Visiting Son1 and Dorcas

Yesterday morning, I visited Son1 in his apartment, now almost two weeks after Wife vacated it.

Partly I was motivated by morbid curiosity: what did the place look like? Partly I was motivated by an acquisitive itch: did she leave behind anything I wanted? And partly I just wanted to be sociable. Normally I don't see my kids very often.

The place looked more jumbled than usual, but a lot less crowded. Most of the furniture was gone out of the living room, and all the nice bookcases. The living room rug was still there, and I know that came from somebody in Wife's family because at one point (back when we all still lived together in a house) one of her nephews tried to extort it out of her. Lovely family. Son1 remarked that there is literally no place in Wife's new digs where it will fit. 

Of course we talked about Wife, and how she reacted to the move. (I notice in passing that half the time Son1 refers to her by her name, instead of saying "Mom." He still says "Mom" once in a while, but the change is striking.) Son1 said that he thinks part of the long-term therapy which she needs is to have all her useless, ancestral junk stripped from her, so that she has to reconstruct her life without it. I didn't say anything specific, but I was thinking that this was exactly what D and I thought way back during the Housecleaning From Hell in December 2008 and January 2009, that I've described as "Second date." (The account stretches from here to here, but you can pick this one as a good solid example of our thinking.)

We talked about Wife's drinking. He thinks she has accepted the designation of "alcoholic" because it gives her an excuse: if she's an alcoholic, then nobody can expect any better of her. I remember how bitterly she hated her own father's alcoholism, and how long she denied that her mother had the same problem because she didn't want it to be both of them. If she's now decided simply to accept the same diagnosis herself, that's a huge change. Of course it has been decades. (Her mother died in 1994. I think her father died in 1978.)

I don't remember all the other things we discussed. For a while we talked about trivia like our respective work, or unusual air travel.

In the end, I did go and look at the wreckage left in what had been Wife's room. One bookcase was still there, with a few books randomly strewn across it. There were a few (the minority) that looked interesting and weren't garbage; Son1 said I could take them. Apparently the criterion for which books to take was "What fits in the truck?" because Wife had done no packing or sorting before Son2 arrived to help load the truck.

Among the contents of the shelf, I found notebooks that Wife had kept. I didn't take them, though now I wonder if I should have. They seemed to be laid out according to one or another psychological theory for dealing with instrusive thoughts, and the entries were dated. This one dated back to 1993. That one dated to 2011. (The layouts were different from one to the other, I should add ... probably she was working with different therapists during those years.)

What I found most remarkable was the amount of guilt that I saw expressed in her notes. When writing in her own journals, she could freely admit that her infidelities caused me pain, and that her crazy overspending caused me distress. She could admit that they were wrong. But then those admissions triggered automatic thoughts of total worthlessness that made her mind spiral out of control. Apparently she was trying to learn ways to stop the automatic spiralling.

But I guess she never did. At any rate, she never got to a point where she could admit to me that she knew what she had done, and that she knew it had hurt me, and that she was sorry. If I were in the room, she'd fight me.

Those journals were a remarkable discovery. I still don't really know how to feel about them. And I wonder if I should have taken them, or if it is better to let them be swept away with the juink?

           

Looks like a big year

It looks like this is going to be a big year.

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I went to the Ecosophian Convention in June. That was big, right there.

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I mentioned a while ago that I'm back to work on my book. My goal is to self-publish successfully this year. I don't expect to make a lot of money at it, although it would be nice if Fate proved me wrong. But it explains an obscure, niche topic. The natural audience is probably not large, and I've never been very good at publicizing myself. The goals that I hope to achieve include:

• proving that I can set and achieve a long-term goal;
• learning about the self-publication process, so I can plan to publish some of the other stuff bubbling in my head;
• opening up the possibility for my sons that they can achieve things in life above and beyond holding a regular job, because it is always easier to do a thing if you see someone else do it first. (To be clear, my own father was rather weak on the "holding a regular job" part, so that was the first thing I wanted to model for them!)

But there is more. Turns out that the world doesn't revolve around me. 😀

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Wife moved from living with Son1 to living near Son2. Son1 and Son2 organized the whole move between themselves, and are handling the aftermath.

Son1 will be moving in with Dorcas soon. Son2 proposed to Beryl.

