Hosea and Marie's soundtrack: a meme

Usually it takes me a while to think of the music that fits a certain relationship. I didn't post a soundtrack meme for Wife and me until 2009, the year we separated our finances and I began the process of pulling away from her in earnest. I didn't post a soundtrack meme for D and me until 2014, after the affair was well over. I didn't post a soundtrack meme for my father until 2015, the year he died.

Now you could argue that I've had plenty of time to think about a soundtrack for my relationship with Marie. I met her 36 years ago. But I've already mentioned that I normally don't think of my life in terms of songs. So it would be believable if I hadn't really thought this through yet.

Only this one is a slam-dunk. I'll explain why in a few minutes, after I get one other song out of the way -- a more normal one.

See, actually I want to give you two songs. The first one came to me last night as I was typing my "Year 1" post about Marie. I don't remember if I knew it back then, but it characterizes nicely the social isolation I felt at the time.

Before I forget, let me start off quoting a paragraph of rules: 

The Rules:
Write a post about the soundtrack of your life. Please include somewhere in the body of the meme "This was started by Kyra (last refuge of the lonely housewife)"... I want to google to see how far and wide this meme travels.  

Anyway, this is how I lived my life back when I was in college. Not completely -- I dearly wanted something better -- but I was afraid to go look for it.

"I Am a Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel

A winter’s day
In a deep and dark December
I am alone
Gazing from my window
To the streets below
On a freshly fallen, silent shroud of snow
I am a rock
I am an island

I’ve built walls
A fortress, steep and mighty
That none may penetrate
I have no need of friendship
Friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock
I am an island

Don’t talk of love
Well, I’ve heard the words before
It’s sleeping in my memory
And I won’t disturb the slumber
Of feelings that have died
If I never loved, I never would have cried
I am a rock
I am an island

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me
I am shielded in my armor
Hiding in my room
Safe within my womb
I touch no one and no one touches me
I am a rock
I am an island

And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries
__________

But that's only the first song, and not the important one. The second is the one I called a "slam-dunk" choice.

Why a slam-dunk? Because this time I don't have to think of a song after the fact to characterize the emotions of the time. This time it's a piece of music we listened to there and then. And Marie loved it above all the things of this world.

When she first got to college, Marie knew nothing -- or almost nothing -- about classical music. But Scarlett loved classical music and played it quite a bit. So did Schmidt, as Marie and I got to know him. So it was through Scarlett and Schmidt that Marie learned to enjoy classical music ... and particularly to love Beethoven ... and above all Beethoven's other works, the Seventh Symphony in A Major ... and above all other works of man or God, the Allegretto, the Second Movement.

We would sit in Schmidt's dorm room -- or Scarlett's, but more and more we went to Schmidt for this sort of thing -- and he would put on his recording of Josef Krips conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Marie would close her eyes and relax. As the Second Movement started, her face would melt into a beatific smile as if she were listening to angels. And when we left to go our respective ways, she was happy and renewed, no matter what life had been throwing at her.

She even said once, a year or two later, that the Seventh Symphony may well have saved her life. During most of her sophomore year she was sick with a bug that just wouldn't go away. And the muscles of her back tightened up in knots that none of her friends could massage away. So she had begun to despair of the possibility of pleasure in life, and from this she began to question "If pleasure is impossible, why go on living?" But she never went so far as suicide ... because one ineffable pleasure remained to her unsullied by any of the dross of the world. If she could enjoy nothing else, she could still listen to Beethoven. And that was enough reason to go on living.

Ever after -- from her freshman year (my sophomore year) to the present day -- I have found those two, Marie and the music, inextricable in my memory. If I think of Marie, I hear the Second Movement in the back of my mind. And if I hear the Second Movement, I always think of Marie.

In fact, I think of her at one moment, in one scene. There was a huge public rhododendron test garden just across the street from campus, and it was unlocked at night. Many is the time when I -- with or without friends -- would have to get out of my room late at night, and would go walking through the gardens. So when I hear the Second Movement what I see in my mind is Marie, standing in the moonlight in front of one of those huge rhododendrons, breathing in the scent and smiling up at the stars.

