for my distress? 14.9% of the state may well consider me a selfish little bastard, complaining about receiving strawberry jam instead of raspberry jam on his sandwich while other people are hungry. My relatives, I glean through casual conversation, enforce the notion that employment on any schedule counts as a medium-grade miracle.
The college changed, under duress, the hiring process of part-time faculty. The process by which administration assigned courses to PTF went into the air roughly simultaneous to the changes at my ‘day job.’ Too much uncertainty! Not to let the anxiety simmer, senior people within the college’s administration either quit, retired or accepted different positions. Shifting sands! Relationships with people I built at the college evaporated, seemingly overnight. Thus far, the administration treated me very well, assigning to me numerous challenging classes in Holland and making themselves available to help when I asked. Two fears surfaced within days of learning of the administrative turmoil: that the college could not offer any summer courses and second, that I’d lose the preference to work within the Lakeshore campus.The first fear came not to pass. The college offered me an a summer course. The second fear lingers, as said course meets in Grand Rapids. Because I seemingly live in a personal golden age, I felt aggrieved by the assignment. The Grand Rapids course doesn’t fit my preference. I like the income. I dislike the location. One fear possibly realised seems too much. That seems petulant.
Maybe the ‘golden age’ is instead an age of selfishness; that the resources (including time) at my disposal feed a machine of self-interest (my house, my whims, my vacation) rather than something larger. At 31, am I hearing a biological clock? Last week I thought about creating a bumper sticker reading “Britney Spears Can Have Children But I Can’t?”
Perhaps the culture of ‘having it your way’ crept into my worldview.
Perhaps my life needs shaken up by challenges. Life is going too well. I can’t shake this suspicion.
A ‘golden age’ is identified by contrast: how one characterises the ages before and after the one under inquiry. Those of Anglo extraction commonly trace a link to the reign of Elizabeth I of England. That era of English history is known as England’s ‘golden age’ for its relative domestic peace and prosperity. A lovely allegorical portrait of said qualities exists right here. The time before good ‘ole Bess sat her ass on the throne is noted by historians as gruesome religious/civil violence. Guess what defining qualities are best remembered in the era after Bess’ throne warming ass?
If I split the term ‘age’ into a calendar year, the most recent -- starting with the house purchase exactly one year ago -- two words apply completely, honestly and beautifully: Peace and Prosperity. Meaning, that... oh shit. Something’s going to happen. Before pessimism gets the better of me (hah!), some detail needs attention.
When living in a golden age, one wants what one wants when one wants it and on one’s own terms. Why? Because the good days will seemingly never end.
Last month my boss announced at a department meeting that our hours of operations may return to 24/7 from their present 16/5. I had a goddamn fit. Retaining a ‘normal,’ reliable schedule count as one of the greatest benefits of working in this department. Losing the schedule to something far more capricious - and to a process best described as an internecine melée - sends my brain into a spiral of melancholy. Yet, some context changes the manner of my response. In the intimate context, in my immediate family I am lucky to have full-time employment. My mother and one brother remains unemployed well over a year. The other brother recently lost (maybe regained) his job. My dad (luckily?) can no longer work due to a medical problem and will remain on disability for the rest of his life. In a larger social context, I live in the state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate (14.9%). Considering a possible work schedule change from either of these perspectives gives me pause; nobody in these hypothetical schedule revision meetings mentioned a thing about layoffs, so what exactly are the reasons for my distress? 14.9% of the state may well consider me a selfish little bastard, complaining about receiving strawberry jam instead of raspberry jam on his sandwich while other people are hungry. My relatives, I glean through casual conversation, enforce the notion that employment on any schedule counts as a medium-grade miracle.
