Sunday, October 26, 2008
GRASS
"The grass is never greener," I started saying to myself while living in London. "There's no getting ahead," or "No matter where you go, there you are," might be other ways to say this, but I've been working hard for the past 18 months to cultivate a "glass half-full" outlook on life, so I'll stick with grass. Grass grows in the spring and summer - there's no denying it. Grass withers and dies in the fall and winter - that's true too. But millions of human energy hours are spent each year in the effort to alter this natural equation - to make the grass greener, to make it last longer, to make it plusher, softer, less likely to be nibbled by bugs.
We do the same things with our lives. We imagine that if we can just get concoct the right chemical formula and apply it liberally to the affected areas of our lives, that we will no longer suffer the indignities of the natural cycle - withering, loss, dryness, disintegration, stagnation, being trampled from time to time. What is a good life? All around me I see good-hearted people struggling with this question. The struggle has all kinds of flavors. In this version of my life, I've been given a scoop of quick-melting middle class topped with a scoop of long-lasting post-modern alienation. You might be holding a similar cone. If you are educated, if you have an active mind and a reasonably healthy body, if you have managed to meet your basic needs but still harbor some kind of ambition toward making/gathering/achieving more, then you are probably sharing my struggle. Maybe you are wrestling with your conscience - wondering how your craving for a Pottery Barn leather sofa can be reconciled with your desire to serve meals to the homeless more often at St. Anthony's Dining Room. Maybe you are wrestling with time - trying to "be present" all the time, while keeping your house clean, getting your work done, playing with your kids, and being available to family and friends. Maybe you are wrestling with money - trying to live within your means, save for a rainy day, enjoy the moment, prepare for the future. Maybe you are wrestling with all these things in a 24/7 winner-take-all, no-holds-barred, anything-goes, knock-down-drag-out, monster-truck-grudge-match of mythic proportions.
Maybe, like me, you are so fucking exhausted and bored of this struggle that you'd like to strip off your tattered lycra wrestling suit and run screaming and naked into the nearest lane of oncoming traffic - just for a change. I mean, jesus, what is going on here? Why is it so hard to sink our toes down into the earth and grow the way grass is meant to grow in the soil of this particular place. Why is it so hard to accept that in the natural life cycle there are productive times and fallow times, times full of lush greenness and times punctuated by the crackle and crunch of deadness under our feet. Why is it so hard to be still and resist the urge to struggle?
Be well.
Photo (Winter Grass) by Idle Type
Labels: Community Muses, time
Sunday, October 12, 2008
WAVE
When I started my new job 9 weeks ago, I had this little schtick I would trot out for friends and acquaintances who would ask "Are you excited?" or "Isn't it going to be great?! This is your dream job!"
"Yes, I am excited" I would offer, "but I also feel like a novice surfer, eager to catch her first wave, but wondering if instead I will be smacked silly by an unforgiving ocean."
Imagine...It's twilight. I paddle out into the big blue, amidst a scattered company of expert surfers, full of puppy-dog eagerness to get up on my board and show my stuff. I've never actually done this before (except in those silly land simulations where they have you wiggle around on the sand), but I'm hoping with the right combination of focus, effort, and luck, that I'll stand up on my board at exactly the right moment, catch the crest of the wave, and enjoy a glorious ride to the shore. That's what I'm hoping for. But what I'm expecting is that I'll miss the right moment, be sucked into the wave, and that instead of elevating me, the wave will crush me down to the sea floor, and I'll wind up with a mouthful of sand.
And the joke was - since I knew this was going to happen anyway - I wanted to just drive out to Ocean Beach and fill my own mouth with sand (skipping the ocean part) - just get it over with.
Well, I told this story for a few weeks, and then I forgot about it. But it didn't forget about me. The wave that has been moving toward me for the last 9 weeks finally caught me this week, and just as I expected, even though I am sitting on dry land, metaphorically I am coughing and sputtering, trying to clear my mouth of seawater and silt.
I think a lot these days about human energy - how much it has been able to manifest in the world throughout history - and yet also how none of my friends seem to have enough of it right now. Everyone I know, despite elaborate life architecture and their best truest efforts, seems to be getting crushed down into the earth at least once a season.