It has been 36 years. If the image is still that strong for me today, I assume I will be seeing it -- whenever I hear that music -- till I die. I guess I could do worse.

Anyway, here is the music, the voice of angels, the soundtrack for all my memories of Marie.

Second Movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony

Writing Marie, 2

Here is the letter I wrote Marie today. One thing I learned from my Working Out Loud circle is to start with some kind of contribution, something of value to the other person. I hope this counts.

Dear Marie:

Schmidt tells me you got my last letter, so I guess this address must be valid. Can you stand one more?

Thank you for introducing me to the writing of Dorothy Bryant. I don't think I ever said that before, which makes it long overdue as she has become -- belatedly -- one of my favorite authors. Part of what I love about her writing is that her stories are so hopeful, in a way that has nothing at all to do with the events of the plot. Anna Giardino is mugged; Booker Henderson flees into hiding; Mei-Li Murrow is trapped in a madhouse; India Wonder dies of cyanide poisoning; Ella Price abandons home and family on Christmas Eve and is last seen on the operating table; the Unnamed Narrator is sentenced to death. And yet, ... it's OK. For all of them, what happens is, in the end, somehow right and good. I'm not sure I know another writer of fiction who can stare so bravely into the face of desolation and misery, and find hope and value inside. Even her villains aren't exactly "villains" -- they're men like Willie Fortuna, who make stupid, destructive choices because they just don't get it; but the evil they do is almost a form of clumsiness rather than real malice.

I should qualify all that a little: it's hard to find anything hopeful in A Day in San Francisco. But even there she plays absolutely fair with her characters: Frank makes arguments that sound every bit as strong as Clara's. The only way to know that her arguments are better is to see it ... somehow. But at the same time it is easy to understand Frank thinking as he does.

Of course it is partly a matter of taste. I gave Son 2 a copy of Miss Giardino for Christmas last year, telling him it's one of my favorite books, and I don't think he saw much in it. Maybe he'll come back to it when he's older (he was 16 at the time) ... or maybe not.

In any event -- as I said -- I have to thank you for introducing me to her writing.

I've been hesitant to write you because I've been afraid you won't want to hear from me. Our correspondence has broken off several times in the past [once she wrote me to say flatly that she never wanted to hear from me again], and by now it has been years since we wrote each other. It's easy to imagine you looking at my last letter and this one in puzzlement, wondering "What the hell? After all this time? Aren't we done?"

And if that's your reaction, I wouldn't blame you. At the same time, from my side, I hope to hear back. One of the benefits (if you can call it that) of separating from Wife has been that I am able to see how thoroughly I abandoned my circle of friends. I'd like to repair some of the damage, if possible. And if you do write back, I promise to talk about more than just books.

At the same time, I don't want to be a pest. So let me offer you a deal. After sending you this letter (which, as noted, I have reason to think will arrive safely) I won't bother you again unless and until I hear back from you first. That way if I am being a pest, all you have to do to shut me up is fail to reply.

But if you are interested in renewing the conversation, I would love to hear from you. It doesn't have to be volumes: even a post card is enough to transmit what is (after all) one bit of information -- "Yes, keep writing" or "No, go away." As you can see from the envelope, my street address is: .... If surface mail doesn't appeal to you, my home e-mail address is: .... And my phone number is: .... That number accepts text messages as well as phone calls, but ASCII text only. My phone is too primitive to accept photos or colorful formatting.

I hope to hear a "ping" back from you, and I look forward to it eagerly. 

All the best, now, ever and always,
Hosea 

 

Back story on Marie, after college

[This entry was written and posted on Sunday, March 6, 2016.]

 

So I had graduated. But the story doesn’t stop there.

