proteanme

David foster Wallace killed himself this past weekend. I have been feeling really sad about it. Sad for him and his family. For his friends and his students. And sad to loose his voice. I’m sad we won’t be able to grow old with his voice growing old in our lives. I just started reading some of his essays this summer and I was pretty blown away by his writing. This excerpt is from a commencement speech he gave at Kenyon this past spring:

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible — sounds like “displayal”]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

Yep, today I almost bit it. I’m dead serious. Dump truck almost took me out. I was braking hard, dragging my feet, anything to stop before this fucker, who I don’t know how he didn’t see me except that he wasn’t looking, plastered me to his grill. And believe me, there would have been no walking away from it. Dumb luck for me that the dumb ass stopped his 5 ton vehicle at the last minute.

It was super fucking weird, though. The feeling I had staring at the truck and trying to stop. Not like the movies at all. I felt flat, underwhelmed, kinda pissed. A huge sense of “No way, man. I can’t believe this is it.” Had that same feeling years ago in a car accident. I was driving back from Indy to Btown with Licia and my jeep spun out on an ice patch on 67. It was so damn quiet in the jeep while we spun around. And I remember thinking, fuck, we’re gonna roll. Could die. Could very well die.

I was compelled to read this article about focus groups after getting hooked by this great lead in for the link: What Do Focus Groups Actually Tell Us? The only thing I can conclude is that swing voters are f-cking morons. The tag line made me thinking about morons fucking and the article made me think about how to win the moron vote. Ahhh, an afternoon spent in deep thought.

Today, I was asking a colleague (a guy)  in a super straight forward way what was up with a certain meeting invite and our new graphic designer (a girl)  overheard me and joked, “My, you’re sassy.”  How funny.  No one I know calls me sassy. It reminds me of how wait people will call me miss or lady, to which I always wanna respond something like, “I’ll tip you extra if you never say that to me again.”

It’s all these little things that add up to being read or not as butch.  Sometimes it’s uncomfortable, like getting the double take when I use the women’s restroom.  Sometimes it’s flattering, like the straight girl at the wedding party who can’t stop touching me when she when she wants to make a point.  Sometimes it awkward, like negotiating for service when I’ve gone shopping for a nice men’s suit.  But sometimes it’s just right, though, some girl will say or do just the right thing or some other butch will gimme the nod or bond with me over heartbreak and getting older.

It’s so interesting how thoughts and feelings that arise around something can harden you or soften you or both. I like the idea of both because I’d like to get away from all the binary thinking of this either/or culture. Say for instance I’ve have some unwanted experience, like rejection, I can get pissed and hurt and close myself off or I can feel sad and closer to the pain of other folks who I know are feeling rejected too. Especially folks who feel rejected by me. And for a second I can also see maybe it was never about rejection; maybe it was about someone seeking out connection or trying to soothe their loneliness and longing and fear; maybe it was about self-preservation; maybe it was was about timing.

Maybe it’s ok if I’m even a little softer than I thought I was.

I went to the Oregon State Fair last Friday.  It was more like a country fair on steroids than it was a statewide event.  Certainly not like Indiana’s.  And probably not like Illinois’ or Iowa’s or Ohio’s either.  It had the strangest combination of food.  Not a giant tenderloin in sight. And even if there were a variety of things on a stick, like corn dogs and berry kabobs, as well as some fair classics, like elephant ears, soft serve ice cream and grilled ears of corn, I was thrown off by the Thai and Hawaiian food booths and the one serving the yakisoba noodles just seemed out of place.

The animal barns were pretty good though, what with the goats and pigs and pygmy goats.  I got to feed apples to a long horn cow and her calf and talk to a women who was raising some call ducks that had been hatched and looked after by a chicken.  Pretty cool ckicken, man.

As fas as I could tell there was not a demolition derby, but there was a rodeo.  And that was fucking cool.  I saw a little barback riding, which was insane and then watched about 20 minutes of  tie-down roping. There is nothing more butch than a cowboy on his horse roping a calf, throwing it to the ground and tying up its legs in 7.1 seconds.

Finished off the night with Willie Nelson, who played for at least and hour and half. Sang every classic, voice sounding as good as ever, made a few jokes, jammed on his guitar and threw his bandana into the crowd.  I’ve missed seeing so mnay icons when I heard Willie was coming this yea, I said to myself no way am I gonng miss seeing Willie one more time.

When work comes up in therapy, it’s not a good sign.  As a rule, I don’t use this space to talk about my job, so I will leave it there.

I have been trying to write because I want to tell some stories that aren’t getting told, like Toni Morrison said “If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.”  Lemme be clear though, a book sounds kinda ambitious, at least once you’re sitting there on page three and hating yourself.  Hold your tongue RU! I had been telling myself for the last several months that I don’t need the help of a group or a class and I dunno why.  Bullheadedness, most likely.

Stayed up to watch Obama’s acceptance speech last night. Good stuff. Although Bill still gets the highest marks from me. The former President knows how to do it. He makes it look like the most natural thing in the world. What a gift, man. But anyway, Obama still gets good marks. And I’d love to see if this guy really can be at the forefront of issuing in a new era of government. Wow, wouldn’t that just blow everyone away. But I’d sign up to work as part of that government.

I watched this convention mostly because it was so historical and that in and of itself did provide some unexpected inspiration. To see so many women and African Americans on stage, not just as tokens, but as integral party members, was moving. Looked more like my world looks, minus raging queers. In fact, queers seemed suspiciously absent, unless I missed something, which is quite possible. I did find myself having a couple disassociative moments at the end of Obama’s speech when he called for compromises on abortion and gay marriage. A reminder of my still marginal status here in the US, being a dyke and having a uterus. For some reason it made me feel even more pissed and sad coming from the mouth of someone who should understand how much it sucks to be marginalized. I get it though. It’s about the economy and the war and global warming and I don’t wanna be a wedge issue on either side. Plus, I’m not a one issue voter, even if discrimination against my person, in the form of separate but equal marriage laws is complete and utter bullshit that pisses me off to no end. That’s why the asterisk’s up there. I just wanna say to the Dems, you owe me, ya know.

I’ve haven’t watched the Democratic Convention in a while, but man this year even I’ve been inspired. I dunno if it’s all the African American faces and the old school soul music or all the women on stage, but I’m almost moved to hope. Hillary gave a great speech last night. And Michelle Obama rocked the house the night before. Ted Kennedy wasn’t too shabby either. I keep waiting for a big butch dyke to get up there, but that’s another 10 or 20 years off. Still I did hear Hillary say gay rights last night.

Last year I was the same age as my dad was when my parents got divorced. I thought that was significant. But nothing special happened. I’m a year older now and the other night at a party I met a girl who has the same name as my dad’s last wife. We talked for a while.  She laughed at my stories. It was a fine evening.

Mostly, things just happen, ya know.  Meaning comes from the inside.