Quick notes

I use this blog, among other things, as a diary to record major events in my life, Of course I also write about my thoughts, if any.

But sometimes the events run way ahead of my ability to write about them.

So, for example:

• In the month of October, I flew to Debbie's state to join her at a UU silent meditation retreat. Then we visited for a couple days before I came back. I wrote about all this.
• But way back in July, just a month after I flew to the Ecosophian conference, I traveled to visit Marie for a week. I didn't write about that. I'm not sure I had anything important to say, but still.
• The week after I got home from Debbie's [this is October again], I traveled to visit another conference where John Michael Greer was speaking. After having met him in Providence—and after having given a talk at the meet-up there—I waved when I saw him here. I even engaged him in conversation, for a few minutes. He gave exactly NO sign of recognizing me from four months before, but I suppose that comes with the territory once you become a celebrity.
• At the very end of October, Marie flew to join a Jane Austen conference, and I traveled to join her there. It was fun enough, I guess. Again, no special insights, I guess.

Meanwhile, I've been thinking about the project of publishing my book.

• You remember that Kimberly Steele told me I have to get it published. "... go forward no matter how absurd and hopeless it may feel at times.... Basically getting this thing out into general circulation is going to be an act of will that will act as one of your major tests in your life."
• So last spring [three years after the advice from Kimberly] I decided, This is the year.
• Watching the process since then, I think I have figured out why it is one of the major tests in my life.
• The whole point is to determine (i.e., to "test") whether I can carry out a major project as an act of pure will.
• I've done big things before, e.g., in school, where I had the pressure of teachers and fellow students and grades to get my ass in gear.
• I succeeded in raising my sons, when I had their faces in front of me and I had to react to real-life situations.
• I succeeded in marrying—and then in leaving—Wife, though in both cases I was more or less in extremis emotionally before anything happened.
• But today I have no one else pushing me. I have no outside pressure to do anything at all. Can I still get something done?
• The answer seems to be, Maybe. But it is really hard. 
• One after another, I have passed milestones in the book-publishing process. But they don't pass easily. I would like to blame delays on the editor I have hired, but no such luck. Whenever there are significant delays, they come from me. This way or that, I piss away my time rather than getting stuff done.
• I set myself a deadline. At this point, I am no longer sure I'll make it. (Back in the summer, it looked easy.)
• But I have come to realize, the deadline isn't the only fact. More important is whether I finish at all. And if this book takes too long, I will learn from the experience (at least) so that the next one can go faster.
• Which is stronger? My laziness, or my stubbornness?
• Honestly, it is a difficult question. But I think my stubbornness is even stronger than my laziness. I may finish it late, but one way or another I expect to finish the blasted thing.

I'll write more about it after I have.

           

Daylight savings time ends again

 

Catching up with Son2

I got a phone call this morning from Son2. It has been a while since we talked, and it was great to hear from him.

Most of his news was about how Wife is settling into her new digs. (See here, here, and here, for example.) And his summary answer was, Actually pretty well, all things considered.

Her new space is full enough to be homey, but empty enough to be kept clean. (Wife keeps asking if he can rent a trailer to collect the rest of her stuff, and he keeps declining to do so.) She has her sewing machine so she can make things, but none of the ($10,000 worth of) equipment she bought a few years ago to set up a home business that never went anywhere. She has set up new doctors (always a big job any time she moves). She no longer has two different car insurance policies that she is paying on. (Why two? He has no idea.) 

And Son2 has taught her how to use Google Maps.

That last point is huge. For all the 30 years of our marriage, Wife was helpless with maps. If she had to go somewhere unfamiliar, either I drove her there or I wrote out a page of instructions. The boys have mostly just driven her, especially as her driving has gotten worse. Years ago I bought her a GPS device for her car, though heaven only knows where it is today. But somehow Son2 has been patient enough to teach her how to read maps. Hallelujah.

He talked for a while about what it is like to communicate with her, and he says he has been testing different approaches scientifically to see what works. Sometimes it seems like extended A/B testing. For example, he asked me, Does it sometimes seem like she says something specifically to trigger you to yell at her, so that she can be a victim of your yelling?

Oh yes, I told him. That's an old pattern. Then I described the kind of argument I sketched out for you in this blog 18 years ago, in this post here.

He made affirmative noises and then said that he has tried various kinds of answers that don't engage with the fight. [At the same time I couldn't help but think of John Michael Greer's observation that many people don't want to be happpy, and you can tell because whenever they get into a happy situation they ruin it as fast as possible. So does Wife actually want to be all the time fighting?] She has accused him of trying to control her behavior by setting boundaries for himself. And of course he pointed out that this accusation can only make sense if you start from the assumption—as Wife does—that she is always perfectly passive and uniquely a victim. Whatever someone else does to her counts as aggresssion, and whatever she does—either in response or on her own initiative—is a baseline kind of activity that is utterly unremarkable.

One technique that he says he has learned is to distract her from venting about someone by praising her for something related instead. If she starts complaining about some eveil deed by her rotten insurance company, he might say, "I'm really impressed with how you've been following up on that issue so consistently. I know it's difficult, but it is really making a difference." Sometimes this succeeds in throwing her off her complaint, so that she's not sure what to say next.

There were other examples, but I don't remember them right now. I did tell him, more than once, that I am really impressed that he has started learning how to navigate these dynamics now, in his twenties. I think I was in my forties before I made much progress. (Hell, I was in my forties when I first started this blog!) Of course, he and his brother both had my failures to communicate with Wife as an example to measure against. And Son2 suggested that not only has he learned from my failures, but from Son1's as well. Studying failure scientifically in order to learn what might work better is definitely the philosopher's approach. So I'm glad to see it.

        

Talking about kissing

A couple of days after I came home from visiting Debbie, we talked over Zoom. Of course there wasn't a lot of news to talk about after just a day or two. But then Debbie asked if we could practice Beginning Anew.

