Thoughts on failure

D and I have been discussing failure lately. It started with our discussion of expat life the Monday of our last date. I've told you what caused me to get depressed at that conversation, but it took a couple of days before I was able to explain it to D in a letter. When I did -- when I explained that I thought I'd be more comfortable at the table of Sister Failure than dining with some of the expat executives she described -- she tried to talk me out of it with remarks in the vein of "There, there, Hosea, you're not a failure." That told me that she really hadn't heard what I was trying to say, so I spent a little time trying to figure out what I really was trying to say. I came up with something close to the following.
__________

It is quite late, but I have been sitting thumbing through the latest Time Magazine. The cover article is about Amy Chua's new book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and I found myself thinking about Sister Failure as I read it.

Sometimes I wonder whether you hear my remarks about Sister Failure in quite the same tone of voice that I have in my head when I write them. Maybe not quite, because it seems like you try to talk me out of seeing myself in some kind of relation or connection with "her," and yet somehow I think that if you heard my thoughts the way I meant them you might not feel like you had to. I'm not quite sure: "Sister Failure" is a conceit, after all, that I made up pretty recently; and my thoughts on "her" are maybe somewhat confused and contradictory. What I do not feel is that the term "failure" in this context is any kind of reproach. I'm not quite sure I can articulate what I feel instead, but I think there are several levels.

The easiest level to describe is the one where "success" and "failure" describe incomes. That is, after all, one common way of using the words, at least in this country, and I think we both have a pretty good idea of what they mean. "Success" (in America, with respect to incomes) refers to an income of a certain size or larger, that is deployed in such a way as to buy a certain level of material wealth. I don't think it is necessarily a happy way to live, and I don't expect ever to live that way. Partly I don't have that kind of an income now. And once I am divorced, I may take it into my head to look for work somewhere else, somewhere exciting, doing whatever I can find there. If I make that kind of a move -- meaning a move for the sake of the new place, not for the sake of a job -- my income is likely to drop. And if I can momentarily stretch the meaning of "failure" to cover everything that is not "success" ... well, that will end up including me just because I'll never make it inside that particular income bracket. I don't lose any sleep over that fact, though -- not a single wink -- because I would have no idea what to do with that kind of money if I had it.

Another data point surfaces when I think about the people who were my friends in college. Oddly, they were not the other high achievers in my class. (My academic record was a little nuts.) I don't mean that any of them was stupid -- I'm not sure we had a lot of stupid people at my college. But my friends were a little aimless, like I was; plugging along but not sure why, or where they were headed. They were a different group altogether from the confident, driven students who knew what they wanted to do, who systematically applied to law schools or graduate schools in their senior years, and who tended (through dedication and focus) to get most of the top spots in the class. I often felt that I ought to be more like these people, but on the other hand I felt kind of intimidated by them. Any one of them could give an account of himself better than I could. The things they knew, they seemed to know more deeply, while my knowledge was a huge nest of bright-and-shiny tidbits collected from all over the place. And if I had had to answer the question, "Which of the students in your graduating class are the natural successes?" I would certainly have picked them ... even if that meant not picking myself.

It's truly odd, because there is a part of me that feels that it would be invigorating to be ambitious and challenged, a part of me that is eager to go out and pit strength against strength. I wrote you a lot about that when you mentioned that of course you would like to be a great teacher ... in retrospect I think I must have written a lot more than anyone could have wanted to read. And in fact one dimension of our friendship for each other, yours and mine, runs exactly through our delight in each other's strengths.

But side by side with that ambition I have always felt this persistent timidity, this fear. Indeed, in some ways I think that success smells to me something like fear, which is really peculiar. Isn't success supposed to smell sweet? But somehow success (for me) carries with itself the threat of radical impermanence, like I am only an inch away from not being good enough so I have to scramble harder and ever harder to scoot away from the edge of that cliff. In this context, failure is actually liberating. An acceptance of failure means that I don't have to be wound up tight all the time. It's a fair question to wonder how, with all that fear of not being good enough for strong, driven, motivated people, I was ever able to make myself vulnerable to you. I think the answer is twofold. First, I had known you for so long as a friend of Wife's that you already felt fairly safe to me. Second, you had already taken the huge risk of making yourself way more vulnerable to me first. I would like to think that I would have had the courage to pursue you otherwise, but ... well in all those years I didn't do it, did I? So I don't have anything to congratulate myself on here.

It's also a simple fact that we all fail many times in life. I surely learned this in my marriage if nowhere else, because I failed over and over and over again. Not only the little, tactical goals failed, but most of the big ones too. That sounds bleak, but it prepared me for all the times as a parent when I wanted with all my heart to achieve A, and all I could get was B or C. By the time we had kids and that started to happen, I was on the way to learning that in such a case it is best to settle for what is possible and move on. A big reason that I don't react even worse than I do when communication breaks down between you and me is that I have already experienced worse breakdowns so many times that I have started to learn how to deal with it. "Started" ... I don't claim expertise. But I had to smile very softly to myself when you told me that my depression placed huge demands on you, because it meant that I was asking you to fail over and over again in our relationship. The smile was just because I took my own failure towards you very much as a matter of course. So it seemed like no big deal to me for it to go two directions.

And of course this is why we all need forgiveness. Nobody ever has to forgive success. But we have to be able to forgive each other over and over because we are always failing each other, always disappointing each other. It seems like all the time -- well OK, that's an exaggeration, but let's say "not too infrequently" -- that I misstep badly in our relationship or misstate something in a letter and have to ask your forgiveness. You step more gracefully than I do, so you don't misstep as often; but I can only hope that I am as willing to forgive if the occasion ever arises. I'm sure the reason God asks us to forgive each other is that He has a better understanding than we ever could of just how often we need it ourselves.

Sister Failure

Some time ago I saw an article about Philip Schultz's recent book of poetry, Failure, and I knew I had to get it. Somehow the title was too evocative to miss.

I am kind of new to poetry. Some people live with poetry all their adult lives. Me, I found it strange -- modern poetry especially. Plus I had a girlfriend in college who found poetry very profound, and who was always urging me to read this or that piece ... words scattered haphazardly across the page, breaks in the damnedest places, verbs or punctuation missing. So I'd read it, and she would look at me expectantly, as if I were about to experience some shattering revelation that we could then discuss for the next three hours, and all I could say was "Huh?" It was never the right thing to say. So I shied away from the whole thing; and with only a very few exceptions -- most notably William Blake, whom I discovered in graduate school and whom I whole-heartedly love, yes, including all his bizarre prophetic visions -- I say, with only a very few exceptions I stayed away for decades.

