I'm home, now, and borrowing from my friend P, I think my aura is a couple of time zones behind me. A lot of life between now and the last time I blogged, including Santa Barbara space, Pamela space, school space, flights and questions and frets and landings. And then a long weekend of F-space, on highways and in the hills of Vermont, filled with openings and silliness and lust and hope. I don't know if I've ever enjoyed an 8.5 hour car ride so much, had such connected and intimate conversation that seems so full of possibility. Not for a long long time. The person I am now -- that person has never had it. It feels... rich, still fragile, still complicated, but so... possible and real.
And against this -- along with my own qualms and tremors as I flew eastward on Thursday -- my friends seem to be in a vortex of different kinds of fragility. Health pronouncements and shadows, breakups, despondencies, doubt, running face to face with the results of inertia and a loss of yearning. Lots of worry and loss and fragility and restlessness, in several realms. And I'm just trying to hold it light.
It's good to be home, rain falling outside my window, a quick dinner with my dearest friend at my kitchen counter, work in front of me. Focusing my hamster mind to really writing, still a little spinny with the dancing whirl, the quiet side-by-sideness, the guttural connection, of the weekend. Looking ahead with hope.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Trip #6
to Santa Barbara starts tomorrow. Six trips to that particular west as part of my school program -- a program that was ignited, really, by September 11th. So fitting that five years later I'm off to be a "student anchor" -- mentor, really -- to incoming students. They'll be all bright-eyed and bushy tailed and wanting to know how to speed through the program with great alacrity. And here I'll be, life still mostly unpacked by the experience, re-constructing before their eyes. Some of them will speed through, to be sure, though my OPS gang have taken our weaving way, only 3 or 4 of us having finished yet. (Though many many who started after us are fully Doctored and onto the next thing). 
I'm okay with my pace, will convey my "your pace is your pace, everyone's is different, don't compare yourself" message, and most of all, will be so full of the ocean, time with Pamela, the interstice of sky and beach and sea and hills and sun that first brought me to life four and a half years ago. My place, the west coast.
I'm okay with my pace, will convey my "your pace is your pace, everyone's is different, don't compare yourself" message, and most of all, will be so full of the ocean, time with Pamela, the interstice of sky and beach and sea and hills and sun that first brought me to life four and a half years ago. My place, the west coast.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Fucking the dog
I went for a long walk through the buzz of orientation week on campus tonight -- frisbees in the street, girls in the height of goth finery, road construction that only U of T would have happening this week, wide-eyed frosh, a few weaving drunks, young women with a coffin effigy for lives lost in the middle east -- the stirring stew of eagerness for ideas and Life and uneasy anticipation.
I tend to pick up phrases of conversation as I roam through, and one that rung out at me tonight, a few young guys on a patio on College drinking beer -- was "fucking the dog."
A lot front-loaded into that. The person I most associate with that phrase is my lost friend H, who tended to the small-town-Ontario language of his roots, homage, in some ways, to his father, like his continued membership in the Legion. He'd use these terms in his round radio-announcer voice, simultaneously ironic and assertion of a foundation that had made him. We had an ongoing riff about that term, which I'd never heard before I'd met him, and which he frequently used in contexts that made people blanch -- like the time he was trotting merrily down the street, walking his friend's tiny terrier, and ran into a couple of pals. "What'd you do all day?" they said. "Oh, fucked the dog," he chirped, bark laughing when the two fastidious guys turned their gaze on the terrier with horror.
The big irony is that I haven't talked to H in four years, after a friend-breakup that was as wrenching and unkind (on my part, mostly) as any lover breakup -- but I came across his blog on the weekend (while idly trying to discover, deep in my drunken night with S, whether he still worked at her firm). And, this triggered a lot of reflection about our friendship, where it had gone off the rails, cringing at my part in its ending.
So I emailed him. An apology, of sorts. Not just about our finale, but about the whole arc of it. I see now that I needed, always sought, a kind of intimacy from him that was a displacement of something missing with A, and I was as miserable when he couldn't meet it as I was with the lacks with her. I played out a lot of of those lacks on him, culminating in a final burst of "you know what your PROBLEM is?" flaying arrogance.