Beginning Anew is a practice from the Plum Village tradition of Buddhism. The point is to practice it when somebody has hurt you, so that you can get back into a good state with him. (You can find information about it online, for example here, here, or here.)

Of course I said that would be fine, but I was a little concerned. Had I done something to upset her?

So we began. The first step in Beginning Anew is "flower watering." Each of you describes things about the other that you love, value, or respect. So we did. Then each of you expresses any regrets you have in the relationship. And each of us came up with something that we (respectively) had done badly or unskillfully in the last week.

The third and fourth steps are to express hurts and ask for help. And Debbie said she was uncomfortable with the way we kiss, because we still sometimes kiss on the mouth.

Whoops.

Of course we do—I mean, we have been, ever since we got back in touch with each other after taking a break for a couple of years. I noted at the time that our kisses were "perfectly chaste" except that our lips touched. I think I've remarked on it since then, too. And I guarantee it hasn't all been at my initiative. When I was joking with Debbie in Glencoe, Scotland, and she caught me around the waist for a kiss, she certainly aimed for my lips. This is part of what gives our relationship the frisson that it has, that makes it feel like I have two girlfriends and not just one.

At the same time, Debbie has expressed reservations about it before. (See, for example, here.) She worries that we are doing something behind Marie's back. She worries that she is encouraging me to philander. I don't see it that way, and I have told her so before. I also recognize that if she weren't so conscientious on this specific point, she would probably be sloppier than she is about other ethical issues as well, and I wouldn't love her so much. So I don't argue with her or complain about her point of view. It simply is what it is.

What I told her in real time is that I had never meant to make her uncomfortable, and that I drew the line between romantic kissing and the other kind in a slightly different place: viz., on whether the kiss involved open mouths or closed ones. I joked that this meant no more than that I had calibrated the topic a quarter inch to the left of where she calibrated it. But now that I understand that touching lips makes her uncomfortable, of course I'll stop. 

Sigh.  

It was delightful while it lasted.

           

"I miss you already."

I left Debbie's house for the airport yesterday about 2:30 in the afternoon—far earlier than I "needed" to leave for my flight, but it gave me plenty of time to return the rental car, and so on.

Part of why I left when I did is that her grandsons were about to arrive home from school, at which point her afternoon gets pretty structured until dinner time. By leaving when I did, I think I made things just a tiny bit simpler for her.

Three hours later, she sent me a text saying, "I miss you already. It was wonderful to spend a few days with you."

Of course such things are always delightful to read. But right away I began to wonder, What about me? Do I miss her already? My temporizing answer in the moment was that it was a little hard to say, because I was still in-transit, and was therefore thinking about the travel rather than about How I Felt in any more general way. But in another sense—deeper, and longer-term—I already knew that the answer was, No, not really. 

Am I a cad?

I can't admit this without recognizing that it speaks badly of me. Isn't this the basic meaning of the word cad, a man who toys with the affections of women without himself getting involved?* Am I no better than a cad?

Don't get me wrong. I love her dearly. She is one of a tiny number of people that I got to know deeply as soon as we met. (Chris is another. Dale may be another. But I'm no longer in touch with either of them in any meaningful way.) Debbie is, in a way that reaches far beyond romance, one of the great loves of my life.

But being around other people is tiring. At least for me. Figuring out what to say, what not to say, how to act—all that takes work! It's better with Debbie than with many others, in that I can afford to admit to things that are truly embarrassing (as she does, to me). And I have said before that years ago each of us gave the other "the right to say it wrong." All of these things are blessings, and I am grateful for them. At the same time, there are still limits. You remember the last two or three posts before this one? (I mean here, here, and maybe here.) Part of why I wrote them into an anonymous blog is that I didn't feel comfortable discussing them directly with Debbie in real life.

A month ago I speculated, "Maybe I need to fall in love [with somebody brand-new]. Maybe the NRE would drive me to get my ass in gear. Too bad I'm way too old for any of the equipment to work any more." But then I reflect that I may never let myself be that vulnerable to someone else again—maybe from old emotional scarring, and maybe because being emotionally open and vulnerable is just too damned much work.  

__________

* See, for example, the definition given by Words Defined, in this entry here: "A 'cad' is typically under­stood to refer to a man who behaves dishonorably or unethically, particularly in matters of romance or social relationships. It implies a lack of respect for others’ feelings, often associated with deceitful or exploitative behavior."      

      

"If they ever weigh you at school, tell me."

Last night Debbie and I had dinner (again) with Mattie and the kids. (R was somewhere else until later.) Older Brother, who is eight years old and in third grade, was telling about his day in school. In PE they did tests to see if they are healthy.

What kinds of tests? They had to repeat some kind of activity a certain number of iterations within a specified time. I was never clear if it was running back and forth between two spots, or something else. Anyway, he explained that eight-year-old boys were supposed to do it 19 times, and he did it 21 times. I figured that was the point of the story, so I congratulated him on being healthy.

But Mattie was concerned that he had specified 19 repetitions as the goal for eight-year-old boys. Surely he meant "students"? 

Older Brother replied with total seriousness that no, the goal for eight-year-old girls was lower. He didn't remember exactly what it was, but he did remember that even the goal for nine-year-old girls was only 18 repetitions—still lower than that for eight-year-old boys.

At this point, Mattie had to give a speech. She explained clearly that the standards for boys and girls "at that age" should be the same. She was so definite about it that even Older Brother, who had been so innocently proud of his achievement even against girls who were older than he was, said that yes of course he agreed that the standards should be the same for both.

But wait a minute. Doesn't Mattie "believe in science"? Isn't this whole household devoted to a secular, rationalistic, scientific approach to the world? Of course they are—so much so that it feels like Mattie and R think even Debbie's Buddhism and meditation practice are a little weird. (To be clear, I know better than ever to discuss polytheism with them!) 