The college changed, under duress, the hiring process of part-time faculty. The process by which administration assigned courses to PTF went into the air roughly simultaneous to the changes at my ‘day job.’ Too much uncertainty! Not to let the anxiety simmer, senior people within the college’s administration either quit, retired or accepted different positions. Shifting sands! Relationships with people I built at the college evaporated, seemingly overnight. Thus far, the administration treated me very well, assigning to me numerous challenging classes in Holland and making themselves available to help when I asked. Two fears surfaced within days of learning of the administrative turmoil: that the college could not offer any summer courses and second, that I’d lose the preference to work within the Lakeshore campus.The first fear came not to pass. The college offered me an a summer course. The second fear lingers, as said course meets in Grand Rapids. Because I seemingly live in a personal golden age, I felt aggrieved by the assignment. The Grand Rapids course doesn’t fit my preference. I like the income. I dislike the location. One fear possibly realised seems too much. That seems petulant.
Maybe the ‘golden age’ is instead an age of selfishness; that the resources (including time) at my disposal feed a machine of self-interest (my house, my whims, my vacation) rather than something larger. At 31, am I hearing a biological clock? Last week I thought about creating a bumper sticker reading “Britney Spears Can Have Children But I Can’t?”
Perhaps the culture of ‘having it your way’ crept into my worldview.
Perhaps my life needs shaken up by challenges. Life is going too well. I can’t shake this suspicion.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Body conscious
I have the habit of stepping onto the bathroom scale every day. The scale is pretty: an Ikea white plastic and glass design.
Last night, 136.5; Monday, 136.0. This weekend at the gym, I caught a glimpse of my stomach in a mirror during a set of chin-ups. A voice -- my own -- clearly and calmly claimed that, ‘you can’t go to the beach like this.’ Landed on my feet, I felt dizzy. What the fuck was that?
A small bulge at the navel drives me to distraction. It resists eradication in spite of a healthy diet and general exercise (plus targeted routines including crunches, leg lifts, and knee-ups). My present waist in size in the ready-made pants analogy is 30. I look into the mirror to grimace while pivoting left and right. Why will it not go away? Every day I cover up in a small t-shirt, aggravated. When engaged in conversations of diet/fitness, the intransigent bulge invariably arises and the other person invariably says some version of “you’re not fat.” Which isn’t the point.
The “once a fatty, always a fatty” paradigm exists. This nasty truth is, well, nasty. I didn’t expect it. It seems like a post-modern version of the ‘you can take a boy out of the jungle...’ cliche. I’m neither dumb nor anorexic (can a double negative fly here?). For a man my age and height, the quantitative stuff reads well. I know this. My doctor told me this. What in hell keeps the body consciousness around after losing fifty pounds? Why the use of italics? Anyway, knowing that my perception is warped by a cognitive dissonance sucks. I feel confident in handling the quantitative. Numbers represents goals that I can reach through effort and work. The problem doesn’t lie in the quantitative but qualitative; that’s a fight I’m less confident to engage. Subjectivity is a vehicle used to my detriment. Qualitatively speaking, no reason exists to feel ashamed/embarrassed about my body (aside from a bit of paleness).
My fear is that, after months of working on this little bit of body, the exertion comes to a lot of shadow-boxing. In other words, that I’m battling the missing fifth and sixth pieces of the ‘six pack’ instead of something more important. Perhaps I’m fighting a skewed perception.
Last night, 136.5; Monday, 136.0. This weekend at the gym, I caught a glimpse of my stomach in a mirror during a set of chin-ups. A voice -- my own -- clearly and calmly claimed that, ‘you can’t go to the beach like this.’ Landed on my feet, I felt dizzy. What the fuck was that?
A small bulge at the navel drives me to distraction. It resists eradication in spite of a healthy diet and general exercise (plus targeted routines including crunches, leg lifts, and knee-ups). My present waist in size in the ready-made pants analogy is 30. I look into the mirror to grimace while pivoting left and right. Why will it not go away? Every day I cover up in a small t-shirt, aggravated. When engaged in conversations of diet/fitness, the intransigent bulge invariably arises and the other person invariably says some version of “you’re not fat.” Which isn’t the point.
