Debbie is in town

Debbie has been in my state since the 12th, visiting family and friends. She has been here in Beautiful City since a week later, arriving the evening of the 19th. 

Whenever Debbie and I see each other, I always notify Marie ahead of time. But this time I somehow forgot to say anything until we texted each other the morning of the 20th about getting together later in the day. Then I suddenly thought, "Oh shit!" and sent Marie a quick email with all the plans that I knew about up till then.

Hey love,

Just a note that I forgot to mention before. Debbie's visiting [this state] for a couple weeks. She was in [another city] for a while, and last night drove all the way [here], where she's staying in the house of some of her friends from [the UU church that hosts our Sangha]. I have not seen her yet. 

I got a text from her this morning, and she has come down with a cold (ugh) but is testing negative for COVID. So we might have dinner or something, if we can find a place with tables outside. I forget how long she is in town, but this is not her last stop. (Sometime next week she'll go on retreat with a Buddhist Fellowship that she's connected to, down in Big City.) But I think she's here for a few days.

As I say, I didn't think about it when you and I were talking, because it was driven clean out of my head by our exciting discussion of [your current writing project]. (Actually I mean that seriously!) But when I got her text a few minutes ago, I remembered that I should drop you a note before seeing her. (And as noted, if we can find a suitable set of tables that probably means dinner-time.)

So far, so good. And all of it was true, as of the time I sent it. Marie replied briefly.

Oh, thank you for keeping me posted, love!!!

Very considerate of you.  I hope you do get the opportunity!

Blast from the past: The Baptists and the rest of us

I've explained how Wife started attending Christian churches, and how she ended up at an Evangelical Baptist church. (OK, strictly speaking I don't have a story about how she ended up there in particular. But she was church-shopping, and that's the one she settled on.) I've told you a story which let you know that the Senior Pastor was willing to go out on a limb and try something unusual. How did the rest of us end up there?

[What follows is an account based on a long email I wrote to Marie in May of 2016, with minor additions or adjustments where suitable.]

Once Wife settled on a church, she started asking us to go with her. The boys had no special interest, but they were still little kids at this point. Clearly it wasn't up to them. I had no special interest either. Wife insisted that it made her look bad if we didn't come with her. I told her this was silly, but I didn't have the vocabulary to explain that the whole idea was absurd. Really, Babe, it's not all about you.

Now, this was while I was out of work. [Let's call it 2003.] And Wife was being particularly unsupportive: indeed, it felt like not only did I have to be looking for work 8 hours a day but I had to be managing her anxiety (and her consequent shrewishness and regular threats to divorce me) something like 16 hours a day. It wasn't much fun. Anyway, I finally sat her down to talk earnestly, and made a deal with her: I would attend church with her (and put the boys in Sunday School) if she would commit to behaving in a Christ-like way. (And of course I meant this in the sense that her church was teaching her to understand the word "Christ-like": I certainly didn't want her to behave like the rabble-rouser who smashed up the tables of the money-changers in the Temple!) She said she didn't think she could possibly do that; I said "Of course not, not under your own power. So if you succeed in doing it anyway, that's proof that God is helping you; and in that case God must be real and I'm willing to go to church." Well, the bargain didn't hold forever—after a while she had started an everything-but-physical-sex emotional affair with the Lead Tenor in the church choir—but for a while it bought me a bit of peace. So sure, hell, why not? Besides, this gave me a whole new vocabulary with which to try to talk her out of her crazier and more destructive behaviors.

 [Now that I think about it, I give the details of the contract itself in this post here. Go read it. But I don't talk about the aftermath.]

Blast from the past: Stigmata

Strictly speaking this story isn't necessary to explain how we ended up attending a Baptist church for a few years. That story will be adequately covered by the previous post and the next one. But it fits nicely between them, because it took place after Wife had started regularly attending the Evangelical Baptist Church near us, and before the rest of us started attending as well. And maybe—just maybe—it might help add some layers of nuance to the generally dismal and dispiriting picture that I have painted of Wife in this blog. (See also, for example, this post here.)

One Sunday morning, Wife left for church at the normal time. By this time she had passed through the Pentecostal churches of he church-shopping phase, and had settled down at an Evangelical Baptist church not too far away from us. While she was gone, the boys and I did whatever we did. I assume they played in the back of the house somewhere. I might have done the breakfast dishes, or just sat in the living room to read.

