Santa Lucia poems

I mentioned Saint Lucy's Day to Marie, and explained that the Swedes say it is the darkest night of the year. (And in fact, before they shifted to the Gregorian calendar it would have aligned with the Winter Solstice.) I even told her something about how they celebrate it in Sweden, although I'm pretty sure I haven't told her the story of my evening with Lilliana. Anyway, it clearly made her think about the day, the weather, and any portents that might shine forth from the one or the other. And today, a week later (or almost) she sent me this:


The Eve of Santa Lucia

Full moon tonight.
Cold moon, bitter moon,
some have called it,
but I hope for grace:
a night of pure light
at the dark center of the year,
as the days spiral downwards,
closing in.

But the sky is clouded,
obscured;
there is no light save what we furnish.
So we light guttering candles,
So we string lines of color against the darkness,
So we strew cheap tinsel
to bring light where there is none.


I read this while I was still at work. And I liked it -- of course, I like any poems she sends me -- but I really couldn't think of anything to say back. Later tonight, as I sat in bed drinking and postponing actual sleep, I read it again. I thought about the implicit complaint that she looks for grace, for light, in the world but finds only the light we create. The world itself is dark and it is up to us to do something about it. Or not.

And as I thought about that lament I opened a text file on my phone, and the following answer came to me almost (not quite) as fast as I could type it. (Also I have since then changed one word at Marie's suggestion.)


The little lights hang in electric strands
On trees bedecked with tinsel and with trim.
Bright neon is the work of human hands
To shine when night is foggy, dark, and grim.

The year, just like the day, has its dark night,
When all is bleak and frozen and forlorn.
We hope to see a sign, a flash of light,
But there’s only what we make, till spring is born.

But it was ever thus. For long ago,
When Saint Lucia’s Night and solstice came,
We’d huddle in the dark, against the snow,
And build a bonfire fierce with ruddy flame.

And from that man-made fire that burned so bright,
We drew the hope to stand against the night.


Sleep well, you all.
  

Wife wants to come to my family’s Christmas ... now!

Dear God, how did I let this happen?

It was just about a year ago that Wife emailed me saying she wanted to come to my family's Christmas celebration. [https://hoseasblog.blogspot.com/2018/12/wife-wants-to-come-to-my-familys.html] At the time I didn't try to dissuade her too hard because I assumed the idea would be a complete non-starter. But nobody in the family likes to make a fuss. People put up with shit rather than to rock the boat. So Wife was over at my mother's house one evening several months ago — she was in town for a doctor's appointment and couldn't drive all the way home yet that night — and apparently broached the issue. My mother apparently did not say "No" or at any rate didn't say it loudly enough. And so Wife decided she had an invitation and it was a done deal.

Son 2 flew back to town from college on Sunday. Since Son 1 is living in my apartment, there's not a lot of room for Son 2 as well, and so the two boys agreed that Son 2 would spend some time with Wife. So I drove him there Monday night. And while I was trying to make pleasant chit-chat as I dropped him off, Wife said something about "when we go to your mother's house for Christmas." 

"We"???

I asked her what she meant. She said she had been invited by my mother, and she was sure nobody had a problem with it. I hadn't voiced an objection a year ago. I told her this was news to me. Why hadn't I heard anything about it before? I don't remember what else I said. There must have been something. I got out of there as quickly as I could. I went straight home and started drinking. 

The next day I called my mother from work to ask her, "Did you invite Wife to Christmas?" Her answer right away was, "No! Umm ... why do you ask?" I explained. And that's when I got the story about a few months ago. But my mother also said she'd be willing to go along with any plans that made everybody happy. I told her I couldn't have Wife there, so I also undertook to tell Wife not to come. I sent her a short email to that effect, and then notified both boys that I had done so (because I knew she would take it out on them and I wanted to prepare them). 

Later that day, Son 2 called me. We had a long talk. First he tried to sell me on letting her come. Then he asked me why not. I explained that I wasn't trying to control her, but that I couldn't be around her. It was emotional self-defense on my part, pure and simple. So then he asked, well what if I visit my mother for December 25, and maybe 26 or 27, and then go home and Wife visits after that? "It's fine that you don't want to be around her, because honestly she doesn't want to be around you either." (Music to my ears.) I said that would be OK and we agreed to work out the details later. 

This evening I talked with Son 1. Even though he lives in my apartment, what with one thing and another we hadn't seen each other for several days. He explained that he had been really angry with me for the last 24 hours, because of the emotional firestorm that Wife had apparently unleashed. He said my note to them that I had told Wife not to come felt like I had pulled the pin on a live grenade and tossed it into their laps. I asked, "Why are you mad at me and not at your mom who is the one dumping all the fiery emotions on you?" He answered, "Oh I can be mad at more than one person at the same time, don't worry! There's plenty of anger on that side too. I can be mad at both Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un at the same time if I have to." I smiled and told him I was glad he could multitask. But then as we talked some more it developed that he wanted to know the same thing Son 2 had, namely Why? When I explained that I just couldn't be around her for Christmas, he relaxed. OK, that he could understand as a motive. His bottom line was that he wished, when I had told him and his brother that I had told Wife not to come, that I had added the words "because I just can't spend the holiday around her." He said that would have given the two of them more to work with in managing her. I replied that it never occurred to me that would be helpful to them, and so it was really easy for me to apologize for not having done so. That seemed to resolve that, and we started talking about dinner. 

But I think nobody understands how terrified I am of Wife. That's probably because I have never admitted it to anyone, never discussed how abusive she was, never clarified that in retrospect I now look back and call myself an abused spouse (though I never used that terminology at the time). The behaviors were all there: covering for her, making excuses, cleaning up the damage, and being afraid to come home from work every single night because I didn't know what I was going to face. But I never confided in anyone at the time — anyone! And so I assume that if I try to say something now people will just assume that I am lying to garner sympathy. I assume no one will believe me ... partly because I never said anything then, partly because Wife has probably prepared the ground with stories about how awful I am (so that any stories from either of us about the other will be written off), and partly for the same reason I never thought to use the term at the time: because the archetype of an abused spouse is a battered housewife. Wife's abuse of me was mostly non-physical (emotional, financial, social, but not physical) and of course I'm a man while she's a woman. How could she be the abuser? How could I be weak enough to let it happen?

That last one is easy. I've always been weak. But the rest of it? I don't have high hopes. And so I'll probably still not say anything.

God, but she scares me though. 

Sent from my iPhone

Santa Lucia

Today is the Saint Lucy's Day. (Well actually I'm writing this a week later, but I'm back-dating the post to December 13 because this is the day I want to write about.) Why do I care?

Years ago I worked for a company that required me to travel once in a while: Dublin CA, Cary NC, Dallas TX, Stockholm ... those kinds of places. (I challenge you to figure out the common denominator.) The last time they sent me to Stockholm was in December of 2001. And it was a magical visit, in many ways.

Stockholm is very far north [citation needed] so during the winter it is frequently dark there. I remember sitting in one meeting after lunch, fighting hard against my severe jet lag to pay attention, and looking out the window. As I looked, I saw the street lights come on because it was getting dark. Oh that's interesting, I thought. I wonder what time it is? I looked at my watch and it was 2:25 pm. By the time I was through with work for the day and left the office -- at 4:00 pm -- it was pitch-black and you could see the Milky Way. 

