proteanme

Hello September! What a stunning start. First the weather: blue skies, warmish temperatures and a little wind. Second the people: new folks, friends in the making, tried and true connections, Portland family, and old friends far way who are on the mend, thank goodness. Third the bounty: corn, tomatoes, basil, green beans out the wazoo, eggplant, zucchini, kale, more tomatoes and pickling with A.M.

Easy to practice gratitude this past weekend. Easy to be in love with the world and chit chat with fellow bike riders and weed and pick green beans and sing along loudly to old soul music and belt out kids songs to distract my favorite  2 & 1/2 year from the sadness of leaving the park. (Who knew you could make the Wheels on the Bus last the course of 10 blocks?! Let’s just say lots of people and farm animals were on the bus.)

I know this is the end of summer and the start of fall and that the change is a reminder of how all things change. Seasons are a pretty perfect reminder and an excellent and obvious example of how life and death work. And Fall seems like a pretty opportune time to embrace all of that. Because it’s beautiful but the beauty is on the wan and because the sun shines but the days are getting shorter, etc. Sometimes I am amazed at how desperate we, as a people are are, to figure out all these life and death mysteries, when nature seems to hold so many of obvious answers answers. We are all connected. There is beauty. There is destruction. Neither one of them are based on merit. It’s hard to to talk about this without lapsing into cliche. I suppose that speaks to my writing skills. This fall seems super poignant to me (even though its just started) and I don’t know why. I think it has to do with getting older and people in my family getting older, too. There were two other milestone birthdays in my immediate family this year. Mom turned 80 and my niece turned 18. Also for me fall may be symbolizing this time of my life, where I’m clearly in the 2nd half of it. But anyway, if you’ve got it in you to spend some time reflecting on change and endings and beginnings, I think this would be a fruitful time.

A quick aside to no where: I am always entertained by Robert Pollard’s fake British accent. Even when I don’t like the song. But a  also good, new Guided By Voice song, is really fun to listen to.

Day 11. Surprise! I’m still blogging. What the heck and also thank you Colleen for the encouragement. I will try not to make you sorry you encouraged me to keep posting.

The roads were almost empty riding my bike to work this morning. A sure sign of a holiday or an upcoming one, as is the case with Labor day.  I used to work for a company that didn’t recognize Labor day as a holiday, which seemed absolutely absurd. Luckily, my current employer has more holiday sense. I like riding on empty roads, although on a work day I get a little bit of a post apocalyptic-where is everybody-feeling. I have an amazing ability to imagine disaster.

Morning bike rides are starting to turn cooler. Evenings too. One night last week, it was cold enough that on my ride home I actually wore my wool gloves. I was glad I had the gloves with me, but I felt a little indignant just putting them on, like “no way, wool in August.” I started pedaling along and I couldn’t get warmed up (it didn’t help that I had on shorts) and I immediately started thinking about riding when its dark and rainy and cold and how I want to ride more this fall and winter, but it sucks riding when its dark and rainy and cold. It was only a 20 minute ride home but my mind totally reeled off into this story of miserable riding, even though I wasn’t  miserable right then. It was just chillier out than I wanted it to be, and probably a little later too, but nothing at all, not even close to what it’s like to ride  in the winter. My mind turned a completely ok bike ride into an unpleasant trip and started souring me on winter riding, even though summer riding isn’t over.

The reason why I’m going on about this, is it’s such a good illustration of the bullshit unhelpful thinking that can cause unnecessary suffering, as the Buddhists would say. And it is amazing to me how quick that kind of unhelpful thinking can arise in me and how once its started, it is a struggle to get some space from it. The thinking becomes reality, even overshadowing the real reality that’s happening. I’ve been noticing more and more when it happens.

Woohoo! I challenged myself and met my goal. Yay, self! I really appreciate all the comments and “likes” from everyone who’s been kind enough to read my posts.  Encouragement sure does feel good.

I see that I’ve been recently tagged in some old photos from a camp reunion, circa the late 80’s. I’ve got no memory of the pictures being taken and only hazy memories of the reunion itself, except that I wasn’t officially out as queer to many of the people I’d gone to camp with, although I’m sure lots of people didn’t have to be told. I’m solidly midwestern dyke in these photos, replete with an un-ironic mullet and earrings. I’m also wearing a pair of 80’s big glasses that are eerily similar to some of the big glasses I see younger folks wearing these days. (I should have kept those glasses along with my old labyrs necklace. I could have ebayed them off for a little bank.)