I'm very different than I was four years ago, I think. So much more tentative about how I relate to people, shape them, so conscious of how I've expected other people to follow my narratives of need, how I've railed at them when they haven't. A bore the brunt of that; H carried a fair bit of it.
And I'm also conscious that part of the uneasiness with him was that we both had a fair bit of the same kind of arm's length yearning to fulfill... something... about our work, shared bursts of optimism when we touched near it (he with poetry and fiction, hopeful new loves, running a marathon), deflation and misery when it receded and we didn't know how to grasp it differently.
The uneasiness is wrapped up in the touchstone phrase, too -- our friendship was, in a way, fucking the dog -- marking time near each other, shaded near but not of real intimacy. Time spent wanting to do things differently but only approaching it.
I'm working through a lot of this stuff about how to grasp and live into my voice, my passion, put my work and my life in the same place, not sit around the edges of it. I do more than my share of measuring out the coffee spoons and not just doing what I can in the day. Posting, in particular, letting the very real rewards of the online community take up so much time. I think "getting obsessed and staying obsessed" is partly about the "bursts of brilliance," as Pamela calls them, but also about the steady building of the tedious, the dividing up the units of work, as F levers through his day. Just... doing the tedious things, staying at it, until the bursts of brilliance come in the sides.
I do know that living my life and doing my work are inextricably intertwined in a different way than, say, if my work were in a lab -- my way of loving, talking, walking through the city -- when your work is about making social worlds, all of this is part of knowing. But knowing and doing something with the knowing are two different things, and while the two are more latched together for me than for some people, the doing something needs to be more tightly shaped for me than it is.
I tend to pick up phrases of conversation as I roam through, and one that rung out at me tonight, a few young guys on a patio on College drinking beer -- was "fucking the dog."
A lot front-loaded into that. The person I most associate with that phrase is my lost friend H, who tended to the small-town-Ontario language of his roots, homage, in some ways, to his father, like his continued membership in the Legion. He'd use these terms in his round radio-announcer voice, simultaneously ironic and assertion of a foundation that had made him. We had an ongoing riff about that term, which I'd never heard before I'd met him, and which he frequently used in contexts that made people blanch -- like the time he was trotting merrily down the street, walking his friend's tiny terrier, and ran into a couple of pals. "What'd you do all day?" they said. "Oh, fucked the dog," he chirped, bark laughing when the two fastidious guys turned their gaze on the terrier with horror.
The big irony is that I haven't talked to H in four years, after a friend-breakup that was as wrenching and unkind (on my part, mostly) as any lover breakup -- but I came across his blog on the weekend (while idly trying to discover, deep in my drunken night with S, whether he still worked at her firm). And, this triggered a lot of reflection about our friendship, where it had gone off the rails, cringing at my part in its ending.
So I emailed him. An apology, of sorts. Not just about our finale, but about the whole arc of it. I see now that I needed, always sought, a kind of intimacy from him that was a displacement of something missing with A, and I was as miserable when he couldn't meet it as I was with the lacks with her. I played out a lot of of those lacks on him, culminating in a final burst of "you know what your PROBLEM is?" flaying arrogance.
I'm very different than I was four years ago, I think. So much more tentative about how I relate to people, shape them, so conscious of how I've expected other people to follow my narratives of need, how I've railed at them when they haven't. A bore the brunt of that; H carried a fair bit of it.
And I'm also conscious that part of the uneasiness with him was that we both had a fair bit of the same kind of arm's length yearning to fulfill... something... about our work, shared bursts of optimism when we touched near it (he with poetry and fiction, hopeful new loves, running a marathon), deflation and misery when it receded and we didn't know how to grasp it differently.
The uneasiness is wrapped up in the touchstone phrase, too -- our friendship was, in a way, fucking the dog -- marking time near each other, shaded near but not of real intimacy. Time spent wanting to do things differently but only approaching it.
