R looks angry

After leaving the weekend retreat, Debbie and I came back to her home. I'll be visiting here for a couple of days before flying back to my own home.

As you no doubt recall, Debbie shares this house with her daughter Mattie, her son-in-law R (Mattie's husband), and her two grandsons. Debbie has her own little apartment in one wing, and the other four occupy the rest. Debbie has said she wishes she had space for her fiber-arts hobbies, and in fact her loom is in a big room downstairs. But she doesn't like to go down there to use it, because she doesn't like to intrude on "the family's" space. In many ways she feels confined to the two-rooms-plus-kitchen-and-bath that are allocated as "hers."

Last night we had dinner with the rest of the family. The boys were silly, as little boys often are, but remarkably well-behaved. Mostly I assume that's training, though a little bit might be that their grandmother's Friend-from-out-of-state was visiting (that's me). Mattie was pleasant and cordial—that is, she still felt cold and reserved, but to me she always feels cold. I don't know if anyone else perceives her the same way, and there's nobody I can ask.

But as dinner progressed, I began to get the impression that R was angry. Not about anything specific, but more as a way of being in the world. To be clear, R is often quiet and reserved. So it's not that he was unusually quiet over dinner. Nor was he visibly out of humor: I even managed to make a couple of jokes that coaxed a chuckle out of him. But there seems to be a set to his jaw that I don't remember seeing before, and a firmness to the gaze. You could chalk this up to maturity: despite his two children, despite owning a house, R was a young man when I got to know him, or youngish. I would guess that today he's somewhere around forty: time enough for the softness of youth to wear off, and to be replaced by muscles built of responsibility. Maybe what I am seeing is no more than that.

It is true that he has had disappointments already in life. He and Mattie were graduate students together, but she finished her Ph.D. while he did not finish his. She therefore has a teaching post, while he is working in business. They picked the town they live in based on Mattie's teaching assignment. Even his house—for which he is on the deed—is shared with his mother-in-law, and it was her inheritance that bought it. I don't know whether R keeps score, but he may feel disgruntled about the turns his life has taken.

Nor am I convinced that he is fully happy with his domestic life. It's just little glimpses that I've noticed in moments over the years, and I could be reading them all wrong. Heaven knows my own difficult life with Wife could have predisposed me to see troubles where there are none. But I feel like I might also be able to see trouble where it is well-hidden, because I certainly tried my best to hide my own troubles back in the day.

I know that Debbie wishes Mattie and R were more easy-going with the boys. It would be easy to attribute the same point of view to R, and to assume that Mattie is the only martinet in the family, but that accusation feels false to me. I think the strict parenting is as much his as hers, and may be one direction that he channels his anger at the world. So I have no guesses at what lies behind his anger. Strictly speaking, my whole diagnosis may be false, especially as it is based on no more than glimpses.

But R looks angry to me.

          

How silent is "silent"?

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm visiting Debbie and we are attending a UU-Buddhist silent retreat for the third year in a row. The instructions when we arrived emphasized that this is a silent retreat, and that attendees should take that part of it seriously: also, to be absolutely clear, there is to be no talking in the meditation room, nor in a room off the dining hall (wfor those wanting to eat in silence).

So of course most attendees seem to be talking with each other most of the time. Not, to be sure, during the posted meditation sits. And there seems to be a minimum of talking in the two rooms where it was explicitly forbidden. ("Minimum" is not the same as "none" in this context.) But in general the injunction to silence seems to be carried somewhat ... gently ... by most of the participants.

There's a part of me that wants to criticize them for this, but mostly I don't bother. It's not like I'm some advanced arhat who came here expecting to commune with the World-Soul, and who would have been able to do so if only it weren't for the ongoing conversations! I've got enough internal conversations going on in my own mind to match any of the others. And even if everyone is really committed to silence, it takes longer than a day to settle down. This retreat stretches across a weekend, no longer. So one shouldn't expect wonders.

My cough has been unpredictable. I can go hours at a time without coughing once at all; then suddenly it will strike and people ask, "Are you OK?" (Yes, I think I'm OK.) 

Mostly I have stayed out of long conversations, which is good because when I get in them I get muddled. 

I have been sleeping close to ten hours a night, and still seem to want an afternoon nap.