It’s hard for me to leave myself tagged in these photos. I don’t look so great in most of them and I can’t believe I wore a mullet for sooo long. But also, what is harder for me to have public, is evidence of all the years I abandoned my butch self for an easier to digest dyke version of me. It’s hard for me to acknowledge I didn’t always identify or present as butch, even though I know why I did this, which was because being butch was not really an option in the 80s. And even though I was in the baby butch camp from 6th grade through my first 2 years of being out, I also wanted to fit in the lesbian and gay community in Bloomington. So I grew out my hair and got my ears pierced and wore rings and hung up my flannel shirts and put my Red Wing boots in the closet. I re-imagined myself as best I could as an androgynous dyke, while being a closet LHB (or long haired butch for those who aren’t familiar with the term). It’s not that I’ve got anything against dykes or dyke life. I love dykes. I’m forever grateful there was a dyke life to come out to. Even if the shoe didn’t exactly fit, it was a bajillion times closer to who I was than anything else I could figure out. But I do have some sadness and regret that I couldn’t figure out  earlier how to be the butch I am. I would have loved to been the kinda dyke who rebelled some against the great lesbian-womyn loving womyn-androgynous force of the 80s, and claimed for myself “butch” and “gender queer” (which didn’t even exist back then). But that Iwasn’t that kind of a dyke. I was a fitting in one and and I’d like to figure out how to be ok with that part of my story. So I leave myself tagged in the FB photos. Try not to cringe Let my dyke self be public.

Ever since I turned 50 (gasp), I  have been thinking about aging. In large part, because I can no longer ignore it. The physical signs have made themselves apparent. Some of it I embrace, like the silver hair and the reading glasses. Some of it I tolerate, like the wrinkles and lines and looser skin. Some of it I don’t talk about publicly, like menopause. I alternate between being pissed and feeling defeated by how it’s 1000 times harder to get in shape and 100o times easier for it to all go to pot. I try not to freak out that I’ve gone from having an incredible memory for all sorts of facts and figures to forgetting names of things, like bands and books and sometimes people. It’s all very strange and it don’t think it helps that I never set many goals that corresponded to age related milestones, like by 40 I want to have done a, b and c and by 50 I want to have done x, y and z. I’m not sure what that would have helped with exactly, but it seems like it would have helped with something. Like a list of achievements could balance out a bunch of new wrinkles.

Talking about this is like coming out again. I feel a little like I did when I was a baby dyke, but now I am a baby old person. I cringe when I hear people I know try and guess at the age of someone and say something like “hes old, like 50 or something.” Or when people tell me I look great for my age. Just say I look great or maybe that I don’t look a day over 40. Seriously. Save the age related compliments for those 90 and up (although it might piss them off too). For me, I’ve gotten better looking as I’ve gotten older, which I’m not saying from vanity, but more from a thank god perspective. I had to age into me. Also, I think I might start telling people they look great for a being a 32 year old or a 26 year old. See what happens.  Whew, I’m off on a tangent.

The thing I wanted to talk about more than the above rant was how intellectually, you understand you will age, but emotionally you really don’t believe it until it starts happening to you. Probably something similar to getting pregnant or things changing after you get married. There’s probably hundred of examples of stuff like that. That you need experiential knowledge of to really get.

Well I need to eat so I can go see a movie, I think. I just got going on this post and it’s kind of interesting and kind of embarrassing and vulnerable too, but I think it’s ok.

Is is a good idea to eat corn fritters twice in less than a week? And with sour cream and salsa and spicy honey syrup? I’ve got the genes to handle the cholesterol, but do I have the other jeans the calories? I think I’m trying too hard to be clever with that line. Still, when I get the the first ears of corn from my farm share, I can’t resist turning them into fritters.

Hmmm . . . day 7 of my 10 day challenge and I don’t know what to write which is an interesting dilemma and different than not wanting to write at all. Proof, if one needs it of how things change. And I suppose I always need that kind of proof to ride me through the “I don’t want to/this sucks/fuck this” phase I go through with just about everything I do, maybe even more so with things I deeply care about doing.  Life is  full of irony.

I have been thinking about love lately. Trying to understand what it really is to love someone. It’s kind of funny for me to be having this conversation with myself, as I am kind of love junkie, a serial monogamish monogamist. But things have not worked out with a lot of people or what seems to me like like a lot of  people. And I loved every one of them. So what does that mean? What does that say about love? I’m not even sure if I am explaining this accurate to the way I’m thinking about it. But I think there is some part of love I don’t get or do right that’s about unconditional acceptance and generosity and showing up in a heartfelt and in the spirit of partnership way that I do not get. Some part of  love that is about being that person’s “fan” that I won’t do. Or haven’t done, thus far. I probably need to think on this some more. But that’s what I’ve been thinking about love lately. Maybe I should go back and re-read Bell Hooks.

