With the road trip over, Lover's Lanes is going to update a lot less frequently. I did collect one love story that I hope to get typed up soon, but Blackbird has taken her last cross-country flight for a while. It's back to LiveJournal for a while with me! But first, this trip deserves an epilogue.
The night before I set out, I wrote this: "I don't know what's going to happen -- whether this will be one of the best or worst times of my life, or what kind of meaning it will turn out to have, or if it might turn out to have no meaning. I don't know. But that's the point."
Now that I do know what happened -- well, more or less -- I have the benefit of hindsight. These weeks fell squarely into the "best times" category. Viewed episodically, most of my time on the road ranged from average to fantastic. I had my share of hours, evenings, and even days of relative depression, but with so little of the mundane world to get in the way, I found it easier to transmute sadness into lessons and even pride. ("So I'm feeling threatened by Winnemucca, Nevada? Wow, that means I must be in Winnemucca, Nevada. What the hell kind of craziness made this possible? Wait, I got here by myself? Maybe I do have what it takes to step into a casino, then...")
Meaning is a trickier question. I can say Lover's Lanes was meaningless, or that it taught me about the importance of self-reliance or friendship or motion, or that it made me more of an American or an adult or a man. But the proof of any of those "meanings" is in the pudding. If I now return to my old routines with my old attitudes, Lover's Lanes was just an unusual vacation. And maybe that would be fine with someone else. But it's not fine with me.
The day before yesterday I applied to the University of South Florida's library science degree program. If they accept me, then next year I'll begin working towards an MLS. I've talked to a number of librarians and haven't heard one yet say "this is an awful job," or "I made some bad choices," or even "meh, it's a living." Is this the right job for me? Could it even be a career? I don't have the first idea, but I do know that by the end of the year I will have been in the business of tutoring for about as long as I was in college, and that alarms me. Tutoring was an experiment, an important and lucrative one, but it's an experiment that got out of hand. It's time to recork that particular test tube and try the next one. It's a big lab, after all, and time flies!
Showing posts with label me. Show all posts
Showing posts with label me. Show all posts
Monday, August 3, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
Angelus rampant
Woke up, got dressed, drove to Missoula. That was my day, mostly. It takes about seven hours to get to this mid-sized university town in Montana from Seattle. I was eager to get off to a strong start on my way back to the east coast, and seven hours in the driver's seat -- taking me through all of Washington, the Idaho "panhandle," and western Montana -- qualifies. On the drive I listened to "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (my second to last audiobook -- must practice conservation!) and watched the forests transform into high plains in hilly and occasionally dramatic fashion. One hillside had lots of trees but no brush whatsoever, creating a ghost town effect. While I gained some altitude today, I've hardly begun to re-penetrate the Rockies. Those mountains are not something you drive across in a day, though you can get across the wicked part in a day. Today was canoeing down the Hudson River; the wicked part is canoeing down Niagara Falls.
Since I have so little else to say today, I thought I'd post an imaginary dialogue that I think does a pretty good job illustrating what most days are like for me out here. This is how I got dinner tonight. I hung up with my parents saying I was going to Perkins to get some comfort food after some subpar Ethiopian last night. But the angel of adventure, who was sitting beside me, said, "Nay! We shall at least check Google Maps first to see what unique local eateries might be in the area!" I let him do it, and he discovered that in downtown Missoula there is a place called MacKenzie River Pizza Co that Google Maps rates five stars. "Let us then abscond to the pizza place," he said. "But Perkins is right down the road and I know it'll be good," I protested. He chided me: "Lo, you have been bugging Us for good pizza for weeks now, and now that pizza appears on Our doorstep you wish to eat at Perkins?" "Fine," I said, and we got in the car.
We drove downtown, a short and pleasant drive, and there was a wait. While we waited for a table, we looked at the menu. "I can't wait to have some of this classic mozzarella," I said. "Hold!" replied the angel of adventure. "It says on this menu that this is a gourmet pizzeria, and therefore we shall have gourmet pizza!" "Mozzarella can be gourmet," I pointed out. "Mozzarella is less likely to be gourmet," said the angel of adventure, "than a Thai Pie, which is a pizza in which tomato sauce has been replaced with peanut sauce, and which is topped with basil chicken, mandarin oranges, scallions, red peppers, peanuts, and cilantro!" "Is that even a pizza?" I asked. "I do not know!" answered the angel excitedly. "Therefore, let us order it and find out!" "I was promised pizza," I grumbled. "And verily, you are getting a Thai Pie," said the angel.
The Thai Pie, to my surprise and frankly I think to the angel's too, was indeed a pizza, and it was delicious. It was more delicious than mozzarella would have been.
Now to the pictures!
Speaking of angels, here's the statuary trumpeter atop the central cathedral in Salt Lake City, Utah, at sunset. No post-production effects have been applied to this picture. This is how it really looked.
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, through the fence on the south end. This is not the classic view of the bridge, which is taken from Marin County on the north end on a clear day, but this picture is closer to the reality of the bridge as I experienced it in the fog.
Jono Xia (nee DiCarlo) denounces the evils of socialism in full wedding regalia.
Sushu and Jono, all dressed up in their self-designed wedding couture. Aren't they radiant?
Brian Auriti, Action Wildlife Photographer! That is a wild deer who lives on a steep and exhausting three-mile trail in Muir Woods in Marin County. The hike was beautiful but did not photograph well.
Run, it's a tsunami! Oh wait, no it's not, that's just the fog rolling in on Pacifica, the Bay Area town where the Raskin clan lives. I stayed one night in their place. Never having seen a tsunami, I actually was momentarily worried when I glanced out of my car window and saw this panorama.
And in less threatening landscape capture, the sun sets here on quite a different bay, eight hours' drive away in Waldport, Oregon.
Run, it's the Fremont Troll! This guy lives under a bridge in Seattle and is a piece of public art. The things I learned in Seattle were generally less photographable than the things I learned elsewhere, so this is the only picture from Seattle in this batch.
One of a thousand views of the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver. Photos are not very good at capturing motion or depth, two elements very important to understanding how beautiful this garden is, but I couldn't very well not include any photos of this tranquil place.
And a few blocks away, here's Vancouver pot culture. It's a little blurry because I was holding an umbrella in the other hand. Does rain bring out the potheads, or is downtown Vancouver always this smoky?
I touched the moon! This was at the otherwise not very interesting astronomy museum in Vancouver by the southern bay. The rock was very smooth, worn down by God knows how many thousand or million fingers.
Vancouver as seen from Queen Elizabeth Park, the highest point in Vancouver. Funny how in many ways this view is better than any view of the city I took from atop the tourist tower (visible at right; it's the one with the needle) or the skyride at Grouse Mountain (the one on the right).
Wildlife Photographer 2: Electric Cockatoo! At Queen Elizabeth Park there is a greenhouse containing a wide variety of tropical plants and birds -- yes, in Canada. I don't know what species this guy is, but he very much enjoyed strutting his stuff for all the photographers.
And here is an axe thrower at the lumberjack show at Grouse Mountain. The axe is actually in the air here, near the target at about two o'clock from the bullseye; you can see it against the light brown pole if you look carefully. He landed the bullseye a fractional second after the moment frozen here.
There! Now I can procrastinate on posting a whole new set of pictures, once I have some! :D
Since I have so little else to say today, I thought I'd post an imaginary dialogue that I think does a pretty good job illustrating what most days are like for me out here. This is how I got dinner tonight. I hung up with my parents saying I was going to Perkins to get some comfort food after some subpar Ethiopian last night. But the angel of adventure, who was sitting beside me, said, "Nay! We shall at least check Google Maps first to see what unique local eateries might be in the area!" I let him do it, and he discovered that in downtown Missoula there is a place called MacKenzie River Pizza Co that Google Maps rates five stars. "Let us then abscond to the pizza place," he said. "But Perkins is right down the road and I know it'll be good," I protested. He chided me: "Lo, you have been bugging Us for good pizza for weeks now, and now that pizza appears on Our doorstep you wish to eat at Perkins?" "Fine," I said, and we got in the car.