I can't place what brought me around to be interested. Maybe it was my affair with D, who sends me books of poetry but doesn't act like she is giving me an exam. Maybe it was when I started trying to write poems for her -- far more structured than modern, as you have been able to see. Whatever brought it on, it has been comparatively recent. But I am enjoying it.

Anyway, I read this article about Schultz's book, and the title instantly spoke to me. I don't know why, exactly. When I told D about it, she got cross with me at first, telling me that I had no business "considering myself a failure" just because this or that hadn't worked out in my life the way I had planned.

Whoa, whoa, ... wait a minute. I never said it had anything to do with how things had turned out in my life. Nor did I say that I found anything sad or pitiful in the thought of failure. I know the word is often used as a form of condemnation or reproach, a disgrace, a cause for remorse. But I don't think it has to be any of those things; and more and more these days I feel that it isn't. Failure just means that you set out to do X, and in the end you didn't. OK fine, you didn't do it. There might be a hundred reasons why not, some of them interesting and others very prosaic. But the end result is what it is, and now you have a new configuration of circumstances facing you in the world. Next?

It seems clear to me that Schultz doesn't mean "failure" to be a reproach, either. The title poem (near the end of the book) describes his father's funeral. Somebody tells him, "Your father was always a nobody," and Schultz corrects him saying, "No, he wasn't a nobody, he was a failure." And then he goes on to describe his father, whom he plainly loved, and who was clearly a fine fellow with interesting and off-beat ideas for businesses that never worked.

The thing is that none of us ever hits 100% of what we set out to do, and that's OK. Sometimes we don't hit any of what we set out to do, either because it was out of our power to begin with, or because we went at it wrong, or because the world changed underneath us and made everything different. But it is still OK. Achieving the things you set out to do isn't really the point. At the end of the day -- at the end of our lives -- we won't be graded by how many items we have checked off of our To-Do lists, any more than we will be graded by how much money we have. Bumper stickers notwithstanding, the winner is not the one who dies with the most toys. The things that really matter are things along the way -- what kind of person I am, and you are; how we treat each other, and those close to us, and even those far away; what kind of balance we can keep our souls, and how much we love God. These kinds of things, and others beside them. They are what matter. But notice: if those are the things that matter, then one consequence has to be that Success as conventionally understood does not matter, or not so much. That is to say, Success understood as checking items off our To-Do lists, planning and setting and achieving goals -- all that manic, driven, targeted way of life -- is really not that important. It is at best what the Stoics called "an indifferent thing," neither good nor bad except in how we make use of it. (Just as a point of reference, they included money and food and health in the same category.) In fact, I might even venture to speculate that Success could turn out to be a distraction from (or a hazard to) our real job of leading the best life. And in that case, if Success is a hazard that can deflect us from leading the best life, then it is at least thinkable that Failure may not be so bad after all. I can imagine an updated St. Francis picturing Sister Failure as one of our guides along the way, in the same way that the real St. Francis spoke of Sister Poverty. Certainly in this place and time, here in today's America, any praise of Sister Failure would be about as deeply counter-cultural as it gets.

It is an odd thought. I think it came to me because for some time I have been thinking that the current chapter in my life is drawing to a close. Son 1 is out of the house, in boarding school. If Son 2 goes to a boarding school for high school, he'll be out of the house in another two years. And then Wife and I can sit down and dissolve the marriage without the boys caught in the crossfire. On this line of thought, I could find myself three years from today with no marriage and no house -- still bound to the boys, but otherwise freer and more mobile than I have been in ... well, longer than I can remember. And what will I do then? Honestly I don't know. But the autumnal sense of an approaching end has been growing in me for some time, and I see no sign of its going away. I get the same autumnal sense from Schultz's poems about failure. And I think this is why I felt the title call to me before I had ever laid my hands on the book.

It is an interesting place to be in, right now. I don't know where I will go next.
__________

Failure, by Philip Schultz

To pay for my father's funeral
I borrowed money from people
he already owed money to.
One called him a nobody.
No, I said, he was a failure.
You can't remember
a nobody's name, that's why
they're called nobodies.
Failures are unforgettable.
The rabbi who read a stock eulogy
about a man who didn't belong to
or believe in anything
was both a failure and a nobody.
He failed to imagine the son
and wife of the dead man
being shamed by each word.
To understand that not
believing in or belonging to
anything demanded a kind
of faith and buoyancy.
An uncle, counting on his fingers
my father's business failures —
a parking lot that raised geese,
a motel that raffled honeymoons,
a bowling alley with roving mariachis —
failed to love and honor his brother,
who showed him how to whistle
under covers, steal apples
with his right or left hand. Indeed,
my father was comical.
His watches pinched, he tripped
on his pant cuffs and snored
loudly in movies, where
his weariness overcame him
finally. He didn't believe in:
savings insurance newspapers
vegetables good or evil human
frailty history or God.
Our family avoided us,
fearing boils. I left town
but failed to get away.

Goals and me: four theories

I was thinking about goals this evening.

You've read before that I find it hard to set and stick to goals. (For example here and here, to pick two posts at random out of many.) And I was mulling about why this might be.

One theory (one that Debbie was fond of): I never learned how to set long-term goals because my father didn't set them because he drank too much. (Debbie loved explanations that involved blaming alcohol.) OK maybe, although I kind of like the suggestion I heard somewhere else that past the age of forty you can no longer blame your parents for anything. At that point you are old enough to have outgrown whatever it was, if you chose.

Another theory: My shyness makes me want to stay inside my bubble, my comfort zone. Achieving a long-term goal takes me out of it. Again, this is possible but it's an oversimplification. As I figured out a few months ago, I have at least two setting -- outward and inward -- and they trade off. But even when I am in an outward-facing mode, it's hard for me to remember to focus on a particular goal.

But I thought of a third theory as I was driving to the UU Sangha this evening. It is just this: with all my meditations on "Sister Failure" I have actually rationalized failure. I have decided that it's not so bad. Part of this is related to my willingness to put up with almost anything (as evidence for which look at how long I put up with Wife) ... part of it is a kind of Buddhist willingness to be mindful of my breath and remember that everything is temporary, so success and failure are both a kind of illusion. And if failure isn't all that bad, it sure as hell is easier than success. So maybe that's it. Maybe the big difference between my father and me is that -- at least in Philip Schultz's sense -- he was a failure who kicked against it and always wished with all his heart that he had been a success; while I am only a little more successful in a narrow range of things (for example, I'm much better at getting along with bosses or working in authority structures) but I have developed a whole theory of failure that allows me to fail with a clean conscience. And in that case, why bother stressing about goals?

