Christmas at home

Just a few words about Christmas.

We collected at Mother's house on the 24th—that's me, Brother, and SIL. Brother and SIL spent hours cooking for the next day. I got there later and brought a shitload of wine. I … actually don't remember what we had for dinner the night of the 24. I know we had to improvise something at the last minute. We all joked over having a house full of food and "nothing to eat"—nothing that wasn't already slated for the next day, that is. But we scraped together something. And we had wine to drink—I'd brought plenty, so there was some for that night too. After dinner, Brother and I put up the outside lights along the front edges of the roof.

Dictionnaire d'amour

"I sometimes wished someone would invent a dictionnaire d'amour—a lover's dictionary listing all the weird and wonderful ways in which humans show their love. An inordinate number of men choose to repair things; other people frantically rebuff compliments, and still others stubbornly conceal their love so as not to pester anyone. A dictionary—yes! Of course, it could never be comprehensive."

⸻ from Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers, p. 24

I got this book last week, as a Christmas present from Debbie. So naturally I have to wonder, … is "buying someone a book of fiction in which the story is actually narrated by Love" one of these "weird and wonderful ways" that would show up in such a dictionary?

See also choices like this movie here, not to mention our further discussion here or any of the posts that come after it.

          

A year later

A little more than a year ago, I visited Son 1 and Wife in Chapter Two of this long post here, to bring them their Christmas presents and check in. Today I did the same thing. This is the first time I've seen Wife since that visit, and it's close to the first time I've seen Son 1, as well. (He came to town once during the summer for something else and asked if he could park at my apartment because parking was going to be hard to find. We probably exchanged a dozen words—surely no more than two dozen—while he was coming and going and using my bathroom.)

So I looked back at that post before writing this one, to compare and contrast. Sure enough, I can do both.

Paying for Paris

I'm going to post this in real-time, the evening I write it, and not back-date it to go with the rest of the Paris posts. It wasn't really a "theme" during the vacation itself. And it only got resolved in the last few days. So it can sit out here in December as an outlier.

Two weeks in Paris aren't going to be cheap, no matter how you do it. We went in November (not "high season" and therefore cheaper). We stayed in "cheap and cheerful" accommodations in the Quartier Latin, rather than more upscale tourist digs. We didn't go to the Moulin Rouge, or any other expensive entertainment. And still, it … wasn't cheap. Paris never is. 

"Odiosa Ergo Vera"

Just found this on Twitter. I don't know if I believe it, but I love that the author bothered to put it in Latin. (You can find the original here.)

Kulak's First Principle, eh? Fine by me.

Unproductive

I've fallen into a pattern in my days that's really unproductive.

I get up late, because I stayed up too late the night before. Sometimes I'm mildly hung over. That is to say, I'm not badly hung over—not to the point where my head hurts and my mouth feels foul and living is unpleasant. No, not at all. Nothing like that. Just to the point where I'm sluggish, and unimaginative, and uninspired … just to the point where I can't quite muster the gumption to do anything more ambitious that to doomscroll* Twitter.

What's wrong with the Five Mindfulness Trainings?

Last night, the Unitarian Sangha that I belong to recited the Five Mindfulness Trainings. This is something we do every month or two. The Five Mindfulness Trainings are Thích Nhất Hạnh's recasting or interpretation of the Five Buddhist Precepts. They also serve as the entryway into the Order of Interbeing. (See also this link here.) So they are kind of a big deal for the Plum Village Tradition of Buddhism.

Overall, or at a high level, I don't really have a problem with the Five Mindfulness Trainings—that is, if you see them basically as injunctions to be a nice person and don't look too closely at the details. But you all know me by now. When have I been able to avoid looking at the details? And when you subject them to that level of scrutiny, … well … there are issues with them. Problems. Things that don't make sense, or that really should be worded a different way. 

Things that I can't fully agree with.

Now, any member of the Plum Village Tradition will be quick to tell you that the Five Mindfulness Trainings are precepts—often they take this to mean suggestions or advice—and not commandments, strictly speaking. In principle they won't insist that you stick to every jot and tittle; but they will tell you that the closer you can come to abiding by these, the less suffering you will feel in your life and therefore the happier you will be. Well and good. At the same time, I don't feel that most of them want to hear the flaws—the misconceptions or simple errors—that I find in them. So you're going to have to hear them instead.

The fragility of the self-absorbed

This afternoon I saw "Maestro," with Bradley Cooper playing Leonard Bernstein. It's not really a straight biopic (you should excuse the pun), but focuses specifically on his relationship with his wife Felicia … and therefore it shows us something of his many affairs (without cataloguing them or always bothering to give us names). Men and women both, of course, although it looks like the men outnumbered the women. At one point he meets friends on the street in New York: they are a young couple carrying their new baby, at whom Lenny coos and makes suitable noises. Then he bends down as if to address the baby very seriously and says, "You know, I've slept with both your mommy and your daddy!"

I also found myself thinking about the dynamics of having any kind of a relationship with a very self-absorbed person. Lenny appears to ignore Felicia for years; but when she gets sick (she died of cancer in 1978) it hits him like a pile-driver. And I reflected that Wife fought tooth and nail for decades to be "free" of what she saw as my overbearing domination; but when I said "OK fine, I'm going" she crumpled and was utterly lost. It's not an easy dynamic to understand.

Of course, Wife was never a world-famous conductor, either.

It's late, and I can't think of anything insightful to say. So I'll stop here. Maybe I'll think of something more in the next few days. But the comparison did strike me.

          

Why not to bring your whole self to work

Way more articulate than anything I've said on the subject. Agree 100%.

You can find the post on Twitter at this link here.

Failure upon failure

Decades ago, back when I was in school, I thought that "success" meant getting good grades and the approval of my teachers. That belief pretty much guttered out when I left graduate school with a stack of Incompletes, partly because I didn't really want to be there and partly because Wife had a new boyfriend.

Time went on. After a while, I began to think that "Success" meant keeping my marriage together, doing OK in my job, and buying a house. Of course that belief ran aground when I decided I had to leave the marriage, and when we later sold the house.

On cannibalism

I forget whether I ever mentioned this, but last spring Son 1 asked me for $1000 because Wife had stuck him with an unexpected bill on the excuse that she was doing him a favor. I gave him the money but warned him that with it would come a certain amount of advice. There followed an email telling him how to set up a budget (to which I got no response). Several months later I sent him a second email, about how to disentangle his affairs from Wife's, so that if she declares bankruptcy it doesn't pull him down too. (I got no response to this one either.) Finally last night I sent him a third installment:

Some day, the people at your work might offer you a promotion that includes a relocation. Depending on how things are going at home, you might feel obligated to turn it down because if you move to Greenland or Langley or Some-place-I've-never-heard-of then that might be tough for your Mom.

ADVICE: NEVER TURN DOWN A PROMOTION. If you do, chances are that they won't ask a second time: they'll just pass on to the next guy. And if the promotion means moving to Greenland or Langley or Wherever, that's normal in your line of work. And you need to prioritize YOUR life, not someone else's.