The reason I ask is that of course everyone knows that boys are stronger than girls, and that this is true from an early age. See for example this report on "Sex Differences in Upper‐ and Lower‐Limb Muscle Strength in Children and Adolescents: A Meta‐Analysis," published on the website of the National Library of Medicine (a branch of the National Institute for Health), which states clearly that "Upper‐ and lower‐limb strength were 17% and 8% greater in boys than girls when 5–10 years old." Those percentages aren't huge, but then the difference in goals set by the school for boys versus girls wasn't huge either. Somehow it seems like the school is operating more in line with "the science" than Mattie.

A few minutes later, Mattie remarked that when she was a girl, she was terrible at Physical Education, and her poor performance in sports made her feel bad about herself. It would not be crazy for a person to wonder if her current attitudes are driven even more by a desire for revenge against the phenomenon of school athletics than by a desire to support her egalitarian ideology. But perhaps I'm reaching too far.

Then she announced, "If they ever weigh you at school, tell me."

Her boys had no idea what she was talking about. So Mattie explained that some folks are prejudiced against fat people, and that they weigh students in school in order to shame them. Her boys didn't understand what the word prejudice means, so Mattie had to explain that. She gave racism as an example, and then had to explain what racism is. (She got the definition wrong, by the way, because she defined it as "hatred of non-white people" rather than "hatred of others based on skin color.") And all of this was in service of the proposition that it would be an evil thing for the school to check the weights of the students.

Debbie suggested softly that if the school did such a thing, they might be responding to a state law and have no choice. Mattie said, "Well I can still complain."

But let's take time out here for signals. In the first place, Mattie's two boys are rail-thin. The likelihood that either will ever be humiliated by a school official for being fat is vanishingly small. In the second place, childhood obesity is a real problem for the children it affects. For officials to be concerned about it—if any of them ever really are—is not just a matter of blind prejudice, but one of sound medicine. And while it's not likely to be a problem for Mattie's children in particular, I'm not sure that it is best to prejudice the children in favor of fat acceptance before they are able to understand that there might be complexities to the issue.

Why, in fact, bring up any of these points at all, especially since she had to explain every single one? Why not just let her children be innocently proud that they passed their tests in school and are therefore judged "healthy"?       

      

"That's not funny!"

Some years ago, I learned about the satirical conspiracy theory "Birds Aren't Real!" (See also the "movement's" official website, here.) The whole thing was a joke created back in 2017 by a fellow named Peter McIndoe, who figured there are so many crazy conspiracy theories out there in the world that he wanted one of his very own. For a while he was very active on social media, in his self-assigned role as a "bird-truther"—spreading the word that all birds in the United States were replaced in the 1960's by surveillance drones in a massive collaboration between the Pentagon and the CIA. (See the Wikipedia article for more information about the history of this extended practical joke.)

Anyway, I thought this story was hilarious when I first heard it, and right away I ordered myself a hat like the one in the picture. A couple of years ago I lost it somewhere, and after a while I replaced it with a new one. I've had people ask me about it over the years, and I always explain. I thought everyone who knew me well had heard about it long ago.

But I was out to lunch with Debbie today, and she asked me very gingerly about my hat. I was a little surprised, because surely I had told her long ago ... hadn't I? Maybe not. So I summarized the story for her, and told her particularly about a TED talk that McIndoe gave. He explained the history of the Birds Aren't Real "movement," and then told a story about one day when he was out in public holding a sign and handing out literature. He said that people responded with raw hatred. One woman came up to him and shouted in his face, "You're what's wrong with this country!" (At that point Debbie said quietly, "I see where she's coming from," and then hastily amended her comment by adding, "Of course I don't support the hostility.") What McIndoe said in his talk was that—in that moment, as the woman yelled in his face—he felt his commitment to the movement double down inside him, even though he knew he had made the whole thing up!   

McIndoe's conclusion was that, when somebody expresses an opinion you disagree with, yelling at him is not likely to change his mind. Try compassion instead.

I thought Debbie would appreciate the story, especially as it ended with the kind of Aesopian moral one might expect from Thich Nhat Hanh: compassion is better than judgment, dualistic thinking is hurtful, I am inside you as you are inside me, we all inter-exist ... that sort of thing. She loves these moral messages when she hears them from Zen practitioners. Why wouldn't she love it in this context?

But she didn't. After a moment, she asked me when McIndoe started his "movement." 

I didn't remember. (I found the date above when I looked up the Wikipedia article, just before writing this post.) But I asked her in turn, does it matter?

She said, Well if he started it back in 2016 [I assume she meant "before Trump was elected President"], it might have been funny back then. But these days we have so many conspiracy theories and they are so dangerous, that I just can't see laughing at something like that any more.

Oops. My mistake, I guess.

Question: How many socially-conscious Unitarian Buddhists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Answer: That's not funny!

      

R looks angry

After leaving the weekend retreat, Debbie and I came back to her home. I'll be visiting here for a couple of days before flying back to my own home.

As you no doubt recall, Debbie shares this house with her daughter Mattie, her son-in-law R (Mattie's husband), and her two grandsons. Debbie has her own little apartment in one wing, and the other four occupy the rest. Debbie has said she wishes she had space for her fiber-arts hobbies, and in fact her loom is in a big room downstairs. But she doesn't like to go down there to use it, because she doesn't like to intrude on "the family's" space. In many ways she feels confined to the two-rooms-plus-kitchen-and-bath that are allocated as "hers."

Last night we had dinner with the rest of the family. The boys were silly, as little boys often are, but remarkably well-behaved. Mostly I assume that's training, though a little bit might be that their grandmother's Friend-from-out-of-state was visiting (that's me). Mattie was pleasant and cordial—that is, she still felt cold and reserved, but to me she always feels cold. I don't know if anyone else perceives her the same way, and there's nobody I can ask.

But as dinner progressed, I began to get the impression that R was angry. Not about anything specific, but more as a way of being in the world. To be clear, R is often quiet and reserved. So it's not that he was unusually quiet over dinner. Nor was he visibly out of humor: I even managed to make a couple of jokes that coaxed a chuckle out of him. But there seems to be a set to his jaw that I don't remember seeing before, and a firmness to the gaze. You could chalk this up to maturity: despite his two children, despite owning a house, R was a young man when I got to know him, or youngish. I would guess that today he's somewhere around forty: time enough for the softness of youth to wear off, and to be replaced by muscles built of responsibility. Maybe what I am seeing is no more than that.