Can you stand a fourth theory? While I was meditating this evening I remembered something that happened years ago, after Wife and I left graduate school. Some time in the couple of years thereafter -- when I was no longer a scholar but just had a job (and a pretty dumb job, at that) -- I realized that I could afford to let go of the anxiety I had been nursing about leaving school. That is to say, ever since leaving school I had been fretting about the time I was losing ... fretting that I was "really supposed to be" doing something other than what I was doing ... fretting that there was some kind of program or destiny for my life that I was deviating from, and that it was going to get really bad if I didn't get back on track "in time". And then I thought,

What do I mean by in time? What do I mean by really supposed to? Says who? I had to worry about all that bullshit while I was in school, because it was my whole job to please my teachers ... to remake myself into whoever they wanted me to be. But I don't have to do that any more, because I'm not in school. I don't have to stick to somebody else's timetable, and I don't have to be what somebody else wants me to be. I don't have to do anything any more! Oh sure, I have to obey the law. And I have to get along with my wife. And I have to do basic things to ensure I'm not an asshole at work or at home. There's always that kind of thing. But I don't have to squeeze into somebody else's categories or schedule. I don't have to fret about this stupid-assed job I'm in, because I can afford not to worry that I "should be doing something better instead". Maybe this is where I belong. Maybe this is the right job for me. And some day I'll have a different job doing something else, and that's fine too. But who's to say that I belong on some other kind of track, and there's something wrong with me for having abandoned it? Who the fuck says? I don't have to do anything for anybody any more. Maybe this is what being a grown-up is all about, in which case Hallelujah!

You know, it's interesting. A few years before, when I was still in college and having trouble figuring out what I was going to do next, my father wrote me a letter about the difference between a career and a job. A career, he said, is a glorified form of slavery; you're tied to a treadmill with the promise that if you work really hard you can rise in time all the way up to ... Head Slave. But a job means freedom: you put in your eight hours, they pay you, and then you can go do whatever you like afterwards.

Considering that in one of my posts (I no longer remember which) I conclude that failure means freedom, it's possible that all I have been doing for the last thirty-five years is to circle around that one letter of his.

It's also true that the third and fourth theories above complement but do not contradict each other. (That fourth theory sounds a little bit like the one my dad expounded in this post here, and which I gave short shrift at the time. So maybe it's bullshit. But this time around it looks interesting.)
     

Talking to myself with Sister Failure

They say failure is valuable, and it is.

They say failure teaches you how to succeed.

But I don’t think so.

I have been fired.

I have been laid off.

I never learned how to hold a job forever.

But I learned that life goes on.

I learned not to be afraid of being fired. Or laid off.

I have lived on unemployment. And savings.

And the money from piecework.

And the help of family, and strangers.

I never learned how to be rich.

But I learned that I can get by until the next thing comes along.

I have held jobs that went nowhere.

I have held jobs from which the only road to promotion was to quit and work somewhere else.

I never learned how to rise to the top.

But I watch the guys who make it to the top.

And they spend their whole lives at it.

Day in, day out, they do nothing but work.

They have to work hard, because they are irreplaceable.

When they drop dead, the company replaces them. In half an hour.

And they leave behind a big pile of money that somebody else has to spend.

They never spend it because they are too busy working.

I have failed at marriage.

After many, many years of struggle.

Can it possibly have made me a better husband?

Probably not.

Bitter, not better.

But I learned that I can’t change my wife.

And I learned that I can’t endure forever.

I am only a man, not a god: my power is weak, and if you bend me too far I will break.

It is very freeing to know I am only a man.

I have failed at adultery.

The affair went faster and more urgently than my marriage.

I never learned to be a better seducer.

But I learned not to pick women that are too much like my wife.

That’s worth something right there.

I never could teach my sons to do their math homework.

I don’t know what I did teach them.

They seem to have learned something from me, but never the things I set out to teach.

I guess the only things they learned must have been the things they picked up by imitation.

By habit.

Just by being there.

The things they got by watching me.

And they saw a lot that way.

They saw me lose my temper. Many times.

And make them do stupid things. For no reason.

And argue with their mother. Endlessly. Out of spite.

Every moment of weakness and failure, those are what they saw.

What they learned from.

And what have they become? Young men, like others.

Mixing good and bad. Like others.

I never learned to be a great father.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever learned to be any kind of father at all.

What I know I learned is that children grow up in spite of you.

When you see their faults, you see a mirror.

In a flash you recognize your own faults in them.

But when you see their strengths, you gaze with awe and wonder:

“Where did they learn that?”

“How did they come to be so good and so strong?”

They didn’t get it from me.

And so I learned to be grateful.

Because whatever is good and strong in my children is a gift from God.

Maybe some people learn from failure how to succeed.

Not me.

What I have learned from failure is freedom.

Not how to succeed, but that I don’t have to succeed.

If some time I chance to succeed at this or that – by accident – OK fine.

But if I don’t – and often I don’t – I can walk away.

There’s freedom in that.

And peace.

And quiet.

Sister Failure on New Year's Eve

I'm sick. I don't know why. I haven't seen
A doctor -- just gulp pills of no clear pow'r.
My father treats his colds with Scotch and sleep,
But alcohol just makes my stomach sour.

My cell phone doesn't work. I don't know why.
It says to "Check the SIM card" -- but not how.
I guess the store could fix it; haven't tried.
In fact I don't know where that store is now.

My girlfriend writes me letters filled with news,
And all her thoughts: on God, ... marriage, ... affairs,
I've nothing to say back; it's like at work,
Except at work there's no-one really cares.

"Oh, Sister Failure, say a word to me!"
I'm not sure, but I think she whispered "Peace."

Maybe I'm a girl?

The lead article in the May issue of the Atlantic Monthly is called "The Confidence Gap."  It's by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, two journalists I'd never heard of before, and it's about why women don't excel in the work world in the numbers that we'd like to see.  In a nutshell, the argument is that men overestimate their abilities and women underestimate theirs; also, that self-confidence is more important than raw ability in getting ahead.  So men are more likely to apply for promotions for which they are even marginally qualified, more likely to angle for raises, more likely to keep pushing their way up.  Guess who ends up rising farther faster?

There is a lot of analysis behind this, and a lot of speculation about causes.  But one page really caught my eye.  Allow me to quote at some length:

For some clues about the role that nurture plays in the confidence gap, let's look to a few formative places: the elementary-school classroom, the playground, and the sports field.  School is where many girls are first rewarded for being good, instead of energetic, rambunctious, or even pushy.  But while being a "good girl" may pay off in the classroom, it doesn't prepare us very well for the real world....

It's easier for young girls than for young boys to behave: ....  They have longer attention spans, more-advanced verbal and fine-motor skills, and greater social adeptness....  Soon they learn that they are most valuable, and most in favor, when they do things the right way: neatly and quietly.  "Girls seem to be more easily socialized," [Stanford's Carol] Dweck says.  "They get a lot of praise for being perfect."  In turn, they begin to crave the approval they get for being good....

