Rhubarb Pie

It is always the gear.

Read this today and loved it:

We have an idea that art is self-expression--which historically is weird.  An artist used to be seen as a medium through which something else operated.  He was a servant of the God.  Maybe a mask-maker would have fasted and prayed for a week before he had a vision of the Mask he was to carve, because no one wanted to see his Mask, they wanted to see the God's.  When Eskimos believed that each piece of bone only had one shape in it, then the artist didn't have to 'think up' an idea.  He had to wait until he knew what was in there -- and this is crucial.  When he'd finished carving, his friends couldn't say 'I'm a bit worried about that Nanook at the third igloo', but only, 'He made a mess getting that out!' or 'There are some very odd bits of bone about these days.'

Impro  Improvisation and the Theatre.  Keith Johnstone.  1981, pg 79.

Thanks for the excellent recommendation, Matt.

Strawberries and Fog

It has been foggy here for the past few days.  I wish I could take a picture of the fog, but all it would look like is various shades of misty white, everything else obscured.  I was walking with the dogs along a woody path, though, and what I noticed was that there were dozens of cobwebs on the ground, made visible by the fog's dewdrops.  Before this I only thought that fog erased visible things, but now I see that it takes some things and makes them disappear, but takes other things and makes them reappear. 

I also saw the first firefly of the season last night, flickering away over across the parking lot, near the dumpster.  The rest of the night still and cold, dark as black velvet, with the smell of woodsmoke in the air.  You don't expect to see a firefly on a night like that.  But there he was, blinking lazily.

Here are some strawberries that I bought by the side of the road.  I paid $6, which seemed ridiculous at the time, but I had already pulled over and felt too shy to haggle.  I got more bummed out as I kept driving and saw more pickup trucks selling strawberries further along, for $5.00 a quart and then for $4.00, and then for $3.75.  Drive north for better deals, and don't stop at the first truck you see. 

.sllactaC

Oh man.  I'm sunny again today, but can I tell you?  I was SUCH a grump yesterday.  For no good reason that I could tell.  I ate enough, worked out, did the usual things that I do to keep cheerful, and none of it worked.  I mean, it may have worked in the sense that I didn't dismember anyone or anything.  But that's also because I kept my distance from people.  The people I love didn't deserve to deal with my glowering self.

I was grumpy all day long and keeping a very close leash on it.  You kind of have to know me to know when I'm pissed.  The angrier I am, the more polite I get and the more tightly I control my voice.  Fortunately, my sister and the boys are away this weekend.  I didn't have to manage my temper last night, but I did have to go retrieve her car, like we arranged.  I left later than I meant to, at twilight.

Now, I don't care.  In Sacramento, I walk out at night.  I walk anywhere in Midtown with no fear at any time of the night.  I would do that here too, but people keep scolding me.  My sister and every one of her friends have been mugged.  My sister is adamant that I carry mace if I go out at night.  It worries her and it bums me out.  I miss walking out at night.  But I was supposed to go get the car from the BART station and she wasn't here to worry, so I left at twilight.

The neighborhood is gentrifying, so you just don't know who the people approaching you on the street are going to be.  Hipster couples?  Black kids from the high school?  Huge Islander dudes (well, them you can tell from a distance)?  Friendly people?  Scary people?  Could be.  But I walked down the big street and kept my head high.  Lots of eye contact and saying hi, because I always do.  Also, because I want to be ready to react if someone is threatening.  Whatever.  There were hipsters in front of the pizza place and women on bikes and people getting Korean food.

Twice I had to walk through groups of black men.  I hate that I notice this.  I hate that I have to decide to avoid or go through the middle and I am not savvy enough to know what they're up to from down the block.  I hate that I have to include the possibility that they could hassle me in my assessment.  I was, walking in my sister's old bad neighborhood, shot with a bottle rocket by a bunch of neighborhood kids.  Other men seem worried that I'll forget that I'm stacked. 

