You know when you think about going back and having the chance to do something differently? What would you do then that you aren’t doing now?
Reply
Category Archives: Other Ways and Means
8:27pm
The phone rings and I’m crying at the immensity of life and the losses losses losses.
I answer, thinking I must, and it’s a guy from Spectrum. He says good afternoon. I say good evening. He says this phone call may be recorded. I say, I can tell. He says he’s from Spectrum calling to offer me a new deal. I say I’m not interested, but I am sorry that you must sell your time like this for money, something you can’t eat or build a house out of. He says well you have a good night ma’am, and I say you too.
The Will to Work
Lucy and I were out walking on the farm at dusk, seeking the moon despite cloudy skies, and I was musing about work. I am a librarian to “earn my keep” in this society, and because of my IT experience pre-library-school–hardware, networks, imaging, and caring for a cadre of public and staff PCs at my local library–my career path has naturally flowed along this vein of library work despite my attempts to move into other aspects of library work.
This new year, January 2, 2020, I started a new job, with people I really respect and admire and like. I was happy and still am happy, but this week, one week after start date, was an all-day meeting for everyone on the team–we are spread out all over the state, so people don’t see one another in person very often–and all staff were to present for 5 minutes or so on their current work. I figured I would have to get up there but didn’t have anything to say yet, so I began to prepare something that was meaningful and also, slowly, then faster, spinning out of control in a maelstrom of anxiety. Couldn’t sleep one night, then two nights, and formed a headache three days ago that still hasn’t completely gone away today, a day after the event (which went just fine, even well, and my new boss totally did not expect me to get up there and speak).
So Lucy and I were walking along and I was musing about work and how to deal with this job. In most of my other jobs I’ve felt to varying degrees depleted by them and very much in need of drawing strict boundaries between home and “my time,” work and “their time.” (I once worked in the Preservation Unit at New York State Library as a student assistant for three glorious years, loved my job dearly, and even then there was a pretty clear demarcation between work and “life.”) But this job feels different. I’ve stepped into a rarified environment where creativity is not only valued but encouraged, and our common goal is lofty and righteous.
Scary. Daunting. And so the shadow self comes up and starts heaving me around, showing me all the shit I still haven’t cleaned up, all the things I’ve left undone and how are you ever going to do anything? Dicing my already distracted mind into a fine mess, which, given reign, pulls me into a death spiral. I spent most of this week indulging like a sonofabitch, as don Juan Matus would say to Carlos often in those books. It’s not like I can help it, once I get going, but still…I see it happening and let it go off the rails at some level.
Walking on the farm under the hidden moon, I realized that the approach I’ve taken to work until now will not work anymore. Instead of boundaries I need to integrate. Instead of compartmentalizing my life into work and life I need to find a way to fit work into my life, allow it to permeate my life, allow it to wake me in the middle of the night with great ideas I need to write down before I can possibly sleep again. Embrace work as part of my life, not separate from it.
When I came home, I found this article waiting for me in the “Pocket” offerings every new tab on Google presents. It is a very good article and confirms me in my musings in a way only the Universe can, as it riffs off of and echoes my own inner landscape. Happy New Year.
The Way You Think About Willpower Is Hurting You
Just After Twilight
There is no end to the blame
Or the depths of pain.
We all bear not only our own history
But our ancestry.
There’s no way to even the score.
We must, like children, cry,
Olly olly all come free!
Back to the Garden
Not one more word.
I will go back to gardening,
Which is really all I ever do anyway.
I don’t know why these moods come upon me–
Why I cannot stay.
I know. I do know.
Seasons change.
I am an annual blown by the wind
Visiting established gardens.
They don’t know who I am
And I am gone again.
“Not to love is a failure of the imagination.”
I know someone said this to me once or I read it but I can’t remember who or where.
It came into my head this morning,
Watching rainbow prisms upon the wall.
I will care for my garden.
(Where my garden meets your garden is also my garden.)
A Story
I had the thought yesterday I could pinpoint the date I ran away from DeSisto School because the Moody Blues played Tanglewood that night, and that information (even the setlist!) would be online. My “RA” was at that concert and many others from our dorm, too. If they hadn’t been I could never have run away. As it was, Carolyn, the dorm parent who had an apartment off the main dorm, suspected I was going to run and made me sleep on the floor in her living room. My roommate was put guard over me, sleeping next to me on the couch. I had to lie there silently and breathe even, calm all of everything but stay awake. My grandmother had given me a gold bangle bracelet–not real but I wore it all the time. It clunked on the floor when I started to make my way into a crouch so I took it off and left it on my pillow, knowing I’d never see it again. I inched across the floor, crawling a bit at a time and freezing, then going a bit further and freezing. When I got to Carolyn’s front door there was a Hebrew character hanging on it that kept knocking against the door so I had to lift it off and leave it on the floor. I always felt bad about that because I didn’t mean any disrespect to her religious beliefs but I knew she would easily take it that way. I just needed to be quiet.