At more or less the usual time, Wife's car pulled back into our driveway, a little sloppily. A minute or two went by. Then Wife opened the door and came out of the car, stumbling and lurching as if she were drunk. She got up to our stoop, came in the front door, and lurched her way into the living room, where she collapsed on the sofa. Her speech was not very coherent. And when I went over to ask if she was OK, I saw that the palms of her hands were a bloody mess.

So I wiped off her hands—I don't remember seeing a visible wound, or at least there was no fresh blood coming out once I cleaned them off—and asked her what happened. What follows is her story, as I remember it.

Blast from the past: Wife and the Baptists

Did I ever explain how Wife—who started our marriage as a Wiccan—ended up attending a Baptist church? I don't remember if I ever did, but it looks like I didn't. On the other hand, the other day I was looking through some of my old emails, and I found one of my old emails to Marie in which (among other things) I discussed about half of it. At the time I thought I should paste that into here, and then I realized I should go one step further and give you the whole story. Or as much of it as I can remember these many years later.

So this all started in … well, I think it was the early 2000's. Wife started getting terrible migraine headaches. Or rather, she'd always had migraine headaches from time to time, but they were getting worse and more frequent. So she went to her doctor, who ran some tests and finally took images of her head. When the images came back, he informed her that she was suffering from pseudotumor cerebri. This is a condition where some blockage in one of the vessels in her brain stopped the spinal fluid from draining out the way it should. So she was developing a pool of spinal fluid in her brain, that was acting like a brain tumor. It wasn't a real brain tumor, because it wasn't a growth of excess brain tissue. It was just a pool of spinal fluid. But it put pressure on the rest of the brain just like a brain tumor would have done. Hence the name "pseudotumor cerebri."

Great, so now Wife had a diagnosis. Heaven knows she collected diagnoses the way some people collect baseball cards, and now here was one more. So she asked her doctor what could be done about it? 

Her doctor suggested that she put her affairs in order.

Bad habits, 3

A couple days ago I got an idea for a post to write here, and it turns out I've already written it—or at any rate the first half of it. (You can find it here.) It was going to be about how I've gotten into a lot of bad habits lately. Self-destructive or suicidal habits, if I don't correct them. Habits that are guaranteed to shorten my lifespan. I'm too isolated from others. I don't exercise enough and I'm putting on weight again. My alcohol consumption is on its way up. (In 2021, I averaged 3.3 drinks per day; in 2022, 3.6; in 2023, 4.1; in 2024 to date, 5.2.) I do some volunteer work for the professional society that covers the profession I used to follow, but I feel grumpy and alienated about it. It's been months since I cleaned my apartment. And so on.

Why do I feel no push to do anything better?

Well, in a sense I do feel a little push. Otherwise I wouldn't feel bad about it and write you now. But it's not a strong enough push to overcome the lethargy that holds me in place.

Most immediately, I don't have anyone in my face, that I have to report to. I don't have anyone making me do anything. I'm sure Marie would be happy to offer to nag me if I asked her to, but I don't want to ask her to.

Besides, when I bang this drum too loudly there's another side of my brain that fights back. "Geez, what do you want, anyway? I already set myself a major life goal, and I hit it. Isn't that good enough? Can't I relax now?"

I think the answer is No, it's not really good enough. I think the answer is that, as long as I'm alive I should keep pushing forward.

But it sounds like a lot of work. 

          

Paying Alfred

I wrote you about getting a call from my old college buddy Alfred, who asked me for a couple thousand dollars. It took me a couple of days to come to a decision, but in the end I wrote him a check for $500. 

My analysis of his situation continues to be that there is a lot he isn't saying. As I explained in my last post, the story he gave doesn't work because the timing is wrong: he says he spent a bunch of money looking after his mother, but she died several years ago. What has he been doing since then, that has gotten him into a financial crunch NOW? The first time I asked this, I got an artful non-answer. When I pointed out that he hadn't answered—and also said, Fine, don't tell me, I don't need to know"—he added that yes, there was more to it: his tutoring business had fallen off during the pandemic. I did not bother to remind him that the pandemic was four years ago, so this explanation is as bad as the other. The timing is wrong. So one way or another, he is not telling the whole story. And if it is that important for him to hide parts of the story, those parts must be pretty ugly. I assume that it's probably something like drugs, gambling, or—at the absolute best—skull-cracking financial stupidity.