 

My first year after graduation, I didn’t do a lot. Hung around home, but didn’t find a job. I thought I wanted to go to graduate school, so I sent out applications – even though at some level I knew perfectly well that I had no desire to spend more time in school and that I was doing it because I didn’t know what else to do instead. And I wrote a lot of letters to my friends back at college. I forget if Marie was one of these. I do remember that I went up to visit campus at the end of the next school year, when the school puts on a big party; and I remember trying to come on to Marie drunkenly in a bathroom that weekend. She rebuffed me very curtly.

 

At the very end of that summer, I met Wife. Within a week we were sleeping together. Within a couple of months I was living at her apartment. The summer after that we were married, and left for graduate school in earnest. And it was during the two years we were at that school that Marie wrote to me. Dear Hosea, You have expressed a desire that we should remain friends, but “just friends.” That doesn’t work for me, so I have decided to break off communication with you. If you want to say goodbye, you can write back. After that, please do not contact me again. Marie.

 

It sounds like the end of the story. But no.

 

After two years in graduate school, Wife and I came back home. (That story deserves a post of its own, some day.*) I got a job where I stayed for four years, while Wife taught high school at a couple of different schools. Then we moved to a new city to allow Wife to go back to graduate school. I got another job. And after another year and a half – probably a little more, in fact – I heard from Marie, out of the blue. She had been working with the Landmark Forum, a program that encourages you to make dramatic changes in your life and heal old wounds, all in a few easy steps. She wanted to be friends again. I was thrilled. We wrote, and she came to visit Wife and me. After that we continued to keep in touch.

 

But this, too, turned out awkwardly. Wife was involved with Girlfriend 1 at that point, and told Marie all about it. Marie concluded that Wife and I had agreed to be non-monogamous on principle, because of course Wife never explained how upset her infidelities made me. And so she wrote me a letter saying that she understood Wife had a lover, she understood it was OK with both of us, and so she wanted to be mine.

 

I did not handle this well. I told her no, she should go find somebody of her own. I felt scared and exposed, and I was mad at Wife for putting me in such an awkward position with her big mouth and clueless braggadocio. Marie accepted my decision and we kept writing each other, … but at longer and longer intervals. Finally we just had nothing more to say to each other, and stopped.

__________

 

And there it sat. I could have let it sit there forever. But you know that I have wanted more friends in my life. And I never felt good about … well, really anything in my long, tangled, confused and confusing relationship with Marie. So when I met up with Schmidt again last summer after a dozen years, I asked him for Marie’s address. And I got in touch with her. And that has turned into a whole new story of its own.

* You can find that story here, as "The Oscar Diggs problem."

 

 

Back story on Marie, years 2 and 3

[This entry was written and posted on Sunday, March 6, 2016.]

 

The next year was my Junior year. Marie was a sophomore. We had kept up a very friendly correspondence over the summer, so I looked forward to seeing her again. But somehow this year it wasn’t quite the same. I still felt guilty for having failed so abjectly when she had told me she found me attractive, but I didn’t know what to do about it. And somehow things just seemed more difficult. Sometimes it was just like the year before. Other times Marie would start asking me probing emotional questions – questions I didn’t know how to answer and was afraid to try. I didn’t understand my own emotions very well; what I had learned from my father the actor was less how to look inside than how to project an image. And the only image I knew how to project was the one I had been perfecting for years, the Enthusiastic Student. Also, I was skittish about being asked personal questions. Again, my father had been nosy about my personal life to the point of prurience; so my response to personal questions was to avoid them and redirect the conversation elsewhere. At the same time, I felt lonely and isolated in the persona I had created for myself; I wanted the warmth and close human contact that I assumed was part of an emotionally close relationship. So I wanted to be able to answer Marie’s questions, even as my ingrained training worked hard to steer away from them. It was an awkward time.

[For more about these troubled non-conversations, see also Hosea's Blog: Back-story on Marie, year 1½ (hoseasblog.blogspot.com).]