It is true that he has had disappointments already in life. He and Mattie were graduate students together, but she finished her Ph.D. while he did not finish his. She therefore has a teaching post, while he is working in business. They picked the town they live in based on Mattie's teaching assignment. Even his house—for which he is on the deed—is shared with his mother-in-law, and it was her inheritance that bought it. I don't know whether R keeps score, but he may feel disgruntled about the turns his life has taken.

Nor am I convinced that he is fully happy with his domestic life. It's just little glimpses that I've noticed in moments over the years, and I could be reading them all wrong. Heaven knows my own difficult life with Wife could have predisposed me to see troubles where there are none. But I feel like I might also be able to see trouble where it is well-hidden, because I certainly tried my best to hide my own troubles back in the day.

I know that Debbie wishes Mattie and R were more easy-going with the boys. It would be easy to attribute the same point of view to R, and to assume that Mattie is the only martinet in the family, but that accusation feels false to me. I think the strict parenting is as much his as hers, and may be one direction that he channels his anger at the world. So I have no guesses at what lies behind his anger. Strictly speaking, my whole diagnosis may be false, especially as it is based on no more than glimpses.

But R looks angry to me.

          

How silent is "silent"?

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm visiting Debbie and we are attending a UU-Buddhist silent retreat for the third year in a row. The instructions when we arrived emphasized that this is a silent retreat, and that attendees should take that part of it seriously: also, to be absolutely clear, there is to be no talking in the meditation room, nor in a room off the dining hall (wfor those wanting to eat in silence).

So of course most attendees seem to be talking with each other most of the time. Not, to be sure, during the posted meditation sits. And there seems to be a minimum of talking in the two rooms where it was explicitly forbidden. ("Minimum" is not the same as "none" in this context.) But in general the injunction to silence seems to be carried somewhat ... gently ... by most of the participants.

There's a part of me that wants to criticize them for this, but mostly I don't bother. It's not like I'm some advanced arhat who came here expecting to commune with the World-Soul, and who would have been able to do so if only it weren't for the ongoing conversations! I've got enough internal conversations going on in my own mind to match any of the others. And even if everyone is really committed to silence, it takes longer than a day to settle down. This retreat stretches across a weekend, no longer. So one shouldn't expect wonders.

My cough has been unpredictable. I can go hours at a time without coughing once at all; then suddenly it will strike and people ask, "Are you OK?" (Yes, I think I'm OK.) 

Mostly I have stayed out of long conversations, which is good because when I get in them I get muddled. 

I have been sleeping close to ten hours a night, and still seem to want an afternoon nap.

And last night in the middle of the night I woke up having to pee, and realized I had already leaked all over my pajamas. Mortifying. I told Debbie I'd need to borrow her washing machine when we got back to her home, and she pointed out that the retreat center has machines of its own. So right now I'm waiting for my pajamas to dry. As I say, mortifying.

No profound insights, I guess. But it is a good and pleasant place to be.  

"Because I'm just fed up" part 2

Last month I wondered if Debbie might be loosening her grip on her progressive politics. No such luck.

I'm visiting her for a few days ... we are going to the UU-Buddhist Silent Retreat we also attended last year and the year before. Last night she mentioned again that she was going to re-register as an Independent, so I asked her why she deleted her Act Blue account.

Turns out she's just sick of getting fund-raising spam clogging her email and phone, so she thinks deleting that account might help stem the tide. Also it seems like she thinks it is better (from the perspective of Plum Village Buddhism) to be politically non-aligned, even if she still votes the same way as before.

I don't know if these moves will help keep the spam out of her Inbox, but I certainly agree with being politically non-aligned ... even if she isn't really non-aligned. But I suppose I shouldn't make predictions about the future. Sometimes big things grow from little beginnings.

Or not.

       

Son1 on Wife's hoarding

The last couple of days I've driven out to Son1's apartment to help him pack. At the end of the month, he's moving in with Dorcas. You remember that she owns her own condominium, and this way (once he is no longer paying his own rent) Son1 will be able to pay Wife's rent. Somehow it all makes sense.

Of course Wife moved out a couple of months ago, and took as much stuff as could fit in her new place. But that left huge piles of hoarded crap behind, for Son1 to deal with.

Honestly we didn't get that much done. It was unseasonably hot, and we couldn't muster much motivation. I did whatever he asked me to do, but I let him organize the work. And he wasn't very motivated, either. Dealing with Wife's stuff can have that effect.

At one point, during a break in the action, I asked him, "What do you suppose would happen if your mom were deprived of all her possessions at once, at a blow—as if she had just barely escaped from fire or flood or a barbarian invasion? Would she finally develop a new self-concept, one that wasn't so focused on owning things? Would that liberate her from all her stuff?" (This is a question that D and I discussed back and forth, during and after the monstrous housecleaning effort I've recorded as "Second date," which stretches from here to here.)

Son1 didn't even have to contemplate. Right away, he answered clearly, "No, she'd just lie about it—the way she lies about her academic achievements and the career she (thinks she) was 'deprived of' by the 'evil machinations' of the 'enemies' in her department."

Open and shut.

Did I ever tell you the full story of how Wife got ejected from graduate school? I feel like I've hinted around the edges but no more. Maybe sometime soon I can walk you through it.   

      

Me and groups

Over the last couple of days, I've been thinking about how I relate to groups or organizations.

There's a story I tell myself that makes the answer sound easy: I'm a consummate outsider. I suffer from social anxiety. I'm shy, or an introvert. These are all stories I have told myself for years.

Of course this story is partly true, or I would never have concocted it in the first place. But it is not the whole truth. A number of recent experiences have made this clear to me.