I finally made it out of there and down the hall to my room, where I got dressed and grabbed $50 in one dollar bills I’d been stashing along with my other, regular roommate Beth. We were saving to run away in the fall when she got back from her enforced camping expedition with a group from the school. So I stole her contributions to that fund along with my own to run away with Craig. It hurt her. I didn’t mean to hurt her or do the wrong thing. It seemed like the right thing to do under the circumstances…but to be totally honest I just wanted the chance to be alone on the road with Craig. I was a little shit in a lot of ways but not out of malice. I had to do things. I don’t know. I didn’t think about how I affected others or more to the point it didn’t occur to me that I affected others much. I was smart and knew how to bravado my way, and I felt how guys looked at me too. I don’t think I took much advantage of that but I noticed it and felt its power. After being powerless for years it was heady and I was a lonely girl. But here it was different, something had changed. I wanted to be near Craig and I wanted him to touch me and I wanted to touch him.
The school, on a few acres of land outside of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, was an experimental school. We were all butterflies…rather we were caterpillars and chrysalises striving toward being butterflies.
It was a bad place. I was actually kind-of excited to be going there after five long months in the hospital. It felt almost like I was going to college. I was going to get my shit together and make something of my life eventually. The first night I got there they let me unpack and eat dinner at the dining hall, outside of which I first saw Craig. They let me get into my pajamas and go to bed and lie there in the dark for awhile, getting my bearings, thinking this is a bit weird but OK. I was the new girl again, nothing new about that. I’m starting to relax when the door opens, the light comes on, and five girls pounce on me, holding me down. They had all my limbs and I fought but couldn’t move. I spat in one girl’s face. I don’t even know where that came from but that’s what I did. Like an animal.
They dragged me up to a room on the second floor that had bunks along the walls and about 10 girls sleeping in them and also on the floor. I forget what they called this, but these were all the girls at high risk for running away. I was here because I needed to earn their trust that I wouldn’t run. We had all these kids in a room on the second floor, and they blockaded the door with a dresser.
So this was the environment. A lot of money there. My parents had always done well for themselves even though their investments and houses kept us living poor in a lot of ways. It looked good from the outside but it was weiners and beans for dinner. lol. And cold. Not loving. Appearances matter more than what’s inside. Aaaanyway. DeSisto attracted a far richer set than any circles my parents traveled. Judd Hirsch’s son was there when I was. People spent a lot of money to send their unruly privileged troubled teenagers to a place that promised they would come out creative, productive, and even specially gifted citizens. It was a fucking concentration camp with a real chef to cook our meals and culture and nature all around, and Alice’s Restaurant.
Craig and I hit it off immediately. We both knew exactly what was going to happen so we didn’t waste any time pretending it wasn’t happening. I think it was the second day I was there–it was May, just after Mother’s Day–the afternoon was warm and muggy and brought a torrential thunderstorm, which the group of us stayed out in, enjoying the heavy, warm water pelting us. I looked at Craig and felt a burst of joy, stepped up to him and threw my arms around him. He was surprised but only for the briefest beat before he smiled and hugged me back, lifting me off my feet. That was it.
So five weeks later when he and Tex stood outside my window and told me they’d been kicked out of the boy’s dorm to fend for themselves for the night…when he said they were running away and he wanted me to come with them, I had to say yes. I would meet them later in Lenox. But my summer roommate heard the tail end of this and they shut me away in Carolyn’s apartment because everyone was at Tanglewood for the Moody Blues.
I made it out of the dorm and skirted the buildings, down to Route 183, turned left and headed up the road, jumping to the side into ditches or shadows every time a car was coming because I was walking straight toward Tanglewood. A whole lot of adrenaline going through me that night, and it is going through me now, thinking about it. Ha! The wonder of Google…I can tell you I walked 3.6 miles to Lenox wearing my very stylish and practical outfit which included moccasin boots–no support at all. But it was my best don’t-fuck-with-me-I’m-cool outfit. There is power in image.