 

I don’t have a lot of set-piece stories from that year, not that I remember. Marie suffered from serious muscle knots in her back, and at one point I offered to give her a back rub. I desperately wanted to be able to touch her; at the same time I was terrified lest she think I was making a pass at her. (Never mind that she had made one at me the year before. I never said I was being logical.) So I told her, “Let me rub your back; I do this for my father all the time.” (No way that can be sexual!) But I still felt nervous and awkward, even though she was sitting up and fully dressed. Later on she remarked that she had not known it was possible to give a non-physical backrub, but I had managed.

 

In the fall of my Senior year (her Junior year) we were slowly able to talk a little better. And we started touching each other. Marie asked me to brush her hair. I pulled together enough courage to put an arm around her. We even started laughing over how difficult we had made things for ourselves, and for each other … though I really don’t think we had figured out why, for either of us. And one night in the dorm social room, we allowed ourselves to start kissing. We held each other and ran our hands clumsily across each other’s bodies. Marie let me run my hand up under her sweater, which meant – since she regularly went braless – caressing her breasts. And finally we decided to adjourn to my room.

 

The next step would logically have been to undress each other. But even though I had had my hand under her sweater, I wasn’t brave enough to pull her sweater off. So we undressed ourselves and then climbed into my little twin bed. Clumsily, inexpertly, guided by nothing but very theoretical knowledge, … we began to try to make love.

 

I was so nervous I couldn’t stop talking. (And I wasn’t talking about love or sex or anything like that – it was some other, totally irrelevnt chatter.) We stroked each other, and looked at each other’s bodies. I was hard – Youth is a wonderful thing, too bad it’s wasted on the young! – and I remember Marie holding my erection, feeling it, looking at it with fascination, and kissing the head. Then we held each other some more, caressed each other some more, and finally decided to try actually fucking. By this time I had gone soft, because it had been so long without my doing anything. (My penis was probably bored.) But with some stimulation I became hard again. I climbed on top of Marie, tried to figure out how to find her cunt, and worked my way inside.

 

I wasn’t there for long. By this time we were both tired, so I went soft again before I could come. But it was a really interesting feeling. It actually felt like my penis had disappeared; in retrospect this has to be because I hadn’t expected how warm it would be inside her, and all of a sudden I couldn’t feel the air on my skin. (Ironically my father once said the same thing about his first time inside a woman – a prostitute in France while he was in Europe as a GI – namely that he was surprised by how warm it was.) So before long I decompressed and slid out of her. We held each other some more and then Marie got dressed to go home, to a house off-campus that she rented with a few friends. I got dressed and walked to the nearest 7-11 for a snack. I remember thinking, as I walked through the night, Wow. So I actually lost my virginity tonight. Do I feel any different? That was very …. Wow.

 

We never got naked together again that year. For a week or two I remember feeling blissful that I actually had a girlfriend. I don’t know how Marie felt. But soon it went sour. I don’t even remember how, or what happened. Maybe we fell back into old habits? Something happened. The next thing I remember was a long, difficult emotional conversation – the kind I had gotten so used to with marie – in which I told her I wasn’t in love with her. (I was careful not to say I didn’t love her, because I realized that I didn’t actually know what love felt like; so maybe I did love her and didn’t realize it. But I was pretty sure about in love.) 

 

My first real girlfriend, and the first time I dumped somebody. (I guess the second time was when I dumped D.) I remember how free and happy I felt afterwards.

 

We weren’t hostile after that, but we weren’t as close. I no longer felt that I had to make myself available for the long, difficult conversations that Marie no longer asked for anyway. We still had a lot of friends in common, so we still found ourselves in each other’s company from time to time. We were friendly about it but no more. There were a couple of other girls [excuse me, this was college: we all understood that girls is a patriarchal term, so we always said women] I was fond of, so I spent a lot of time with them and felt kind of giddy about it. And then I graduated.