Day two of my 10 day blog challenge and I already wish I wouldn’t have challenged myself.  Its kind of an old story and very much like day two of not eating chocolate or day two of doing sits ups every night or day two of going to bed early or day of writing every day. There have been many days twos that have been immediately followed by starting over at day one again. Except for smoking and thank you RU for helping me with that. If I add it up, I bet I’ve put together at least 3000 non-smoking days, and they would have been consecutive except for a few isolated incidents, like going to this bar in Indy with friends the week I went home when my Dad died.

I think the the difference between me and many ambitious people is not only that they get more things done, obviously, but that they have more day threes, fours and five hundreds than I do. Also maybe ambitious people pay other people to do some of the shit they don’t want want to do, like dusting or mopping the floor, so they can do the shit they feel ambitious about, like writing a book. I feel like I have this worth ethic-long suffering thing about house cleaning, like we should all have to do it and no one should be above washing dishes or running the vacuum. But man, housework really can eat up one’s time. I guess the trick is to live in smaller place with less stuff to take care of and then there will be less time you have to spend on upkeep. Or there’s always the Phyllis Diller philosophy – “Housework can’tkill you. But why tae the chance.”

So I’ve successfully tricked myself into completing day two of my self imposed 10 day challenge. Maybe next time I’ll trick myself by writing about how not writing is one of the hall marks of being a writer

I’ve noticed that more and more that’s who I’ve been turning to when I’m not feeling very psyched about how my day’s going or when I’m feeling down on myself. Whatever bullshit my today self is doing, like watching TV and eating junk food and ignoring cleaning up my errors on my credit score, I can take comfort in knowing that my tomorrow self is going to work out and write and clean the fridge and generally be a better person who gets shit down. Too look at it kindly, I could say that my tomorrow self is aspirational.  That it’s both a benchmark and a source of hope. But realistically, I think my tomorrow self is fantastical, even a  little delusional, which I don’t mean pathologically. I mean my tomorrow self is getting in way of my today self and I’m living in a fantasy of who I am based on who I dream of being. I’ve got nothing against dreams. It’s just I feel I use them to get me off the hook of doing the hard work to actually achieve them, or at least to try to. I have a sneaking suspicion that my tomorrow self is becoming an escape and a much more embarrassingly elaborate escape than I described above because secretly I imagine my tomorrow self is wildy successful at something, as well as being in much better shape than I am today.

I probably sound much harsher than I actually feel because I think this whole tomorrow self thing is very human. We plan and we dream and we otherwise consider the future. There are a ton of songs and sayings about tomorrow being a new day and I think they speak to our desire for the chance to start over, or event re-invent ourselves, especially when things are crappy and fucked up or just terribly disappointing. That’s powerful stuff, especially if it can be dialed in to the moment. If every moment is the chance to start over.

I’ve got no conclusions except soon my tomorrow self is going to be older than I’d like. Soon being relative to a decade or two, probably. I’ve got no big declarations either. Except all the sudden I’m thinking of David Foster Wallace  and “This is water.”

By the way, one of my new favorite essayists, John Jeremiah Sullivan, wrote a review of DFW’s The Pale King. Great writing about great writing.

My mind is twisted up like a wet towel wrung tight and I should probably go to bed. Untwist the bugger if I can.

The combination of antibiotics and sleep is amazing. I’m no longer contemplating tragedies; nor am I groaning because I feel like crap all over. All this just in time for solstice, which I think I’ll commemorate by getting out of bed and taking a shower, which could be seen in the great solstice tradition of rebirthings and new beginnings, as me celebrating beginning of getting better.

I’ve been trying to reflect back on this year. In the past I’ve done this by making lists of favorite songs and books and movies and meals, but this year I’d like try to to pick out memorable events and occurrences and determine if there’s some bigger picture to tie it all together.  To that end I’ve got a list things that happened in 2011 that were meaningful to me or that I liked or that I feel grateful for.