We drove downtown, a short and pleasant drive, and there was a wait. While we waited for a table, we looked at the menu. "I can't wait to have some of this classic mozzarella," I said. "Hold!" replied the angel of adventure. "It says on this menu that this is a gourmet pizzeria, and therefore we shall have gourmet pizza!" "Mozzarella can be gourmet," I pointed out. "Mozzarella is less likely to be gourmet," said the angel of adventure, "than a Thai Pie, which is a pizza in which tomato sauce has been replaced with peanut sauce, and which is topped with basil chicken, mandarin oranges, scallions, red peppers, peanuts, and cilantro!" "Is that even a pizza?" I asked. "I do not know!" answered the angel excitedly. "Therefore, let us order it and find out!" "I was promised pizza," I grumbled. "And verily, you are getting a Thai Pie," said the angel.
The Thai Pie, to my surprise and frankly I think to the angel's too, was indeed a pizza, and it was delicious. It was more delicious than mozzarella would have been.
Now to the pictures!
Speaking of angels, here's the statuary trumpeter atop the central cathedral in Salt Lake City, Utah, at sunset. No post-production effects have been applied to this picture. This is how it really looked.
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, through the fence on the south end. This is not the classic view of the bridge, which is taken from Marin County on the north end on a clear day, but this picture is closer to the reality of the bridge as I experienced it in the fog.
Jono Xia (nee DiCarlo) denounces the evils of socialism in full wedding regalia.
Sushu and Jono, all dressed up in their self-designed wedding couture. Aren't they radiant?
Brian Auriti, Action Wildlife Photographer! That is a wild deer who lives on a steep and exhausting three-mile trail in Muir Woods in Marin County. The hike was beautiful but did not photograph well.
Run, it's a tsunami! Oh wait, no it's not, that's just the fog rolling in on Pacifica, the Bay Area town where the Raskin clan lives. I stayed one night in their place. Never having seen a tsunami, I actually was momentarily worried when I glanced out of my car window and saw this panorama.
And in less threatening landscape capture, the sun sets here on quite a different bay, eight hours' drive away in Waldport, Oregon.
Run, it's the Fremont Troll! This guy lives under a bridge in Seattle and is a piece of public art. The things I learned in Seattle were generally less photographable than the things I learned elsewhere, so this is the only picture from Seattle in this batch.
One of a thousand views of the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver. Photos are not very good at capturing motion or depth, two elements very important to understanding how beautiful this garden is, but I couldn't very well not include any photos of this tranquil place.
And a few blocks away, here's Vancouver pot culture. It's a little blurry because I was holding an umbrella in the other hand. Does rain bring out the potheads, or is downtown Vancouver always this smoky?
I touched the moon! This was at the otherwise not very interesting astronomy museum in Vancouver by the southern bay. The rock was very smooth, worn down by God knows how many thousand or million fingers.
Vancouver as seen from Queen Elizabeth Park, the highest point in Vancouver. Funny how in many ways this view is better than any view of the city I took from atop the tourist tower (visible at right; it's the one with the needle) or the skyride at Grouse Mountain (the one on the right).
Wildlife Photographer 2: Electric Cockatoo! At Queen Elizabeth Park there is a greenhouse containing a wide variety of tropical plants and birds -- yes, in Canada. I don't know what species this guy is, but he very much enjoyed strutting his stuff for all the photographers.
And here is an axe thrower at the lumberjack show at Grouse Mountain. The axe is actually in the air here, near the target at about two o'clock from the bullseye; you can see it against the light brown pole if you look carefully. He landed the bullseye a fractional second after the moment frozen here.
There! Now I can procrastinate on posting a whole new set of pictures, once I have some! :D
Monday, June 29, 2009
Man and life
I've spent the last few days hanging out with old friends and meeting some new ones. Most especially, though, I've spent them delighting in Jono and Sushu's newfound matrimony. The weekend has been a whirlwind. Hell, in a one-hour span today alone I established in-jokes with my buddies about buffalo, pagodas, and pylons in separate episodes. (Golden Gate Park has all three.) For the record, Stephen's buffalo call is "buffalo!" said in a slightly different voice, and the famously bizarre (but perfectly grammatical) sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" relies on the word "buffalo" being a collective plural noun, a transitive verb, and an adjective, properties we couldn't think of any other word that fit. (The sentence means "Buffalo from a city in New York who are bullied by other buffalo from a city in New York bully still other buffalo from a city in New York.") The stories for the pagoda and pylon are similarly elaborate. We all learned the word "equitational" in connection with the latter.
But I digress. I should really start with Friday, a day spent mostly at the home of the grandparents of Aza Raskin (a webfamous software developer) exploring their wonderfully eccentric farm and treehouse. They have chickens, goats, alpacas, a dog, a cat, a python named Monty, an African gray parrot (not a Norwegian blue), a swing hung from tree branches perhaps thirty feet high, and two tree forts connected by industrial-strength rope netting. I traveled this strange realm with friends old and new; it's been a pleasure getting to know Aza's sister Aviva over the weekend, and I hope we stay in touch! (They have a third sibling, Aenea, and if you are observant about language you will notice that their parents have a particular playful naming convention for their children.) At the Raskin clan's house Alexis and Aviva baked a red velvet cake to complement the wedding while I wrote a story to perform at the picnic, a work of fiction based on the tales I've recounted in previous entries here; it includes elements from Ruby Falls, from Tunnel Hill, and from Winnemucca, and tells how my nonexistent friend Richard had a surreal experience while on a road trip to San Francisco to pick up a statue of St. McGuffin.
The following day I actually told this story in front of the picnic crowd of about sixty people, to general applause! Other acts included a trumpet/cello duet (?!) written especially for the wedding, some really fantastic juggling with that spinning thing on a wire, two ukulele songs, and embarrassing stories about the many ways Jono has almost killed himself over the years. During the eating portion of the picnic I wandered off with Alexis and Aviva. We found a creek, took our shoes off, and had a foot dip. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was for me, maybe more than the storytelling. Spontaneity is difficult! I love spontaneous people, but I have trouble cultivating that quality in myself. I can't go out and mindfully practice it, either, because by definition you can't plan spontaneity. So instead I just have to be alert to the times when I can break out of my own expectations to create something unexpected and wonderful. In this case I came out refreshed and with dirty feet. The willingness to accept dirty feet as the price of being able to tell this story is relevant to what I'm trying to say here.
After the picnic there was the wedding dinner, where I sat at a table of twelve and was very nearly socially functional! The toasts and well-wishes would have been nauseatingly sweet for anyone but Jono and Sushu, who are superhumanly sweet themselves and deserve all the sweetness the world can bestow on them. Afterward there was karaoke. That started out okay, but it turns out that when you pack forty people into a room with flashing lights and loud music and bad technology and people trying to make conversation with you in this environment you have a recipe for social disaster. I fled the scene after about an hour and spent the rest of the evening in my car until the friends I was driving home were ready to leave, turning the car on only to play "Blackbird" softly. I felt really awful. This is the same as the creek story except for the outcome. But I don't want to beat myself up for that; karaoke could have been fantastic and I gave it the opportunity to be. Adventures don't always have happy endings, but most happy endings come about because of adventures.
