Pleasantly surprised

Background

I got an email today from Wife. The context is that when my company-paid health insurance ended in September, I dithered for a while and then signed up for a COBRA policy. I told the boys I'd cover them until they could sign up for insurance of their own through their jobs; I told Wife I'd cover her through December. After that, I said, either I would cancel her coverage or I would deduct the cost from her alimony check: her choice.

OK, strictly speaking it's not even "alimony" at this point. Our Separation Agreement ties the amount of alimony to my salary: right now I am unemployed and have no salary, so legally I should be paying zero alimony. But I told Wife I didn't want to be an asshole, so I am continuing to make payments as long as I can afford it. I have explained that if some day I can no longer afford it, she should remember that there is nothing legally binding about these payments.

On the other hand, the cost of COBRA coverage for her totals just over 50% of the size of those payments. So if I deduct that from her payments, she won't have a lot left. At the time, I suggested that she look for cheaper insaurance.

What I expected her to write

I expected her to have done nothing since then, to have been paralyzed by the need for action. I expected her to be frightened and panicked, and therefore angry and accusatory. I expected her to have forgotten just how far I have done her favors during this process, and to demand more because she needs it.

I was wrong on all counts.

What she wrote instead

Her email was clear and detailed. She explained that naturally the best case from her perspective was something other than what was available, but she fully recognized that it wasn't available. She had, in fact, found and signed up for an alternate insurance plan, and described in some detail what it will and won't cover. Therefore, she said I should go ahead and cancel the COBRA insurance for her at the end of this month. She also expressed gratitude for everything I have done for her so far, and ended the email by mentioning some happy things that have dropped into her life lately.

She said nothing about her needs. She thanked me and demanded nothing beyond what I had offered. She did ask a couple of clarifying questions about what expenses she could slide under the wire, but they were all posed as pure questions and not disguised challenges.

And I was just a little bit stunned. Has she been able to do this all along, and just chose not to? Or has she been practicing? Has she turned over a new leaf somehow? Is she in the process of another dramatic personality change, kind of like the one I wrote about a few days ago, but in the other direction? That last option sounds far-fetched, but who knows? I suppose anything is possible. Anyway, reading her email was a little bit like preparing for a step and then finding that it's not there. Almost disorienting.

But I was pleasantly surprised.

Does this mean that my long-standing fear of her is going to be out of date some time soon? That might be a lot to ask, but I suppose anything is possible. I guess we'll see.  

  

“You’re being childish and cruel!”

A few days ago Iwrote a post in which I speculated that the reason Son 1 was planning to stay away from celebrating Christmas with the rest of us was that he was being emotionally blackmailed by Wife. Son 2 is staying with me for a couple of days, and last night we talked about it. I suppose the good news is that I was completely wrong.

No, the point is that Son 1 believes – and Son 2 agreed with him on this – that I am being childishly vindictive and cruel in my repeated refusal to let Wife visit my family for holidays. And he decided he no longer wants to dignify what he sees as petty game-playing on my part with his presence. So either I grow the hell up and drop my resistance, or he won’t show up. Son 2 said he agreed with the moral stance, but chose to come anyway precisely so that he could discuss this with me in person. Several times he said, “I know this isn’t pleasant to hear, but I want you to understand”; and I assured him that I would rather understand what is true than be placated with what is pleasant.

Actually, in a sense this story is more pleasant for me than the one I believed before. There’s a part of me that doesn’t especially mind being hated: I figure it’s only fitting punishment for my sins, or something like that. (In the past I have explained that attitude in one way, for example here. Now I am starting to think that story is really too glib and not deep enough. But the phenomenon is a reality anyway.) As I say, there’s a part of me that doesn’t especially mind being hated. But it alarmed me to think of Son 1 victimized by Wife’s abuse and emotional manipulation. So yeah, hearing that it’s really all my fault is actually an improvement.  

After that, Son 2 and I talked for a couple of hours. I tried to explain, in a kind of fumbling, ham-handed way, that my attitude towards spending holidays with Wife comes not from cruelty, but from thirty years of abuse. I conceded that I had never talked about this with him or his brother (and that in a sense I was glad they hadn’t already figured it out) because all the advice I had read from Judith Wallerstein and others said that it is a terrible thing for children of divorcing parents when the parents bad-mouth each other to their kids. Son 2 agreed that it is indeed terrible when that happens; but he added that one of the consequences has been that for years they have heard all of Wife’s complaints against me but never the other side of the story. And when you only ever hear one side of the story, well, what are you supposed to think? Besides – and on this point we both agreed – the boys are now adults. Rules that applied when they were still kids don’t have to apply any longer.

Son 2 still thinks that I haven’t handled my damage from the marriage in any kind of useful way (seems to me I remember Debbie telling me the exact same thing years ago), and that there is a lot of room for improving the current situation. But he no longer condemns my attitude on straightforward moral grounds. It’s progress. He wants me to write a short email to Son 1 summarizing the same points, and then the two of them will discuss it some more.

Two days ago I did a Tarot reading where I asked “What do I need to understand about today’s events?” I dealt three cards: for my Self, the World reversed; for my Situation, the Fool reversed; and for my Outcome, the Five of Pentacles reversed. I looked up the card meanings from an online site. At the time I wasn’t sure how to put together the suggested meanings, but in retrospect it looks as if the cards were telling me something like this:

Self: The World reversed: I am seeking closure on a personal issue.

Situation: The Fool reversed: I am acting recklessly.

Outcome: The Five of Pentacles reversed: There is a possibility that this might not end with my losing the relationship with both boys, or (figuratively) being shut out in the cold. In other words, there could be a way forward. But don’t fuck it up, bubbeleh.

I suppose it’s easier to read a divinatory message when you already know what’s going to happen, isn’t it?

                 

Lao Tzu on shamelessness

Eight years ago -- gosh, it's getting on towards nine by now -- I wrote in a poem here that failure is freedom while success means a kind of bondage. 

Recently I found that Lao Tzu had a similarly dim view of success. In the Tao Te Ching, poem 13 reads, in part:

SHAMELESS

To be in favor or disgrace

is to live in fear....

What does that mean,

to be in favor or disgrace

is to live in fear?

Favor debases:

we fear to lose it,

fear to win it.