But most of what I remember about that visit involved a colleague named Lilliana.

I had met Lilliana on an earlier visit, when I was staying for several days and she had been delegated to show me around the city. It was a delightful day and we got along beautifully. She was a divorced mother of teenage girls at that point, and I was a married father of very little boys. I was also very stuffy back then about being faithful to Wife (not that Wife ever returned the favor!), besides still being a little clueless about the subtle signals between men and women; so Lilliana and I never did anything compromising together. But she was warm and friendly and we were instantly on the same wavelength; and when I got back home after that first visit my heart beat faster every time I got an email from her. Those emails were all about work, but I still thrilled at them.

So during this visit, in 2001, I had to make sure to see her. 

After completing some of my other business, I traveled to the building where she worked. Security let me in, because I could identify myself as an employee in another location (never mind that we were on another continent!). So I made my way to her cubicle without her being notified that I was on my way. When I got there, a couple other colleagues we both knew were there as well, and she had her head buried under her desk trying to dig out some boxes of files. I leaned against the divider wall of the cubicle and wisecracked, "My God, the people they let wander through this building! You'd think Security would be more careful." Lilliana heard my voice and jumped up from what she was doing. She pivoted around and launched herself into my arms. I held her tight and spun 360 degrees in a circle, swinging her feet off the ground before I let her down again. Then we talked for a while and made plans to meet for dinner. She would come by my hotel and we would go out from there.

This all took place on Saint Lucy's Day, ... or Sankta Lucia's Day, as it is called in Sweden. And the customs for that day are very specific. Choirs of girls and young women roam the city in long white dresses, wearing crowns of candles bound on their heads with garlands of holly and singing songs of Saint Lucy. That afternoon a choir entered the office building where I was working with some other colleagues and roamed the halls singing. This was a sign for everyone to stop working and come into the common room to listen ... to listen and eat cookies and drink glögg. (It could never happen in America. No HR department in the country would allow it.)

 

When Lilliana finally joined me at my hotel, she had forgotten that we were going to eat and so had already eaten at home. Also she had had something to drink, which meant that she'd had to walk to my hotel instead of riding her bicycle. What do you mean? I asked. Well I can't drive a vehicle if I've been drinking, she explained. But a bicycle? I insisted. That's a vehicle, she clarified. Swedish law makes no distinction. OK, got that.

 

So we walked to a bar and got drinks. And talked, and just enjoyed each other's company. And as we sat there talking, suddenly the lights went out and voices began to sing. It was another choir, walking through the bar singing the Santa Lucia song, and everyone stopped to listen. When they were done they left and the lights came back up.

 

Lilliana and I talked about all kinds of things that night. I've forgotten most of them, although I remember that partly we discussed the grim business outlook for our company and what we might do if the worst came to pass. I remember that I desperately wanted to take her in my arms, kiss her deeply, and make love all night long, and in fact I did nothing even vaguely close to that. Virtue or cowardice, today I can't tell you which it was. And finally the night came to an end and we went our separate ways.

 

I never saw her again after that visit, but we connected on LinkedIn. So today (18 years after that magical night) I sent her a quick note through LinkedIn wishing her a happy Sankta Lucia's Day. In a matter of hours, no more than that, she sent me a reply: "Oh wow, YOU REMEMBERED!"

 

How could I ever forget?   

    

Uninvited parenting

NOTE: I wrote this as an email to Marie on November 28 -- Thanksgiving -- the date marked on the post. But in fact I am only adding it to the blog a couple of months later, January 19, 2020. I emailed this story to Marie because, unlike the year before, she was not able to get enough time off work to join me at my family's big Thanksgiving get-together. (She used up all her vacation time going to New Zealand with me this summer.)

Hey love!

We spent the day setting up for the meal, and making a potato-carrot dish, and some other things. [There follow three paragraphs about cooking, that I will skip.]

 

Also I have a problem with Stan, the son of Paul and Vicky. During the course of the evening he smashed one of Carole’s cute, decorative little plates for hors d’oeuvres; climbed up on top of the outdoor fireplace and pounded on the metal chimney; grabbed a glass of ice water off the table and shoved his hand inside to grab the ice cubes; and generally behaved himself like a Visigoth. I had hopes that he would at least sit at the kids’ table. But he told Paul that he wanted to sit at the other table and Paul should sit at the kid's table. And Paul accepted that. ( WTF?? Stan is ... maybe five? I forget, but around that.) So Stan sat at the adult table while Paul sat at the kids’ table. Vicky, thank God, took a seat at the adult table next to Stan. 

And then he was up and down at random during the meal, never asking to be excused but sliding off his chair when he felt bored and coming back when he felt like grabbing another bite. At one point he came back to the table with a huge basket on his head, one he had been wearing off and on all evening. (He said he was a knight with a helmet.) That was too much; there was too much risk that the basket was going to knock something else off the table. So I barked at him automatically, “No, Stan! You can’t wear the basket to the table. You can wear the basket or sit at the table, but not both.” Honestly I never thought about it. It was a spontaneous reflex. 

Brief silence. Vicky looks at Carole questioningly, as if to ask, “It’s your house — do you agree?” Carole said something ... I don’t even remember what. It didn’t amount to much. Then Vicky engaged in a long whispered discussion with Stan, presumably explaining something to him. And eventually he went away. 

What I would have hoped for was solidarity among adults: “Well if Hosea says so then do it, regardless of the merits.” (God knows I gave Wife that solidarity too often, when she demanded something crazy of the boys and I told them that if Mommy said so then they had to do it.) I didn’t get it. And of course without that backup, what it meant was that I was ordering around someone else’s kid with no authority to do so. 

I finished my food and sat quietly for a while. Stan got down. After a while Vicky got down. At that point I bussed my dishes. Then I walked over to Vicky and told her, “The last thing I ever want to do is to undermine your authority with Stan, so I was really out of line and I apologize for saying anything.” She said not to worry about it. She said she agreed that the basket didn’t belong on his head at the table, and not to worry because it was fine. I suppose it is just a sign of what a corrupt and horrible person I am that this didn’t reassure me much. It’s exactly what I would have expected from someone whose main concern was to avoid unpleasantness. (After all, if she had truly agreed why didn’t she say something?)  Unfortunately I also think that if you prioritize the avoidance of unpleasantness that more or less disqualifies you as a parent. 

I cannot help but reflect that the strongest criticism Wife ever had of my family was that (so she said) they too often tried to avoid unpleasantness. Another way to say this is that they are kind people, forever loyal to each other, generous in their assumptions about others, rational and liberal in all the best ways. And God knows that these are stellar virtues in dealing with adults. But they are vices in raising small children. 

I hate — truly this is not rhetoric — to think that I am agreeing with Wife ( of all people!) against my family ( of all people!). And in no other context besides this could that ever be possible or even imaginable. But. 

After I apologized to Vicky I stepped quietly  outside for a while. After quite a few minutes Vicky came out to ask if I was OK. I could not give a coherent explanation of what space my head was in, so I mumbled something incoherent. She repeated at greater length that it was all fine and I shouldn’t worry about it. I said I would come in again after I cleared my head. And after some minutes more I finally came back in. 