And yet the result is that many girls learn to avoid taking risks and making mistakes.  This is to their detriment: many psychologists now believe that risk-taking, failure, and perseverance are essential to confidence-building.  Boys, meanwhile, tend to absorb more scolding and punishment, and in the process they learn to take failure in stride....

[Then after paragraphs on the playground and on sports, the authors wind up this section with ...] What a vicious circle: girls lose confidence, so they quit competing, thereby depriving themselves of one of the best ways to regain it.  They leave school crammed full of interesting historical facts and elegant Spanish subjunctives, proud of their ability to study hard and get the best grades, and determined to please.  But somewhere between the classroom and the cubicle, the rules change and they don't realize it.  They slam into a work world that doesn't reward them for perfect spelling and exquisite manners.  The requirements for adult success are different, and their confidence takes a beating.

Do I even have to write anything else, or can I close this post right here?  Those paragraphs are, with minor exceptions, written about me.  I'm pretty sure I'm a guy.  [Just a minute – reaches hand in pants – checks for testicles – yup, they're still there! – yes, I'm a guy.]  But so much of this, from the advanced verbal skills through the praise for being perfect, to the fear of mistakes and the bewilderment at a work world that doesn't give a damn about sentence fragments or split infinitives ... so much of this is deeply, personally familiar that I can't help but think about it.  So maybe this explains why I never have anything to brag about to my alumni bulletin, no visible leadership in anything even though my high school prides itself on training leaders.  Maybe in some respects I'm really a girl, or at any rate a virtual girl.

Of course, even the girls who graduate from that school seem to have a lot to brag about, so that might not be the whole story.  Another option is that I should go back to gently wooing Sister Failure.  Still, it was an interesting idea.

Funny that I should find myself writing two posts in a row about this subject, when it's not something I've been [aware of] thinking about lately.  I wonder why that is ...?

Failure update

Just a quick note to update you.

You remember I was applying for a new job that would move me halfway across the country ... because my boss is demoting me because we have too many senior people in the organization? (Meanwhile nobody else I know at my level is being demoted. Must just be a vote of confidence, huh?) 

Well I heard back today. I did not make it even as far as the interviews. They've got some really strong candidates and blah, blah, blah ....

Something to discuss with Sister Failure.

Or maybe Billy Crystal. 

 

What games did I play as a child? part 3

This post follows on from two that are nearly ten years old, here and here. There's no sense in which it is important. In fact, it would probably never have occurred to me to write it at all if I hadn't drunk an entire bottle of cheap wine with dinner.  But that can send your mind down interesting byways.

Ten years ago I explained that Dale and I used to make up pretend countries. In principle these were micronations, though I hadn't learned the term yet. It was silly, but fun. Back when I wrote about this before, I fit this game into an understanding of my adult life by saying "Making up useless systems? Check."

But there was another side to it that was odd. Sometimes several of us would all join a single country, and then we would debate what its political structure ought to be. My experience of this is that usually I was outvoted. I'd have some idea that I thought was really cool, and I could never persuade other people that it was nearly as cool as I found it. So far, this is pretty consistent with my self-understanding later in life. (See all my discussions of Sister Failure, for example.)

The weird part—the part that contrasts with my adult self-understanding—is that even when I was totally incapable of convincing anyone else to vote for any of my ideas about how this or that micronation ought to be organized, I was usually elected President anyway. At the time, this seemed normal and I never thought about it. Today, in retrospect, it is a great puzzle.

Marie, after meeting Son 1 and Son 2, has started to talk about a phenomenon she calls "the Tanatu charisma." This is the same whatever-it-is phenomenon that makes it impossible for me to blend into the wallpaper even when I try my damnedest. Maybe that's what this game displayed … already at work, long before I was old enough even for college.  

                

Bring your whole self to work

Today is Diversity Day at my company, so we had a potluck. That part was a lot of fun … plenty of good food, so how can you go wrong?

 

But one of the slogans for Diversity Day was, “Bring your whole self to work!” The idea is that the company should cultivate enough emotional safety that people feel free to be open about who they are … so that nobody has to hide their ethnicity or nationality or religion or sexual preferences because we’re all just one big happy family. Or something like that.

 

And I can’t help but wonder … really?

 

I should feel safe bringing my whole self to work? Let’s see, that includes …

• Failed scholar
• Failed husband
• Multiple adulterer
• Drinks too much

 

Also, less dramatically, I suppose I could add …

• Permanently separated (but not divorced) from a Wiccan-Baptist-Mormon, bipolar, bisexual, promiscuous wife
• Pagan-sympathetic, Christian-sympathetic crypto-Platonist attending a Buddhist meditation sangha
• Eats too much

 

… Those things don’t make me look shocking or immoral … just kind of pathetic and boring.

 

I could talk about Sister Failure. That would sure draw a crowd. Of course it would draw them all to the other side of the building as people moved out of earshot, but still I suppose that constitutes a crowd.

 

Anyway, how is it supposed to be safe to bring all this to work? Also my boss is demoting me, supposedly to “rationalize” the org chart, which means that I’m looking for a relocation on the other side of the country. Should I bring all that in too? Hell, that part’s even work-related. But what do you bet that part’s all covered under confidentiality rules?

 

The potluck was nice. I’m always in favor of anything involving food. But the slogan? Sorry, I can’t believe that ….

 

Sister Failure in Japan

I just discovered this poem today.  It’s perfect ….

Wife, daughters, friends.
This is for you.
Enlightenment is
Mistake after mistake.

-- Ikkyu Sojun, 15th century Japanese Zen Master

So little

I have accomplished more or less fuck-all in my job search in the last week. Yesterday Marie sent me an email asking how it's going, since I haven't said much about it. I don't really want to admit to her how useless I've been, but this evening I sat down in front of an open text file just to type out the first things that came to my head on the subject. It ended up as a conversation that went like this.

==========

Why have you accomplished so little in job hunting?

Well it's not like I've done nothing. I've watched recorded videos about how to brand yourself. I've attended live webinars on important topics like how to get medical insurance when you are unemployed. I spent a lot of time formatting my resume for the state unemployment department, which was a requirement for getting Unemployment Insurance. And I've attended professional webinars put on by my professional association.

You've also squandered hours and hours of time. And all this stuff -- maybe it matters but it's all getting in your way. Why aren't you looking for work?

Because I don't want to!

You don't want work?

I wouldn't mind working. I don't want to have to look for work!

Bad news, dude, but jobs don't grow on trees.

I know that.

Fine. What do you dislike about it so much?