But approaching the first group of a half a dozen men, I relaxed pretty fast.  In their thirties and forties, sharp dressers, friendly faces.  Very sharp dressers.  Now, a man whose fedora perfectly matches his suit vest may steal your heart, but I wasn't scared for my wallet.  I said Evenin' and got a chorus of Evenin's; as I walked past, one guy shouted.  "Hey!" he  said.  "I like your hairdo!"  That made me run my hand awkwardly up the back of my bob, which we all laughed at.  So I was already feeling better as I walked towards the second group.  Younger, in front of a sketchier store front, one friendly glance, one steady look, and then two chatting handsome guys.  I grinned at one of them and he grinned back.  "Hey girl.  It's yo world.  It is yo world, girl."  My heart lifted and for the rest of my walk into the evening, it surely was.

Reinventing the Wheel

I am thinking about discipline, and my thoughts haven't taken shape enough to really respond.  I like what you said about changing systems, and working around self-discipline, finding cheats for it.  I've been thinking a lot about structure.  As you know, I left a really structured work environment, a law firm, in 2004, and for the past four years I've been doing work (coaching and freelance writing) that doesn't come with any set structure.  As a creative person working in law my views on structure were pretty flat: it's constricting and limiting, who needs it?   These last four years have really changed my view.  Structure supports you, and reinforces your focus.  At least it does for me.  It was my job as a coach to create the structure for a whole team of students: to set goals, to make timetables, to figure out the right mix of variety and repetition to make a week of practice productive and fun.  But nobody made that structure for me, so I never knew when I should be resting and when I should be working, or even what benchmarks I could use to tell myself how I was doing.  Without those things I was constantly uneasy.  (And the benchmarks I invented for myself were perfectionist benchmarks, that I could never, ever, live up to.)  At every moment, I was thinking about what I should be doing and whether this was the best use of my time.  That is tiring. 

(Barry Schwartz talks about this phenomenon -- about how unlimited choice leads to anxiety and self-doubt.  This 20 minute talk from a few years ago just popped up when I was shuffling my iTunes, and it reminded me again how much I admire him.) 

So I think for me that's part of the trick of being happy and productive.  Putting myself in a situation where I don't have to invent everything -- the structure and the plan and the objectives.  I can do it, but it's taxing.  I do better when I'm part of a team of people who share that responsibility, when I don't have to decide each day what will happen that day, but rather can just show up and get to work on my part.  I wouldn't like to abdicate entirely my input on the goals and objectives.  (That's one of the problematic things about being a young lawyer -- with few exceptions, you don't get to pick your clients or the matters you work on, and I didn't like that aspect.)  But being entirely free-form, where what you do, when, and how, are entirely yours to decide each day, can be hard, at least if it's coupled with high expectations about what the results will be. 

My new job is exciting to me for what feels like silly reasons. 

If it is a losing bet, don't double down.

On my visit to my French cousin, we'd sneak away to walk and talk with our hearts open.  We don't see each other nearly enough, you see, and we think the other is great.  So we have to talk long and hard in the few days we get.  Anyway, I'd said something about how I give up sugar for a month a couple times a year.  "Oh," she said.  "That's so American."

She may have meant the food Puritanism, but I think she meant the larger idea of self-improvement projects.  So American, so striving, so driven, so ceaseless. I do it too.  The list is long, but just for starters I'm trying to revise my walk and the way I stand (shoulders back and down, don't crane head, pelvis tucked).  That's before I get to anything actually productive or try to help anyone else.  So believe me, I know the urge and I'm even glad for it.  Working at projects, including myself, actually does make my life better.

But here's the thing I came to last year.  I'm all for self-improvement.  But I am done with self-discipline.  Done.  As a technique, self-discipline has taken me as far as it can.  I am thirty-six, and self-discipline has been the way I drive myself for as long as I remember.  That's what people told me.  Do it harder, do it again, practice, eat less, restrain more, work at it, push harder.   And I am done with that.  The way I figure, self-discipline has taken me as far as it is going to (pretty fucking far - through lots of school and having a job and owning a house).  Anything that's left is not something that self-discipline works for.  If self-discipline worked on the remaining problems, it would have fixed them by now.

