Stay of Execution

Road Trip

My weekend plans fell through unexpectedly and I found myself with a free weekend and a strong desire to get out of Maine.  I threw some things in a bag and some dogfood in a tupperware container and blazed west.  I find myself today in Saratoga Springs, New York -- a peculiar town if I've ever seen one.  It is like Newport, RI, only with horses instead of boats.  And the streets are wider.

I am staying in a fleabag motel around the corner from Yaddo, where a friend of mine is doing an artist's residency.  My motel is right across the street from one of the training rings and this morning the dog and I walked past all of these thoroughbred horses running along on their white taped ankles.  Horses are lovely mysterious creatures, each with an entourage of handlers and riders and drivers.  A cop was stopping traffic to let the horses cross the street.  You could see all the muscles in their anatomy rippling and pulling under their glossy brown coats. 

Last night there was a fun but bizarre little party for one of the resident artists who was leaving.  We convened in the long, empty white studio space assigned to one of the visual artists, with nothing in it but a couple of tables and chairs and a big vase of stargazer lilies.  My friend and I arrived first, with gin and tonic and limes and rum and tequila and coke.  We sat and talked to the visual artist, a charismatic 50s ish black man who kept talking about how overdramatic the writers at the colony are.  His iPod was hooked up to some small speakers and playing Miles Davis, and then later Prince.  A handful of other people trickled in -- an Irish filmmaker, a skinny screenwriter with a grey moustache who stared into his coffee cup of gin, a Spanish visual artist who spoke no English and a photojournalist who was the only person there who spoke fluent Spanish.  The guest of honor, a poet wearing white athletic socks under his Tevas, wanted to dance, not talk. 

I smoked half a cigarette.  The first few drags were wonderful.  The flavor of the tobacco and the mellow sensation of exhaling reminded me of college, when I used to smoke now and again at parties.  But before very long it started to taste stale and awful, and I rested the cigarette in the ashtray and watched it slowly turn to ash.    

Comfort Zones

I was at a board meeting of the Portland Yacht Club last night.  I confess to zoning out for a little while.  The day had been very hot, the kind of thick mid-eighties unstable air that means a thunderstorm will probably move through at the end of the day.  It hadn't come yet, and although the fan was on the air in the boardroom was uncomfortably warm.  During the treasurer's report or the Food and Beverage committee report or maybe a discussion about mooring insurance but I kind of mentally left the table, and stared out at the anchorage.  I was looking south and noticing the boats, all their bows pointing northwest, their sterns swaying a little bit to one side or the other.  I noticed a boat I hadn't seen before, and as I looked at it I thought about how much I like looking at boats.  And the thought slipped across my mind, "I would feel completely at home anywhere where I was looking at an anchorage full of boats."  For a moment I imagined being picked up and dropped into a board meeting at the San Diego Yacht Club or the Chicago Yacht Club and looking out at their waterfront and, yep, I felt pretty sure I would feel right at home there.

And as soon as that thought struck me I thought how peculiar that was.  I thought about what a strange and privileged and incorrect comfort zone that is, the sense that I could find safety and belonging at any yacht club I wandered into.  It made me feel a little bit sheepish, and it reminded me of something that happened to me in college.   

Note To Self: Don't Go To The Lobster Shack

You think that just because you really really want fried clams and everywhere else is closed you should go.  You think that you're tired and sunburned and it's 8:30 on a Sunday night and all you want to do is sit somewhere and eat fried clams and so it won't be so bad.  You think it might even be sort of nice to sit there at one of the picnic tables by the rocks, right on the breakers there, next to the fog horn, where you can watch the big ships approaching Portland Harbor across the wide grey ocean.  You think it won't be swarming with tourists. 

But it will.  It will be swarming with tourists and the stink from the unemptied dumpsters will be pervasive and drown out even the salty smell of the ocean and the rocky point and the beach roses right there on the rocks.  There will be harried teenaged staff and unpleasant music and bright lights and too much milling around and waiting.  It will drive you bonkers after only about ninety seconds of standing in line, and you will give up and go to a cool dark Mexican restaurant where even the piped-in mariachi music will feel like a relief. 

Just forget about the Lobster Shack.  It's for tourists, who don't know any better.  Ugh. 

The Ferris Wheel

I noticed today that the tiger lilies are out, trumpeting orange and green by the side of the road.  Tiger lilies are always a portent for me of summer's end.   Of course it's only early July, and nothing is over.  Still, we've hit the peak of midsummer, and have started the downswing toward fall.  It's not staying light out quite as late, I noticed last night.   The tops of the longest grass in the fields have faded from the sun, and will be brown soon.   

Since I was a kid, I've had a mental vision of a year as a ferris wheel.  January is at the bottom, and it is icy-blue in my imaginary picture.  You actually get on the ferris wheel a little above the bottom, in December, when my birthday is, and then you get swept backwards and down into January and February, when you start rising, creakily, up into the spring of March and April.  By May you can see an expanse of landscape starting to spread below you and time kind of slows down as you rise up into the yellow green of summer.  And right now we're at the tiptop, and swinging here in my bench I can see how the momentum is about to shift.  I can see the yellow-orange of August in these first tiger lilies, and I know in my stomach how the lurch and drop of September will feel like an increase of speed, into the orange-browns of October and the greys of November, until once again I get dragged backwards down in the low blues of January and climb up another year into spring.

I can't imagine what age I was when I started envisioning the year as a ferris wheel, but I always have.  And we're right at the top, in that impossible and beautiful suspense before we tilt forward and start to drop again. 

Fire the Scriptwriter!

I just had an imaginary conversation in my head with the cute kid who works in the coffee shop where I am sitting right now.  It all went to hell when I said something about my recent college reunion, and he (imaginarily) asked which reunion it was.  I then, imaginarily, got uncomfortable with how old I am, and asked him to guess.  What a cheeseball. 

(In actual conversation, I find it extremely irritating when someone asks someone else to guess how old they are, and I try not to do it, ever.) 

Skill vs. Talent

I was just running and while I was running I was thinking about Skill vs. Talent.  I mean by talent something you're born with, something you just know, and by skill something that you've learned through practice and experience and observation and study.  Actually I started off thinking about beauty vs. cuteness, with beauty being what you've got and cuteness being what you do with it consciously.  But I got distracted and ended up taking a personal inventory of my own skills and talents.  I don't think I'm very talented.  I'm not real skilled, either.  But I didn't especially worry about all that.  I was more looking at the arenas I function reasonably well in, and assessing whether it is because of skill, or talent, or both.

I'm not a talented sailor.  But I'm very experienced, and pretty interested, and, when motivated, highly coachable.  So I've become a pretty highly skilled sailor.

I think I'm a talented writer.  I'm learning to be a skilled writer.  That looks like a pretty steep hill.  I think I am skilled as an editor of other people's writing.  I'm not sure there's such a thing as being talented as an editor.

I'm a talented storyteller and teacher, in person.  I'm not particularly skilled.  So far, it's not been an aspiration, but it seems like a worthy one, now that I've uncovered it.  I'd like to learn the tricks of stage presence and body language better. 

I'm neither skilled nor talented athletically, as a runner or tennis player or ball thrower or catcher.  Once upon a time I might have been a talented swimmer, but I never built any skills.  All this walking and running and goal setting I've been learning to do has been about building skill in the absence of talent, and realizing that self-esteem can come from skill as well as from talent.

Intellectually, as a thinker, I'm more talented than skilled, and I'm perceptive enough to see that I've got neither the innate talent nor the discipline to build the skills to be a Great Mind.   

I'm both skilled and talented as a listener.  I have a natural curiousity and open-mindedness and friendly acceptance, and I've learned how to read people and reassure them and draw them out.

I'm a reasonably skilled cook and baker, without particular talent. 

I'm a reasonably talented draw-er (by which I mean sketches and cartoons and depictions) with very few skills. 

I've got some kind of natural talent for leading and organizing, some kind of social credibility and authority.  I am very unskilled.  I am beginning to learn some skills, but they can't come too soon. 

I Am Thinking A Lot

What's new, right?   I'm thinking about unresolved-ness, those relationships that somehow contain a tension of some unfulfilled expectation.  I'm thinking about confidence and progress.  I'm thinking about family and foundation.  I'm thinking about a second wind, and how you come to trust that if you do something you don't feel like doing, somehow despite yourself you'll catch a second wind and start wanting to be doing it.  I watched "About A Boy" last night and during that pivotal scene I was both laughing and crying at the same time and I am thinking about that.

But I'm not going to write too much, I don't think, for a few days.   I'll be sailing and welcoming my sweetie back into the country after his long trip abroad, and planning a 4th of July Scavenger Hunt and going running and sitting in the sun. 

Being Female

I was watching a couple of friends of mine yesterday, aged approximately 6 and 8.  The 6 year old girl is very girly, and has been as long as I've known her (a couple of years).  When I arrived she was wearing a purple T shirt with sparkly hearts on it, and pink sandals.  She was holding a "Brat" which is a kind of teenaged version of Barbie (except for the genius marketing innovation that Brats travel in packs -- collect them all!) and our first activity was to undress and re-dress the Brat. Later she was drawing pictures of mermaids.  Lots of mermaids.  An unexpected twist was that she had developed a morbid streak since I'd seen her last, so some of the mermaids were vampire mermaids, with magic hair that could grab other mermaids, squeeze them, and empty their blood into cups.  Yikes!  Anyway, as she drew her pictures, notwithstanding the addition of the vampires, witches, and zombies, I noticed that all of the characters were female.  There were babies, and flowers, and lots of attention to the hair.  I thought, 'This little girl is preoccupied with the concept of being female.  Where does all this girliness come from?'

I am not very feminine a lot of the time.  I'm a late-blooming girl. I'm still a stranger to a lot of the parts of me that are traditionally seen as "feminine" traits (e.g. intuition, love of beauty, sensitivity, receptiveness, vanity, changeability), and when they show up I'm not always very kind or welcoming or accepting of them.  Although I'm learning to, gradually, I don't innately trust their strength.  As a result of not playing around with these parts of myself I am only now figuring out things like how to put on makeup, or how to dress myself.  Not that those external manifestations are what it means to be feminine, but I think maybe distrusting the feminine traits suppressed my curiosity about the girly accessory parts.  So yesterday watching this girl playing I guess I felt a little envious.  She's thinking about it about 25 years earlier than I started to.  I felt behind.  How am I going to figure out my femininity?  I'm too old to play with Brats. 

I know a man who became a woman.  I had lots of questions when the man I knew started down the path of becoming a woman, but the one that never crossed my mind was, "Why would a man want to be a woman?"  Today I was talking to a man who used to be a woman, and after our conversation all I could think was, "Why would a woman want to be a man?"  I can't imagine it.  Which I guess means I'm more connected to being female than I realized.  It's deep, perhaps impossible to articulate.

I Don't Know Whether To Be Happy Or Sad

Hanging out with my pregnant best friend, talk turned naturally to college basketball and the NBA draft picks.  Because I'm living under a rock here, I hadn't heard what happened.  Ooh, I don't want to know -- tell me tell me, oh no, oh no, I don't want to know.  Okay, no, tell me.  Who did they take from the Tar Heels?  I screwed up my eyes and crossed my fingers and she told me.  Marvin Williams, gone.  Felton, gone.  May, gone.  McCants, gone.  Ouch.  Manuel and Jawad Williams and Scott graduated.  Ouch.  I couldn't think of a player we have left.  Noel?  Can't remember if this was his junior or senior year.

We did win the championships this year, so I can't blame the boys.  And I am so glad Felton and May will still be playing on the same team.  And I'm proud that Felton was the #5 draft pick.  He's my favorite.  But I went and looked at the roster and it's a bunch of names I don't know.  Yikes. 

What You Worship

Via PJM, I just read the transcript of David Foster Wallace's commencement address at Kenyon. Even if you think he's irritating, which I do about half the time, this is worth reading.   

Here's the part I really liked:

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.

I've had a series of conversations lately about this, in connection with my own professional reflections, about which maybe I'll write more later.  I didn't think I worshipped my intellect, but I was beginning to.  I think it's hard to be a lawyer without a certain amount of intellect -worshipping.  I didn't think I worshipped money or power, but walking away from a path that promised those things has been harder than I wish it were. 

But the point David Foster Wallace makes is so important.  We get to choose, each day, what to worship.  It's good to recognize that we have that choice.  And it's good to consider whether choosing something that will eat us alive makes any sense at all.

A Small, Good Thing

I got a call yesterday, and a follow up email today, from a magazine editor, offering me money for a piece I sent.  I accepted the offer.  If all goes well, they may just publish it.  So that made my day.  I'd been feeling sort of hopeless and despondent about my writing aspirations, so it came at a good time.

Another small good thing is that my best friend is in town.  Well, actually, in New Hampshire.  But that's close enough.  I'm going to see her tonight.  Since she's almost five months pregnant, I've been thinking almost exclusively about seeing her belly.  Last night on the phone I had to stop myself and say, "um, Autumn, of course I'm also looking forward to seeing you."  And then I went back to asking questions about her belly. 

Too Hot

It's bouncing between 98 and 100 degrees here.  I just spent 5 hours helping a friend move.  It's too hot to do anything else, except go for a swim, and maybe wash my car.  Catch you later.

You're Only As Old As You Feel

I took my 16 year old cousin, his girlfriend, and his best friend sailing today.  When I got to where I was picking them up the best friend was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, with a hemp hat pulled low, dark shades, and a walkman on.  My cousin and his girlfriend were locked in an impassioned embrace up against the wall of a store, making out.  The girlfriend was wearing a black and white corset and a short black skirt with an irregular hem, giving an illusion of tatters.  My cousin was wearing a Superman T-shirt and knee-length shorts and a big leather armband that had a watch face in it.  The best friend was in baggy pants with hems that dragged on the ground, and had someone's telephone number written in thick black magic marker along the inside of his forearm. 

We went for a sail, out around Clapboard Island and then up to watch the start of the Thursday Night Race.  I think they dug it.  I brought a beer for each of us, which they thought was pretty cool, and we ate pretzels.  We talked about Ireland, where my cousin moved a year ago (and hates it), and about jobs and about a kid in one person's class who had a heart attack right in computer lab.  I asked them to teach me the slang and they talked to me about the difference in meaning between "bad 'ghetto'" and "nice 'ghetto.'"  Apparently 'ghetto' as a descriptor either means very run-down or the opposite, all 'pimped out and blingy.'  We discussed the synonyms for getting bested in a verbal sparring match: you got served, you got faced, you got dissed, you got shot down, you got done.  Something that's cool may also be known as 'sick,' 'ill,' 'mad,' 'nasty,' or some combination (e.g. 'sicknasty' or 'nastyill').  And smelch is something bad, but can be used in almost any context: "He's a smelch" or "he's such a smelcher" or "His smelchitude score is really high."  Occasionally I would interrupt and point out an osprey flying by clutching a fish, or to tell them a story about a boat or an island we were passing.   

On the ride home, we talked about drugs.  I asked what the prevalence of different drugs were in their schools -- a private school in Ireland, and a couple of local public schools.  Pot is most prevalent, although in Ireland it's hash.  Then Adderall and Valium, locally, but not so much in Ireland.  I told them we didn't have a lot of prescription drug abuse when I was in high school.  I asked how kids take Adderall.  You can 'rail' it or 'parachute' it, apparently.  Railing is crushing it and snorting it; parachuting it is crushing it, wrapping it in a sheet of toilet paper, and swallowing it.  People with ADHD can usually get extra pills, and sell them for $20 to $30 a pill, especially to someone who's kind of slow and doesn't know anywhere else to get them.  Nobody really uses acid, they told me -- it's hard to get.  But we have opium, one of them said.  I know a guy who grows shrooms, another one said.  In Ireland it's PCP.  I posed the hypothetical of how long it would take them to procure a certain substance if I approached them during third period with enough money.  Pot, prescription drugs would all take about half an hour.  Cocaine and crack would take maybe a day.  I could get you opium by three o'clock, if I had a car.  Heroin would take longer -- maybe a couple of days, and I'm not sure I could get it for you, but I'd know in a few hours if I could get it.

They were interested in this conversation; we arrived at their destination but they didn't make any move to get out of the car.  Instead they sat fielding my questions and comparing notes about their schools.  There's this kid who was dealing out of the chemistry lab at one school, one told.  He would put the stuff in a drawer, and then someone would come later and put the money in it, and that's how they did the deals.  One day a teacher got to it first.  Another told about the day a drug-sniffing dog came to school, and all kinds of kids just left classes and headed to their lockers to dispose of the evidence.  My old high school is apparently loaded with drugs now.   Back in my day there was plenty of pot, shrooms, acid.  I think there was some cocaine but it would have taken me a while to locate a source if someone had asked me to find it.  I didn't know anyone doing heroin or opium, and only a few people with prescription drugs. 

I opened the car door and got out, and all of them gave me a hug and thanked me.  They're nice kids -- funny, bright, agreeable, tuned in, friendly.  They walked off together, teasing each other and laughing, and I drove home thinking about what I'd learned.    

Sweet Abundance

I have enormous snowballing peonies on the south side of my house (and two more hearty but not-yet-blooming ones on the shady north side).  I have two full vases on the counter, and was out cutting two jelly jars more to give to the friends I'm meeting for dinner later on.  I like to cut these flowers.  I like the way there are a few friendly black ants crawling around the plants, one in every flower, it seems.   I like the way the old flowers, just past peak, shed their petals all at once if you give their stalk a shake -- the petals quivering as they fall, and smelling like soft white silky sweetness.  I like the way the new buds shoot out from the elbows of the old, the tiny little red-tipped round heads on dark greeny-red stalks bursting out of the stalks right where a dark green leaf emerges from the main stem.  I like the way the weight of these heavy rich white flowers will tip the plant over unless you stake it up.  I like the way the petals hold dewdrops, so they seem always to be soft and a little moist.

While I was cutting my flowers three little neighborhood girls were playing a game in one of their dad's truck, parked at the curb at the end of my front walkway.  They were climbing up over the rear fender into the bed, then jumping out the side.  They were hollering to one another in their small sing-songy voices, telling one another the rules of a game that seemed to me unrelated to the climbing up and jumping out of the truck.  "We're playing house!  You're the stepmother and I'm the real mother."  "What about Isabel?" "She can be another stepmother, because you can't have two mothers." "Look, look, this is where you jump out."  "And that's the grocery store." 

When I was done cutting I looked at my peony plant, still covered in big blooms.  I cut another flower and offered it to one of the little girls.  She ran squealing to her friends and soon I had two more girls approaching, one brazen and one squirmy and shy.  I let them pick out the blooms they wanted and they plunged their noses into them.  Pretty soon their moms approached.  "Oh, how beautiful!  Can I have one, too?"  I passed around flowers and we introduced ourselves and talked about weather, and lawns, and the neighborhood. 

Family Day

Today I spent the day on the water, with my dad, running a regatta that my dad's dad, my grandfather, founded maybe 40 years ago.  That's a pretty cool way to spend Father's Day.  At the awards ceremony, after I had presented all the trophy winners with their prizes (these bags, embroidered with "PYC Pilot Race 2005" and "1st", "2nd" or "3rd"), I announced a special prize, to a volunteer without whom, I said, I couldn't have done any of this.  I gave my dad one of the bags, embroidered with "PYC Pilot Race 2005: Best Dad" and thanked him in front of the assembled throng of sailors. 

Now I'm home long enough to change my clothes, run a brush through my hair, and head out to a restaurant where my parents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, and my grandmother will celebrate my grandmother's birthday.  I feel grateful to have a family I enjoy so much. 

A Peach

I ate my second peach of the summer this morning.  It was ripe and juicy but not yet at that peak summersweet magic.  Still, as I picked peach flesh out from between my teeth, I found myself with Prufrock in my head.  I can't eat a peach without thinking about that poem and about an essay about New York that Joan Didion wrote.  Then I get stuck with misremembered poetry in my head.  In high school I was made to memorize the end of Prufrock, but instead of remembering that part, fragments of the whole poem come back and mix themselves around in my memory out of order.  So I looked it up:

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 

Shall I part my hair behind?  Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. 
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of  the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Re-Gifting

Back at Christmastime, Housemate received a miniature teapot from a well-meaning co-worker.  The teapot was in a box, and was the kind of thing you might buy at a Hallmark shop.  It was too small for more than a cup or a cup and a half of tea.  It had pastel flowers on it, or maybe pastel bears.  It was one of the worst kind of Christmas gifts -- something the recipient doesn't value at all and can't use, and something the gifter spent some money on and obviously thought was tasteful and sweet.

We pondered the teapot for a while, not wanting it in the house but feeling guilty about getting rid of it.  And then we were walking one day and hit upon the perfect solution.  There's a little old lady who lives on the other corner of my block, in a rambly one-story house.  Her lot has huge trees on it, and a couple of brambly rosebushes, and is in that unattended state of disrepair that you see with old people's houses.  The little old lady who lives there rarely comes out.  In the six years I've been here I've only seen her a handful of times, wearing huge wraparound dark glasses and slowly making her way down the steps to get in a car with her kids.  There's a sunporch on the east side of the house that has shelves on the glass walls, crammed to the rim with trinkets: collectible coffee mugs, ceramic lighthouses, ashtrays, figurines, and, yes, teapots.  The side windows, covered with gauzy curtains, don't hide the fact that the whole house is full of these things.  Every windowsill has a line of vases or cups or mugs on it.   

So last December we wrapped that teapot back up in its box in Christmas paper, and in the dark stillness of Christmas morning I crept over to her house and left the present on her front steps, unsigned.  Sneaking back to my house, feeling sure she would find the box and be delighted by the teapot was a private happiness I had all day. 

Over the course of the winter our walks took us past her house plenty of times.  As we passed we kept an eye open for the teapot to appear on the racks of ceramic keepsakes on the sunporch.  There are so many that it was hard to know for sure whether it was there.  This morning, though, unmistakably, we saw it in the second window on the north side, in a place of honor by itself.  We stopped in the road and elbowed one another.  Take a look at that.  We high fived and walked the rest of the way home with big grins. 

The Finger

I drove north to a wedding this weekend.  On my way up I was behind a truck with a couple of guys about my age in it.  They were doing a little bit of road flirting with me -- passing, waving at me, pulling over and letting me pass, etc.  There was traffic, and a merge, and they ended up considerably ahead of me on the other side of the road construction bottleneck.  I saw them passing an 18 wheeler and as they did so both the driver and the passenger shot their arms out of their windows, middle fingers extended, and waved them at the 18 wheeler.  I can't imagine why.  I didn't know people still did that.  I was trying to think about the last time I've seen an adult give someone else the finger.  It was a long time ago. 

Unsorted College Reunion Bits

• There is such a thing as a "warm acquaintanceship."  I didn't know this at my 5th year reunion.  I thought that if I genuinely liked and respected someone, one or both of us should feel guilty that we hadn't been in touch, and we should apologize and make amends and resolve to be active and friendly participants in one another's lives.  I don't feel that way anymore.  There are people I think are great, and am delighted to know, and can have meaningful and challenging conversations with, and wish all kinds of good things upon, and feel easily myself with, and know I won't lift a finger to see again.  That's okay.  If our paths cross or circumstances conspire to bring us together, wonderful.  If not, it's nobody's fault.  I hope to see them again in 5 more years.  No need to promise or demand more.

Why You Should Go To Your College Reunion

1) You forge new relationships with people from your school.   You will discover that the range and kinds of relationships you can have in your life are broader now than they were when you were in college.  You will meet people you never knew then, you will be able to talk to people who intimidated you then, you will remember people you liked but lost touch with.  You will see the manifestations of so many different kinds of talent and potential, applied in all different directions.  You and your classmates are connected, even if you never met while you were in school, and there is a kind of access and discourse and even trust possible with these people that isn't quite like what you have with anyone else in your life.  These people, and the relationship you have with them, is what I was thinking about when I wrote Why Go To An Ivy League School.

2) You will forge a new relationship with yourself.  You will experience sudden memories, evoked by people and places and smells, or just the shadow of an oak on a slate walkway in a particular low slanting light, and these felt memories will be a mirror on your own past.  You will understand who you were then, and who you are now, in a fundamentally different way.  You are the same person who was here so long ago, and yet you have changed and grown and can hardly believe you were ever so young.  You will discover that you were in the Sistine Chapel and you didn't know enough to look up.  You will discover that the myth you've been telling yourself about your college experience is not nuanced or accurate, or very useful.  You will realize how much you absorbed and learned while you were here, and how much you weren't able to see and comprehend, and you will realize how different your filters have become in the intervening years.  I think you will feel relief, and gratitude, for how far you have come.

3) You will forge a new relationship with your school.  You will realize that things you blamed on it were not its fault, were not inevitable, were accidents of the filter you carried and the individual path you stumbled onto when you were too young to know better.  You will realize that things you have blamed on yourself were not your own fault, but were failures of the school or the department, oversights of preoccupied scholars who did not see you falling through the cracks.  You will realize that your school is always your school, that you have not wasted your chance to know it.  You will realize that in some way you are always welcome there, if you choose to go back. 

What I've Got Going For Me

• I have my health, which I now appreciate.
• I live with the world's best dog.
• I live with a dear friend, in a house that I own (well, me and the bank).  I have a big yard and a garage full of surfboards and cross country skis and bikes and wetsuits and a grill.  The roses and the peonies will be blooming shortly.  My house is a drop-by place, where people pop in to visit and stay for dinner.  There is lots of lending and borrowing and potlucking and sleepovers.
• I have a warm and full social life, with interesting friends who are generous with their time and their laughter.  I still see people I knew in elementary school, and I'm still making new friends, and when people come to my house they open up to me and to one another and the result is happy times. 
• I am close to my mom and dad, who I admire and enjoy, and see them often. 
• I have a law degree, and I've learned some law, and I've gotten to know a lot of smart and interesting lawyers.
• I have a sailboat, sitting on my grandfather's mooring, and an all-girl Hooked On Tonics sailing team who I love to race with.
• I am trying to do something I've always wanted to do, even though it's scary.
• I'm smitten with a sweet man who knows a lot about boats and a lot about words and sees the beauty in the world.
• I am on the board of the Portland Yacht Club, a place that has mattered to me my whole life, and I love feeling like I'm helping take care of the place. 
• I feel very connected to my community. 
• I have a blog. 

I'm feeling better about this reunion already.

Love Stories

This Fish posted recently about a failed relationship.  One of the problems, she notes, was a blog post about a previous relationship that the fellow she was dating didn't like.  She is angry at him, it is clear, and her post is not kind.   The disputed post isn't kind, either.  There's a bee sting in both of the posts, the narrator rubbing a red welt and lashing out at the men who inflicted it.  In each post, she tells someone else's secrets, in a voice of contempt.  It makes me sad.   I like This Fish for her honesty, but I also like her because I sense that she is kind.  Posts like these, with the attendant dozens of "you go, girl!" comments from loyal readers who relish the snarky deconstruction, make me feel betrayed in that belief.  These stories are hers to tell, I suppose, but they also hold the secrets of men whose lives she touched.  Even if the men aren't worthy romantic partners, they are people, not anecdotes, and if she cared enough about them to feel stung and disappointed, they deserve better than caricature.  I hate that people seem to like contempt so much.   

I blog from time to time about my own romantic life.  Mostly, I don't.  That's for a lot of reasons.  The most obvious one is that my romantic life is in flux, and has been for most of the life of this blog.  I'm afraid to count on it when things are good, and I'm afraid to tell the truth and expose my vulnerability when things are bad.  I'm afraid to write about it because my words, out there in public, might affect my real-world life.  I'm afraid to acknowlege my longing, give power to my fears, own up to my confusion.  I'm afraid to clutch too tightly to happiness.  I haven't managed to hold on to it yet.

The alternative is this strange coy silence, as if I'm not all those things: confused, longing, vulnerable, happy, afraid.  I am all of them, sometimes all at once, sometimes in quick succession, and sometimes one at a time, flooded and overwhelmed.  I haven't learned how to write about it.

Do you know anyone who does, without sounding hardened, or stung, or contemptuous?  I'd like to read that kind of writing: honest, from someone with an open heart.   

What I Am Thinking About Today

1) Where does shame come from?  I know what makes it go away, but I don't know where it comes from. 

2) How do I want my life to look in a year?

3) Personal power politics that flare up in organizations, and how I can defuse them.

4) What to plant in my side garden this year.

There's more, of course, but those four subjects are taking up about 60% of my brain space.  The shame question really interests me. 

I Feel Pretty

Sorry about that rant below.  Here are two pictures from a recent excursion with a friend to buy her wedding dress.  We're trying to find the most outrageous bridesmaid dresses.  These two are good, but I bet we can do better.

 

Big Paper

My Housemate invented a thing called "Big Paper."  Well, obviously there was big paper before my Housemate came along.  But when we talk about Big Paper we talk about "doing Big Paper" or having a "Big Paper session."  Big Paper is a way we figure things out.  It's how we identify blocks and sort out our options and begin to see what we want to do about something.  We did Big Paper yesterday and it was, as usual, surprising and helpful and powerful.

To do Big Paper you need two people.  You need big paper -- poster size, or a great big sheet of newsprint.  You need a pen and some colored pencils or markers.  The person with the problem talks, and the other person draws and writes on the big paper.  The second person asks questions but does not contribute ideas.  If you are the scribe during Big Paper, your job is to get clear what the person with the problem feels and thinks. 

Big Paper is important because a lot of blurts and unrelated ideas are going to come out.  On a big sheet of paper there's room to make separate lists or to put questions that seem important but aren't directly related to the conversational thread you're on right now.  You can stick them over in a corner of the page and circle them in pink crayon and get back to them later.  Yesterday I had asked Housemate to describe what wild professional success would look like in her life, and she was telling me the attributes of the ideal work situation.  She mentioned collaboration and the concept of working collaboratively.  That spun off an arrow pointing to another section on the big paper on which we listed all of the kinds of collaboration she does in her life now, informal and formal, and distinguished with color and stars the good kinds of collaboration and those that feel stunted and forced.  We could go back and forth between the vision of wild success and the attributes of current collaborations in her life easily, without moving the paper or running out of room in either section. 

The job of a Big Paper scribe is tricky.  You need to ask questions to tease out the assumptions in your friend's statements.  (e.g. "why do you want to stay in this job?"  "I think it's the only one I can get."  Obviously, absurd.  But you write down, "I feel like this is the only job I can get."  And then you ask, "how come you feel like you couldn't get a different job?"  And you write down the answer.  What comes up will be irrational and outdated, fears and invisible blocks.  Your friend will roll her eyes after she says some of them, because they're silly.  That's the point.  We all end up blocked by imagined barriers, and sometimes we can't even see them.  Big Paper helps.

We do Big Paper for one another a few times a year, and we have friends who come over for Big Paper when they're overwhelmed or confused.   It's really useful.   

Things I Hardly Know Anything About

That last post was interesting because the question of comparative knowledge made me think about what other people know as well as what I know.  For example, I think I'm reasonably good at cooking but a lot of people know a lot about cooking so I probably shouldn't have put that down as something I know more about than most people.  I know some things about gardening and plants but way too many people know lots more than I do.  And, I'm a good dog owner and I spend lots of time watching dogs and dog behavior but I don't think I know more than most dog owners, and they're so common in the population that I couldn't say I'd know more than 7 or 9 people out of 10. 

Writing the post got me thinking about what I am pretty sure I would know LESS about than 7 or 9 people out of 10 selected randomly off the street:

-- popular television shows and movies and music
    what's out and who it's popular with and whether it's considered good or bad
    identifying stars and what they've done
    who's who on TV
-- American history
    who did what, when, and why. 
-- Politics
   -- who's doing and saying what, who's a democrat or a republican, what's happening in Congress
   -- international relations, alliances, and hostilities
-- Religion
   -- what different religions and denominations believe, and how they act
   -- who's who in the Bible
-- Home maintenance and construction
    -- do it yourself stuff
    -- price and degree of difficulty of various remodeling tasks
-- Golf, baseball, and car racing
    -- rules and personalities
-- Automobile prices, care, maintenance
-- the military
       organizations and structure
       equipment
       history
-- Pregnancy and the care and development of babies and young children (I am learning more all the time, but I bet most people know a lot more than me about this stuff)

Things I Know Something About

I got off a call today and thought, wow, I'm turning into someone who knows something about this topic.  It got me thinking about the things I know something about.  I decided to make a list.  My criteria for "knowing something about" is not expert status, but topics or situations where I think that if you selected 10 people at random, I'd trust myself and my own knowledge and expertise better than at least 9 of them.   The list, as it occurs to me right now, is below the fold:

Dread Day

Today is dread, fear, and shame day.  I'm dealing with all the things I've been putting off, big and small, that give me a small sinking feeling when I think about them.  Ugh.  I think I'll feel really good at the end of the day.  But looking ahead to it -- the phone calls I don't want to make, the stuff in the pile on my desk that I haven't particularly felt like dealing with, yucchy. 