I'm working through a lot of this stuff about how to grasp and live into my voice, my passion, put my work and my life in the same place, not sit around the edges of it. I do more than my share of measuring out the coffee spoons and not just doing what I can in the day. Posting, in particular, letting the very real rewards of the online community take up so much time. I think "getting obsessed and staying obsessed" is partly about the "bursts of brilliance," as Pamela calls them, but also about the steady building of the tedious, the dividing up the units of work, as F levers through his day. Just... doing the tedious things, staying at it, until the bursts of brilliance come in the sides.
I do know that living my life and doing my work are inextricably intertwined in a different way than, say, if my work were in a lab -- my way of loving, talking, walking through the city -- when your work is about making social worlds, all of this is part of knowing. But knowing and doing something with the knowing are two different things, and while the two are more latched together for me than for some people, the doing something needs to be more tightly shaped for me than it is.
Faking it
And now I'm clicking around like mad, finding more of those luscious tiny image narratives. This one would have resonated in my earlier mood, when I was walking around outside taking my doubts too seriously. I like the way I got punted out of that space by the little "Respect the Art" exchange, 
the same way I was pulled up short by Amelia last summer, with this conversation, in my tiny bathroom in the apt. in J&S's house:
Amelia: Why are you putting that stuff in your hair?
Me: Because I have a meeting and I need to look nice for work.
A: Because you need to look like a businesswoman?
Me: Pretty much.
A: But they're GOING to KNOW you're faking it!
She then explained that my eyebrow ring was a clear signal that I was Not a Businesswoman. But I do carry that silly little story around, her recognition that I'm not exactly mold-fitting. There's a big question mark there about what I was thinking about earlier -- when is being cross-disciplines, cross-conversations generative, stimulating, vivid -- and when is it a failure to buckle down and join one seriously already. I don't think I'm "faking it" -- but I do need to pick an academic/practice conversation and just JOIN it. Seriously.
the same way I was pulled up short by Amelia last summer, with this conversation, in my tiny bathroom in the apt. in J&S's house:Amelia: Why are you putting that stuff in your hair?
Me: Because I have a meeting and I need to look nice for work.
A: Because you need to look like a businesswoman?
Me: Pretty much.
A: But they're GOING to KNOW you're faking it!
She then explained that my eyebrow ring was a clear signal that I was Not a Businesswoman. But I do carry that silly little story around, her recognition that I'm not exactly mold-fitting. There's a big question mark there about what I was thinking about earlier -- when is being cross-disciplines, cross-conversations generative, stimulating, vivid -- and when is it a failure to buckle down and join one seriously already. I don't think I'm "faking it" -- but I do need to pick an academic/practice conversation and just JOIN it. Seriously.
Respect the Art
I had the bloody strangest little exchange with a new poster on my online community Tuesday night. We were talking about that postcard site with the confessions that I linked below, and she ventured a rather categorical opinion that they were actually all professionally done. 
(Implying that it was all Fake and that we were Internet Rubes being taken in by a Scam). I offered the thought that actually, they probably only post the best ones, but that I knew a lot of people who would be able to produce those kinds of tiny perfect narratives. This poster did the online equivalent of snorting and huffed, "Easy to say--hard to do. Respect the art."
Well, this simultaneously pinched me and made me guffaw. I mean, respect the art? It's not like I said I knew how to make an oil painting of a fucking CLOWN or some other ambitious claim. We're talking about postcards with a sentence on them.
This exchange rifled into a ruffle, as they tend to, with Katie clamping down on the new poster and everyone getting all rustly for a bit, but then it all simmered down, with a request for her to be less categorical, less judge-y in her opinions.
But I'm still giggling over "respect the art." I think it'll be my new motto. It came at the right time, too, when I was in a little state of agonizing too much over my own doubts about MY "art" -- my research, my work, my thinking -- remembering the Garp line about building fucking bookcases instead of writing books. It's true. It's absurd. Respect the art. Make a postcard with a sentence on it that speaks volumes about being human. One after another. Put them into the world, collaboratively and openly. Call it a dissertation, joining the conversation. And that's all I have to do.