And then today I got to meet Jono's very little sister Aleksa, who is without doubt the nerdiest eight-year-old girl I know. (I'm guessing at her age.) Jono, Sushu, Aleksa, and I played some Rock Band together, and it turns out I'm best at the drums while Aleksa is best at singing. Then there was tourism: the Exploratorium, a San Francisco interactive science museum full of the coolest exhibits I have ever seen, from magnetic sand to imaging technology that draws evolving, moving stylized sketches of you in real time as you stand in front of the screen gaping at it; and Golden Gate Park, which I've already talked about. That plus the amazing Asian food that my visit to Cali has been full of made this a day well worth getting out of bed for.
It looks like I have two more full days in the Bay Area. I'm driving Alexis and possibly our fellow anime club alum Isaac up to Portland and then Seattle later this week, probably Wednesday, in convoy with Aviva. Until then I will happily stay in these bay cities that have afforded me so many adventures!
But I digress. I should really start with Friday, a day spent mostly at the home of the grandparents of Aza Raskin (a webfamous software developer) exploring their wonderfully eccentric farm and treehouse. They have chickens, goats, alpacas, a dog, a cat, a python named Monty, an African gray parrot (not a Norwegian blue), a swing hung from tree branches perhaps thirty feet high, and two tree forts connected by industrial-strength rope netting. I traveled this strange realm with friends old and new; it's been a pleasure getting to know Aza's sister Aviva over the weekend, and I hope we stay in touch! (They have a third sibling, Aenea, and if you are observant about language you will notice that their parents have a particular playful naming convention for their children.) At the Raskin clan's house Alexis and Aviva baked a red velvet cake to complement the wedding while I wrote a story to perform at the picnic, a work of fiction based on the tales I've recounted in previous entries here; it includes elements from Ruby Falls, from Tunnel Hill, and from Winnemucca, and tells how my nonexistent friend Richard had a surreal experience while on a road trip to San Francisco to pick up a statue of St. McGuffin.
The following day I actually told this story in front of the picnic crowd of about sixty people, to general applause! Other acts included a trumpet/cello duet (?!) written especially for the wedding, some really fantastic juggling with that spinning thing on a wire, two ukulele songs, and embarrassing stories about the many ways Jono has almost killed himself over the years. During the eating portion of the picnic I wandered off with Alexis and Aviva. We found a creek, took our shoes off, and had a foot dip. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was for me, maybe more than the storytelling. Spontaneity is difficult! I love spontaneous people, but I have trouble cultivating that quality in myself. I can't go out and mindfully practice it, either, because by definition you can't plan spontaneity. So instead I just have to be alert to the times when I can break out of my own expectations to create something unexpected and wonderful. In this case I came out refreshed and with dirty feet. The willingness to accept dirty feet as the price of being able to tell this story is relevant to what I'm trying to say here.
After the picnic there was the wedding dinner, where I sat at a table of twelve and was very nearly socially functional! The toasts and well-wishes would have been nauseatingly sweet for anyone but Jono and Sushu, who are superhumanly sweet themselves and deserve all the sweetness the world can bestow on them. Afterward there was karaoke. That started out okay, but it turns out that when you pack forty people into a room with flashing lights and loud music and bad technology and people trying to make conversation with you in this environment you have a recipe for social disaster. I fled the scene after about an hour and spent the rest of the evening in my car until the friends I was driving home were ready to leave, turning the car on only to play "Blackbird" softly. I felt really awful. This is the same as the creek story except for the outcome. But I don't want to beat myself up for that; karaoke could have been fantastic and I gave it the opportunity to be. Adventures don't always have happy endings, but most happy endings come about because of adventures.
And then today I got to meet Jono's very little sister Aleksa, who is without doubt the nerdiest eight-year-old girl I know. (I'm guessing at her age.) Jono, Sushu, Aleksa, and I played some Rock Band together, and it turns out I'm best at the drums while Aleksa is best at singing. Then there was tourism: the Exploratorium, a San Francisco interactive science museum full of the coolest exhibits I have ever seen, from magnetic sand to imaging technology that draws evolving, moving stylized sketches of you in real time as you stand in front of the screen gaping at it; and Golden Gate Park, which I've already talked about. That plus the amazing Asian food that my visit to Cali has been full of made this a day well worth getting out of bed for.
It looks like I have two more full days in the Bay Area. I'm driving Alexis and possibly our fellow anime club alum Isaac up to Portland and then Seattle later this week, probably Wednesday, in convoy with Aviva. Until then I will happily stay in these bay cities that have afforded me so many adventures!
Monday, June 15, 2009
Days like this, part 3
This is the third and last part of a three-part post. Please read part 1 first; it's two posts below this one. Blogs aren't like novels; you have to read them in reverse order. It's like the movie Memento, except not actually intended to be viewed that way. Bizarre.
Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, was my next stop after Eustis. I rushed to Decatur to meet my host Zach, who was generous enough to wait for me before heading to a biweekly get-together at his friend's house to play tabletop games. I was looking forward to getting to know Zach (a friend's friend who I'd never met before) and his cohort over a board game -- but things didn't quite work out that way! Zach's friend was MIA, and through a series of increasingly frantic phone calls Zach eventually discovered that game night was canceled. He didn't even hesitate before dialing yet another number, then several more, organizing an impromptu meet-up at a local Thai place. The ginger chicken was nice and savory, and the conversation was a real challenge; I navigated a sea of unfamiliar names and relationships that emerged among the four of us there. Unfortunately, amidst the general rush of the evening I didn't have my camera with me, and the Slug Incident back in Zach's apartment was a sucker punch that knocked any will I might have had to photograph anything out of me. I feel very much like Bilbo Baggins -- someone not naturally proactive or good with exigencies who nonetheless finds himself on an adventure and doesn't always know how to cope with it.
I mentioned in the last post that the three towns I've stayed in have been completely different, and Decatur is the polar opposite of spacious Eustis -- ultra-urban, with everything crammed into as little space as possible, bending streets and buildings in the process. It's not a pretty place -- is what I thought driving in on Sunday evening. But this morning (was it only this morning?!?), driving out, I saw the way the skyscrapers vanished into the dawn fog as though their tops were rubbed out with an eraser the color of the sky... and I decided maybe Decatur wasn't so bad.
I did get a picture from Decatur, but it's not the skyscraper one. It's the side of Zach's apartment building, a poor picture that could have been taken anywhere. I wish I had pulled over and snapped the shot of the skyscrapers.
As I passed through southern Tennessee on the way to Paducah, I saw several signs for some tourist spot named Ruby Falls. I was on track to get into Paducah very early and had some time to kill, so I figured, what the hell, waterfalls are pretty. Right decision. Turns out Ruby Falls is an underground waterfall at the end of a half-mile cave a thousand feet beneath Lookout Mountain, just outside Chattanooga. Twenty bucks bought me a gorgeous tour -- and one that I do have pictures of.
A tourist-oriented cave tour is not photography-friendly. Though everything is lit just right, you're never at rest for long, and when you are there are heads or hands between you and the thing you want to photograph. Nevertheless, I got some fantastic shots, which I present here without further comment, except to say that they are all much more beautiful in person. If you're ever near Chattanooga, go.
And now is the part where I want to regale you with tales of the wonders of Paducah... only writing these posts has ended up taking most of my spare time this evening, so I haven't seen much of the town. Actually, I'm glad. The last few days have been full of sensory overload, and so for once it's probably better for me to sit inside staring at an electronic screen than to be outside getting fresh air and discovering things. I'm sorry, Paducah. You seem like a nice town. You are two hundred years old and full of river lore. If I ever come back I promise I'll give you the exploration you deserve.
Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, was my next stop after Eustis. I rushed to Decatur to meet my host Zach, who was generous enough to wait for me before heading to a biweekly get-together at his friend's house to play tabletop games. I was looking forward to getting to know Zach (a friend's friend who I'd never met before) and his cohort over a board game -- but things didn't quite work out that way! Zach's friend was MIA, and through a series of increasingly frantic phone calls Zach eventually discovered that game night was canceled. He didn't even hesitate before dialing yet another number, then several more, organizing an impromptu meet-up at a local Thai place. The ginger chicken was nice and savory, and the conversation was a real challenge; I navigated a sea of unfamiliar names and relationships that emerged among the four of us there. Unfortunately, amidst the general rush of the evening I didn't have my camera with me, and the Slug Incident back in Zach's apartment was a sucker punch that knocked any will I might have had to photograph anything out of me. I feel very much like Bilbo Baggins -- someone not naturally proactive or good with exigencies who nonetheless finds himself on an adventure and doesn't always know how to cope with it.
I mentioned in the last post that the three towns I've stayed in have been completely different, and Decatur is the polar opposite of spacious Eustis -- ultra-urban, with everything crammed into as little space as possible, bending streets and buildings in the process. It's not a pretty place -- is what I thought driving in on Sunday evening. But this morning (was it only this morning?!?), driving out, I saw the way the skyscrapers vanished into the dawn fog as though their tops were rubbed out with an eraser the color of the sky... and I decided maybe Decatur wasn't so bad.
I did get a picture from Decatur, but it's not the skyscraper one. It's the side of Zach's apartment building, a poor picture that could have been taken anywhere. I wish I had pulled over and snapped the shot of the skyscrapers.
As I passed through southern Tennessee on the way to Paducah, I saw several signs for some tourist spot named Ruby Falls. I was on track to get into Paducah very early and had some time to kill, so I figured, what the hell, waterfalls are pretty. Right decision. Turns out Ruby Falls is an underground waterfall at the end of a half-mile cave a thousand feet beneath Lookout Mountain, just outside Chattanooga. Twenty bucks bought me a gorgeous tour -- and one that I do have pictures of.
A tourist-oriented cave tour is not photography-friendly. Though everything is lit just right, you're never at rest for long, and when you are there are heads or hands between you and the thing you want to photograph. Nevertheless, I got some fantastic shots, which I present here without further comment, except to say that they are all much more beautiful in person. If you're ever near Chattanooga, go.
And now is the part where I want to regale you with tales of the wonders of Paducah... only writing these posts has ended up taking most of my spare time this evening, so I haven't seen much of the town. Actually, I'm glad. The last few days have been full of sensory overload, and so for once it's probably better for me to sit inside staring at an electronic screen than to be outside getting fresh air and discovering things. I'm sorry, Paducah. You seem like a nice town. You are two hundred years old and full of river lore. If I ever come back I promise I'll give you the exploration you deserve.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Slow down -- you move too fast
So as Athena suggested yesterday, Lover's Lanes needs to change. As originally conceived it's a fantastic idea for someone other than me, but I can't pull it off. I'm too introverted, too anxious, too prone to harsh self-criticism. But rather than abandon the project, I'm rewriting the rules. Rather than "ask for love stories," the new rule is "ask for love stories when I'm reasonably comfortable doing so." That might mean twice a week, once a week, or never.
I'm viewing this not as a surrender but as a necessary evolution. Making a cross-country road trip will be challenge enough without also imposing pressure on myself to invent and become a factitious persona. With this concession to reality I'll be able to enjoy myself more and worry less about interviews and itineraries. Maybe someday, when I've grown, I'll be able to take the journey I initially conceived. But that's not going to happen by June.
The change in plans is bittersweet for me. Sweet because the new journey will be more liberating and self-authentic than the one I'd planned; bitter because the new journey will not be breathtakingly original. It'll be "only" an extended road trip, with an option on love stories. Which itself is totally new for me, and I hope to grow through it -- but it's not new for you. You've done it yourself or you know someone who has. As anyone who's sat through a family slide show knows, travel is sorta boring when you're not the one traveling. So I reluctantly conclude that the daily-blogging phase of Lover's Lanes is at an end, at least for now. I'll pop back in as interesting developments (like cars or laptop computers) happen to the project, and when the trip starts I'll post whatever interesting anecdotes or ideas the scenery affords me. More dialogues with goddesses, maybe. And when there's a love story to be had -- well, I'll likely post that too.
Good trails!
I'm viewing this not as a surrender but as a necessary evolution. Making a cross-country road trip will be challenge enough without also imposing pressure on myself to invent and become a factitious persona. With this concession to reality I'll be able to enjoy myself more and worry less about interviews and itineraries. Maybe someday, when I've grown, I'll be able to take the journey I initially conceived. But that's not going to happen by June.
The change in plans is bittersweet for me. Sweet because the new journey will be more liberating and self-authentic than the one I'd planned; bitter because the new journey will not be breathtakingly original. It'll be "only" an extended road trip, with an option on love stories. Which itself is totally new for me, and I hope to grow through it -- but it's not new for you. You've done it yourself or you know someone who has. As anyone who's sat through a family slide show knows, travel is sorta boring when you're not the one traveling. So I reluctantly conclude that the daily-blogging phase of Lover's Lanes is at an end, at least for now. I'll pop back in as interesting developments (like cars or laptop computers) happen to the project, and when the trip starts I'll post whatever interesting anecdotes or ideas the scenery affords me. More dialogues with goddesses, maybe. And when there's a love story to be had -- well, I'll likely post that too.
Good trails!
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
I have to have Kentucky
My new reading project is "Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes," a neat book about writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Ethnography, as I understand it, has to do with understanding a society in terms of the experiences of the people who live in it. It is a little like anthropology, only with more emphasis on culture; it is a little like sociology, only with more field work; but it's different from either of them in that it's not so much an area of study as a technique of study. You can study a lot of things using ethnography. The key feature is that you go out and talk to the people you're interested in, maybe embed yourself with them a while, and then come back and write about what you learned. In that sense, Lover's Lanes is an ethnographic project -- though its scope, abstract like love and broad like the United States, is less focused than most ethnographies. And if Lover's Lanes is an ethnography then these love stories are field notes. Since Lover's Lanes will not go beyond the field note stage -- a real ethnographer does not merely anthologize his field notes, but writes a book about his theory using his field notes as source material -- it is especially important that I write my field notes well.
I've gleaned most of this from the first five pages of the aforementioned book -- that's all I've read so far -- which makes me optimistic that reading more of it will be useful.
Another thing I've gleaned from the first five pages of "Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes" is that there's some difference of opinion about who gets to do field work. Some people think you have to be a natural-born genius to talk to people and get coherent data from them. Other people think "any literate, adventurous person" can go do field work. The authors disagree with both schools of thought, believing that conducting and writing up field work is a skill that can and must be taught, which I presume is why they bothered to write a book about it. What caught my attention about this is that they referred to the second of those theories, the idea that anyone can do field work, as the "sink or swim" approach: you learn the skills you need on the job or you don't. That is very stark, but it precisely describes what I've been planning. I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to learn from scratch a new skill, namely making friends on purpose, in an environment where if I don't learn the skill I'll judge the whole project a failure.
Maybe it takes a natural-born genius to make friends on purpose. I never have. There have been rather few times in my life when I've set out to make friends; I don't even remember those people's names, so you can tell how well that went. It may be related to the way other people seem to be able to choose what they believe or feel, while I experience beliefs and feelings mostly as things that happen to me. In the same way, I haven't picked my friends; my friends have happened to me, thank God, and I treasure you.
So that's one variation on Lover's Lanes I could pursue. Make the trip, but don't try to make friends on purpose. Don't approach a single person for an interview. In the course of the journey there will be conversations. Trust that friends, or at least acquaintances, will happen to me. When they happen, ask them for their stories. That's a nice vision that plays to my strengths. But it relies a lot on luck. Luck is good to have around but you can't count on it. What's the saying? "Believe in God but keep the powder dry," or something like that? Me, I'm still working on figuring out which end you point at the bad guy.