So to be in favor or disgrace

is to live in fear.

--- from Ursula K. LeGuin's Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, 1997.

Sent from the all new AOL app for Android

Saturn return

OK, after all the depressing shit in my last two posts, this one is just for fun. A week or two ago I was farting around on the Internet and stumbled across a reference to something called a "Saturn return." What's that? I wondered. I looked it up and found lots of sites that were happy to explain it to me.

It's an astrological term. The idea is that a "Saturn return" is that period when the planet Saturn comes back to the same place in the sky that it occupied when you were born. Apparently Saturn is connected with themes like maturity, hard work, and discipline, so a lot of these issues start cascading around you at this time. One site put it this way:

Think of it like this: during your Saturn return, you are a teenager and the planet of discipline is your dad, barging into your room checking to see if you’ve done your homework. If the assignment is complete, you are rewarded. But along with this accolade comes a warning: you can’t rest on your laurels. You must keep going to maintain your status. On the flip side, if you haven’t done the work, you still have to learn those lessons. What you’ve been avoiding catches up with you—Saturn doesn’t let you get away with it anymore; you must correct the course. For many, the Saturn return aligns with fulfilling milestones: weddings, giving birth or promotions. For others, it lines up with unnerving shakeups: cross-country moves, career changes or heartbreaking breakups. However the transit manifests for you, you can’t escape this total renovation of your life. It’s a rite of passage; it’s a time to grow up.

Another site talked a lot about challenges, tests, existential crises, and growth. You get the idea. It's supposed to be a turbulent time when your normal routines are all upset and you have to buckle down to focus on what really matters.

After I read all that, my next questions were, When are (or will be) my Saturn returns? Do these descriptions work out in practice? Fortunately there are calculator websites which will tell you just that. I found one and plugged in my birth date. 

Turns out my first Saturn return stretched from March to December of 1990. I remember that time. In March I was working at a placid, easy, nothing job where I'd been idling for four years. That summer we moved to Beautiful City, where I live now; in the early autumn I got a job there, and nine weeks later I was fired. By December I was collecting unemployment and scrounging temp work. I was also just about to get a job (through one of those temp agencies) that would open up the career path I followed for the next ten years, that brought me my first management assignment, and that lifted me out of pissing away my days in placid, easy, nothing jobs. Of course I couldn't see that at the time. All I could see at the time was that I had smashed into my biggest fear in the world of work — being fired — but the sun had come up again the next day and I somehow had to find a way to move on. So yes, challenges, tests, unnerving shakeups, and growth all seemed to play a part in the story right about then. 

But I'm old enough that there's a second one, too. That one was in January of 2020. Now when I look back at that time, January 2020 doesn't seem to have been unusually turbulent or challenging. So maybe the theory falls apart. Or maybe it just requires a longer view: that was, after all, just before COVID-19 broke out and I started working from home; it was the beginning of the year in which my company decided to close my office for good. (And while we all assumed the closure was related to COVID, it might not have been. For all I know the decision might have been taken back in January, for other reasons, and COVID just provided a good cover.) If it had only fallen a year later, I could have blamed by second Saturn return for my current joblessness, and for the way I am now wrestling with the question what I really want to do next. Do I even want another job? Or is it time to retire and do something different for a change?

I suppose if you are generous enough with the parameters you can make it work. Of course if you are generous enough with the parameters you can prove anything. Anyway, it's fun to think about.

      

What happened to her, anyway?

I don't know why I'm writing this now. It's late, and I'm far from sober. If I want to write a think-piece, much less an analysis of someone's personality, I should take time over it. I should have all my wits about me. Right?

Whatever.

To this day I cannot give a satisfactory answer to the question, What the hell happened to Wife? How did she morph from this into that? Honestly, it looks like magic: I don't know how else to explain it. And since magic was her whole métier, back in the day, I guess that's an appropriate explanation. Any way you look at it, it's bizarre.

Back when I met Wife, she was strong, energetic, and magical. We were both academic nerds, and of course the normal question then — even before you get as far as a pickup line — is What's your major? If you want to be really classy, you can ask, What's your research about? Her research was about the Arthurian legends and the character of Merlin. She knew, seemingly, everything there was to know about King Arthur and Merlin, and could trace both figures effortlessly back into the prehistory of Celtic mythology. She had ambitions to pursue these topics through a Ph.D. and into a tenured professorship somewhere important, and the same passion also fueled her dedication to learning real magic and her commitment to achieve a third degree as a Wiccan High Priestess. Even then she could be difficult, but she was invigorating to be around. Her conversation crackled with a tangible passion and energy.

Today? She's tired, spent, cranky, and totally self-centered. Everything wrong in her life is the result of bad luck or ill-treatment by others — none of it is ever her responsibility. (Just ask her!) Everyone picks on her, and then they abandon her. And wait, wait — let her tell you about all her physical ailments! She's got these debilitating headaches, plus of course her doctor tells her that she's permanently disabled so it's not like she could work to earn even one thin dime. Basically she's helpless, completely helpless — also miserable, but in a way that precludes her taking any steps on her own behalf, to make her own life better. Life has just been really difficult for her, you see, and it doesn't help that her ex-husband is such a heartless son of a bitch ....

And so on.

What the hell happened?

Part of it was that she got so sick. I mean, even back when I met her, she would sometimes get sick with weird symptoms that no one could really identify. Somewhere around the year 2000 (when we had been married for 16 years, and when the boys were respectively 4 and 2) she was finally diagnosed with systemic lupus. Probably a decade before that, she had been diagnosed with depression and put on Prozac. 

Privately I suspect she suffers not simply from depression but from bipolar disorder — a diagnosis she got just once, and which was never repeated, and which she has resolutely denied. But the phenomenology of bipolar disorder includes those marvelous, manic highs as well as the deep, depressive lows; and I think those highs are exactly what made her seem so magically exciting and attractive back in the early days. In any event, she denies that she suffers from bipolar disorder but these days she is treated with mood stabilizers that are normally reserved for bipolar patients. Her excuse is that these are the only medications that work on "treatment-resistant depression." Sure, babe. Whatever.