This last year has been about finding other techniques for bettering me.  I got a physical trainer.  This is ridiculous.  I've been heavily involved in sports since I was two.  If there is anything I know, it is how to condition.  But I wasn't doing it, and I was badly out of shape.  So I turned that problem over to someone else and that has been GREAT.  Outsourcing that discipline works, as my bulging triceps can attest.  My sister changes the physical system.  If the clothes aren't folded again, she figures there's a reason.  She'll provide the folding table at the right height, the sufficient hangers and the big-enough dressers until doing the laundry is smooth and easy.  I'm trying to see if bribing me works.  Are there indulgences that I'd trade for not doing something or other?  (Not much success with this one.  My wants are modest and I should just get massages if I ache.)  At any rate, I'm looking for new approaches.  I don't know which ones will work, but I am very sure that self-discipline doesn't any more.*

So, hon, if you want to change your email habits, that's cool.  I think you're perfect, but if you want to be more perfect, that's fine by me.  But I'm curious about how.  Are you going to change your email habits by, you know, trying harder and working at it and reminding yourself?  Are you going to apply self-discipline to this problem?  If self-discipline doesn't work, are you going to beat yourself up for that?  Will you tell yourself to use even more self-discipline?  Will that work?






*Also, it is worth noting that nothing I've ever been good at came about by self-discipline.  I never forced myself to do TKD.  I absolutely loved it in the years I got good.  In the end it was habit, but it wasn't a habit I fought.  The blogging wasn't effort and that blog was only good when I was full of enthusiasm.  Painting my house bright colors was compulsion and a vision for the result, but not self-discipline. 

You Started It

This is where I just got done swimming.  I counted the steps from my front door, because I knew you would ask.  78 steps.  And the water wasn't as cold as you would think.  I expected to feel like I had been immersed in an ice bath.  But instead I just felt like I'd been immersed in very cold water.  And I'm used to that.  I stayed in about twenty minutes or so, doing circles around the docks, doggy paddling, floating on my back.  And then when I climbed out I lay on my back on the warm wood and let the sun dry me.  In the distance I could hear waves, a flag flapping, and a lawnmower somewhere, a long way off.

I'm not trying to trick you with a bait-and-switch.  You've been here, and you've gone with me to the drab municipal pool, with its fluorescent lights and top 40 music playing on the radio and the congested roads leading there and back.  That's where I swim most of the time, and your outdoor pool sure looks nicer.  But this is where I swam today, and where I will swim tomorrow, and the day after that, and for the whole summer.  So I think that makes us even on the swimming facilities.  Not that anyone is keeping score.

Best

I've been mulling over your reaction to that guy who writes "Ciao" at the end of his emails.  I know a guy who does that, or at least used to back in 1997, and I remember thinking it was very silly.  (In between wondering whether maybe it was very sophisticated, and I was just very provincial.)  I have been similarly bugged by people who sign their emails "Cheers!"  Who says that?  And what does it mean?  Did they spend a lot of their formative years in a pub in Ireland?

But I still don't really know how to write a decent email, especially to a stranger who I would like to impress.  My email habits are sporadic and lazy and formed partly during school and partly during life as a lawyer, so they alternate between being too casual and too formal.  Half the time I postpone reading emails and they disappear off my screen and I never answer them at all, and half the time I am doing something else when I check them so I dash off a hasty line full of skipped words.  And half the time I sit down with my full attention and I read an email from someone else that's signed "Cheers" or that has a silly inspirational quotation on the signature file and I decide immediately that the person is a blowhard or an airy-fairy flake.   I often sign my emails to strangers with "Best," which is ridiculous.  'Best' what?  Best wishes?  Best of luck?  My best to your mother?  What do I mean, and why don't I say it?  I mean none of those things, because they all sound silly, and yet somehow a long time ago I arrived at "Best," as my handiest signature and now dash it off without thinking about it.  I don't think "Best" is as bad as "Ciao," but maybe it's worse.  At least 'Ciao' is a word meant to be an opening or closing.  What does 'Best' even mean??  And then the way I sign my name -- often I just type the letter "S", if I sign at all, so do recipients wonder whether I was going to type a word and got cut off?  It is only with rigorous self-control that I am resisting going back into my email archives and skimming through all the various closings I have used in emails past, to try to figure out whether I'm a blowhard or not. 