I've gleaned most of this from the first five pages of the aforementioned book -- that's all I've read so far -- which makes me optimistic that reading more of it will be useful.
Another thing I've gleaned from the first five pages of "Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes" is that there's some difference of opinion about who gets to do field work. Some people think you have to be a natural-born genius to talk to people and get coherent data from them. Other people think "any literate, adventurous person" can go do field work. The authors disagree with both schools of thought, believing that conducting and writing up field work is a skill that can and must be taught, which I presume is why they bothered to write a book about it. What caught my attention about this is that they referred to the second of those theories, the idea that anyone can do field work, as the "sink or swim" approach: you learn the skills you need on the job or you don't. That is very stark, but it precisely describes what I've been planning. I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to learn from scratch a new skill, namely making friends on purpose, in an environment where if I don't learn the skill I'll judge the whole project a failure.
Maybe it takes a natural-born genius to make friends on purpose. I never have. There have been rather few times in my life when I've set out to make friends; I don't even remember those people's names, so you can tell how well that went. It may be related to the way other people seem to be able to choose what they believe or feel, while I experience beliefs and feelings mostly as things that happen to me. In the same way, I haven't picked my friends; my friends have happened to me, thank God, and I treasure you.
So that's one variation on Lover's Lanes I could pursue. Make the trip, but don't try to make friends on purpose. Don't approach a single person for an interview. In the course of the journey there will be conversations. Trust that friends, or at least acquaintances, will happen to me. When they happen, ask them for their stories. That's a nice vision that plays to my strengths. But it relies a lot on luck. Luck is good to have around but you can't count on it. What's the saying? "Believe in God but keep the powder dry," or something like that? Me, I'm still working on figuring out which end you point at the bad guy.
Monday, April 13, 2009
A bad country for gods
I just finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods. There's something in there that's relevant to Lover's Lanes, but I'm not sure what yet. I doubt I'll meet any gods on the road, and if I do I'll have to change their names anyway so you'll never know. If I figure out what the relevant part is I'll post it.
I wish I could figure it out, because tonight I'm having trouble thinking of what to put in this space. Since my trip to the New Age place last weekend I've been worried I am just not extroverted enough for this trip -- or perhaps not open enough? not agreeable enough? too neurotic? -- worried, in any case, that I'm temperamentally out of my depth. I'm terrified about how I'll come across to the other person. I guess that's because I'm working without a mask. This isn't tutoring or shopping. I'm doing something I actually want to be doing and making no pretense about it, which means I'm showing a part of myself to strangers that I usually show only to friends, and sometimes maybe not even to them. That's fair, because of course that's what I'm asking my subjects to do for me in telling me their stories. But I guess like all guys I'm worried that if I expose myself I'll be laughed at. Or lectured... or pranked... or ignored. Being politely brushed off like a panhandler -- even that would hurt. I'm not the salesman type who deals with rejection by just trying again with a smile as bright as ever. It's not totally impossible I could adopt that attitude as a mask, but then the journey would be work, like the other things I do with masks on, wouldn't it?...
And yet there's a conflict here in that my wiser self doesn't believe in masks. I don't mean he disapproves of them, I mean he literally doesn't think they exist. He thinks we have a lot of different faces and all of them are real. He agrees that some are less comfortable than the others, but says that usually the discomfort comes from unfamiliarity. He also thinks that when a face is really needed it will be there.
I'm not sure where that leaves me. It's much easier to be wise than to act wise.
I wish I could figure it out, because tonight I'm having trouble thinking of what to put in this space. Since my trip to the New Age place last weekend I've been worried I am just not extroverted enough for this trip -- or perhaps not open enough? not agreeable enough? too neurotic? -- worried, in any case, that I'm temperamentally out of my depth. I'm terrified about how I'll come across to the other person. I guess that's because I'm working without a mask. This isn't tutoring or shopping. I'm doing something I actually want to be doing and making no pretense about it, which means I'm showing a part of myself to strangers that I usually show only to friends, and sometimes maybe not even to them. That's fair, because of course that's what I'm asking my subjects to do for me in telling me their stories. But I guess like all guys I'm worried that if I expose myself I'll be laughed at. Or lectured... or pranked... or ignored. Being politely brushed off like a panhandler -- even that would hurt. I'm not the salesman type who deals with rejection by just trying again with a smile as bright as ever. It's not totally impossible I could adopt that attitude as a mask, but then the journey would be work, like the other things I do with masks on, wouldn't it?...
And yet there's a conflict here in that my wiser self doesn't believe in masks. I don't mean he disapproves of them, I mean he literally doesn't think they exist. He thinks we have a lot of different faces and all of them are real. He agrees that some are less comfortable than the others, but says that usually the discomfort comes from unfamiliarity. He also thinks that when a face is really needed it will be there.
I'm not sure where that leaves me. It's much easier to be wise than to act wise.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Aphrodisiax
I didn't get to do any work on my journey over the weekend, because I spent it under sedation. My new medication apparently does that for the first few days, weeks, or months of treatment, depending on the patient.
But let me back up. Many of my readers right now already know this, but I've struggled with anxiety issues all my life and depression since college. I've been in and out of psychiatric treatment since my second year of college -- longer, if you count the spells of therapy in elementary and middle school. By my count I've taken ten medications in the last six years, and none of them has yet done a thing for me in the long term beyond sedating me or possibly making me bipolar. You might call my continued attempts to find a medication that works faulty pattern recognition, and I admit it sounds like grasping at straws at this point, but any hope is better than no hope. It's not like you can treat the causes of these things. Mental illness, at least for me, seems to have no etiology. Like consciousness, it's just an emergent phenomenon proceeding from a particular configuration of neurons. You can change those, but that requires electroconvulsive therapy or lobotomy, which seem to be off the table. So all I have to treat are symptoms -- and we haven't even been successful in treating those.
My depression in particular bears on Lover's Lanes in several ways. One, the depression tends to make me pessimistic about the whole project -- which however is just one more obstacle to fight through, like having to buy a car or figure out how to approach people. Two, and ironically, Lover's Lanes is in part a way to escape from various things that I perceive as depressing me for a few months -- and if everything goes perfectly and the book is salable, maybe longer. Three, and correspondingly, the journey is a way to fight depression; I'm less depressed when I'm distracted, and nothing un-depresses me like being in the middle of succeeding at something cool. Four, and conversely, it's possible that my depression will be more pronounced during the trip, which will take me away from my support network, present me with lots of stressors, and give me copious opportunity to fail or be disappointed. Five, and proceeding from the last point, I have to find a way to be stable if I'm going to take the trip responsibly (which does not necessarily rule out taking it irresponsibly).
Which brings me back to medication. Starting tomorrow I'm on three different pills, two of which are strong tranquilizers. The most recent one in particular, Seroquel, seems to cause sedation universally; it even gets prescribed off-label for patients with sleep disorders. It seems I've passed some kind of threshold where making me feel normally is no longer on the table; now the game is one of tradeoffs, looking for drugs that relieve more problems than they cause. My impression is that you don't generally prescribe Seroquel to a patient you think has a chance of ever feeling 100%, because Seroquel knocks percentage points off the patient's ceiling. Fortunately, some people become acclimatized to the roofie aspect of the medication over time and are no longer affected that way. Others apparently never normalize.
We go through a lot to give ourselves hope. Hope is a lot like love that way. It isn't enough by itself, but it's better than nothing.