1. Hanging out with Becky in Portland, especially riding bikes, especially at night.
2. Spending time with Lowen, my favorite nephew (who is technically not my nephew).
3. Seeing all of my family even though it was for the incredibly sad occasion of my grandmother’s funeral.
4. Flying from the funeral back to Portland with my sister and feeling glad I had a good shoulder for her to put her head on when we had to non-dramatically abort out landing in Las Vegas.
5. Spending 3 unexpected weeks getting to know Rachel’s cousins better.
6. Spending time with Martha in NYC.
7. Hosting a buddhist nun for 10 days at our house.
8. Camping near the Fossil beds with RU.
9. Writing and reading with the Thank You writers.
10. Figuring out how to teach my REDCap class.
11. Seeing, in person, art by Richard Serra, Willem De Kooning and Lucien Freud.
12. Walking the new section of the Highline.
13. Watching the sun set on the Hudson.
14. Stumbling across Occupy Wallstreet at its beginning.
15. Seeing Jennifer Egan at Wordstock and talking to her when she signed my book.
16. Learning to make great larb.
17. Growing green beans.
18. Making one batch of kick ass ice cream.
19. Eating Thanksgiving turkey and pie with my sister and niece.
20. Taking in a lot of the TBA, including seeing a really good play, The Method Gun. Thank you Susan.
21. Talking to RU on phone right after a retreat.
22. Spending time with Deirdre in DC.
23. Reading out loud part of a story I’m working on and making a lot of people laugh.
24. Listening to hymns when I was feeling sad.
25. Working in my yard. A lot.
26. Buying a bunch of shoes that I’m now trying to sell at Buffalo Exchange.
27. Feeling heartened by the Occupy Movement and feeling disgusted by the U.S. congress.
28. Feeling curiosity  and something like dread at the thought of turning 50.
29. Thinking a lot about my gender.
30. A really great dinner at June with the Uris’es and a great breakfast at Navarre with RU. Both vaguely birthday related events.
31. A couple nice long drives with RU around the Oregon country side.

I am sick. Sinusitis. I thought I  just had a crappy ass cold, but then yesterday I added a fever, chills, sore neck and aching face parts to the copious amounts of phlegm I’d been producing so today I headed to the doctor. Sitting up in the waiting room and in the office just about did me in. I kind of wanted to cry, but yay antibiotics! After just 1 dose and a longish nap, I’m starting to feel better.

I don’t get sick that often, but when I do my mind spins out in couple different ways. One, I think what if this is something worse, like today I got the idea of meningitis stuck in my brain, even though I clearly didn’t have most of the symptoms. Among other things, this led to Ween’s Spinal Meningitis song playing over and over in my mind. Two, I think how did people survive gulags and concentration camps and forced marches, etc. when they were sick. It seems so impossible, but somehow at least some percentage did survive. When I am sick, I think I would not be in that percentage. Sometimes, I also wonder why we never hear about the president being sick. Not just Obama, but any president. Even if it’s only a one term president, he must get sick enough at least once or twice in 4 years that he has cancel meetings and lie around in his presidential sealed pjs drinking tea with honey and lemon. Or maybe he gets some kind of crazy super inoculation shots as soon as he takes office.

Going to bed now.

Sunny and almost 70. Luxury weather for out here.  I spent most of the day working outside in my yard, which was not what I’d planned to do, but I got a lot of stuff done without having set out to do any of it. It was a kind of zen and very satisfying endeavor. Up until this year I’ve generally hated doing yard work, which was something I did not know about myself until RU and I bought this house. It’s funny how you find things out about yourself. This year, I don’t mind working in the yard. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it either. The warm and dry weather help. A ton. But I also think there’s a real shift too. I’m definitely more interested in the vegetables we are trying to grow. The slugs ate all the leaves off my turnip plants, which weren’t doing very well anyway because overall the temperature has been so cool this spring. And I’m sad because now I can’t find turnips anywhere. I encased my vegetables boxes with copper slug tape and I’m hoping that will work to protect what’s left of the cabbage and collards, which are also taking a beating from the slugs. I bought tomato cages when I got the slug tape today. I’m excited about tomatoes, although it needs to get quite a bit warmer for them and basil and green beans too. I’m trying to convince RU to let me experiment with growing some cantaloupe.

I did not plan on writing about vegetables or the weather but sometimes it’s just that simple. And simple is maybe not the right word. It is really about being alive and doing things that are about the business of living, like taking care of the yard and grocery shopping and cooking food and doing laundry. Things that are easy to take for granted or to see as a chore, until you think about tornadoes and earth quakes and air raids.

Passing on NYRB review of some current memoirs, which also includes some advice for all those aspiring memoirists out there. It’s good advice. Maybe hard to hear, but well worth taking the time to read.