I don't like that it's all a competition I don't like having to think about what I'm especially good at. And all my accomplishments seem so specious. When I go online and read the requirements for this or that real job, I think there's no way I can match those. What a joke! They are looking for people who are polished and accomplished. I sit at my desk and fill out forms, after somebody else explains them all to me.

Is that all you can do?

Well -- OK, maybe not. But I don't see any way that I can pretend to meet all the bright, shiny requirements in these ads.

Are you looking at the wrong ads?

I guess I must be.

Where would you find the right ones?

Shit, I don't know! I'm googling jobs with titles similar to the ones I used to have, or that use keywords that look right.

But you don't fit most of what you find?

Let's say that when I see a new ad, the first thing I do is scan it for some requirement that would eliminate me. I usually find one.

Because you don't want to work?

Because I don't want to have to fight for it in the arena. So if there's some reason I'm going to be disqualified anyway, I figure let's get it over with. There usually is.

And you assume they are going to find someone with 100% of what they want.

Maybe not. Look, if the part I don't have is listed as "preferred" or "nice to have" then I don't worry so much. But if they absolutely require some familiarity that I don't have, why should I waste their time and mine applying?

If that's true it seems like you should spend more time at the search, not less, because you need time to weed out all the inappropriate ones. 

I know, I know. It's just depressing.

Do you need to target your search a little better? Who is it that you can really help?

Small start-ups that have just been acquired by huge global firms and need help integrating into the systems of their new parent. At least, that's where my last two jobs have been.

Is that who you are targeting?

I don't know how to find them.

Are you asking anybody?

No. Where would I even start?

Your existing network? Or that consultant that your last employer hired for you until June?

Oh. Yeah. I guess that would be a good idea. I didn't think of that. Also I don't want to move out of this general region.

Nice to know your requirements are so simple!

Well, you know, my mom ….

Yes, yes. I know. Nice to know your requirements are so simple. Are you sure you're not just adding more requirements to make a big heap so the whole effort becomes impossible?

I'm not sure, no.

So you might be?

I might.

Is that OK with you?

Fuck, I don't know. What does it matter?

Are you planning to get another job?

Oh, I'm sure it will happen sooner or later.

Which? When?

I don't know.

Do you care?

It's hard for me to care.

Because you don't want to?

Not a lot, I guess.

Do you want to retire?

I don't know if I can afford to retire.

If you could afford it, would you want to?

It would be tempting. On the other hand I look at how I piss away my days right now, and I remember how much my dad pissed away his time once he sold his business, and I'm not sure it would make me any happier. What it would make me, after a little while, is unemployable -- because I would have forgotten the dance that you have to do at work to get things done.

Are there things you still want to get done?

Sure. I want to write up all the philosophy that I keep promising out on the Patio, and maybe a couple of things I've never mentioned there. I'd like to publish a book I started writing last year about some of the stuff I do professionally.

Could you do those things if you weren't working?

You'd think so, huh? But I don't know if I'd ever get the motivation to sit down and do it.

Will you do those things if you do get a job?

I haven't yet, and I'm nearly 60.

So are you saying they'll never happen?

I'm saying I need some kind of outside compulsion.

And what about job hunting?

Look, tomorrow morning I've got an appointment with my main consultant, and also with a resume specialist. Those meetings will push me back on track.

Really?

No, not really.

==========

Fun, huh? Maybe I need to admit that one of my consultants is Sister Failure. Or maybe I just need to get my ass in gear. That's another way to read the data.

     

Crime

This story starts years ago.

The boys were young. We all still lived at home in our house. And one day -- God knows why -- Wife started telling the boys about my academic achievements when I was young (grade school, high school, college).

Now I had made a point of never discussing any of this. It's all ancient history and I figured they didn't need to know. Besides, there is something really pathetic about anyone whose greatest achievements in life happened when he was sixteen. If I've got nothing better to say for myself than that I was valedictorian of my high school and that I had great SAT scores, ... that's pretty small and sad, isn't it? Better I should just skip all of that. How could they possibly care? And if I make a big deal about it when they don't care, won't I just come across as self-absorbed and clueless?

But suddenly there was Wife, telling them all about it. She probably exaggerated it; in the first place she wasn't there back then, and in the second place she really really cares about this stuff. She craves the kind of recognition that makes me run and hide. So it sounded to me like she was laying it on kind of thick.

I got mad. I yelled for her to stop. I demanded how could she do such a thing when she knew I didn't want her to talk about all that.

She didn't understand. Never mind that I had asked her not to discuss it ... she disregarded that request completely because to her mind she wasn't saying anything bad. In her mind, she was praising me; therefore she was saying good things; therefore the fact that I had expressly asked her not to somehow disappeared ... or didn't matter ... or never happened. Because it was OK by her lights, that made it OK simply. It's as if I couldn't really have meant what I said when I asked her to keep it a secret.

I tried and tried to get her to understand that tastes differ. Values differ. Just because it was OK with her didn't make it OK with me. She couldn't understand. She couldn't even understand that she didn't understand. It was as if I were a mime ... as if I were mouthing and gesturing but no sound came out. Her inability to get it was that total.

I felt that way a lot around Wife, and I kept looking for ways to break through so she could hear me. I kept looking for something I could say, something so bizarre that she would realize that she really didn't understand me ... something so bizarre that she would drop all her certainties, open her ears, and just listen.

In all my years with Wife, I never found it. But that particular day, while I was groping for something to say, I hit upon asking her, "Do you just hate your children? Why else would you tell them this stuff?" I wanted her to understand that I meant (in small part) "Don't lay a trip on them that they have to live up to such-and-such an image. Let them be who they are." I also wanted her to feel slapped in the face -- shocked enough that she would trouble to listen.

That part didn't work, but she did call D to complain about how bizarrely I was talking. (This was back when D was still Wife's best friend.) And D wrote me a letter demanding to know how I could possibly think Wife hated the boys just because she was praising me to them.

I said it was because I was startled. I was taken by surprise by her telling the boys about my victories in school a hundred years ago, so I overreacted. D wrote back to say that was crazy: there's no way that just being surprised or startled could make me say something so extreme, and in any event why should I be startled instead of pleased? (In her own way, D was just as chronically unable and unwilling to understand me as Wife ever was.)

So I tried to explain by telling a story. Think of it, I told her, like this ....