As you know, I spend a fair amount of mental energy feeling guilty about not living up to my ideal.  I would like to be the kind of person who reliably responds to emails, with wit and insightfulness and good grammar.  While we're at it, I'd like to maintain an empty inbox, and tidily organized folders and an updated signature file with the right contact information.  And I'm not that kind of person, so I feel a tiny bit bad about myself whenever I open my email.  I think the answer is to check email less often, and actually pay attention when I do it.  Add that to my list of self-improvement goals for the summer.   

No ceiling, no walls.

Hon, this is a swimming pool.  I know it must look all naked and exposed to you, just out in the air like that.  But here, we keep our swimming pools outside.  Then, when we swim in the pools, we are also outside.  This is nice, because it isn't too chlorine-y.  It is super great in the rain, because you can swim under, look up and see the drops land.  Sunny days are even better.  On a sunny day, when you swim you also get tan.

Think of it!  You get your workout and get tan at the same time!  You don't have to do additional tan maintenance.  That frees up, like, two hours a week and you don't have some crummy patchwork tan.  Bliss!

Good as this system is, I have to admit that it still requires fine-tuning.  Back when I only swam freestyle, I noticed my back was getting darker than my front.  But now that I swim backstroke every third lap, I've been evenly golden brown all over.  I also had to correct my breathing.  I used to be a left-side breather, until I saw the goggle line coming in on that side.  Well, I never liked breathing to the right, but with such high stakes, I fixed that flaw.  Rest your mind, hon.  My face is even again.  It took a while to find the right suit.  Three years ago, I went out to a turnip field at midnight and swore that as god was my witness, I would never have a racerback tanline again.  It takes resolve, but the problem only has to be solved once a year, when you get a new suit.

I don't want to bore you with more details, but I am confident that we can work out the right tanning/swimming regime for you.  I'll leave you to figure out what you want to do with all the time that frees up.  Coming over for mojitos is always an option.

We are still monkeys, you know. Monkeys are curious.

Couple New Year's ago, or maybe three, we finished off what ended up being a twenty-four hour party by walking out after dinner to look at the house that a tree had fallen onto.  Big three story Victorian, even bigger elm tree.  Crunched right through the roof, made the whole house list.  Several of us spent an hour in the windy night watching the crane pull the tree off the house.  A white owl lost his home that night too.  He spent the whole time flying between the elm and two palm trees over on our side of the street.

While we were watching, we chatted up the crane operator.  He got a call to another treefall, so six or seven of us piled into someone's car to go see the devastation there.   That's right.   We celebrated the New Year by driving to another squashed house.  This one was little and in a kinda bad neighborhood.   The branches were much wider than the house, and looked to be growing sideways from the living room.  The owner was an older black man who was remarkably sanguine.  "My insurance is paid up and God just gave me a new house."  He'd been sitting in the living room, heard the creak and walked out his side door as the tree came down.  Calm fellow.

The House Across The Street Is For Sale

When there is a fire here, it doesn't smell like wood.  It is a building, and it isn't supposed to be burning.  It smells like old tires or chemicals, and I get nervous and look around for a big black column of smoke.   Will you think I am a bad person if I tell you that sometimes, if I can, I follow the smoke and drive to the fire?  I remember watching flames consume a small house in Brunswick.  I sat in my car, rapt, as the roof collapsed, as the walls changed color and started to sag.  Once, in the early spring, I was driving out of Boston and I followed smoke to a boatyard that was on fire in East Boston.  There were six or seven firetrucks forming a barrier to the neighborhood, but they had given up on the boats.  They were up on jackstands in the parking lot, each with a coating of shrinkwrap, and I watched the greasy black smoke and the huge orange bursts as the fire ate the boats, one by one.

Here's a picture of the way June should be, to cheer you up.  It's not too late to move here to Utopia, you know.