And last night in the middle of the night I woke up having to pee, and realized I had already leaked all over my pajamas. Mortifying. I told Debbie I'd need to borrow her washing machine when we got back to her home, and she pointed out that the retreat center has machines of its own. So right now I'm waiting for my pajamas to dry. As I say, mortifying.

No profound insights, I guess. But it is a good and pleasant place to be.  

"Because I'm just fed up" part 2

Last month I wondered if Debbie might be loosening her grip on her progressive politics. No such luck.

I'm visiting her for a few days ... we are going to the UU-Buddhist Silent Retreat we also attended last year and the year before. Last night she mentioned again that she was going to re-register as an Independent, so I asked her why she deleted her Act Blue account.

Turns out she's just sick of getting fund-raising spam clogging her email and phone, so she thinks deleting that account might help stem the tide. Also it seems like she thinks it is better (from the perspective of Plum Village Buddhism) to be politically non-aligned, even if she still votes the same way as before.

I don't know if these moves will help keep the spam out of her Inbox, but I certainly agree with being politically non-aligned ... even if she isn't really non-aligned. But I suppose I shouldn't make predictions about the future. Sometimes big things grow from little beginnings.

Or not.

       

Me and groups

Over the last couple of days, I've been thinking about how I relate to groups or organizations.

There's a story I tell myself that makes the answer sound easy: I'm a consummate outsider. I suffer from social anxiety. I'm shy, or an introvert. These are all stories I have told myself for years.

Of course this story is partly true, or I would never have concocted it in the first place. But it is not the whole truth. A number of recent experiences have made this clear to me.

Case One

Two nights ago (Thursday), I joined an online meeting of the leadership for the local Region of the professional society that I belong to. There are plenty of reasons I needn't have bothered. In the first place, I'm not even working any more. I joined the professional society two or three years before my local office closed. As you recall, I never found another job after that. I've been volunteering with this society as a way to keep busy, more than anything else. 

Also, I'm only in leadership in the most tenuous way. I was Chair of the local section for four-and-a-half years. (There's a rule in the society that limits you to two years, but, well, stuff happened.) But I was able to resign my Chair-ship at the end of last year. Fawn, whom I recruited to join our leadership committee as Program Chair, took over as the new Chair on January 1 of this year. I accepted a minimal role in the leadership committee because Fawn asked me to be available, to give her advice. And that minimal role means that I am invited to the monthly meeting of all the Regional leadership, because they want to make sure that there is at least one representative from each section. In case the Chair can't make it, someone else should still be there to report.

Fawn has made it to these meetings very reliably, all year. But still I show up whenever I don't have a conflict.

That's the first interesting question: Why do I bother?

The second interesting point—and this is what started me ruminating on the subject—is how other people in the meeting treat me. Of course they are used to seeing me. I showed up for these meetings for four-and-a-half years as Chair of my local section. My attendance at these meetings has now overlapped with the tenure of three different Regional Directors. I also notice that—despite the term limits—there are a few names that I keep seeing, year after year. I guess they must have rotated into new roles or job titles (as have I). But they keep representing their sections in these meetings. It's interesting.

But the moment that struck me, in the meeting two evenings ago, was when one of the long-time representatives (used to be Chair of his section, I think now he is Treasurer) started joking with me in a very obvious way, the way two old veterans might kid each other over long shared experience. Of course in the moment I responded by rocking back in my chair and laughing—we were on Zoom, after all, and I had my camera on so people could see my reaction. But in the back of my mind I wondered: If I am genuinely shy and introverted, how did I get into this position? I keep trying to avoid having to do hard work for this society, so how did I become a veteran that this man feels comfortable joking with?

That started me mulling. Then the next afternoon I acquired more data.

And now a summer cough?

I shouldn't be so shocked. Although I tried to reassure friends and family this winter (see here and here) that my cough was just a winter phenomenon (based on last year's experience, for example here and here), in reality I've written in this venue about the damned thing showing up in other seasons too. (See for example here, or here, or here.)

But it's always annoying. And here we are again. I wish I knew what causes it.

I made a note on my calendar back on July 26, "started to notice a cough the last couple of days." Shortly after that it took off. A week ago on September 10, I noted "seems like less coughing the last couple days." And today I jotted down "cough much better but not gone." Hmm. From July 26 till next Sunday (the day after tomorrow) is eight weeks. Does that mean anything? Or is it all just random?