A Reminder

I bet you've forgotten how good apricot preserves are, haven't you?  You might wish to refresh your memory.  Yum.

How To Be Happy Part 2: Get Enough Sleep

You'll feel better.  You'll feel really good. 

Getting enough sleep means taking care of yourself.  It means noticing what things you eat or drink that disrupt your ability to fall asleep.  It means going to bed early, which means giving up some things, and probably turning off the television.  It means being willing to lie in the dark stillness and let your brain roam for a while before you get pulled away into sleep.  That's kind of nice time, if you're open to it.  Making friends with yourself, your unclogged mind, will make you happy, and that still time before you naturally fall asleep is one of the nice ways to do it.  Sometimes that untended brain will race around with worry but as you make its acquaintance you'll learn how to calm it down, how to let it drift gently around.  My edge-of-sleep mind plays with detailed imagery -- I see submarines or beaded jackets or landscapes, and if I have a sleeping companion I describe what I see, in a semi-conscious trancey stupor.  It's an inventive slideshow of random images that leads me into dreams. 

Getting enough sleep means learning what makes you feel good and doing it.  Maybe a bedtime ritual?  Maybe a poetry book beside your bed to read and think about?  Maybe a children's chapter book that you remember from when you were a kid?  Maybe stars on your ceiling?  Maybe one sock? 

Getting enough sleep might mean taking naps at first.  Mmmm, naps.  It means making room in your life to be healthy.  You'll like it. 

Help Wanted

I need help with something.  Will you help me? 

-- You need to be a nice person.
-- You need to be able to keep a secret.
-- You need to like me, at least a little bit.
-- You need to be forthright.
-- It's probably better if you don't know me in person, although that's optional.   I guess real-life friends are welcome, too.  But strangers are the best. 
-- It might be a little bit fun.
-- This is a favor I'm asking, not a job.

No, it's nothing illegal. I just don't want to write about it on the web right now, because it's sort of just taking shape in my head.

If you're willing to help me, please shoot me an email and/or leave a comment with your contact info and I'll send you details, as I figure them out.

[UPDATE 4/28.  Still accepting helpers, until tonight when I go to bed, so don't be shy just because others have signed up.]

[UPDATE 4/29.  All set, thanks.]

Weekend Report

Don't you nosy snoops have anything better to do than to wonder about my clumsy old love life?

Sigh.

Didn't this post tell you all you needed to know about how it went? 

Don't you know that I have no interest in becoming Stephanie Klein: mining my own and other peoples' emotional vulnerability and then cutting, shaping, and polishing the fragments into glistening shiny pieces intended to dazzle a hungry flock of spectators?  She's a terrific writer and in moments real, wise, and luminous, but so much of her writing lacks kindness.  She tells other people's secrets without hesitation, and although she appears to expose everything about herself, there's something contrived and at times a little bit cruel about her confessions.  I have the same impulse to tell all, to sort and process my experiences by writing about them, but I am very, very suspicious of that kind of narcissism in myself.  I hold back a lot.    

Sheesh. 

Plus, what is that physics principle that says you affect the nature of a particle by observing it?  Is that Heisenberg, or someone else?  I think Heisenberg said you can either know where something is in space or time, but not both.  And related to that, somehow, is the fact that you change something just by looking at it. And plus plus, he's one of you, a blog reader.  How would you feel about dating me, if you knew I might process my thoughts here? 

So lay off if I don't say too much.  Those are my disclaimers. 

Now I'm going to go ahead and tell you about my weekend. 

A Cup of Tea

I met a couple of friends for a 6 AM breakfast this morning at a little diner I like.  We got there right at 6, when the place was just opening, and we were the first customers.  The sky outside was overcast so it was a little bit dark and chilly.  We yawned and pulled our coats around our shoulders as we sat in the booth.  We all ordered tea.  I like getting tea at this place because they bring you a big teapot, not one of the stingy little mini metal ones, but a nice big one with three or four cups worth of water in it.  They give you a selection of teabags on the side -- not the classiest way to serve tea, but it's acceptable, because the variety is usually decent.  But today the selection was only herbal teas, with the basic bulk-order Salada or Lipton equivalent black tea for someone who wanted caffeine.  I was hoping for Constant Comment or Earl Grey or English Breakfast.  I asked if there might be more behind the counter, and the waitress dug up a Lemon Lift.  Better than nothing.  But then I poured the hot water from the teapot into my cup and discovered that the water was lukewarm, not hot.  By this time I felt like a high-maintenance complainer, so I didn't say anything.  But there's nothing more disappointing than lukewarm water when you're looking forward to a cup of tea.  You really aren't going to get what you want.

The best place to get a cup of tea in Portland is Artemesia Cafe, which is one of my secret places so I'm not going to tell you where it is.  They have a great variety of teas, and they will brew a pot and serve you a teapot that's just the right size, and pretty to boot, with a pretty little cup and saucer that's fun to drink out of.   The second best place to get a cup of tea is Arabica Cafe, which is not a secret and in fact is almost too public to go to anymore because you won't be able to get anything done because you'll run into lawyers and fishermen and people whose faces are familiar but whose names you can't remember and you'll forget what you were thinking about because you're trying to remember their name.  Arabica doesn't give you a teapot, but they brew the tea themselves and they are very strict about it -- they let the tea steep the right amount of time, then take out the tea strainer and bring your cup of tea to you.  Most places will just throw loose tea into a filter and put it in your cup and give it to you, leaving you to decide when to take it out, but Arabica is strict and won't even give you the tea until it's right, which is kind a fun little ritual in and of itself. 

Stunner

I found myself making a list today of people who I know who strike me as truly happy, as in, if you were writing a book about being truly deeply happy you'd want to talk to them about how they assembled their lives and how they maintain the balance and focus that gives them joy.  People who make you feel relaxed and inspired around them. 

Making the list was hard.  Really hard.  It is a very short list.  I began shaking my head as I was making the list.  Can this be true?  Are so few people living lives that make them really happy?  Am I being too hard on people?  I don't think so.  I know lots of brave people, honest people, kind people, contented people, and even dissatisfied people who are steadily improving their lives.  But deeply happy people, hmmmmm.  They're a rare breed. 

Pictures

I wished I had a camera on several moments this weekend.  Then I read my dad's blog and discovered he'd posted some pictures much like the ones I might have taken.  I, too, was just at Brooklin Boat Yard, and I climbed in and around Goshawk, a lovely 76' sloop, cold-molded and fast-looking, built for racing but trimmed out below in gorgeous wood. 

A Tiny Violin

Housemate has an art school class this semester called Temporal Forms, or something like that.  I haven't fully been able to figure out what it's about.  Her projects have been ephemeral in various ways -- e.g. a plate of cookies with one bite taken out of them, next to a plate of full cookies, with an invitation to the audience to participate in the installation.  Anyway, her final performance of the semester is tomorrow, and for it she is sitting in a small chair on which she has attached a seatbelt.  She has rented a tiny violin, a real one, but built for a very small child, and she is playing it.  On a music stand, instead of music, she has a map.  She is wearing big noise-blocking headphones and putting the map to music on the violin.  At some point during the performance a buzzer goes off and a bell starts clanging.

Her boyfriend and I were in the kitchen after dinner talking while she was playing the tiny violin.  Although Housemate is actually an accomplished violinist, the instrument by its nature has a fairly jarring sound -- it is high, and screechy, shrill, and poorly balanced.  The map as a tune is rather abstract, with a fair amount of stopping, starting, and adjusting of pace.  The bell that interrupts surprises me every time.  The whole thing is a bit unnerving, which I think is the point.  If I have children, I think I'll guide their musical talents (if any) away from the violin. 

I Hope I Die Before I Get Old

It's too late for that, of course.

David Weinberger has an interesting summary of a panel at a computer conference asking teenagers how they use technology to communicate.  Seems worth reading, if you want to talk to anyone from a different generation.  And I think all of us, especially those in business and law, should know how to talk to all kinds of people, not only in plain vocabulary, but also in a medium that is comfortable for them. 

Also, (not that it's going to help me with the youngsters any) I'm going to be dragged into the podcasting world by Zane Safrit when he interviews me about LexThink next week. 

Sunshine, Rain

Woke up at 5 AM to a flash of lightning and, almost instantly, a crack of thunder, and noisy rain hitting the roof like a truckload of marbles.  It cleared up a bit before I left, but when I got on the road it was a dense mist, like driving through a cloud.  The grass was crazy green; forsythia had opened overnight.  It rained in Palermo, where I got stuck behind two pulpwood trucks.  It was sunny in Richmond, and by Portland looked like a nice day.  I couldn't quite get the wipers on the right setting and kept switching from nothing to slow to regular to fast.  But here, too, the sky is patchy and I just heard what sounded like hail on the window and it was grey and dreary and wet.  But now the sun is out again, with the patchy puddles evaporating off the sidewalk and the daffodills nodding their yellow heads.

That's kind of what my weekend was like. 

There Goes the Neighborhood

I live in a funny little secret neighborhood that's bordered on three sides by water -- a tidal estuary and the shallow harbor -- and on the fourth side by the highway.  Lest you think me one of the yuppies, my house is definitely on the low rent side: no water view, and constant low grade highway noise.  Still, I love my neighborhood.  It's quiet (besides the hum of the highway, I mean).  There's no through traffic, just neighborhood residents, because all of the streets are dead ends.  It's two streets wide and three and a half streets deep. 

We're not exactly cozy as neighbors, but there's not much turnover in the neighborhood so you get to know folks and wave at them every day.  There are people I know by face and then a bunch of people I know by dog (when they walk by) or by house (e.g. the woman with the Tibetan prayer flags on the porch, and the neighbor with all the plastic flowers and plastic geese in the yard).  Others I know mostly by vehicle (e.g. the old guy with the busted down Volvo wagon who drives about two blocks away to get coffee and drives back every morning, and the truck with the "Pipefitters for Kerry" bumpersticker and the red Mercury Sable with the vanity plates and the Boxer Rescue association door insignias). 

One of the neighbors I know mostly by vehicle is the people in the red house who have suddenly introduced a big black Hummer into the neighborhood, emblazoned with the logo of this company.  It's parked at the end of my street and I go by it most days on my walks or runs and wonder who it belongs to.  I'm not much of a fan of Hummers but have been watching for indications about who lives there and what Irish Boyz is all about.  Maybe these are hip young folks who will change my mind about Hummers.  But today, right in front of the red house, I saw something that makes it almost impossible for me to continue to feel good about these neighbors.

There are two jet skis sitting there.  I am unequivocally against jet skis. 

Peter and the Woof

There's a story behind every Google query, for sure.  My imagination expands a little each time I look at my referrer logs.  Today's best query: "rubber duck sat in dog's stomach for five years" made me scratch my head, smiling.   

When I was a little girl I had a record of 'Peter and the Wolf' that I listened to frequently.  Vincent Price narrated (could that be true?? it sounds unlikely) and it was squirmy-creepy at the end when he said, "If you listen very closely, you could hear the duck inside the wolf's belly." But he was right -- there was the low strain of the oboe within the music of the hunter's procession. 

I wonder if you listened very closely to this poor dog, you could hear the faintest squeak of the rubber duckie....

Tenth Reunion

I was going through my mail pile and finally decided to open the thick packet with the details about my upcoming Yale 10th reunion.  I began mentally making my to-do list to get ready for the event.

To do before June 2-3:

1) Lose 15 lbs
2) Win major professional, literary, or intellectual award
3) Attract and marry glamorous husband, preferably with foreign accent
4) Pop out a couple of precious and handsome children.  Learn how to care for them, graciously and effortlessly.
5) Develop a singing, acting, or athletic ability and form a nationally-recognized organization around it, as a "little hobby" 
6) Do some international humanitarian aid work
7) Study up on politics, economics, pop culture, literature, linguistics, etc.
8) Get featured on National Public Radio
9) Produce an independent film
10) Take a company public, then travel the world for a year or so afterwards around India and Asia, connecting deeply with own spirituality
11) Get PhD
12) Work in an inner city school
13) Hold elected office

Can't wait to see all my classmates in New Haven!  We'll have so much to talk about!

The Empire Strikes Back

I accompanied my newly-engaged friend L wedding dress shopping on Saturday.  This was my third time as bride-buddy.  I'm getting good at buttoning and zipping and helping brides climb in to yards and yards of fabric. 

So at this one place the bridal salesgirl brought out some dresses and was telling us about them.  "These ones are ahmpeer cut," she said to the bride.  "They have an ahmpeer style waist, which will be very flattering on you."  Right, okay, thanks.  I wasn't really listening very closely so it took me a minute or two to realize she was referring to dresses that I would have described as empire-waisted dresses.  At least, I always thought it was pronounced 'empire.'  Ahmpeer? 

So am I the chump who's been mispronouncing an obvious word for years, or is she?   

Question

Assume someone has been in a serious romantic relationship for 5 years, give or take.  For how long after getting out of that relationship should the person be considered to be on emotional probation? 

Did An Angel Whisper In Your Ear?

This morning I had good intentions to go to a specific church at 9 AM.  I got up well in time but dawdled and wasn't ready to make it.  This kind of self-sabatoge when it comes time to go to church is becoming familiar.  No problem, I thought, looking at the clock reading 9:05.  I'll be well in time for the 10 AM service at another church I've been thinking about visiting.  Again I managed almost to miss it.  I ended up frantically parallel parking, swearing at myself, right at 10.  I scurried along and passed an Episcopal church on my way.  Maybe I'll go there, instead.  I swung in, peeked in at the service, and chickened out.  I continued along to the State Street Church and tiptoed into a pew.  I didn't even know what denomination it was.   Almost immediately there came a time in the service when we had to shake hands with our neighbors.  I get uncharacteristically nervous at these things.  I mean, I manage just fine, a friendly hello, a smile and a nod of the head, but inside I am cringing and awkward.  I'm a poser, an infiltrator, I don't belong in this church and these people do, and I'm afraid they'll try to talk to me and I'll just stammer and fall short.  Such an unfamiliar social feeling for me.   It happened again after the sermon -- the woman in the pew in front of me introduced herself and invited me to stay for coffee hour.  I stammered a grateful thank you, but I have brunch plans, but, yes, thanks for reaching out, even though you are scaring me right now with your welcoming and your expectations that I can't discern.

This is NOT a Party

I sent an email out to a few friends this week, with the subject line, "This is NOT a party invitation."  The text said, basically, it would be fun to have a party but I wasn't able to do any work at all to organize one so instead I was just going to open a bag of chips, put some beer in a cooler, and light the grill on Saturday night, hoping people would stop by and throw something on it.   

My house and driveway are now full of two dozen people, maybe as many as thirty.  Someone brought huge sea scallops wrapped in thick apple smoked bacon.  There's steak and sausages and fruit salad, wine and beer and Chartreuse, laughter and conversation.  The dogs are in party mode, constantly alert for bits of dropped food.  I bought a family pack of Twinkies, cut them in half, put giant skewers in them (in lieu of toothpicks) and led an excursion of people outside to see what would happen if we grilled them.  Turns out they sort of crust up on the outside and the filling oozes into a sort of warm sugary goo.  Tasty, though. 

Okay, back to my guests.  Even though, since it's NOT a party, I don't have any responsibilities.  Perfect.

Duckfat

Last night Housemate and I went out to try a new little restaurant called Duckfat.  It's a small place, all exposed brick and indirect lighting and wood and copper.  The menu is simple and small and full of food that's bad for you: french fries fried in duckfat, served in a paper cone with truffle ketchup or spicy mayo sauce, for example, and malted milkshakes and beignets and paninis.  The panini section of the menu has "ADD BACON TO ANYTHING" in big letters at the bottom.  It's a little bit tongue-in-cheek, and a little bit serious.  The food really is great; simple and well-done, and loaded with fat.

I got a duck confit salad with duck and pine nuts and dried cranberries and greens.  Housemate had a salad with lentils and rabbit and carrots.  We considered the cheese plate, but instead we shared some french fries; I had a beer.  Then we each had a thick malted milk shake: mine, mocha; hers, black & white.  I haven't had a malted milkshake in a long, long, long time.  We also ordered some beignets.  The beignets were fantastic -- balls of dough fried perfectly so they were chewy on the outside, warm, soft, and perfectly done on the inside.  They were lightly sprinkled in a spicy sugar: sugar and cardamom, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon.   One of the best things I've ever eaten.   

The patrons of the place were all attractive, slim, relaxed, slightly hip.  It's a fun place.  The waiters were young, friendly, fashionable men.  And amidst these surroundings, the artsy interior, the European menu, the cool crowd in the restaurant, the music playing, a little bit too loud, was Phil Collins Greatest Hits.  Housemate and I stayed there for about an hour and a half, savoring the rich food and talking about our lives, and the whole time a part of my brain was distracted, thinking, "Su-su-sudio?  Are you kidding me?  Someone, make it stop."

We got home and each lay down on a sofa in the living room, pretending to read, but both almost immediately fell asleep in a rich-food coma. 

It's Amazing What People Will Tell You

The teller at the bank this morning told me he's going to name all his kids after characters in video games, and that he thinks most of his friends will do that, too.   Sephiroth would be the boy's name; Aeris the girl, or maybe Tifa. 

The person I lunched with told me about her boss's menopause and about the politics of the volunteer organization she's a part of and the unofficial ostracism of one of the committee members and her own role in ostracizing that person. 

The person who called me to respond to an email I'd sent about an administrative matter for an organization I'm part of told me who in that organization he thinks is a pain in the ass and how much money he's spent on [X] over the last few years. 

The vendor who called me back about a software inquiry told me about his vacation plans and his cell phone troubles.

The man behind me in line at the coffee shop told me about his concerns about the global oil production peak and how he's giving a documentary DVD about the coming end of suburbia to an architect.

The lawyer I met for coffee, who I hope will become a mentor, told me many things.  I'm not saying what they were, but I learned a lot.   

The Emperor's New Clothes

My latest beauty innovation has been the addition of clear mascara to my fairly minimal cosmetics regimen.  In the mornings, when I put it on, I give myself an approving nod in the mirror.  I really do think it makes my eyes and lashes look better, although I can't explain why or how.  It goes on after my eyeliner, and I lean in to the mirror with a concentrated expression on my face and apply it carefully so that the lashes don't clump and I get all of them. 

But there's also a little voice in my head that's cracking up, saying, "You are such a sucker.  What a great scam.  Clear makeup.  Genius!  Where do they find people to buy this stuff, anyway?  I'm in the wrong business.  I should be bottling invisible eyeshadow or fragrance free cologne." 

The placebo effect is a powerful thing.  Or am I just crazy? 

Fresh Basil

I cooked dinner tonight and chopped the biggest, freshest bunch of basil I've seen since last summer.  It was green and fragrant and lovely.  The sausage simmered and I chopped up the tomatoes and the olives and the whole kitchen smelled fantastic, and it made me feel like everything is right in the world. 

How To Stay In Touch

These are separate steps.  Don't do them all at once, or you'll waste yourself in a mad dash of effort and good intentions but you won't actually follow through.  Do them as you would errands on your to-do list.  Do them when you're waiting to get your oil changed.  This is how to stay in touch when you're too busy in the first place.

1) Buy 20 funky envelopes and 20 stamps.  They can be anything, as long as it's distinctive.  Cost, approx $3.00, plus the time it takes to run the errand.

2) Address 10 of them with your own address, and the return address of your friend.  Address 10 of them with your friend's address, with your own return address.  Stamp them all.  Cost, $7.40, plus the time it takes to address them.  I suppose you could print out labels if you were all techno-savvy.

3) Get a big mailing envelope, and send 10 of the envelopes (addressed to you) in the mail to your friend.  Cost, about $1.00 plus the trip to the post office.  Throw in a note saying that you're going to start writing to her or him, and you wanted to make it as easy as possible to respond.   

4) Get a kitchen timer and turn it for 25 minutes, and write a 25 minute letter.  Write on anything -- the back of your grocery list, a napkin, a notepad, or your trusty laptop.  Write about anything.  What's on your mind, a memory about your friend, what the kitchen looks like and what's on the counter and what it reminds you of.  Write about how strange it feels to be writing a letter.  Write about how you don't know what to say, or you don't feel like you have enough time.  Write about how you feel guilty about drifting apart.  25 minutes isn't quite enough time, but you'll be able to get started, and you'll be surprised at what you find yourself writing about.  When the buzzer goes off, finish as best you can ("oops, I want to write more but need to go, but I'll do this again a little later in the week.") and put the letter in the mail.  Cost: 25 minutes. 

Do it again, the next week, or a few days later.  Don't worry about continuity.  Write about what's happened since you last wrote, or what you should be doing instead of writing, or what you wonder about your friend's life, faraway.  Write about a funny thing that you saw or a car problem you're vaguely worried about.  When the buzzer goes off, you can either give yourself another 10 minutes or just sign off -- sorry so abrupt, but I'll write again soon -- and stick it in the envelope and in the mailbox.

Your life will be better, even if your friend doesn't write back.  But she will, and you'll love getting the mail.    

[UPDATE: Tim asks what about email, phone, IM? I address those in the extended post.] 

Dead Pigeon

I was walking back to my office from a meeting with another lawyer.  On the sidewalk I saw a dead pigeon.  As I walked by it I noticed it had no head -- there was a small bloody dot amongst the feathers where the neck had been.  How does that happen?  I have a vague memory of some heavy metal guy (Ozzy Osbourne, maybe?) who used to bite the heads off of birds and kill puppies and nasty things like that.  But I don't see how a pigeon would lose its head just in the course of ordinary pigeon business.   

In Case I Forget

The lie was the car accident involving the inflatable woman and the rotary phone.  We didn't get into an accident at all.  I sat in the backseat, swilling wine, and talking to Susannah and the inflatable woman on the rotary phone, while our sober teammates drove us home without incident.   

Chimney fire with python and hot air balloon accident were both true. 

After You Left

After you left, I went to that meeting, where the subcommittee sat and tried to cull the notes from the focus group into a vision statement and a mission statement.  Both of the ones we ultimately adopted were my drafts.  The committee chair smiled at me and said, "Yours just sound better.  You have a certain poetic side to you, don't you?"  I shrugged, and said, "Thank you." 

Walking out of the meeting, in a generic office building in Falmouth that used to be woods, we startled four deer at the edge of the parking lot.  They froze and stared at us.  We stopped and the standoff lasted for minutes, until they relaxed, started turning their heads, looking at things, letting their ears twitch.  We walked away from them, toward our cars, and they stayed, frozen, tracking us with their big heads until one gave an invisible signal and they leaped off into the wind, white tails shaking behind them.

Later, I drove into town to return the movie you and I watched last night.  On the way home I saw the rim of a setting orange moon, like a Cheshire cat smile, orange and thin and low on the horizon of the western sky.  I craned my neck looking at it on the highway, because it almost looked like a UFO or something and I couldn't figure out at first what it was.  It must have been the moon, but it was unexpected and lovely and strange.  I wondered if you were also seeing it on your long drive home. 

Instincts and Intuition

One of the things I've been thinking about since my trip to Chicago is instincts and intuition and impressions.  I read "Blink" while I was there, and two novels with protagonists who had trouble reading people.  And I met a whole bunch of people and came away with distinct impressions, some positive, and some negative, even though I didn't get to have long, meaningful, or especially personal conversations with many people. 

I have a headache and a headcold and I'm in a rush, so I can't really formulate a nice essay about this.  Yesterday I went to a luncheon/CLE seminar for the consumer bankruptcy practitioners in Maine.  Again I walked out of there feeling that some of the lawyers in the room were people I wanted to tap as mentors, colleagues, and friends, while others I wanted to stay as far away from as possible.  Obviously you can't tell from sitting in a banquet room who's a good lawyer and who would be a good collaborator and sounding board.  But of the people I didn't already know, I noted the names and the faces of those I wanted to get to know.  It wasn't everybody. 

Two Truths and a Lie

Which is the lie?

1) I was evacuated from a two-alarm fire during which firemen were given particular instructions about the 10 foot reptile in the house.

2) I was involved in a car accident during which an inflatable woman doll, a rotary telephone, and a bottle of wine that had been opened with a hammer were found in one of the vehicles. 

3) I was injured in a dramatic hot air balloon accident which resulted in a visit to the hospital and, ultimately, inpatient surgery. 

Hooray for the Tarheels

Last night (or, technically, really early this morning) I drunkblogged about watching the game and a whole lot of other things that seemed relevant and interesting at the time.  This morning I decided to remove the post.  But I hope you won't think that means I'm not really excited about last night's victory.  I just have a bit of a headache, is all.

A tiny part of me worries that more of our guys will leave for the NBA because they won the title last night than if they'd narrowly missed it.  They might have stuck around for one more year together, to finish unfinished business, etc.  I guess that kind of speculation just gets us nowhere, doesn't it?   Because who knows what'll happen in the NBA draft anyway.  And next year we've got 4 hot freshmen coming in.  It'll be fine.   

Busy in Chicago

I'm here, too busy to blog.  More later (including the requests I haven't gotten to yet).  Go Tarheels. 

This Is Not The Post You Were Hoping For

All this post says is that I'm heading off to Chicago, where I'll be lurking about the ABA Techshow, trying to learn things, and scurrying about trying to finish organizing LexThink, and hanging out with Jeremy and Dennis and Matt and Ernie and meeting Sua Sponte and Tom and Jim and Rob and Chan and Carolyn and Arnie and about forty other smart and interesting thinkers.  I'll be reading, writing, thinking, and schmoozing.  There's wifi everywhere, so I don't expect blogging to be much diminished, although who knows, really?

The post you were hoping for?  That's coming tomorrow, on All Request Thursday.  Be sure to ask for it, though, or I might not know to write it. 

Opportunity Knocks

A friend stopped in for dinner last night.  He's unhappy in his job, and as we cooked and chopped we explored possible alternative careers for him.  These got progressively more outlandish and funny.  We learned that the following urls are still available: www.pastfads.com, www.fastpads.com, www.fraufinder.com, www.whatkindoflout.com, www.fraudulentnotary.com, www.avoidintimacy.com. Huge business opportunities with each one, clearly.  Who says the domain name land grab has passed us all by? 

High Up

I'm in my new office (!) looking out the window.  We're way up high here, on the 10th floor.  In this city, there aren't a lot of buildings with more than 10 stories.  This one has a few more floors above us.  Unfortunately there's a tall building right across the street that's blocking a good part of the sky.  To the right of that building is Monument Square, a central gathering place right in the middle of town.  I can look out over the square, down a brick promenade and across the top of buildings to the harbor.  There's a ferry going slowly across the grey water toward Peak's Island, and a barge heading inward from House Island.  Two seagulls are swooping at about eye level over the square.  There are four more sitting along the top rim of One City Center, a building across the way from me.  Wherever you are in Portland, you can look around for a moment or two and see seagulls. 

I can look across the way into the offices of people in the building across the street.  I can't tell from their offices what they do.  A lot of them have blinds down.  I can see a diploma hanging on the wall of one office.  Is it a law school diploma?  I wonder if anyone's looking out from behind their blinds across the way at me, sitting here at the conference room table, looking out the window and dreaming....?

Yet Another Unsolicited Family Story Where Somebody Dies

I stopped by my grandmother's place today to pick up the paperwork for my grandfather's mooring, and to return the copy of Emma that she loaned me.  The actual book was in two volumes, in an old edition (maybe it was the Winchester edition?), bound in leather and fancy paper, with illustrations and very nice typefaces and pages.  We talked about the books themselves -- I borrowed the book just because I wanted to read the story, but there was a special pleasure in reading it on those particular old and handsome pages.  "They used to belong to the wife of an uncle of mine," my grandmother told me.  "It was quite a ghastly story, those two."  I raised my eyebrows, and she went on.  "First, he committed suicide.  Then, not long after, she committed suicide.  He was not a very successful man, and she made her disappointment known.  She was very critical.  After he committed suicide, I think the guilt got to her."   Yikes.   

It seems there are more of these gory family tales than I knew. 

Blasphemy

So I gotta say, although I like the idea of March Madness, I'm not finding it that compelling. There are too many games played between teams I don't know. My bracket is by now hopelessly flawed, so I don't have much of a stake in a lot of the games. Last night I wanted Louisville to beat Washington, and Illinois to beat UW-Wil, and both of those games came out my way, and there was some decent ball played, but it wasn't exciting. I wasn't invested in any meaningful way. I don't know the players or the coaches of those teams. It's really no skin off my nose if the games had come out the other way. Oklahoma-Arizona started off with a bang, and seemed like a good game to watch, but I ended up going home to bed instead of seeing it until the end.

I guess I haven't grown into my sports fan maturity yet. I get really, really excited about UNC games. I am outraged by bad calls and love to watch the players, each of whom I am really familiar with, as they live up to my expectations or surprise me. But the other games I watch in the background. Especially if the sound is turned down, I squint at the TV trying to remember which color jerseys are which team, and who are the guys I'm rooting for, anyway? I can't tell if a team or a player is having an unusually great game. It's hard to get mesmerized in quite the same way.

Last night I watched with a friend who explained some more basketball rules to me. He told me about the paint and the key, about shooter fouls and one-and-ones. I had pretty much figured out the foul patterns, but it was nice to hear it confirmed. I didn't know the rule about the offensive guys only being allowed to be in the paint for three seconds unless the ball was in the paint, but suddenly I recognized that pattern and could recall the way Sean May moves around up there and I admire his skill all that much more.

Tonight I'm going to try again, this time with the sound on.

LexThink Update

Next week I head off to Chicago for LexThink!  It's been taking a chunk of my time these days, and I am really amazed and impressed with what we're building.  We have assembled about 50 fantastic minds from around the country -- lawyers, consultants, technology innovators, writers, businesspeople -- for a day of brainstorming and cross-pollenation.  The lawyers range from big firm lawyers to solos to the practice management experts in their state's bar association (Utah, Oklahoma, and DC).  Everyone's smart and innovative and creative.  I'm compiling a list of the blogs these folks write and it's blowing my mind.   Getting this gang in one room to talk about building successful and fulfilling personal services firms is going to be really, really neat. 

And the coolest thing about doing it is that I'm building it with Matt Homann and Dennis Kennedy, who I've never met.  We're now up to conference calls twice a week, and emails and files being exchanged daily, but still, I'll have to squint at faces and guess who they are when I finally get to Chicago.   Before we started talking about this project, I only knew these guys from their blogs.  And yet, I knew I could trust them and would like to collaborate with them from their writing.  Now I feel like I know them quite a bit better (and I do trust them, and have enjoyed collaborating with them).  But still, I've never looked into their eyes.  That's pretty amazing. 

I wish I could link to the LexThink blog -- that's been taking a bunch of my energy, too -- but for now it's password protected, for attendees only.  I expect we'll open it up, or at least parts of it, after the Chicago event is over.  We're already talking about LexThink! Los Angeles, so stay tuned. 

Reminder

I had forgotten how easy it is to make Hollandaise sauce.  Perhaps I never knew.  But last night on a whim, as the vegetables were steaming and the fish was almost done, I thumbed through the Joy of Cooking and discovered that it's a snap.  Yes, you have to use a double boiler, but that's the hardest part.  Egg yolks, water, some melted butter, and the squeeze of the part of the lemon you didn't use for cooking the fish.  I used a little too much lemon this time.  It took about six minutes, and made things pretty yummy. 

Bracket Update

Although I planned to watch lots of college hoops this weekend, it wasn't in the cards.  I ended up only watching some games on Friday afternoon, so I missed most of the good stuff.   Catching up this morning, I felt a pang of regret.  Looks like it was some pretty good TV. 

My bracket is hurting.  I have Wake and Syracuse going to the Final Four.  Oops.  The Kansas-UConn game isn't going to happen, either, I guess. 

This weekend I'll have my priorities straight.  Basketball must come first. 