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Debbie has had multiple spells of atrial fibrillation. Already this year she has had a device inserted into her heart to help regularize its behavior, and she is on medication to help with that as well. We still talk regularly every Friday afternoon, but more and more those conversations tend to drift over to talking about death. She's still making plans for the future, but more and more she talks about wanting things to be in order by the time she is no longer there to order them.

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Because Debbie has been thinking about death, she has been pushing our Unitarian Sangha to establish a Care-Taking Council. I wrote about the very first steps ... setting up an exploratory committee to review the idea ... back in 2025. But most of the activity will take place this year.

Also related to that, this spring our Sangha held its first ever Day of Mindfulness. We are slowly stretching out of a fixed and unchanging shape that we've held for some 20 years.

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Marie's favorite nephew was arrested by TSA. Turns out he was on a cruise with his parents (Marie's sister Cuñada, and her current husband). TSA explored his tablet, and found pornography on it. Some of the pornography involved subjects below the legal age of consent. This translates to five years in prison—automatically—without the possibility of parole. Marie is beside herself—partly at the fate of her nephew, of course, but partly because of the nature of the offense. She has not said so, but my guess is that years ago (before we got back together and she started to re-evaluate her attitudes towards sex), she would have approved of such a law. Today she hates it because it endangers Nephew. There are probably other complexities as well ... Marie generates emotional complexity effortlessly.

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I'm in a fight with my professional organization. I don't know why I care, and some days I don't. It's not like I'm working any more. My membership expires this month. Maybe I'll just let it go. Still, if I do, that's another milestone for this year.

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At the end of June, Schmidt wrecked his car. He described it this way:

"Driving to town for groceries and prescriptions.  Just a mile or two out of town, got distracted trying to let a wasp out the window, drifted just enough to hit a mailbox that (due to prior vandalism I suppose) was anchored with steel and concrete like a damn skyscraper and totally wrecked the car.  Flipped, rolled, slid... good thing I'm in the habit of doing only 60 on that part of the road!  Seat belt & air bags did their job and I crawled out the (pulverized) passenger side window with just some cuts and bruises.  Somebody came along just as I got out and used his cell phone to call 911 -- I was still dazedly trying to collect myself and wondering how to use my phone without  my glasses (knocked off and god-knew-where).... Cue EMTs, Highway patrol, tow truck -- tow operator finally found my glasses for me (way in the back of what's left of the car) so I can see again."

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My former boss wrote me that he is afraid of being laid off, because the huge company that we both worked for is doing lots of business except not in his country.

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Numerologically, 2026 is a "1-year" because 2 + 0 + 2 + 6 = 10, and 1 + 0 = 1. According to John Michael Greer, 1-years are: 

"Ruled by the Sun, this is a number of new beginnings and opportunity. This is a time of practical action and constructive change.  It's a good time to take direct action and to start new things in motion, so long as they aren't complex or evasive. Move ahead forcefully during this year."

All-righty then!

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Have I forgotten anything? Maybe. Probably

Is there more that I don't know about? Gosh, I hope not!

           

Proud, I guess?

Last weekend—well, Monday actually—Wife moved out of Son 1's apartment to go live by herself near Son 2.

I told you this was coming in this post and this one, both from a few months ago.

Anyway, it finally happened. Nobody told me anything about it. I learned a little bit by texting the boys and asking things based on my assumptions ... whereupon I learned that my assumptions were all wrong and they were several steps ahead of me.

In this whole operation—well, up until this morning—the only thing they have asked me to contribute is money: not work, not thoughts or planning or suggestions, not decision-making, not physical presence (even if only to manage Wife) ... nothing else. And the cash was specifically intended for her first-and-last-month's-rent deposit in the new place. For what it is worth the sum they asked for was too small to cover that. I guessed that they would probably need more, so I buffered the amount I gave them ... and it turned out to match what they needed very closely.

Other than that, they handled it all. They organized a plan whereby: 

• Son1 moves in with Dorcas. (Remember that Dorcas owns a condominium free and clear.)
• Son1 sends to Son2 the money he would otherwise have spent on rent. 
• Son2 uses that money to pay Wife's rent ... and the apartment is rented in his name, not hers.
• Son2 stops in to check on Wife from time to time, to make sure she has food in the house and isn't drunk off her ass or doing crazy shit.

They also worked out a complete plan for the move.