In reality I don't think it's quite random, though neither would I go to the other extreme and call it controllable. But there do appear to be correlations. 

• If I eat a handful of salted peanuts, I cough immediately.
• If the air gets damp, I cough more frequently, though this is a probabilistic relationship. (Some day I'll test the correlation by moving to the Atacama Desert.)
• If I start talking excitedly, I cough.
• If I listen to a piece of music that makes me emotional, I cough.

I don't understand the connection with salted peanuts. But in general, it seems like I cough when I engage with being fully awake and alive. If I just sit motionless, browsing Twitter and letting my mind rot, I can go for extended periods without coughing.

Should I just sit and do nothing, and rot into my chair? Well, maybe.

     

"Because I'm just fed up"

I was talking with Debbie this evening. We usually talk for about an hour every Friday evening; tonight it stretched for nearly two-and-a-half. Then, just as we were winding up, she added, "Oh, one more thing. I've deleted my ActBlue account, and I'm going to reregister as an Independent."

Wait, Debbie?

I asked why, and she said, "For two reasons. First, I want to see if re-registering makes me feel differently about some issues. And second, because I'm just fed up."

As usual when someone raises a sensitive topic, I responded by talking too much. What I wanted to do was to ask her "fed up with what?" But I didn't ask. Maybe I can ask that next week. I babbled about how there was research that suggested she's onto something ... that identifying with a group can change how you feel about issues where that group has already staked out an opinion. And of course I said I'd be really interested to learn how the experiment turns out. What will she end up feeling about the contentious political issues of the day. I mentioned that I have never in all my years registered with any political party, because I figure that anybody will go crazy if you give them enough rope. ("Are you trying to say, Power corrupts?" "Yes, but more clumsily. Also sometimes when you give a party power they don't really start to do evil ... sometimes they just get goofy.")

So we talked in an unproductive way for another five minutes, most of which was spent with me babbling because I was nervous. I'd like to become more self-aware, so that I know ahead of time that I'm likely to overreact this way to a potentially sensitive topic and can shut myself down in advance. And I want to ask for pointedly what exactly she is fed up about.

In retrospect it feels a little bit like this conversation with my aunt, three years ago. And I wonder: when public intellectuals like John Michael Greer say that the Democratic Party and the Professional-Managerial Class are losing control over the hegemonic narrative that has kept them in power for decades ... is this what that looks like?

               

Hard to write

It's the middle of September, and this will be my twenty-eighth post in 2026.

Twenty-eight is an important number. In the years since I started this blog (not counting 2007, as I started in December), my worst year for posting has been 2016. In 2016, I posted twenty-eight times. So reaching that number means, At least this year won't be worse than 2016. At least I won't have reached a new low!

Nice to know.

But it's also September. The year is almost 3/4 over. How have I written so little?

I don't know. For a while, towards the beginning of the year, it just seemed like nothing was happening to me—like there was nothing to write about. Then I committed to finishing my book this year. Then I went to the Ecosophian convention. Then other stuff started to happen, and I realized that Lack-of-Material isn't really my problem. (Besides, there's always more to say. Remember the time that Robert Pirsig assigned a rhetoric student to write about the front of the Bozeman Opera House, starting with the upper left-hand brick!)

Are my habits getting in the way? Probably. I get up in the morning, fiddle around for a while, finally get a shower and have breakfast, check my email for a while, ... and then go take a nap! After that, it's mid-afternoon and I'm ready to spend a couple hours on the day's work before it's dinner time. I usually don't accomplish anything after dinner.

It's not like I'm "too busy" in a conventional sense. I scarcely go out. I talk to very few people. That may be part of the problem, in fact: that I use food and drink and Twitter to replace the human company that I miss. But then, why not spend the time writing? That's a kind of conversation, after all?

I don't know the answer. It just seems too hard, somehow. Even for the regular writing that I have to do to support the two columns I post online every week, I've been writing quick-'n'-easy pieces because I can't bend my mind around how much work it would take to write something more substantive.

Maybe I need to fall in love. Maybe the NRE would drive me to get my ass in gear. Too bad I'm way too old for any of the equipment to work any more.

Maybe if I got out more, the rest might follow. Meanwhile, does it ever seem to you that I'm repeating myself a lot?