Case One

Two nights ago (Thursday), I joined an online meeting of the leadership for the local Region of the professional society that I belong to. There are plenty of reasons I needn't have bothered. In the first place, I'm not even working any more. I joined the professional society two or three years before my local office closed. As you recall, I never found another job after that. I've been volunteering with this society as a way to keep busy, more than anything else. 

Also, I'm only in leadership in the most tenuous way. I was Chair of the local section for four-and-a-half years. (There's a rule in the society that limits you to two years, but, well, stuff happened.) But I was able to resign my Chair-ship at the end of last year. Fawn, whom I recruited to join our leadership committee as Program Chair, took over as the new Chair on January 1 of this year. I accepted a minimal role in the leadership committee because Fawn asked me to be available, to give her advice. And that minimal role means that I am invited to the monthly meeting of all the Regional leadership, because they want to make sure that there is at least one representative from each section. In case the Chair can't make it, someone else should still be there to report.

Fawn has made it to these meetings very reliably, all year. But still I show up whenever I don't have a conflict.

That's the first interesting question: Why do I bother?

The second interesting point—and this is what started me ruminating on the subject—is how other people in the meeting treat me. Of course they are used to seeing me. I showed up for these meetings for four-and-a-half years as Chair of my local section. My attendance at these meetings has now overlapped with the tenure of three different Regional Directors. I also notice that—despite the term limits—there are a few names that I keep seeing, year after year. I guess they must have rotated into new roles or job titles (as have I). But they keep representing their sections in these meetings. It's interesting.

But the moment that struck me, in the meeting two evenings ago, was when one of the long-time representatives (used to be Chair of his section, I think now he is Treasurer) started joking with me in a very obvious way, the way two old veterans might kid each other over long shared experience. Of course in the moment I responded by rocking back in my chair and laughing—we were on Zoom, after all, and I had my camera on so people could see my reaction. But in the back of my mind I wondered: If I am genuinely shy and introverted, how did I get into this position? I keep trying to avoid having to do hard work for this society, so how did I become a veteran that this man feels comfortable joking with?

That started me mulling. Then the next afternoon I acquired more data.

And now a summer cough?

I shouldn't be so shocked. Although I tried to reassure friends and family this winter (see here and here) that my cough was just a winter phenomenon (based on last year's experience, for example here and here), in reality I've written in this venue about the damned thing showing up in other seasons too. (See for example here, or here, or here.)

But it's always annoying. And here we are again. I wish I knew what causes it.

I made a note on my calendar back on July 26, "started to notice a cough the last couple of days." Shortly after that it took off. A week ago on September 10, I noted "seems like less coughing the last couple days." And today I jotted down "cough much better but not gone." Hmm. From July 26 till next Sunday (the day after tomorrow) is eight weeks. Does that mean anything? Or is it all just random?

In reality I don't think it's quite random, though neither would I go to the other extreme and call it controllable. But there do appear to be correlations. 

• If I eat a handful of salted peanuts, I cough immediately.
• If the air gets damp, I cough more frequently, though this is a probabilistic relationship. (Some day I'll test the correlation by moving to the Atacama Desert.)
• If I start talking excitedly, I cough.
• If I listen to a piece of music that makes me emotional, I cough.

I don't understand the connection with salted peanuts. But in general, it seems like I cough when I engage with being fully awake and alive. If I just sit motionless, browsing Twitter and letting my mind rot, I can go for extended periods without coughing.

Should I just sit and do nothing, and rot into my chair? Well, maybe.

     

"Because I'm just fed up"

I was talking with Debbie this evening. We usually talk for about an hour every Friday evening; tonight it stretched for nearly two-and-a-half. Then, just as we were winding up, she added, "Oh, one more thing. I've deleted my ActBlue account, and I'm going to reregister as an Independent."

Wait, Debbie?

I asked why, and she said, "For two reasons. First, I want to see if re-registering makes me feel differently about some issues. And second, because I'm just fed up."

As usual when someone raises a sensitive topic, I responded by talking too much. What I wanted to do was to ask her "fed up with what?" But I didn't ask. Maybe I can ask that next week. I babbled about how there was research that suggested she's onto something ... that identifying with a group can change how you feel about issues where that group has already staked out an opinion. And of course I said I'd be really interested to learn how the experiment turns out. What will she end up feeling about the contentious political issues of the day. I mentioned that I have never in all my years registered with any political party, because I figure that anybody will go crazy if you give them enough rope. ("Are you trying to say, Power corrupts?" "Yes, but more clumsily. Also sometimes when you give a party power they don't really start to do evil ... sometimes they just get goofy.")

So we talked in an unproductive way for another five minutes, most of which was spent with me babbling because I was nervous. I'd like to become more self-aware, so that I know ahead of time that I'm likely to overreact this way to a potentially sensitive topic and can shut myself down in advance. And I want to ask for pointedly what exactly she is fed up about.

In retrospect it feels a little bit like this conversation with my aunt, three years ago. And I wonder: when public intellectuals like John Michael Greer say that the Democratic Party and the Professional-Managerial Class are losing control over the hegemonic narrative that has kept them in power for decades ... is this what that looks like?

               

Hard to write

It's the middle of September, and this will be my twenty-eighth post in 2026.

Twenty-eight is an important number. In the years since I started this blog (not counting 2007, as I started in December), my worst year for posting has been 2016. In 2016, I posted twenty-eight times. So reaching that number means, At least this year won't be worse than 2016. At least I won't have reached a new low!

Nice to know.

But it's also September. The year is almost 3/4 over. How have I written so little?

I don't know. For a while, towards the beginning of the year, it just seemed like nothing was happening to me—like there was nothing to write about. Then I committed to finishing my book this year. Then I went to the Ecosophian convention. Then other stuff started to happen, and I realized that Lack-of-Material isn't really my problem. (Besides, there's always more to say. Remember the time that Robert Pirsig assigned a rhetoric student to write about the front of the Bozeman Opera House, starting with the upper left-hand brick!)