I never meant to write a complete account of the whole evening. So I haven’t and I won’t. I came back in, got some more wine, then after a while got some pie, and sat somewhere away from Stan. After a longer while, Paul and Vicky left, taking with them Stan and their two-year-old daughter. The rest of us sat around chatting aimlessly. The two other kids (sons of my other cousins) wrestled vigorously and interminably on the floor. Jenny [mother of one] cautioned them a couple of times; so did Fred [father of the other]. And for all the energy they were exerting, neither one ever behaved like anything less than a(n age-appropriate) gentleman. So it’s not that I’ve just become a Grumpy Old Man who has forgotten what it is like to be a kid. Those two were delightful. It’s just Stan who was a savage. 

Jenny and I traded stories about raising sons. She talked about someone she had met who had two daughters (both perfectly behaved) and said she had wondered, “Honestly if you’ve only had girls can you even call yourself a mother?” 😊 I told her that while naturally my data sample has been very small, I have always considered her son to have exquisite manners for his age. She rolled her eyes and said there were a few exceptions; but then she stopped being sarcastic and said she understood what I meant, and thanked me for it. 

At this point I’ve had yet more to drink, and it’s quite late. Everyone has gone home except those (like me) who are staying here in this house for the night. And I still wonder: Am I overreacting? Or is it better if I skip venues where Stan is going to be present? Unfortunately that means big family gatherings like this one, and I don’t see my extended family on any other occasions.

I don’t expect you to answer this question, so don’t bother trying. But I am disturbed.

I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving.

Never forget that I love you ever.

Your Hosea

Further thoughts about "Joker"

A couple weeks ago I posted this piece about having recently gone to see the movie "Joker". And what I wrote to you, I also wrote to Marie.

But then we discussed it some more and I so I expanded on what I'd said, as follows:
__________

You understood that when I talked about living with mental illness, I was talking about my 30 years with Wife, right? Interestingly, I’ve been looking up reviews (or just articles) that specifically address the question of mental illness in the movie, and I’ve found two types.

(1) There are some that condemn the movie bitterly (or just sadly) for linking mental illness with violence: these writers all quote the statistic that people who suffer from mental illness are more likely than the average person to suffer violence (not commit it), and so they blame the director (who also wrote a lot of the script) for adding to the popular stigma around the disease. All of these writers appear intent on burnishing their credentials as Concerned Liberals, and they all sound like they have learned about mental illness from books.

(2) Then there are articles by writers who say up front “I have suffered from mental illness for decades” or else “I work with the mentally ill every day of my life.” These articles breeze past the link that the movie allegedly makes between mental illness and violence, because — geez! — it’s a supervillain origin story. Of course he’s going to end up being violent. He’s the Bad Guy. What they focus on with laser precision is how hard his life is, and how little anyone else in the world cares about him — how little anyone else in the world wants to deal with him at all or even to be around him, and how this invisibility and isolation make his already-difficult life twenty times harder — and they all say the movie NAILS IT! Yes, exactly that. That’s what it’s like. 

There’s actually a point right near the end where he’s talking to another character about all the bad things that have happened to him, and about the crimes he has already started committing ... in response? ... as a result? ... post hoc ergo propter hoc? ... well, whatever. And the other guy gets kind of huffy and says, “I’m hearing a lot of self-pity from you. Do you really think your bad luck justifies the things you just now confessed to doing?” And maybe I didn’t hear the Joker’s answer correctly, because I’ve seen nobody else pick up on this part of that conversation. But I really believe that at that point Joker says, “No.” No, he doesn’t believe that his bad luck justifies his crimes. But he does see a connection that the bad luck nonetheless caused his crimes. His bad luck doesn’t make his crimes acceptable, but does make them happen. As I say, maybe I heard him wrong. (I’m getting old, you know.) And even if I heard him right he took a lot less time with the point than I have taken right now. Even if I heard him right, 75% of the explication I’ve just given is mine, unpacking what I think he said. But I think in that moment he showed that he may be mentally ill, but he’s not crazy. In other words, he understands the difference between right and wrong and knows that A does not justify B; but he’s also trying to make the point that — regardless what moral theory might say — you can’t expect anyone to suffer the things he has suffered without snapping and reacting the way he has reacted. 

One clarification. In all this, I have to add that when I talk about “his bad luck” that’s a little like describing an elephant as “his house pet”. Really. This man has the most phenomenal bad luck you have ever seen. But then so did Wife, which means I believed it instantly rather than treating it as a weak plot device. But I have to warn you that at a certain point your ability to sympathize over bad luck shuts down from overload — or mine did in real life — and you start assuming that, statistically, nobody can have random luck that bad so she must have done something to cause it somehow, by pissing people off or whatever, so that they then treated her badly. Likewise him, the Joker. See, I really do hear an echo between them, even though Wife never became a supervillain.

Thanks be to God. 

But could I have ever imagined her turning violent the way the Joker does in this movie? Based on the many bad things she suffered; and also on her (perhaps) diminished capacity (because of illness, physical or mental) to absorb suffering, roll with the punches, and bounce back? Sure, why not? That’s part of what I found totally plausible in the movie. And I chalk it up to good luck (for a change) that it didn’t happen in real life. 

__________

 

Here are some of the reviews I found that agreed the movie portrayed mental illness well.

 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/movie-review-joker-honest-treatment-of-madness/

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/10/joker-joaquin-phoenix-psychology

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/10/joker-mom-movie-penny-fleck

 

https://losangeleno.com/features/psychiatrist-analyzes-joker/

 

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2019/10/15/joker-tells-the-truth-about-mental-illness-and-its-long-overdue.html

 

Happy viewing.

    

What if Wife had become a supervillain?

I saw "Joker" this afternoon. (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7286456/) It's very intense. Afterwards I texted Son 1, who asked me if I liked it. I wrote him,

I don't know yet. There's a lot there and I'm a little stunned. Reviews criticized it for pushing a narrative about the mentally ill and social services that isn't a well thought through platform, but for Pete's sake it's not a frapping political platform in the first place. It's a super-villain origin story, and a very dark and heavy one. But then ... he's the Joker. It would have to be.

But part of what I thought was that it was a little bit like Wife's story. The protagonist, Arthur Fleck, suffers from mental illness; so does Wife. He has chronically bad luck; so does Wife. He reacts to things with emotions that are out of phase with the emotions of the people around him; so does Wife. He has a very difficult and slightly creepy relationship with his mother, to whom he is nonetheless deeply attached; so did Wife. His mother has emotional problems of her own, and is either delusional or very badly used by others; so was Wife's mother. In fact, I almost thought I could summarize the movie for Son 1 by saying, "Take your mom's story; make it even worse; give her a slightly different set of diseases; and have her end up as a supervillain." (I chickened out in the end, and didn't say it.)

At one point, though, we look over his shoulder as he is writing in his journal, and we see a sentence that I'm sure she could agree to:

"The worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don't."

Yup. I've watched that be Wife's experience, and I've also been the one expecting her to behave as if she didn't. It's tough.

I guess it's good she never became a supervillain, huh?

Sent from my iPhone

Not actually wrong

I've visited Debbie twice this year, both times on the occasion of a trip to Sticksville for work: once was at the beginning of June, and the other was in mid-October -- just recently. And both times I mused on choices she made during the visit that triggered me to wonder if she still had some kind of romantic feelings underneath the clear outward show of Good Behavior. Back in May she had us read Walt Whitman poems back and forth to each other; in October, she selected "Our Souls at Night" as a movie to watch.