How To Throw A Good Party, Part 3

Okay, in earlier installments we talked about managing people and setting things up logistically.  This time I suppose we should talk about music.  I've just arrived home from a party.  My high heel shoes are off, my stockings have a run in them, my feather boa has been hung up, and I'm curled up in the big easy chair, staving off sleep.  At this party there was a DJ.  How is it that people who appear to make a living out of playing music for people seem to be so oblivious about how to do it?  Have you ever seen a good DJ?  Probably not, because by definition if the DJ is great you don't even notice him.  Your attention is on the dance floor and your fabulous moves.   The only DJs you notice are the semi-competent ones.  Tonight's was nice enough, but not particularly adept at reading the crowd.

The music you choose for your party is going to depend on many things -- the mood you're trying to set, and the demographic of the people you've got at the party.  That seems obvious, but it's something I've learned over time.  I remember a warm spring day, last year or the year before, I was outside in the yard working on my boat.  I had the boom box out and a bunch of CDs beside it.  Friends started to drop by and we fired up the grill and before long the afternoon took on a life of it's own and we had a little informal party going on.  I thought to myself, I'll just play some Beck.  Everybody loves Beck.  And I put in Midnite Vultures and proceeded to go about my business until I noticed some guests making faces and rolling their eyes about the music.  Everyone doesn't love Beck, I realized.  Wrong crowd.  I put on Little Feat instead, and everyone relaxed.  So lesson one: know your demographic.  The object is to provide music that is familiar, but not cliche.  It's got to be accessible to your guests, but it's preferable if it is interesting to them, too.  Not something they hear at every party.  So Norah Jones and David Gray are out.  Coldplay is out.  The Allman Brothers are out.  Jimmy Buffet is out, not simply because I can't stand him, but because he's a cliche.  Bob Marley is out for the same reason, but Peter Tosh would be okay. 

The DJ tonight was only moderately competent.  My current hypothesis is that the best way to get people dancing is to play funk and disco.  Those tunes are familiar to everyone, but aren't anybody's regular diet of music.  Doesn't everyone like James Brown?  ABBA? I think so.  But not everyone wants to hear John Fogerty or Def Leppard.  The Rolling Stones work pretty well.  80s music, and hip-hop/rap re-mixes are spotty.  It depends on the crowd, of course. 

My musical mainstays for entertaining are: Christopher O'Reilly -- True Love Waits -- classical piano renditions of Radiohead tunes.  Nice background music for a dinner party, with a familiar but elusive edge to those of your guests who are really listening.  Jimmy LaFave -- Trail -- a two-volume CD collection of mostly acoustic singer-songwriter tunes.  Many of them are Dylan covers, sung wonderfully.  Paolo Conte -- a smoky-voiced Italian crooner and piano player.  Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire -- great, loungey, swingy pieces by a musically rich ensemble with a suave-voiced singer and odd lyrics.   Wilco's Being There is a great mellow background choice.  Johnny Cash suits certain crowds.  When I want people to dance, I lean hard on Millennium Funk and New Millennium Funk, compilation CDs that really work.  James Brown works for me, as does Maceo Parker, and occasionally Madonna and ABBA and the Digable Planets and the Beastie Boys.

For the party tonight I wore a little black dress and heels and a pink feather boa and elbow length black gloves and over-the-top fabulous humongous sunglasses.  The theme was "Dress as the name of your boat."  We Hooked On Tonics girls, in our fabulous superglam getups, with our cigarette holders and oversized martini glasses, took the first prize for our outfits.  It was pretty fun. People were taking lots of photos; if I get my hands on one perhaps I'll post it.  But now it's time for bed.                               

Wayward Googlers, Come Unto Me for Answers

I'm somehow on a strange sleep schedule and tonight I'm up way past my bedtime.  I was perusing the search queries that led people to this site and began to see a theme:

"how can you tell if a guy doesn't like you anymore"
"bad reasons to date a guy"
"the reason guys are dumber than girls"
"what men look for in a girlfriend"
"breakup lines"
"high maintenance boyfriend"
"stay with your dog"

Okay so maybe the last one isn't exactly on point, but can we really be sure?  Of the list, it's probably the only one I can really offer any decent advice about.  Which won't stop me from offering advice about the rest of them.  I've decided that tomorrow will be Google Day here at Stay of Execution.  I will treat each of these Google queries as post topics and give you all the benefit of my experience.  Which will be worth about zip, since I seem to be chronically single.  But I do know how to stay with my dog.  Tomorrow, I'll tell you how. 

Relief

If you'd asked me last week whether I was at all worried that I had cancer I would have scoffed and rolled my eyes and said, "No way.  I'm fine." 

But today, I feel like I've put down a very heavy load.  I guess there was part of me that was distracted by doubt and uncertainty and low grade worry.  And today that part of me is back and happy and available and energetic.  It feels really, really good. 

No More Dilly-Dallying

If you haven't already filled out your bracket, get on it.  I'm only partly done.  There's some thinking and some research to be done.  This is tough.  I have already filled out the middle, though.  UNC's going to take it all.  The upsets I've chosen are Iowa over Cincinnati, UTEP over Utah, ODU over Michigan, NC State over Charlotte, Nevada over Texas, and UW-Milwaukee over Alabama.  Still haven't decided how to call GW vs. Georgia Tech.  Probably going with Georgia Tech.  Very tricky.      

Butt Report

Okay, I'm back, still mildly sedated, feeling fine.  I've eaten.  I've been instructed to pass gas with abandon. 

I asked to stay awake during the procedure, because I wanted to watch it on the video screen.  I told the doctor, "I'm never going to have the chance to see something like this again."  He said, "You don't intend to make it to 50?"  I said, "By the time I'm fifty there's going to be a way way way better technology for this."  You're probably right, he said.  "How's your pain threshhold?"  I said, I don't like the sound of that question.  But I guess it's pretty high.  You can always give me more drugs if it's too uncomfortable, right?  Right.

So I was awake, but goofy.  They gave me this drug, I don't know what it was, and immediately I could feel myself get goofy.  I had to concentrate to talk.  I could follow what was going on on the video screens but I had to struggle to ask question, and to comprehend the answers.  I think I was talking but I'm not sure if I was making any sense, and I can't remember our conversation.  There were a few moments of ouch-yeesh-ouch but they were brief and passed quickly.  Meanwhile we did a tour of my colon.  The camera was great -- the colors were true, the resolution was good.

The diagnosis: proctitis, which is inflammation of the colon at the very bottom end.  The walls were obviously inflamed and bleed at the slightest touch.  It's an immune response gone awry, apparently.  It's possible that I picked up a bacterial infection in Mexico last fall that triggered it.  Sometimes it can get worse and take over the whole colon.  The doc took some tissue samples, which might explain the cause of the inflammation, and gave me a prescription for meds that should take care of it.  I'll go back to see him in a month. He didn't find any polyps or anything scary.  No cancer.  Phew. 

My mom took me out for a big meal afterwards.  Fasting was hardest yesterday morning and got easier as the day went on; by today I hardly noticed being hungry.  But the meal tasted great, and I have a pleasantly full tummy now. 

Thanks for the well-wishes, from everywhere.  I can't describe how comforting it is to feel like I have friends rooting for me when I'm scared and feel like things are falling apart.  It's like I won the lottery, with a jackpot of kindness. 

Church Lady

I set out yesterday morning intending to go to church.  I got a little bit dressed up -- silk blouse, black pants, high heeled boots, hair up in a twist, lipstick.  But all that preparation made me a couple of minutes late and I chickened out rather than clump into the back of the church and creak the floorboards while trying to slip into a pew.  I drove around the city hoping I could find a church with a service starting at 11:00 (it was just after 10:30).  No luck at the State Street Church or the Greek Orthodox Church.  Went down Mellen Street to the big Catholic Church near the park.  There were people standing on the steps so I parked my car but as I was walking up I could see that people were leaving, heading to "faith class" in the chapel.  I almost investigated, but didn't dare.

I went into the church anyway.  There were still some people milling around -- musicians clearing up, a couple of folks in conversation in the pews, an old lady and a middle aged man walking on the raised stage in front (what is it called in church language, anyway? a nave? a vestry? an alcove? I have no idea), fiddling with some papers on a table that's probably not called a table.  The church was beautiful, with amazing stained glass and ornate carvings on columns holding up this vast huge vaulted ceiling.  I sat in a pew in the back and felt that butterflies-in-my-stomach feeling I get from churches.  I watched people talking.  An intercom was crackling and staticky while a faint disembodied voice said, "hello, hello, hallelujia, praise His name.... hallelujia? hallelujia?" in the tone of voice you'd expect to hear someone saying, "check, check, testing one two three, is this thing on?"  A lady moving the musical instruments said, "That's the Baptist church down the street.  They have the same kind of wireless mikes that we do and sometimes they broadcast on our frequency.  If Father's battery is low on his mike we sometimes hear them coming over our system."  Another woman said, "I think I remember a service where that happened halfway through the gospel."  I smiled and raised my eyebrows and went back to looking at the pews and the ceiling and the windows.  There were no flowers, which seemed too bad.  I'm a little bit scared of Catholic churches -- I feel like I'm not really welcome.  But this place was beautiful and the bulletin boards and displays about service, in the back of the room and in the hallway leading out, touched me. 

What's the deal with this new longing for a church?

I Hope This Fast is Over Fast

I'm not allowed to eat today, and it's only 9:30 and I can already tell it is going to be very hard.  Last night we had a sort of impromptu dinner party, a "Celebration of the Colon" feast.  We roasted a chicken and squash and potatoes and sweet potatoes and onions.  We had garlicky spinach and a big salad with pine nuts and goat cheese and cherry tomatoes.  We had focacia bread and olive spread and wine and homemade oatmeal cookies and Mexican hot chocolate.  My intention was to eat enough that I wouldn't be hungry today at all.  I failed.  We had a lively evening nonetheless, laughing and coming up with ideas for things that could get Portland into the record books.  Outside the snow was falling steadily; accumulating at a rate of two inches per hour. 

This morning I was hungry when I woke up.  I may use the chicken carcass to make some chicken broth, which strikes me as the most substantial clear liquid food item I could obtain.  Remembering that I can have beer made me think about whether stout would be allowed, as a nice Guiness practically a meal.  It's hardly a "clear liquid" though, so I imagine it's off limits.  I keep forgetting -- not exactly forgetting, but substituting food that I don't want for what I really want.  Like, I'll see an apple and I'll think, "oh, well, maybe I could have an apple."  Because what I'd really like is huevos rancheros with a side of sour cream and salsa and eggs over easy and tortillas and beans.  An apple, well, that doesn't really count as food, does it?  And then I realize I can't even have an apple and I remind myself I shouldn't be in the kitchen anyway. 

At my 5th year college reunion a bunch of my classmates were anorexic.  I'm sure there was plenty of anorexia in college, too, but at reunion it was striking.  I remember walking to my car when the whole thing was over, and two undergraduates were walking along just in front of me.  They'd been working the reunions as servers or custodians, and were talking about the experience.  "Which reunion were you at?"  "Class of '40, the old guys.  What a hoot they were.  How about you?" "Class of '95 -- the anorexics."  I jumped into that conversation -- you noticed too?  I thought it was just me.  Oh, no, she said.  What's the deal with that?  I couldn't answer her, and it nagged at me.  I have no idea what the deal is.  These successful, lovely women, who had been attractive and vibrant as undergraduates, were emaciated.  It bothered me a lot.  I wasn't able to believe them when they said they were great, knowing what they'd once looked like, even though they trotted out stories of accomplishment (law school, med school, documentary producer, etc).  I thought that to someone who hadn't known them before they might just look like fabulously thin women.  Apparently they looked like anorexic women. 

I've never been able to fast.   I can't imagine it.  In younger days, in periods when I was dissatisfied with my body, I had moments of idle envy of anorexics.  Wish I had that kind of self control, I would think.  But of course I didn't really wish for it.  Friends who've been caught in the madness and self-hatred of anorexia have described it too well.  And food is such a pleasure in life.  Once I was on a date with a guy who seemed really cool.  He was cute and smart and entrepreneurial, a triathelete and a dreamer with bright eyes.  But we were out to dinner and I was delighted by the mango salsa that came with my fish, and was talking about how much I love a good mango -- the sensation of the soft fruit in my mouth, its melty texture and the burst of flavor and the undercurrent of pepper.  He said, "I've always thought about food purely as fuel."  And I was pretty sure right then it wasn't going to go anywhere with us. 

Flat Tire

I seem to be in a more forthright mood than I have been for a while.  You needn't read this.  It's perhaps a bit indelicate.  But I'm tired of keeping it inside.  And, frankly, I'm a little bit scared.  I have to get a colonoscopy on Monday.  I'm bleeding.  Have been for a few months.  It's not clear why.  It's probably nothing serious.  But it's not nothing.  People don't just bleed, you know? 

The specialist doctor was good, smart, not alarmist, but firm.  I was wheedling with him a little bit.  I'm fine, I feel great.  I feel really healthy.  Can't this wait until I have an income?  Is there something less expensive we could do instead?  I'm not dismissive of my health, but time and money are factors for me.  I'm basically uninsured.  He said, no, we can't wait any longer.  We need to look.  Do you want me to scare you?  I can scare you into this if you make me.  He did, a bit.  Not too much, but just enough. 

So I'm getting it done. Thinking about it makes me tired.  Not anxious scared, just full of a weary low grade dread, a sense of a certain unpleasantness.  I feel old.  And I feel lonely, all alone in my life.  I wish I had a partner at times like this.  The doctor lectured me a little bit.  When was the last time you had your cholesterol checked?  Um, I don't know if I've ever had it checked.  What?  When was the last time you had blood drawn?  I don't know.  I don't think I've needed it drawn.  He said, "Look, Sherry, you're 32 now.  You need to tend to yourself."  It made tears well up in my eyes.  I'm sure my cholesterol is low.  I eat oatmeal and oat bran six days a week, for heaven's sake.   Nothing is wrong with me.  I feel fine.  I am healthier than I've been in a long time. 

Except that I'm not, maybe. 

Making the arrangements with the scheduling nurse I had her in stitches.  I wasn't trying to be funny, but I was joking around with her as I tend to do.  I kept making faces as she explained the procedure to me.  The procedure, if you're not familiar with it, sounds like it sucks.  The day before you can't eat anything.  The day of, you can't eat anything, and you need to get someone to drive you home, and you can't plan to do anything that requires you to have a brain because you'll be sedated and dumb.  So I was asking a lot of questions while thinking about when to schedule it, and making a lot of faces because I didn't like the answers.  I really can't eat anything?  You can have clear liquids.  Can I have beer?  I was thinking about the ACC tournament finals; I'll be watching them on Sunday.  I need to know whether I can drink beer.  The nurse fell apart with peals of laughter at that.  No, I'm serious, can I have a beer?  She went to get the doctor.  The doctor, who likes me but was pretending to be exasperated with me, said, yes, I could have as much beer as I wanted, and I could even have vodka, but no screwdrivers.  Vodka okay, orange juice not cool.  The nurse kept making jokes about me drinking beers during the operation.  She thought I was the funniest patient ever.  That's because all your other patients are old, right?  Yes, she said.  You're a lot younger than we usually get around here.  Great.  I'm a tragic example of youth cut short and you're toying with me.  They were very nice.  They do what they can to help people who are paying out of pocket.  I've learned a lot about the crazy health care system in this country, being uninsured and trying to manage costs while trying to take care of myself.  I've been surprised at how much doctors blame lawyers. 

Anyway, now I'm rambling.  But today I guess I am feeling a little more fragile than usual.  I'm feeling alone.  Probably that's because I choose not to talk about this stuff.  It feels somehow ill-mannered to discuss it with anyone.  It is indelicate, in the first place, and in the second place it's scary.  Better not to burden folks with it.  I'm shelling out what seems like an absurd amount of money, when I am already feeling pretty poor, to have a very unpleasant experience.  My frugal self thinks, "they'd better find something, or this won't be worth it."  Of course, I don't want them to find anything.  95% of me is confident that they won't.  5% of me is a scared little girl, arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth in the corner and singing lullabyes to herself while tears leak out the sides of her eyes. 

So I have this kind of shaky day and then I go to have drinks with my family and am scheduled later to meet some friends.  While with my family I get a phone call; it's my visiting friend, stranded at the airport due to a cancelled flight.  Can I come pick him up?  Okay.  I'll be right there.  I am headed toward him.  A skunk is walking in the road.  I swerve around it and think, "that would have been a nasty experience.  Good thing I have sharp eyes."  As I pulled back into my lane, heading upward onto a bridge abutment, I hit a big pothole.  Hard.  I blinked a couple of times and noticed the car was pulling funny.  Oh crap.  I pulled over.  Flat tire.  And I just felt totally helpless.  I wanted to crumple.  Please, somebody, take care of me.  I can't seem to take care of myself.  I called a friend and dispatched him to the airport to collect my stranded friend.  I called another friend to come help me change the tire.  I should know how to do this but I don't.  Just then my dad, who'd been visiting my grandmother and aunt with me earlier, drove by, saw me, and stopped.  I'd forgotten that he was so close by.  He changed the tire for me -- I did helpful things like loosen some lugnuts and hold the flashlight.  It turned out not to be so bad.  But for a little while there, standing in the cold darkness trying to figure out how to pick up my friend at the airport, and who I knew who wouldn't mind helping me change a tire, I just felt so tired and small and overwhelmed. 

Professional Update

Okay, so here's what's going on with me.  I've been in a holding pattern, waiting for a job I really, really wanted.  I don't mean that theoretically; I mean, someone called me about a job I really really wanted and invited me to apply, and I've been in the hopper for that for a really long time.  I'm talking since late September.  First they extended the search, then they thought they were going to have interviews in early December, then in late December.  In early January they scheduled interviews for late January.  At the interview, which I thought went very well, they were all apologies about how long the process had taken, and promised a decision by mid-February.  There's been no decision since, and no response to my gentle queries. 

At this point, although I've not heard anything official, I've concluded the job is dead.  There's a grapevine which suggests an internal conflict about the position.  There are external circumstances that have changed that make it less likely the position will exist.  All is uncertain.   I would have loved the job; I would have been good at it, passionate about it, and I think I could have done good and made a good living.  But I'm done waiting for it. 

So I'm at square one.  I took a gamble, figuring that this job was exactly what I wanted to do.   Although I had very qualified competition for the slot, I would have kicked myself if I hadn't done everything I could to have gotten it.  I can look back and say I think I did everything in my power to make it come about.  I'm glad I did, but yowza.  Here it is, six months later, and I have very little to show for it. 

That's not true, of course.  I have a lot to show for it.  I haven't written much about what I've been thinking and feeling and observing professionally while I've not been working, but this is rich and fertile and difficult territory for me.  Letting go of a job title and a professional definition, even if I didn't think I was that attached to it in the first place, has been an exercise in grasping and clutching and fear and letting go and trust.  Getting comfortable with an extremely reduced income, facing my own safety net and my ideas about security and money and value and self-sufficiency and responsibility and risk.  Structuring my time, managing projects, figuring out what I truly love doing, what I do because I need to, and what I don't need to do even though I always thought I did.  Dealing with my own moods, my feelings about self-worth and the value other people put on my various skills.  Good heavens.  There's a lot going on.  I've not been writing about it, maybe because I felt too in-between or too exposed.  I am not sure why.   That doesn't mean I haven't been thinking, pretty deeply, or feeling, pretty intensely, a whole lot.   

In any event, that's where I've been.  I've kept a little income coming in with for-pay projects.  I need to make more money, in fairly short order.  I'm ready to say goodbye to the dream job, and find the next big thing. 

Waystation

Last night an old college friend was in town, from the other Portland.  We went out to dinner and talked about sustainable forestry and how he asked his fiance to marry him and the ways we are different now than when we were 22.  We talked about friendships and dogs and how people behave at weddings.  He spent the night, and we had oatmeal together before he went off to his meeting in a drab conference room in a hotel near the mall. 

The night before last another old friend was in town, from the remote rural woodsy place I lived after college.  I cooked fish with ginger and garlic and soy and mushrooms and sesame oil and shallots and lime.  Outside it was sleeting and snowing and the wind was rattling the windows, but we ate fish and brown rice and steamed spinach and talked about music and mud season and Belfast.  We talked about opening our hearts and New York City and letting our subscriptions to the New Yorker Magazine lapse and global warming.  He was up before I woke, to catch an early flight to Florida, but the storm cancelled it, so we went to a diner and had eggs and talked about the people now living in the house I used to live in.   

How To Throw A Good Party, Part 2

Okay, so you've got good people coming, and you're going to give them a sense of shared purpose, and a relaxed and fun atmosphere.  What else?

Well, that relaxed and fun atmosphere doesn't just happen.  There's some things you need to take care of to make sure that comes together.  The most important thing, of course, is that the minute the first guest arrives, you are relaxed and fun.  No more preparing.  Of course, the first guest will inevitably arrive before you are ready, and you'll have a zillion things left to do.  But you're entertaining now, so your chance to have everything just right when the guests arrive is past.  You've failed, and that's okay.  You've got to relax, laugh, and smilingly help your guests feel good.  It's not going to be perfect, and your charming, friendly acceptance of that is the most important way your guests are going to be put at ease. 

You've thought of the obvious things, of course -- where the guests' coats will go, how the food and alcohol will be distributed around the house for traffic flow.  The drinks are in an obvious place, so guests can easily help themselves without troubling you.  That's been put in place before the first guest gets there.  And you've got a music playlist that will have people tapping their feet, rising in intensity as the party heats up, with some familiar tunes and some unexpected ones that guests will ask one another about.  (The music will slow down around the time you want people to leave, and perhaps even stop when it's time to go home -- all without your intervention during the party.) 

People are going to congregate in the kitchen no matter what you do, so you're going to need to accept it rather than trying to shoo them into the beautiful and comfortable living room.  You might get them in there with a project and by putting the booze and some of the best food out there, but there are going to be people in the kitchen no matter what so you'll have some food there, and you'll have the kitchen in an order that makes everyone reasonably comfortable being there.  And you'll have things for the guests who are there to DO: something needs to be chopped, surely, and something else poured into a bowl?  Something wrapped in aluminum foil?  Some candles to be lit and put around the party?  Delegating these tasks is sometimes more work than just doing them, but you are relaxed, you're sensitive to your guests' desire to be useful, you're flitting around the house taking care of last minute things, and you're able to give your guests concrete ways to contribute. 

You've hidden the breakables.  You're not concerned about spilling.  You've made things apparent to guests so that they can help one another: the corkscrew and the bottle opener are readily visible; the wastebasket is easy to find; there are vases on a shelf for flowers; there are plates and platters out; there's a dish of lemons and limes near a knife and a cutting board; the drawer with the serving spoons is the obvious one; it's easy to know where to put your coat and purse and to find them later.  The bathroom is easy to find.  Everyone can relax; your guests can navigate the house easily. 

How To Throw A Good Party, Part 1

First of all, forget the food and the decorations.  If you're thinking about food and decorations, I can't help you.  It's not that they don't matter, it's that they don't matter very much.  And that, if you get everything else right, the food and the decorations will take care of themselves.  And if you get everything else wrong, the food and the decorations won't salvage it.  People planning parties seem to get hung up on food and decorations, as if that's what it's all about.  Martha Stewart and her ilk perpetuate this.  But that's the first lesson.  Forget about the food and the decorations entirely.

What matters?  The people.  That's what's going to make a good party.  Interesting people who are having fun and interacting in a relaxed way, that's a good party.  Who is coming?  Who do you want to have there?  And what do you want to have happen?  I like to throw parties where people will meet people and walk away with at least one new friend, one conversation they didn't expect to have, one potential new romantic interest.   Are your guests interesting?  Do you have enough different kinds of people coming, so that they'll have something they don't experience every day?  Are they going to be in the frame of mind to appreciate one another?

So the questions you've got to think about are who's coming, who CAN'T come if some people come (e.g. ex-boyfriends or girlfriends, or sworn enemies.  This is rare but must be considered from time to time), and what their social energies are.  There are people who are lively minglers, there are people who will shadow the host or hostess, there are people who will find the people they already know and clump together in a secure pack, having conversations they won't remember.  Most people can be any of the above, in different social settings.

It's Happening

I think I've become a real sports fan.  I caught myself reading this page this morning, intensely focused, nodding along.  In the past I might have recognized the names of one or two players; this year I know all of them, and have opinions and favorites.  I can remember the way the last four games played themselves out, and how the different players performed.  Felton was amazing in the NC State game but merely good against Duke, whereas May has been getting better in each game, it seems.  In some ways I think it's been good for the team to play without star boy McCants; the talent of the remaining players and their ability to pull together is very apparent.  I don't care too much about the ACC tournament, but I want him back for the NCAA tournament.  I could go on and on. 

The only way I'm probably not a very good fan is that I've thought for a long time that coach Roy Williams looks like Howard Dean.

Chef Audition

Okay, so both of the chefs were given a grocery list that included the following items: butter, milk, cream, chicken breasts, basil, cilantro, lemongrass, flour, lemons, limes, potatoes, plum tomatoes, red onion, baby spinach, red peppers, capers, baby eggplants, shaved prosciutto ham, garlic, berries, sugar, fresh shrimp, artichoke hearts marinated in oil, ricotta cheese, carrots, celery, and parmesan cheese.   We provided extra virgin olive oil and dry spices.   

Last night's chef performed magic with those items.  (He omitted the ricotta cheese.  Both chefs omitted lemongrass.)  The shrimp was marinated in lime juice and garlic and grilled, with a tomato/red onion relish that was delightful.  Was there perhaps a little cilantro in there? I can't remember.  The eggplant and the red peppers were roasted and made into an appetizer with capers and basil and the shaved proscuitto piled in an elegant tower on top.  The chicken was perfectly cooked (after being marinated, apparently, in finely chopped carrots and celery, which gave it a light sweetness) and served in almost a sandwich tower, with the breast cut in half and nestled between the halves a potato puree,  and garlicky steamed baby spinach, and a parmesan cream sauce drizzled generously around the plate.  Dessert was strawberries and cream, simple but with a hint of lemony sugar syrup, and a surprising light touch of sweet basil. 

The other guy apparently did a good job, too, and his menu was surprisingly different from last night's.  I really wish I'd been to the other dinner, so I could compare the two more fairly.  Several of the other board members had been to both dinners, and after we were done and the chef had gone home we sat by the fireplace debating the merits of both chefs. 

There were some clear differences.  Both chefs, when we'd finished eating, came out to the table and were interviewed by us.  We asked both chefs what they thought of the grocery list.  One said, "I wish you hadn't asked me to cook chicken."  He would have preferred a different ingredient for the main dish, didn't think chicken was interesting or a good way to highlight his skills.  The other said, "Eggs! Where were the eggs?  I could have done so much with some eggs -- a sauce or a custard, maybe.  And vinegar.  I would have liked to use some vinegar."  One chef brought a server with him, the other came alone.  One chef bought a couple of additional food items, not on the specified grocery list, to make dessert.  The other stuck exactly to the list -- he was the one who pined for vinegar but didn't use it even though there was a bottle in the kitchen.  He called us to get permission to buy artichoke hearts packed in water because he couldn't find the artichoke hearts in oil the list called for. One chef's grocery bill came to $80, the other $159.   

We had a heated discussion about the two chefs and their styles, their experience level, their personalities, and the risks we saw associated with each one.  I learned a lot about my fellow board members from what they valued and what made them nervous.         

Spring Is The Mischief In Me

I heard a fragment of this poem today: "Lay me on an anvil, oh God./  Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar/ Let me pry loose old walls./ Let me lift and loosen old foundations." 

It made me think of this poem, an old favorite that I haven't revisited in too long: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall...."  My favorite part of this poem is "There where it is we do not need the wall:/ He is all pine and I am apple orchard./  My apple trees will never get across /and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him./  He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbours.' "

My Day

Got up early.  Got dressed up -- pink fuzzy sweater, black wool skirt, high heels.  Made myself pretty.  Left the house to go to church.  Chickened out.  Went and got myself breakfast at a new breakfast joint -- maple-cured proscuitto, egg, cheddar, and tabasco on a bagel.  Yum.  Finished Mansfield Park, which gets considerably better in the second half.  Read the paper. 

Took a deep breath and went to the 10:30 service at a different church.  Pretended I knew how to read music, mumbled along to the hymns, and cried.  Something about being in a church cracks me open.  It has nothing to do with the sermon, and nothing to do with god, because try as I might I can't seem to get as far as believing.  But all these people coming together to try to be reverent, to seek redemption and forgiveness and community, to worship and sing and bow heads together, something about that whole ritual both terrifies me and makes me cry.  I think about going to church most weekends but usually have other things to do.  And I don't know what to do with myself in a church, when to stand up and when to bow my head and how to decode the musical notes to tell whether the next syllable of the hymn is up or down from the one I'm currently singing ever-so-softly.  I haven't much of a sense of which church to go to.  So with the slightest excuse I will chicken out.   But when I go, once a year or every couple of years, tears stream down my face the whole damn time, just at the strange beauty of being there. 

Then errands.  On my way out of town I saw a guy riding a unicycle.  Then to the gym for my five mile run, then to the sports bar for the nail-biter UNC-Duke game.  What a game. 

A Rose is a Rose is a Rose

So I decided to indulge my inner child.  I painted my toenails a nice coral pink.  I had a spinach salad.  And I've been keeping my eyes open over the course of the last few days for a nice hand cream that smells like roses.   I've not found it.  Lavender-scented products are everywhere.  I've seen lots of gardenias. 

Today I went out hunting for it.  I figured I'd have to choose carefully, because some rose-scented products are overpowering and sickly sweet.  But I figured it wouldn't be that hard to find something gentle and light and rose-soft.  Instead, I could have chosen from: Condensed Milk, Ocean Breeze, Sweet Pea & Violet, Apple, Orange Zest, Cucumber Pear, Cucumber Melon, Grapefruit, Cocoa Butter, Whipped Silk, Cherry Almond, Pomegranate, Honey, Brown Sugar, Soy Protein, Baby Scent, Lavender Chamomile & Ylang-Ylang, Grape Sorbet, Citrus, Oatmeal, Calming Tea Infusion, Bubblegum, Aloe, Ginger.  Plus lots of creams with nouns or adjectives but no specific scents: Energizing, Calming, Soothing, Invigorating, Passion, Care, Softness, Comfort. 

No roses, not a one. 

Geno's

For the past couple of nights I've had elaborate plans that I've completely abandoned in favor of spur-of-the-moment whims.  On Thursday I was going to go to a wine tasting, a lecture, a show, and then watch the basketball game.  Instead I got into a time warp at the gym and then went and bought myself some underwear and cute tank tops. 

Last night I was going to go on an art walk and then to a pot luck dinner party with a funky crowd I'm on the outside of.  But instead I had drinks with a bunch of lawyers and got dragged to a very preppy cocktail party.  I am not making this up: someone was actually wearing navy blue corduroys with green whales embroidered on them.  Surely this must be some kind of new ironic post-preppy retro look.  But it was too much for me; I fled as soon as propriety allowed and went, alone, to Geno's.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Housemate is attending a funeral today for a woman who pretended she didn't have cancer, and that it wasn't killing her, until the very end.  She got treatment, of course, so I guess her denial didn't extend to the fact of the disease, just to her prognosis.  She kept telling people that she was about to get into a clinical trial, even after the doctors had said there was nothing more they could do for her.  She wouldn't let anybody acknowledge the seriousness of the condition.  Nobody could say goodbye to her, until she was so heavily sedated by morphine that she couldn't protest or contradict. 

It required friends and family and loved ones to be accomplices in a lie, to hide their grief, to leave unexpressed their gratitude and love and thanks.  My sense is that this was pretty dissatisfying and strange.  I used to like Dylan Thomas's outlook, but I'm not so sure anymore. 

Soak

Yesterday, as the snow fell quietly, Housemate and I ventured out to a new establishment in town.  It is called "Soak" and bills itself as a "teahouse and foot sanctuary."  It was Housemate's birthday, and we decided to find out just what one does at a teahouse and foot sanctuary.

Turns out you get your feet soaked, while drinking tea.  And it is great.  The upstairs is a little cafe.  A woman was eating lunch, some kind of yummy looking grilled salmon salad, maybe?  There is a serious tea selection -- a dozen or more each black teas and green teas, five or six white teas, a double handful of herbals, and mates. 

You go downstairs to this funny room that looks at first like a furniture store basement. 