Suppose that you were a young woman in Germany in the 1930's, and you married a man with political ambitions who rose to be the Gauleiter of some important city.  In the last stages of the War, your husband is shot by partisans, and somehow you escape undetected to North Carolina.  You adopt a Southern accent, change your name, and take a job teaching ... and nobody knows about the life you used to lead.  By working very hard, by never letting up your guard for even a moment, you manage to erase your former life completely.  This means there are no embarrassing questions about war crimes; no difficult moments where you are asked how you personally feel about the Jews; no angry strangers lecturing you about how their Daddies were shot down in cold blood by your goddamned sonsabitching Kraut soldiers and what the hell do you have to say about it now ... none of that.  You have achieved one important part of the American Dream, by completely reinventing yourself.  Nobody has any idea that you didn't spring directly out of the red mud in the small rural town where you teach.  And then one day, as you are shopping for groceries, a stranger sidles his cart up next to your in the frozen food aisle, touches you on the sleeve, and whispers softly (in a voice that could not possibly have come out of the Carolinas), "Guten Abend, Frau Gauleiter.  Wie geht es Ihnen?  Was neues?  Erinnern Sie sich mir?"  Wouldn't your heart jump into your throat?  Wouldn't you feel like screaming?  Can you really judge me for overreacting?

That's the story I sent her, to explain how I felt at Wife explaining to the boys what an outrageous academic overachiever I was back when I was an immature little snot.

But what does the story mean? If that's how I felt, ... then how exactly is it that I did feel? Like my achievements were something shameful? that they were hateful? that they were crimes against humanity? What does this story really say?

I don't know -- consciously -- exactly what the story means. I told it because it felt right. But now that I look back on it years later, I have to say that it looks like I was trying to say I felt that my academic achievements were a crime. That they burdened me with a terrible guilt. That they had to be expiated. That I had to be punished for being so goddamned smart and so insufferably good at the games schools make you play. That there was something deeply wicked and immoral about being the best student in my selective private prep school every year but my first, and again the best student in my intensely academic liberal arts college every year but my first. 

The. Best. In. Two. Excellent. Schools.

When I spell it out like that I can still feel a little twinge of pride in the accomplishment. But at the same time I feel ashamed of the pride, as if it soils me ... the way a really degrading sexual fetish might. As if the very fact that I can feel these twinges of pride just proves how depraved I am, how low and petty. As if pride in that achievement is the same thing as wallowing in the gutter, or masturbating in public.

I still feel like it is a crime. I don't resent being punished for it. In fact, maybe this is where I get my flirtation with Sister Failure ... as a door to redemption. Because if I fail badly enough, maybe I can escape the curse of so much early success.

I just don't understand why I think these things.

Wrestling with failure 1, “Forget you even know me”

D has been really down the last few days. Her job has been getting to her. I know, I know, ... you’re tired of hearing about her crappy job teaching too many classes a day to unmotivated students and reporting to a criminally mendacious administration. You hear it a lot. But it takes a lot out of her morale. And some days she looks back on what she wanted to be, and the contrast is just too much. So we’ve been writing back and forth about this.

She started the conversation about a week ago. Wife and Son 2 and I drove out to Hogwarts because it was “Parents’ Day,” when we got to meet all of Son 1’s teachers and learn about the program for his freshman year of high school. Then after that all the school closed for a few days so that all the students could go home for a while after having been away nearly two months. I had told D that this might interfere with my writing for a couple of days, so she knew all about it in advance. And at some point during the weekend she wrote me as follows:

“I am glad Son 1 is fitting in so well and the two days have been rewarding. I actually tried to learn about your schedule at Hogwarts, just to help me know what you were seeing and doing, but that was a mistake. Looking at the pictures and reading the site just made me acutely aware of the differences between the education a person receives at Hogwarts and the lessons taught in my school. I found myself embarrassed (why did I ever take you into my classroom?) humiliated, and yes, angry. I don’t know how to close that gap, but I realize that Son 1 will not, in a million years, really understand the experiences of my students, and I can’t begin to imagine what life must feel like at Hogwarts. The class issues, the race issues, the history and experiences of his parents...all these differences add up to another world. The implications for civil society are huge. I don’t know what to do or to say on a personal level. I feel a welter of emotions; none of them happy....

I need to concentrate on grading anyway. I’m way behind and I’m becoming panicked and worried; I feel like I’m doing a terrible job and I need to go better. Not that my students will ever compete with your children or mine, but that injustice causes me to be blinded with tears of anger and frustration. My real struggle is to carry that weight without sinking like a stone and without a certain edgy anger. I’m not there yet.

So I’ll leave you, driving home on a beautiful fall day with both boys in the car and the prospect of a delightful holiday ahead for the entire family. I wish you much happiness, fewer interruptions from work and, please, forget you even know me for the duration of Son 1’s break.”

Cheerful stuff, huh?

I wrote her back, in part, as follows:

“Of course you know that forgetting you exist is out of the question -- not for the duration of Son 1's vacation, not for the weekend, not even for a moment. But your letter troubles me.

I could have understood it had you spoken of a sense of despondency or defeatedness from comparing the gritty reality of your school with the photos of Hogwarts, but that's not what you said. Instead you spoke of embarrassment and humiliation -- of asking yourself why you ever let me see your classroom -- and I have to admit it sounds a little odd to me that you identified those feelings instead. Can I say why it sounds odd to me? I think there are three reasons, very different from each other.

The first reason is, in this case, far the most superficial, but it is also absolutely true. It's just that I love you -- so much that embarrassment seems unimaginable to me. What I mean by that is, ... well, let's look at your class room. How could I possibly fail to adore it? It's your classroom! That by itself means that of course I'll adore it....

The second reason is the most practical: it is the line of thought which concedes there are disappointing things about your school, but which remarks immediately that none of them is your fault. You aren't responsible for the disadvantages which so burden your students; nor for the deep dishonesty of the administration; nor yet for the poor choices of the novice teachers....

Then there is a third line of thought, radically different from the first two, which nuances that second reason by saying that no, you are not responsible for all those obstacles in your environment; but you chose them anyway. I may be able to explain this point best by using an extended example.

I think in a way that for you to tell me you are embarrassed by your school, and by letting me see your classroom, is a lot like my saying that I am ashamed to let you see our house because it is always such a wreck. Of course it is a wreck, notwithstanding the valiant way you fought to better it while you were here [see the story of our second date, here and following]; and of course at some level, yes, I am ashamed to let you see the place. But the three levels apply here too. (1) I know you will continue to love me anyway. (2) I know you know that the clutter and the deep uncleanliness isn't my doing, and that I'd be more diligent about cleaning it up if I didn't feel like the only one to give a damn. So far, so good.

But it is also true, at the deepest level, that I signed up for this willingly. Twenty-six years ago, I stood up before witnesses and said "I do"; and while it is certain that I did not know in detail what the consequences would be of handing over my decisions and willpower to this madwoman, there was some level on which I knew that they wouldn't be good. But I did it anyway. To this day I'm not sure that I have figured out a complete inventory of reasons why I did it.... But that's as may be. It's a choice I made, and the consequences -- including the fact that I live in perpetual clutter -- all flow from it. To be ashamed of the outcome now is, as Nietzsche put it, "to leave my decision in the lurch"; to forget that, at some deep level, there was something important I wanted to get out of this choice that I made.