Of course it would be no surprise if she did: how do you get rid of memories like that without replacing them by some other emotion? My feelings for D now are overlaid with frustration and anxiety; my feelings for Wife, with anger and fear and disdain and disgust. But I don't feel any of those things for Debbie, and so (as I have shared freely with you) I still feel a wistfulness towards her. Why shouldn't she feel something similar?

And then about a week ago I got an email that was a little clearer. I had written her about the rest of my trip: after visiting with her for a weekend I had gone on to work in Sticksville for a week, then flew the long way home so I could spend a few vacation days with Schmidt. The visit was very low-key for a lot of reasons, but Marie visited me there (we were all three friends back in college) and we had fun sitting round the table at dinner drinking too much wine and telling funny stories. Anyway, several days later I wrote a short email to Debbie that included the following:

I always enjoy visiting you, and this time was no exception. Always you give me a chance to shift into a different gear, I’m glad to spend time with your daughter and her husband, and our time together (yours and mine) is simply good. And thank you for the movie! I’d never heard of it before we watched it, but the reviews I looked up later said all the same things we did: that it was a remarkable piece of work done in a very understated way.

Her reply, a few days later, ended as follows:

I agree that our time together while you were here was simply good.  I will be honest and say that during your last two visits, I have found my heart opening to you.  I don't mean to complicate things.  Given all the context, including my personal commitment to respecting other people's relationships, it is not something to be acted upon but simply acknowledged and enjoyed for what it is.  I just think it might diminish the little bit of awkwardness that is present in our interactions to name it.

Bingo. I'm glad to know that my sense about this hasn't been actually wrong, all this time.

It took me a couple of days to think what to say back. I didn't want to wait too long -- when someone declares her love for you, a faster reply is always better.  But I also didn't want to say the wrong thing, and I thought that was altogether too likely. In the end maybe I said too much, though I hope not. What I wrote her went like this:

Your last paragraph made me feel very happy and ... what’s the right word? As if I were snugly wrapped in a soft, warm blanket. I know what you mean. There will always be a part of my heart that is open to you, too. At the same time, you are completely right that it doesn’t have to mean anything beyond or outside of itself. We can enjoy it for what it is, exactly as we have been doing. And we don’t have to carry it anywhere that makes a mess of the “context”. I know I felt the same thing on my side, but was concerned that saying something might be unwelcome; so thank you for naming it. 

With love and metta always,

Hosea

        

It never happened

A few days ago, as soon as I drafted by poem on the FMEA method, I sent it to Marie and asked for her feedback to make it better. A few days later she sent me a reply that she hadn't done anything with my poem yet, but that a book she was reading had inspired her to write one of her own.

====================

“The shadow past is shaped by everything that never happened.” Robert Macfarlane, Underland.
 
it never happened
that i wed you as a girl
that we ran lightly
among trees hung with yellow fruit
 
it never happened
that i threw myself away
into the dark
 
it never happened
that we never
met again
 
we are here, and all that
never happened

Training in the FMEA method

I'm sitting here in a training class in Sticksville on the FMEA methodology, and the instructor just finished introducing a typology of failures. Briefly, any kind of tool, product, or service is defined by having a certain kind of function. And once you know what the function is, then a "failure" is a deviation from the desired function. And there are five possible kinds of deviation:

• No function at all ("total failure")
• Quantitative deviation (it does the right thing but in the wrong amount, too little or too much)
• Time deviation (it does the right thing but too early, or too late, or it misfires somehow)
• There is an unintended or undesirable function
• There are impermissible side effects (noise, heat, radiation)

So far, so good. But it got me thinking: do these same types apply to human failures as well? I think they do ... and here is my first pass at thinking through how that could work.

“How many kinds of failure are there, now?”

The trainer asked us, reading from the screen.
And answered, “Five — it all depends on how
“The non-fulfillment of the function’s seen.”

“There’s total failure: nothing’s done at all.
“Then quantitative: little or too much;
“Early or late; wrong functions great or small;
“Or side-effects, like noise and heat and such.”

I harbor all of these deep in my heart:
The sluggard who just dreams, I know him well;
The one who does it backwards, end to start,
Who’s thoughtless, and whose voice clangs like a bell.

For every type of failure we define
Is surely one that I can claim as mine.

    

Visiting Debbie, 4 ... and another movie

After my last visit to see Debbie (see here and here) she commented several times how much she had enjoyed my visit, and that I was welcome to come back. So I took that as a hint. This week I am back in Sticksville for another training class, so I flew in on Saturday and spent the weekend with Debbie instead.

As usual, it was a quiet weekend … last time I called it a "Sabbath" and that's not wrong. We visited with her daughter and son-in-law and their son (now about one-and-a-half years old). We meditated together. We went to church on Sunday. It's too cold to work in the garden and anyway she says the season is over: they've already gotten the first frost. We cooked. And (as always) we didn't fuck. We didn't even kiss, because Debbie had a cold and didn't want to give it to me.

And then we watched a movie on Netflix, one she called "one of the sweetest movies she has seen lately": "Our Souls at Night" with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. (See this article here for one review.) She's right. It is a sweet movie -- about a man and a woman around the age of 80, who are neighbors and who finally discover each other at a deeper level after living across the street for 40 years. And I'm left wondering … is she trying to say something?

You remember that during my last visit we read aloud Walt Whitman poems to each other. This time we watch Robert Redford and Jane Fonda slowly falling for each other on-screen. But she made no move to cuddle with me on the sofa as we watched, and she was careful to put me in the same guest bedroom where I have always slept. So … is there a deeper meaning to these things? Or maybe not? It's hard for me to say.

And perhaps I don't need to know. But it is always pleasant to visit with her, and she always seems to feel the same way. It's all good.
  

Movies about broken people

You know, it's interesting .... Normally I go out of my way to communicate with Wife as little as possible; but after the last two movies I've seen I have shot her a quick note each time suggesting she go see them: I mean "Where Did You Go, Bernadette?" and now "Judy". So I started mulling why that might be?

 

The first thing is that in both movies there is something about the main character that reminds me of Wife.

• With Bernadette it is her problematic social skills (and total lack of interest in improving them), and her general contempt for the people around her. Nonetheless Bernadette gets something kind of like a happy ending, so in a way I suppose my subtext to Wife was, "Get up and go DO something and you'll be happier than you are just sitting around!"
• With Judy Garland it is her narcissism, her magical thinking, her roller-coaster emotions, and her total inability to see herself from the outside. (Though the boys tell me that Wife has gotten better about the roller-coaster emotions now that she has been ordered to give up drinking for good.) Of course in real life Judy Garland didn't get a happy ending, but I also know that Wife is a big fan of hers.

So in a sense both movies are about broken people, and I wonder if that is what I have a taste for ... or at any rate an interest in. Of course it is also true that in both cases the main characters are not simply broken: Bernadette and Judy each has some kind of greatness in her past and somehow in her reach if only she can figure out how to stretch out her hand towards it. And for me that makes the stories more interesting and more poignant. Hell, there was a long time when I tried to find some way to tell myself that kind of story about Wife, as a way to reconcile myself to the way that she seemed to be caving in before my very eyes. Ultimately of course I realized that was the wrong story template in a number of ways, and also that the features which I was seeing ever more clearly had in truth been there all along. But clearly that hasn't diminished my interest in brokenness ....