Anyway, I think the combination of physical and mental illnesses knocked the stuffing out of her, and convinced her that she was never going to achieve any of those great things she'd always dreamed of. Certainly there were years when she achieved almost nothing. Back when Son 2 was about three years old, he drew a picture of her and then ran to show her. "See Mommy? I drew a picture of you! I drew you lying down in bed, because that's where you always are." She absorbed comments like this into her own self-image rapidly, indeed almost eagerly.

On top of her health issues, she ran into a lot of obstacles in her professional life even before she left work on permanent disability. 

• Some of these obstacles may have been health-related, like when she did unexpectedly poorly on her qualifying exams for her doctoral program, as a result of which she failed to get a second master's degree and left school forever. 
• Other obstacles resulted directly from her execrable social skills, that led her to get fired from one job after graduate school and almost fired from the next. (In the end she went out on disability because of her lupus just before her boss lost patience with her forever, so they agreed to call it "permanent disability" and avoid the ugliness of termination-for-cause.) 
• Strictly speaking, these same execrable social skills meant that she had burned all her bridges back in graduate school, so when she did (as I say) unexpectedly poorly on her qualifying exams she had exactly no leeway with the department in which to lobby for retaking them, or working for another semester and trying again, or any other reasonable accommodation. No one was willing to extend her any more than the strict letter of the law; and the letter of the law was that she failed. Too bad, so sad. Goodbye!

In case it's not obvious, these are the same execrable social skills that I described earlier this evening — the ones that have left her virtually alone for Christmas, because nobody wants to spend time with her. 

And so she gave up.

Over the years — back before I, too, gave up and decided to leave her — I spent a lot of time trying to reconcile these two different pictures of her, Before and After. Some days I settled for a simple explanation: that her anti-bipolar mood-stabilizing drugs did indeed smooth out her emotional affect, but that in the process they also eviscerated all the energy and power that had made her so attractive back in the old days. 

Other times I explored a more metaphysical explanation, that there is some correlation between (on the one hand) an openness to the gods, to divine revelation and to magical experience, and (on the other hand) an emotional fragility or instability that easily collapses into mental illness and pathology. For what it is worth, I think this principle is true: that is, I think there really is such a correlation. Think of any of the great prophets of the past: if they lived among us today, I think we'd find them emotionally fragile, and we'd probably consider them mentally ill. But, as Nietzsche pointed out, just because they are sick doesn't make them wrong. [I don't have a reference to hand, and it's too late at night for me to want to look it up. But I know he said it somewhere.] Or, as the Who once expressed the exact same idea, "Sickness will surely take the mind / Where minds can't usually go / Come on the amazing journey / And learn all you should know."

Anyway, I told myself that an openness to the gods required this mental and emotional fragility. And therefore, I went on, it was just bad luck — but totally predictable — that Wife's mind and emotions collapsed under the strain. In every generation, so I told myself, there are a few people who are able to access the divine, who can communicate with the gods more clearly and easily than any of the rest of us. But they pay dearly for this gift, and Wife's collapse was an example of what this payment looks like. [Compare also, if only for sheer preposterous grandiosity, this post here.]

I spent years telling myself these things. But were they true? Or was I just making excuses for her, the way I made excuses for her emotional abuse over decades and refused even to call it what it was? Honestly, I have no idea. 

What this means is that, to this day, I can't give you a good explanation of what the hell happened to her. I don't know how she changed from this to that. 

All I know for sure is that it was bad.    

   

The evil that men do

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones.

– Marc Antony, in Julius Caesar, III 2, by William Shakespeare 

No, nobody has died. But I can't help thinking of Marc Antony's lines anyway. Wife is still poisonous, despite and after the separation.

I feared something like this when Son 1 first made plans to let her move in with him, though I never committed myself to particular details. Not that I claim any genius as a prophet. But this doesn't require genius. 

What happened is that we as a family started planning Christmas. Yes, it's only a week away — that's actually not abnormal for us. Son 2 will be driving into town from the faraway place where he now has a job: he plans to spend a couple of nights with me, a couple of nights with Wife, and several days at the home of my mom, including the afternoon of Christmas and then Boxing Day. Brother and SIL will probably cook up a big feast at my mom's place on the evening of the 25th. We'll all eat too much, drink too much, and sit around opening presents or just visiting. It should be fun.

What about Son 1? I emailed him to ask about his plans, and he said,

Ok, welp, this probably won't be popular but I wasn't planning to go anywhere or do anything for Christmas. We'll have Son 2 crash here for a couple nights, but that's about the limit of my planning.

When I inquired a little further, he explained,

It is my intention, while I live with [Wife], to abstain from all Tanatu family gatherings if she does not get an invite.

Oh. Got it.

There are so many things I want to say in response, and most of them aren't going to be helpful. The reply I sent him this morning just pointed out that he might find himself living with Wife for several years to come, and it would be a shame if he let himself drop out of touch with the family during that time; also — though I devoutly hope that this won't be an issue for some years yet — I asked him to make an exception for funerals.

Meanwhile inside my head I'm screaming.

Is this because you are trying to avoid us, or because you are trying to placate her? 

If you are trying to avoid us, I'm baffled, because Mother and Brother and SIL have never been anything but kind to you. 

If you are trying to placate Wife, I get it — but it will never work. I tried for thirty years to placate her, and she still inflicted misery on herself over and over. Finally I realized that placating her would never work — and I also realized that I had sub-contracted out all my decision-making to her when it touched any of the (all too many) issues that wounded her oversensitive vanity. I had allowed myself to stop doing things I enjoyed because Wife would be upset. 

So I broke with her and the break was total. If you want to have a good relationship with her in the long term, you have to start by setting some boundaries now. Otherwise it will take a lot of years — years when you avoid doing things you want to do, for her sake — and then one day you'll decide never to speak to her again.

I know that Wife gets whiny and emotionally manipulative around the holidays — any holidays. Whenever things unroll in a way that differs from the Perfect Holiday Script that she has in her mind — the foods aren't exactly what they were in her girlhood, the dramatis personae aren't quite right, whatever — she goes to pieces, weeping and wailing that the Holiday has been Ruined Forever. If you spend even part of the holiday with somebody else she'll claim that she has been Abandoned For Christmas, and that she has No-One to Spend It With. I've heard the same speeches from her for years. And I can kind of understand why you don't want to have to listen to it.

But why is she so alone? 