How did I make my decision? Partly I just sat and mulled. And partly I read Tarot for it. You recall that I started reading Tarot something like three years ago. What's more, even if you think that the cards really are random, there is an advantage for someone like me—who is often afflicted with indecision—to use an external tool like the Tarot to come to closure. Sometimes, after all, any decision is better than no decision. (For a more thorough account of the mechanisms by which divination works—including at least two mechanisms that even the most hardened skeptic would acknowledge—see this article from October 2016 by John Michael Greer.) I won't reproduce pictures for all the cards that I laid out, but I asked a number of questions and the answers seemed pretty consistent.

If you think that reading Tarot is dumb, feel free to skip the rest of this post. (Though there is a little more narrative towards the end.)

An odd phone call

I got a peculiar phone call yesterday morning. It was from a guy I knew in college—so, forty-some years ago. We were buddies then, but I've really had almost no communication with him since. Oh—one exception: when I went to my fortieth class reunion two years ago (as mentioned briefly in this post), he was active in planning the event so I communicated with him a fair bit in the run-up to the reunion. And we chatted several times at the reunion itself, catching up on the last forty years. Although … now that I think about it, he really didn't tell me much about his life, or his circumstances. But he was good at asking conversational questions.

I'm going to have to give this fellow a name, so let me call him Alfred, after the great Alfred E. Neuman. (There are … reasons … that this isn't a crazy name to choose.) Anyway, Alfred sent me a text message Friday asking for a call over the weekend. He said he wanted my advice urgently on something. So we set up a call for 10:00 am on Saturday. He was cordial and pleasant, asking after my news and then asking what other college alumni I'm still in touch with. I told him I talk to Marie and to Schmidt, and he asked about them. Then he asked about my professional work, and about my professional opinion about a topic that has been in the news a lot lately. By this time we had spent almost an hour in conversation, and it felt like we hadn't gotten to the point yet.

Then he asked me for money.

Why publish?

This post follows on from one I wrote two months ago, called "Why Write?"

I woke up at 3:30 this morning and toddled into the bathroom. While I was there, I put something together.

You all know that I've long had a fantasy of writing and publishing stuff. (See, for example, oh I don't know, maybe here and here—or, more recently, here and here.) You know that sometimes I have played with the idea of letting it all go and forgetting about it. (See, for example, here.) And you remember that more recently I have gotten external advice that says, No, you actually need to get your ass in gear and do it. (See especially here.) Not that I've made any progress, but it's the latest input I've gotten.

But why? In the long run, what does it matter? In my earlier post "Why Write?" I quoted one expert on self-publication that there are two reasons to publish: Money and Fame. But I don't really need the money (though of course it would be nice). And remember what Anne Roiphe says about fame:

That is the moment I began to despise the idea of fame. What does it do for the bearer of the laurel? Who cares if your name is in the paper? Who cares if you are mentioned as one of the top-ten cyclists, boxers, batters, painters, poets, artists, fly fishermen in the world? Who cares if your name is written in history books? …. Jack wanted to be Michelangelo painting on the ceiling, lying on his back on the scaffolding. Good old Michelangelo. Good for us who stare up at the hand of God reaching toward Adam. But actually Michelangelo doesn't know that crowds line up and pay good money to enter the room to see his masterpiece, and if he had known, would his breakfast have tasted any better, his loves been any stronger, his life any longer?

So why bother? Who needs it? And in particular, why does Kimberly's ogham say I have to get it done?

I think it's not because there's anything special about writing, nor about publication. It's not because there's necessarily anything special about achievement, per se. The problem is with me.

Jack and Jill have moved away

Jack and Jill moved out some time last week or the week before. I'm not quite sure when. Today the couple that used to be my downstairs neighbors (in this post, for example) started to move into their place.

Of course it's more complicated than that. The couple that I'm calling my "downstairs neighbors"—they need names, so how about if I call them Rick and Rory?—moved away a year or two ago, because they needed more space. When they moved out, Jack and Jill rented the apartment that Rick and Rory had just vacated, to use it as a "guest room" when one or the other set of in-laws visited. So actually it has been empty much of the time. 

Then a few months ago, Jack and Jill finally bought a house. Coincidentally, Rick and Rory were going to have to leave their new place for some reason that I don't remember. They posted on Facebook to ask if anyone knew of a place they could rent. Jill saw their post and called them to ask, "Hey, do you want our place? We bought a house, so we'll be moving out soon." And so it worked out.

There's more. You remember the apartment downstairs from me, that Jack and Jill rented as a "guest room"? They haven't relinquished that yet. See, they want to do a bunch of remodeling on their house, but the permitting process here takes forever. So they have moved into the new house without the remodeling done (so that Rick and Rory could move in); but when the permits are finally approved (maybe in a few months more) they plan to move out of the house and into the apartment while the remodeling and reconstruction is done. Then finally, when all the dust has settled (literally and figuratively), Jack and Jill will move back into their house and relinquish the apartment downstairs from me. When she described all this to me, Jill estimated that that transition might be a couple years in the future yet.