    

Unpopular movie opinions

Back in August I ran across this xkcd cartoon and sent it to a few of my friends: https://xkcd.com/2184/.

What I added by way of commentary was this:

He’s right … it’s harder than it looks.

Especially because even if you can think of such a movie, you might not want to admit that you like it. (smile) 

And hey – even “Pacific Rim” got a 72% freshness score from the critics (!!) and a 77% score from the audience. “Transformers” (2007) got 58% from the critics and 85% from the audience. So it’s not like there are a lot of popular movies that routinely get BELOW 50%.

 

So does that mean it's impossible? No. Just that it's really hard to admit to your friends that you like such a movie. I can name one right away, because this is an anonymous blog: a movie that scored 29% from the critics, and 56% from the audience. For what it's worth, though, one of the few critics who liked it -- maybe the only one, now that I think about it -- was Roger Ebert. So there's that.

 

The movie is "Threesome" (1994) with Lara Flynn Boyle, Josh Charles, and Stephen Baldwin, and I really like it. Why?

 

OK, the setup is preposterous: it's a college dorm where a girl named Alex is assigned to a dorm room with two guys because some administrator assumed that "Alex" must be male. OK, fine, it could have been anything else. That's just what threw the three of them together.

 

But then they become friends, ... with a complicated set of attractions among each other. (One of the guys is attracted to Alex, who is attracted to the other guy, who is gay and attracted to the first guy. As I said, complicated.) And I think what I like about it is that I find them believable. They find themselves in a confusing situation, and they talk a lot more than they fuck -- but that's college, isn't it? A time when everyone wants to be fucking like bunnies, but all these complicated thoughts keep getting in the way and so they have to have long, earnest conversations about it all. Later in life this becomes simpler, but in college we are all still feeling our way. Err ... so to speak.

 

And the movie carries the story far enough along that we also see them drift apart, leaving a nostalgia not only for what was, but for what might have been and wasn't. That, too, feels really true for me.

 

Yes, at one point they do finally all end up in bed together. And whenever I watch the movie I always think, "Finally!" But it's really not the focus of the story, and it all happens towards the very end. There's other sex that happens in-between scenes, but we don't see that at all. As in Greek tragedy, it's all reported by a herald who runs in from offstage. (Well, not literally but you know what I mean.) And that's because, while they are all thinking about sex all the time, actual real-life sex is not the center of the friendship. Most of the story lives in that in-between state, where each of the three is thinking, "I think I know what I want, but do you know what you want? And is it the same thing?" College students.

 

As I say, I really like the movie. Roger Ebert liked it too, but apparently almost nobody else does. An unpopular opinion.

 

Not that I'll ever admit it in real life.

      

 

What is compassion supposed to look like?

At Sangha tonight, we were discussing the Four Brahmaviharas (love, compassion, joy, and equanimity) and in particular the conversation turned to compassion. We read an article ("The Four Qualities of Love") by Thich Nhat Hanh [see also here], which said in part:

The second aspect of true love is karuna, the intention and capacity to relieve and transform suffering and lighten sorrows. Karuna is usually translated as “compassion,” but that is not exactly correct. “Compassion” is composed of com (“together with”) and passion (“to suffer”). But we do not need to suffer to remove suffering from another person. Doctors, for instance, can relieve their patients’ suffering without experiencing the same disease in themselves. If we suffer too much, we may be crushed and unable to help. Still, until we find a better word, let us use “compassion” to translate karuna. 

And I started to think about my years with Wife. How did I react when she lost it? (See, for example, any of the posts tagged "Wife loses it" ... just for a start.) Or never mind a complete meltdown -- how did I react when she was just plain angry or morose or anxious or upset -- when she was suffering and needed me to be there?

Well mostly I was there. That is, ... early in our marriage I used to offer suggestions on how she could fix things, but I rapidly learned that was a bad idea. She could tell me right away why every single one of my suggestions was stupid and doomed to fail. So mostly I just sat and listened to her and tried to swallow the pain as fast as she could dish it out ... hoping that somehow if I swallowed enough of it there would be less pain available to torment her and she might start to hurt less.

So far as I could tell, this approach didn't really work; and unfortunately it wasn't easy for me to think of alternatives. But what caught my attention tonight was the line, "we do not need to suffer to remove suffering from another person." That would have been good to know, because certainly my approach to easing Wife's suffering -- sitting and listening and swallowing all the pain that she vomited forth -- caused me an enormous amount of suffering in turn. I did it because I told myself that I could be strong for both of us and therefore could be strong enough to take it. (Compare that with the posts here and here.) But in fact it hurt like hell. And now all these years later I read that this means I was doing it wrong. So I talked about this with the others in the Sangha, and explained that I didn't understand what (on this measure) I should have been doing instead? How could I have been compassionate without drinking in all of Wife's pain? What is compassion supposed to look like?

I can't say that the ensuing discussion was terribly helpful. Of course in a sense the whole discussion is academic now, because I'm not around Wife any longer. But I'd still like to know. Maybe some day I'll need to use these skills with somebody else, God forbid. And if nothing else I'd enjoy knowing the answer just because answers are more gratifying than questions.

In any event, one woman started by saying that in any difficult situation you have to have compassion for yourself first. Know what you need and what your own boundaries are because you can't help anybody else if you yourself are beaten into the ground. (But wait, ... doesn't this same article say a little farther on that when you truly understand the other person then the boundaries between you melt away?) And sure, this sounds like the kind of advice I could have gotten anywhere. But what is she telling me to have done, in practical terms? When Wife was weeping and crying out about how everything in her life was going to be bleak and miserable from this day forward, ... what would this woman have had me say that wouldn't sound smug or clueless or uncaring, or that wouldn't make me sound like a ninny?

Then another woman told a very difficult story about a time when her son was on suicide watch, and when she and her husband were frantic to do anything they could to help him. The lama she was seeing at the time (and still sees, in addition to attending our Sangha too) told her to take no action and not to interfere, but to spend her whole day in prayer and meditation. And in the end her son didn't kill himself, so it worked! Which is great. I'm glad her son didn't kill himself, of course. But it is hard for me to look back, in retrospect, and think of that as helpful advice.

It would be fair to reply that I might not recognize good advice if I saw it. After all, to all appearances my approach didn't work. What makes me think I have any idea what the right approach ought to look like? And I guess I don't. That's one reason I'm writing this out now. As things turned out, I finally ended up pulling back because I recognized that I wasn't doing any good. (This came after lots of variations on trying to be helpful or compassionate or simply present, all of which failed more or less spectacularly.) I would tell her that I was sorry, that I wished things were better for her, but that I just wasn't smart enough to know what to do ... or, depending on the concrete situation, that it was literally out of my hands and there was nothing I could do. This didn't solve anything, but it actually didn't make things worse (I had feared it would) and it got me out of the line of fire. And in the end, as you all know, I pulled so far back that I asked her for a divorce, and then moved out, and then we legally separated.

Is that what compassion is supposed to look like? Somehow I can't think so. Surely the Buddha himself, or even Thich Nhat Hanh, would have figured out a more intelligent approach.