• Her birth family is a lot bigger and more extensive than mine is. Why isn't she spending Christmas with some of them? Answer: Because she has alienated them all. Every single one, so far as I know.
• She used to have a wide circle of friends that she called her "family of choice," and for years she talked about how "families of choice" are so much better than families by birth. Why isn't she spending Christmas with some of them? Answer: Same reason she's not with her birth family. One by one she has driven all of them away, or the friendships withered to the point that there was nothing in it to make it worthwhile for her friends to keep up with her.
• More recently she has talked a lot about how my family is "the only real family she ever had." But did they actually like her, or did they just put up with her for my sake? Seems to me that if they'd actually liked her, they would have made overtures to get together some time when it's not a holiday, just for the pleasure of hanging out. To the best of my knowledge that hasn't happened. So it kind of looks like they don't much care for her either.
• I totally agree that her isolation is sad. But it's like Greek tragedy. The fates of Oedipus, and Agamemnon, and Hippolytus were all sad too, but they were also self-inflicted. She has brought this on herself.

I don't know if Son 1 will reply to my short email. If he does, I don't know what direction the conversation will go. I may not say any of these things. But inside my head I'm still screaming.

            

A call from Candy

Last week I got a call from a recruiter. I was busy and didn't recognize the number, so I let it roll to voice mail. When I listened to the message, she said her name was Candy, and she was a recruiter with XYZ recruiting agency; also, she had seen my resume on the Monster website, and was looking to fill a job she thought I might match. Could I please call her back? 

Then she paused, and added, "Is this the same Hosea Tanatu that I used to talk to all those years ago?"

Oh my God. So it was that Candy! I thought I recognized the name!

To be clear, "all those years ago" means something on the order of 30 years. I was new in town, she worked for a different staffing agency from the one she works for today, and she did indeed get me a job. In the intervening years I found myself unemployed from time to time, and I think I probably contacted her once or twice again. But as it turned out she never placed me a second time. 

But I remembered her name, which is why I went back to her. When I found myself unemployed in the spring of this year I tried to find her again but she was no longer in town. I checked on LinkedIn, but there were too many people with her name and none of the records listed the place where she had worked 30 years ago; so I couldn't be sure I'd found the right person, and gave up. And now here she was, calling me.

Of course I called her back. We spent a while chatting about what we've each been doing since we last saw each other. She sent me a copy of the job description. I told her that I didn't think I met it, but she was welcome to submit my name if she wanted; and so she did. So far, so good. We'll see if anything comes of it. 

But after the phone call was over, I found that I was really thrilled that she remembered me, and that she had called. And I started to wonder why? It wasn't because the job was all that great. So it had to be something about talking to Candy again after all these years. But why should that matter? I've worked with plenty of recruiters over the years, and I wouldn't feel so chuffed at talking to most of them. Why Candy? 

Was it just that I was flattered at being remembered? That might be part of it, but it can't be the whole story. By now I should be used to the fact that people remember me -- I've even jokingly called it "the Curse of the Tanatus."

Besides, I also remembered her -- by name. That's not true of any other recruiter I've ever worked with. It's not even true of every HR professional who has worked for companies that have hired me.

Candy and I were never friends in any meaningful sense. We never discussed anything other than how to get me a job, except incidentally (the way you might discuss the weather). I know nothing about her hobbies or her personal life.

A fortiori, there was never any hint of romance or sex between us. Nothing of the kind.

So why did I remember her? Why was I thrilled that she remembered me?

The easy answer is that somehow we clicked together back when we met, and clearly that has to be true but it explains nothing. Why did we click? I puzzled over it for a while without answers.

Then she sent me an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. And when I read her profile, suddenly I got one small clue.

Her work history wasn't complete. It didn't stretch back as far as 30 years, which is why I hadn't found her before. But her profile included one entry for education. A bachelor's degree, granted just a few years before mine. So far, nothing remarkable.

But Candy is an American. And the one educational credential in her profile is a Bachelor of Fine Arts. From Oxford.

How did she end up going to Oxford? I have no idea. But it couldn't have been by accident. It couldn't have been out of negligence. It couldn't have been because her family was English nobility and has been sending their children to Oxford absent-mindedly for centuries. She's American, so there had to be a deliberate choice involved: on her part, to attend Oxford; and on someone else's part, to pay for it. 

And all this means that at some level she is a humanist intellectual. We never discussed anything but getting me a job. We certainly never discussed art or history or philosophy. Whatever her past as a humanist intellectual, she clearly doesn't discuss it today.

But at some level we saw each other. Somehow it was what sociologists call "consciousness of kind." Underneath all the distractions of the workaday world, and without exchanging a single word that did not belong to the workaday world, we recognized that we belong to the same small tribe. And therefore we clicked. And therefore we remembered each other over many long years.

Maybe this is all bullshit, but it's the best explanation I have so far. 

         

Fun with health insurance, part 1

NOTE: I am writing this post in January 2023, but posting it back here where it belongs chronologically. Anyway it's really just a placeholder. But it's a topic I refer to glancingly from time to time.

One of the consequences of losing my job has been losing health insurance. Last month I tried to buy some privately through the ACA exchanges, but for a variety of crazy reasons that didn't go as planned. In the end, I signed up for a COBRA continuation plan from my company. Yes, I know COBRA is supposed to cost way more than any ACA plan. This time it doesn't. The world is crazy.

I explain what happened when I get to part 2, which also tells you how the whole situation plays out over time. Part 2 is dated January 2023. You can find part 2 here.

      

Bad at parties

Jack and Jill threw a Halloween party tonight. They had skipped it last year because of COVID-19, and in fact they haven't thrown any parties since the outbreak of the pandemic, so far as I can recall. (Or at any rate, they've had people over from time to time -- rarely, to be sure! -- but this is the first one that was general enough that I was invited.)

I knew that I couldn't afford to get really hammered, because I'm planning to visit my mom tomorrow, and that means a drive of a couple of hours. Plus, after I get there, we're going out for the evening somewhere that will require a bunch more driving. So I have to be functional tomorrow.

But also I have come to realize that I am really bad at parties, or at any rate at the kind of parties that Jack and Jill throw. I'm not good at small talk, or at least I'm not good at small talk with people I scarcely know. I'm not part of these people's lives -- none of them, not even Jack and Jill themselves, really, even though they are my next-door neighbors. And I don't dance, not unless I'm so drunk that the next day is already destined to be a total loss.