Are my habits getting in the way? Probably. I get up in the morning, fiddle around for a while, finally get a shower and have breakfast, check my email for a while, ... and then go take a nap! After that, it's mid-afternoon and I'm ready to spend a couple hours on the day's work before it's dinner time. I usually don't accomplish anything after dinner.

It's not like I'm "too busy" in a conventional sense. I scarcely go out. I talk to very few people. That may be part of the problem, in fact: that I use food and drink and Twitter to replace the human company that I miss. But then, why not spend the time writing? That's a kind of conversation, after all?

I don't know the answer. It just seems too hard, somehow. Even for the regular writing that I have to do to support the two columns I post online every week, I've been writing quick-'n'-easy pieces because I can't bend my mind around how much work it would take to write something more substantive.

Maybe I need to fall in love. Maybe the NRE would drive me to get my ass in gear. Too bad I'm way too old for any of the equipment to work any more.

Maybe if I got out more, the rest might follow. Meanwhile, does it ever seem to you that I'm repeating myself a lot?

           

An unsatisfactory visit, part 2

[Continued from Part 1.]

The next morning, after breakfast, I asked her what she was worried about. She settled into a comfortable chair and started to explain.

Where did her money go?

In the first place, it's not that all of Mother's money is gone. Or at least that's not what she ended up saying. It took her a while to explain this, because she wandered elliptically around the subject. But the way I understand it, this is what happened.

1. Ever since Father died, she has kept most of her liquid assets in two big bank accounts: one savings, and one checking.
2. Mother still works part time. She doesn't make a lot, but she said she always hoped that her earnings would more or less cover her day-to-day expenses.
3. But she doesn't know if they do. She doesn't really know what her day-to-day expenses add up to. All she ever did was to look at the overall balance of her two big accounts: as long as they didn't move much, she figured she was OK.
4. Some time back in the past, she (or maybe "they," if Father was still alive) took out a home equity line of credit (HELOC), because of some reason. It was no longer needed, but for too long she had just placidly paid the interest on it.
5. Finally at the beginning of this year she decided it was stupid to keep paying interest on a loan she didn't need. (Yes, that's true.) So she paid it back in a lump. That meant something like $30-35,000.
6. Then Brother and SIL came to her, asking for a loan. They have done this before, for smaller sums. This time they wanted to borrow $66,000 in cash.
7. Their explanation was that their credit cards had gotten away from them, and they needed to clear them out. Mother said they did not tell her how their credit cards had gotten away from them, and she said she did not ask. But she also said that she was very worried, because what's to stop the same thing from happening all over again? I agreed with her. 
8. She added that for the past few months they have been paying her back a thousand dollars a month. She did get them to sign a note for the full amount, but she did not ask for any interest. She is also aware that, at the rate of a thousand dollars a month, it will take five and a half years to pay back $66,000.
9. Anyway, what with paying off the HELOC and then lending so much money to Brother and SIL, her bank accounts are down something like $100,000. And yes, that arithmetic sounds about right.
10. So when she sees that her overall balance is so much lower than it used to be, she's afraid.   

Is this truly something to worry about? Who can tell? There's no way to know without more information.

"Why don't you ...?" "Yes, but ...!"

So I started to ask more questions, and to suggest things she could do to address her fears. Turns out this was not a good idea.

For every idea I had, she had a reason that it wasn't practical. It began to feel like we were playing "Why don't you ...?" "Yes, but ...!" In fact at one point I even referenced that game a little obliquely, reminding her that Father used to accuse Wife of playing it all the time (Mother remembered this part very well) and saying "But of course that's not what is going on here! You are just identifying parameters that any solution has to meet."

Translation: Yeah, that's exactly what we were playing.  

I admit that some of the things I suggested might be a lot of work. Mother has no idea how much she spends for her day-to-day expenses, so maybe she'd like to go through the last year's utility bills and credit card receipts? Then she could come up with a rough number, and she'd know whether her part-time salary covers it or not. Of course that's a lot of work, but is it worth it to buy the peace of mind that she would get from a definite answer? Maybe to some people. Maybe not to her.

There were other suggestions. None of them was trivial. And even if one of them were trivial, that doesn't mean she would do it. How hard can it be, after all, to fill out a Medical Power of Attorney form?

In earlier years, I was inclined to think my mother was something of a saint. (See for example here and here.) But in retrospect, that was largely because she was quieter than Father, so it was easy to assign all good qualities to her by default. I have already remarked elsewhere that the stories we (as a family) normally told about Father and Mother weren't really true.

Speaking of synchronicity

Mother has many fine qualities. But if she doesn't feel like doing something, she's not going to do it—even if "doing it" would solve some other problem that bothers her a lot!

In a sense that's self-defeating, just the same way all my failed conversations with her all weekend long were self-defeating.

And gosh, wasn't I recently writing something else about self-defeat? Indeed I was. That's why I started Part 1 of this story by talking about synchronicity ... because the topic of self-defeat seems to be haunting me these days.

Maybe I should pay attention. 

           

An unsatisfactory visit, part 1

Sometimes it seems like a topic shows up on my radar and then just won't let go. I think the technical term is synchronicity. The way I understand the theory of synchronicity, I should pay attention when it happens. I don't recall whether the theory says what to do in case I don't want to pay attention.

Not Mother's house or pool, but you get the idea.

A couple of weekends ago, I drove to Big City to visit Mother. The most immediate motivation was purely sybaritic: it has been very hot lately, and Mother has a swimming pool. And in the end I got to use it a couple of times, in the mornings before Mother got up. Not that she would have stopped me using it any other time, but we were talking.

So much talking

These days, when I visit with Mother we spend a lot of time talking. Back when Father was still alive, that was less true.