• Wife had filled two storage iunits, plus she had her stuff all over Son1's apartment.
• Son1 rented a 15-foot U-Haul trailer for the weekend.
• Son2 flew to be there for the weekend.
• The two of them spent the weekend loading the U-Haul with as much stuff as they could make fit.
• Sunday night they put Wife on a plane to Son2's town. I assume Beryl met her at the other end and gave Wife a place to stay, because otherwise Wife would have been completely helpless.
• Monday morning, they drove the truck to Son2's town. It took all day.
• Tuesday they unloaded the truck. I guess they returned it. Son1 flew home.

Today I got a note from Son1 (copying Son2, so everything was above board), asking if I can pay for Wife's rent for one month, because she had so much junk left over that he will have to keep his apartment rented another month just to clean it out. And he can't pay two rents at once. I said, yes, I think I can.

What do I think about all this?

• On the one hand, stereotypically, I think I'm supposed to feel bad at being treated as a source of cash and nothing else. What am I, chopped liver?
• On the other hand, I can see that my body has deteriorated over the years. I have nowhere near the energy and strength that Son1 and Son2 have. This is just a simple fact.
• On the third hand, and related, I'm relieved not to have to deal with the consequences of Wife's crazy accumulation and hoarding yet again. Been there, done that. 
• On the fourth hand, it feels truly, truly weird that there was a major event involving Son1, Son2, Wife, and lots of work ... and I was left out of it.

I asked if it would be helpful if I came down to order pizza or something, while they were working. One of the boys (I think it was Son 1) said it would be better if I stayed out of sight. So I dropped it.

Then the next thing I knew, Son1 was texting that he had gotten home safe and sound a couple of days later.

So how do I feel, in the long run?

I'm glad that they can plan something this complicated together, and that they can see a common perspective well enough to agree what to do. Son1 is 29, but turns 30 later this year; Son2 is 28. I think back to when I was 30—or 28!—and I'm not convinced I could have been this mature about planning the relocation of a parent. Nor am I sure that Brother and I could have seen things similarly enough that we could have worked together so well. Actually I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have.

So I guess I'm proud of the boys: for their initiative, their diligence, their common understanding, their ability to work out and agree on the details (better than many professionals I've worked with), and their commitment to see it through.

I still feel really weird at not having been involved at all, but perhaps I just need to thank my lucky stars. Besides, it's in the past; so after a while I'll forget. Right?

Meanwhile, please pass the brandy.

           

Volatility

I mentioned in my last post that I've started to work seriously (once again) on this book I hope to publish professionally. Of course we'll have to see how far I get. But in some ways the exercise of working with a professional editor has already been very educational.

A couple of days ago, I wrote you that my δαίμων appears to be alive and well and still in business, even though it has been so many decades since I was in school.

And today I came face to face with my old, familiar volatility.

I should explain.

Back when I was a child—or a teenager, or an undergraduate—my emotions were often volatile. It was one of the things that I understood to be distinctively true of me. When I learned the word mercurial, I latched onto it as a self-identifier. As a little child I had played at being Mercury, in and around playing at Batman or Superman. And then I learned that the word which best described my emotional life was derived from this same Power! How delightful. How apt.

The process of growing up was, for me, one long, long process of suppressing that mercurial volatility, of learning to distrust myself, of learning to slow down and wait. And of course in many ways that was a good thing. Certainly I learned over the long years of marriage to Wife that I couldn't just say the first thing that popped into my head! Nor could I with D, for much the same reason. By the time I was involved with Debbie, I had learned enough about my own dynamics to ask for—and get!—"the right to say it wrong." I described that years ago as "the assurance that, if I said something which upset her, I could take it back and try again and she would stop being upset." All of this was valuable progress in growing up, in becoming a mature adult instead of an immature prat. All of it was valuable progress in slowing down.

Except of course that all of you—anyone who reads this blog—knows that it's all an act. I never really slowed down my emotions. All I did was to slow down my external affect. I don't react as fast as I used to. But my emotions still bounce around. You know that, because you have to listen to me. So you are perfectly well aware that I will rage and whine and pout over developments that I end up accepting with (so far as anyone can tell externally) calm and grace. As I say, you know it's an act.

Sometimes I pretend to myself that I've made a kind of progress. And maybe I have. Maybe control over one's external affect really is a kind of progress, whatever is going on inside. But, as I said at the beginning, working with this professional editor has brought me face to face with my old, familiar volatility.