(Implying that it was all Fake and that we were Internet Rubes being taken in by a Scam). I offered the thought that actually, they probably only post the best ones, but that I knew a lot of people who would be able to produce those kinds of tiny perfect narratives. This poster did the online equivalent of snorting and huffed, "Easy to say--hard to do. Respect the art."Well, this simultaneously pinched me and made me guffaw. I mean, respect the art? It's not like I said I knew how to make an oil painting of a fucking CLOWN or some other ambitious claim. We're talking about postcards with a sentence on them.
This exchange rifled into a ruffle, as they tend to, with Katie clamping down on the new poster and everyone getting all rustly for a bit, but then it all simmered down, with a request for her to be less categorical, less judge-y in her opinions.
But I'm still giggling over "respect the art." I think it'll be my new motto. It came at the right time, too, when I was in a little state of agonizing too much over my own doubts about MY "art" -- my research, my work, my thinking -- remembering the Garp line about building fucking bookcases instead of writing books. It's true. It's absurd. Respect the art. Make a postcard with a sentence on it that speaks volumes about being human. One after another. Put them into the world, collaboratively and openly. Call it a dissertation, joining the conversation. And that's all I have to do.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
It's Life
My dear friend Renee sent me a link to this poem today. Very a propos for my slightly too tangled, fretful mood.
The ending is beautiful:
It's life that will consume you in the end, but in the meantime...
It's life that will eat you alive, but for now...
It's life that calls you to the street where the wood smoke hangs,
and the bare hint of a whisper of your name, but before
you go...
Too late: Life got its tentacles around you, its hooks into your heart,
and suddenly you come awake as if for the first time, and
you are standing in a part of the town where the air is
sweet -- your face flushed, your chest thumping, your
stomach a planet, your heart a planet, your every organ a
separate planet, all of it of a piece though the pieces turn
separately, O silent indications of the inevitable, as among
the natural restraints of winter and good sense, life blows
you apart in her arms.
The ending is beautiful:
It's life that will consume you in the end, but in the meantime...
It's life that will eat you alive, but for now...
It's life that calls you to the street where the wood smoke hangs,
and the bare hint of a whisper of your name, but before
you go...
Too late: Life got its tentacles around you, its hooks into your heart,
and suddenly you come awake as if for the first time, and
you are standing in a part of the town where the air is
sweet -- your face flushed, your chest thumping, your
stomach a planet, your heart a planet, your every organ a
separate planet, all of it of a piece though the pieces turn
separately, O silent indications of the inevitable, as among
the natural restraints of winter and good sense, life blows
you apart in her arms.
Haiku for my morning
French press sat too long
While wheedling computer guys
Harsh coffee, no mac
***
I am trying not to get torqued out about the fact that the geek boys can't even give me a diagnosis on the ibook until tomorrow -- Wednesday -- when I have to have resolved my issues to enough of a degree by the end of the day on Thursday so that I'll have a computer to take with me on my 10 day trek from the pacific to the hills of vermont. I'm trying to decide if I'm more fretful about not being able to WORK or not having my online lifeline. I'll have basic email with the treo, but no FULL emailing (and so much of my life happens in email), no blogging, no online community. The twitchiness at that possibility is a Big Sign that maybe I need to go off on an electronic-free quest.
I sure know that my ibook-free stretch of time since last Wednesday night has meant I have MUCH better sleep hygiene, when I fall asleep with a novel in hand instead of dvds on my chest and chat with my west coast peeps. Important to remember :-).
While wheedling computer guys
Harsh coffee, no mac
***
I am trying not to get torqued out about the fact that the geek boys can't even give me a diagnosis on the ibook until tomorrow -- Wednesday -- when I have to have resolved my issues to enough of a degree by the end of the day on Thursday so that I'll have a computer to take with me on my 10 day trek from the pacific to the hills of vermont. I'm trying to decide if I'm more fretful about not being able to WORK or not having my online lifeline. I'll have basic email with the treo, but no FULL emailing (and so much of my life happens in email), no blogging, no online community. The twitchiness at that possibility is a Big Sign that maybe I need to go off on an electronic-free quest.