Let me know if you think of something.
   

11,608 days

Off and on over the last year I've alluded to having had troubles with my old car (see for example here and here), culminating in buying a new car almost two months ago (see here). The last step in the process, naturally, was then to get rid of the old one. Well I dithered for a while, and inquired in a desultory way about the prospects for donating it to charity. Then I went online and found some outfit that will buy old junker cars from you. I'm sure the rates amount to theft, but they do all the work and come pick them up ... and you can set it up by clicking a few buttons on a website. Convenience wins out. So I made the arrangements yesterday, and the guy came today with a tow truck to drag it away -- something like 11 months after I started having these troubles.

I was shot last night. Obviously after everything else this last step was a triviality, but it felt huge. But I didn't realize how huge it felt until I decided to go out and get some groceries I didn't need; I drove to the store, walked across the parking lot ... and realized I had left my wallet at home. With all my money and my driver's license. In other words, I wasn't thinking at all. So I drove home (much more carefully!) and gave up on the groceries.

I've had this kind of total brain-fade before, and it often comes when I have just finished some huge and emotionally-draining project. So realizing that it had just happened again made me step back and put this "last step" in a little more perspective. This car was the last big artifact from my married life ... supposing you don't count the boys, of course. It was the first new car that Wife and I bought together -- in fact, it was the first really big purchase of any kind that we made together. At the time we had been married just a little over three years. And it stuck with us, or we stuck with it, ever after. It was a 1988 Honda Civic DX four-door sedan. It ran like a dream (well, until it didn't) and had the tightest turning circles of any car it has ever been my pleasure to drive. Manual transmission, manual steering, manual windows (Wife told the car dealer, "For $2000 [the difference in price] I can roll down my own windows"), manual locks. And all it needed was regular maintenance -- not that it ever got that from me at all reliably, but still. Of course by the time it reached 31 years old the fabric that covered the seats had split in a bunch of places; there was a patch of rust slowly growing on the back near the gas cap; the air conditioning had been out of order for over ten years; and the 268,000 miles it had traveled were starting to leave signs in basic wear and tear. But it was still a wonderful car.

Then it started having troubles that I couldn't get fixed because the mechanic couldn't get parts any more. It started overheating uncontrollably. And so I borrowed other cars (from Wife, from Mother) to get around, in the process letting this one sit long enough that the battery died. And after a while I gave up any hope of ever getting it repaired. I bought a new one, and today sold the old one to a junkyard for $80.

But I did the math to find out how long we'd owned it. And it came to 11,608 days -- almost 32 years. In fact, when I compare that number to the 12,004 days that the marriage itself lasted, the comparison is interesting. 12004 - 11608 = 396 = 365 + 31. The marriage itself lasted only a year and a month -- thirteen months -- longer than the ownership of this car, although of course they were offset by a bit. [And even that calculation counts as part of the marriage those years between when I moved out of the house and when we finalized the agreement.]

But I think that's why it felt like such a big deal. It's really been a very long time.

My next door neighbor texted me this afternoon, "Wow. The Little Honda That Could has left its forever parking space. Fare thee well old friend." It was sweet and I thanked her.

It was the right thing to do. It had to happen. And 31 years is a fantastic run for a car that's in daily use. But I'm still a little sad.
    

Scarlett

A while ago I mentioned that I had tried to get in touch with an old school friend named Scarlett. Sure. Let me tell you how that worked out.

First, a few words about what Scarlett was like back in college. (This means 40 years ago, or so.) She looked nothing like Vivian Leigh. But her attitude was strictly "Take no prisoners." She might have been "only" a freshman when I was already a sophomore; but she had read more literature than I had ever heard of, had heard more music than I knew had ever been written, and had cast-iron opinions about all of it. Also she was a show-off, not only intellectually but in dress and style. She replaced the interior door in her dorm room with a beaded curtain, and sat around in a silk smoking jacket. In all these respects she was maybe a little like Bunthorne.

I was afraid of her scorn, but I also found her brass bitchiness really attractive. When I first met Wife, some years later, the very first thing I thought about her was that she reminded me strongly of Scarlett. (They even had the same hair color and general build, though Scarlett was a little taller.) Anyway, the flamboyance together with the arrogance are why I call her "Scarlett". She also dearly loved the color red.

[Update added July 19, 2020: I've thought about this some more since then, and realized that I was partway in love with Scarlett for exactly these reasons. Also this is part of why I fell in love with Wife so quickly, because she reminded me of Scarlett. That must be part of the reason I wanted to get back in touch with her, too.]

We all graduate. We lose touch with each other. I marry Wife and lose touch with everybody I used to know, because my new life is so bloody crazy. So ... fast-forward a few decades.

From time to time I would check the Internet to see if I could find any trace of people I used to know. It was partly a fantasy, partly a distraction. But twelve years ago I found an article she had posted online, and what I thought was her email address. I sent an email to the address commenting on the article, and got an error message back. Oh well. No other signs.

And every few years I'd look again. There were indications she was still in the same city where I'd found her the first time, still doing the same kind of thing ... but no clue at all towards a physical or electronic address.

And then finally this year it looked like my travel schedule would take me into the same ... large urban area in whose orbit she was living. (If she was still there.) So I did a few more searches, and -- lo and behold! -- she is now working somewhere new, somewhere that posts the email addresses of selected personnel on the web. If it's really the same Scarlett, I can reach her now!

Actually, when I first saw that my travel schedule seemed to be veering in that direction, I also checked our college's alumni directory and got a street address. No guarantee that it was current, but it's something.

So several weeks ago I sent her a card.

When a while went by and I had heard nothing, I sent an email.

When another while went by and I had still heard nothing, I sent a second email ... this time asking her opinion of an article I had seen about some Romantic composer I had never heard of before, a guy named Korngold. I figured it would be right up her alley.

Finally I got a reply, as follows:

Hello Hosea,
I've been out of town for a few weeks, and was very surprised to find not only your card, but also two emails in my work in-box when I returned.  I'd be interested to know how you got my work email address, since it's never been posted in our alumni directory.  Also, I must ask you not to use it again -- my work email is strictly for work.
Yes, I remember you -- we corresponded briefly after college, too.  I recall that in the last letter you sent, you said your life had become very, very busy and that you would not have time to reply to me any longer...but that you would be happy to receive any letters I might send.  You may recall I didn't reply.
...So I have to ask:  why the sudden urgency to get in touch with me now?  It surely can't be because of Korngold!

Best wishes,
Scarlett

Aha.

In other words, "Dear Hosea, You were a flaming asshole thirty-five years ago and therefore I wrote you off forever. Why the fuck are you contacting me now?" I suppose it is a fair question.

I sent her a reply in which I apologized for having been a jerk, and asked her forgiveness. I also told her that if she did not reply, I wouldn't pursue it. She has not replied.

Why did I do it? I hoped maybe I could re-establish some channel of communication, as I have done with Marie and Schmidt. Doubtless part of it is that I was so fascinated by her back when we were students, although my attraction to high-maintenance women has dimmed somewhat after Wife and D. And I was curious to learn if the resemblance to Wife carried through in some of their life experiences. Did Scarlett have the same struggles with mental health? (In retrospect I wouldn't be surprised if she had been a touch bipolar back then.) Did Scarlett have gastric bypass surgery for her weight? Did she ever establish any kind of permanent romantic bond with anyone? (She still goes by her maiden name, but that proves nothing.)