The one thing I know how to do at their parties is eat and drink. And they always have food out, and plenty of alcohol. So in the past I have often spent my time drinking and drinking again, occasionally chatting with someone who decides to be nice to me, and maybe dancing if I finally get drunk enough not to care that I have no clue what I'm doing.

No, that's not fair. The people at these parties are genuinely nice to me. Even the ones that I know the least smile and wave, and their eyes show recognition; others remember my name even when I've forgotten theirs. They recognize me, and even seem happy enough to see me.

It's my problem. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to interact. These people are all friendly and willing to interact with me in whatever constitutes "a normal way." It's my problem that I have no idea what that means, or how to do it.

This evening's party was scheduled to run from 6:00 pm to midnight. I arrived somewhere around 7:00 pm, I think. I chatted aimlessly with a couple of people, and drank four or five glasses of sake. (Jack had just come home from a trip overseas, and had brought a lot of sake with him.) I was the only one there without a Halloween costume, but Jill cleverly told someone else that I was dressed as a sociopath -- you know, they always look so normal! I thought that was pretty clever. (And in fact I wondered if she had been talking to Marie, but I managed to stop myself from asking.) And then, when no-one was looking, I snuck quietly out their back door and back to my apartment. I was home by 8:15. In fact I was all ready for bed before I decided to write this. But I'm going to bed right after. 

It's times like this that remind me how isolated I really am. And it's a depressing thing to remember. Oh well. Tomorrow is Halloween, and I'll be driving to visit my mom. That will be nice.

Time for bed. Maybe I can forget all this for a few hours while I'm asleep.

    

The perils of punditry

There's a new writer that I've started following on the Internet — a man named John Michael Greer. I don't always agree with him, but he's interesting and intelligent. These days he blogs here and here (and has an earlier blog archived here). Also, he has a regular group of people who follow his posts, and who comment about them afterwards. The discussions that arise in the comments are wide-ranging, and add a lot of depth to the posts themselves. This is the kind of engagement that bloggers dream of and long for; and except for a few years in the very early history of this blog (when I was lucky enough to be part of a real — if much smaller — online community) it's something that I, for example, have never had. I try hard not to sound envious when I say this, but you probably know better.

But about a month ago, Greer published a post that made me see in an instant that there are real dangers to being an Internet pundit — to writing so much, so regularly, for so many people. The danger is this: part of what it takes to be a successful pundit is that you are usually right. You are either smarter or bolder than the other posters around you — or both, of course — and so the things you say are usually borne out by reality. This means as a corollary that when someone disagrees with you, usually it's for one of two reasons: either he is wrong, or he doesn't understand you correctly. 

What's bad about with this? you ask. Isn't this the position every Internet blogger wants to be in? Yes of course it is. But the danger is that, if you ever are wrong, you won't see it. And when someone calls you out, you'll assume — based on all that previous experience — that either he's the one that's wrong or else he just didn't understand you.

Greer's post — the one I'm thinking of — is here. The gist is that Greer took issue with another author, a man named Paul Kingsnorth, who had posted an article which (according to Greer) included a number of fundamental errors on a subject close to Greer's heart and expertise. What's more, Greer was sure that Kingsnorth actually knew better — that Kingsnorth's errors were made in bad faith, or that they were deliberate lies. So Greer wrote a post calling out Kingsnorth's false statements. So far this sounds like a hundred other Internet disagreements, and hardly one that would reveal any deeper truths.

Two facts emerged in the later discussion of the post which changed the story. First, it turned out that Kingsnorth himself is a regular reader of Greer's blog, so he joined in the comments to insist, "That's not what I said."  Second, it turned out that Kingsnorth's article in question had been hidden behind a paywall, so Greer never read the original article before writing his; what he'd read was a summary prepared by a third party (a man named Rod Dreher) who really wanted to make points of his own and just referenced Kingsnorth to support some of them. (Since that time, Kingsnorth took this article out from behind the paywall, so anyone can read it. But it is one of a series, and the other articles in the series are still behind the paywall.)

At that point, in light of the new information, the obvious thing for Greer to have done would have been to say, "Oops. Sorry about that. Guess I was wrong." And if he'd changed just a couple of sentences, he probably could have left the rest of the essay in place as-is: all he would have had to do would be to replace, "Paul Kingsnorth is wrong because" with "An unwary reader might walk away thinking that Paul Kingsnorth means XYZ; but this oversimplified opinion is wrong because." It would have been a purely cosmetic change, and would have left all the important points of Greer's post intact. After all, the important part isn't that this or that individual human being is wrong; the important part has to be about the facts of the matter at hand. A graceful apology, a little humor at his own expense, and a trivial rewrite of a couple of introductory sentences could have extricated Greer from this situation smoothly and cleanly.

And that is exactly what he did not do. Instead, Greer doubled down: either Kingsnorth didn't understand my article or else he's just wrong, because as I already explained …. Several times in the after-post discussion, Greer expressed some version of this; and each time, Kingsnorth replied, No, that's not what I said. Finally, Greer just stopped replying to him. He engaged with everyone else, but treated Kingsnorth as if the latter were no longer there.

It sounds like I'm criticizing Greer, and in one small, unimportant sense I suppose I am. But not really. I'm a new reader, but already I've read him enough to realize that most of the time — the vast majority of the time, in fact — if some commenter disagrees with Greer, the commenter is the one who's wrong. Greer really is very smart, and his approach to the world is individual enough that he sees things the rest of us don't see. That's why I enjoy reading him. The only problem is, if 99% of the disagreements you have with online commenters are caused by the commenter not understanding you or not understanding the phenomena you describe, it becomes really hard to shift gears for that 1% of cases where you are the one who's wrong … or even to recognize that one of those cases has snuck up on you. 

Maybe I should be grateful that I'm not famous, huh? Maybe it keeps me modest? Or maybe it means I have even less practice fielding disagreements. Anyway, there's a risk to being an Internet pundit.

     

"Die, damn you!"

Last week I was on a video call with Marie. She was talking about the latest news from the COVID-19 pandemic. In among other bits of information, she mentioned that the sharpest recent increases in the death rate were (apparently) all in counties that had voted for Donald Trump in the last couple of elections.