It's the same with your teaching at your school, except in your case I think the reason behind the choice is easier to find (and more honorable). It's not like you couldn't have chosen some other outcome in your life. If you had really wanted to teach at some other kind of school -- Exeter, Andover, Hogwarts -- you could be there now. God knows you're capable enough!... But instead you chose the place where you are today. Now of course there were practical reasons constraining your choice. There always are. But if teaching at Andover or Hogwarts had been important enough, you would have found a way around them....

That doesn't mean there aren't days -- how I know those days! -- when your choice makes you gnash your teeth with rage and anguish and regret: days when the students are being ridiculous, when the administration is being more than normally dishonest and corrupt and criminal, when every muscle aches from exhaustion and your soul hurts worse than your body. Yup. Been there, done that. But days like that pass. One day, you will no longer hurt and your soul will be at peace. And the question then will be whether the goal you wanted to achieve was worth the cost.

What is the goal? Why do you choose schools and settings like this? I've always assumed that at some level you do it out of discipleship, as a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. But if that's true, if my guess is right, then you will always teach in the kind of school where the students have things tough: whether they are "at-risk" or "underserved" or whatever the technical term is at this or that particular school. If my guess is right, then the odds are you will never teach at a school like Exeter or Andover or Hogwarts -- not because you couldn't (you could!!) but because at some deep level of your identity you choose not to. But in that case the comparison between your school and a place like Hogwarts is a foregone conclusion; and so far from being embarrassed by it, you might just figure it is an inevtiable by-product of the way you carry out the challenge of discipleship.

Well then, if this is the station you have taken up to serve God, why aren't your results better?... Let me recall the comparison I drew between your career and my marriage. I think we both took on challenges that were beyond us. You hoped to raise the valley to the plain, or even partway up the mountain -- not for one or two students in your lifetime, but for an entire class at once -- preferably year after year. I hoped (more modestly) to save one lousy human life -- one soul, no more -- from the countless demons that beset her. Up till now, we have both failed. But remember what I said before, that Sister Failure is not our enemy. Maybe in the end it will turn out to be OK that we failed. Maybe all it means is that neither of us is God. In any event, let's neither of us be embarrassed or ashamed -- in front of each other -- for those failures. Let us trust in each other's love, and in the prospect of unbounded forgiveness.”

D answered that she was grateful for my saying kind things to her, but I obviously didn’t succeed in improving her mood much.

“Your comments about my choices and your choices seem about right. I know I am struggling more than I let on; I am drinking far more than I ever have before.... Part of the problem with alcohol abuse is the secrecy you develop around drinking--how much, how often, all the excuses.

I am deeply lonely. My daughter wrote yesterday and accused me of being incredibly passive about my life and I responded with a shrug and silence. I know I'm passive, for all the reasons you laid out a couple weeks ago. Perhaps I don't have the faith in Providence I need to make a major change. I know that I have a hard time just getting up and doing enough to get by. Right now, I don't feel like a decent teacher, let alone as good as you think I am. I am also impatient with my less experienced colleagues because they make my job far more difficult.... My frustrations, my deep loneliness, my sense that nothing has meaning or worth leave me in a very dark place with no reason to care....

You are right to wonder why we have chosen such impossible tasks because indeed, we both know there can be no victory. The odds were and are stacked against any easy success and perhaps it was never realistic to begin with; the Kingdom is not of this world. That doesn't discount what we do, but it's more a case of providing witness to God's coming presence than changing the world in some dramatic fashion. I know you love me and I know that on some level, you really do affirm what I am doing. I know you don't judge my classroom...except I also know that you would never dream of sending your boys to my class. You know there is a better system of education.... I'm embarrassed because I know this...I realize that you enjoyed visiting my class just because I teach there, not because there is anything truly notable about what I do there, the same way you had a great time at Son 2's school play without thinking it was remarkable theater. Unfortunately, I'd like to be a great educator. I know I fail. On some deep level, that bothers me. I know that in the end, all will be well, but I also realize that now, so much is broken and grieving. Most of the time I can live within this tension, but recently, I'm failing...sliding off the roof, you might say, unable to play my violin with either conviction or beauty.”

It was hard to know what to say to this, and so it took me several days to reply.

Fourteenth date

Wow.

So D and I spent this last weekend together in Faraway City. I told Wife I had to give a seminar in the office there; I told my coworkers I was taking a couple days vacation; I flew out the evening of Thursday, got in after midnight, then met D’s plane close to noon on Friday. I am starting to write this now in the airport Monday night (and finishing it later in the same week). What about the three days in between? Several things stand out.

In the first place, it almost didn’t happen at all. Back last fall, D and I were bickering over how to pay for our next visit. I insisted that I would pay for the whole thing; D insisted that she would pay her share; and there we sat at a standoff. (See for example here and here.) Finally she said she didn’t care who paid for what so long as we saw each other, and I made reservations for this weekend in mid-January. No sooner had I done so, of course, than she asked how much she owed me for her ticket. (sigh) Honestly what I wanted more than anything else was not to have to discuss money at all … it brought back way too many memories of having to plan out finances with Wife. But D is stubborn. (You are shocked to hear this, I realize.) I had to threaten to cancel the tickets before she would let up, and even then she was grumpy about it. I suggested that if we really had to talk about money, maybe we could do so in person, after we had been together for a day or so … thinking that maybe after enough sex we’d both be more relaxed and able to approach the question more calmly. In any event, I didn’t cancel the tickets and we did meet.

Sometimes I think I am past it sexually, or nearly. I’m almost fifty years old and D is radiantly sexy. We are in bed as I stroke, suckle, lick, squeeze, rub … but I don’t get hard. Maybe later, … sometimes I still wake up hard in the mornings … but that’s no guarantee that I’ll stay up. D just tells me that I can’t expect sex at fifty to be the same as sex at twenty, and that she is still perfectly content. (She also gently suggested that Pfizer sells medication for this sort of disappointment.) But it can be depressing.

D herself, needless to say, may be older than I am but she isn’t past anything. Her whole body, every inch of skin, every nerve, is a finely-tuned machine designed for orgasm. I told her this weekend how sexy she is, and she said, “Well thank you, I’m glad you think so.”