Coffee, Milk, Nuts

Housemate is a women's health nurse practitioner, as well as an art student.  Today she gave a little presentation about the menstrual cycle.  She talked about it with me, for practice, a bit this weekend, and this morning.  It sounded pretty cool.  She had an apple, some almonds, a walnut, some coffee, and some milk as visual aids.  The apple is about the size and shape of the uterus, with the bumpy base of the apple looking something like the cervix.  The almonds are about the size of the ovaries, which are slippery soft, like goldfish.  A practitioner feeling on the belly can sometimes feel the ovaries, but they are evasive and slippery to a palpating finger.  The walnut represented the hypothalamus in the brain, with the pituitary glands and their hormone regulation function.

The coffee stood for estrogen, and the milk for progesterone. 

Question for Health Insurance Pros

Um.

I have this low grade health issue.  Well, this is the thing.  I've been thinking it's low-grade, because it doesn't bother me.  But there's something wrong.  Let's not go into the details.  Something's not right, although I feel fine. 

Unfortunately, the easy, obvious, relatively innocuous explanations have now been eliminated.  There are plenty more easy, relatively innocuous explanations, I am told, but going forward the process of figuring out what's going on may get a little bit expensive, and involve specialists and, um, procedures.       

I'm on a short term health insurance policy.  It's up at the end of March.  I haven't used it thus far because I didn't want to mess with the claim process.  I could use some advice about the timing of my claims, and the impact of this whole thing on my ability to get coverage going forward.  If any of my readers know about the ins and outs of health insurance, would you be willing to email me? 

Peace Out

I got an email today signed "peace out."  I've never liked the expression.  I don't think it makes any sense.  It made me think of all the other email closings that I find mildly irritating.  "Cheers!" sounds very silly to me.  I guess people like it because it is meaningless and can be an opening and a closing.  I dislike it for the same reasons.  "Ciao" and "Ciao bella" strike me as foolishly pretentious, unless you're a romantic sophisticated older man in New York or Paris sending me sweet nothings over email, in which case I will think it is sweet and quaint. 

Don't even get me started on the random quote generators that sign off with some kind of clever quotation that your machine decided to append to the bottom of the message you're sending me, for no particular reason.  And if the quotation is about how magical cats are?  The spam filter awaits. 

Lingering

I love this post. 

It reminds me, oddly enough, of why I liked drawing pictures when I was trying to learn something in law school.  Because I'm not an artist, but the little girl in me likes to color and likes trying to draw new things or to think of funny ways to represent concepts, I found that I spent much longer trying to capture certain concepts than if I had just been scratching words onto a legal pad, or, worse, typing them out.  So I would sit with a subject I was outlining -- the exclusionary principle in criminal procedure, for example, coloring in the fruit on the poison tree and sort of idly thinking about where I might draw a judge or a police officer.  And sitting with it, not specifically thinking about it but just letting my mind kind of roam on its own, I always had three or four more thoughts about the subject that I hadn't already identified or captured.  Sometimes those thoughts or connections were the most useful of all.  If I hadn't had some coloring to do or a reason to stay, half aware, near the topic, I would never have gotten to those insights.   We value speed so much, quickness of association and immediate retrieval of information, that I forget sometimes how much good work your mind can do if you wait another couple of minutes and see what else is in there. 

Natural

When I was in high school, there was a program called "Natural Helpers."  It wasn't your usual extracurricular activity, attracting hyperachievers looking to pad their college applications.  You couldn't sign up to join.  Instead, the school sent around a survey in the homerooms.  The survey was anonymous and asked questions about what things stressed us out, and what we talked to our friends about.  At the bottom, it asked for the names of two people in the school you felt comfortable talking to about your problems.  The survey made clear that these people wouldn't get in trouble, and wouldn't know you'd written them down. 

The school district then had a list of all the kids, across cliques and grades, who had the trust of their peers.  It pulled us out of school for a couple of days and trained us in how to cope with that responsibility.  The training was great.  The approach made so much sense.  "We know you're hearing about a lot of issues.  We want to give you the information you need so you can help your friends out, and so you can deal with all the confidences people are entrusting you with."  It was perhaps the most relevant, intelligent, meaningful educational experience of my life, including Yale and law school.  We learned how to listen better, what people want when they confide in us, how to help someone solve a problem without taking the problem on as our own.  We learned about the suicide hotlines and the STD resources and how to cope when we felt overburdened and how to ask for our own help. 

Wow

David Weinberger's right.  The information here is mildly interesting, but the way it is presented is amazing.  The presentation of information makes you curious about the information itself.  It invites questions and stimulates curiousity.  It makes you want to use the tool and explore patterns in the data.   And because the tool is intuitive, and beautiful, you will stay longer than you expect to.   Things done well are lovely to behold. 

Good Thing, Bad Thing

Bad thing: Coming down hard on my tailbone at the bottom of a fast hill when cross country skiing this morning.  Still feeling tender.   

Good thing: Full moon, floating yellow-silver over the western horizon, in a sky that was butter yellow sliding into rose pink sliding into lavender blue.

Good thing 2: The fried eggs I made myself for breakfast came out perfect.

UPDATE: 10 hours later, the eggs have been forgotten.  The moon is a nice memory.  The tailbone hurts. A lot. 

Bro

I have a friend who talks like a surfer.  I haven't spent much time with him for the past couple of months, but he called this weekend and suggested that we "bro out" together.  I had to postpone our scheduled time to bro, but I've decided to take the verb and put it into active circulation.  Bro on. 

Neighbors

This morning an industrious neighbor began snowblowing, directly beneath my bedroom window, at 5 AM.  I wasn't sleeping all that well anyway, and I was going to get up at about 5:30, but the roar of the snowblower made me grouchy.  I don't think it was actually a neighbor.  It was someone employed by the owner of the apartment building across the street, who had driven over with the snowblower in the back of a pickup truck.  He probably had a lot of properties to do this morning, and wanted to get an early start.  For all I know, he'd been someplace else snowblowing at 4. 

My neighborhood is a small one, two blocks wide and three or four blocks deep.  We're cut off from the rest of the world by water on three sides -- a tidal estuary emptying into the ocean.  The fourth side borders the interstate, which makes travel convenient and keeps the property values from getting too high.  When I first moved here I heard the whoosh of cars on the interstate all the time; now, I don't notice.  The different boundaries make the neighborhood an interesting demographic mix -- we have yuppies with big porches facing the water and blue collar family homes and apartment buildings. 

The family across the street from me has a teenage daughter.  When I first moved here, their front porch was the late night gathering place for a crew of teenagers who liked to stay up late and set off firecrackers.  The summer I took the bar exam there were a few nights when I had to call to them out my bedroom window, pleading, and ask them to keep it down.  It seemed like she was always going on dates -- the way I knew is that cars would always be idling on the street between our houses, honking their horn repeatedly until she came out and jumped in.  It made me crazy for a time.  But kids grow up, and the teenagers have dispersed to unknown places.  The neighborhood is pretty quiet, except for a wandering collie that shows up and barks from time to time, and the occasional pre-dawn snowblower.      

Dress Shopping

Via Unfogged, I found this New York Times Magazine article about matchmakers.  It's a worthwhile article, with a skeptical narrator profiling three different kinds of matchmakers.  For the past couple of days this excerpt has been sticking with me:

At times it strikes me that she talks about marrying as if it were shopping for a dress. Everyone knows that when you go out looking for the perfect dress, you can't find it. You drag your friends to store after store. The event grows closer; you're still shopping. How about this one, your friends ask, or this? Any of these would look lovely. The event has started; you're still in the store. Better to buy an imperfect dress than to miss the party entirely, your friends counsel. You cave. Then you go to the party and have a great time and get compliments, and you can't remember why you agonized so long.

Hmmmmmmm. 

Crows

I've been tuned in to crows recently.  They're everywhere. 

As I was driving down to the poker tournament I saw them flying in from all directions, headed for Munjoy Hill.  There's such a mysterious intelligence at work in a gathering like that.  Where are they getting the information about the location of the roost, and when it's time to go there?  Baffling.   It reminds me of the way locusts know when to wake up from their 17 year slumber, all on the same night.  The world is full of secrets.

I learned as much as I wanted to know about roosting crows (a gathering of crows is called a "murder" of crows -- yikes) here. 

There Is No Title For This Post

This morning I got up and wanted to go to the gym, but instead sat and worked on a post because I had an idea that I couldn't get out of my head and wanted to figure out.  Then I had to meet friends for coffee which, wonderfully, stretched for three hours.  Then I had to watch the UNC game.  Now I have to go get dolled up to deal cards for a charity poker tournament my friend is hosting.  The post remains unfinished and half-chewed in my head.  And I still haven't made it to the gym.  I've been exercising a lot recently, enough that a day without it makes me feel jittery and incomplete. 

Meanwhile, everyone wants to know what happened after the plane crash.  I stood around, chilly and with a delayed nervous feeling in my stomach.  The pilot had lots to take care of, so he sent me home while he did paperwork.  A lobsterman buddy came over to my house to show me his low rider 1966 Scamp, and we went for a ride and ended up at a dive bar drinking whiskey.  I said, "I had a strange day today," and told the crowd the story of the plane crash.  It sounded really unreal to me.  Later that night I went to collect the pilot.  He was tired.  The damage on the plane was estimated to be around $12,000.  As we drove back from the airport, there was a pedestrian walking along a busy road with no shoulder.  She was dressed in dark clothing, but it was thin and not warm enough for the chilly spring night.  She was crying and waved down my car, so I stopped for her.  The pilot was unhappy that I stopped -- he had had enough problems for the day.  The woman needed a ride, and tearfully relayed a baffling story.  She had walked here from a faraway city, looking for a friend, who she feared was lost or hurt?  I can't remember.  It wasn't clear whether she was mentally all there.  She didn't have any money, or a phone, or any way back home.  I brought her to the police station.  Neither the pilot or I had the energy to rescue her.  Not long afterwards, for reasons unrelated to the plane crash, I opted not to keep seeing the pilot.  A month or so after that I ran into a handsome fireman I happened to know.  We were catching up, and he told me he was stationed out at the airport for the year.  I just crashed out there, I said.  That was you????  He had been away at a training, and was disappointed he'd missed the crash.  It was apparently one of the most interesting things that had happened at the airport for a good long time.  The firemen agreed that my pilot friend had managed things exceptionally well. 

I'm trying to decide whether to go to NH tomorrow, hike in to a hut, and climb a mountain on Monday with my friend Turboglacier.  I'm not that interested in climbing mountains, but I'm ashamed to admit that.  Perhaps I'd like it if I tried it.  I'm dogsitting for a friend, though, and would have to make provisions for not one but two dogs.  I'd have to borrow snowshoes and a gnarly-warm sleeping bag.  All do-able but it sounds like a hassle.  I like the idea of an adventure though.  Perhaps I can dream up an alternative adventure that I can bring the dogs on.  Suggestions?   Maybe I'll go to Popham Beach.  Maybe I'll bring my wetsuits, and go for a wintertime swim.   

My Plane Crash Story

[This post deleted after the fact.]

Crashing

Today was a little bit intense for me.  I'm going to bed and I expect to sleep deeply. 

One of the conversations I had today was about fear.  Some risks we take on and we worry about.  Other risks don't seem to generate much fear.  I talked to a friend who had had a routine operation go very wrong; she was the one in a million who nearly lost her life.  Now she has to repeat the operation; she shrugs and says, I can't get scared about this.  Even though it seems to me there must be a visceral kind of fear that's hard to fight.

Something about her shrug made me tell her the story of the plane crash I was in three years ago.  For an event as scary as it was (I was in a small private plane, and we learned in the air that the landing gear was busted, so we knew we were going to have to crash land it.) there was remarkably little fear.  What was I going to do, jump out of the plane?  We had to land.  Crashing was inevitable.  I couldn't work up too much fear.  Anyway, remind me and I'll tell you the story of the plane crash one of these days.   

What Am I For?

I had lunch with a friend who wants me to be an agent for social change.  You can make such a difference in the world, he told me.  He's told me this before. 

I said to him, I know I'm a leader, but I can't quite figure out what I want to lead.  I don't know what my cause is.  And the truth is, I'm not much of a joiner.  I get a little bit edgy and restless if I don't feel like I can slip out the back door.  I can't figure out how to reconcile the fact that people look to me as a leader, that I have a skillset and a competence and a confidence and a strong voice that makes me seem like a leader with the fact that I would rather sit in the back of the bus and learn about the disaffected people than be driving the bus and leading the camp cheers.  I don't know how to use my power, or even what it's for.

And then what welled up was this: What I really want to be for is helping people be themselves. 

Double-Double

The last couple of times I've gone to the sports bar to watch basketball, the crew of fans I befriended last year and the year before haven't been there.  It's meant that I'm more confused when watching the games than with their guidance.  I don't always see the fouls; I don't always understand why a time out is being called.  Last night the sound was off on my game so I didn't even have the dubious benefit of the announcers.  A caption flashed under Sean May that said something like "3 Double-Doubles" and there was nobody to ask, "what's a double-double?"  This morning, a little digging lets me surmise that a double-double is a game in which a player scores in the double digits in both points and rebounds.  Sean May is rock solid on the rebounds, it seems. 

All alone in the sports bar, I sent text messages back and forth with my best friend, who was also watching the game.  "Is M. Williams a frshmn?" I asked.  "Yes."  "Rashad McCants is hot!" "Yes but not as hot as J. Williams." "Felton = my fave."  "I like Scott but he never plays anymore." "What # is Scott?"  It was too slow a process to discuss plays, but it was a chummy way to remember that I wasn't really watching the game alone. 

There was a couple at the table beside me who appeared to be on a date.  Neither of them were watching any of the games on the TVs.  If you weren't going to watch sports, why would you bring a date to a sports bar? 

Missing

I wish I could Google objects in my house.  I never lose my keys but I frequently misplace my glasses.  This morning I was looking for a book that I'd just seen.  I knew it was around.  When I couldn't put my hands on it a sleepy thought flitted through my head -- "your computer's right there, just Google it.  Google always finds everything."  I felt relieved until I realized that wouldn't help at all.   I'm sure it's just a matter of time. 

The book was the second one down in a pile of active books, here beside my workspace. 

Bargain Shoppers

I finally bought a dishwasher the other day.  The way I selected it was this: in Home Depot, I asked the appliance guy, "Show me the least expensive dishwasher you have that will actually clean my dishes."  He smiled, like I'd thrown him an easy ball, and wheeled around on his heels and led me to a particular model.  This is the one you want.  He proceeded to tell me something about spray nozzles, and how the two less expensive models the store carried wouldn't actually get dishes clean because of the way the water was distributed.  Okay.  I took his recommendation, chose a white one (and discovered when I got home that I'd been given a black one, what can you do?), and am perfectly satisfied with the purchase.  But what I want to know is, who buys those other models, the less expensive ones that won't clean your dishes?  Why does the store even carry them?   

Letters

When I was a senior in high school, my best friend moved away.  She moved really far away.  She moved to Bangladesh.  We'd been best friends since first grade and spent most days together after school, at my house or hers.  She was like my sister.

On the day before her plane took off we went to the supermarket and bought some Oreos to eat and to send with her on the voyage, then went to an art supply store and bought dozens of bright colored envelopes, which we addressed to one another and stamped.   We wrote to one another, faithfully, filling those pink and yellow and purple envelopes with the daily details of our lives.  I knew about her classmates and her bathing suit and her digestive troubles and the cows on the streets in Dhaka and the curfew and the riots and the bricks through the window and the aerobics video she was doing.  I don't remember what I wrote to her, but I imagine it was Deering High School gossip and all the fears and musings of a senior sick of my hometown. 

Fabulous

I went to a fabulous cocktail party last night.  The catering was fabulous.  The martinis were fabulous.  The guests were fabulous ("We've just gotten back from St. Barts!"  "It's embroidered silk, isn't it fun? You're sweet to say so!").  The house was fabulous, expansive and professionally decorated and beige.  I wasn't quite prepared for the fabulousness of it all and showed up in jeans, which immediately made me the center of a group of women exclaiming, "I was going to wear jeans, but I wasn't sure, and I so wish I had!  Good for you, wearing jeans."  The conversation and social undercurrents at the party felt straight out of a Jane Austen novel.  For a time I escaped the small talk by chumming up to the bartender and learning how to make chocolate martinis.  I hung out behind the bar long enough to be mistaken for the caterer by some of the guests.    

I don't have too much patience for fabulous.  I drove home, perhaps a little too fast on the country roads, with the stereo turned all the way up and the sunroof open and the cold night wind tugging at my hair.  I saw a perfect red fox dart across the road near the little creek in New Gloucester.  The crystals on the surface of the snow glittered like diamonds as I pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine.  Two wagging retrievers were prancing at the door, overjoyed to see me.  Fabulous.    

Housesitting

I'm house and dog-sitting for my parents while they're away for the weekend.  They moved to this house when I was in college, and until they did so I never imagined how much they are country people.  For my sake, they lived in Portland for 18 years, literally around the corner from the good public schools I attended, and all that time I thought they were happy.  But here, in this house on 11 acres on a dead end dirt road, woods and fields and birds all around, horses on the farm next door, they are truly happy. 

Since I've never lived here, I don't know where things are, and looking for them gives me the opportunity to puzzle over the strangers my parents have become in their domestic habits.  I made myself pancakes this morning and discovered that my parents have currant jam but not maple syrup.  I wonder why they have this package of pineapple jello?  They keep their measuring spoons in a cabinet, not in a drawer.  Look at all of these vitamins in the refrigerator.  There doesn't seem to be a thermometer telling you the outside temperature.  How interesting. 

The house is a lovely retreat, full of light and wood and books.  Out the window the world is under 18 inches of snow and there are birds frolicking around the birdfeeder.  Their dog and mine lie snoring on the rug, and I have Mozart playing and a steamy cup of mint tea.  I've got a new John Irving book going (just finished Sense and Sensibility, my favorite Jane Austen book yet, I think).  This is the kind of house that makes me wish I had some knitting to do.  It puts me in a mood to bake something.  In a minute or two I'm going to try out my mom's cross country skis.   

Chrysalis

I've been thinking about butterflies recently, and how they get that way.  How a caterpillar finds a place to hide and before doing anything else builds a screen to keep the awkward transformation process out of sight.  Otherwise well-meaning caterpillars would keep popping their heads over the edge of the leaf and making unhelpful comments:

        "How's that thing coming along?  Done yet?  Enjoying yourself?  How much longer?"    
        "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
        "Is that what a wing is supposed to look like?  You got enough raw materials for that?"
        "Since when do you know how to fly, inchworm?"
        "Must be nice dreaming away your life, kiddo.  I'm going back to eating this leaf up here.  You want to get practical again, you let me know."
        "You're changing, and I don't think it's for the better." 

Meanwhile any butterfly that might happen to flit by would see a monstrosity -- a half-formed, grotesque beginning of a butterfly, nonfunctioning and amateurish.   She might pause and pulse her wings for a second but I can't imagine that she wouldn't flutter off, disgusted by these wormy beginnings.  Does the butterfly remember where she came from? 

I like that the transformation is hidden from view, inside a dark place, with no audience.  Still, that caterpillar must be lonely when it builds itself that shell, and scared.   

New England Prejudices

My friend Turboglacier has a nice post today touching on the way we New England states think about one another.  It is a funny inherent little bias we have.  Rhode Island and Connecticut aren't truly New England states at all.  We'll permit Rhode Island, I suppose, (because really it's nothing more than a neighborhood of South Boston), but Connecticut is basically an annex of New York and Massachusetts.  We don't have much truck with Connecticut.   In fact that's a disparaging phrase you can throw around if you want someone to cluck his tongue and nod sympathetically, "...all these people moving up here from Connecticut..."  Nobody is in favor of all those people from Connecticut.  If you don't feel like being subtle you can mention something about "buying places on the water," and then you'll get a shake of the head.  What are things coming to?

We all grudgingly tolerate Boston, which we keep around for its sports teams and its airport and its Chinese food and its museums, but otherwise don't much like Massachusetts.  Those people can't drive and they have too much money and they talk funny.  Particularly Worcester.  Nobody's got any use for Worcester.  But most of us have family down in Massachusetts, we send our kids off to school and to spend their twenties down there.  They have an economy, we understand, and jobs, and there's something to be said for that.

We Mainers like Vermont.  Good people over there.  We respect them.  Salt of the earth.  They don't have the ocean, but they've got hills, which we understand to be the tradeoff.  It's downright scenic in Vermont.  Good skiing.  We understand why people live there.  More farmers, fewer fishermen, but otherwise, people like us.  Burlington's even something of a twin city to Portland.  Yep.  Vermont's okay.

New Hampshire, on the other hand, is this watery nothing of a barrier between us and our destination.  All it does is extort toll money from people travelling between Boston and Maine.  There's no coast to speak of, no hills to speak of, no cities to speak of.  We tend to think of our New Hampshire neighbors as equivalently hardy, but less interesting, than ourselves or our Vermont brethren.  And we suspect a bunch of them of being Massachusetts people in disguise -- commuting down to Boston to work in skyscrapers -- or, worse, Connecticut people who lacked sufficient vision or ambition to infect Maine or Vermont.  It's not that we dislike New Hampshire, we just don't see much of a point to it.  There's more to life than having no sales tax. 

Grandfather Dreams

Last night I dreamt about my grandfather.  He hadn't died, after all.  Our whole family had been mistaken about that.  I immediately felt guilty -- how had I not known that he was alive!  how long it had been since I'd visited him!  He wasn't resentful.  He was still sick, and his body had shrunk.  His skin was yellow-brown and waxy, and his hair was long and unkempt.  But he was mobile, and spry, and his voice was deep and booming.  He wanted to give my dad and me some instructions about financial matters.  Two nurses stood behind him.  When he'd finished telling us matter of factly what we were to do, and asking us some questions, I watched him and his attendants walking away.  He wore running shoes and they hung big and floppy on his tiny feet.  I woke up comforted and upset, both.  How have I been living without him all this time? 

Can't Delete This, Can You, Milbarge?

I'm really looking forward to watching my Tarheels defeat Duke tonight.  We've been waiting a long time for this. 

On Monday I ran into a guy in the supermarket who I know only from seeing him at the sports bar where I go to watch the games.  I haven't been to many yet this season, but he must have remembered me from last year because he came over and said hello.  We talked about the team so far, and about tonight's game.   We stood in front of the carrots and celery and talked about Illinois and the NCAA tournament.   When we parted ways I said, "See you Wednesday!" and it wasn't until I was in the dry goods section that I realized I don't even know his name.  Doesn't seem to matter.  I know which team he roots for, and maybe that's enough.

UPDATE:  Ouch.  What a game.  And what a lousy last 8 seconds.  What a way to lose....

Maps

I have a confused relationship with maps.  I have two maps hanging in my bedroom.  I have a chart of Casco Bay in my study, right in front of my desk, and a framed old chart/map of Bermuda showing the locations of about thirty shipwrecked vessels, with a tiny painting of the vessels around the circumference.  I like to curl up with the atlas and look at it -- preferably with a sweetie -- studying the pages and thinking about all the different places in the world.   In college my favorite class was a remote sensing class, where we looked at satellite photos and aligned them with maps and with aerial photos and tried to decode mysteries of erosion and ancient settlement patterns and habitat range of disease vectors and their intersections with human populations.

So it sounds like I like maps, yes?  I think so.  I'd even claim to be a fan of maps.  But my dear friends would dispute this.  They think I'm anti-map.  And, in a way, they're right.  I am dead-set against maps in cars.  I don't have any maps in my car and do everything I can not to buy road maps.  I hate to ask for directions and I consider it cheating to consult a map while trying to get somewhere.  It is permissible, and perhaps even sensible, to look at a road map before the trip.  I tend to ask for directions and write them down, sometimes even print out a Mapquest little trip report, before heading off to someplace I've never been before.  But once on the road I like to use as few aids to navigation as possible, relying if I can simply on road signs, the position of the sun, my memory of whatever directions I've read, and instinct. 

I have surprisingly good luck with this approach and I think I enjoy and notice a place more when I'm discovering it, my eyes out for landmarks and clues.  Especially when I'm going to a new place on an open schedule, and can afford a few wrong turns, I feel like an explorer.  It's so much more interesting and full of possibility.  If my travelling companion pulls out a map the universe shrinks down; it's known, others have been here before, and suddenly there's nothing left to discover, no sense of mystery around the next corner.  It's businesslike and sterile, using our brains rather than our senses, staring at a piece of paper on our lap rather than the world outside the window. 

Housemate is a Map Lover of the opposite sort.  She doesn't look at maps as abstractions, jumping off points for daydreams.  She doesn't have any maps on her walls.  But she has a shoebox full of road maps -- city maps for cities all over the place, state maps, regional maps.  When we flew to Miami to do the marathon she said, "You know what I want to do?  As soon as we pick up the rental car, I want us to find a Triple A and get as many maps of the area as they'll give us.  Won't that be great?"  A part of me deflated when she said that.  She has a rising anxiety when there's not a plan, not a clear destination, not a sense of control and progress.  I sighed quietly and abdicated navigation duties to her, turning when she told me to and disconnecting from the geography of the city around me.  She thinks I hate maps, because I hate having them in the car with me.  I think she uses maps as a crutch, and misses out on places by concentrating on their surrogates. 

Starting the Day off Right

I got up early to go for a run.  I planned to drive to the running trail, do the 3.5 mile loop and go home.  When I got in my car it kicked and sputtered.  I had run out of gas in my own garage.  I'd been driving around with the gas light on for a while but because of a strange car-swap with my housemate and partial tank refill I didn't have a good instinct for how much gas was actually left.  (I have a bad habit of waiting until the very last minute to fill up the tank.)  So, yeah.  Ran out of gas.  I made a haphazard funnel out of tin foil and used the lawnmower gas tank to put enough gas in my car (and on my sleeves, pants, shoes, and floor of the garage) to make it up the road to the gas station.  I pumped almost sixteen gallons of gas into the tank.  Before today, I'd thought the capacity was only 14.5 gallons.  I drove to the running trail with the windows down and the sunroof open to minimize the smell of the gas fumes evaporating off of my clothing.

The run was slow, on a surface of slushy mud that has melted each day, received the imprints of dozens of footsteps, and then frozen at night.  Here and there are puddles crusted with thin ice, oozing moisture into the mud around them.  Hard, bumpy going.  But the tide was almost full and flooding in.  I watched a set of big ice chunks moving into the cove on the current, as if sliding down a river.  The sky was pinky-orange and the ducks were nowhere to be seen.

A Portrait of the Artist

1. Today I went cross country skiing with the dog.  The golf course was slushy and the snow was thick and difficult, but the sky was blue and the air was warm -- almost 50 degrees! -- and the sun was shining on the ocean and it felt wonderful to be out there.  When I finished I decided to go to the yacht club to go look at the water.  And while there I decided to make a snowman.  But as I was making it I decided I would rather make a snow sculpture of a sailboat.  So I knelt in the snow and got totally absorbed in the project.  I kept thinking I would stop but then would start smoothing out the hull shape and refining the line of the bow.  At first the snow kept crumbling away, or lumping into dense bumps where I didn't want it to, but I got used to its consistency and learned how to melt it a little bit after I got it where I wanted so it would solidify.  The dog kept coming by and knocking the bow off, or the mast over.  I looked up once and there was a golden retriever hanging around, and a man in a baseball cap looking at me funny from afar.  I felt silly for a moment, then waved and went back to sculpting.  My clumsy snow boat made me think about Andy Goldsworthy and how talented and patient he is.  If I haven't already recommended Rivers and Tides, I heartily do so now. 

2. I came home to find Housemate in the middle of constructing an art project.  It has to do with homemade cookies with single bites taken out of them.  There was a tray of cooling gingersnaps on the counter.  I proceeded to help her with the project.  It's harder than you might think. 

Plant News

A few months ago, in the pot of a struggling houseplant in the kitchen, a tiny tomato seedling appeared.  It has been quietly growing bigger and stronger ever since.  As part of the Good Riddance Project Housemate and I cut back or threw out a bunch of our plants, and have been more attentive to the ones that remain.  We cut back the original houseplant, which lingers still, and have been administering Miracle Gro for a few weeks.  The tomato seedling seems to be thriving.  The two of them are probably too small to share this pot, but for now I'm letting things play out.  I am loyal to the old warrior plant, for surviving my careless ministrations for so long.  And the tomato, of unknown parentage and with unknown ambitions, is a daring new upstart.  It deserves its own pot but I almost feel like it's got its own agenda, and has already sorted things out with the aging houseplant, who is crouching way over on the side of the pot, leaving plenty of space for the tomato seedling.  This tomato has self-will, and must have chosen this pot for a reason.  It would be meddling with fate to move it elsewhere.  I don't talk to plants or anything but I've begun to feel like these two have personalities of a sort.  Their quiet little story unfolds on the sunny patch on my kitchen counter each day.   

A Little Known Fact

You might not expect it of me, but one of the things I really really love when I go out on the town is frittering away my money on momentary pleasures.  I love jukeboxes and video games.  I tend to go for flashing lights over skillful activities like darts and pool.  I once dropped about $27 in a dive bar in Miami playing the crane game for several hours (with nothing to show for it, although sympathetic friends managed to pull out a stuffed seal and gave it to me as a consolation for my pathetic lack of skill).  My current favorite is the touch screen photo match game called MegaTouch that my best friend introduced me to this summer.  Last night I played at a machine that had recently been reset, so the high scores were super low, and for almost every game I played I got to put in a funny name onto the high score board.  Is this not happiness?   

Oops.

I finally had a long-postponed doctor's appointment today.  I called in early in the week and they told me there was an opening today at 7:45.  So I rushed around this morning and arrived there a little bit late at ten minutes to eight.  When I presented myself I was greeted with suspicious, almost hostile looks.  "Really," I insisted, "I have an appointment."  Turns out the appointment is at 7:45 tonight.  That never would have occurred to me.  And, of course, it changes my evening's plans all around.

Eggs and Bananas

If you ever decide to make me breakfast in bed, you should know that my favorite thing is eggs over easy, with maybe some toast or, even better, some spicy black beans and a couple of warm corn tortillas. 

I have an egg almost every morning -- on top of my oatmeal or oat bran, or sometimes just alone.  The mornings when I don't have one are evened out by mornings like today, when I had two.  Despite cooking eggs a lot I still don't do it very well.  When I crack the egg into the pan the white spreads everywhere, and the resulting puddle hardens into a big floppy irregular shaped thing that I have a hard time getting on my spatula and turning over smoothly.  The flipping almost always gets me in trouble; I break the yolk or I can't get the whole thing over and it sort of collapses onto itself. 

This morning I cooked myself two eggs, over easy, and I sliced up a very ripe banana and fried that right beside the eggs.  Somehow I managed to flip both eggs over beautifully.  The bananas got warm and melty with soft edges and slightly brown surfaces.  Breakfast was a treat, one of the best I've had in a long time. 

Miami Bound

I capped today off by cooking dinner for a number of young attorneys in the area.  The only thing to hope for is that the cell phone camera pictures of certain folks dancing in my kitchen to Skid Row's "I Remember You'" do not surface in any professional circumstances.  For that matter, a transcript of the dinner party conversation might damage some very promising careers.  There was lots of laughter.  It was a lovely dinner. 

Tomorrow at the crack of dawn I fly to Miami, for the Toyota Prius Miami Tropical Marathon on Sunday.  I've hardly written about training for this marathon, and that's because I haven't been thinking much about it.  At this point I just want to be done with the thing.  No more training walks.  That's my whole objective.   I don't have a target time or pace or anything.  Because of the snow and the slush, we haven't been able to do any real speed training.  I can't imagine we'll come close to our half-marathon pace.  As long as I don't get food poisoning this time, and I actually get to do the marathon, I'll feel like a champ.  Plus I'm seeing two good friends in Miami.  And, of course, it's Miami, so it will be about 60 degrees warmer than it is here. 

Doubt I'll be able to write while I'm there.  Catch you on the other side. 

Bathroom Reading

Housemate and I recently had a little tussle over the magazines in the bathroom.  "Get real."  I said.  "Nobody reads these.  They're clutter."  I meant, of course, that I don't read in the bathroom, because she immediately protested.  "But I do read in there!  I like having something to read."  I shrugged and we discussed the reading materials.  Right now we have a Yale alumni magazine, a copy of The Nation, which Housemate subscribes to, and the Brad and Jennifer breakup issue of Us magazine that I bought at the supermarket checkout not long ago. 