And is she happy with where her life has taken her? I was hoping to learn that.

I guess I won't. Damn shame.

[Update added July 19, 2020: Again, in retrospect I can make this easier. I got in touch with her again partly because I wanted to know if she had turned out the way Wife had, and partly because I had been in love with her way back when. So I could still think about her and sigh just a bit. Her reply, when I finally did reach her, confirmed that she was just as much a narcissist as Wife or D, and that I was better off not falling into her orbit again. Also, from what I could tell by stalking researching her on the Internet, it looked like she had spent the last thirty years in graduate school. Apparently she had given seminars and contributed to a book, but I saw no indication that she ever actually got a Ph.D. out of the whole thing. So in asking whether she was happy, I would have been asking her to reckon with some kind of academic failure. (That might be another reason she wanted to avoid the contact ... fear of having to explain where her life has gone since the Good Old Days when she was a Watson Scholar.) Anyway, that would have been malicious of me. Yes, I rationalized it to myself by suggesting that I could tell her why I think it is fine to be outside the Academy, but that's a little bit like saying "Your life would have been so much happier if you hadn't jumped off that cliff." Again, malicious. It's really just as well she blocked further communication. And I guess I really was being something of an ass. I wish I could see these things before I do them, rather than always only after.]

Wanting to be distracted

I'm starting to think my default setting is wanting-to-be-distracted.

Thich Nhat Hanh's Fifth Mindfulness Training reads as follows:

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I am committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I will practice looking deeply into how I consume the Four Kinds of Nutriments, namely edible foods, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness. I am determined not to gamble, or to use alcohol, drugs, or any other products which contain toxins, such as certain websites, electronic games, TV programs, films, magazines, books, and conversations. I will practice coming back to the present moment to be in touch with the refreshing, healing and nourishing elements in me and around me, not letting regrets and sorrow drag me back into the past nor letting anxieties, fear, or craving pull me out of the present moment. I am determined not to try to cover up loneliness, anxiety, or other suffering by losing myself in consumption. I will contemplate interbeing and consume in a way that preserves peace, joy, and well-being in my body and consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family, my society and the Earth.

Of all the Mindfulness Trainings, this must be the one I have the hardest time with. As soon as I wake up in the morning I reach for my phone, to check my email and read the news. At work, if I'm not absorbed in something I'll check the Internet for stupid stuff or hit up the vending machines for snacks. By the time I come home I really want to eat (even if I'm not hungry) and I really want a drink (even if I'd rather not put on the excess weight or feel like I can't put it down). Passing up any of these distractions is really tough.

In the past I've said that I'm trying to avoid "anxiety" but it's not really that. It's just the state of wanting-to-be-distracted. And I've written about it before. (Try, for example, here, here, here, here, here, and here. There are probably others too.)

What causes it? Who knows? Of course I can always find superficial things to drape themselves in the feeling, so that I can say, "Look, I feel anxious about X." But I think actually it is just a feeling. And as long as I continue to allow myself distractions, I suppose I'll continue to feel it. I wonder what would happen if I went back to a regular daily meditation practice? I wonder if it would slowly ebb in intensity?

Maybe I'll try that later.
   

Out of your past

How do you react to someone who appears unexpectedly out of your past?

I don't know for sure how often this has happened to me -- not often, if ever. But in general my idea is … well, is it someone I want to see? Do they want something from me? How did this happen? These are all questions or concerns about the person generally, and about what's going on here and now. It's also the kind of reaction I got from, for example, Inga when I first contacted her out of the blue after years.

Turns out there's another way to respond, though, which is to pick up the conversation based on the very last encounter you had with that person, even if it was decades ago. I've seen this at least twice.

When Wife was first diagnosed with lupus she was afraid she didn't have long to live. And one of the things she decided she wanted to do before dying was to straighten out things with an old boyfriend, someone she had been with in a frustrating relationship before she met me. So she looked him up on Google, and then wrote him to tell him about her diagnosis. He wrote back, very concerned about an almost-meeting that she had almost-engineered twenty years before, the last time the two of them were in the same city. And he wanted to make very clear to her that he was absolutely devoted to his wife and she should get any ideas about cheating with him out of her head.

She told me she wanted to write back to say, I'm not trying to fuck you -- I'm trying to tell you I'm dying! But in the end she just dropped it.

Over the last month or two I have looked here and there on Google and finally succeeded in tracking down a current address for a woman named Scarlett, that I used to know in college. So I mailed her. It took a while, but I finally got a reply courteously asking me not to use her work email address any more (but giving me her personal address), and asking why after all this time I was contacting her, … and reminding me of something really shitty I had said in my last letter to her 35 years ago, to which she had decided not to respond.

Wow. I never remembered saying such a thing. But she seemed to remember it like it was yesterday. Of course, she was the one who was shat upon, not me; so I suppose it makes sense that her memory would be a little bit sharper. But still … wow.

And I wonder -- what makes it possible to remember such a specific hurt that long? Is it the nature of the wound, or the nature of the person wounded? In other words, does it say something about Scarlett that she has "held this grudge close to her heart and nurtured it well"? (That was an expression Wife used to describe herself, back when I first met her. I laughed and thought it was a joke. It wasn't.) Or is it just that anyone who had gotten a letter as douchey as the one she quotes from me would remember the sting in exactly the same way? (I have no recollection of writing this letter, but I totally believe it. I was really self-centered back then.)

I don't know the answer. I wish I did.
 

“the little woman”

Well that was interesting....

I'm at my hotel in Sticksville and I was just downstairs having breakfast. As I bussed my dishes I said Hi to a woman who works here whom I have always seen every time I stay here. I don't know what her job is — maybe some kind of daytime manager? — but she's clearly a longtime employee and she is always tidying the breakfast area on weekday mornings.

Her name tag says her name is Dawn, but it didn't remember that from earlier visits. But I absolutely remember her face and we generally wave and chitchat.

Anyway Dawn said Hi back, and then remarked, "It's been a while now since I've seen the little woman here with you." And I had to stop and think ... Huh? Who? What "little woman"?

Finally I figured out that the only woman with whom I ever had breakfast there was Hil, back when we were working together. So I explained that Hil had transferred to another department and didn't do projects in America any more, I told a funny story or two, and went on my way.

But I have to wonder ... is that how we looked from the outside? I'm used to the phrase "the little woman" as a synonym for "wife". And I can imagine it used when someone isn't quite sure of the nature of the relationship. (This is a hotel, after all! They must get a disproportionate number of couples without benefit of matrimony.) The thing is, I can absolutely guarantee we never touched and there were never any verbal endearments. We talked about work, or about her girls, or about her shopping. (Ugh. Her shopping!) Maybe once in a long while about my boys. But that's it. Period.

And still Dawn thought it made sense to inquire in a roundabout way about "the little woman". It's strange.

Maybe Dawn has an overheated imagination. Or maybe my manner towards Hil was more courtly than I realized. Maybe we got along casually enough that Dawn just assumed we had to be closer than just colleagues.

Maybe a lot of things. I have no idea.