I sure know that my ibook-free stretch of time since last Wednesday night has meant I have MUCH better sleep hygiene, when I fall asleep with a novel in hand instead of dvds on my chest and chat with my west coast peeps. Important to remember :-).
Monday, September 04, 2006
Open windows
The window is open on very overcast skies, my oven is on, and I'm actually *cooking dinner* for the second time in three days. Even more impressively, I'm cooking dinner *for myself*, and making enough to have leftovers.
Today, labour day, the notorious first day of "new resolutions" for all of us who actually looked forward to going back to school, got excited about pencil crayons and empty scribblers and pristine mathbooks, was a good recalibrating day for me... on all sorts of fronts. After a weekend of both some excess and just a little too much socializing (all of it *good*, mind you), I've been completely quiet today. Reading, working on a paper, making comments on a chapter my friend P wrote for a book on transformational learning, lying on the couch reading Bitch, emailing Important People, hanging out a little bit with my online friends.
Inside my loft, the space feels restful, finally, in counterpoint to the agitated outside, the busy market, the grim skies (tail end of Ernesto), the fighter planes flying around aimlessly for the airshow down at the lake. (Sidebar -- what IS this anachronistic display of "might" about? We HAVE no military planes to speak of -- why are they zipping around showing off tandem dives when, presumably, we're over-committed in a war already? The air show thing always evokes my childhood moments on the airfield at the base in Baden, me in my brownie uniform shaking hands with Prince Philip while the mounties rode through their paces, other Exciting Moments with planes darting about. These are probably the same planes that created awe in 1974).
Today, 10 years ago, was the day A and I got possession of our house. I can't imagine having predicted a decade ago where I'd be on September 4, 2006. In some ways, I don't know where I am, of course -- but I can see some of the paths that are taking shape, starting to be shaded vividly in, all past this milestone date of January 08 when I am aiming to be done the phd. The dissertation proposal is in my committee's hands right now, with a conversation planned for next Monday -- my life will get new organization around that once it's approved. Eek. So exposing, sending that proposal out into the world, such fragile ideas.
One of the things I've been doing this week is rereading two of my favourite John Irving books -- Garp and Hotel New Hampshire. Both are heavy handed, Hotel in particular, which doesn't stand up to the joy it gave me in my early 20s -- but I obviously gravitated to it this week for a reason -- the aphoristic messages of pursuit and purpose: life is serious but art is fun; the leitmotif of the perfect ending of gatsby and the green light, and the ending he set up to rival Fitzgerald's: "Coach Bob knew it all along -- you've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. You've got to keep passing the open windows."
I feel the dissertation worming its way into my soul, singing along with other barely sketched out dreams, making me obsess in all the right ways. More green tea, more home-cooked meals, more time making this place feel like a space for Real Work.
Today, labour day, the notorious first day of "new resolutions" for all of us who actually looked forward to going back to school, got excited about pencil crayons and empty scribblers and pristine mathbooks, was a good recalibrating day for me... on all sorts of fronts. After a weekend of both some excess and just a little too much socializing (all of it *good*, mind you), I've been completely quiet today. Reading, working on a paper, making comments on a chapter my friend P wrote for a book on transformational learning, lying on the couch reading Bitch, emailing Important People, hanging out a little bit with my online friends.
Inside my loft, the space feels restful, finally, in counterpoint to the agitated outside, the busy market, the grim skies (tail end of Ernesto), the fighter planes flying around aimlessly for the airshow down at the lake. (Sidebar -- what IS this anachronistic display of "might" about? We HAVE no military planes to speak of -- why are they zipping around showing off tandem dives when, presumably, we're over-committed in a war already? The air show thing always evokes my childhood moments on the airfield at the base in Baden, me in my brownie uniform shaking hands with Prince Philip while the mounties rode through their paces, other Exciting Moments with planes darting about. These are probably the same planes that created awe in 1974).
Today, 10 years ago, was the day A and I got possession of our house. I can't imagine having predicted a decade ago where I'd be on September 4, 2006. In some ways, I don't know where I am, of course -- but I can see some of the paths that are taking shape, starting to be shaded vividly in, all past this milestone date of January 08 when I am aiming to be done the phd. The dissertation proposal is in my committee's hands right now, with a conversation planned for next Monday -- my life will get new organization around that once it's approved. Eek. So exposing, sending that proposal out into the world, such fragile ideas.