It was very late when I got to Lenox. Traffic had died, the concert long over. I walked through the empty streets…I didn’t really know where I was but I thought I could find the place we were meeting. Starting to get a bit scared I turned down a street I was pretty sure was the right one and I hear something and saw at the same time motion across the street in a recess–he stepped out and I ran over and hugged him and never had a hug felt warmer or more welcome, ever.
We walked over the mountain to Pittsfield, singing Ozzy songs and enjoying our freedom and power in the moment. In the early morning we all bought one-way tickets to Albany at the bus station, along with a couple packs of Marlboros.
And that is in large part how I came to be in the Cultural Education Center on July 17, 1984. A Tuesday. Thirty-five years ago yesterday.
Over the Verizon
Before I begin, I wish to say that I make my “living” through technology. It is what puts money in my bank account so I may continue to have a warm place to sleep and cook and love and otherwise live my life outside of work. I appreciate the tool, but I hate it, too. I hate how it seems to pervade every bit of life. But it isn’t really technology, it’s how it is used—which serves to foster more dependence, more looking forward to the next thing instead of being here, now. We take pictures at a concert instead of allowing ourselves to be swept into the music. We take pictures of our food, of our loved ones, of ourselves, instead of really being there. We check work email from home, so we won’t be confronted with a pile of it when we get back. We allow ourselves to be swept along by the current rather than drinking the depths of true experience.
Anyhoo.
My older brother Gregg came to visit me on his way home from an elk-hunting trip in Colorado a few weeks ago, and he told me about his time out there with our cousin Jeff, in a sparse but evocative way so I could feel the place and Gregg’s experience of it. He was a little reluctant at first to talk about it because he knows I eat vegan, but I urged him to tell me, and he did, and he also told me other things about his life that I did not know, and it was a very lovely and healing evening.
Along the way in this conversation, Gregg told me he had an old iPhone and GPS for backpacking, and asked me would I like them? I said, sure. Of course.
I have not upgraded my phone since 2012. It is a perfectly serviceable and quirky LG keyboard phone, doesn’t capitalize when it should and capitalizes when it shouldn’t,
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away ~Paul Simon
but fine for texting and vocal communications. It was running out its days, though, getting on in senescence, close to death. I’ve known it for months, but wasn’t going to do anything about it until the emergency hit. Life has a way of working itself out, though, if you step back and let it. So in late October I received a package from Gregg containing a Lowrance Endura Out&Back and a sweet little iPhone, fully charged and ready to go.
But I didn’t do anything about it right away, because my old phone was working fine, and I know, from long experience with companies and technology, that what should be easy never turns out to be easy.
So on a rainy Friday in November, my Saturday, I ventured out to get my hair cut, some groceries, and to switch my phone over to (angels singing) an iPhone. First I stopped at Verizon, but could not find a parking spot near the shop. It was raining hard, so I elected to go get my hair cut and the groceries rather than push on ahead.
About 45 minutes later I found myself in the same parking lot, with a good parking spot and the rain abating, steeling myself for what would follow.
I show the woman at the back of the store my antiquated cell and my new-to-me iPhone. No problem. We can get you sorted out. She hands me off to her coworker, a young man, who begins the process, which takes time on his computer so I have space to witness what is happening with the other guy who came in behind me. Turns out he lost his phone. He doesn’t have any more money to spend per month. What can he do?
He was so apologetic, as if the Verizon lady held his balls in her custom-fitted gauntlets, ready to squeeze. Really. Well, of course he would need a new phone, and an upgrade as well. Only a few dollars more per month, not much at all. He acquiesces, grateful for the privilege of increasing his monthly payment, probably consoling himself that he’ll have a new phone to play with. I don’t know.
∞ ∞ ∞
It is all looking good for me as I answer the questions I’m asked, but along the way my salesguy picks up the iPhone and sees it is a 3G.
We are not supporting 3G as of next month. And actually we will not be supporting this phone either (nodding to my LG). Nothing less than 4G. As of next month.
I’m processing this all, and basically repeat what he has told me, in different words to make sure I was hearing correctly. So, you are telling me that this (holding up 3G iPhone) we are now calling garbage, even though it works perfectly? Even though children in Africa are forced to mine the metals used to produce it and it will go to a landfill to poison the waters in time…we are calling this
3G iPhone
garbage in the name of technological advancement? (Read: corporate greed.)
The salesman nods and tells me I can get a new phone for only $7 extra each month, $1 more for a Smartphone.