 

 

Back-story on Marie, year 1

A few months ago, I wrote to Marie, my college girlfriend. And heard nothing back. Then I e-mailed her. And heard nothing back. Perhaps there's a message here, but I'm going to try one more time.

Why? In a recent e-mail, Schmidt said he had talked to Marie on the phone and she mentioned getting a letter from me. Apparently she said nothing about the e-mail. So perhaps the e-mail went astray or I had the address wrong. And perhaps she just hasn't gotten around to writing a reply.

In any event, if she didn't get the e-mail then she didn't get my promise to let it drop if I never heard back from her. I still want to give her the opportunity to ask me to go away just by failing to reply, but it's no fair my assuming that's what she means if I don't know that she heard me offer it. So this weekend I am going to write another letter, sent to the same address as the first one. That, at least, should get through.

Meanwhile I think it is time to give you a little of the back-story on her. Why am I prepared for the possibility that she might not want to talk to me again? Then if we do re-start our friendship -- given that I'll write about it -- you'll know more about our background. And even if we don't, the background will illuminate where my head was when I met Wife ... which might help explain why I married her.

Early in my sophomore year in college, four of us who had met (one way or another) the year before started to have lunch together regularly. I was one of this party; I probably won't have to give the other three names in the long term, so for now I'll call them A and R and Mac. (Schmidt joined us later in the year.) We were all sophomores, and all guys. Now, A began a relationship with a flamboyant freshman woman named Scarlett: I don't know quite how they met or how it started, but it didn't take long. And one evening Scarlett had a bunch of friends over to her room. Her two roommates were there, and one or two other freshman women from the same dorm. We all sat around and talked. I forget if there was food or wine or music; all I remember is talking. And as the evening got later, I did more and more of the talking, telling long stories about ... God knows what. (It will come as no surprise to you that I was telling long stories.) Over time people drifted away. A was still there because he was going to spend the night with Scarlett and it was her room. R was still there, I think Mac was still there. And there was one other freshman woman, directly across from me. Earlier in the evening she had been sitting, but by now she was lying on one side and listening with rapt attention. And smiling. She wasn't pretty -- her face was angular, her nose and chin jutted out sharply -- but her smile softened the effect, and every storyteller adores the look of an avid listener. At the time I didn't catch her name.

The next morning at breakfast, she was there in the cafeteria getting her food about the same time I was. We greeted each other with polite chit-chat (probably asking "Did you ever get any sleep last night?") and I apologized for having to ask her name again. She said it was Marie.

Soon, our lunch group of four had expanded to six with the addition of Scarlett and Marie. There was always a lot to talk about. In a little while more, Marie and I realized that we were taking the same Physics 100 class. We were in different sections, but by the second semester our schedules had shifted to allow us to share a lab. And we continued to talk a lot. Marie would show up at my dorm room to discuss physics problem sets, and we would talk for hours ... sometimes even about physics. I remember her standing in my doorway in a powder-blue jacket, primed, focused, fully alert, and with a slight smile as I opened the door. In retrospect, if I had put out my arms she would have jumped into them.

Why didn't I? Several reasons. In the first place, all of us thought she had developed a relationship with Mac. Maybe she had, I really don't know. I never asked. But when we were all together she and Mac usually had their hands all over each other. On the other hand she spent a lot of time with me too, and she beamed when we were together. Whatever there was with Mac, it didn't occupy her whole attention.

More fundamentally, I was cripplingly shy and socially naïve. I was frightened of doing anything wrong, with the result that often my interactions with girls were embarrassingly awkward. If I had been less afraid of doing something wrong, I would have done fewer things wrong -- but of course that's what I see now, decades older, looking back. Back then I was desperately young for my age. And yet maybe it wasn't obvious to others just how shy I really was ... because I had a loud voice and I covered my terror of intimacy with voluble expertise about any number of arcane topics. To the rest of the world I was a born scholar, someone who never had to worry about living in the real world because he was never going to leave Academia ... someone who never had to worry about love or sex because all he needed was his books.