I'm sure I've discussed this in an earlier post, but I just spent over an hour looking for it and I can't find it. The indexing that I have set up for this blog isn't nearly good enough. Anyway, the point I wanted to reference is that as long as Father was alive, Mother never seemed to talk very much. Father always dominated the conversations, whether in public or among friends or just at home among family. Always. On the other hand, once he was dead I noticed a major change in Mother whenever I visited her ... at any rate, if it was just the two of us. Suddenly she talked a lot. Sure, some of it was practical. But a lot of it was just talk. I finally asked her about what was responsible for the difference. She said, more or less, that when Father was alive she let him dominate the conversations because she knew it mattered to him. No other reason. (At a certain topological level, her reasons maybe aren't that different from what Marie told me here.) Anyway, now that he was gone and there was no longer any reason to worry about his preferences, she was reverting to "normal." The result is that when I visit over a weekend, I often drive there on Saturday; then we spend all of Sunday morning talking, and much of the rest of Sunday too. Finally we wrap it up Monday so I can go home and she can go to work. Of course, this weekend Monday was Labor Day, which gave us an extra day.

Anyway, we spent a lot of time talking. But this time, honestly, the talking was very unsatis­factory. I kept feeling like I said something to piss her off. I kept feeling like she was mad at me. 

An example

At this point it has been a week and a half, and I didn't take notes at the time, so I can't remember all of the discussions. But for example, she asked me how it was possible for anybody (meaning the people she sees on the news) to distrust vaccines?

I tried to explain that the world has changed since she was a girl. I said nobody distrusts the polio vaccine or the smallpox vaccine. But now there are far more of them out there, and legally the manufacturers shielded from liability for vaccine injuries. This shielding creates an opportunity for moral hazard, the circumstance where the benefits of an action (profits from selling vaccines) flow in one direction (to the parmaceutical companies who make the vaccines) while the risks (in case of injury or death) flow in another direction (to the patients who cannot sue for compensation). And I suggested that some people think the pharmaceutical companies might be tempted to cut corners in their development or safety testing, since they can't be punished if something goes wrong. So it's natural for people who think that way to be distrustful. I tried to suggest that this was very different from simply being "anti-science."

She nodded along with my whole explanation, and then asked (almost belligerently) "What about the measles vaccine?"

I don't know. What about it? Was she asking me for a complete list of which vaccines are safe and which aren't? (I can't supply that.) Or was she accusing me of being "anti-science"? I don't know what she meant, and I didn't answer her very effectively.

And then she said ....

There was more. As I say, I've forgotten most of our topics. But mostly they were as unsatisfying as the discussion of vaccines.

And then in a side comment just by the way, Mother said she was worried about running out of money. This was unexpected. Between the time Father died and this conversation, Mother always gave the impression that she was in comfortable circumstances. In the moment she went on to talk about something else totally different. But the next morning after breakfast, I asked her about it.

[See Part 2.]        

           

On self-defeat, part 2

I just wrote about how Wife's whole life—so it seems—has been one long exercise in self-defeat. This is a line of thought I started after looking at the journals she left behind when she vacated Son1's apartment.

But my reflections didn't stop there. Oh no.

Father undercut himself the same way. I've talked here and here about how he undermined his own authority as a businessman. I don't know the details of his stint as a university professor, except that he failed his first tenure review (after three years) so his contract was not renewed. Decades later he found a letter he had written to the Dean after his contract was canceled, and read it to us over the dinner table. As a piece of rhetoric or invective—as a letter that burst into flame upon reading—it was a remarkable piece of work. But by that time I was already an adult, and in fact I was a manager with employees of my own. And what I thought privately (though I never said it aloud) was, "Gosh, if that's where your head was at the time, I'd have fired you too." The letter was all about him, and never mentioned the needs or strategies of the university. And even if he didn't care about the university, anyone who wanted to play the employment game should know enough to pretend to care. Not Father. 

After he retired from business, he tried to make a living as an actor. There he was dogged by a special kind of bad luck that repeated over and over. Time and again, he would get a part in something very small whose schedule neatly prevented him from auditioning for something large and rewarding. To hear him tell it, this happened so often that he could almost count on it. Now was this self-defeat? I have no idea. All I know is what I heard from him, and he made it sound like random bad luck each and every time.

On the other hand, we've all heard the saying: Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. I just don't know which "enemy."

In other words, the topic of self-defeat is one I probably need to spend some time with, because I've lived around it much of my life. First Father, then Wife. That's definitely why I need to think about it. Right?

Ha. I should be so lucky.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have discussed my own self-defeating behaviors many times. Good luck seems to be wasted on me. And I never had the skill to advance up the corporate ladder. I hide myself, and I seem to court failure. You can multiply other references throughout the blog without breaking a sweat.

I think this is why Kimberly Steele told me (three years ago!) that publishing my book "is going to be an act of will that will act as one of your major tests in your life." I have spent too much of my life trying actively to fail. I have worked at defeating myself, and I have surrounded myself with masters at self-defeat. So the challenge is, Can I pull out of such a dramatic dive? Can I get my ass in gear and make it happen?

The questions about Wife matter to her therapist, but I'm not her therapist. The questions about Father are of biographical interest, but after all he's dead. The questions that have to matter to me are about me. 

I have achieved two long-term goals in my life. The first was my marriage (and children). The second was my separation. What comes next? Now that I'm a senior citizen, what long-term goals can I still accomplish? And can I do them without ruining myself in the process?

Those are the questions that matter now. I suppose I should be grateful to Wife's old journals for making me think of them.   

           

On self-defeat, part 1

I've been thinking more about those journals that Wife left behind, when she moved out of Son1's apartment.

She must have been writing them under the guidance of some psychotherapist, or at any rate under the guidance of some psychotherapeutic ideas—ideas that she might have read somewhere, or might have gotten from a therapist in the past. The journals specifically talked about her experience of compulsive thinking, and she set up tables to work out concrete examples.

• Column 1: Initial idea.
• Column 2: Compulsive idea that it triggers.
• Column 3: Rational idea towards which she should redirect herself.
• And so on ....

Examples included:

• Initial idea: "I hurt Hosea by my infidelities and by overspending the budget."
• Compulsive idea: "I am a terrible human and don't deserve to live."
• Rational idea: "I did cause pain but it will be manageable if we work together on it." [Actually I don't remember this entry, but I assume it would have to be something like that.]
• I don't have more examples, because you remember I left the journals there.