As I described in my last post, she sent me a development edit of the whole manuscript. And there were some changes that just sent me around the twist. Instead of marking up the same manuscript document, I funneled all my feedback into a separate document where I could write, "No! You're wrong, WRONG, WRONG!" Fortunately my painfully-learned habits of maturity kicked in last night, so that I didn't send her anything until this morning. Then this morning I wrote a cover email saying, "By the way, I think you're wrong about a few things but you are also write about some others." I attached the document and clicked Send.

Observing myself this morning, I noticed several things.

• Part of me wanted to stop and not send her all that feedback, in order to avoid the conflict that might ensue. Of course that would have meant that I had wasted the entire weekend, and where would we go from here if I couldn't send her my feedback?
• Another part of me chastised the first part, saying, "This is how you always get in trouble in relationships too, by failing to make a stand early when you should. Better to say something now and have done."
• A third part of me wondered, "Can we treat this email as an experiment? How does she handle criticism? If she handles it well, then you can keep working with her. If she handles it badly, that's an early sign of future trouble."

I thought it a remarkably interesting internal conversation.  

Fortunately the outcome was an anticlimax. Her response was very measured and reasonable. I answered her in a similar vein, thanking her for her answer and focusing on plans for the next step. And all the drama blew over, just like that.

But my renewed awareness of my own emotional volatility—and the interesting three-sided dialogue I held with myself this morning—those things have stayed with me.

           

My daimon

Decades ago—back when I was an undergraduate, in the Carter and Reagan Administrations (or call it the Late Pleistocene, for simplicity)—I used to talk about having a daimon (δαίμων). I'm not sure I meant it literally ... though, to be clear, I'm not exactly sure I meant it figuratively either ... but I used it as a shorthand to describe the inner experience of my approach to my studies that led me to have such a ridiculous academic record. I even had a little story that I would tell along with the claim, as a kind of set piece to explain how scholarship felt to me. It went like this.

Whenever I come back to school after summer vacation, there's a period of time when I really can't study. There's just too much else going on that's more interesting! There are friends to visit with, and there are trees to walk under. There are bright colors outside, there are concerts to attend, and there are pints of Häagen-Dazs at the local 7-11. Why would I want to study? Of course I realize that I have to, and the longer this goes on the more worried I get. What if I can't make myself sit down and study ever again?

And then one day, it's as if I can feel a switch go click inside me. Suddenly all the bright colors wash out till they look like the reflection cast by fluorescent lights. Suddenly everything I eat or drink tastes like coffee. Suddenly I'm just not that interested in going out and exploring the city any more. And suddenly studying is the easiest thing in the world.  

Of course I never meant this literally. My food didn't literally taste like coffee, and I didn't literally lose interest in visiting with my friends. But at a certain level of abstraction, it served as a useful "as-if." And there was indeed something interesting going on when that "switch" went click. There was something that happened that clearly separated the time when I could not focus on my studies, and the time when I could (so it seemed) do nothing else.

That was a long time ago. It has been a long time since I had to study like that—at any rate, since I had to study for months on end—and so the experience kind of faded away. I remembered the story, because I tend to remember stories well. But I wouldn't have identified it as part of my current experience.

But lately I've been trying to make some progress on the book I've told you about. The book that, as late as April, I said I hadn't touched in almost a year. Back in May I contacted someone who gave me a quote on development editing. At the beginning of June, not long before I left for the Ecosophian convention, I sent her a complete manuscript to work on. She sent it back, fully edited, a couple weeks ago—and asked for my feedback.

And what with one thing and another, I have been unable to look at it for more than a few minutes at a time.

Of course there are lots of Good Reasons. I have a regular schedule of blogging to maintain. I went to visit my mother for the Fourth of July. (Son1 and Dorcas visited as well, plus Brother and SIL. It was quite the event.) I had to do my laundry, and to buy groceries. Lots and lots of Good Reasons.

Yesterday, I wasted most of the day on Twitter. So today I told myself for sure that I had to work on reviewing my editor's changes. I sat down and forced myself. And even so, I kept getting distracted by the damnedest stuff. It must have been two hours after I made myself focus on the work, before I'd gotten more than a page or two into it. 

And then after a while—"suddenly," as they say—I was deep inside the work and couldn't think about anything else. I got all the way to the end of it (using one review protocol), and then started over using a second. I got about a third of the way through before I decided to break for dinner. At this rate, I should finish (using the second review protocol) some time tomorrow.  

When I first noticed that my distractability had evaporated, I was simply grateful. 

Then I remembered the story I used to tell.

And I thought—maybe, just maybe, my daimon hasn't left me. Maybe he has just been resting. Maybe he is still there when I need him.

