Prodigies

[NOTE: It is December 12 as I type this, but I wrote the note to myself in June so I am going to back-date the post correspondingly.]

What do prodigies do?

All the elementary stuff is so easy for them that they never settle down; they never develop the discipline of a single craft; by the time they reach middle age they are forgotten and anonymous, eating the wrong things and drinking too much and there is nothing left of their talent.

Oh good! It’s great to know I count as a prodigy! Hey ... I heard somewhere that failure is freedom. Right?

Sure. We can go with that. Failure is freedom. So is homelessness. On that scale, have you considered there might be something to be said for slavery?

Isn’t it nice, though, to have been smart and capable once upon a time?

Sure. Isn’t it nice to have memories?

 

Visiting Debbie, 2

Once again ... I guess this is about a year later, or almost ... I got the chance to visit Debbie at the tail end of a visit to Sticksville for work. Like before, it was a pleasant visit: we talked together and cooked together. Unlike the last time, I detected no underlying romantic tension, no effort being put behind Not Doing Anything Sexual. So maybe that's now a thing of the past? Or maybe it's just a matter of Different day, different atmosphere. I don't know which.
 
What follows is slightly reworked from the email I sent Marie about it. 

• So I talked to Debbie about my job situation, mentioning the following points:
• The change of status changes my bonus potential, but not my base salary. Losing the bonus at the same time Son 1 graduates from university is close to a wash, because all I ever spend my bonus on is his tuition.
• My boss assures me that there is no risk of my losing the job itself, but I don’t believe him. I think I’ll be overpaid if I’m reclassified as a non-manager, but that’s my idea and nothing anyone has said.
• Saying I’m overpaid is synonymous with saying I’m underutilized, and according to one way of looking at it that’s bad for me too. Underutilization makes it easy for me to grow dull and fall into a rut, which in turn makes me more likely to lose my job.
• I used to tell myself that I was highly mobile and loved exploring new places, but at this point that’s more of a religious self-identification than a reality. (“Of course I’m a Methodist / Episcopalian / Jew / whatever, ... just because I’ve never been in a house of worship in the last 50 years doesn’t mean anything!”) That is to say, in the last 27 years I’ve really settled into Beautiful City as home. And I would really miss Beautiful City if I were to move.
• On the other hand, I have somehow organized my life in such a way that it involves a lot of travel.

Maybe there was more. You’ve heard me talk through this a lot.

Debbie didn’t comment on any of that directly at first, but talked about her own moves: to Los Angeles in the fall of 2013 for her M.Div. studies, to Wisconsin for a year of practical apprenticeship after getting the degree, and then to her current home a year ago for this job. Talking through her experiences, she said that she missed Beautiful City enormously. While in L.A. she’d come back from time to time to visit, and every time she got here she would start to cry. She expected to hate L.A. when she first moved there; and in both Wisconsin and her current home she felt very alone and culturally isolated.

 

All that having been said, she has also found the process of breaking out into something new to be incredibly rewarding on many levels. She has felt revitalized and challenged, professionally and personally. Yes, she still misses Beautiful City terribly. (I brought her some marmalade, made from fruit from my neighbor's tree, which she gladly accepted.) But she didn’t hate L.A. when she moved there — she loved it. Moving to her current home was a big change, but she made friends through the Unitarian Church, through her work, and through hobbies like quilting and fiber arts. And not only has she thereby made a new place for herself, but getting in motion again has reminded her of other places she wants to go too — to travel or to live — while she is still able-bodied. (She turns 64 later this summer.)


So that’s the filter of her own experience, which she offered as a perspective on my question. From there I started to talk more about the details of the job I've recently applied to, and we brainstormed some questions I should ask when I talk to the manager on Tuesday. (Gosh, I hope I can remember them all now!)

After that she got me to help with some of her gardening, and then we drove a few towns over to visit her daughter, her son-in-law, and their two-week old baby. We stayed there for a few hours; drove back, set up a bed for me in her guest room (after moving the ironing board and a couple of sewing projects), and went to our respective beds. Breakfast this morning was out on her deck in the back yard — she said that this house is the nicest place she has ever lived as an adult, and certainly the view of the yard in the morning was lovely — and then I drove 4.5 hours to the airport....

Marie / music

Just got this from Marie:

Begin forwarded message:

I forget if I ever sent you this one:

you are as present to my mind

as music to my ear

you are as far, as far from me

as music silent

Sent from my iPhone

Marie sent me this poem that she just stumbled across. Somehow it sounds to me like it belongs on the same page with ruminations about failure as a teacher or a spiritual discipline.

One Art

BY ELIZABETH BISHOP

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Sent from my iPhone

Failure update

Just a quick note to update you.

You remember I was applying for a new job that would move me halfway across the country ... because my boss is demoting me because we have too many senior people in the organization? (Meanwhile nobody else I know at my level is being demoted. Must just be a vote of confidence, huh?) 

Well I heard back today. I did not make it even as far as the interviews. They've got some really strong candidates and blah, blah, blah ....

Something to discuss with Sister Failure.

Or maybe Billy Crystal. 

 

Bring your whole self to work

Today is Diversity Day at my company, so we had a potluck. That part was a lot of fun … plenty of good food, so how can you go wrong?