And she grinned a great big, wide, satisfied grin. Which -- for just a moment -- scared the shit out of me.

I pointed out to her that she was grinning. Her only remark was that she guessed she had better not mention this factoid to any of those family members who disagree with her politically, or at any rate not if she's on a video call with them. She wasn't horrified or alarmed. In fact she took the news quite calmly.

Why did she grin? One possibility is that she was glad at the thought of her opponents dropping dead. But there's actually another that I think more likely, based on the other things she was saying. The way she told the story -- I have taken no steps to confirm any of this -- the counties with the highest death rates were mostly those that had rejected the imposition of strict mask and vaccination mandates. And of course there's a high correlation between the counties that rejected strict mandates and the counties that voted for Mr. Trump. So I actually think Marie's glee was the glee of an intense, young grade-school student who just got the right answer when all the bigger kids got it wrong. I think her grin was supposed to say, "My friends and I did what the teacher told us to do, and we're all alive. But you didn't listen and insisted on doing your own thing, and now you're all dying. Now do you see that we were right all along?"

Hermione Granger morphs into Madame Defarge.

There is something terrifying about the Need To Be Right.

  

"Good night John-Boy, … Debbie, … Mattie …."

This week Debbie bought a new house.

She won't move for a while. The current owners don't want to have to leave till November. That's fine with Debbie because she's still waiting for her mom's house to sell so she'll have the money. (You remember that her mom died a couple months ago.)

But wait, doesn't Debbie already have a house? Doesn't she, in fact, own a house that she herself described as "the nicest place she has ever lived as an adult"? What gives?

Well, you know that her daughter Mattie lives in the next town over -- Mattie and her husband and two little boys. (That's the whole reason Debbie is living where she's living.) She regularly drives over to spend time with them, helping out in a grandmotherly way when Mattie and her husband are overburdened. You also know that Mattie and her husband don't make much money, and live very frugally. So Debbie and Mattie put their heads together and decided it would make the most sense to buy a big house where they could all live together. Debbie could help raise the boys, Mattie and her husband could stop paying rent, and when Debbie gets actually old (she's 67 this year, and clearly not yet "old" by this definition), Mattie and her husband could help her out and take care of her. 

Wait a minute -- suppose I want to come visit? How will that work? Debbie figures she'll put a sofa-bed in her bedroom along with her regular bed; then any guest "who is like family" can sleep there. For someone who is less close, she guesses they can figure something else out. I think I'm probably in the first category.

OK, OK, so if we suppose that the question of my visits has been handled, what then? It's interesting. In principle I think it is a great idea. When my father was a kid his grandmother lived with them, and he loved it. And I can personally vouch that parenthood is too big a job for two adults: having live-in help is a great idea.

But at the same time I can never imagine doing the same thing with either of my boys. And I am trying to understand why not.

• Partly, I value my own solitude too much. This will become a problem when I get old and frail and brittle, but I am assiduously not thinking about that right now. (That always works, right?)
• Partly there are two of them, … so in the event that they both start families, which one should I stay with?
• And partly I just assume that neither one of them wants to see that much of me. Didn't they get pretty well sick of me during all those years they were growing up? Sure, we get along fine now, but I assume that's just because we see each other only in small doses. 

Of course, I assume that about most people, really -- I mean, I assume that they can tolerate me best when there are strict boundaries and limited exposure. And, well, OK … I guess strictly speaking I know that Marie wants to marry me or live with me permanently, but I figure she just doesn't know her own desires well enough because she hasn't been married before: I keep telling her that after a few years the bloom will fade and she'll get sick of me. Also I know that Son 1 is living with Wife right now, but I'm pretty sure that's just because of straight-up emotional blackmail on her part. If anything, surely that experience will leave him sufficiently disgusted that there would be no prayer of his ever wanting to do it again.

It's strange that I can think this is such a good idea in the abstract, and yet it feels odd when Debbie does it and I find it unthinkable that I myself ever would. Maybe this makes me a flawed person … I mean, more flawed than we already knew I am. I just don't know.

      

Sociopath postscript

Well, our conversation (following on from here) was something of an anticlimax. I did not raise any of the relationship-shaking issues, but mostly let her talk. I did explain that if she were determined to see the whole topic like a war, then it really made more sense to treat this engagement as an immaterial skirmish rather than anything bigger. For her part, she said (while trying to smile) that at least she hadn't kept her upset a secret but had let me know right away … a sign that she had learned from when I mentioned that I have a problem with her habit of keeping issues bottled up inside her without any word of warning.

I also mentioned as a casual observation that she and I almost never discuss politics, but didn't bother to explain why not. There's time for all that later.

And then after a while we discussed trivial shit: things like what medical insurance plan should she select during her company's Open Enrollment period? I guess the rest can wait.

     

So now I'm a sociopath?

The last couple of days I've had the most interesting exchange with Marie. It started Friday, when she emailed me briefly to tell me how one of her relatives was weathering Hurricane Ida, and to mention (seemingly in passing) her dismay at the Supreme Court's recent decision to take no action in the case of Whole Woman's Health et al. v. Austin Reeve Jackson, Judge, et al. I didn't know anything about the decision so I googled it and read a couple of articles. Based on what those articles told me, I replied (later the same day) that it looked to me like this "decision not to decide" was at most very temporary, and that bigger cases (substantive ones, not to be decided on procedural details) appeared to be on the horizon. What I meant by this was that, if she wanted to engage in any kind of political activity around the issue, she would be well advised to keep her powder safe and dry for a time that it could make a difference. 

What I got back from her late that evening was an impassioned screed that started, "You fucking sociopath!" She went on to remind me that I'm not a woman [err, … yes, that's true, was there any doubt of this?], to express gratitude that none of my children had been daughters, to explain that everyone else "in the universe" is currently "register[ing] excruciating agony" over this topic, and to excoriate me for not "giv[ing] a FUCK for anything that makes other people's, REAL OTHER PEOPLE's, lives utterly, HORRIFIC[ALLY], WORSE." Then after adding a little more juicy substantiating detail, together with some odd predictions for the local politics in my own state, she concluded:

You don't care, do you?, so long as you imagine you cannot be affected.