I say, again, So you’re telling me that this perfectly good phone—we are calling it garbage because you aren’t going to support 3G anymore?
He nods, looking at me like I’m slightly deranged. I pick up my obsolete phones, thank him for his time, and walk out past the apologetic man and the bouncer at the front of the store.
And other than telling this outrageous story to a couple of people, I was ready to have that be the end. So what if I don’t have a cell phone? So what? Fuckers.
But really, you almost NEED a cell phone these days. My bank sent me an email just a couple of days later telling me they will no longer use email to send me access codes to my account—only texts or phone calls. People expect you to have a Smartphone—my cell phone is a rarity. It cripples you in this world if you don’t have access to the technology that is used by the majority.
Tonight for some reason I remembered that I work in technology, and I know there is always another way to do something. So I looked it up. Turns out Verizon is refusing to activate phones less than 4G. Which to me means, if I can figure out how to activate it myself, it will work. And I did. And here is how to do it, right from the horse’s mouth:
How to Perform the Over-the-Air Activation
People. Do not be ensorcelled by technology and corporate rule. Do not forget your sovereignty. Do not bow and scrape in stores. Do not bow and scrape, ever.
Peace.
April Hike
There ain’t no fuckin’ around at Mohonk when the weather gets good. If you are arriving at 10am on a Sunday you may be too late. Lucy and I were too late for Trapps Trailhead, but lucky for us we were heading for Coxing and that was still open.
Today was the kind of day no one can fault. Flawless. Magnificent. 60 degrees and clear sun all around. I got out of the car and took off my jacket, took off my fleece (the layering habit of what seemed an interminable winter), and unbuttoned the flannel shirt I intended to keep. Donned my safari hat to keep the sun out ‘ma eyes, and we headed over to the map, where, I see, there are other dogs freely wandering. This is always problematic because Lucy, my kooky, loving dog, does not get along well with others of the canine persuasion. She loves or is indifferent to humans by turns, but other dogs are near always trouble. When we encounter them she goes on short leash, and if we can avoid the dogs we do, even if it means bushwhacking off trail a bit.
Oncet I had a Golden Retriever–sweet and mellow. I could let her off leash in the woods and she’d never go more than 100 feet or so from me, and although she had been attacked in the woods by a couple of German Shepherds when she was a pup, and sometimes drew a growl from other dogs on trail, we mostly just passed on by other hikers and other dogs without incident. So I understand the attitude of people with mellow, off-leash dogs. “Oh, my dog would never hurt another dog.” “My dog never causes trouble.” Thing is, when we get your dog and another, unknown dog in proximity, there are now two, and that means unpredicability.
Lucy (on short leash) and I get up to the map so I can figure where we are going–never having hiked here before. I’m looking at the map when something makes me turn to the left. One of the loose dogs has come up to Lucy, and Lucy is quietly straining on her leash to smell him while the other dog’s head is cocked to the side and his eyes are rolling, like a horse shying. Then Lucy lunges at him. I have a good grip on her and back slowly and calmly away. The dog immediately follows our retreat, and I say calmly to the general crowd, would you please put your dog on leash? A man steps forward and calls his dog, which turns and goes to him, but he does not put him on leash. I apologize to the man for Lucy (because that’s what you do) and turn back to the map. A moment later I hear another man say sweetly to the dog, “Were you causing trouble Bentley? That doesn’t sound like you!”
Now, I am surrounded by a bunch of people who appear to be serious hikers with lots of gear, lacing up and shouldering big packs. A bunch of type-A, weekend-warrior hikers (the two men with Bentley are lawyers by the sounds of their conversation) and two loose dogs. I’m just a hippie woman in jeans and flannel looking to get alone in the woods, and am feeling pretty prickly by now. I turn around to look in the direction of the man who spoke to Bentley, but a kind of calm runs over me and I decide not to engage. I turn back to the map and decide to cross the road, in the opposite direction from where all these people are going.
On my way across the parking lot I see the other loose dog following its human toward the bathrooms, right in our path. This man bends down to his dog and tells it to go back over there (pointing away from where Lucy and I are headed), which it obediently does. Then he stands up and looks right at me and gives me a big, beautiful smile. A conspiratory smile that tells me we both get what just happened with Bentley. Then he turns and jogs toward the bathroom, his own flannel shirt flapping behind him. His smile–his beautiful, understanding smile–made me spend the next few minutes blessing this man and his family forever and ever. Thank God for smiles from strangers. Thank God people still see and hear and love and care for strangers.