But let me back up. Many of my readers right now already know this, but I've struggled with anxiety issues all my life and depression since college. I've been in and out of psychiatric treatment since my second year of college -- longer, if you count the spells of therapy in elementary and middle school. By my count I've taken ten medications in the last six years, and none of them has yet done a thing for me in the long term beyond sedating me or possibly making me bipolar. You might call my continued attempts to find a medication that works faulty pattern recognition, and I admit it sounds like grasping at straws at this point, but any hope is better than no hope. It's not like you can treat the causes of these things. Mental illness, at least for me, seems to have no etiology. Like consciousness, it's just an emergent phenomenon proceeding from a particular configuration of neurons. You can change those, but that requires electroconvulsive therapy or lobotomy, which seem to be off the table. So all I have to treat are symptoms -- and we haven't even been successful in treating those.
My depression in particular bears on Lover's Lanes in several ways. One, the depression tends to make me pessimistic about the whole project -- which however is just one more obstacle to fight through, like having to buy a car or figure out how to approach people. Two, and ironically, Lover's Lanes is in part a way to escape from various things that I perceive as depressing me for a few months -- and if everything goes perfectly and the book is salable, maybe longer. Three, and correspondingly, the journey is a way to fight depression; I'm less depressed when I'm distracted, and nothing un-depresses me like being in the middle of succeeding at something cool. Four, and conversely, it's possible that my depression will be more pronounced during the trip, which will take me away from my support network, present me with lots of stressors, and give me copious opportunity to fail or be disappointed. Five, and proceeding from the last point, I have to find a way to be stable if I'm going to take the trip responsibly (which does not necessarily rule out taking it irresponsibly).
Which brings me back to medication. Starting tomorrow I'm on three different pills, two of which are strong tranquilizers. The most recent one in particular, Seroquel, seems to cause sedation universally; it even gets prescribed off-label for patients with sleep disorders. It seems I've passed some kind of threshold where making me feel normally is no longer on the table; now the game is one of tradeoffs, looking for drugs that relieve more problems than they cause. My impression is that you don't generally prescribe Seroquel to a patient you think has a chance of ever feeling 100%, because Seroquel knocks percentage points off the patient's ceiling. Fortunately, some people become acclimatized to the roofie aspect of the medication over time and are no longer affected that way. Others apparently never normalize.
We go through a lot to give ourselves hope. Hope is a lot like love that way. It isn't enough by itself, but it's better than nothing.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Spreading the love
Happy March!
Over the weekend I realized that I have no idea how many people read the average post here. I thought I had no way to find out until I realized that Google AdSense is basically a hit counter. Based on its stats I seem to average about ten hits per day. Assuming half of them are me, that's five readers per day (more per post), which is actually surprisingly high, I think! Maybe search engines' webcrawlers count as hits? Anyway, I was surprised that Lover's Lanes is popular enough to merit a few people reading it per day. I'd sort of thought I was talking to myself half the time!
And I realized almost immediately that it doesn't matter. I love that people think this project is cool enough to be worth following. I think it's cool too, and I'd much rather have you follow my (mis)adventures than not. But whether my followers numbered a hundred, ten, one, or zero, I'd still want to do this. Because -- and this may be the first time I've been able to say this about an aspiration in years -- because this is something I want to do in and of itself and independent of what other people think of it. Mustering the will is easier with moral support, and if you're reading this, thank you for yours. But if you're not reading this, that's okay too. I am all I need to make this journey a success in my own eyes.
That was a pleasant revelation.
That said, I wouldn't mind if my audience swelled. I want to write a book, after all. I wonder how a blog like this one grows its readership. The stuff I post about these days is all prep work, quotidian stuff, perhaps not of interest if you don't already know me at least a little. But when I get in the car in June or so and start posting tales from the road, from living rooms and laundromats and coffee shops -- in short, when I start doing things most people have never done -- maybe there will be more people who'd like to read about it. How do I find them? Do I run ads? Email webcomic authors who have never heard of me and ask them for free publicity? Call NBC-2 and ask if they want to cover my departure as a human interest story? How do memes -- in Dawkins' sense, not 4-chan's -- spread?
By being good, is the short answer. So I'll do that. Meanwhile, thanks to those of you who drive down Lover's Lanes a couple times a week and see how the neighborhood is changing.
Over the weekend I realized that I have no idea how many people read the average post here. I thought I had no way to find out until I realized that Google AdSense is basically a hit counter. Based on its stats I seem to average about ten hits per day. Assuming half of them are me, that's five readers per day (more per post), which is actually surprisingly high, I think! Maybe search engines' webcrawlers count as hits? Anyway, I was surprised that Lover's Lanes is popular enough to merit a few people reading it per day. I'd sort of thought I was talking to myself half the time!
And I realized almost immediately that it doesn't matter. I love that people think this project is cool enough to be worth following. I think it's cool too, and I'd much rather have you follow my (mis)adventures than not. But whether my followers numbered a hundred, ten, one, or zero, I'd still want to do this. Because -- and this may be the first time I've been able to say this about an aspiration in years -- because this is something I want to do in and of itself and independent of what other people think of it. Mustering the will is easier with moral support, and if you're reading this, thank you for yours. But if you're not reading this, that's okay too. I am all I need to make this journey a success in my own eyes.
That was a pleasant revelation.
That said, I wouldn't mind if my audience swelled. I want to write a book, after all. I wonder how a blog like this one grows its readership. The stuff I post about these days is all prep work, quotidian stuff, perhaps not of interest if you don't already know me at least a little. But when I get in the car in June or so and start posting tales from the road, from living rooms and laundromats and coffee shops -- in short, when I start doing things most people have never done -- maybe there will be more people who'd like to read about it. How do I find them? Do I run ads? Email webcomic authors who have never heard of me and ask them for free publicity? Call NBC-2 and ask if they want to cover my departure as a human interest story? How do memes -- in Dawkins' sense, not 4-chan's -- spread?
By being good, is the short answer. So I'll do that. Meanwhile, thanks to those of you who drive down Lover's Lanes a couple times a week and see how the neighborhood is changing.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
A Song of Air and Fire
I was talking about Lover's Lanes with my dad the other night. He understood the part about wanting to travel, but wasn't sure why I wanted to collect love stories. Why do you need a theme?, he asked.
Really there are two answers to that question, but I can sum them both up with one diversion into Tarot. There are four suits in a Tarot deck, two feminine and two masculine. The masculine suits are Rods and Swords. (If you're not sure why these are masculine suits, consider enrolling in a course on Freud.) Rods and Swords embody two different ways of "being a man." Rods are about energy, adventure, even animalism, like the magic wand of a magician; their element is fire, and they show it in their passion and love of novelty. These are the mountain climbers, the bungee jumpers. These are the guys who pick up and drive across the country to collect love stories on a moment's notice.
But I'm not a Rod. I'm a Sword. Swords are about finesse and careful consideration. They approach life with the perfectionism and discipline of a fencer honing his craft. Curiosity, sure -- but in contrast with the exuberant experiential curiosity of a Rod, a Sword's curiosity is intellectual and is about patterns rather than experiences. Swords are the suit of air -- not in the sense of freedom but in the sense of coolness and living on a higher plane than the brute material. Swords think; Rods act.
But Swords are also the suit most prone to make problems for itself. I certainly have. I think too much. It makes me anxious and depressed. I insist too much on everything going according to plan; I have trouble living in the moment. I am a Sword, but I am broken.
The first reason I'm collecting love stories, not just traveling, is that I'm a Sword. I need structure. I need to have a reason for what I'm doing, a purpose guiding my blade (or my Honda). What's more, the act of studying or cataloguing anything, like love, appeals to the Sword in me. It makes me more willing to do something Rodlike, like go on an adventure.
Which is good, because motive number two for collecting love stories -- and the trip as a whole, really -- is to become more comfortable with my Rod side. The future is a terrifying place sometimes. If I could just approach it with the anticipation and glee of a Rod rather than the skepticism and defensiveness of a Sword, maybe I'd have less trouble facing it. And maybe, if nothing else comes of my journey, maybe I'll learn that not knowing what town I'll be in tomorrow night or when I'll find my next willing subject or even whether my voyage will succeed -- in short, the uncertainty of the future -- is cause, not for panic, but for excitement!