It all looks like a very logical therapeutic approach. But the single most important fact—overwhelming everything else—is that it didn't work! Self-understanding counts for bupkes unless it results in meaningful changes of behavior, and Wife's behavior never changed! So all these journal entries were just masturbation, nothing more.

During my most recent visit, Son1 mentioned as an aside (as if it were an obvious point, while explaining something else) that Wife still suffers from these compulsive ideas. Someone criticizes her and right away she falls into a spiral of ranting, "Oh I'm a terrible human and don't deserve to live!" Then whoever's talking to her backs off, because he (or she) didn't mean the criticism to be quite that extreme. And therefore nobody ever succeeds in talking to her about behavior that she actually has to fix.

As I typed those words, I found myself thinking, "Nice work, if you can get it."

And indeed, in the short run it seems like this uncontrolled and disproportionate response is an effective tactic to prevent Wife ever having to face any serious criticism. It insulates her. If narcissism means having to preserve her self-image at all costs, it's a very sturdy form of narcissistic defense, ... even if it is awfully remeniscent of Russian roulette. 

In the long run, of course, the tactic is self-defeating because it means she never confronts the habits that make her fail. So she never learns new habits instead, and she continues to fail. At this point, Wife has failed:

• As a musician. (Good enough to be a church organist, not good enough to be a professional.)
• As a scholar. (She dropped out of one graduate program for complicated reasons, and then failed her Qualifying Exams in her second program.)
• As a businesswoman. (She alienated several employers and they fired her; then her health collapsed while she was still working for the last one and she had to go out on permanent disability.)
• As a church-goer. (I don't know as much about this. But she transitioned over the years from Wiccan to Baptist to Mormon. She was pretty open—to me and the boys—about joining the Mormon church because they look after you. But I think I remember her saying a few years ago that her bishop had actually thrown her out of the church for some reason. Maybe freeloading.)
• As a friend. (Wife keeps making new friends and then keeps alienating them. She tried to contact her friend Leia to say goodbye before leaving town, but no such luck.)
• As a wife. (OK, maybe I'm prejudiced on this point. But read the first ten years of this blog to see my perspective on the question.)
• As a mother? (Whatever else is going on, Wife has clung to her identity as a mother of two wonderful boys. But the last long email I got from her makes me think she is reconsidering what that relationship really looks like.)

If you run into an asshole one day, well, tough luck, you ran into an asshole. If everyone you meet, all day long, is an asshole—it's because you are the asshole.

What this means, in turn, is that Wife's whole life is one long exercise in self-defeat. And it didn't have to be. It was all avoidable. I mean ... maybe her bad health was baked in from the beginning. But the dysfunctional personality, that squandered every opportunity she was handed? That seems to have been something she did on purpose. And it is sad.

           

Visiting Son1 and Dorcas

Yesterday morning, I visited Son1 in his apartment, now almost two weeks after Wife vacated it.

Partly I was motivated by morbid curiosity: what did the place look like? Partly I was motivated by an acquisitive itch: did she leave behind anything I wanted? And partly I just wanted to be sociable. Normally I don't see my kids very often.

The place looked more jumbled than usual, but a lot less crowded. Most of the furniture was gone out of the living room, and all the nice bookcases. The living room rug was still there, and I know that came from somebody in Wife's family because at one point (back when we all still lived together in a house) one of her nephews tried to extort it out of her. Lovely family. Son1 remarked that there is literally no place in Wife's new digs where it will fit. 

Of course we talked about Wife, and how she reacted to the move. (I notice in passing that half the time Son1 refers to her by her name, instead of saying "Mom." He still says "Mom" once in a while, but the change is striking.) Son1 said that he thinks part of the long-term therapy which she needs is to have all her useless, ancestral junk stripped from her, so that she has to reconstruct her life without it. I didn't say anything specific, but I was thinking that this was exactly what D and I thought way back during the Housecleaning From Hell in December 2008 and January 2009, that I've described as "Second date." (The account stretches from here to here, but you can pick this one as a good solid example of our thinking.)

We talked about Wife's drinking. He thinks she has accepted the designation of "alcoholic" because it gives her an excuse: if she's an alcoholic, then nobody can expect any better of her. I remember how bitterly she hated her own father's alcoholism, and how long she denied that her mother had the same problem because she didn't want it to be both of them. If she's now decided simply to accept the same diagnosis herself, that's a huge change. Of course it has been decades. (Her mother died in 1994. I think her father died in 1978.)

I don't remember all the other things we discussed. For a while we talked about trivia like our respective work, or unusual air travel.

In the end, I did go and look at the wreckage left in what had been Wife's room. One bookcase was still there, with a few books randomly strewn across it. There were a few (the minority) that looked interesting and weren't garbage; Son1 said I could take them. Apparently the criterion for which books to take was "What fits in the truck?" because Wife had done no packing or sorting before Son2 arrived to help load the truck.

Among the contents of the shelf, I found notebooks that Wife had kept. I didn't take them, though now I wonder if I should have. They seemed to be laid out according to one or another psychological theory for dealing with instrusive thoughts, and the entries were dated. This one dated back to 1993. That one dated to 2011. (The layouts were different from one to the other, I should add ... probably she was working with different therapists during those years.)

What I found most remarkable was the amount of guilt that I saw expressed in her notes. When writing in her own journals, she could freely admit that her infidelities caused me pain, and that her crazy overspending caused me distress. She could admit that they were wrong. But then those admissions triggered automatic thoughts of total worthlessness that made her mind spiral out of control. Apparently she was trying to learn ways to stop the automatic spiralling.

But I guess she never did. At any rate, she never got to a point where she could admit to me that she knew what she had done, and that she knew it had hurt me, and that she was sorry. If I were in the room, she'd fight me.

Those journals were a remarkable discovery. I still don't really know how to feel about them. And I wonder if I should have taken them, or if it is better to let them be swept away with the juink?