I voted that if we were going to keep reading materials in the bathroom they should be of the Us magazine variety.  That's the only one I've touched, and in the mornings when drinking my tea and eating my oatmeal I'll wander into the bathroom to retrieve it and read it at the kitchen counter.  When Housemate moved here she used to get Entertainment Weekly, which was a tasty little treat, even if I didn't know who most of the celebrities were.  You get to know them from repeated pictures and pretty soon who they are doesn't matter, you just know they're important and you're supposed to care who they're dating now or how their bedrooms are decorated.  Housemate mentioned a magazine she read in the waiting room of a health clinic she works at monthly: Majesty.  Majesty is all about the comings and goings of royalty.  Sounds pretty good.  Every so often I'll buy an In Touch, which is preposterously bad but somehow satisfying for the bathroom.

All this reminds me that I've let my subscription to the New Yorker lapse.  It's not as bad as I feared it would feel.  I have plenty to read, and it's really a relief not to have new issues showing up before I'd finished the one from two weeks ago.  I still think, guiltily, about resubscribing, but I'm going to wait it out and see if I really miss it.  Maybe it's time to switch to Majesty.   

Contest: Tell Me Something I Don't Know

I continue to be amazed by how interesting and smart my blog readers are.  Who knew golfers ring bells?  Not me. 

So here's the game: please leave a comment telling me something I don't know.  Preferably something interesting, although my standards for what is interesting are very low.  The two that catch my eye the most will win a nifty and sentimental prize -- something unearthed in the Good Riddance Project that was just too good to throw away. 

Good Riddance: A Letter Returned Undeliverable

                                      5/25/1998
                                      8:38 PM EST
                                     Somewhere over Newark, NJ

Dear J,

           Cruising bumpily along in the back of this 737, breathing very stale air and trying to deflect conversation from the pack of retirees I'm sitting amidst, I'm feeling none of the thrill of flying.  But two mornings ago I was concentrating on not hitting the cloud in front of me while J.T. gently but firmly told me I really ought to nudge the nose up a little more...more... you really need to get level... you're descending, you know... why don't I take it over for a minute?  What a fabulous experience.  It's really hard to keep track of where you're steering, whether you're horizontal, how you're burning fuel, what the clouds are doing, and the dozen other things J.T. was paying attention to while I alternately climbed, dove, and gaped at the Olympic National Park unfolding below us.  I felt once again reminded of what new sailors feel -- like how hard it is just to steer a sailboat in a stright line, and how long it takes for a good "feel" to develop.  Oooh -- it was tantalizing and wonderful and I'm afraid I'm going to have to do it again.  Perhaps many times.  I never thought I could be enticed by a more cripplingly expensive pasttime than sailing.  Maybe common sense will prevail and I'll gradually forget what it felt like to fly. 

     B. and I had a quite grand trip after leaving you.  The San Juan Islands (okay, we only actually set foot on one, Orcas Island, a charmer and a half) are worth your time.  Snag someone with a car or hitchhike to Anacortes with a bike and a tent and get on the feeling.  Orcas may be quite touristy come summer, but B and I had it all to ourselves save a wild bunny or two, or, truthfully, seven or eight, in our campground.

     Vancouver Island was disappointing, but we turned our luck around and scored a free night's stay in a luxury hotel, where we dolled ourselves up and feasted on seafood while making waiters nervous (w/ our great beauty & rapier-like wits of course).  Topped off w/ a morning of working out, swimming, whirlpooling, sauna-ing & rebuffing fools -- then on to Port Angeles, WA, on a spectacular ferry ride marred only by an old woman giving us an unsolicited biography of John Templeton, a man who had a great impact on the financial condition of the Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania in the 1930s -- for 45 minutes, really.  But that one bad experience shouldn't stop you from checking out Port Angeles, a new potential fantasy-relocation spot for me.  18,000 people, vibrant but totally unpretentious & uncondo-ed (a urologist's office, modest & squat, enjoyed waterfront property in a totally working class neighborhood), with its toes in the Juan de Fuca Strait and its back pressed up against the Olympic Mountains.  I tell you, J, it's sweet. 

Oh, we had no end of fun.  My hand's getting tired, and there's actually a lot of turbulence on this flight.  I gathered a batch of smooth, wonderfully colored stones on Orcas Island with the intention of sending them to you.... but I've become rather attached to them so I'll just keep them for a while and give them to you when you're on the East Coast next, how's that?

Okay -- out of time, room, patience.  I liked your idea of reviving a correspondence -- but I'll like it better when there's something from you in my box.  I'll look for it.  It was really nice to see you.  Let's not go 4 years again before the next time. 

Love,

S

Wow.

This speech by Bill Moyers is powerful.  I encourage you to read it. 

Geography

Are you feeling brave?  Go find a friend and challenge him or her to do the following: draw a freehand map of the United States and detail all the states.  I did that tonight with my cousin and her girlfriend.  None of us got all fifty states.  I'm not talking about in the right places, I mean not even on the map.  I had a big vacant hunk in the middle and forty-eight states accounted for.  I kept going through it and saying, "Aha! Kentucky!  Oops, no, there's Kentucky right there.  Hmmmm.... Arkansas? Nope, already got Arkansas.  Crap, what am I missing?"  Turns out I was missing Tennessee and Indiana.  My cousin had forty nine states, but her missing state was New Jersey, which seems particularly embarrassing.  Our third participant had Iowa where Idaho should be, and Idaho below Iowa.  I had the locations of most states approximately right, with a few notable errors.  Relative sizes and borders were problems, but the general states that neighbored one another was decent, except that I had Wisconson and Utah completely wrong.  We compared notes with one another, and then dug up a road atlas.  "Ooooh.  Hmmm.  That's interesting.  So that's where that goes...."   It was absorbing, although all three of us felt pretty ignorant afterwards. 

The drive there was through snow falling so slowly it seemed to be suspended in the air.  The drive home was in heavy, heavy snow, with whiteout conditions for most of the way home.  I poked along slowly on the unplowed highway, because I don't have great confidence in my tires.  From time to time a cowboy would decide to pass me and barrel along in the left lane, with a contrail of snow streaming off in his wake that blinded me even further.  We've had four inches in the last couple of hours, and there's no sign of it stopping. 

The Wrong Burner

How often do you turn on the wrong burner on the stove?  I do it with some frequency; once a week, maybe, or a couple of times a month.  Today I left the room and the waffle iron left over from this morning's banana waffles heated up instead of the kettle.  No emergency, just a smoky waffle iron when I wandered back into the kitchen looking for my tea.  But it always scares me.

I read a book a few years back about those things: the light switch you always flip wrong even though you've done it a million times, the doors that you feel like a doofus because you push even though the word "Pull" is written on it, the VCR you can't program even though you have an advanced degree, the damn burners on the stove.  The book demonstrates that it's not your fault; those things are poorly designed and they are actually tricking you into doing the wrong thing.  It's reassuring to know that.  Stupid burners. 

Non Compete

Twice a year, Google starts directing a whole bunch of people to this site in response to queries about "law school grades" or "bad grades law school" or "should I drop out of law school."  I have posts here and here about law school grades.  If you have advice or encouraging words for frantic law students wondering what to make of their grades, it's worth dropping by, because the posts continue to attract fresh comments. 

I started out writing a post about my rivals for the top slot in law school; how different all of our approaches were.  It turned into a reflective narrative about competition, because although there were four of us in the running, I felt the whole time as though there was only one other person who was a serious competitor.  I think that says a lot more about the psychology of rivalry than about anything the merits of the other two guys with great grades.  Anyway, after I wrote all that I realized it wasn't really what I wanted to say.   

I'm really competitive by nature and as I get older I've been trying not to let it control me.   I know that I need to give it appropriate outlets (I race my sailboat to win, I aim to beat my chess opponent) or else it manifests in areas of my life where it doesn't belong and I find myself comparing my life choices and my outcomes and my process to other people as though we were competitors.  I think I'm getting much better at this.  It's one reason I didn't go work at BIGLAW -- I didn't think I'd be strong enough to resist comparing myself to dozens or hundreds of other smart, ambitious associates, and I knew doing so, daily, would lead me to a life that didn't make me happy. 

My mom wrote me an email yesterday in which she said she admired the way I seem to be genuinely whole and happy regardless of my professional status.  I think she's right, and I'm proud of that, too.  Leaving my law firm has been part of this growth process for me.  I think while I was working there I had a pretty rich outer life, but I don't think I knew quite how much of my own identity was wrapped up in my job title.  That's part of what's been going on on this blog, that frustrates some of my readers.  I have professional goals and ambitions -- more clear now than they've ever been, although I'm choosing not to write about them -- but they are only a piece of who I am.  And they're nobody else's goals.  I feel like I've been unhooking from a whole lot of things over the last six months, habits of thought I didn't even know I had.  Unhooking from other people's expectations and from my own competitive response to those.  And unhooking from my sense of the world, and this life, as some kind of contest, in which I'm either ahead or behind.  There is so much richness in life, so many facets, so many things to be interested in.  Writing about them is my way of celebrating a world full of possibility. 

If you got bad grades last semester, I wish you good luck turning them around next semester.  It is very possible.  I did it.  But what I wish you the most luck in is charting a path that really fits you.  I think that's possible, too.  It seems harder than getting good grades, though.  I'll keep you posted. 

Luxury Itself

Wow.  I just slept in.  I've been getting between six and seven hours of sleep a night, which is perhaps ever so slightly too little.  Last night I slept between nine and ten hours.  I feel great. 

A Step Toward Normalcy

I haven't mentioned it, but one thing that changed in my life recently is that I received a T.V. for Christmas.  One reason I haven't mentioned it is that it didn't get any channels.  I finally borrowed a good antenna and last night watched TV.  I get ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, UPN, FOX, the WB, and some kind of televangelist channel.  Also an unidentified channel that appears to broadcast M*A*S*H at all times.  The televangelist channel comes in the best.  Second best is Fox.  The network channels all come in, but the antenna needs to be adjusted in different directions for different ones.  I think ABC works most of the time, but you need to pick your orientation, so you can either have CBS or NBC, but not both.  I haven't set up my old clunky VCR yet, but I will soon.  And one day, when my ship comes in, I'm thinking of being totally frivolous and buying a DVD player. 

So last night I set things up and sat on the sofa with the remote control, watching TV.  A friend came over.  We flipped between the televangelist and some reality TV show apparently called Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Search.  Then we watched The West Wing.  The West Wing is pretty good.  I can see why people like it so much.  The picture was a little snowy, but I enjoyed the experience.

I'm now trying to figure out whether I should become a TV watcher, and, if so, what shows I should watch.  I still don't see where people find the time to watch TV (especially when there's so much urgent reading to be done).  My evenings always seem to be full.  But maybe I could carve out a night a week to watch something.  I used to really like The Simpsons, and Malcolm in the Middle.  The West Wing wasn't bad.  If Survivor comes back on maybe that'll be my show.  Or maybe I'll just leave broadcast television alone a little longer, get myself a 15-movie rental punch card from the video store, and start trying to make headway on all the movies I haven't seen. 

The Outer Life Guy wrote a great post recently about filtering out the world.  I feel like I've been living a highly filtered life for a long time.  The addition of this television is going to be an interesting change.  I'm not sure what to do with it. 

Woodstoves

So this weekend's trip to the north woods was pretty nice. We stayed in cabins a few miles up a snowy logging road, behind a locked gate, on 27,000 acres of woods, river, ledge, and fields. There was a soft and fresh blanket of snow on the ground, but it was relatively warm -- in the 20s, dropping a few degrees each day. On Saturday night we had a contest to guess the lowest temperature that would be recorded overnight, and the winner guessed 7.9 degrees. In past years that number has been well into the negative digits. You could go outside to empty the coffee pot in the snow or to visit the outhouse without having to rush back in, teeth chattering, and warm up by the fire.

My favorite part of the weekend was the super iron woodstoves in the cabins. Big, cast iron workhorses, they pumped out heat and would roar quietly when you added logs to them. The kitchen had a nice wood cookstove with lots of burners and a faulty damper that would fill the kitchen with smoke when you opened the door to stoke it up or add wood. I loved tinkering with the stoves, poking at the coals to make a shower of sparks fly up, or shoveling out the old ash, or loading them up with big pieces of wood. Growing up we used to have a woodstove and I loved that thing. I particularly loved adding birch logs to the fire, because the coating of birchbark would crackle and sizzle and catch fire right away while the wood snapped and clucked and finally caught flame.

I drank coffee while on the trip, a cup on Saturday and one on Sunday. Part of it was that there was no caffeinated tea, but another piece was just my fascination with the old fashioned percolating coffee pot, with its little clear gizmo on the lid that let you see periodic blurps of liquid, starting out clear and gradually turning caramel colored, then brown. I had my coffee with half and half and a little bit of maple syrup. It tasted smoky and good. Maybe I'll try to start drinking it again.

On Saturday I went on a short cross-country ski. I went out with friends, but turned back a little bit before they did and returned accompanied only by the dog. When I stopped to adjust my gloves I heard a quiet shunk-shunk-shunk sound. I looked at my dog, but she was by my side, panting lightly. I looked around the woods, then up, and saw a small hawk flying by overhead. The shunk-shunk sound was the sound of wingbeats on the air. It was that quiet and still in the woods. On Sunday the dog and I took a walk by ourselves and inspected animal tracks of all different shapes and sizes. Also, as my senses adjusted to the surroundings, I started noticing seeds on the snow. Near one tree there was a shower of tiny seeds in the snow -- brown, shaped like tiny doves, and spreading around the tree in all directions. I couldn't figure out why this tree, and no other, had these tiny dovelike flakes falling from it. I watched but didn't see anything falling, or any squirrels at play. I looked for other trees like it (was it a beech tree? Maybe. I once knew a little bit about dendrology, but have forgotten almost all of it) but none of them had the dusting of seeds around them. On the way back I saw another kind of seeds, these small, asymettric flakes, tan and feathery with a darker brown seed. They fluttered down from a conifer. Are they what is buried inside the cone of a pine cone? Was a critter scattering them down? I couldn't figure it out, but stood studying them in the snow, and looking up into the tree until the cold dog started whining.

We played pictionary and I got a little bit obsessed by a jigsaw puzzle, and we cooked big feasts and dozed by the fireplace and laughed. We made snow cocktails -- strawberry snowgaritas, and mudslides with milk and kahlua and snow. The guests were an intelligent and diverse bunch, and talk ranged from psychiatry to crossword puzzles to sheep farming to outdoor gear. I got some reading in, and some writing. I spent a bunch of time just standing by the river, watching it and listening to it.

Unpacking this morning I noticed that my clothes smell like woodsmoke and maple syrup. I don't want to put them in the washing machine just yet.

Chipped Tooth

I'm back.  Unshowered, tired, a little cranky, and generally pleased to be back in civilization.  I got a chipped tooth last night, in a freak mishap that wasn't nearly as exciting as it should have been.  My tongue is sore from running itself back and forth over the ragged new surface.  Fuller report later.

Off the Grid

I'm about to head north, way out of cell phone coverage, to a wilderness area owned by Dartmouth where a friend each year gathers a crowd of people.  We stay in these rustic ranger cabins with bunkbeds and big woodstoves and gas lanterns and no electricity or running water.  We snowshoe and cross country ski and play games and eat big communal meals at a huge long table.  I'm bringing chess and New Yorkers and books and playing cards and a notebook for writing.  I've only been once before, two years ago.  The crowd is pretty gnarly outdoorsy -- we're talking Olympic caliber cross-country skiiers and people who rebuild the Appalachian trail and go ice climbing for fun.  I'm the only single person -- everyone else will be coupled up.  I'm prepared to be the chick who hangs out by the woodstove and greets happy, athletic, rosy-cheeked couples as they come and go on their hard core adventures.  The dog and my books will keep me company.  And I did pull out my X-C skis, which I haven't been on for a couple of years, and will fumble around on those until the woodstove beckons me back in.

Anyway, I'll be offline for a few days.  Way, way, way offline.  Stay warm without me.   

Opportunity

We got about seven inches of snow last night.  I was shoveling out the front walkway for the postman and thinking about my neighbor who used to live across the street.  He used to do a beautiful job shoveling his place -- not just his walk and driveway, but he would square off the snowbanks in front of his property so they did not slope into the street but were straight walls upward from the curb.  So his guests could always park six inches from the curb in front of his house.  I never really understood why he went to the effort.  For me, my driveway and the front walk is more than enough shoveling.

I forget his name.  He was about 40, blonde, handsome, and a little bit vain.  All summer he was out in his yard, mowing or washing his car or watering his flowers, without his shirt.  I noticed, and would look forward to it.  He wasn't my type but nonetheless was a pleasant shirtless addition to the neighborhood.  He got a black lab/rottweiler puppy and would walk him around the block, and stop to talk to me and Belle.  He smoked cigarettes and wore a big gold chain around his neck.  He wore lots of cologne.  He used to give me the eye, ever so slightly.  He was married, but I never saw his wife.  She drove a van that said "Chem Lawn" on the side, but I only ever saw her as a blonde blur getting into or out of the van.  He had lots of canoes and would tow them off somewhere behind his big truck, with one on top, most weekends.  His truck had a vanity license plate with the name of a local mountain on it, and housemate and I called him by his license plate tag because we couldn't ever remember his name.  (Mark?  I think it was Mark.)  One day he had a different license plate.  When he was walking his dog, I asked what had happened to the vanity plate.  "I had the opportunity to get a four digit plate," he explained.  I waited a beat too long before realizing that was the explanation.  I guess I vaguely knew that low license plate numbers are somehow coveted, because they are hard to get.  "Oh.  Congratulations," I said.  The neighbor's house went on the market, suddenly, not too long after that, at a price that seemed to me surprisingly low.  I heard rumors from another neighbor.  I never saw Mr. Blonde guy again.  Now whenever I see cars with four digit plates I think to myself, there goes somebody who had the opportunity to get a four digit plate.   

Good Riddance

Housemate and I are undertaking a serious decluttering project.  We're devoting a pretty serious hunk of time to it each week for the month of January, and are going to do the entire house, from tip to tip.  Because she's an art student, and because we're both kind of groovy, we're not just going to throw a lot of junk into bags and send some to the trash and some to Goodwill.  We're trying to be intentional about the project, and to push one another to let go of a lot more of the things we hold onto than feels comfortable.  We've given a lot of thought both to the intentions behind the project, the documentation of the project, and the ways to include and connect with other people through the project. 

The underlying principle is not just decluttering, but trying to fight our own grasping tendencies, and trying to encourage generosity and simplicity.  I keep writing 'abundance' and 'thrift', and then thinking, "no, that doesn't make sense -- those are opposites" and deleting them.  But they're not opposites, actually.  I think that when you hang onto things, it can sometimes be thrift, and it can sometimes be panic, desperation, or graspingness.  When you feel a sense of abundance, you don't need to own things, because you can borrow or obtain what you need without having to stow it or hang onto it.  So in some ways letting go of things we've been hanging onto just in case is recognizing the abundance of the world.  And in other cases hanging onto things is actually thrift. 

We're going to photograph all the things we're giving away, each day, and make a big spreadsheet of each room.  We may make it into a blog, actually, although it might be kind of a dull one.  We're also going to document those things we're keeping.  As we do so, we're going to try to articulate some principles behind the things in our life that matter to us.  I expect usefulness will be one, sentimental value another.  And there are some things that we won't expect.

(I was de-decorating the Christmas tree, for example, and took off the fuschia pink feather boa that was strung along the tree like a garland.  I pondered the pink boa and wondered what its fate would be in the Good Riddance Project.  I immediately thought of the arguments for keeping it.  "A hot pink boa is a good thing to have around," I thought.  "There are times when a hot pink boa is just the thing to change the mood of a room."  And then, "I like being the kind of person, with the kind of house, that can come up with something frivolous and funny like a pink boa at just the right moment to make a group of people smile."  Interesting.  But of course, do I really need this pink boa?  Probably not.  We'll see what becomes of it.) 

So when we identify the things we don't want to hang onto anymore (including those things we really WANT to hang onto, but acknowledge that we don't need, really), we're going to divide them up into categories.  There will be trash, but probably not too much.  There will be the Goodwill things.  And then there will be things too nice, or too meaningful, for Goodwill.  We talked about selling them but we decided that since generosity and abundance are intended to be a part of this project, we will have an Elf Day or two, where we wrap these items and give them as gifts to selected recipients.  Depending on how many such items there are, we also talked about inviting friends over for a big Yankee Swap, only asking our friends to bring food to share instead of gifts.  Then we'd have a big potluck feast, and go around the room just like a Yankee Swap, and all our friends would take away our precious, but no longer needed, objects. 

One piece of this is an enormous closet purge.  We've invited two of our most stylish girlfriends over for dinner on a specific night, and we're going to ask them to help us by giving the thumbs-up or the thumbs-down on all of the clothing we wish to keep.  We've done this once before, and our advisor was wonderfully helpful.  "You can wear that, but you can't," she would say about something we'd formerly shared.  Or, "That skirt is acceptable, but ONLY if you wear it with boots and a very tight top -- otherwise it's frumpy."  It was wonderful.  Our wardrobe advisor actually left with a few items of our clothing, we gave some of it to other friends, and we had this great certainty about dressing -- we knew that what remained in our closet looked really great, or, if not, what it needed to look terrific. 

I'm sure there will be more to report as the project gets underway.  I know I'm going to be getting rid of a ton of books, and maybe I'll offer to mail them to interested blog readers if we can find a way to make it postage-neutral to me. (Paypal?  Sounds kind of hard.... )  We'll see.  Perhaps even a hot pink feather boa will be available....

August Cucumber

Remind me when I'm not rushing off to NYC to tell you about the time I was eating oysters and the oyster guy told me to notice how the taste of this one kind of oyster was just like an August cucumber, and indeed it was, wet and fresh and tasting the tiniest bit of earth and water.  And how that reminds me of tasting wine with people who know the language, so they can mention the raisin or the rust or the toast in the taste and suddenly a flavor that would have just slipped by becomes something I notice and savor and experience.  And how that makes me aware of all the things I don't have the language for, and how they sort of move past me in an indiscriminate blur, even if I am trying to notice and feel and articulate nuances.  Without the words it's hard to grab an idea or a notion or an impression before it's gone.  I have been listening to a musician who is really super talented musically, although only so-so lyrically.  And I'm trying to capture for myself what I am digging about the music, and it's something about complexity and layering and something else that all I can do is go "aha! there it is" when it happens and it makes me wish I knew the language of music, because the experience without words and names for the moments I'm trying to notice is like trying to tie a knot with mittens on.

Start Spreading The News.....

I'm heading to NYC today, for a couple of days.  New Years Eve plans still officially up in the air, but I'm leaning towards getting out of the city before the big night and finding something quieter between NYC and here.  I may be persuaded otherwise by my friends.  We'll see.

Not sure if I'll get to write much, although I'll be hanging with Rufus and with Jeremy, and perhaps Tony too, if we can get our schedules to work.  And my traveling companions are the great Gates of the Mountains bloggers.  The great thing about NYC is how many good friends are all gathered there.   

Happy New Year, if I don't talk to you before.   

Not Much To Say

Today I realized that all of my CDs had been stolen out of my car.  My whole collection -- three of those pouches with lots of CD sleeves, plus a 20 CD sleeve that was usually on my sun visor, but that I'd taken off so I could show my teenage cousins my musical taste.  (Amazingly, my teenage cousins seem to think I'm cool, and wanted to have serious conversation with me about music, which mostly involved me going, hmm, nope, never heard of them.)  So I was really bummed out about that, and I was thinking about whether the RIAA would consider it an act of theft if I burned myself new copies of the stolen CDs from my digital music collection.  And I was wondering if this means that I need to start locking my car, which would be an enormous hassle and would, more importantly, be a mental capitulation to the idea that Portland's not this friendly small town.  And I was wondering which of my CDs, if any, aren't on my digital collection, and was chiding myself to make sure to burn all of them from now on just in case something like this happens again.

And then, like an idiot, I saw that I was wrong, and there all the CDs were, safe and sound on my backseat.  I'd looked all around the car, but clearly I was not looking properly because they were there all along.

And suddenly I felt like I was having a great day, like I'd just been given a valuable gift -- all my favorite CDs!  For me, to keep and have!  Hooray!  My faith in humanity was restored and I'm so excited to have all this music again.  No locking the doors for me. 

Who Wants To Buy Me Lunch?

I'll be heading down to New York City on the 29th, staying for a few days.  I haven't decided whether to do New Year's Eve down there (the thought fills me with trepidation) or come back here for something quieter.  In any case, I'll be in the city for a few days, and driving back on a flexible schedule on the 31st or the 1st.  If you're in NYC, or along the route home, and want to have lunch or a cup of coffee, send me an email.  (I'm looking at you, Rufus.) 

Scratch and Sniff

In lieu of words, I wish I could offer you smells for today's post.  There's the ginger/cloves/warm cookie smell of the Hottendots I just baked, the orange spice of my tea, and a balsam smell from a little pillow a friend just gave me.  Coming up, pumpkin pie and pear-apple-cranberry pie.  Yum.   I'm  dancing around the kitchen, singing Steely Dan songs to my dog, and baking up a storm. 

Chess Update

I've played now with a couple of new opponents.  One was a law student, still addled from finals, who hadn't played in years.  I beat him, but expect after he shakes the rust out he'll be formidable.  We played on my sleek magnetic travel chess set, which is tricky.  The little magnet pieces are discs with an imprint of the shape of the piece on the top of the little puck.  The pawn imprint looks enough like the bishop imprint that you can make a mistake.  And passersby can't glance at the board and tell how the game is going -- you have to peer at each tiny magnet to know what piece it represents.  So it's kind of a stealth gameboard. 

Last night I played with my friend L, who made a bunch of disclaimers about how long it had been since he played and then came out strong, taking undefended pawns before I knew what was happening.  I strung him out for a while through a series of lucky moves, and even managed an elegant little attack on his king with my rooks and a bishop, but in the end I was outnumbered and outfoxed.  His chessboard was beautiful, with intricately carved wooden pieces that were great to touch and heft. 

Thankful

I had a wonderful birthday yesterday.  Thanks to each of you for stopping by the blog, leaving a comment or a thought or sending me an email.  I got some great recipes, poetry, some pictures, all the Jack Handey deep thoughts I'll need for the year, and a soundfile or two as well as what was posted here in the comments.  I got text messages and phone calls and a mysterious and beautiful handmade unsigned birthday card in the mail (I think I know who you are, anonymous sender, and am plotting a scheme to reciprocate with unexpected sweetness).  Besides my blogfriends, I got phone calls from friends from all different life stages.  Perhaps my favorite was a call from my best friend from 2nd grade, now a weightlifting toughie who owns a self-storage business in rural Maine and who brought me up to date on her tattoos.  "Last month I had two guys inking me at the same time," she said, matter of factly.  "Never done that before.  I think 2005 is going to be a good year for the tattoos."  I got a birthday haircut and an e-card featuring cheerleaders and groucho glasses and a tiny sleek magnetic travel size chess set.  All in all, a good day. 32 is off to a great start.  And the days are already getting longer. 

Now I'm headed out of town to spend the better part of today with my dear friend and college sailing partner.  She's on Christmas break from law school, where she hangs out with none other than Energy Spatula.  Small world....

Haircut

Housemate gave me a haircut yesterday.  My hair had gotten quite long.  I think I've said before that I'm a little bit vain about my hair.  It takes a fair amount of trust to have a friend cut your hair.  I'm more conservative than Housemate, although I don't like that about myself and admire her style and boldness.  We negotiated a bit at the beginning of the cut.  How much license do I have here? she asked.  I gave her a fair amount, and tried not to wince too much as I saw my hair falling to the kitchen floor (or when she jammed my ear with the comb). 

It came out well.  Shorter than I had envisioned, and a little more flippy and flirty than I'm accustomed to.  But watching Housemate's face starting to light up as she snipped and pulled and compared was really fun.  She would let out an occasional squeal when she saw how a piece of hair fell.  And we both smiled when I checked it out in the bathroom mirror.   

We may continue to edit as the days go by and we observe how the haircut works.  That's the good thing about having your roommate cut your hair. 

Two Embarrassing Things

1) I am low on washer fluid in my car.  I finally bought some -- even an extra gallon, so responsible! -- and was chagrined to discover that I seem to be incapable of opening the hood of the car.  I've done it before, so I know it's possible.  There must be a lever or pull thingie; there always is.  But I can't find it.  So, no washer fluid for now. 

2) When I first started blogging I tried to use Trackbacks and kept bungling it, producing only dead links instead of the desired link to a page I was commenting on.  It is not self-evident to me how to leave a Trackback on a page.  I have become embarrassed about my inability to do it, but not motivated enough to fumble on through yet again trying to learn how.  So, no Trackbacks for now. 

Here We Go

Starting at midnight tonight, I will be living as though I were not afraid to fail. 

Silent New Year's

So people are starting to float New Year's propositions my way.  I tend to be very skittish about New Year's, for the usual reasons: too much pressure, too many choices, too many desperate amateurs trying to convince themselves that this  is the most fun they could be having while looking over your shoulder to see who else is in the room.  I tend to opt out.  For about a dozen years I would stay in, and make a list of the cool things -- things I'd seen or done, friends I'd made, habits I'd developed, etc -- that had happened in the year just concluding.  I would match it with a list of the kinds of things I was hoping to be proud of in the next year.  What was cool was after doing it for a while I could, of course, compare what I was proud of in a year that had just passed with my aspirations for the year at its beginning.  The coolest part of that was not, as you might imagine, the satisfaction of seeing that I had attained a lot of the things I'd hoped to do.  Instead it was seeing how many great things came about in the year that I'd never anticipated.  Every year there are things that make me happy that I don't know enough to imagine or to hope for.

This year I'm being tempted to go to New York by some good friends.  There's a regatta here on January 2nd, which I'm planning to sail in, unless it's snowing or something.  There's talk of a ski trip, or a winter camping expedition.  But the one I like the best so far is Silent New Year's Day.  Housemate and my friend MC did this last year.  I don't remember the details of New Year's Eve, but Housemate spent the night at MC's place -- I think they cooked dinner together and read books, went to bed early.  New Year's Day was spent without speaking.  They cooked breakfast, went for a walk, played games, read, and generally had a good old time together.  They communicated with gestures and pictures, although no words.  They even called me on my cell phone, I recall, and were speechless on the line to me, until I started asking yes or no questions and they pushed buttons on the touch tone phone to respond.  They invited me to dinner that way, I believe, although I couldn't go.  Anyway, for now that's the front runner.  A quiet New Year's Eve, and a silent New Year's Day. 

Verbal

In the usual line of snarky comments over at Anonymous Lawyer, one commenter chastises another commenter for using the word "verbal" when he presumably means "oral". 

I remember, when I was an undergraduate, being at a mixer for a group I belonged to.  I somehow was talking to a very famous alum, one who had a building named for him on campus and who had just given pots and pots of money to the organization.  We were talking about something, I forget what exactly, but the thrust was that nowadays what my group did in writing, they had done conversationally, face to face.  And I was nervous, but earnest, and eager to relate, hoping to hear more stories of the old days, and so I said something about how that sounded like it would have been so much harder, to do it verbally. 

And he looked at me, said disdainfully, "I believe you mean 'orally,' " and turned and walked away. 

I stood there, feeling like an ass.  I've not made the same mistake again, although, lately, I no longer think I was the one who was the ass. 

Quote of the Day

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhlemed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.

-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipeligo

I had a good lunch with my mentor, who may, it seems, become a friend. We talked of many things. 

Slumber Party

The Hooked on Tonics girls had a slumber party last night.  We drank wine, ate a marvelous dinner, talked about sailing and what we need to do to the boat and boys and our careers and religion and clothes and home decorating and people we know.  We danced to the Bee Gees, and took funny pictures of ourselves in our pajamas.  We exchanged gifts.  We ate chocolate.  We laughed a lot.  And this morning we drank coffee (well, I drank tea), and talked more about work and next year's regatta schedule and made a plan to go out dancing next week for my birthday. 

This morning when I went out to my car there had been the lightest dusting of snow -- a single layer of snowflakes.  They had crystallized on my car but retained their shape, so you could see the symmetry of each individual flake, its six-sided unique beauty, studding and sparkling my car.  I walked around the outside peering at the crystals with the wonder of a little girl for a few moments before the cold air sent me into the car and its heated seats. 