 

But one of the slogans for Diversity Day was, “Bring your whole self to work!” The idea is that the company should cultivate enough emotional safety that people feel free to be open about who they are … so that nobody has to hide their ethnicity or nationality or religion or sexual preferences because we’re all just one big happy family. Or something like that.

 

And I can’t help but wonder … really?

 

I should feel safe bringing my whole self to work? Let’s see, that includes …

• Failed scholar
• Failed husband
• Multiple adulterer
• Drinks too much

 

Also, less dramatically, I suppose I could add …

• Permanently separated (but not divorced) from a Wiccan-Baptist-Mormon, bipolar, bisexual, promiscuous wife
• Pagan-sympathetic, Christian-sympathetic crypto-Platonist attending a Buddhist meditation sangha
• Eats too much

 

… Those things don’t make me look shocking or immoral … just kind of pathetic and boring.

 

I could talk about Sister Failure. That would sure draw a crowd. Of course it would draw them all to the other side of the building as people moved out of earshot, but still I suppose that constitutes a crowd.

 

Anyway, how is it supposed to be safe to bring all this to work? Also my boss is demoting me, supposedly to “rationalize” the org chart, which means that I’m looking for a relocation on the other side of the country. Should I bring all that in too? Hell, that part’s even work-related. But what do you bet that part’s all covered under confidentiality rules?

 

The potluck was nice. I’m always in favor of anything involving food. But the slogan? Sorry, I can’t believe that ….

 

What’s wrong with the “Purity Culture”? (a rant)

This really is a rant. It started as part of a letter to Marie, and it built up a head of steam until it was altogether out of control. What's more, I think it sounds like a sermon, and Heaven knows nobody ever asked me to preach a sermon on this, nor ever will. But what the hell, right? Nobody still reads this blog either, so it's a fine place to try out stuff like this. Don't tell me I didn't warn you.

[Begin in the middle of the letter. Marie had mentioned something about Purity Culture, and I took the bit in my teeth.]

... Because of course what I want to say is that training a girl to be afraid of sex is like owning a Lamborghini and only driving it to the corner market once a month for sprouts and tofu. The female sexual response is one of the most sublime creations on God's earth, proof for anyone who thinks in these terms that the Creator is not only beneficent but powerful and energetic and deeply creative beyond the wildest imagination of men. (Yes, in that context I mean "men".) The other exhibitions of Demiurgic power that are equally awe-inspiring are dangerous and deadly, like volcanoes and tornadoes and earthquakes. But the female sexual response is our size, it is healthy and life-giving, it enriches and fructifies our lives on every level you can imagine, while being as stultifyingly awesome as any volcano. To repress it, to fear it, to bottle it up, to deny it, and to teach others to do the same, is to spit in God's face. It is as treacherous as Judas selling Christ to the Sanhedrin, and as cowardly as Peter denying him thrice before cock-crow. If ever any human act were villainous and wrong, that is.

Of course, that doesn't mean you have to peddle it cheaply, or squander it carelessly. That doesn't mean you have to get drunk and pass out at a frat party so the boys can do you from all angles while you're unconscious and then post streaming videos on YouTube. It doesn't mean you have to pick up strange men in bars and then do them on the living room floor in front of your children. It doesn't mean you have to be callous or manipulative or uncaring, that you have to compete for the most notches on your bedpost or otherwise exploit yourself or others. It doesn't mean any of that; and so far as Christian teachers are saying you don't have to do squalid things that you will hate even as you are doing them, things that will cheapen and coarsen yourself in your own eyes ... so far as they are teaching that they are absolutely right.

But when they say that anything can cheapen you irreversibly, they have abandoned Christianity. At that point they have turned their backs on Jesus after spitting in his face and telling him they know better than he does; they have become Manichaeans, heretics, and heresiarchs. Because innocence is always an option. Forgiveness is always available, both from God and — what is often far more difficult — from yourself. 

There is more. God chooses different paths for different people. And God lets us choose for ourselves; then if we paint ourselves into a corner he can help us learn from it and move on. So if some girl does go hog-wild with her sexuality, if she does go crazy and do things that her family and church can't understand or approve, and that make them shake their heads in wonder ... that's not the end of the story! What happens next? Does she stay there for the rest of her days? (Theoretically possible but really unlikely.) Or does she get out of her system something she had to get rid of, and does she then learn from it how to lead a more mature life after? Does she maybe learn things that will let her help others who also find themselves careening towards dangerous and risky behaviors? Because if she can help people, even if she's outside the circle of her home church's morality pamphlets ... that too is the work of God. Rescuing people who are at risk in the sketchy margins of life — savingthem, redeeming them — that too is the work of God. And if she was strengthened and enabled to do that work by her own checkered and unconventional sexual history ... well, God works in mysterious ways, his ways are not our ways, and no human understanding is broad or deep enough to encompass his own. So our job in that situation, as bystanders and as her family and church community [supposing for the moment that those are the people I'm talking to], is to love her, to offer our supportif she wants it, and then to shut the fuck upand let God do the work that needs to be done by whatever means necessary....

See what I mean?

Sent from my iPhone