I think a lot these days about the phrase "Work/Life Balance" - a odd term that I think comes from the corporate world (and which implies that one is not alive at work), but which seems to have infiltrated nearly every work environment, even the alternative ones.
I think a lot these days about my foremothers - my great-grandmother and her friends - and how they probably would have laughed and scoffed at this phrase. "Life is Work" they might have said. I doubt most of them would have thought to want some "Me Time" at the end of a day of kneading, baking, sweeping, feeding, scrubbing, scouring, carrying, cooking, scraping, hanging, ironing, fetching, serving, mending, and minding. They probably wanted less from their lives than we do. But maybe they weren't so twisted and tormented. So guilty and grasping. Maybe they never thought "of course" as the cold waters closing over their heads or felt as oddly comfortable as I am with the feel of grit between my teeth.
You can't turn back the clock though. In our post-feminist, pre-apocalyptic, 21st century urban environment, inside this global pressure-cooker, there seems to be only bigger/faster/stronger/higher/harder waves coming at us, with no calm in sight. Are they even surfable anymore? Is the only solution to find a little protected cove and cut yourself off from the rest of the ocean? Is the storm ever going to pass?
Photo by wentloog
When I started my new job 9 weeks ago, I had this little schtick I would trot out for friends and acquaintances who would ask "Are you excited?" or "Isn't it going to be great?! This is your dream job!"
"Yes, I am excited" I would offer, "but I also feel like a novice surfer, eager to catch her first wave, but wondering if instead I will be smacked silly by an unforgiving ocean."
Imagine...It's twilight. I paddle out into the big blue, amidst a scattered company of expert surfers, full of puppy-dog eagerness to get up on my board and show my stuff. I've never actually done this before (except in those silly land simulations where they have you wiggle around on the sand), but I'm hoping with the right combination of focus, effort, and luck, that I'll stand up on my board at exactly the right moment, catch the crest of the wave, and enjoy a glorious ride to the shore. That's what I'm hoping for. But what I'm expecting is that I'll miss the right moment, be sucked into the wave, and that instead of elevating me, the wave will crush me down to the sea floor, and I'll wind up with a mouthful of sand.
And the joke was - since I knew this was going to happen anyway - I wanted to just drive out to Ocean Beach and fill my own mouth with sand (skipping the ocean part) - just get it over with.
Well, I told this story for a few weeks, and then I forgot about it. But it didn't forget about me. The wave that has been moving toward me for the last 9 weeks finally caught me this week, and just as I expected, even though I am sitting on dry land, metaphorically I am coughing and sputtering, trying to clear my mouth of seawater and silt.
I think a lot these days about human energy - how much it has been able to manifest in the world throughout history - and yet also how none of my friends seem to have enough of it right now. Everyone I know, despite elaborate life architecture and their best truest efforts, seems to be getting crushed down into the earth at least once a season.
I think a lot these days about the phrase "Work/Life Balance" - a odd term that I think comes from the corporate world (and which implies that one is not alive at work), but which seems to have infiltrated nearly every work environment, even the alternative ones.
I think a lot these days about my foremothers - my great-grandmother and her friends - and how they probably would have laughed and scoffed at this phrase. "Life is Work" they might have said. I doubt most of them would have thought to want some "Me Time" at the end of a day of kneading, baking, sweeping, feeding, scrubbing, scouring, carrying, cooking, scraping, hanging, ironing, fetching, serving, mending, and minding. They probably wanted less from their lives than we do. But maybe they weren't so twisted and tormented. So guilty and grasping. Maybe they never thought "of course" as the cold waters closing over their heads or felt as oddly comfortable as I am with the feel of grit between my teeth.
You can't turn back the clock though. In our post-feminist, pre-apocalyptic, 21st century urban environment, inside this global pressure-cooker, there seems to be only bigger/faster/stronger/higher/harder waves coming at us, with no calm in sight. Are they even surfable anymore? Is the only solution to find a little protected cove and cut yourself off from the rest of the ocean? Is the storm ever going to pass?
Photo by wentloog
Labels: Career Anxiety, Community Muses, time