Go fuck yourself.

Seriously.

Fuck yourself again and again.

Fuck yourself in every orifice.

And then again.

This email was followed by a one-sentence email later the same evening in which she apologized for swearing at me.

Wow. 

Kind of exciting, actually. I don't remember anyone ever accusing me of sociopathy before.

I waited a while before replying. Saturday, around noon, I asked her to double-check the articles I had read (and had previously linked for her), so she could tell me whether there was anything in my email that I had not lifted directly from them? Also, did she think those journalists were sociopaths too?

She replied in a longer email that mostly avoided capital letters, in which she explained why any decent human being would feel as helplessly, hopelessly distraught as she did right now, before closing with:

But [the word] sociopath was ill-chosen.  You struck me as exhibiting a lack of empathy marked enough to feel to me like a slap in the face, but you certainly don't exhibit tendencies either to personal irresponsibility or to violence. 

So sorry about that term as well.

Love, Marie

Does this mean I'm not a sociopath after all? Inquiring minds want to know.

Also I have to wonder, where does this leave us as a couple? Does it make a difference? Do we go on as before? Or do we have to do some kind of work around this? I know that in general I avoid discussing politics with Marie, because I know that she gets crazily over-invested in it. But in this case I wasn't even expressing an opinion on the issue that was different from hers. (To the extent that my political opinions are different from hers – on this issue or any other – I am even more careful to keep my silence.) But clearly avoiding disagreement isn't good enough. Even if I am "not-disagreeing," apparently I have to use exactly the right words to express that "non-disagreement" in. This could get old fast. 

And of course it's not even remotely news. (For example, compare this post here, which dates from almost exactly four years ago.) That's why I don't talk politics with Marie. But I thought my remarks were totally innocuous, so I was taken by surprise.

Let me clarify that I'm not hurt, or offended, or insulted. I didn't take her outburst seriously enough for any of that. After raising two children up from birth, and after living through Wife and D as romantic partners, I'm used to handling infantile temper tantrums. (Go ahead – tell me I'm being condescending. You're not wrong.)

But I was taken by surprise. And at this point I may have to explain to her that this is part of the reason I am not about to trust her emotionally. Of course that doesn't stop us from fucking. But will she really be happy in the long term with a relationship where we fuck whenever we can travel, but where I keep large parts of myself off-limits and out-of-bounds? Where we can't even discuss the daily news, for Pete's sake, because usually the daily news involves politics and I won't discuss politics with her? What kind of relationship is that?

We have a regular, weekly phone call about an hour from now. Let's see how it goes.

    

Mattie, or, Movie meme 8

I've figured out what name to use for Debbie's daughter, if I ever have to write about her again. (The most recent time was here, for example.) I'm going to call her Mattie, after Mattie Ross in the movie "True Grit." 

Partly there is a physical similarity between Debbie's real daughter and Mattie as played by Hailee Steinfeld. But most of the similarity is in attitude. I am thinking specifically of Mattie's absolute conviction, rock-bottomed and copper sheathed, of her own righteousness – and of the determination that it gives her.

Maybe this is only part of the story with Debbie's daughter, but it's the part I see. 

Retirement planning through sortilege

I feel stupid writing this, but that's probably good for me, isn't it?

One of my big topics during this time is to figure out what the hell to do next. (See, e.g., the 6-word slogan I've out on my masthead: So what do I do now?) In line with this concern, I've started learning to cast simple tarot readings, using the instructions that John Michael Greer posts here. Do I believe that the tarot tells the future? Probably I have to answer with Niels Bohr and say, "Of course not …."

But I will add that Wife seemed to have a pretty good success rate reading Tarot back when we were together, or at any rate when she was still in her stride as a self-confident witch. I don't know if she still reads today, or with what level of success.

Anyway, one of the big questions I've been concerned with lately is whether to invest the money that I have collected in my 401(K) account from work with the financial advisors that I first mentioned here. And the answers I've gotten have been, … well, … not encouraging.

For these questions I've been using a variant method, not quite the one Greer explains in his post that I reference above. This is a method that Wife taught me years ago. 

1. Think of a yes/no question while you shuffle the cards.
2. Turn over the first three cards.
3. Count each upright card as a "Yes," and each reversed card as a "No." Majority wins.
4. If you want more commentary on what it's going to look like, read the cards themselves.

Over the last couple of days, I have asked these questions in several different ways.

• Can I trust XYZ with my money? Answer: No. (8 of Cups reversed, Sun reversed, King of Wands upright. But I flipped the cards as I turned them over, which normally I don't do. Does that matter? Should I count the reversed cards as upright and vice versa?) 
• Will XYZ treat my money dishonestly? Answer: No. (10 of Pentacles reversed, 8 of Swords reversed, 2 of Wands upright.)
• Will someone else handle my money better than XYZ? Answer: Yes. (Magician, Hermit, Page of Pentacles, all upright. I assume the Hermit there means "Keep looking," but how in the hell am I supposed to find a magician to invest my retirement account with?)

Finally this afternoon I tried a different way to word it: Are XYZ the right people to invest my money with? And the answer came up like this:

Strictly speaking, I suppose that's a Yes, isn't it, because two cards are upright and only one is reversed. But it doesn't look like encouraging commentary. The way I read this, it's telling me:

• Eight of Swords: I'm only choosing them because I feel like I don't have any other choice. And it's true that I haven't been interviewing anybody else, but that's because up till now all their answers to all my questions have sounded really reasonable. And when I look them up on the SEC website there are no outstanding complaints against them.
• Queen of Swords reversed: I'm at risk from some kind of deceit. Either that or an older woman will be badly disposed towards me. (But XYZ is a small firm and all the analysts are men. This couldn't mean Wife, could it?)
• Five of Wands: And there's a risk of family fights if I go ahead. Family fights? That's how Wife always read the 5 of Wands. But I can't really imagine why choosing this investment advisor over that one would cause family fights. How is that possible? On the other hand the little booklet packed in with the cards says, "Imitation, as, for example, sham fight, but also the strenuous competition and struggle of the search after riches and fortune. In this sense it connects with the battle of life. Hence some attributions say that it is a card of gold, gain, opulence." I suppose gain and opulence sound nice -- certainly a lot better than family fights. Hmm.