Nerves

I'm generally not intimidated or shy around many people.  I'm having lunch tomorrow with one of the few who still makes me feel self-conscious.  Maybe it's because he seemed very wise and impressive and talented and larger-than-life when I met him, which was about eight years ago now.  Back then I was more easily intimidated, and so watched him from afar as he led an organization I was involved with.  I was a sponge, an invisible protege.  I read the books he'd written; I went to hear him speak; if he mentioned a book as part of an anecdote I went and read it.  He's been a huge influence on me, unbeknownst to him.

Having lunch with him feels kind of like the way it feels when a childhood friend's parents, or one of your teachers, tell you to start calling them by their first name.  It's awkward and strange.  I am both excited and sort of gawky and nervous about it.  It's a funny, unfamiliar feeling. 

Party by the Numbers

Duration of festivities: 8.5 hours (7 PM -- 3:30 AM) 
Confirmed Yes RSVPs: 74
Actual attendees: 59 (by best count, although we keep remembering people and might still....)
    Sailor-types: 25
    Lawyer-types: 12
    Art schoolers: 14
    Childhood friends: 11* (this number disputed, depending on classification rules that Housemate and I disagree on)
Dog attendees: 3 (2 labs, 1 chihuahua)
Beverage report:

•     Beer

    purchased: 60 bottles
    consumed: 79 bottles
    remaining unopened: 69 bottles

• Wine

    purchased: 3 big bottles (the cheap stuff), plus one small bottle.
    consumed: 7 small bottles (good stuff) plus 5 additional bottles half-consumed
    remaining: 4 big bottles, 6 small bottles

• Booze: Net gain to us: 1 fifth of Mount Gay.   Only partial consumption of existing supplies of gin and vodka so the seal unbroken on the new bottles we bought.  Small consumption of Capt. Morgan's spiced rum purchased for the occasion.  I don't think anyone drank any of my good scotch, although I did see two gentlemen discussing the bottles at one point. 
• Nonalcoholic beverages: we're up on tonic, although it was a net loss of diet tonic and a net gain of regular tonic.  3 bottles of sparkling water, half a large bottle of cranberry juice, and about a quart of eggnog consumed.  Contributions included Diet Pepsi and ginger ale, which were mostly consumed. 

Food report: we're down half a cake, a bunch of cookies, guacamole, salsa, veggies, and a lot of mixed nuts.  But we're up some chicken wings, a cheese/nut loaf, several bags of chips, and some cookies.  And we had lots of contributed food that was consumed.  I'd say it was a small net loss in the food department.  But the net gain of alcohol more than makes up for it. 
 
Seeds of possible new romance planted: 2 known, ?? unknown (but 1 suspected)
Seeds of breakups planted: None known.  1 suspected. 
Seeds of new friendships: 8 known (1 friendly coffee date, 2 friendly dinner invitations, 1 lunch date, 2 sailing invitations, 1 baseball plan, 1 chess game).  ?? unknown (but more suspected) (tally does not include invitations made to hostesses, although we're hoping to be included as additional guests in the dinner invites)
Overt hostilities: 1 small instance
Covert hostilities (people leaving shortly after others arrived, or making quiet snarky remarks to me about other attendees):  five or six. 

Instances of dogs eating people food: too numerous to count.
Party fouls: 1, negligible (the chihuahua reportedly pooped in the house, but his owner was on the scene, and the cleanup was instant, since the offending items were very, very small).  NO spills, drunken tears, lost keys, overflowing toilets, or dogs vomiting.   

Time the last person who left the party in a cab came to retrieve their vehicle: 4 PM Sunday.

[Correction: no chihuahua poop.  That happened the last time he visited; for some reason I thought it happened again this time.  This makes me nervous.  Could we have really had no party fouls?  The yellow lab did eat a considerable portion of the cake after the party was over.  Does that count?  Or is there an undiscovered party foul lurking somewhere in the house?] 
 

Tuckered Out

Big, bad, contentious, important, productive, passionate meeting yesterday morning for an organization I'm involved with.  Then home for party preparations and a party at my house that went on until the wee hours of the morning.  I got to sleep at 5:30 AM, when I'm usually waking up.  It was a really fun party -- watching people from different circles of my life meeting one another and making friends, and the serendipity of people who my guests invited turning out to be delightful tribe members in their own right, and the abundance of all these fun, creative, friendly people finding ways to make one another laugh....it was great.  The house was full, but everyone had a place to stand and those who wanted had a place to sit.  The oldest attendee was 90, the youngest was 6.  People brought mistletoe, and treats for the dog, and yummy food, and a silly hat for the dog to wear, and wine, beer, and booze in overwhelming abundance.  I didn't have very many good conversations -- I just floated from room to room, introducing people from time to time, and leaving to find something.  I'm sort of a flaky hostess -- I can't have a very good conversation with any of my guests and tend to leave them to entertain one another.  They did this pretty well. 

Anyway I only got about three hours of sleep, debriefed and did some clean-up with Housemate, walked 6 or 7 miles (we were supposed to go 16 today, alas) and now have to head off for a book group holiday party and then, finally, I'll have a rest of sorts as I go watch the UNC basketball game this evening.  And then bedtime.  Real posting will resume tomorrow. 

National Security

There's an opening for an executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union.  I looked at it and talked to some folks, but ultimately didn't apply because I don't think I'm quite as much of a zealot by nature as I think should lead the MCLU.  You have to have a single-minded passion, and a finely-tuned sense of moral outrage, for that job.  But reading this tale from John Perry Barlow I was re-thinking that.  The 4th amendment is a big deal, I think. 

I met John Gilmore a few years ago at the Berkman Center.  I thought he was pretty cool then.  It appears he really is. 

Note To Self

I can procrastinate from something for a long time, and somehow once I start doing it I remember how much fun it is to work, and to think.  Why then do I still procrastinate?  Working on the project is always better than putting off working on it. 

In Which I Model Some Of Housemate's Art Projects

You asked for pictures.  Here are pictures.

(Without a digital camera, and not being much of a picture person, I only have the pictures other people send me.  It's an unusual collection.)

Practical Tip for Everyday Life

In the winter I go to bed wearing socks, because it's just a little bit too chilly to slide my feet under the covers without them.  But of course as the night goes on I overheat with socks on.  I used to wake up and find my socks in mysterious places -- one under a pillow, one gently held in a hand. 

Brilliant innovation:  wear one sock.  I've found that wearing one sock is exactly right for sleeping.  It's the functional equivalent of sticking one foot out from under the covers for temperature regulation.  But there are more possibilities, if you've got one sock on.  It's great.  You can stick the socked foot out from under the covers, or the unsocked foot, depending on just how much you want to cool off.  If you're cold, you can double up the blankets on the unsocked foot, and let the socked foot bear more exposure, without cold toe consequences. 

So somehow I've managed to teach the sleeping self that when she gets too hot in the middle of the night, she should just take off one sock.  Now I wake up with one sock under my pillow, or thrown onto the floor, and one sock on my foot. 

I discovered this last winter and I still feel like a genius. 

Chess Report

Played chess by a fire last night.  Won the first game, lost the next two.  That makes my record against my friend MC 2 and 2.  He's smartening up, I'm getting less conservative in my play.  It's fun.  Except when I was concentrating on the board I wasn't thinking about what I was doing and would take big gulps of my Maker's Mark thinking it was my water glass, and then I'd have a too-big mouthful of smoky complicated taste when what I'd wanted was a cool sip of water.  Multi-tasking is very difficult. 

The Badge

Okay, I don't know what the word is that would describe being sheepish and happy/proud at the same time.  What I really am is happy and proud, but afraid that if I admit it I'll be the object of lots of scorn and derision.  So I guess I feel self-protectively sheepish as well as proud.  Because it's a very silly thing.  That happens to mean a whole lot to me.

I was just elected to the board of the Portland Yacht Club.  I'm the Race Officer.  I was given a special badge with a crest, and in one of the cloverleafs of the gold braid on the crest (see, I told you this is silly) are the letters "RC" (for Race Committee).  I have to buy a blue blazer, and Nantucket Red pants or a skirt.  These look stupid on men, and will look even stupider on me.  I probably need to buy a neckerchief or scarf emblazoned with the club burgee.  It is about as silly and preppie as anything ever was.  And I'm so proud and excited. 

Being on the board means I'm a steward of this place I love more than anywhere else.  We looked at budget numbers and talked about replacement costs of docks and repair estimates for the road and membership dues and the parking crisis and our relationship with the neighbors, and I listened with wide eyes.  Should we build a new dinghy float?  How will we make the decision about whether we need a new launch?  Should the race committee boat fall under the waterfront committee's budget or the race officer's budget?  I'm telling you, my eyes did not glaze over for a minute (okay, only for a minute, when we were talking about amending the bylaws to reflect changes in membership categories).  This club is my home. 

Being Race Officer means I'm in charge of organizing a casual weekly beer can race every Thursday, and four big weekend events throughout the summer season, plus coordinating two or three other big regattas that will be primarily organized by local one-design fleets but will happen at the club.  I'll have to recruit, motivate, and manage a committee of about eight people; I'll have to find sponsorship and arrange trophies and throw parties and rustle up lots of volunteers and make them happy.  I'll have to be a peacemaker and an advocate, because in the club there's a history of some animosity between the members who love to race and those who don't, that plays out with political infighting and squabbling about money.  It's going to be a huge bunch of work and headaches and detail management and budgeting and wheedling.  And I was all smiles.   I'm excited to do it.   

My dad was race officer years ago.  My grandfather was on the board in his day.  He held a lot of positions, although I'm not sure whether he was the race officer or not.  I'm choosing to think that he was.  I love the club; I've been running around there my entire life, swimming in the water and riding the launches and looking at seals and learning how to race and, more than that, how to be confident and how to talk to grown-ups and how to be on a team and how to make people feel welcome and engaged.  I learned to sail there, and so did my dad and all of my aunts and uncles.  I want to take care of it and make it fun for other people, keep the dues down so young people at the beginning of their careers can afford to belong. 

I'm not sheepish at all, I guess, now that I write all of this.  I know yacht clubs are bastions of privilege and I guess having a boat at all makes me an out-of-touch elitist.  I know this is hardly a needy cause and I could be doing more meaningful things with all this time and love.  And I've known people whose connection to the yacht club was more about status and belonging and namedropping than about a true love of the water.  Those people make me cringe.  (Luckily there aren't many at this club.)  That's the last thing I want to be.  All of these are good reasons to think this is a silly silly thing to be involved with, let alone to get excited about, so I guess I feel nervous admitting how proud I am about this milestone.  But this place is my home.  I'm not happier than when I'm on the water, with others who love to be on the water.  I've been so lucky to know this place.  Inheriting my grandfather's mooring is a legacy that means more to me than perhaps anything else that's happened this year.  Being elected to the board feels like a bigger deal than, say, graduating at the top of my law school class.  This achievement recognizes something I've been doing my whole life -- being part of this community, and lending a hand when I can with friendliness and attention and competence.  The badge comes with responsibility to a group of people who care about the same things I do, who have watched me grow up and have confidence in me and trust me not to screw up.  I want to do a good job on the board.  I'm going to wear my ridiculous blue blazer and my stupid Nantucket Reds and my silly badge with the gold braid and the burgee and I'm going to laugh heartily with preppie wealthy white men and debate the merits of different kinds of outboard motors and I'm going to have a big delighted smile on my face the whole time. 

Punctuality

How long do you wait in the cold dark evening for someone you don't know to show up for a meeting you aren't sure is happening?  I waited twelve minutes, on a park bench, where I was hoping to talk to somebody about some graffiti.  A guy was loitering across the street, looking at me, and I wondered if he was one of the artists.  But then someone opened the door he was standing in front of, and greeted him, and he went inside.  A group of art students drifted by and loitered for a while, smoking, but they didn't look at me and scattered away on bikes after a few minutes.  No graffiti artists. 

There is a distinctive tag that's been appearing around Portland over the past few months.  Since Housemate and I walk so much we've noticed it in various places around town.  We've taken an interest it.  It has different manifestations -- typography and color and style vary around the city.  Sometimes it is just the tag, and sometimes the tag accompanies additional words (e.g. "Die yuppie scum" or "Naught endures but mutability" or "Jay Leno has a small penis.").  The tag itself is a semi-obscure allusion.  (I'm not writing the tag here because I don't want to show up in a Google result for it yet, but this is the word.)  I've looked around Wikipedia, spent some time on the microfiche machine at the library, and have two books on order through interlibrary loan to find out more.  I've corresponded with a guy who owns the web domain that corresponds with the tag; he's in Austin, TX.  He doesn't know about the graffiti here in Portland, but he's offered to put digital photos of the tag on his website.

On our end, Housemate and I and a third principal investigator have taken a foam posterboard on which we've mounted a bus map of the city, with pushpins to mark the location of the tag.  We have started taking pictures of the tag where it appears, and these photos are posted onto the foam poster.  We have scouts in other neighborhoods who report to us new sightings.  We see some patterns to the appearance and have formed some theories about the graffiti artists (including the theory that there is more than one person involved), and have some suspicions about who might be behind it.  A few days ago there was a flag flying with the word on it, on the corner of Free Street and Temple.  It was only up for a day or so, but one of us got it on film. 

Not long ago we saw a note on a bench.  Someone had defaced the tag, adding the letter "O", and then claimed responsibility for the defacement.  "We are the 'O'," the note said.   "Meet here any Wednesday night at 9."  So I went looking to meet the "O"s, who presumably are also hunting or responding to the original graffiti artist(s).  Nobody showed up.  The hunt continues. 

Wink, Wink

I was at a dinner party last night with an outspoken woman.  I don't know how the subject came up but she claimed to hate winks.  She said, "It's just so gross and slimy, and people who do it -- eeeew.  I just can't stand it."  So of course I defended winking.  Which meant I winked at her often, and at everyone else around the dinner table, for the rest of the evening.  The other four people at dinner caught on pretty quickly and started winking right back.  It was fun.  The outspoken woman would exclaim, "Eeeew!" when I winked at her in the middle of an unrelated conversation.  There are so many different kind of winks.  The four of us wink-defenders launched into a whole set of statements whose meaning was changed if you said them with a wink.   Sometimes when we winked at each other we could make one another laugh; almost always we made each other smile. 

I love winks.  You can wink at somebody to convey a million different things.  To me it's generally friendly and playful.  Sometimes it's flirty.  Sometimes its just an acknowledgment of a little specialness, and of the power of eye contact.  I see you, I see you seeing me, and isn't it fun?  Yes, sometimes winks are slimy, I guess.  But I just couldn't see the rationale for this woman's revulsion.  As dinner progressed she started giggling when I would wink at her, and saying, "you're really good at that."  She even tried to wink back a time or two.   Maybe she started to see it differently.

Find someone to wink at today.  If winking is outlawed, only outlaws will wink. 

I Want I Want

This weekend on our 12 mile walk, Housemate and I were talking about an artist she's familiar with, who makes giant sculptures -- big huge building size beds of stone and metal, for example.  For a few years all of her work was etched with the words "I want I want I want I want I want," everywhere.  I can relate, some days.

Anyway, today I have two small wants.  I want a pretty little necklace.  I am wearing a sweet delicate necklace that belongs to Housemate -- it is a silvery chain, with a small bird that hangs right in the hollow of my collarbone.  When I was getting dressed I looked at all of my necklaces and I found I wanted something like this for my own -- sweet, feminine, perhaps a little bit edgier than this tiny bird, but something that would feel like a symbol and a little piece of loveliness for my neck.  I have a necklace that my best friend gave me, another silvery chain with a glassy blue droplet and the word "dream" hanging there in my collarbone hollow, but it's getting old and a bit worse for wear.  Any ideas on where to look for a new amulet? 

I want someone to play chess with me this winter.  I used to play years ago -- for a time I was playing so much that I had chess dreams, or would see a telephone pole and think that it could capture the one across the street if it were a bishop -- but haven't touched a chessboard in perhaps ten years.  And I wasn't particularly good even when I played a lot.  I'm thinking more about chess by a fireplace, in a pub or a cafe, but I could also be happy to play a game or two online. 

Stay of Execution: A Retrospective

Everyone's looking back.  Sua Sponte's revisiting past Thanksgivings, and my dad just wrote about reading his journals from a year ago.  I found myself having the same impulse.  I decided to pull my journals and look at what I was writing and thinking about in the fall and winter three, five, ten, and fifteen years ago.  Here are some snippets:

One year ago, November 2003: Here's what I was blogging about a year ago. 

Three years ago, late December 2001, Age 28:  At the Iron Horse in N. Hampton, waiting to see [Musician].  Afraid I've been thinking about this in a way that will lead to disappointment.  [Musician]'s been a platform for my daydreams since we saw one another in early December.  Part of it is that I have a crush, but another part, I think, it that I'm weary from this job....

I fear that I am entering a dreary time of life.  Perhaps not, what with my new hair and my new job.  But the job is a reason behind my suspicion.

The beauty of the job is the access it gives me to human drama -- a small tragedy in every case.  I'm learning a lot about human weakness.

Five years ago, November 1999, Age 26: This just in from S. -- a late night (drunken?) missive.  Still no call -- I called him two days ago, left a message wishing him well and asking what he's thankful for.  The text was: 'Dear sweet woman, you are as inspired as you are lovely.  You do truly warm and tickle my heart.  And for that and life's countless mysterious blessings I give thanks.'

Sushi and scotch last night.  Yum.  I was even wearing my cashmere pants.  Yummy.  E. says I glow.  I think I am beginning to.   Overslept and missed Con Law, was late to Admiralty.  Can't keep staying up late.

Ten years ago, November/December, 1994, Age 21: I think about J. all the time.  My thoughts probably have little to do with him right now and far more to do with my feelings of loss and listlessness.... Learning lessons is tough.  The loneliest times of my life have been right after J. left in August and these past two weeks.  It's amazing to me how I can see things happen to other people and still not imagine something until it happens to me.  So much for empathy.  Love has made me feel lonelier than anything else.  I'm lonely now, and the funny thing is that there's no cure -- I'll be lonely for a long time....Look at what I'm writing!  I sound like a wimpy girl!  This is the kind of cheese that I hate on top 40 radio and lame soap operas.  This experience will certainly help me be a little more open minded about other people's loves.  Nobody on the outside of a relationship can ever know what's right.  Hell, the people in it probably can't.

....Another day squandered.  Will I ever bring myself to do those horrid physics labs? 

    Last night A. & I went to Rudy's. We split 3 pitchers.  Talked about evolution and brotherly love and friendship.  He's great -- the more I know him the more I think so.  One of the best things about him is how comfortable he makes other people.  He laughs easily and sincerely and it feels good to be around him.  Although he's not an active friend he is a solid one and knows much about me.  I think I know him fairly well too, at least several facets of him. 

    I've been flirting with the idea of taking Prof. F's writing class.  If I can get in, that is.  I'll have to practice over break.  Tonight I was in the bookstore reading the Best American Short Stories of '94 and loved it so much.  I wonder if this is a colossal sign that I need to read and to write.  I guess my reaction to my physics labs and my total indifference to my senior project are clues. 

    I have to make next semester fun.  This one has been such a vacuum.  I'm worried about disappointing people but really I've hated this fall.  It's been awful.  I've been honest about that.

Fifteen years ago, December 1989, Age 17: Yesterday at a pro-choice rally I fainted.  A doctor behind me said it looked like a seizure because my eyes moved and my legs shook.  I had a dream -- not anything I remember besides shapes and emotions, but it lasted a long time.  I felt like I had a series of dreams, until suddenly I was looking up to a cold blue sky with wispy clouds blowing past, dead tree branches, and dozens of concerned faces looking down on me.  Someone was holding my head.  I felt shocked -- disoriented -- could not understand where I was for several moments.  I had to recall the time before I passed out when I was feeling woozy and then figure out that I must have fainted.  It seemed like hours had gone by between the time that I'd felt like I might faint to the time when I woke up on the ground.  Someone had called an ambulance, and they carried me off in a stretcher and into an ambulance.  It was embarrassing, but I did feel too wierd to walk.  They gave me an EKG and then let me go.  It was a very strange experience altogether, and very disorienting.  I hope I don't have seizures, or faint for a while.  I have fainted about four times in the last three years -- Oct '87 in Sex Ed class, Jan '88 in the doctor's office, Nov. '88 at home when I was sick, and now Nov. '89.

I can't believe it's going to be 1990 soon.  That's something, isn't it?  At the end of this decade it will be 2000, and I'll be 27 years old.  I'll have gone to college, graduated, gotten a job and an apartment.... I wonder what I'll be like as a 27 year old.  I'll probably be too serious.  I hope when I get older I'll still hang out with younger people -- won't just blow them off because of their age.  There are some adults who are great with younger people, but most of them just can't do it.

Seventeen years ago: Thanksgiving, 1987, Age 14: Last night L. spent the night.  We talked for a long time.  She still likes T, the creep.  But she doesn't like most of her 'druggie' friends and wants to make new ones but finds it hard to do.  She got all Bs and one D+ this quarter.  The D+ was in World History. 

Why do I try to force good grades on people?  I think it's because Mom and Dad have always brought me up to think grades are important and school is important, etc.  And I agree but then it is hard for me because there are a lot of people who I love and admire (L, E, S, A) who are not what they should be.  I love them but not for my preconceived notion of what success is and what happiness is, because they don't share it.... So I feel a little uncomfortable at myself or at them because I love them very much even thought they don't fit my ideas, so I wonder if my ideas are wrong or if they're wrong.  It's easier to say they're wrong and to try to change them.  I'll decide they've got the right ingredients, the right notions, but they've just gone astray.  But sometimes my little formula isn't right for them and I'm faced with the fact that maybe everyone's not the same as me only gone in a different direction.  And if I can't think that then it's a lot harder to relate to them because I don't know who they are.  And maybe, I'm forced to wonder, if my formula doesn't work for them, maybe it won't work for me....

The beginning of the fossil record: February, 1986, Age 13: Guess what?  I won the city spelling bee!  Yes, me!  I even beat Josh W. (he got out quite early, actually, on UPBRAID, whatever that means).  But I won.  Super, huh?  Super is my new word, I'm saying it all the time now.  Yesterday Mr. L. gave me this long lecture about my behavior in math class and how I needed to conform to his rules.  I feel guilty about not telling my mom, but I don't know if she'd understand.  I hate Mr. L.  Yucky-yuck.... Tomorrow's Valentine's Day and I think I'll write a note to Bobby H. and slip it inside his locker.  471.  What a wonderful number....There's a writing workshop tomorrow, I was selected.  I have no idea what it's for, though....Well, the writer's group was pretty boring.  We wrote a few poems and the guy read us some eskimo poems.  BORING!  On Thursday nothing important happened, except I started really liking this kid on the track team.  I like him he's in eighth grade and is nice, I think.  He looks nice, like he's a nice guy, and he has curly hair.  He's the best (or almost the best) high jumper on the team.  Tori and Gwen also like him.  I'm not going to blow it with him like I did Bobby H. by being overly anxious....   

Thankful

The hum and bump of clothes in the dryer; the splash and rattle of rain on the windowpane; the rising hiss of the kettle starting to warm up on the burner; the heavy breath of a dog falling asleep; the yellow glow of a floor lamp on a thick red carpet; the solid weariness of a belly full of food digesting.  It makes for a pretty cozy November night. 

Apostasy

In the midst of marriages and co-habitations everywhere, I have a few friends divorcing.  One of them is having a party to celebrate the divorce being final.  He told me about it, and, with a bit of a wry laugh, suggested, "So if you have any promises you wish to renounce, or commitments you'd like to break, bring them along.  We'll have a bonfire." 

I liked the idea, and am pondering which commitments I am ready to abandon, which promises it is time to forsake. 

Cranberry Conserve

I made this last Thanksgiving, when I had 15 "orphans" here for a yummy dinner.  It was really good, and I've been assigned the cranberry sauce for dinner at my uncle Ben's.  I also need to bring an hors d'oeuvre; if you have suggestions I'm listening.

Cranberry Conserve:
1 or two thinly sliced, unpeeled oranges (remove seeds, and cut slices in semicircles)
1/2 cup apple cider or juice
1 1/2 cups pineapple chunks (fresh)
1 pound cranberries
3.5 - 4 cups sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp cloves (whole)

Simmer the orange slices with the cider until the peel softens, approx 15-20 mins.  Add the remaining ingredients and simmer for about 35 minutes, until the mixture thickens.  You'll want to stir a lot.  Cool overnight. 

I found this recipe in the new version of the Joy of Cooking.  It's yummy, and pretty. 

Note To Self

15 minute parking meters just aren't worth it.  I always run into someone, or the errand takes longer.  Even when I think I'm being good, like today, by feeding the meter and going back and feeding it again, I'm doomed.  Today I ended up with the boot.  Ouch. 

Minds Are Like Parachutes

I'm pleased to report that I've changed my mind.  I'm no longer categorically uninterested in Mexico City.  I'd meet you there. 

Little Sisters

There are two young women in the world who I think of almost as younger sisters.  One is the only child of my parents' best friends.  I've known her since she was born and look forward to knowing her for the rest of our lives.  The other is my best friend's younger sister, who I've known since first grade.  We've lived together, and I've watched her grow up and into herself.  Over the past five years I've watched her struggle with self-esteem issues and conquer some big problems, and relax into herself.  It's really cool.  She's flourishing now: healthy, beautiful, hard-working, confident, engaged in her life, willing to take risks in business, a committed nurturer to friends and family.  And she's in love with a wonderful sunny young man.  It's been a wonderful transformation.  In some ways, she's got a wisdom and an ease that makes me feel like now she could be my older sister. 

I'm off to a faraway place to celebrate their wedding.  If there's connectivity, I'll connect.  Otherwise, I'll see you Tuesday. 

A Small Subset of Things I Am Bad At

1) Remembering birthdays.
2) Buying presents.  Especially wedding presents.  Thank goodness for the within-a-year rule.  Still, I'm a chump and a doofus about it.  Today I made a little headway for two couples, but I have three others still to shop for. 
3) Covering it up when I feel sad.
4) Lying about anything, actually.
5) Driving. 
6) Remembering to take my wet laundry out of the washing machine and dry it.
7) Knowing what things (eyeglass frames, haircuts, etc.) look good on me.
8) Singing.

That'll do for the time being. 

A Watched Pot

I am sitting cross-legged in my favorite armchair, waiting for the kettle to boil so I can make some tea.  The dog is at my feet.  She just emitted a gentle post-breakfast burp, and is now licking her front paws.  I can hear the warming pot hiss and burble.  Outside it is thirty-eight degrees, with a sky the kind of grey that it only gets in November.  Later today I'm going to meet a bunch of intrepid souls and mess around with sailboats.  If the messing around is successful, we'll put them on a crane, drop them into the water, and race them for a few hours until it gets dark.  I expect to be very cold.  I think I'll bring a flask of Scotch along.  Last time I did this, my hands got so cold that my fingers could no longer open the top of the flask.  I hope that doesn't happen again. 

The kettle just whistled, and now I've got a full cup of Earl Grey tea beside me.  The dog has her head down and is beginning to breathe deeply through her nose.  There are a bunch of things I want to write about -- the settlement of makeshift tents and tarps, a semi-permanent homeless community, that my walking companion and I stumbled upon yesterday; the political arguments swirling around me last night at a dinner party, all shaking index fingers and red faces and flashing eyes and bursts of angry profanity; further thoughts on the dating age gap between men in my peer group and the women they wish to date and how I feel about it. 

But now that my tea is made, I'm going to work on my fiction project.  It's kicking my butt.  I'm reasonably comfortable with my descriptive ability, but I've got no confidence in my ability to write dialogue.  And plotting is so very hard.  I'm starting to get a sense of my characters and the structure of the thing but there are huge, enormous gaps in what I know.  I also find that I'm terribly undisciplined as a writer.  I don't have a routine in place or a way to push through when things are hard.  It is a great exercise -- made possible by the ridiculously short time period, which lets me feel comfortable writing garbage, just so I can write something.  If I didn't feel like that was safe, I wouldn't be able to write anything.  I think the blog has been a little bit helpful in getting me used to writing without needing things to be perfect.  I think it has helped my sense of confidence in my descriptive ability.  But I think it has hurt me in that it hasn't required any discipline -- there need be no narrative thread, I write only about what I feel like, only when I feel like it, only for as long as I feel like.  Which has gotten me accustomed to writing in blurts and bursts of inspiration, until whatever it is I want to say is out, and then going and doing something else.  This fiction project is about writing whether there's a burst or not, and writing something that is connected to the things that come before it and those that come after it.  Whew.  It's kicking my butt, in a great way.      

Things I Am Not Open-Minded About

I was writing something last night and started to write, "I'm generally pretty open-minded."  Which I still think is true.  But the sentence grabbed my attention and challenged me.  Am I really?  I asked myself to think about the things I have firm convictions about that aren't based in logic, experience, or reason, and about which I'm not open to persuasion.  Here's a partial list.  I realize that I have these big aesthetic blind spots -- areas where my beliefs are rigid enough that they'd keep me from experimenting with something new, where I would deeply discount the recommendation of a friend.   (Once upon a time, though, I had a strong bias against country music; now I dig it.  So there's hope, I guess.)  I'll keep working on it; I'm sure there are more.   

1) I will never like, enjoy, or approve of jet skis.  Four wheelers are okay, and snowmobiles, with a stretch of the imagination, I could imagine enjoying.  Not jet skis.
2) Gin and tonic is a summer drink.  By which I mean, I vaguely disapprove of those who drink it in the winter, and also I vaguely disapprove of those who don't drink it in the summer.
3) I am not open to the music of Jimmy Buffett or the literature of Tom Robbins.  (Or, for that matter, the literature of Jimmy Buffett or the music of Tom Robbins.)  Not negotiable.    
4) I don't ever want to go to Orlando, Florida; if you make me, I can't imagine enjoying myself.  Also Las Vegas, Nevada.  Also, Mexico City.  I'll meet you anywhere else, but I've got a mental block against those cities.
5) There is nothing interesting about window treatments. 
6) I never wish to try anything made with those "flavor shot" syrups they have in all the coffee shops now, no matter how good you might tell me it is. 

That's all I can think of so far.  I bet there's more.  This has been uncomfortable to write.  I don't like feeling prissy and disapproving, which I do about these things.  I've been sitting here trying to imagine changing my mind about Orlando, or asking someone to explain to me their interest in curtains and valances.  But apart from this list I think I'll listen to most anything, read or watch or taste most anything, be curious about most hobbies or passions, be interested in exploring most places, try or play with lots of things.       

Coffee Shop

Today I was sitting in a coffee shop and ended up having a long and roaming conversation with a man who used to own a bar I spent plenty of time in when I was an undergraduate. We talked about neighborhoods in New Haven and then about kayaking the Maine coast and about digital music. And then a woman sat down with us and jumped right into the conversation, which had twisted and turned into the psychotropic reactions to a particular kind of fungus that grows on grains, and which may have explained the strange behavior of the women who were persecuted as witches in Salem. The woman leaped immediately into the conversation, seemingly knowing a great deal about the kinds of fungi that grows on barley and rye and wheat, and the side effects of the fungi and molds as well as the fungicides. Her participation steered the conversation into the various harmful effects that wheat and grains can have on a diet. Also tomatoes. Eliminating all canned tomato products from her own diet cured her carpal tunnel syndrome, this woman announced. She's a physician, apparently, with something of a specialty in food allergies, and cured autism in a child by eliminating wheat from his diet. The fellow who'd formerly owned the New Haven bar I once frequented engaged her in a long conversation about food preferences in children. I sat with my laptop open, trying to work, and delighting in the occasional gregariousness of strangers.

Purple

I've been troubled since yesterday by the maps of the country I've seen -- big swaths of red, and little corners of blue. Are we really that different? That divided? And why, I wonder? How do we live together if there is this fundamental difference in how we see the world?

But of course we aren't so dramatically divided. All those red states are nearly half blue. And the blue states are almost half red. The truth is in every red state there are swirls and blotches of blue and in every blue state there are veins of red. We live next door to one another. The maps strike me as misleading, and perhaps dangerous, because they don't acknowledge the complexity or the neighborliness of each of our real lives.