Plus I just really want to hear people's love stories. There's that too.
Really there are two answers to that question, but I can sum them both up with one diversion into Tarot. There are four suits in a Tarot deck, two feminine and two masculine. The masculine suits are Rods and Swords. (If you're not sure why these are masculine suits, consider enrolling in a course on Freud.) Rods and Swords embody two different ways of "being a man." Rods are about energy, adventure, even animalism, like the magic wand of a magician; their element is fire, and they show it in their passion and love of novelty. These are the mountain climbers, the bungee jumpers. These are the guys who pick up and drive across the country to collect love stories on a moment's notice.
But I'm not a Rod. I'm a Sword. Swords are about finesse and careful consideration. They approach life with the perfectionism and discipline of a fencer honing his craft. Curiosity, sure -- but in contrast with the exuberant experiential curiosity of a Rod, a Sword's curiosity is intellectual and is about patterns rather than experiences. Swords are the suit of air -- not in the sense of freedom but in the sense of coolness and living on a higher plane than the brute material. Swords think; Rods act.
But Swords are also the suit most prone to make problems for itself. I certainly have. I think too much. It makes me anxious and depressed. I insist too much on everything going according to plan; I have trouble living in the moment. I am a Sword, but I am broken.
The first reason I'm collecting love stories, not just traveling, is that I'm a Sword. I need structure. I need to have a reason for what I'm doing, a purpose guiding my blade (or my Honda). What's more, the act of studying or cataloguing anything, like love, appeals to the Sword in me. It makes me more willing to do something Rodlike, like go on an adventure.
Which is good, because motive number two for collecting love stories -- and the trip as a whole, really -- is to become more comfortable with my Rod side. The future is a terrifying place sometimes. If I could just approach it with the anticipation and glee of a Rod rather than the skepticism and defensiveness of a Sword, maybe I'd have less trouble facing it. And maybe, if nothing else comes of my journey, maybe I'll learn that not knowing what town I'll be in tomorrow night or when I'll find my next willing subject or even whether my voyage will succeed -- in short, the uncertainty of the future -- is cause, not for panic, but for excitement!
Plus I just really want to hear people's love stories. There's that too.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Love is not enough
I don't really feel like composing a post today. Business issues, interpersonal tensions in my family, emotional problems, and life just generally being complicated. Which raises the question: what do I do when shit happens on the road?
There's a lot that could go wrong, as I've alluded to periodically since I started blogging about this hare-brained idea a couple weeks ago. I could have bad luck getting interviews. My car could break down. Murphy's Law being what it is, I'm not going to drive up the West Coast and down the East Coast without having shit happen at least once and probably more often than that. I'm not good at dealing with shit. You could call that the central problem of my life. And a lot of things fall under the rubric of "shit," including money, work, hostility, complexity of any kind, and the unexpected. I'm hoping that leaving my comfort zone -- putting my comfort zone up to 2700 miles over the horizon, actually, given what a big country we live in -- will help me learn to deal with shit, but that's not enough. I need a plan.
I have a cell phone. (I need to switch plans, but I'm having trouble arsing myself to do so; see above diatribe on the subject of shit.) The cell phone (in places with towers) and the laptop (in places with Internet access) will help tie me to my support network, so I don't have to deal with everything alone. I want to minimize how much whining my friends have to put up with, though, so I also have to be able to cope by myself. If things are going badly, some days -- if I'm in a friendly city -- I may just skip the highway, pay for an extra day at the motel, and kick back. Maybe look for one interview; maybe not. Decompress. Then get back on the road.
So between now and then I need to work on my coping. Remind myself that what I'm doing is worth it. Because if I stop believing that then there is no journey.
There's a lot that could go wrong, as I've alluded to periodically since I started blogging about this hare-brained idea a couple weeks ago. I could have bad luck getting interviews. My car could break down. Murphy's Law being what it is, I'm not going to drive up the West Coast and down the East Coast without having shit happen at least once and probably more often than that. I'm not good at dealing with shit. You could call that the central problem of my life. And a lot of things fall under the rubric of "shit," including money, work, hostility, complexity of any kind, and the unexpected. I'm hoping that leaving my comfort zone -- putting my comfort zone up to 2700 miles over the horizon, actually, given what a big country we live in -- will help me learn to deal with shit, but that's not enough. I need a plan.
I have a cell phone. (I need to switch plans, but I'm having trouble arsing myself to do so; see above diatribe on the subject of shit.) The cell phone (in places with towers) and the laptop (in places with Internet access) will help tie me to my support network, so I don't have to deal with everything alone. I want to minimize how much whining my friends have to put up with, though, so I also have to be able to cope by myself. If things are going badly, some days -- if I'm in a friendly city -- I may just skip the highway, pay for an extra day at the motel, and kick back. Maybe look for one interview; maybe not. Decompress. Then get back on the road.
So between now and then I need to work on my coping. Remind myself that what I'm doing is worth it. Because if I stop believing that then there is no journey.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
V-Day!
I think I'm going to try to settle into a weekday-only posting schedule, but this is not just any weekend. Today is Valentine's Day. I thought a lot about what to post today -- maybe a poem, something of Donne's or Shakespeare's, or that Cummings piece about the syntax of things. In the end I decided to celebrate the holiday by sharing a love story with you. One of my own, since I haven't collected anyone else's yet. It's the story of my first crush. I'll call the girl Ann because I've never known a girl with that name.
Ann and I were in the same grade, in middle school. I saw her a lot during class, but we interacted mostly during after-school theater, when we produced musicals together. We were low on the totem pole, doing behind-the-scenes tech work or bit parts on the stage. She hugged people a lot, and to be honest that's probably where the crush came from; I've always been vulnerable to that, as though to hug a person were to love them. To be fair, though, I also digged how she threw herself into the work -- optimistic, commited, and extroverted. She seemed like should have been happy, and some of the time she was, but sometimes she seemed cloudy instead. I wanted to make her feel better.
Ann had nothing up front, and as a result the other boys in the class made great sport of her. I remember one boy once saying she had "negative tits;" I don't remember whether she was in earshot. I never joined in, but I never stood up for her either. I guess I should be a little ashamed of that, but you know how middle school boys are. Or maybe you don't. Just in case, what would have happened was that I would have been ostracized even more than I already was -- middle school was when I was just beginning to be socially accepted after a very rocky time in elementary school -- and that the other boys would have mocked me by spreading around that Brian had a crush on Ann. The response of a leader to that kind of thing would have been to own up to it proudly and take advantage of the publicity to ask her out, but I was an introverted middle school boy and I was terrified of girls in general and rejection in particular (so not that different from now). So instead I just sat there when they called Ann ugly, thinking to myself "well -- I don't think she's ugly."
My fantasies about Ann were pretty chaste, as you'd expect from a middle schooler still a little unclear on the mechanics of sex or why people were so interested in it. In my imagination, we were in a dark place and something terribly upsetting had just happened to Ann. We leaned on each other and she cried on my shoulder. I rubbed her back and we held each other. The fantasy was just that -- nothing particularly sexual, just what one friend would do for another intimate friend. But then I've always had trouble with the difference between friendship and romance.
I don't remember when that crush went away. It was probably when I got hit on for the first time, a completely different story that led to my first relationship. But that's a story for another time.
Happy Valentine's Day, lovers! And Happy Valentine's Day, Ann!
Ann and I were in the same grade, in middle school. I saw her a lot during class, but we interacted mostly during after-school theater, when we produced musicals together. We were low on the totem pole, doing behind-the-scenes tech work or bit parts on the stage. She hugged people a lot, and to be honest that's probably where the crush came from; I've always been vulnerable to that, as though to hug a person were to love them. To be fair, though, I also digged how she threw herself into the work -- optimistic, commited, and extroverted. She seemed like should have been happy, and some of the time she was, but sometimes she seemed cloudy instead. I wanted to make her feel better.