God how I hated those books, sometimes. I could see the walls that I had built for myself, even if other people didn't always see that they were just walls and not my real nature. I could see that somewhere out beyond those walls there was a Real World, and that it was richer than anything I had inside: a Real World where people fell in and out of love, fought, broke up, made up, had sex, held each other, yelled, stormed, cried, and laughed. I yearned with all my heart to be free of those walls, and yet at the same time I was terrified to stick even a little finger out of them and I was sure I didn't speak the language. So I was stuck there, walled in by my books, without even a cask of amontillado to cheer my isolation.

At the same time I also loved my studies. I couldn't have done so well at them if I hadn't. And this digression is partly beside the point.

Don't get the idea that the infatuation was all on her part. Quite apart from my yearning to breathe free, I was deeply fond of her. I never used the word "love" to myself, largely because I didn't really know what it meant. How could I tell for sure if this thing I was feeling was love? But I was always glad to see her; my heart always beat a little faster when she was there; she brightened my days, and if I went a few days without seeing her those days were just dreary. I came to her room as often as she came to mine ... oftener, really, because her room was larger than mine and there were more places to sit down. Besides, she had a whole steamer trunk full of different kinds of tea, and she would put on water to boil whenever I came over. She had a large collection of poetry that she was always trying to discuss with me (and which I felt hopelessly incompetent to discuss), books on feminist theory, books in French (we both spoke French), ... it was just a delightful place to be. Much better than studying.

Was I in love? In retrospect, yes of course I was in love. Today it is obvious to me. But back then I didn't know the words to describe how I felt. That's how desperately clueless I was.

At the end of the school year in May, just before final exams, my college throws a big party that lasts all weekend. There is a huge barbecue, beer and drugs flow freely, there is music and dancing everywhere. Marie and I were about to go to the barbecue, but stopped by her room for something first -- that room where I had spent so many hours drinking tea, playing with her cat (which she had against dorm regulations), and talking. We got whatever we were there to get, and then Marie told me she had something to say. She sat down on her bed, stared at the floor far away from where I was standing, then rubbed her eyes with her hand and said haltingly, "It's just that ... I find you very attractive, and ...."

I don't remember what she said after that. I fainted.

Yes, it was a hot day and I was wearing something heavy that didn't breathe well. Yes, I'd probably had a beer already, so my head was a little light. Still, I fainted ... for the third and (so far) last time in my life. I must have said something about feeling hot. I don't remember saying it, but the next thing I knew Marie had helped me down the stairs into the basement where it was cooler, she had stripped off my heavy un-breathing shirt, and she had a wet washcloth on my forehead. After a while I felt better and we went to the barbecue. And we never picked up that conversation.

I wanted to. But I couldn't. Every day after that I told myself I had to go talk to her. And every day I failed to do it. I berated myself for my cowardice, I felt dismal for my failure, and I felt even worse that she had exposed her heart to me and I was just letting it hang out there in the wind. I knew I must be causing her terrible suffering, and I felt grief for it. But I could not make myself go and talk to her about it. When we saw each other we talked about other things, as if it had never happened.

And then the school year was over and we went to our homes. We wrote each other many letters over the summer, all about bright and cheery things. And we never talked about it.

Friend from high school

It's late so I'll keep this short.

As part of Working Out Loud, I joined Twitter. When I joined Twitter, I had to follow somebody. One of the people I chose was a fellow who works in tech now (in a whole different city from me) but who was my best friend in high school. I have mentioned him briefly in passing twice before: here and here. I'll call him Dale. Since I haven't been in touch with Dale much lately, I snooped around on Google to find out what's going on with him. And I found out he's divorced.

Now, I would never have expected Dale to divorce. He's a born-again Christian, and I always assumed that he would consider divorce unthinkable. But then, once upon a time I considered it unthinkable. You folks remember that from the earliest posts in this blog. Opinions change.