Which is the case of an election, too. We had a binary choice. There are lots of things to admire about Bush and about Kerry, and lots of things to dislike about both. Smart, thinking people of conscience could make a principled choice for either one. And many smart, principled people of conscience chose a candidate without endorsing his whole platform. There's no way to vote and scrawl in one's hesitations and admonishments about the candidate. How many people did you know who were voting on one overwhelming issue, or were voting against something they feared, rather than for something they loved?

So there's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth that strikes me as problematic. People I like and respect are accusing approximately 50% of the population of being stupid, misguided, ugly, hateful, etc. And the maps and the facile "exit polls" about 'moral values' are being bandied about as though they tell some kind of meaningful story about the complexity of American lives.

I just listened to Malcolm Gladwell talking about preferences at Pop!Tech -- how our very preferences, even the simplest ones, like tastes that please us, are unknown and unstable, how the stories we tell about the choices we make are notoriously unreliable, how we have only the meagerest language to describe the longings and pulls of our hearts. He persuaded me that focus groups and inquiries into human behavior are extremely unreliable.

And yet there's this crazy rush to analyze and either crow about or decry the election results, to make meaning out of a clumsy and overly simplistic map and some crude questions posed to a few people as they were leaving the polls and hurrying off to do errands. How does this help create a meaningful conversation, or help us make intelligent decisions about choices that are shaded and complex, that involve our neighbors?

We're all living in purple states. The human heart is complex, and only knowable with careful, quiet study. I have misgivings about the election results, certainly. But I have even more misgivings about the flatness of the dialogue about the results. We can do better.

Tapioca

Last night I hedgehogged around my friend MC's kitchen, with NPR turned up loud. I had a package of tapioca and had decided to make pudding. I forgot how easy it is -- an egg, some milk, the tapioca, some sugar, and a splash of vanilla. I stirred it with a whisk, watching it thicken, watching the little fish eyes of tapioca appear. I love the moment when you're stirring something and it suddenly thickens. I think the last time I made something that thickened was making homemade cheese for an Indian food feast back in July. It's magic, the way a liquid can change around your spoon.

While the pudding was cooling in the refrigerator I flipped listlessly through MC's four television channels, knowing there would be very little news. It was a little bit absurd, how many ways the television announcers had of saying there was no news. "I want to report on a very interesting Senate race here in [state]," a blow-dried person would say. "This has been very hard-fought, with the candidates spending a great deal of money in the final days just before the election. And right now it's just too close to call." Public television had a special about Mt. Kilimanjaro, which seemed impossible to me. We watched that for a little while, before I irritably changed the channel. I ate Pringles. I thought about making macaroni and cheese, for some additional comfort food, but instead curled up in a blanket and kept changing the channel.

The tapioca, when we ate it, was still a little bit warm. It had thickened on top -- not quite a skin but a distinct, slightly glue-y, surface tension. Inside it was smooth and warm, sweet and thick and bland and vanilla-soft. We watched local candidates unwilling to concede races that they'd lost by a landslide. Jim Lehrer came on. I scraped the bottom of my bowl. I fell asleep in an uncomfortable position, with the television telling me all the things it still didn't know.

Words

I'm giving this a whirl. It's already hard. It's hard to write lots and lots, without self-editing. The point of this exercise is to get lots of words out, to see what happens when I don't self-edit, and when I get in the habit of writing a lot. But yikes. It's hard.

If I'm quieter here, it's because I'm pumping a couple of thousand words a day into this project.

Pinning Our Hopes

Last night Housemate and her art-school friend made a batch of hundreds of clothespins, stamped with the message "KERRY WILL WIN" on one side and "NOVEMBER 2" on the other. They did this because they're anxious and eager about this election and wanted to turn nervous energy into a project that would spread a positive message of confidence. They went out and pinned clothespins all around town last night. I've been given four dozen or so and on my morning walk this morning found places to pin them -- bus stop signs, telephone booths, park benches. It's kind of fun.

Cooking

I just cooked a nice fish dinner -- broiled hake, brown rice, pureed spinach with red onion and mint, stewed cauliflower with tomatoes. My friend D came over and made bananas foster for dessert.

It's been a while since I've cooked regularly. I think I want to make it part of my life again. I listened to a book on tape while I chopped and simmered, and the time passed under the spell of the recipes and the narrator's voice. Once upon a time I used to cook moderate to elaborate meals four or five times a week. It was wonderful time spent each night, partly sensual experience -- the smell of garlic or cilantro, the texture of a thickening sauce, the chilly feeling of shelling Maine shrimp, the sizzle of oil when I dropped bread in to make pooris -- and partly mental escape. I often disappeared into thought while I chopped onions and peppers, or else listened to All Things Considered and Marketplace and Fresh Air. Nowadays I'm usually rushing off somewhere, or out with friends, or too busy or tired to devote a whole evening to making and eating a meal. But I miss it. I might make a weekly friend date, where I cook for two or three people on the same day of the week each week. I'd like to plan meals again, thumb through recipe books, soak beans overnight and take note of the ingredients I'll need, the timing of the different steps. I'm ready to start up again.

Pop!Tech: Pretty Pictures

Really cool graphic notes done by Peter Durand about each of the sessions are available for viewing here.

I used to make notes and posters like this when I was studying subjects in law school, and for the bar exam. Using pictures, color, and space to depict concepts, relate them to one another, and inject humor and insight into the way I thought about hard subjects, made me learn them much better. I recommend it.

Weary

I'm tired. I'm indecisive. I'm sick of not knowing what my professional calling is. I'm scared that I won't see it or know it or, worse, that I'll see it and not be able to get to it. I'm scared that people I respect won't respect me any more because I'm sort of foundering here. I'm doubting myself. I'm paralyzed by possibility. I just need to commit to one thing and do it but instead I keep turning over more stones and finding more possibilities. Some of this is good, I suppose -- working in parallel is conservative, because already there have been some prospects that turned out to be illusory, and I'm glad I didn't drop everything just to chase them. But maybe if I'd dropped everything and chased them, they wouldn't have dissolved away.

It's funny because I have this dark tired pessism about the short term. I feel like I'm wandering around in a dark forest. And yet I have this wonderful warm confidence about my long term prospects, this sense that the clearing, when I find it, will be sunny and there will be a team of fast-running horses there with one saddled up and ready for me and when I stumble out of these woods, zoom, I'll be galloping off on an amazing journey full of treasures and scenery better than anything I've seen yet. I can't really explain it. In the short term, day to day, I feel more lost than I have in a long time. But I also feel like I'm moving in the right direction, like this lost wayward stumbling is going to prove valuable and essential to the next phase.

Still, it's dark in these woods. I try not to write much about the dark places on this blog. It makes me feel even more vulnerable. I know how permanent Google can make a temporary mood. I don't want to be tainted by my own discouragement. But omitting it, always, is kind of tiring, too.

Last night I had a hard time sleeping. The primary reason was that I drank caffeine and stayed up later than usual. And I was around a lot of people whose lives made me deeply depressed. I have a thin skin, I think. Maybe it's a downside of having imagination and empathy and a strong curiousity about people. Being around people who lack a sense of possibility, whose lives are constricted and small, affects my sleep almost as much as caffeine.

Today I walked six or seven miles in the midday sun, along the water, looking at a lot of yellow and orange leaves. It helped. My legs are tired, but my soul a little less tired.

GIT

Returning from Pop!Tech I had a couple of letters, real live pen and ink letters, waiting for me, and then I got a phone call from a New York friend of mine who was in town visiting. She and her traveling companion and I had lunch today. All three of us are in transition -- we've left stability behind and have no idea what's ahead and we're all giddy and terrified and delighted by the unknown-ness of it all. We went for a walk and as we walked across the causeway looking at the ocean I proposed that we meet again in six months, and again in a year, to report on what we've learned. (GIT = Girls In Transition) It is so useful to meet and talk with people who are being brave in their own lives. It makes it easier, or a little less lonely, to be brave in mine.

Pop!Tech: Ideas Whose Time Have Come

Inspiring sessions this morning. Grant McCracken was over my head, but Barry Schwartz argued persuasively that more choices make us less happy and paralyze us, in big ways and small. He says what makes us happy is not freedom but connection to other people. When we connect deeply with other people it ultimately limits our options -- we must think not only of what we want, but what will work for our counterpart. Sometimes constraints make our lives substantively better. He said it much better. I think I will buy his book.

Ethan Zuckerman then talked about Africa -- getting folks online in Africa, and why it matters. Also how to get the media to pay attention to places beyond the usual hotspots. And David Bornstein is talking about social entrepreneurship and the social change models used by successful entrepreneurs -- micro loans, networks, connectivity, etc. It's not just about charisma of social change leaders. There are blueprints for specific kinds of "business models" for social change -- so it is easier than ever before to use successful models to implement and affect social change. He, too, is saying it better than my paraphrase. Cool.

Local Knowledge

After the conference presentations last night I went to a dinner thing, and then to another thing, and after that, down to a little basement bar in town. The bar was full of locals -- lots of beards, lots of Red Sox hats and T-shirts, lots of eyeliner. No expensive black jackets and funky glasses. I got there and was tipsy and exhausted, so I leaned against the railing and watched people laughing and prowling around the bar. I felt far away.

And then I made my way to the bar and sat for a while drinking my PBR, and suddenly a woman across the bar called my name, excited and disbelieving. "SHERRY?!?" I peered at her and recognized the face of a young woman I taught sailing to 9 years ago. She made her way over to me and gave me a great big hug and we talked for a long time about these past nine years, and what she's done in this time. She graduated in May. Her college sailing experience was crowned by disappointment -- at Nationals, she was pulled out after six races, and I could see the intensity of the emotions she still carried about that. Oog. I told her about how my college sailing career ended the same way -- after a very promising season and some hard training, and indeed even a few great races in the regatta itself, I choked, for reasons I couldn't understand. Oh, it stung. It took me a long time to stop being angry with myself. I could see in my young friend that same struggle. And there was so much more. Talking with her brought me back to my own post-college confusion -- about who I was, what I wanted to do, how to be myself. She told me about her life, what she's learned, what she's afraid of about herself, what her friendships are like, how she's changed since the time I knew her, and how she's the same.

When I got out of college I came here to Camden for a summer, to teach sailing and be around beauty. I ended up staying for four years. I look back on those four years as a rich time but so full of painful lessons and self-imposed pressure. The locals in the bar were the crowd I knew when I lived here. And my former student was here living through the same kind of struggles. Somehow because I'd known her when she was 14 and she'd looked up to me she opened right up to me and I wanted to hug her, and tell her that the mistakes you make in your twenties are all gifts. What I really wanted was to go back to myself at that time, with low self-confidence and so much self-imposed pressure and this burning desire to do the right thing without knowing what it was, and forgive myself for the mistakes still ahead of me. I tried my best to give her that, and saw her eyes fill with tears and so did mine.

Pop!Tech: Misc.

Alexis Rockman is onstage, talking about sublimation of our fears. He referred to Barnett's idea that the gap countries are afraid that modern or globally connected culture will "mess with their women." At the same moment, I was logging in to post this clip, found via Dylan, about just how different the culture that Turkish women live in is from the one I live in. When is domestic violence okay? In Turkey, the answers are pretty different. Holy moly. This is a major cultural clash.

Pop!Tech: Women

Since yesterday afternoon I've been pretty troubled by a pattern emerging from the speakers. First of all, our speakers this year are overwhelminly male -- only one of 30 is a woman. This wasn't intentional, but feels worse now that the program has begun. Because the male speakers have had a bunch to say about women, and I'm getting really depressed. I'm desperately wanting to see some strong women onstage (there are some really cool ones in the audience) but that's not to be. As the program shaped out we as a group noticed that the speakers and performers were overwhelmingly white and male, and our program director worked to shift that, but didn't make it a central factor in inviting folks. It wasn't ominous or intentional, and I'm not much for using diversity as a primary filter for inclusion, but, well, I'm feeling pretty dejected.

Because here's what I heard yesterday: Frans de Waal did a persuasive presentation comparing the leadership patterns of primates with the leadership behaviors of human politicians. By "leadership" I mean patterns of weaker young alpha males surrounding themselves with older, more powerful (but declining) males and gaining power and influence from their association. And attributes like comparative height, physical posture, inclination to defend the weak (versus challenging the strong) in a social group -- all of these things, he made a persuasive case, are dynamics we share with gorillas and chimpanzees. And his observations suggested that we're a lot less sophisticated in our political structures and loyalties than we think -- a lot closer to the primates. Which, since it dealt primarily with male-on-male power domination dynamics, left me wondering what he sees as the future of women in politics. If any. How do we transcend our primate-wired chimp brains that care a lot about posture and height and the relative power, aggression, and reconciliation patterns of males?

Then, later, Thomas Barnett showed us the Pentagon's new map of geopolitics. His theory (which is pretty compelling and much too nuanced to simplify well) here is about resistance to global connectedness: those regions that resist connecting and participating in the global economy, because they resist the culture (Barbies, Baywatch, etc.) that comes with it, are the areas of threat and instability for the world. He calls these the "gap countries." He had a lot more to say, and go check him out here [UPDATE: or summarized well on Ethan Zuckerman's blog, here]. But anyway, he says that, essentially, the gap countries resist connecting to everyone else because they resist the gender roles of the developed world. He phrased it, "because they don't want anyone messing with their women." Wow. He mentioned this a couple of times, although it wasn't the focus of the talk. But if it's true, it's a big big deal, seems to me.

And then a couple of demographers got up and one of them talked a lot about fertility rates and one guy's thesis seemed to be that we're not having babies at a quick enough rate.

I don't know, does this depress any young women out there? Our politics are the politics of alpha male power domination, and there are huge regions of the world that will go to war rather than accept new gender roles for women. And we're not having babies fast enough. These are really smart people here, big thinkers. They have a lot of credibility with me. And I'm wondering what my role in the future is, especially if I'm not pregnant. Sigh. I'm going to corner some of these speakers and see what more I can learn.

[UPDATE: This is important. I was ON the Pop!Tech board this year, and I'm on the working group. We invited 10 really smart, cool women to speak here. 9 of them turned us down -- they just couldn't make it for one reason or another. Lots of men turn us down, too. I'm not on the program committee, but I know the folks who are enough to assure you there's no ominous or malicious agenda. There's consciousness that smart women are doing cool things and a desire to get them on stage. But we didn't do a good enough job, and I'm floored by how much that failure really has me depressed. I talked about it to Bob Metcalfe and am a bit embarrassed that I got somewhat emotional about it. I'll write more when I'm not listening to Janine Benyus -- a very cool, smart woman who is speaking now.]

[UPDATE 2: Some more good posts on this topic: Anthony, who's here, and Mary, who's not. ]

Pop!Tech: Confidence

The chair I'm sitting in at this conference lets me watch a lot of people. There are people here doing all kinds of things -- self-promoting, flirting, looking for money or jobs or attention or praise or friendship or meaning or purpose or confirmation. You see all different kinds of nervousness and all different kinds of mechanisms to feel good or fit in or navigate the uncomfortable parts. It is fascinating, all the different ways people act in a group of strangers like this.

Of all the people onstage so far, Howard Fishman was perhaps the most naturally confident. Bob Metcalfe is pretty self-assured, too.

I'm thinking about confidence and presence and self-presentation, because I've got this great laboratory here to observe. Very interesting. When/if I learn anything, I'll share.

Flurry

I'm in the flurry of Pop!Tech pre-event things, like packing for the next few days (suits? nah. jeans? nah. suede pants? yes, I think so....). I'm helping coordinate the backchannel chat that we'll have going at the conference, and I'm making sure speakers and sponsors and scholarship students are happy and well-treated, and I'm coordinating a blogger dinner for about 15 folks tomorrow night, and then of course absorbing dozens of new ideas and meeting dozens of new very smart interesting people. I don't know how much of this I'll be blogging. I expect major overwhelm and delight.

I'm Beginning to Get It

Even someone as clueless and indifferent to baseball as me can't help but get somewhat sucked into this big Red Sox/Yankees playoff thing. I went to a dinner party on Saturday and we all ended up watching the game and the mood went from gregarious to angry, desperate, and frustrated. Then last night I was out with a friend to get a pizza and the TV was on in the 8th inning. We had to walk to the cash machine after we ordered the pie and we stopped at a group of people smoking beside a cab with the radio turned all the way up to get a score update. We stopped outside a bar and stuck our noses to the glass to watch a little more of the game. We weren't the only ones. Back at the pizza place we watched through the 10th inning. And I started to see why people like baseball so much. For a team sport, it is excruciatingly individual. At any moment, one individual from each team has the entire pressure on him. It's a pressure cooker. Players can be heroes or complete jackasses but when it's their moment the whole weight of the game is on them. I've always thought baseball was incredibly boring -- just a bunch of standing around, and this artificial separation of defensive play and offensive play with no hope for the defense to intercept or turn things over and change the direction of the game. I still am not likely to devote much time to baseball but I now see how it can hold you spellbound and hopeful, building up the tension and wondering whether a player will do something masterful or bungle his chance and crush everyone's dreams in a split second. It's not basketball, for sure, but I think in its own way there's something kind of neat about the game.

Waffles

I made waffles this morning, from scratch, in an old-fashioned stove top waffle iron. Yummy yum yum. Everyone got one, even the dogs.

Love Is A Big Sack Of Salt

I'm feeling very cultured these days.  Last night I went to a lecture about Islam, at which a Sufi imam, a rabbi, and a Catholic scholar all discussed Islam and America.  Mostly over my head, but interesting. 

Then tonight I went to a lecture on Scheherazade herself.  The speakers were a visiting scholar from Bates, who spoke about the history of the 1001 Nights as a work of literature, about Scheherazade as a character, and about his interpretation of the Rimsky-Korsakov piece.  He was followed by the conductor of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, giving his interpretation of the Rimsky-Korsakov piece.  He would describe what he thought was contained within a segment of the music and then play a fragment from the CD illustrating his point.  It was fantastic: the familar explained and reinterpreted.  When I introduced myself and told each lecturer that my own name is Scheherazade they were both delighted -- the conductor gave me the CD he had used and his notes from the presentation.  I listened to them in the car on the way home and couldn't help feeling proud and a little amazed by my namesake. 

The evening was magical.  You'll have to forgive me for being a little swept up in it.  The music of Scheherazade begins and ends with the sea.  You hear the theme of Scheherazade -- feminine, patient, romantic -- and of the sultan -- impatient, commanding, brutal, but fascinated by her.  In the second movement you can hear the Sultan interrupt when the story gets dull.  Scheherazade has to turn up the charm, spicing the repetitive theme up with cadenzas and flourishes.  [My grandfather once had a boat named Cadenza, which I remembered fondly in the moment while listening to Scheherazade using them to cast her spell.]  There are the themes of the stories she tells and her own theme, a violin and a harp, lovely, enchanting, sweet.  And in the end she tames the sultan -- a "royal serial killer," as the professor described him.  You can hear a shipwreck in the fourth movement and the sultan going down with the ship, while Scheherazade floats above on a calming sea, her sweet violin rising in victory.  And the sultan's theme comes back in, low and deep, far below her soaring voice, but tamed, calmer, and under her spell. 

The professor said that Scheherazade was fertile, wise -- booksmart and intuitive -- and rebellious.  I asked the professor why Scheherazade rebelled from her father and married her Sultan in the first place.  He said, well, she labored under the yoke of saving her gender, and the kingdom -- she had to.  It was a sense of destiny and duty that compelled her.  I asked whether he thought she fell in love with the Sultan by the end.  He shrugged.  In his mideastern accent and stilted English said, "Eh. What is love?"  He came over to my seat and looked at me, wondering how to explain his ambivalent indifference.  "My mother, she used to say -- she was married to my father...he was...he was a hard man -- she say to me 'Love is like a big sack of salt, you carry it around and it last a whole lifetime, but you never know how much to put in the soup.'"  I nodded up at him as if that made sense. 

Now I'm home and perplexingly, can't find my copy of Scheherazade.  Listening to it will be different, and marvelous, now that I have some names and landmarks for what I'm listening to. 

Catfight

So remember my Barbie post from the other day? Here's an update. As I think about my next career move, Academic Success Barbie and Rock Star Charisma Barbie are locked in a furious, wailing catfight about who's going to be the breadwinner -- who should be the frontwoman at the interviews, and which interviews we're going to go to in the first place. The battle is intense. Academic Success Barbie has invited a couple of ringers in from the attic: Intellectual Snob Barbie and What Will People Think Barbie, and boy oh boy do they fight mean. It's been a vicious clawing, kicking, stream of abuse since Academic Success Barbie got wind of the idea that she might not be the most important character in the mansion. Despite all this, Rock Star Charisma Barbie seems to be winning, and she seems to have Skipper and Writer Barbie rooting her on. Outdoor Delight Barbie is neutral; Sailor Barbie is looking on with interest, because she has expensive tastes.

The longer I deal with these characters, the more I see that Skipper and Writer Barbie are the strongest forces. I am more curious than I am anything else, and what I see and experience and find interesting I am compelled to write about.

High Fiber

I've been eating oat bran for breakfast for a couple of weeks and really love it. It's warm and comforting and tasty, and I feel virtuous at the same time. It feels right in tune with the season to have a steamy bowl of hot cereal along with a cup of tea, while outside the air is chilly and clear.

All Request Tuesday: Mentor

Reader Steph asks whether I consider myself a mentor.

No, I don't.

And I'm ashamed of that.

Sunk Costs

I was talking to a surgeon friend of mine recently, and asked whether it ever happens that people discover, after medical school and much of a residency and perhaps partway into a fellowship, that they don't have the hand-eye coordination to do surgery, or to do it well. Maybe they know all the theoretical stuff, but their hands shake or their depth perception is off. He said it happens. A friend of his realized that he has lousy depth perception, but not until well into his training. He said often, by that time, there's too much invested in being a surgeon for someone to change tracks. So unless it's egregious, they're just a somewhat clumsy surgeon.

Miscellaneous Updates

1) I stopped running about five weeks ago, and the pain in my shins is nearly gone, although my right leg has a little pulling pain when I walk on it for any length of time. But I am no longer wincing and fighting back tears when I go down stairs and things. So that's good. I miss walking longer distances and I actually miss running. Have some energy to burn. I feel too soft.

2) I am bewildered, scared, and uncertain about my professional and financial future. Although I'm optimistic, too. Alternately terrified and optimistic. It depends on the moment you catch me in, how I'm feeling. Still no regrets, not a one, even in the scariest moments. The soul would rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else's.

3) Pop!Tech is almost upon us. I'll be hanging out with Malcolm Gladwell and Frans de Waal during the conference, so it's a good thing I finally read The Tipping Point, and I'd better finish the de Waal book I'm reading. If you have some extra cash and want to stretch your brain and your sensibilities with three days of big ideas and vision-forming moments, think about coming up to Maine for Pop!Tech.

Ambient Sounds

I can hear the dryer quietly bumping and humming in the basement and the unfamiliar sound of rain outside. It hasn't rained for a long time. There is a labrador retriever dozing at my feet, snoring ever so softly.

I came home from a slow and lazy day of sailing and seal-watching. There was very little wind so the surface of the water was like glass. I saw more than a dozen seals swimming around. I love to watch seals. A bunch of sea ducks were drifting about on the water, too. They make a squeaky rhythmic sound when they fly, and I debated with my friend about what causes the sound. I think it is a sound that their wings make; he thinks they squawk or call as they fly. We spent four hours going not very far around the bay, looking at the islands through binoculars and playing around with the sails.

I got home at about 5, and immediately fell asleep for more than an hour and a half. I woke up and stumbled to the kitchen for dinner in a post-nap haze. Now I'm fed, but still feeling a little bit sleepy and bewildered. Going to curl up in the little study upstairs with my book and listen to the rain falling.

Poser

I am posing for Housemate. She's making a clay relief sculpture of my head and neck. It is hard to stay still. It's been 50 minutes; quick food and bathroom break, and we start up again. I get to read, which is nice.

Question for Men

If a woman does not wish to date you anymore, how much information do you actually wish to know about why? 

Raw

Today I had occasion to be looking at the microfilm of my local newspaper for the week immediately after September 11, 2001. It was in all the sections -- sports, local, national. Remember when the planes weren't flying? People were stuck all over the country? Sports teams didn't know if they would be playing again, or when? Remember there were some days before the link had been made to Osama bin Laden? Each day was more piecing together of the mystery and horror. Remember how long we were looking for survivors? Remember how American flags were springing up everywhere? Remember all the pictures of Ground Zero, and how long it was steaming?

I remember walking by some kind of vigil when I was doing errands on the Thursday afterwards, and standing off to the side, crying. A guy I didn't know very well went by and stopped to smile at me, and I clutched him and bawled. Remember how we couldn't imagine being happy again? Remember how easily we comforted each other, yet how little we were really able to talk?

Seeing the stories play out day by day in the three year old newspaper made me realize I'd gotten used to it -- the fact of this focused, intelligent, terrifying hatred in the world. There was something about the text of the articles written on the 11th and in the days immediately following....I don't know whether to call it naiive or innocent or hopeful. Hopeful is obviously wrong. But we couldn't really believe it, that this happened or could happen. It's hard to remember that innocence, or the terrible dawning of truth that we could never again return to a time when this kind of thing was beyond imagination.

I wasn't reading the articles -- I was looking for something in particular -- but just having them whir by on the microfilm machine ripped off some kind of a scab.

To Democracy

I'm planning to have a dinner party for about 10 friends, 5 Bush supporters and 5 Kerry supporters (or perhaps four and four and a couple of undecideds). I want to see if I can get people together to talk about issues socially. I've actually never been part of a political conversation that didn't turn into something of a polemic, or else a hearty self-congratulatory agreement by a bunch of like-minded folks. For that reason I avoid politics with friends. Nobody seems to learn anything; it turns into a show-off session or an argument that convinces nobody. Which seems silly.

So the rules will be: we eat and drink and talk together about what we are worried about, what matters to us, and how those concerns and interests lead us to a particular candidate. We talk about our misgivings and our grey areas and the issues we don't really know much about without trying to pretend we know everything. Nobody's trying to convince. I just want to understand how my friends think about this stuff, and to learn from them what I can if they understand a particular issue better than I do. At any time, if the conversation gets too heated, vitriolic, fervent, or rude, anyone at the table can clink their wineglass, raise it for a toast, "To democracy," and everyone at the table drinks and takes the conversation down a notch.

I proposed the idea to the H.O.T. girls last night and it prompted us to begin a pretty cool exchange about what we know and don't know, what life experiences lead us to conclude about government, and how unpleasant and scary it usually is to talk about these things with friends. I think it'll be kind of fun.

Experiment

I'm going to turn 32 in a couple of months.

I'm thinking about experimenting with the following idea while I'm 32: I am not afraid to fail.

I can reevaluate when I turn 33 and go back to worrying about it then if I need to. I think it will be an interesting year. I am going to try to get a head start, even before my birthday.

Community

I don't have much time but I've been thinking about communities. Being part of a community feels good. Some groups feel like communities and some just feel like groups. What's the difference? People invest in communities -- they have strong feelings about their communities, they find or ascribe some of their identity to something larger than themselves. People give more to a community than to a group.

I've watched a community I've been a part of die slowly, and transform into just a group. I have some ideas about why and what happened. I don't have words yet, not right now. Meanwhile I've watched some loose groups become communities and something cool happens. Relationships and friendships form beyond the purpose of the group, there is warmth and trust and passion and energy.

I think I'm good at communities. I might even be somebody who helps turn groups into communities. I'm not sure what that means, but it seems important to pay attention to.

Tell Me Something Good

Did you see anything beautiful today?

I'm feeling a little bit blue. Cheer me up, if you can spare any extra light.

Pampered

David Foster Wallace wrote a pretty interesting essay a while back called "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." He goes on a cruise ship for a week, a luxury five-star deal, and writes about the experience in sometimes excruciating detail for Harper's or the Atlantic Monthly or something. It's very entertaining if you can take DFW's style, which at the time I read it I really dug.

But besides being funny I found the article pretty insightful. He writes about the cruise ship brochure's promise that "you will be pampered in every way," and the deliberate selling point of having a week where every need or want is anticipated. He notes that "Pampers" and "pampered" are pretty closely connected and thinks about the infantilization of the customer in an environment deliberately controlled and constructed around removing all responsibilities and anticipating every need to eat, sleep, and play. He thinks a little about the marketing of such a fantasy, the place that fantasy holds in our psyche, and what living it does to a person. He writes about what happens to him on the cruise -- as he gets used to the experience of having thick, fluffy towels handed to him when he arrives on a deck to sit beside a pool, or having his room cleaned and straightened each time he leaves for more than half an hour, his perception of needs and wants adjusts accordingly. So he finds fault with small things -- the fruit basket, for example. He grows cranky and restless and irritable in a place that is as flawlessly deliciously relaxing as any he's been.

I just read a book that I liked a lot called How To Want What You Have. It's the same kind of idea as what David Foster Wallace was writing about, the gist of the article How Not To Buy Happiness, and from what I gather the idea behind The Progress Paradox. Basically, that our wants are insatiable and instinctive and the sense that if only we could have just a little bit more, or adjust things to our liking a little bit, we'd finally be happy. Which of course never happens. We're doomed to be a little bit infantile, we're built to want and to long for things. What I like about How To Want What You Have is that his tone in the book is pretty straightforward -- neither too spiritual or new agey, nor too slanted toward science and evolutionary psychology. He's thoughtful and pragmatic and writes about the cognitive and behavioral habits that help live a sensitive, compassionate, attentive life full of gratitude and joy, even when doing so is swimming upstream against our hard-wired and most infantile yearnings for more more more.

(This post takes the place of an earlier post I started to draft that I recognized was written in that infantile voice, dissatisfied and longing, restless for something just a little more than what I have right now. It's really hard to avoid being pulled around by these yearnings.)

Question for Cooks

What would you suggest doing with the two enormous (at least 30 lbs each) Hubbard squashes in the garden? 

Imagination

I read Angela's Ashes several years ago. If you haven't read it, it's a worthwhile memoir about growing up poor in Ireland. There was a part of the book where the starving brothers somehow come into some money that they get to their mother for food. McCourt describes the amazing, wonderful pleasure of eating a soft-boiled egg -- how luxurious the flavor and texture and golden richness of the yolk was, with a little salt and some bread.

I remember that after reading that passage I went and cooked myself an egg and as I ate it I thought of some starving Irish boys eating it with reverence and hunger and delight. It was truly delicious, nourishing, miraculous. And ever since then I've managed to sustain this sense of magical wonder about eggs. They've remained one of my favorite foods; if I had to pick just one thing to eat forever I think it would be eggs. But what's cool is the lasting effect of that book on me -- it made something mundane and commonplace into something I still feel gratitude for. I get to eat an egg almost any time I want. I am so lucky, and for years I never noticed.....

Your Fresh Breath Goes On and On....

I was cutting a vase full of nasturtiums yesterday morning in the garden when I noticed I had the Big Red chewing gum jingle in my head, somewhat aggressively. That is a serious jingle. On occasions I've had it in my head and started singing it out loud, and without exception the people around tend to jump right in and sing along. Everyone knows that jingle, it seems. Consider it my gift to you this morning. That Big Red freshness lasts right through it. Your fresh breath goes on and on -- while you chew it! Say goodbye a little longer, make it last a little longer....

Forgiveness

David Weinberger wrote yesterday about Yom Kippur and forgiveness, and the difference between human rules of living and computers' rules of living. What he touches on in the post is something I've been thinking a lot about these days: the tension between Justice and Mercy.

It's a simple ethical dilemma, similar to the tension between Truth and Loyalty (do you rat on your best friend?), part of the curriculum of The Institute for Global Ethics' ethical fitness seminars, and something I first began to think about in an organized way when I read Rush Kidder's book How Good People Make Tough Choices. I thought a lot about Justice and Mercy in my first year of law school, when I was trying to get my head around the difference between torts and crimes and what bad acts will bring the apparatus of the state down against a perpetrator (crimes), and which ones won't (lies), and which ones will, but only if a private party complains (torts).