Sent from my iPhone

Exhausted, 2

I think I figured it out, thanks to Google. I'm not exactly happy with the answer. 

See, the days earlier this week when I was so wiped out were days where, the night before, I'd had no alcohol to drink. Absolutely none. After the second such day, Son 1 (who lives with me) wondered aloud whether my hitherto regular nightcaps were causing my exhaustion by interfering with my sleep, because he had recently read (surprise!) that alcohol can interfere with sleep. 

I said no, I didn't think there was a correlation, because I knew that the days when it was worst were days before which I had drunk nothing at all; and in fact I was already forming the opposite hypothesis. Thus for a couple nights I tried drinking the way I used to, ... and the next days I had more energy again!

Tonight I googled the combination of feeling exhausted while not drinking, and I discovered this is a well-known "thing." Several websites aimed at the newly-sober explained that it is common for people who have first given up alcohol to feel exhausted, unfocused, and disoriented for several weeks after their last drink! But they go on to say it's all worth it, because after that time is over they have so much more energy than before, and besides it's great to wake up every day without a hangover.

All of which is great.

Only ... what about those of us who don't wake up with hangovers? What about people (like me) who are used to drinking every day, but not so much that it causes a problem in our daily lives? It sounds like we have habituated our bodies to a certain amount of alcohol daily, so that we will suffer if we get less. Even though alcohol is a poison. But we don't experience it as a poison because mostly we don't drink that much at a time. 

"Habituated" sounds bad, only we don't get the satisfaction other habitués get, of knowing it's the right way to go.

If alcohol isn't really disrupting my life, is it worth it to go without? Just for the bare, abstract name of "sobriety"? 

Or should I just skip it all and go back to drinking?

Sent from my iPhone

Exhausted

I am exhausted. This is at least two days in a row. I didn't go to Sangha last night because I just wanted to go home and go to bed. I could no longer focus on anything. And it's the same today. I tried to get a nap at noon but I was in my car — a black car in the sun, which meant I was baking. I don't know if I dozed or not. But it's as if I really have to have a nap during the day, more or less regardless how much sleep I get at night or how much coffee I drink. (I'm going to have trouble giving it all up on Friday for my flight on Sunday.) Or is it the coffee itself that is making me so tired? Sounds counterintuitive, but I've wondered about that before. In general it seems like the times of my life when I drink a lot of coffee are the times I have the most trouble with feeling exhausted. Maybe there's a connection.

Or maybe I'm just imagining the link. I guess that's always possible.

A talking vulva

Browsing the news on my phone, I found this article. It amused me, so I sent it to Marie.

Fragment of 'The Rose Thorn,' a Poem About a Talking Vulva, Dated to the 1300s

I thought it was mildly amusing, and left it at that. But Marie responded not long after, as follows:

Dearest, if you're going to distract me from my evening, by all means do it well.

 

A medieval poem about a talking vulva???

 

And now, of course, you've got me engrossed in conversation with my cunt about which of US two you appreciate more. 

 

And, of course, the converse: which most appreciates and misses YOU (and your penis and your fingers and that long, talented, tongue of yours, which both laps my clit and spins out involved and filthy fantasies...).

 

Erp.

 

Maybe I'll adjourn to bed, if not immediately to sleep!

 

Thanks for your contribution to my evening, love!

 

 

Always your Marie.

    

A dry week

I'm on my ... second? third? ... glass of whiskey tonight, depending on how you count, but for most of this week I've had no alcohol to drink. It's been interesting.

Some time after Son 1 moved in, I started paying attention to how much I was drinking. At first I didn't, because he'd have a beer or two with dinner and I'd have beer or wine, and who cared? But if we were out of beer he didn't want wine. After dinner he might have whiskey but often not and never any other spirits. And even when he wasn't drinking, I was.

Also I noticed that I had been exercising more regularly than this spring (when I was traveling so much for work) but my weight was pretty constant. Of course there are a lot of calories in alcohol. And when I get drunk, I eat more.

So when I went to the store over the weekend I deliberately didn't buy any more wine -- one six-pack of beer for Son 1, but no more. I drank water or juice with dinner. And I noticed a few changes, as a result.

On the positive side, I lost weight this week -- only a few pounds, but it was measurable and steady.

On the negative side ... well.

I went to bed earlier and earlier -- by 8:00 or even before. Yes, I was getting up at 5:00 so I could go to the gym before work ... so I guess you could argue that going to bed at 8:00 wasn't crazy early. But it was still early. And while in the first half of the day I'd feel a glow of strength and energy, after lunch I would want nothing in the world but a nap. That exhaustion would last all afternoon. I would be exhausted by the time I got home. I'd have almost no interest in dinner, maybe just a piece of bread with peanut butter -- and this was doubtless part of why I was losing weight. So in some ways the alcohol was acting for me as a stimulant.

It acted also as a (social) lubricant. Without it, I found myself wanting to spend less and less time with Son 1. If I wasn't drinking, I felt shy, like I wanted to retreat into my bedroom as soon as possible. This was another reason that I went to bed so early ... that it took me away from his company. It let me hide. Way back in the last days of living with Wife it was the same: if I was sober, I was always on edge and wanted to escape; but if I was drunk I could laugh and joke and be sociable. Is that what is going on here? Do I really need to get Son 1 out of my space the same way I needed to move away from Wife? Or is the seeming similarity just a coincidence?

I don't know.

Today while I was at work, Marie texted me to tell me to do something fun tonight. I replied with an email as follows:

Hey love,

You texted me to do something fun tonight, but I’m not quite sure what would count as fun. I’m kind of getting into this concept of going to bed really early, but I guess that’s not what you have in mind.

My neighbors are hosting a big shindig tomorrow night, but I’m not sure about going. I always feel like death warmed over for at least the next 24 hours afterwards. 

My girlfriend [this means Marie herself, of course!] is not in town, so that kind of lets out planning for lots of energetic sex. (Besides, I share an apartment with my son!) Of course there are three colleges in town, so maybe I should look for a cute undergraduate with spiky hair [Marie has sometimes fantasized about us finding a girl with spiky hair to join us] and then tell my girlfriend all the steamy details afterwards. (Not sure if that would make you feel hurt, angry, jealous, or incredibly aroused — or possibly all four at once!) And as we all know, cute undergraduates with spiky hair are famous for getting excited by pudgy, graying, terminally square guys in their late 50’s, especially when those guys live in dingy apartments and don’t flash lots of disposable cash; so obviously this last plan is a really pragmatic one. 

I’m kind of running out of ideas here. Going to bed early is sounding better and better.

Love you,
Your Hosea

I was trying to be funny. But in the absence of alcohol, I really was feeling like I couldn't think of anything more fun than going to bed early.

Her reply picked up mostly on the funny bits. But in and around the funny bits, I think she heard a little bit of what was going on with me, if not the whole thing. Among other things, she wrote:

 It does seem a while since you've talked about art walks or gallery openings or weird little shows you went to.  When we were first involved it seemed like you went to SOMETHING just about every week.  Are you okay physically? You've seemed tired a lot since our return from New Zealand.

I'm not sure how much I want to explain. Any explanation involving alcohol sounds like a bad thing ... and like it would cause alarm. Or do I just tell her the truth?

Maybe she's asking about more than just the last week. And in that case ... what is the truth?

I don't know. I hope it's not something really bad.