Ann had nothing up front, and as a result the other boys in the class made great sport of her. I remember one boy once saying she had "negative tits;" I don't remember whether she was in earshot. I never joined in, but I never stood up for her either. I guess I should be a little ashamed of that, but you know how middle school boys are. Or maybe you don't. Just in case, what would have happened was that I would have been ostracized even more than I already was -- middle school was when I was just beginning to be socially accepted after a very rocky time in elementary school -- and that the other boys would have mocked me by spreading around that Brian had a crush on Ann. The response of a leader to that kind of thing would have been to own up to it proudly and take advantage of the publicity to ask her out, but I was an introverted middle school boy and I was terrified of girls in general and rejection in particular (so not that different from now). So instead I just sat there when they called Ann ugly, thinking to myself "well -- I don't think she's ugly."
My fantasies about Ann were pretty chaste, as you'd expect from a middle schooler still a little unclear on the mechanics of sex or why people were so interested in it. In my imagination, we were in a dark place and something terribly upsetting had just happened to Ann. We leaned on each other and she cried on my shoulder. I rubbed her back and we held each other. The fantasy was just that -- nothing particularly sexual, just what one friend would do for another intimate friend. But then I've always had trouble with the difference between friendship and romance.
I don't remember when that crush went away. It was probably when I got hit on for the first time, a completely different story that led to my first relationship. But that's a story for another time.
Happy Valentine's Day, lovers! And Happy Valentine's Day, Ann!
Thursday, February 5, 2009
The urge to go on a journey
When we are children we all believe we are the main character in the story of the world. Part of adulthood is accepting that while we may be the main character in our own stories, as far as the rest of the world is concerned we are at best extras in a cast of billions. Unless, perhaps, someone loves us.
I am an extra in your cast. But I beg you to honor me by allowing me the conceit that I am the main character for just a few paragraphs. I will even help you by explaining what kind of main character I am, so that you know whether to fall in love with me -- and allow me, within the spare walls of this blog, to share your inimitable spotlight.
To begin with, I am an antihero. Not the Han Solo kind, the selfish rogue with a heart of gold. Not the Arthur Dent kind, the hapless oaf caught up in a world he could never have controlled. No, I am the Holden Caulfield kind of antihero. I was born to an upper-middle-class family with blessings and advantages that few in the world can dream of. I graduated valedictorian from my high school, double-800s on my SATs, and went off to one of the best colleges in America. I took home my double major after three and a half years of study. And then the whining began.
You see, I am one of those people who have never quite accepted that they are not the star of the show. That what we want, we must earn. Most of the things I've ever wanted have fallen into my lap, either through the beneficence of others or through natural talents that have no need of discipline. When it came time to work to earn my living, I couldn't do it. Working three to eight, I earned more per hour than most people earn in a day, sitting in a chair helping high schoolers learn math, and called it arduous. My kind friends, in dire financial straits like recent college graduates should be, reassured me that pain is deeply personal and that my dissatisfaction with one of the world's best jobs said nothing about my ingratitude. But even they didn't know what to say when I complained that I hated my life so much, and had so little hope for the future, that I was considering suicide. What do you say when "the heir of all the ages, blessed with the material splendors of the Promised Land" -- as a critic once wrote of Holden Caulfield -- tells you he'd rather be dead?
I am coming to the point now, so please bear with me just a little longer. On some level in my ungrateful little self-tortured mind, I am convinced that if I had a girlfriend this would all be better. A girlfriend would give me a reason to look forward to the future, to feel like I was worth more than the trifle I produce. Love, that is, is all I need. But my luck with the ladies hasn't been so hot lately, perhaps because desperation and fantasies of self-slaughter don't exude the right pheromones.
So the other day I saw birds flying through the sky, and just like they say, I got the urge to go on a journey. A quest, if you will. Not for love, exactly -- I'm not ready for love. I'm looking for wisdom. I'm going to drive across America. Stop in cities, towns, hamlets, roadside inns. And everywhere I go I'm going to ask the people who live there to tell me a love story. A story about -- How did you fall in love? Was it love at first sight? Did you grow to love a friend you'd known for years? Did you have an unrequited crush? Were you stalked? When was the moment you realized your love loved you back? When did you realize the glow was gone? When did love give way to sex -- or sex to love? And above all, what lessons did you take from your story?
These are the questions I'll ask. I expect I'll get a lot of different kinds of answers. Maybe so many that it takes more wisdom than I have to assemble the wisdom I receive, like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle without the cover. But whatever gold I snatch from the riverbed of human experience I will pass to you. I hope you will find it useful as a prop in your own drama, now playing on the sound stage across the way, in the studio we built apart but maintain together.
I am an extra in your cast. But I beg you to honor me by allowing me the conceit that I am the main character for just a few paragraphs. I will even help you by explaining what kind of main character I am, so that you know whether to fall in love with me -- and allow me, within the spare walls of this blog, to share your inimitable spotlight.
To begin with, I am an antihero. Not the Han Solo kind, the selfish rogue with a heart of gold. Not the Arthur Dent kind, the hapless oaf caught up in a world he could never have controlled. No, I am the Holden Caulfield kind of antihero. I was born to an upper-middle-class family with blessings and advantages that few in the world can dream of. I graduated valedictorian from my high school, double-800s on my SATs, and went off to one of the best colleges in America. I took home my double major after three and a half years of study. And then the whining began.
You see, I am one of those people who have never quite accepted that they are not the star of the show. That what we want, we must earn. Most of the things I've ever wanted have fallen into my lap, either through the beneficence of others or through natural talents that have no need of discipline. When it came time to work to earn my living, I couldn't do it. Working three to eight, I earned more per hour than most people earn in a day, sitting in a chair helping high schoolers learn math, and called it arduous. My kind friends, in dire financial straits like recent college graduates should be, reassured me that pain is deeply personal and that my dissatisfaction with one of the world's best jobs said nothing about my ingratitude. But even they didn't know what to say when I complained that I hated my life so much, and had so little hope for the future, that I was considering suicide. What do you say when "the heir of all the ages, blessed with the material splendors of the Promised Land" -- as a critic once wrote of Holden Caulfield -- tells you he'd rather be dead?
I am coming to the point now, so please bear with me just a little longer. On some level in my ungrateful little self-tortured mind, I am convinced that if I had a girlfriend this would all be better. A girlfriend would give me a reason to look forward to the future, to feel like I was worth more than the trifle I produce. Love, that is, is all I need. But my luck with the ladies hasn't been so hot lately, perhaps because desperation and fantasies of self-slaughter don't exude the right pheromones.
So the other day I saw birds flying through the sky, and just like they say, I got the urge to go on a journey. A quest, if you will. Not for love, exactly -- I'm not ready for love. I'm looking for wisdom. I'm going to drive across America. Stop in cities, towns, hamlets, roadside inns. And everywhere I go I'm going to ask the people who live there to tell me a love story. A story about -- How did you fall in love? Was it love at first sight? Did you grow to love a friend you'd known for years? Did you have an unrequited crush? Were you stalked? When was the moment you realized your love loved you back? When did you realize the glow was gone? When did love give way to sex -- or sex to love? And above all, what lessons did you take from your story?
These are the questions I'll ask. I expect I'll get a lot of different kinds of answers. Maybe so many that it takes more wisdom than I have to assemble the wisdom I receive, like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle without the cover. But whatever gold I snatch from the riverbed of human experience I will pass to you. I hope you will find it useful as a prop in your own drama, now playing on the sound stage across the way, in the studio we built apart but maintain together.
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