I've found myself talking to folks about my career these past couple of months, and when I talk about the legal work I was doing for the past two and a half years I found myself using the framework of Justice and Mercy to explain why I find bankruptcy law so fascinating. By Justice I mean a system where bad acts have consequences that are predictable and even-handedly applied, and that exact a reasonable punishment from the actor, and perhaps make recompense to the harmed party. By Mercy I mean a system that allows for differences in individual circumstances and adjusts penalties accordingly, that tries to promulgate no further suffering, that ultimately forgives the bad actor and wipes the slate clean. Both Justice and Mercy are good, and they are in tension. I'm sure commenters will quibble with my semantics here, but you can't really have both Justice and Mercy at the same time. Justice is blind, it doesn't care how sorry you are. Mercy does. Forgiveness is not the same as punishment. Mercy is a situation where a harsh penalty is spared a wrongdoer. We need both Justice and Mercy, even though we can't have both at once. I think our legal system tries to codify justice, while building in room for mercy (the jury system, for example, or prosecutorial discretion).

Anyway, I liked doing bankruptcy work precisely because of the inherent tension in it. Bankruptcy is where Justice meets Mercy, codified in the Bankruptcy Code. The Code tries to make rules for a just kind of mercy. Everywhere else in the law, you've got to honor your contracts, and if you don't, a plaintiff can bring the mechanism of the state to bear to enforce the contracts. In bankruptcy, this dynamic is turned on its head. A debtor doesn't have to honor all its contracts, or pay debts in full. There is forgiveness of a kind. And the Code is full of rules about when and how that forgiveness can be earned, and when it must be withheld. It's a fascinating world.

Stickers

After racing yesterday I was walking across the parking lot at the yacht club after returning the little wheelbarrow we'd used to carry sails and cooler up from the dock. The folks I'd been sailing with were peering at the back of my car, having an animated discussion. Uh oh. I wondered if somebody had hit the car. Was there a dent? As I got closer I realized they were discussing the small square sticker on the back -- a blue W inside a red circle with a slash through it. It was pretty clear they thought this was interesting, unexpected, and a little bit funny. One said, "Well, at least she doesn't have a great big John Kerry sticker across the back." I said, "Oh, please, guys, I wish I hadn't heard that." I think it might be time for a big John Kerry sign on the front lawn.

I don't talk politics with too many people. I certainly don't expect to share political viewpoints with the people I sail with. But in this election it seems perhaps worthwhile to venture into uncomfortable territory and have those conversations. I don't like thinking that my friends have such a deeply different view of where our country should be going.

It's also interesting that in this election it seems socially appropriate to root against someone. "At least she doesn't have a Kerry sticker on there." So my apparently Republican friends find it more acceptable that I would be against Bush than that I would be for Kerry. It is true that I am more motivated by a fear of what another four years of arrogant and clumsy foreign policy and deficit spending could mean for our country than I am inspired by a specific alternative. But I think it's pretty sad that that seems to be okay. I'm certainly more comfortable thinking that my friends have misgivings about Kerry than imagining them to be enthusiastic about Bush.

We went next door to the after-regatta party. There, one of my friends helpfully pointed out a car with a couple of Bush bumper stickers. One of them said, "W is for Women." Aha. I wonder in what way.

Axis of Evil

So I've started dating this guy who seems pretty interesting so far.  My criteria are fairly simple for dating: I'm looking for someone cute, fun, and smart.  It is easy to find two out of the three, but all three in one package is harder.  We're in the preliminary stages right now so I'm satisfied on the cute front and am currently assessing fun and smarts.  But one of the interesting things about him is that he's Iranian.  On our first date I had to confess that everything I knew about his country had come from a comic book that I had just read.  He told me not to worry, he'd fill in the blanks.  After all, he said, most of what he knows about the United States came from Superman comics anyway.  Since then I've been learning a little more, in dribs and drabs.  Today we were talking about the government censorship of the media, and the industry of re-mixing films and dubbing them for broadcast on Iranian television.  He grew up watching many American made films, but with scenes cut out, and sometimes entirely different plot premises than the original film had.  And the Iranian actors doing the dubbing would ad lib a lot to the text.  Interesting.  He grew up a huge fan of Charlie Chaplin and other early silent film actors, because those silent films had little to offend the censors (but scenes of men and women kissing were cut) and were rebroadcast again and again.  Also lots of Japanese movies and soap operas were popular.   

Luckily for me the sequel to Persepolis is out and I'm reading that with interest.  I would recommend it even if you aren't dating an Iranian. 

Loafers

One of the ways I've marked fall, without really noticing it, is that I've traded in my flip flops for my loafers. I bought this pair of penny loafers about three years ago, and they're just getting good. Some loafers are sort of stiff and shiny, but these are a really soft leather, more on the moccasin side of the spectrum. They're the medium brown of a good belt and soft, so wearing them feels like wearing no shoes, only more comfortable. I like these shoes because of how they feel and how they look, I think. They're well-made but not new, and although loafers can be a silly and stiff preppy affectation, these are soft and relaxed without being completely informal. They fit me exactly right. I wish more of my clothing felt as naturally a part of me as these shoes.

Technical Difficulties

My laptop is periodically, but with some regularity, failing to see its hard drive. Or booting and then freezing with a message "initiating physical memory stack dump" or some such. It's working for the moment. I'm trying to send all the files I need to my Gmail account. But my entire music library is on the HD. I am not sure how to save it.

Crap crap crap.

I may be offline for a while. If you need to reach me, please call rather than email.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Today will be the fourth wedding I've attended in 2004, and the fourth one with rain. Three of these weddings, including today, have been on days with serious rain, sheets of rain, long-lasting, unwavering rain. The fourth, in Montana, had threatening stormclouds rolling across the mountains toward us during the ceremony, and then a nice thunderstorm, with lightning and winds and everything, midway through the reception.

I have two more, possibly three, weddings this year. I'm thinking perhaps I should invest in a nice-looking umbrella.

Laundry List

This is a brain dump of things in my head now: 1) Don't forget to meet cousin at 10 AM tomorrow. 2) Isn't it amazing that weddings can be so different from one another? As different as families, and couples, I guess. 3) When am I going to start lifting weights again? Make it soon. 4) The name of the guy who wrote a story I couldn't remember the other day is James Agee, and I think the story is called "A Mother's Tale." 5) I wonder if I can link to the Alejandro Escovedo song that is going through my head. 6) I miss running. 7) I'm sick of explaining to people what I do when the answer is I am in between, and the answer to the follow up question is more complicated than cocktail party conversation. 8) Remember to reserve that book at the library. 9) Get plane ticket for wedding in Mexico already.

Frontal Lobotomy

I had a bummer of a dream last night, or this morning right before I woke up. Somehow I was hanging out with a bunch of neurologists in a social setting and when one of them met me he kind of gasped and exchanged looks with another one of them. And I said, "What," and he sort of shook his head and lowered his eyes but then took out his camera and took a picture of the back of my head. And when I insisted he finally said, well, it's pretty clear that you're missing the [something scientific] lobe. And he showed me on the back of the head where everyone else had sort of a large knob or a bump and I just had hair. And lo and behold as I looked around I noticed that feature on everyone but me. And I asked, well, what's in there? And he started naming a bunch of brain parts that sounded kind of important to me, even though I know nothing about brain anatomy -- "Well, there's the cortex, and the medulla, and the occipital lobe, and the blah blah blah." And he and the other guys around were sort of uncomfortable, and I began to realize that this was really serious. Like, I'll probably die. And, like, it's amazing I've managed this long with this brain that is really missing most of its important parts. I woke up feeling both amazed and proud of making do reasonably well for so long on an incomplete brain, and with this dawning sense of dread and limitation and mortality.

Yuck. I haven't really gotten over the dream yet, except with the slow relief that happens when you wake up thinking a dream is reality and during the course of the day start to remember that it wasn't, and isn't real.

Family Stories

I was just at my parents' house for dinner, where I heard some stories about my grandfather's family. One of his brothers dropped out of Harvard to build a schooner that he intended to sail around the world. He went up to Maine and built it, and while there fell in love with a local girl who ran away with him on the sailing adventure. They loaded the boat up with two grand pianos, which apparently they got very inexpensively and wanted aboard for ballast, not for music. They sailed it down to Florida, where they ran into some weather and broke a mast. While they were fixing the boat she got pregnant, and that kept them from continuing around the world.

Another of my grandfather's brothers was a lawyer, and what I learned about his strained family life led me to think he was an earlier era's version of Anonymous Lawyer. A third brother was a physicist, a fourth was mentally retarded, and the fifth died in a mountaineering accident while still in college.

Exoskeleton

I was thinking today about the year so far, and how different life looks right now than it did at the New Year. I was wondering how different it will look in January of 2005, and thinking about how my future is veiled to me right now, and how that feels.

It feels kind of vulnerable, to tell you the truth. I've shed my skin and I don't know what my new life is going to look like yet.

It made me think about lobsters and how they grow by molting, busting out of their own shells just when the old shell is strongest and hardest and fits the most tightly. After molting the lobster is soft and vulnerable with nothing on the outside to protect her from the big world. Lobsters eat their old shells, apparently, to give themselves calcium to build the next one. "At each molt, the lobster's entire neuromusculatory system undergoes remodeling." They hang out behind rocks for a while until their new shell is formed, but even then it is soft and big and baggy and flexible -- they haven't grown into it yet, and it hasn't become rigid. The price for soft shell lobsters is lower because the apparent size of the shells and the weight don't represent the actual size of the lobster inside -- there's a lot of water in there. They're easier to eat, because you don't need crackers or implements to tear open the shell and get at the soft meat inside.

I don't want my old skin back -- it wouldn't fit now, and besides, I think I've eaten it up. But I'm ready for my new one, knowing that at first, it's going to feel loose and strange. Meanwhile I'll just hide out here in these rocks, waiting.

Windy Day

I'm sitting upstairs in the tiny library/study adjacent to my bedroom. I'm hardly ever in here. From my chair I can look into my newly painted room and watch the white curtains billowing in the breeze, their reflections making shadow patterns in the sunlight on the wood floor. There's a breeze coming in the window in this room, too, and I can smell that my neighbors have just mown their lawn. The printer is humming gently and I'm trying to ignore the pile of laundry waiting to be washed.

Last night was just wild enough and late enough that today I'm moving slowly, without much ambition. Occasionally I remember a piece of the evening -- the antics on our ferry ride back from the island restaurant where we had dinner and drinks, for example -- and laugh to myself. We went to some establishments in Portland I never go to, and I'm glad both that we went and that I ordinarily don't.

Discouraging

After a week of rest I'm not wincing anymore when I walk down the stairs. My left shin doesn't hurt at all, and my right one only hurts a little bit. So I thought I'd go for a run today. I just went on the web and read about shin splints and the six training sites I went to said largely the same thing -- ease back into it, with an emphasis on the ease. Don't just take a week off and then go back to what you were doing. Which of course makes sense. But it doesn't really comport with the new half-marathon deadline of October 25.

Meanwhile I thought I'd fiddle around with Java today before a flock of women arrives late this afternoon for a bachelorette party. But when I went here to get it, I was baffled about the choice presented by the two columns. I hunted around a good long while through the tutorials and introductions before gleaning that "JRE" means Java Runtime Edition, while "JDK" means Java Developer's Kit. I think I need JDK, and that's what I'm downloading. But yikes. I'm in for a lot of new vocabulary words and new concepts, aren't I?

I Can't Decide

I can't decide what my favorite part of today was. It might have been when a big flock of ducks splash landed into the duckpond as I walked beside it into the woods behind the cemetary. Or it might have been eating toro and tobiko at my favorite sushi restaurant. Or the sense of abundance I felt when I checked out a pile of books from the library full of variety and potential (Persuasion, Lives of Moral Leadership, Shared Values for a Troubled World, Writers [on Writing], The Between Boyfriends Book, Safe Area Gorazde, On to Java, The Count of Monte Cristo). Or else when I decided to take my old Wicked Witch of the West three-speed bike into town to meet some friends for dinner and pedaled the whole way standing up like a little kid, heart beating fast and wind in my hair and a sense of fun that I forgot is part of riding a bicycle. Or the surprise at dinner when the guitarist playing on the back patio turned out to have a soft spot for the same semi-obscure sentimental songs that I do and played one after another of my particular favorites. Oh yeah, or I almost forgot, the satisfaction of finally getting the paint and the masking tape and prepping my bedroom to paint the walls a color I will like much more than the present, ill-advised orange.

In any event, it was a good day. I hope yours was just as good, and tomorrow even better.

Chilly Morning

It's not light anymore when I get up. I guess it's not completely dark, but it's a low grey light, not a sunshiney morning. And it's chilly, and dewey, and I want to wear a sweatshirt over my tank top. When we got home from our walk this morning (an easy one, with my shins still complaining) I went around the house shutting windows.

My California-native Housemate and I were talking the other night about the extreme seasonality of Maine. How different fall feels from summer, and what a bittersweet relief it is to have night come on earlier. She asked, "Are summers always this...intense?" They are. A Maine summertime is a sprint of outdoor playtime, midweek adventures after work, laughter and cocktails on the porch, visiting houseguests, wedding festivities, boating and gardening and yard projects. The onset of fall, with the shortening of the days, the departure of transient guests from away, and the routine imposed on people who have academic schedules, is a dramatic change. Nights get dark and suddenly you want to gather in your kitchen again, with a couple of close friends and something bubbling on the stove, or curl up on the sofa reading under the warm light of a lamp. Friends who were scattered away, on their own summer sprints, start to reappear. The places you feel like going and the things you feel like doing change. It's like coming inside after recess.

It's still gorgeous out there -- more so than in any other month, I think, with the low yellow light and the reddening of the leaves here and there. But the tilt of the earth and the chilly clear dark nights begin to remind us of the pleasures of the indoors, too.

Found

Looking for a blank book, I found in a pile a journal I started and then left mostly unfilled about five years ago. Back then I did a lot of illustrations in my journals, and they are colorful and quite lovely to look at. This particular book has a bunch of my thinking about spiritual things and my own place in the world. When I found it and looked through it I was both charmed and impressed by what I knew then.

For example, one page, colorfully illustrated, contains these observations:

My joy and wonder in the world comes largely from my senses: sight, smell, touch, sound, taste, movement, curiosity, exploration, adventure, adrenaline, sleep. The joy I get from sensual things is pure.

My anxiety and my external reinforcement come largely from my brain: other people's admiration or scorn, the internal judge, critic, snob, gatekeeper, my ambition, my desire to please or impress. I rely heavily on my brain to feel worthy. Most of the feelings of self-worth I get from my brain are transient and superficial, and relate to other people's perceptions. Exceptions: solving problems that are new and hard, using my brain to understand what I see and notice and feel, responding quickly to things I am seeing or experiencing for the first time.

On another page of the journal I found this Rumi poem, that I'd forgotten about, and was glad to remember (make sure to scroll down; the page isn't laid out as well as it could be). It might be time to pull the Rumi book off the shelf and put it back on my bedside table.

September

This is the best month to be in Maine. And it feels like a month of beginnings. I expect I'll start my next professional gig, whatever it might be, in September. I'm going on a couple of dates this week. The boat is out of the water getting her bottom redone -- an exciting and overdue project. The garden is heavy with tomatoes. The schoolbuses are on the road. People are back from their vacations. The air is clear and the light is flatter and more yellow and the nights start early. Things are starting.

He/She Is Very Accomplished And Important And Interesting

I'm writing and editing the biographical information for a bunch of our Pop!Tech speakers. We start with bios provided by the speaker or his/her agent and we edit them for a consistent voice and tone, tailored to our format and our audience. The raw materials for these bios as they come to us vary wildly in detail and tone. Some of them are so modest and dry, and others trumpet every accomplishment and name drop institutions and publications, sneaking a sideways glance at you to see whether you're impressed yet. I take about equal pleasure in jazzing up the shrinking violets with active verbs and text meant to invoke curiosity and fascination, and in cutting back some of the florid prose and credential-heavy paragraphs of the self-promoters.

I'm More of an Omnivore

You know, half of me wants to roll my eyes at the pseudo-consulty-business-reinvention and reimagining vocabulary and half of me eats it up like Fig Newtons. Evelyn Rodriguez is all about passion in the workplace and the search for meaning and creativity and productivity and today she links to an article calling certain kinds of workers "soulitarians":

He [author Kane] identifies a new type of worker - the "soulitarians", who, if and when they work, shun high salaries in favour of "meaningful" work, are keen to experiment with technology and happily flit between start-up and corporation, self-employment and job-sharing. They are capable of hard work in the right endeavour and their creativity and technological skills make them increasingly sought-after. But they are militant about putting work in its place so they can have time for travel, personal growth and new experiences.

I'm rolling my eyes even now while I look at the description and yet part of me is thinking wistfully, "Am I a soulitarian? Are these my people? Are there folks who really understand this? I wonder if I should buy this book?" And the other half of me is thinking, "What a stupid label, and who are these people who make bucks selling gimmicky business books centered around made-up demographics and silly words like 'soulitarians' when people are, fundamentally, the same as they ever were?"

People like Evelyn and Hugh MacLeod and Matt Homann I find both hopeful and wearisome. I think it's because I'm part free spirit anarchic radical who's interested in the stuff nobody's figured out yet and part conservative, with a deep respect for substance, discipline, and tradition and a huge fear of being a flake. So I love the idea of passionately re-invented careers but something about the militant announcing and embracing of new workplace paradigms and the denouncing of everything that's come before is tiring to me and a little overwhelming and I always suspect it of being faddish. And yet I'm inspired and I do believe -- in creativity and passion and meaning and authenticity and voice and enterprise and adaptability and connection. I think these things are fundamental to being a person who is grounded and therefore good at what you do. But does it all need to be such a crusade, with silly words like "soulitarian" and a zillion books in the Business section turning over each season and urgently announcing that a sea-change has arrived in business that you need this book or consultant to explain? Are these books just an excuse for people to be self-indulgent and noncommittal and undisciplined and call it "creative" and "passionate"?

The question of building a worthwhile professional career is a noble pursuit. And one that obviously has huge relevance for me right now. Do I take a job that exists or do I need to invent my own? What kind of balance between work and play, influence and indolence, accomplishment and experimentation, security and risk, service and reward, do I want in my life? How do I think about this stuff and where do I find like-minded people? So I read Evelyn and Matt and Hugh with interest, because they're thinking about all the same questions. And my reaction is visceral and ambivalent -- strong inspiration, and a fearful distrust, at the same time.

Pay Attention!

So I haven't stopped thinking about the backchannel. I set up a conference call for this morning with Clay Shirky and Greg Elin and some others about the question of implementing a thoughtful one at Pop!Tech this year. While we talked on the phone we played around with the technology. There were certainly moments when I had trouble listening to the telephone conversation because I was messing around with the capabilities of the software. But I was also able to ask clarifying questions without interrupting -- "do you mean show a picture of the person speaking on stage, or a picture of the chat participant?" and at one point Greg posted a URL to an article Clay referenced in conversation and I pulled that up and skimmed it during the call to get some background information.

Another working group member joined the call partway through and logged in to the chat room late. He began asking some questions that we'd already addressed, and I asked him whether he could scroll up in the chat transcript. The version of software we were using didn't permit him to see the room's conversation prior to his entrance, so I cut and pasted the transcript from the chat box and sent it to him by email. A moment later, in the chat room (but not on the conference call) he thanked me for sending along the transcript.

What we were talking about was very interesting, but what also interested me was the new social expectation of the participants. Instead of the illusion that everyone on the conference call was doing nothing other than listening to the call, the expectation was that everyone on the call was not only listening to the call, but also chatting in the room, sending and receiving email, and following URLs found in emails or on the chat space to get background info about the conversation. In other words, the phenomenon of continued partial attention was acknowledged and expected -- you were SUPPOSED to be doing six things at once. In fact, during the conversation Clay left his computer, got into a taxi, and headed someplace, and apologized to us that all he could do from that point on was listen and talk.

I Wish

I wish I knew how to program. It feels like it's too late in life to learn. I know it isn't, probably, but it just feels like a lot to take on. I think my imagination about technology and what it can do is limited because programming is a black box to me.

Tardy All-Request Response: How's The Job Search Going?

"How's the job search going?"

It's a big can of worms. Answer 1: I'm not going to talk about any kind of specifics on the blog until I am where I want to be. Later I'll tell you about process and perhaps some of the possibilities, but now, in the middle of it, knowing that a segment of my audience is colleagues and friends here in town, I'm keeping this close to my vest.

Answer 2: It's not been so much of a 'job search' so far. More like a 'soul search.' I doubt that the outcome of this summer process will be that I occupy a position that was occupied by someone else, doing tasks that were outlined in a classified ad somewhere. I've looked at some classified ads and listened to some people tell me about open positions but the bulk of my time has been spent thinking about what I want to do, what I'm called to do, what purpose I could be serving, what I'm good at, and imagining a whole bunch of ways I might be able to get paid to do that, then talking to the people who might have an interest in paying me to do it.

Answer 3: It's been great, and also terrifying. I've had a lovely summer and have managed to enjoy myself and have some autonomy about going outside during the weekdays, but occasionally someone will comment, "Wow, you're lucky to have such a relaxing summer," and the word 'relaxing' strikes me as very strange. It hasn't been particularly relaxing. It's been crazy-making at times. I've alternately exhausted myself with frenzied possibility and felt idle and undisciplined and dumb and horrid. But it has been very rich. People have been supportive, kind, creative, encouraging, and helpful. I've learned a lot about my own process and pacing and structure, my own fears and anxieties and insecurities as well as those things that don't scare me at all. Strangely, I'm getting braver even as I get further away from certainty and security. Maybe being brave is something you practice. Maybe being comfortable with risk is something you can learn. I feel like I've learned it this summer and it feels really really good.

Complaint

If there's a really good place to get Chinese food in Portland, I've not yet discovered it.

All Request Wednesday: Do You Consider Yourself A Religious Person?

A reader wrote in to ask me that. "When I read some of your writing it makes me think that you are. Just curious."

I'm almost scared to write this post because I think it'll make lots of people scornful of me and/or mad at me -- the devout believers and the oh-so-superior athiests. My answer is unsatisfying on both counts. I'm not religious, but I sort of desperately wish I were. I can't seem to muster up faith, and I wasn't raised with much appreciation for ritual or heirarchy. But I have come to see that ritual and mystery have the power to move people, and I admire those who make room in their lives to think, in a regular and structured way, about majesty and goodness and purpose and contentment and their connection to something bigger than them. I haven't found a religion that feels like a safe or helpful place for me to do that. But unlike the smug and scornful athiests I know I don't see faith as mind-control or the opiate of the masses or a silly fluffy way for people to abdicate responsibility for their lives.

I'm in love with the world. Maybe that's what my reader means when he says I sound like I'm religious. I think that shows up here sometimes when I write about the sky or the moon. And I tend to love people too, and I believe in things like kindness and responsibility and luck and maybe on some days even karma. I'm doing the best I can to find or invent a kind of faith and to live with reverence, even in the absence of true faith or any kind of fleshed-out sense of purpose. It feels like a gap for me, a place I need to grow.

Sometimes I think I've got the equivalent of colorblindness when it comes to faith in God. I just can't seem to do it. I don't think that makes me better or closer to wisdom than those who can. Maybe further away. But it doesn't feel like that kind of faith is available to me.

Undercover All Request Wednesday

A reader emailed me today and asked whether I am religious. He said some of the things I write make me sound like I am. And I thought it was question worthy of a post so I decided to haul All Request Wednesday back in from his summer dalliances and put him to work. So, without further ado, please submit your requests and I'll post on the things you ask me to.

School

After racing tonight, as the sun went down (so early....), I sat with the Hooked On Tonics girls on the back of the boat waiting for the launch to come out and get us. One of the H.O.T. girls was fretting about her boyfriend, and as I listened and asked questions I watched the water and batted the swarm of mosquitos away from my hair. It was still except for a patch of water not too far away, where there were dappled rings and ripples. There was a school of small fish near the surface, their small silver bodies flashing and occasionally breaking the surface with a splash. The sky was blue draining into pale yellow, with strands of clouds lit up orangey-pink. The school of fish drifted over until it was all around us, little silver darts appearing for an instant in the greeny-dark water and then diving away, leaving just a small round ripple behind. The air was chilly, like fall.

More, Please

I know most people don't read on weekends, so I want to draw your attention to this query: I still want to know how "backchannel" communication affects your concentration, sense of participation, relationships to the speaker and to other listeners, and sense of satisfaction in a lecture, class, or presentation. Students, conference-goers, others, please write. Professors, what do you think about the fact that your students are chatting to one another via wi-fi during your lecture, and how do you structure your presentation so that the presence of the backchannel is acknowledged and will add value? Thanks to those who've already written.

Fabulous

A band called The Fabulous Icons played at the wedding. My uncle Ben is the lead guitarist and singer, and my dad plays bass. They've had the band since they were in high school, with a number of different drummers, saxophonists, and visiting vocalists. They play gigs a few times a year. When I was a kid they used to practice in the basement, so I grew up listening to Mustang Sally, Nadine, Knock on Wood, Fever, Louie Louie, Midnight Hour, House of the Rising Sun, Walking the Dog, plus originals like I'm an Icon Again and Huevos Rancheros. The band is pretty good, and they just love playing.

I danced to song after song with aunts and uncles and cousins and friends of the family. I've danced beside these same faces to the Fabulous Icons on many other occasions. My aunt and her new husband were flushed and happy. We were laughing and clapping and hollering for more. I knew all the words and there was this wonderful sense of continuity and family and love. I elbowed my teenage cousin, who has his own band, and told him I would expect him to play at my wedding. He rolled his eyes and teased me back ("By the time you get married, our songs will be golden oldies") and then we clapped together for our dads when they finished the song and launched into their next hit.

Rules for August

1) We blondes never build up a "base tan." We still need sunscreen. Especially if we're sailing for hours. I know better. Ouch.
2) If you are hungry, you must first eat one of the tomatoes in the bowl on the counter. Then you get to figure out what else you might want to eat.
3) If you are picking up corn from a roadside stand, get at least two ears for every person. One ear is not enough.

Tow Truck

One of the human experiences I hate the very most is getting my car towed. I got towed tonight, while I was at a wedding, after parking mistakenly in what I thought was the overflow lot, in what appeared to be a very unobtrusive place. A woman at the reception came and announced it wasn't the right lot and people needed to move their cars and about five minutes after that I got to the lot and my car was gone. And I stupidly cried because I just felt this awful sinking combination of stupid and powerless and frustrated and blackmailed. I called the towing company; he wasn't far up the road. It had been maybe 10 minutes. I needed to come to his house with $75 in cash to get my car back. He was completely unapologetic. I've never met a nice tow truck driver. They know they have you over a barrel and they don't do anything whatsoever to make things easy or pleasant for you. And I just think, great, that's a week and a half of groceries, and I get absolutely no thrill or pleasure or value for it, and I can blame only myself, and I have to find someone willing to leave the wedding with me to go get my car, and when am I ever going to grow up and stop doing completely stupid stuff like this? I found someone to help me retrieve the car and shook myself back into a good mood -- too much happiness at the wedding to be able to do otherwise -- but there is almost nothing that can make me feel irresponsible and angry and resentful and powerless and stupid like getting my car towed.

Question For Speakers and Listeners

Have you been to a conference (or in a class) where there was a participatory audience channel (e.g. an IRC chat space running simultaneously to the speaker's presentation, or a wiki, or IM chats) that actually enhanced rather than detracted from the substance of the presentation? And have you been to a conference (or in a class) where the presence of such an interactive participatory communication channel did NOT work? And can you help me identify the difference?

I like to think about storytelling and delivery and effective communication and starting conversations that are rich and deep and real. Sometimes I think technology facilitates this and sometimes I think it distracts. As we plan Pop!Tech and think about how and whether to integrate IRC and/or IM or some other means for the audience to talk among themselves, I want to be sure we're thinking about the right things.

I know at least some law students out there now regularly chat during the lectures about what the professor or other students are saying while it's happening. Tell me how that affects your attention, your feelings of satisfaction and participation, your ability to concentrate, your feelings of connectedness with your classmates, your feelings of connection to your professor. In what ways does the wifi channel help make the experience richer, and in what ways does it take away from it?

I have my own anecdotal evidence and have some theories, but I want to hear more. Please tell me your experience with compelling presentations and audience interaction/communication devices that enhance that experience. And please tell me about the opposite experience.

[UPDATE: This article, about the social dynamics of a technological "backchannel," is what I'm getting at. Also this one. I want to know how it feels to professors, lecturers, students, listeners, and attendees, and how the backchannel improves or degrades the social interaction and learning taking place.]

[UPDATE 2: More debate about the good/bad/ugly of the backchannel and the phenomenon of "continuous partial attention" in learning and discussion environments can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

And I've read this article before, about how people who listen to talks so frequently misunderstand the presenter's central point, and may have already linked to it, but it's worth a revisit for anyone who speaks or presents to groups.]

Making Paintbrushes

Tonight I was babysitting for a couple of cool kiddoes I know. We went outside thinking I might have a frisbee in my car (I was just hoping, vainly, that I had one deep in the trunk). No go. So then we pulled out some rope from the trunk and jumped rope a little bit, but decided it would be more fun to take turns wearing the cowboy hat and tying the rope into lassos and trying to throw it around a pole. My knot-tying skills are deficient in the lasso department, but luckily our rope-throwing was so bad that the functionality and direction of the slipknot were not tested.

So for our next project we decided to do some art and big brother (age 7) generously let little sister (age 5) use his fancy new acrylic paints, and even squirted them out for her on a homemade cardboard mixing board. And they said, "Sherry, could you please find us a paintbrush?" And that was how we learned there was no paintbrush in the house. So big brother and I handcrafted a bunch of paintbrushes, and little sister tested them out and painted along, giving us helpful feedback and constructive criticism. We made one from a rigid plastic pipe or straw of some kind and some bristles cut off of a basting brush we found in the kitchen (big brother's innovation, done before I arrived in the kitchen behind him). Connected with scotch tape, it wasn't all that sturdy. But we changed over to duct tape with great success. We also made a variety of brushes out of sticks and pine needles I gathered from the woods outside. The brown pine needles were a little too stiff but we got nice feathery effects with the green pine needles. Again, duct tape was an excellent fastener. Finally, we had a number of experimental paint application devices made with Q-tips, or a combination of Q-tips and pine needles and sticks. It was way fun, and the painting turned out pretty nicely.

And then we watched the Olympics and drew pictures and laughed at the commercials and wanted candy but didn't get to have it and got sleepy and fidgety until Dad got home. And now I am sleepy and fidgety and want candy but don't get to have it and it is past my bedtime and there is nobody to tuck me in.

A Preview of Coming Attractions

Now that I've written all those advice posts I'll proceed to break them all. I'm thinking about a lot of things but can't seem to light at the keyboard for long enough to write a big post or even a small post. So this post counts as a placeholder for all the half-brewed ideas clicking around in my head, waiting until I can post them. They fall into three rough categories.

Things I'm Looking Forward To:
* My hot date tonight with a five-year-old and a seven-year-old. Their responsible dad is leaving us all alone together so we get to play play play and draw pictures and run around. And watch the Olympics on TV -- a thrill for me, who never gets to watch TV. I can't wait.
* Three hours in the car tomorrow morning with two of the brightest, most vivid thinkers I know, and the ideas I know we'll come up with.
* My aunt's wedding tomorrow night. She's finally marrying the man she fell in love with 22 years ago. Simultaneously wonderful and tragic story about long-delayed true love to follow.
* Sailboat racing on Sunday.
* Possible visit from a blogging friend next week, hooray hooray.

Things I'm Thinking About:
* Woo Me With Romance Novels. Milbarge thought this was stupid advice, and PG suggested he was wrong in the comments to Milbarge's post. The articles PG pointed to prompted me to enter the romance section at Borders and pick myself up a paperback that I never would have have read otherwise. I read it and have a whole bunch of thoughts about the genre and my response to it. Basically, it was trite and cliche'd and predictable and still managed to push all of my buttons. So, woo me with romance novels? Maybe. Ack.
* Community and Purpose and how meaning is where you place it, and where you get reinforcement from people who you admire and who recognize you for who you really are. Bleh. Those words don't mean what I want to say, but as a placeholder it'll have to do.
* My Love Life and How It Makes Me Feel Old.
* The Mysterious Thing About Toenail Polish.

Things I Did or Saw
* The ominous bruisy-grey-yellow-pink hazy hot color of the sky yesterday as we waited all day for brutal thunderstorms that lurked and made the air feel charged but never materialized and the way the big round orange sun appeared beneath this formless grey mass and sunk down to the horizon like a big strange coin.
* Shooting A Gun
* New Running Shoes
* Bugs I Have Noticed Recently. Mostly earwigs and aphids. I love aphids.

Background Noise

The other day Erni