(The leash rule is there for a reason–and it isn’t because your dog isn’t sweet and mellow. It’s because not all dogs are sweet and mellow in all circumstances. It’s also because dogs can be unpredictable in the woods, and for one to run off here, in the wilderness, is asking for heartache.)
Lucy and I cross the road, and I’m talking to her, saying, “Do the other dogs not like you, Lucy? I’m sorry, baby. I like you. I think you’re the best.” Poor girl. She just doesn’t know how to be with other dogs. For the first two years of her life she was with an elderly man who did not have the strength to take her out. When I first started taking her out, she was attacked by dogs we met on three occasions, and since then she has been on the offense. And always on leash.
A little ways in on the other side of the road, I see a placard on a stand. Here is the stone foundation of the Enderly barn. The placard has an artist’s rendering of how the barn may have looked back in the day, and it reminds me of the Laura Ingalls-Wilder books. It puts me in a mood, standing there, knowing that this place used to be a homestead. We walk further on, another 300 feet or so, and come upon another placard. Here is the foundation of the Enderly house. Another artist’s rendering reminds me again of times gone by, when people were largely self-sufficient. A hard life in many ways, but at its best steady, slow, mostly peaceful, balanced. Before crossing the bridge, we came upon a map of the entire homestead, which included a large garden, a sawmill next to the stream, a root cellar, and a burial ground. The kid in me sings. My imagination is fired up with the notion of living there, in cooperation with and at the mercy of Nature.
The woods are shining with light. We walk along a large stream and cross over into the Minnewaska State Park for a bit, finally coming upon a restored cabin–the Van Leuven Cabin. Panels say that when there was an illness or emergency, the residents would light a lamp and put it in the window to call for help from their distant neighbors. It reminds me of my favorite scene in The Lord of the Rings–the lighting of the beacons to call for Rohan’s help. Such a system depends, overall, on an agreement to come to one another’s aid, and trust that those in the distance are both watching and willing to come to the rescue. A trust that despite their differences and their individual rights, all parties are better off when they work in cooperation, pooling their strengths. A very different world than we live in now, where the seeming norm is to watch out for one’s own and leave the rest to whatever befalls them.
These strong, resilient mountain people lived a hard life and understood that they needed others to help them at times, and others needed them. They understood that sometimes one is up and the other is down, and sometimes one is down while the other is up. This is the essence of community. This is why people agree to give up some of their freedom in order to ensure that they and everyone else has a better chance to do well and live in peace in this world that is full enough of danger without all humans add to it.
∞ ∞ ∞
This way of life is long gone. We have, most of us, lost the knowledge of how to be self-sufficient–let alone the opportunity try it out, because the land and resources have all been taken and sold back to us, rented back to us–and now we must depend upon earning money to buy the things we need. But like the dogs I have written about here, not every person is born and raised in an environment that supports their successful entry into the system. And all of us–I don’t care who you are–all of us are directly affected by the systemic violence that oppresses certain groups and privileges others. Our ancestry, our membership in one (or a few) of these groups makes it much harder to fit in, to convince others to give us the money everyone needs. It becomes a popularity contest. A struggle to fit in rather than a question of the value you can add to the community as an individual.
Right now, in our world community, millions are desperate. Perpetual war, based on greed, decimates families and rich cultural histories. Our relatives, the animals of the sea and air, cry out to us, dying with stomachs full of plastic. Everywhere fires are burning, water is polluted, food is contaminated with poison. Here in the United States we can still turn away, not see, not feel. We can still watch our favorite shows and go out and buy more stuff and follow the next trend, but the future is on our back stoop.
The beacons are lit. Your assistance is requested. Are you watching? Will you accept the call?
I didn’t plan to write for International Women’s Day, but
Today I overheard a group of women discussing their diets, among other things more important, such as menopause and perimenopause. I wasn’t intentionally listening, it was just one of those blank spaces in my own rhythm of eating and browsing on a tablet. These women have bodies like the paleolithic mother goddess, and would have been chosen over their skinny, flat-chested sisters back in the day.
It made me wonder what would happen if they just totally embraced their goddess heritage, honored it, loved it? I mean, take care of their bodies just as they are, eat good food, get enough movement, sleep, water, and not buy in to the image of perfection that is broadcast incessantly at us. I wonder what would happen upon this tremendous freeing-up of psychic and soul energy?
Venus of Willendorf (Source: Wikipedia. Yes, I have donated, but only once so I’m due again. Thank you Wikipedia.)