"You have his Voice"

I spent last weekend visiting my mom. It was very pleasant. Saturday we spent with Brother and SIL, and also a friend of Brother's from school that I know tangentially as well. Then Sunday was just Mother and me. We shopped, we cooked, and we talked. It was low-key and enjoyable.

One of the things we talked about was my dad. I advanced a number of the ideas that I have sketched out here: for example, that he strove to entertain people because he felt unsafe around them, and making them laugh was a way to ensure his safety; and that much of this feeling stemmed from his experience as a little kid, being bullied at school and being dominated by his mother (who was a whirlwind of energy). (See the discussion here and especially here for more details.) Also that he became an actor because he discovered that he was already spending every waking minute acting anyway, so why not do it formally for applause and (maybe) money? (Again, I discuss this point here.) Also that it was really, really important to him that people like him.

My mother agreed with every single one of these insights! And we told stories for a few minutes about how really good he was at entertaining people.

"You can never see inside someone else's relationship"

Sometimes I carry on imaginary conversations in my head. Maybe you do it too.

This evening, for example, over dinner, I was carrying on a conversation with my sons (an imaginary conversation in my head) about some of the more … outlandish … features of my marriage to Wife. (You knew it was outlandish, right? That wasn't a surprise? See for example this exchange with Jane, starting in the comments here.) So I imagined one of them asking, "Why did you put up with that?"

In my mind I stewed for a while, looking for a pithy-yet-profound answer but failing to find it. But then I fell back on the formula I put in the title of this post: "You can never see inside someone else's relationship,"

This is an insight I remember Wife coming to long ago, maybe in the first five years of our marriage, or close enough. The background is that from time to time she would sit around with one of her old friends, and they would complain about their respective relationships (or, in at least Wife's case, marriages). And what Wife found in those conversations was this:

• On the one hand, she would hear friends describe some behavior on the part of their partners that sounded to her like instant show-stoppers. She would tell her friends, "No joke, but if Hosea ever did that I would be out of his life forever so fast it would make his head spin." And her friends would invariably say, "OK, sure, I see your point, but in this case it's different."
• On the other hand, when she would complain about something I had done (or failed to do), the exact same conversation would play out with only the dramatis personae flipped.

She concluded, reasonably enough, that you can never know for sure where another couple have or will set the boundary lines—what they accept, and what they think goes just too far.

Of course there's a risk here. Sometimes the partner's bad behavior rises to the level of abuse. Sometimes it's not that every couple has their own incommunicable framework, but that one partner is a predator and the other has lost the will to resist. Trust me, these things happen. And I assume there is some grey area where it's not clear which of the two explanations is better.

But I think the basic insight is a good one.      

               

Kalyāṇamitra

I learned a new word in Sangha tonight: kalyāṇamitra. Thich Nhat Hanh uses it in the book we are reading. He glosses it as "a friend who is wise, a friend who has light—a true spiritual friend. This friend might already be very close to you but you haven't been able to recognize them." [Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, p. 146.]

Oh, … I think I recognize her. (Her, not them!) But I'm always glad to know a new word.

          

Don't ask a question unless you want the answer

Last month I talked about things that it might be kind of nice to do, but that I wasn't doing because I wasn't really doing anything. One of these was, "I imagine it might be nice to publish the book I've written related to the work I used to do as a day job." As I've explained before (for example, here in some detail) I've written the damned thing, and I've talked to several people about how to publish it. But I've taken no action. And in fact the day before I posted "Becalmed," I had wasted some time by asking the Tarot how it would go if I tried to publish with this or that person. I couldn't make anything of the results.

But you may also remember a little over a year ago when I was still wrestling with whether to find a job, I asked a woman on the Internet (Kimberly Steele) who reads Ogham what her reading said I should do. (And she said no, I shouldn't be looking for a regular job.) Why not ask her again? At least it's a way to delay having to make a decision or take any concrete action, … right? What could go wrong?

Becalmed, 3

I also think I'm drinking too much.

My cough has certainly made this easier to do. If I sit up late writing a blog post (like I'm doing right now) my cough will start to ramp up. And it's so easy to pour myself something to soothe my throat. In this post a couple weeks ago, I called that an excuse, but that overstates the case. Swallowing anything will temporarily dispel the urge to cough, and thick liquids work better than thin ones. (This means spirits work better than water, since I'm not going to sit here sipping maple syrup.) Also, while the alcohol doesn't prevent me from coughing, its anesthetic properties certainly make my throat feel better afterwards. If only I could metabolize away all the booze ten minutes after I swallowed it, then it would be a great solution. Too bad it doesn't work that way.

But I started tracking how much I drink each night, a little over two years ago. And, taken as a whole, the six weeks since I got back from Scotland have been heavier than any comparable period since I started keeping the records. I can't speak to the years before that, but still.

I have not gotten to the point where it interferes with any of my regular obligations. But of course, as I pointed out before, I don't have a lot of those right now. 

Maybe I should just go to bed. Night-night.   

          

Becalmed, 2

Tuesday evening, the UU Sangha that I join was reading from Thich Nhat Hanh's posthumous Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet for our dharma study. (Yes, we were reading the same book six months ago. Good catch. We usually read pretty slowly.) And as we read it, I began to feel like the book was echoing themes from my earlier post of this name, but treating them differently. I began to feel like I should re-read the passage and think about it or meditate on it, because it might help me.

Of course I didn't actually do that. After Sangha was over I spent the rest of the evening far less productively. But my scribbled note to myself is still sitting on my desk, scowling at me. Maybe I should give it a try.

Debbie and the paranormal, part 2

Following on from the earlier post by this name (last month), I remember once maybe a couple years ago, when I was trying to decide what to do after losing my job and also wondering if my retirement savings would last for the rest of my life.

At one point I was discussing these questions with Debbie, and she said, "You know, I've got a feeling that you have a lot of years ahead of you yet … and also that you are going to spend a lot of that time writing."

Of course that doesn't necessarily mean that she's right, does it?

Or maybe I'd better get to work. (grumble, grumble) Just saying.