What will this mean for me? I don't know. Of course it means that the crazy parties Jack and Jill regularly throw will all have a different venue. But that won't really affect me because I haven't been going to them for a while. There was a while when I was sneaking out of them (such as here and here); and then, logically enough, Jack and Jill stopped inviting me. I don't resent that: it was the obvious thing for them to do, and I'm less uncomfortable as a result. I don't remember Rick and Rory socializing quite as ostentatiously when they were here before, but the have friends. And those friends did visit from time to time. I guess we'll see.

Of course, I've become such a hermit these days that it really doesn't matter how much or how often they entertain. It's not likely to affect me one way or the other. I'm coming to think this profound solitude is a bad thing, but I don't know what I want to do about it.

               

This ad really happened to us!

I saw this advertisement—for gun control, apparently—yesterday or the day before. Probably it was on Twitter, though I'm no longer sure. But it really happened at our house, when Son 1 and Son 2 were little.

Fortunately the dildo in question wasn't as … shapely … as the ones in the commercial. It was purely cylindrical, with no distinguishing features. Yes, it had batteries, but the boys assumed that it was "an automatic sword!" (I think they meant "electric," but no matter.) Anyway, they found it under Wife's side of the bed, and started jumping on our bed playing with it. Wife was out of the house somewhere; I think I was in the study paying bills. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that after a minute or so I shooed them out to play somewhere else on the grounds that jumping on the bed was against the rules. They dropped the "electric sword" and I put it back.

I forget whether I ever told Wife what happened.

                

Do men profit from marriage?

The second depressing article I read this evening was a long LinkedIn post under the heading "LES HOMMES NE PROFITENT PAS DU MARIAGE" ["Men don't profit from marriage"]. The English translation runs like this,

MEN DON'T PROFIT FROM MARRIAGE

1. He's 70 years old.

2. He has retired from active work.

3. He worked all his life to raise his children.

4. He has deprived himself of the pleasures of life to pay for expensive school fees and living expenses for his children.

5. They are now well-off in Europe, Australia, America, etc.

6. His wife, 62 years old, moved to live with their children.

7. He stays alone at home.

8. His children hardly call him.

9. He must start the single life again.

10. He fights high blood pressure and other ailments related to old age.

11. How long will he survive alone?

12. This is the reality for most monogamous working-class men: their old age is often lonely and, in many cases, sad.

13. No matter how good the man is, women tend to love their children more than their husbands. The older he gets, the less they seem to serve him.

14. So, what do men really benefit from marriage?

15. They sacrifice so much but receive little recognition for their hard work, while the woman seems to reap all the benefits.

It's a man's world, they said, but it's really for women and children. Dear men, this could be your situation over the next few decades. What are you doing about it? What is your retirement plan?

Take care of yourself as much as your family. Love yourself.

Learn or perish.

Again, really depressing—not least because there are elements in the description that could apply to me and to my life.

Does divorce make women hotter?

Wow, browsing the Internet this evening I ran across two really depressing articles.

The first is from The Free Press. It's an article by Kat Rosenfield that asks women, "Does Divorce Make You Hotter?" And apparently there is a whole theme in our culture today dedicated to the proposition that divorce is empowering and "badass". Not some divorces, mind you. Not divorces from abusive bums who put their wives' lives at risk. But all divorces, divorces in general, Divorce as such. And it is empowering because once divorced, a woman can attend costume parties in her lingerie, drink Jell-O shots, and look for handsome young men to fuck. I guess this is what empowerment looks like.

To be fair, the author of the article doesn't buy this definition of empowerment, and recognizes that divorce can come with a lot of anguish and regret as well. Some of the comments on the article seem to assume that she is endorsing the opinions she describes, but honestly she makes it obvious that she is merely diagnosing.

For my part, I can't imagine why anyone would find divorce exciting or empowering. It might be necessary—I still believe that my own separation from Wife was necessary—but it is always a kind of failure. It is true that I have written about the virtue of normalizing failure (see here, for example), and at a philosophical level I still think that kind of detachment can help. But that is a far cry from glamorizing or celebrating the thing.

Maybe I don't have a lot to say that the author hasn't already said, or at least implied. But I find it depressing that this attitude exists in the world for her to write about.