One of the things I've been doing this week is rereading two of my favourite John Irving books -- Garp and Hotel New Hampshire. Both are heavy handed, Hotel in particular, which doesn't stand up to the joy it gave me in my early 20s -- but I obviously gravitated to it this week for a reason -- the aphoristic messages of pursuit and purpose: life is serious but art is fun; the leitmotif of the perfect ending of gatsby and the green light, and the ending he set up to rival Fitzgerald's: "Coach Bob knew it all along -- you've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. You've got to keep passing the open windows."
I feel the dissertation worming its way into my soul, singing along with other barely sketched out dreams, making me obsess in all the right ways. More green tea, more home-cooked meals, more time making this place feel like a space for Real Work.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Oof.
It's official. The Pace of My Life is a Too Hectic and I need to simmer down and drink a lot of green tea while reading books quietly in my flat.
I'm moving in too high a gear these days, lots of too revved stuff happening. Went out with my friend S last night and we drank our faces off. I'm not really sure why we thought lakes of wine and three tequila shots were necessary for the flow of our always textured, weaving and cracking-each-other-up conversation, but somehow it made a grammar to the words, and next thing you know it was 3:30 a.m. and I was putting myself to bed in her spare room. Not a pretty picture this morning at ALL.
I think the shape of my life gets stretched out too easily when I'm more-or-less-single, like a hoodie with elbow puckers and a zipper that doesn't quite meet any more. I think I'm not always good at just Staying Home Quietly when I'm not working or when there's no one else here to just provide drifty, semi-engaged companionship. One of the things I haven't learned well about living alone, yet.
But... this whacking great hangover is a Warning Sign that I'm pushing myself hard in not particularly healthy ways -- like the little scrape to my car, yesterday, where I backed into a pole in my parking garage because I was trying to do too many things at once (take my busted ibook in to the geekboys to see if they could fish out any data from the hard drive I apparently fried in the blink of an eye on Thursday, talk to D who was in the car with me). Good thing the smart car is made of plastic.
Tonight it's warm time with five friends who are coming for dinner, and I'm actually *cooking* -- the weather is cooperating with rain and chill that makes it appealing to turn the oven on -- and then I will keep the rest of the week, between here and the west coast, completely empty of frantic activity. Pace myself calmly through a paper, lots of tea, a bit of client work, looking ahead quietly. Yoga. Prana. Quiet.
I'm moving in too high a gear these days, lots of too revved stuff happening. Went out with my friend S last night and we drank our faces off. I'm not really sure why we thought lakes of wine and three tequila shots were necessary for the flow of our always textured, weaving and cracking-each-other-up conversation, but somehow it made a grammar to the words, and next thing you know it was 3:30 a.m. and I was putting myself to bed in her spare room. Not a pretty picture this morning at ALL.
I think the shape of my life gets stretched out too easily when I'm more-or-less-single, like a hoodie with elbow puckers and a zipper that doesn't quite meet any more. I think I'm not always good at just Staying Home Quietly when I'm not working or when there's no one else here to just provide drifty, semi-engaged companionship. One of the things I haven't learned well about living alone, yet.
But... this whacking great hangover is a Warning Sign that I'm pushing myself hard in not particularly healthy ways -- like the little scrape to my car, yesterday, where I backed into a pole in my parking garage because I was trying to do too many things at once (take my busted ibook in to the geekboys to see if they could fish out any data from the hard drive I apparently fried in the blink of an eye on Thursday, talk to D who was in the car with me). Good thing the smart car is made of plastic.
Tonight it's warm time with five friends who are coming for dinner, and I'm actually *cooking* -- the weather is cooperating with rain and chill that makes it appealing to turn the oven on -- and then I will keep the rest of the week, between here and the west coast, completely empty of frantic activity. Pace myself calmly through a paper, lots of tea, a bit of client work, looking ahead quietly. Yoga. Prana. Quiet.
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