The “once a fatty, always a fatty” paradigm exists. This nasty truth is, well, nasty. I didn’t expect it. It seems like a post-modern version of the ‘you can take a boy out of the jungle...’ cliche. I’m neither dumb nor anorexic (can a double negative fly here?). For a man my age and height, the quantitative stuff reads well. I know this. My doctor told me this. What in hell keeps the body consciousness around after losing fifty pounds? Why the use of italics? Anyway, knowing that my perception is warped by a cognitive dissonance sucks. I feel confident in handling the quantitative. Numbers represents goals that I can reach through effort and work. The problem doesn’t lie in the quantitative but qualitative; that’s a fight I’m less confident to engage. Subjectivity is a vehicle used to my detriment. Qualitatively speaking, no reason exists to feel ashamed/embarrassed about my body (aside from a bit of paleness).
My fear is that, after months of working on this little bit of body, the exertion comes to a lot of shadow-boxing. In other words, that I’m battling the missing fifth and sixth pieces of the ‘six pack’ instead of something more important. Perhaps I’m fighting a skewed perception.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
I need a hobby
The Winter term began.
Ciela is limping after Ryu inexplicably chased her through the house.
It’s 2010.
The Spanish course my employed paid for went to waste. I didn’t use it.
The number of area friends I have now is the same as three years back.
Enthusiasm for house projects waxes, wanes.
I owe the bank $0 for the Passat.
Time at the office feels wasted. Motivation comes at a premium.
Apple (may? will?) releases a Tablet today.
The State of the Union speech is definitely today.
I need a hobby.
Ciela is limping after Ryu inexplicably chased her through the house.
It’s 2010.
The Spanish course my employed paid for went to waste. I didn’t use it.
The number of area friends I have now is the same as three years back.
Enthusiasm for house projects waxes, wanes.
I owe the bank $0 for the Passat.
Time at the office feels wasted. Motivation comes at a premium.
Apple (may? will?) releases a Tablet today.
The State of the Union speech is definitely today.
I need a hobby.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
What kind of skull?
JD Salinger died. NPR’s obituary on yesterday’s “All Things Considered” brought out tears.
Fine, that likely means I’m a phony. Fine. If I must be a phony, let its awful presence exist in public.
What kind of skull do I want to have when I’m dead? Yorick’s honourable goddamn skull. That skull. I want to feel in love with Yorick’s skull. That skull; the object of envy.
My skull, according to R1 wisdom, is a third rate dome stuffed with second rate brains. My skull opens (the jaw is part of a skull, right?) to push out the pedestrian. My skull, destined for the Museum of the Possibly Interesting but Probably Not. The museum across the way from where the Indians, Africans, and jade chips reside. Precocious primary school children with gold stars adjacent their name are rewarded with a day trip to the latter museum; the disappointing, the dull Middle children of Miss Kellen’s third grade go to my museum. Maybe they’ll see my skull.
My goddamn skull.
I didn’t always scorn my skull. The stuff inside my skull, once upon a time, earned honours; my skull travelled the globe, lay on pillows next to desirable men. My stuff inside my skull emulated foreign accents. Nostalgia for a skull not present.
Alas, poor skull; who knows you?
My goddamn skull.
Fine, that likely means I’m a phony. Fine. If I must be a phony, let its awful presence exist in public.
What kind of skull do I want to have when I’m dead? Yorick’s honourable goddamn skull. That skull. I want to feel in love with Yorick’s skull. That skull; the object of envy.
My skull, according to R1 wisdom, is a third rate dome stuffed with second rate brains. My skull opens (the jaw is part of a skull, right?) to push out the pedestrian. My skull, destined for the Museum of the Possibly Interesting but Probably Not. The museum across the way from where the Indians, Africans, and jade chips reside. Precocious primary school children with gold stars adjacent their name are rewarded with a day trip to the latter museum; the disappointing, the dull Middle children of Miss Kellen’s third grade go to my museum. Maybe they’ll see my skull.
My goddamn skull.
I didn’t always scorn my skull. The stuff inside my skull, once upon a time, earned honours; my skull travelled the globe, lay on pillows next to desirable men. My stuff inside my skull emulated foreign accents. Nostalgia for a skull not present.
Alas, poor skull; who knows you?
My goddamn skull.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)