So I wrote him an e-mail to ask about it. And I got a reply in which he said that the marriage had been dead for a long time but he finally last year took the steps to end it for good. (Dale got married the year after I did. When he said "It's been dead since ..." the year he mentioned was the year before Son 1 was born. That's a long time.)

It actually looks like there are a lot of similarities between his story and mine. We've been married about the same length of time. We began to end it around similar times. Each marriage generated two sons. And ... this is what really struck me ... Dale's wife suffers from fibromyalgia and depression, just like Wife does. When I joked to Dale that Wife and I had picked "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" as "our play" he answered that the similarities between my marriage and his were so significant they were creepy. He couldn't stay to discuss it any more because he was about to leave on a trip to take one of his sons to Japan for a week. But I hope to talk to him more later.

I wonder if he ever had an affair? Or if she did?
     

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.)
     

Depression or ...?

A couple weeks ago I had my annual physical checkup. While he was tapping my knees or telling me "Turn your head and cough" my doctor kept up a running stream of questions ... low-key but consistent. Is it still true that I don't smoke? How much do I drink? What about sexual activity?

At one point he asked me about work. Yeah, sure, I guess it's going OK. It's not like it's going to save the world, but it's going OK. A little later he asked the same question in another way, and I began to wonder where this was going. Most of his questions had an obvious point: when he asked if I've started a new romantic relationship, he explained candidly that he was really asking about unprotected sex. Oh, ... and also about "function": viz., can I still get it up? But what's this about work?

After a while he explained that too. He was trying to determine if I need an increase in the medication I take for my depression. The clues for him were that all I seemed pretty unenthusiastic about work, and I seemed pretty unenthusiastic about finding a new relationship. So what am I enthusiastic about? Anything? And if not, is that for psychiatric reasons?

I told him I didn't think I needed a change in my prescription, so he let it go. But later I started to think about it. It's true that lately I have been sluggish and unenthusiastic about a lot of things. (Work especially!) Is it depression? What else might it be?

The answer came to me quickly: maybe I am mourning. My father died two months ago. Our relationship had its ups and downs, but still ... he was my father. And after his memorial I found myself thinking a lot, Wow, look at all the people who turned out. I wonder if I even know that many people? And how many of them will notice I'm gone when it's my turn? I don't think this is an unusually morbid way to think. Or, to put it another way, I think it's actually pretty normal to think about death when somebody dies. Also to slow down and detach a little bit from the main flow of the world's work.

I don't remember whether I told my doctor that my dad had died. But I think that's part of my recent listlessness.

There's at least one other component. Last week I had an assignment at work that comes around about once a year. For three days I forgot to take lunch and was staying late ... not because of the deadline (though there was a deadline) but because I was having fun. And whatever else I was, I certainly wasn't listless at Jack and Jill's party. So I think the other component in my recent listlessness is boredom. I've been doing the same damned thing every week at work and every week at home and it's just getting harder and harder to give a shit. But give me a change of pace, and I come right back to life

Speaking of which, I've invited Jack and Jill over for dinner tonight. It'll be almost the first time I've cooked for someone else in that kitchen except for the boys -- only a couple of meals for Debbie and I think one for Suzie. I'm looking forward to it. And meanwhile, I should log off and go set the table ....

The Joy of Manipulation

I just got back home from seeing "Our Brand is Crisis". What I read online tells me the reviews haven't been too kind to the movie, but I loved it. Or more exactly, I loved watching Sandra Bullock's character. I'm not quite sure I noticed the rest of the movie.

As it started up, I knew what the story arc more or less had to look like. We were introduced to Jane Bodine in retirement ... she's not going to do political campaign consulting any more. People come to ask her, Can't you help on this one campaign, please? No, no, no. Of course she ends up doing it. Then when she first arrives in Bolivia (where the job is) she gets sick. And for several scenes in a row all we see is weakness: she can't take the altitude, she's throwing up at random moments, she nearly passes out, she sits like a dull bump on a log during campaign strategy sessions. I knew -- everybody watching the movie must have known -- that this is how the story would have to start out. That it would go like this almost until nobody could stand it any more, and then something would call her into action. That she would start directing the campaign -- doing everything totally differently from how it had been done hitherto -- and the candidate would start winning. It's a movie, after all. That's how the story has to go.