It makes for an exciting story.

           

Apparently "Tanatu" refers to pedantic extremists!

So there I was, minding my own business and wasting time on the Internet, and I decided to google the name that I post under. And I discovered something remarkable. Apparently there is a Muslim hadith explaining that the "Tanatus" shall be ruined!

Wait, really? Who are these doomed Tanatus, anyway?

Well, it turns out that the Fatwa Department of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has a website which very helpfully answers exactly this question. Allow me to quote the question and a selection from the answer.

QUESTION: What is meant by the term ”Tanatu`” and what is meant by the Hadith: “Ruined are those who insist on hardship in matters of the Faith.”

ANSWER: All perfect praise be to Allah. Blessings and peace be upon Prophet Mohammad.

In principle, the term ”Tanatu`” means probing into a matter.”Motanatioon” refers to those who probe into matters unnecessarily.... Ibn Atheer stated: “ (Motanatioon) in the above Hadith are those who probe into matters and insist on hardship in what they say.” [An-nihayah Fi Ghreeb Al-Hadith Wa Al-Atharr]. The term “ Tanatu` “ was used by the Arabs to describe those who show off in their speech and employ awkward words when addressing people so as to win their hearts, and this is forbidden in Islam. [In other words, pedants.]

Later, it was used to describe whoever insisted on hardship in matters, whether by words, or deeds, and so they become far from moderation and balance, which are the spirit of Islam. Some instances of “ Tanatu` “ are: inquiring about non-existent juristic issues, and details of the unseen which none knows but Allah, such as the Spirit and The Day of Resurrection." More meaning go under the term Tanatu' as follow: proclaiming the legal illegal, innovations in religious matters, and insisting on hardship in religious practices, doctrines and thoughts.... [In other words, extremists.] 

Moreover, Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) said (What means): "The religion (of Islam) is easy, and whoever makes the religion a rigour, it will overpower him. So, follow a middle course (in worship); if you can't do this, do something near to it and give glad tidings and seek help (of Allah) at morn and at dusk and some part of night". {Bukhari}....

There's more, but that should give you the gist. "Tanatu" refers to niggling detail when it comes to religious doctrine, to agonizing over every jot and tittle, and to making the compliance with doctrine a matter of pain and anguish for everyone else. Just the word for people like me whose compulsions for pedantic exactitude are so obvious. Now if only we weren't all coming to a bad end!

In the spirit of ... umm, ... scholarly exactitude, the exact reference for this hadith is: Sahih Muslim, Book 34, Number 6450. You can find similar explanations of the text here or here. They all agree that Tanatu is a bad thing.

Oh well. Maybe there is still time for repentance.

           

You can just do things!

A long-expected party

The Ecosophian community is an informal collection of people who follow the books and blogs of John Michael Greer. There is no formal organization; nobody collects dues, or organizes formal events, or publishes meeting minutes. But if you check out either of his blogs—Ecosophia, or Toward Ecosophy—you'll find many of the same people commenting over and over. And of course there are plenty of people (I'm one of them) who rarely comment or post, but who read the materials regularly.

For a few years now, there has been a social gathering of ecosophians in Providence, Rhode Island, on or around the summer solstice.In the past, this gathering generally took the form of a big potluck. I remember seeing the announcements and thinking, "Gosh, wouldn't that be fun!" Of course I never went, because I don't live anywhere near to Providence. There was no simple or easy way to pop over and bring a contribution to the feast, so I didn't think about it beyond that.

You can just do things.

Last year, Greer traveled to Glastonbury, England, in early June. He announced his plans the previous November, and in the end his visit turned into a kind of impromptu convention. People gave talks and workshops. There were (by all accounts) good food, good beer, and good conversation. Of course it sounded like a delightful time in the run-up before it happened; and it sounded even better afterwards. But I'm an American, after all. Glastonbury is a long ways away. I toyed with the idea of going there, but I didn't take it very seriously. So in the end I stayed home, and read about it after the fact.

You can just do things.

Then after the 2025 potluck, the man who regularly organizes the events in Providence proposed that "next year" (meaning 2026) he wanted to change it up a bit. Why not hold a convention in Providence, just like the one in Glastonbury? Surely we have people on this continent who would like to give talks on some ecosophian-related topic? Or workshops? It can't be that hard. So he put out an announcement in July of 2025, for the following year, to get people's attention and start them thinking.

You can just do things.