The thing is, I can see using the Tarot to focus your thinking about a subject, to help you frame a question, or to inspire you to look at aspects of a topic you had hitherto ignored. But when all the visible evidence says that XYZ firm look honest and competent, when the contract requires them to act as fiduciaries and has safeguards built in to prevent bad behavior, and when the cards still look ambiguous or depressing -- at that point isn't it just magical thinking to reject what's visible to your eyes because of invisible hints? People have been ruined by magical thinking. Knowing that hasn't stopped me from indulging in it throughout this transition (see, e.g., here and here) but I try to keep it reined in.

Oh well. I'll make a decision some day soon.

      

Marie and Semele

You know the story of Semele, right? Zeus seduced her and impregnated her; then she asked to see him in his glory as King of the Gods and she was incinerated when he appeared as a lightning bolt. The story says that Hera put her up to it, out of jealousy. Meanwhile it was one more story to prove that Fucking With Gods can be dangerous. Don't try this at home.

Then one night during her last visit, Marie said it happened to her.

OK, not exactly. Not literally. But somewhere in the middle of a marathon orgasm she had an … experience … that was just, … well, … different.

Later we talked about it. She said it was hard to describe; maybe it involved saying the unsayable. I joked back that this is what poetry is for. She explicitly made the connection with Semele, and wondered aloud if all the stories of bad things happening to Zeus's mistresses might not have been simply pictures to describe otherwise unsayable sexual experiences. We talked some more, but only around the edges of things.

Yesterday, a week after she flew home, I went for a walk and fiddled with the idea a little bit and then sent her this. My excuse for intruding on her story was that, well, whatever she was going to write was probably not in dactylic hexameter. So our versions would be different.

Poets recite the old story of Semele struck by a lightning bolt.

Was it the kind that incinerates? Did she fall dead as a consequence?

Or was it a manner of speaking -- attempting to say the unsayable?

Lying abed with the Sky-father, clutching his greatness inside herself,

Feeling familiar ecstasies rising and crashing like ocean waves,

All of a sudden -- and standing apart from her usual raptures -- 

A shock shot its way through her body, from cunt to the crown of her forehead,

Throwing her sharply outside herself, as if her awareness stood next to her.

Poleaxed and awestruck, not breathing, and striving to hold the immensity

That batted away her perception like kitty-cats batting a thimble,

She fell on the soft bed adoring -- a heifer struck down for a sacrifice.

Some women live through a death like this. 

Semele might have been one of them.

A few hours later, she replied with her version. And sure enough, it wasn't in dactylic hexameter.

It must have been a god

It cannot have been mortal

 

The pleasure was a lightning bolt

it tore through me

it burned

 

it consumed me, I tell you

 

there was no part of me left

 

Yet after

I was intact

or I seemed so

 

It must have been a god

but when I could look

I saw you

I don't think I have anything more to say, other than to let the poems speak for themselves. Anything more from my side would just spoil it.

But wow. It was different.

     

Visit from Marie

Marie visited a couple weeks ago -- well, it was for about a week at the end of July and wrapping around to the beginning of August. We fucked. We talked. We did a little hiking, and some cooking. And we just hung out. On the whole it was a good visit.

A couple of our conversations orbited around the topics that I discussed with you-all here and here. Marie said that yes, she had indeed interpreted my unwillingness to marry-or-quasi-marry her as a reflection on her, that she wasn't good enough. I think she understood my reply that no, it's because I'm not going to trust anyone that much again. She was sad, but she understood.

We spent part of the time talking about my job-hunt. Mostly I have gotten pretty sluggish about this since discovering that I might not need to get a job at all. But of course that's not settled. At one point I dragged out some of the personality tests that I took back in April; of course I conceded that she might not be interested, but she said sure, she'd love to see them. My next remark was that I had whipped through the questions pretty quickly, so that maybe the answers weren't really accurate. Really? Let me see what they say about you. Then she paged through the results and seconded every single thing they said. So I guess I don't need to waste time re-taking those personality tests, huh?

There is one job opportunity that I'm still in the running for, and that interests me. It's a position at a small local company, in some ways kind of like a start-up (though not literally so), and right now they have nothing at all in place like what I do. But they've decided they need it. So I would have the chance to build an entire system from the ground up. And while I have spent plenty of time in earlier posts complaining about my line of work, this prospect is actually pretty exciting. Anyway, Marie and I talked about it, and about some of the questions the interviewers would be likely to ask me. One evening, in fact, we sat down to go through the job posting line-by-line, to make sure that I could speak to every single point in it. As we talked, I kept getting ideas for things I wanted to say in the professional blog I'm writing; so I'd hop up and write myself a note for later, then come back and we'd go on to the next point. 

One thing I realized while watching myself do this is how much I actually enjoy the professional work I've been doing all these years, and how proud I am of the mastery that I've acquired with so many years of experience. It's a tiny little corner of the business world, but I do it well and I like that. Also I've had time to develop a lot of really strong opinions about how the work should be done; and as you know too well by now, I also enjoy having strong opinions. So don't take any of my complaints about my work too seriously, because they are a long way from the whole story.

The other thing I noticed is that at a certain point Marie suddenly got very quiet. This looked like a danger sign; I took it to mean that this part of the discussion had gone on too long, and I was getting too self-absorbed. So I wrapped up our review of the job posting and we went on to something else. Probably we went to bed. And in the morning, I asked her about it. What was wrong? Was there something going on with you that I was ignoring, or failing to pick up on?

No, she said. But as we had that animated conversation going over your job posting, I realized it was exactly the way I had always fantasized our interactions would be whenever I imagined us working together on something. That part was really great, but the flip side is I realized it's only going to happen very rarely because we're never going to be together that often.

Yes and no, I answered. The only part I've clearly said "No" to is living together as if married. We won't have that. But the way we talked last night wasn't based on living together. We can still collaborate on things, build them together, build on each other's contributions. We can still do all of that. And once we come to a long-term agreement about how to pay for travel, we can set up some kind of regular schedule for seeing each other. So don't despair.

I'm not sure if I was able to convince her not to despair -- sometimes I think that's asking a lot for Marie -- but she did cheer up after that. Baby steps.

There's probably not much to say about the hiking or cooking we did. And the sex deserves a post of its own.