Why did I love watching it? Why does everybody love that particular story arc so well that I knew this movie had to go like that? I think it is because we love to watch strength in action. We love to watch strength winning. But it's no fun to watch Godzilla fighting Bambi: that kind of winning is so preordained that it's a little sickening ... or, worse, boring. No, what's fun is to watch the character that you know is stronger -- the one you know is going to win -- start out weak, beaten, bloodied and broken. And then pull it together, start firing on all cylinders, and pull ahead. That's how the story arc has to look for audiences to love it, and I admit I'm one of them. As I say, I loved to watch Sandra Bullock throughout this movie, as she started out weak and beaten and bloodied on so many different fronts ... and then began, bit by bit, to pull it together. Even as we see her fall apart in other dimensions of her life (how many years had she gone without smoking before starting this campaign?), it is exciting to see her start to drive the campaign. Even though the candidate she is supporting is a complete asshole, it is impossible not to root for her.

It reminded me of "Thank You For Smoking". Both movies showcase a main character who acts completely amorally, just for victory. The joy of winning is the pure joy of prevailing in combat, unsullied with any moral questions about Right prevailing over Wrong. The only thing you can applaud in the main character is strength -- victory -- because the cause she (or he) is fighting for is so wretched. And in both movies, the weapon in this war is persuasion. Golden words. Pure manipulation, soft as silk in one minute, and then hard as a mailed fist in the next. By God, it's wonderful!

When I first saw "Thank You For Smoking" I was still living with the rest of the family, and the boys were both at home. It disturbed me a little bit that I genuinely wanted to instill the right kinds of values in the boys, I dearly wanted to model those values so the boys would take them on without question ... and yet I couldn't conceal my glee at the main character's triumphs. I told them, "Now don't either of you go do this" but I still giggled and cackled as he derailed one legitimate argument after another by raising spurious objections that sounded good. It bothered me that I was reduced to saying (in effect), "This is wicked even though I so obviously enjoy it." And for some time thereafter I puzzled over how I could enjoy (so thoroughly) something I disapproved of (so unambiguously).

Of course the answer is twofold. In the first place, as I said above, it's fun to watch strength in action. In the second place, it's a weapon I love. Persuasion ... manipulation ... weaving a net of golden words ... there aren't many weapons in which I claim expertise but that's one of them. Maybe the only one. But I know I'm good at it. Not as good as Jane Bodine or Nick Naylor, but better than your average bear. So watching these movies is, for me, kind of like a boxer watching "Rocky".

Should it bother me that I enjoy being able to manipulate people with words? A skill is a skill. To be able to do good things with words implies being able to do bad things with them. As Plato has Socrates point out, a doctor who knows how to cure people from poisons will also be the most skillful poisoner just because he knows the subject so deeply. So to enjoy the ability to manipulate people with words is fundamentally no different from enjoying the ability to write fluidly. And in practice, the times it has been clearest to me that I have been engaged in pure manipulation have been when Wife was threatening to do something insane -- kill herself, for example -- and I've talked her down from it, talking and talking and talking until I could push, nudge, wheedle, and cajole her into a safer mental space. Those times, invariably, it was the right thing to do and I was always glad I was able to do it. So maybe the end justified the means.

Another amoral conclusion, to be sure. But when I remember how relieved I always was once I could get Wife to calm down from her hysteria and go to sleep, it's hard to feel guilty about it. Not that manipulation of others is a good thing, of course. Not that I want my boys to grow up to be flacks for the tobacco industry.

But I love watching that kind of skill in action, and it's a simple fact that this is partly because I love using the same skill myself in a smaller way. Oh well, nobody ever said I had to look good to myself.

They are both fun movies. Go watch them.