“That’s not what I mean,” I tried to explain. “I’m not talking about a private opinion, that you are ‘subjectively sexy,’ so to speak. My point is that you are objectively sexy. Think of a Ferrari: when you call it a fast car, you don’t mean that it’s my opinion or your opinion that a Ferrari is fast. You mean that it is designed to go fast. Every single design decision is taken with speed in mind. The engine won’t even work right at low speeds: the plugs foul, the engine dies. But get it up to 150 or 200 miles per hour, and it performs like a dream. OK, well it’s the same thing with your body, except it’s not about speed. Your body is designed to function under conditions of stimulation and orgasm. You aren’t built for celibacy; you get cranky and unhappy when you have to undergo it for too long. But slide into bed and suddenly everything falls into place. Suddenly you are firing perfectly on all cylinders. Sex is what you were made for … far more than any ordinary mortal. In some deep way, calling from eternity, sex is your destiny! This is what I mean by saying that it’s really not just my opinion. You are objectively sexy.”

D was embarrassed by this. “Don’t be silly; I’ve gone years without sex before this.”

“Yes and you were miserable every minute. Look, it’s easy to see what I mean. How many other women do you know who experience orgasm when their toes are suckled?”

“Actually I read an article about toes online just the other day. I’ll send you the link.”

“Whatever.”

We talked about masturbation. D said that she hardly ever masturbates. Huh, what? How is this possible? Well, she said she feels that masturbation is kind of a cheat, because part of the real richness of sex is the deep relationship with another person. Fine, that’s true, but what about just getting off? We talked a little longer and she explained that when she really gets depressed it can be hard to feel sexy … then since she interprets the whole world through the lens of her libido (another reason I say she was made for sex) this means she spirals into despair. Fine, I told her, let Dr. Hosea give you a prescription. The next time you feel like that, masturbate. At the beginning you may be too depressed to feel much like it; but halfway through, you’ll feel a lot better and you’ll feel much more willing to go on. Trust the voice of experience on this. She said she’d think about it.

We talked about some of her previous lovers. She made a point of saying that every single one of them treated her well, every one was a gentleman of whom she had fond memories. The fellow who wanted to take her virginity when she was a teenager, the cultured older gentleman who finally did several years later, even the friend she called up when she was alone and deeply depressed and just wanted to get laid. She had only kind words for all of them.

We talked about my marriage, about Wife’s crazy financial decisions, about the thousands of dollars flushed down the drain over the decades for no discernable reason. I explained as clearly as I could why I never intend to let anyone else have any control over my finances or decisions, once the divorce is final. (Naturally this is why I had been so stubborn when she had tried to discuss paying for the trip.) She commented only that it was helpful to understand how I felt, and that she was hearing for the first time a level of anger and bitterness in my voice that obviously runs deep and that I usually hide when talking about Wife’s antics. Really, ya think?

Talking and fucking … we didn’t do a lot else. The hotel was one of these extended-stay places with a kitchenette, so we bought some groceries and cooked. The weather was crappy so we didn’t really feel like going out for anything else, anyway. But that was enough.

The sex was great. Friday afternoon (as soon as we got to the hotel) it was urgent and hurried – that’s what we get for waiting four months between visits. Then we got dressed, went out to buy groceries, came back to fix supper, and fucked some more. By Saturday morning D was telling me she was already sore, and there were stains on the bed that could have looked like a period if that weren’t a thing of the past for her. So we slowed down and went a bit more gingerly. But didn’t stop.

Sunday night was a little remarkable. We had spent all afternoon eating chips and drinking wine; after finishing two bottles we needed another to go with dinner. I offered to go out to get it. D said that was fine, she would get the food ready while I was gone … only could we lie down first? Maybe cuddle and kiss for a couple of minutes? Maybe feel each other’s skin?

So we lay down on the bed … and suddenly we locked together. Clothes fell negligently here and there. I never did get hard this time at all, but for two hours D rolled in ecstasy. She was exhausted, she was sore, she’d have to urge “Be gentle there” … and then it was “More. More. MORE. Oh my God!!” When we talked about it later, D was pretty embarrassed; but the language she used to describe it made her rapture sound almost like a religious experience. She didn’t want to discuss it a lot; maybe later. On the other hand, when I say that she is designed for sex like a Ferrari is designed for speed – this is part of what I mean.

Monday morning we talked for a while. D told me about the people she has known in all the places she’s lived around the world, and I began to slide into a brown study. I think it was the descriptions of how the executives live in her husband’s company, at various locations around the globe. It’s not that I envy them, although I’ll never live half so grandly. It’s rather that I realize how uncomfortable and out of place I would feel there. Somehow I think I would feel more comfortable dining at the table of Sister Failure, and this probably says something important about me. (If nothing else, it is probably a good indicator of what I should expect in my professional future, sad to say.)

D saw me suddenly fall quiet, and it disturbed her. She began to feel like she had stepped on some kind of landmine she hadn’t known was there, and so she backed away clear to the other side of the room – exactly what I had asked her on a previous occasion never to do when I get depressed. She began to say she should have left the evening before, rather than have said something to depress me so. (What?? And miss last night’s glorious sex?) So I found myself a little bit in the ironic position of having to console her for my depression! Specifically, I reminded her that she is not responsible for my moods. It is not her job to prevent me from getting depressed. All I ask – all I ask – is that, when it happens, she stay with me. Hold my hand. Let me hold her. Keep the direct human contact open. That’s what I need above all to make it better.

She frowned for a while, staring at the floor and thinking about this. But then she came back over to the bed where I was sitting, and stretched out. She said, “You are asking me something hard. I fear I will never know where all the potholes are. You are asking me to be willing to fail a lot in our relationship. But I can do that. I won’t run away.” Then she sat up, slid into my lap, and smiled. And it was better.

Finally we checked out, drove to the airport, and flew back to our respective homes. We both faced huge piles of work left undone for the sake of this trip. But it was worth it. The next morning, I e-mailed D that I had gotten home safely and chit-chatted about little things. And then I added, “The weekend keeps coming back to me in reveries unbidden, and I have to shake my head to get back to work. You have talked many times about the lifelong task of ‘becoming a woman,’ but I can only reflect that your womanhood is an instrument on which you can already play music of subtlety and complexity befitting an entire orchestra.


In my mind I hear your voice like violins, in thoughtful, nuanced discussions drawing on perceptions and insights that would be clean out of the reach of anyone with less than a half century of experience and of careful meditation on that experience. Cutting across that subtle richness like horns or trumpets is a kind of sharpness and clarity -- equally well as idealism for the future and as indignation at injustice -- that one might imagine from a young woman in her twenties. Skipping gaily across the top is the flute section, the playfulness of a little girl who jokes and banters with me, who sneaks up to hug me from behind, and who scoots into my lap with her arms around my neck smiling winsomely. And then there is the passion, ... the divine passion before which my words fall helplessly to the ground and I pull my shoes from off my feet in reverence ... the sublime passion that only the Muses can sing of rightly, and for which mortals like me can feel only awe, and gratitude, ... and overmastering desire ....

Dear heavens I love you, deeply and passionately, now and ever,
Hosea”