My Life in Books
Over a year ago, I gave away all my CDs to friends; I had already copied the music to my computer and didn’t want the physical objects taking up space and collecting dust anymore. So did I listen to music less frequently after that? Nope. Way more, in fact, and more often, via Pandora and Rdio on Sonos. (Right now I’m listening to my Smiths station: “Sixteen, clumsy and shy, I went to London and I…” Anyone?)
Somehow, though, I felt differently about giving away my books. I’d donate the new fiction that I’d been lured into buying, but nothing from The Shelves, which housed the books that had survived the purges and the re-locations of the past twenty-plus years.
But, this time, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to get rid of all of my books. I realize that for some people this is like saying that I’m pretty sure I’m going to leave my kids in an Arby’s parking lot. But I just don’t think I need the physical objects anymore (the books, that is, not the kids. I’m going to hang on to the kids for a while). The chances of me sitting down to page through The Autobiography of Malcolm X at this point in my life are, uh, slim. But I still remember the story and the impact it had on me.
The books that have survived this long have (cheese alert) become a part of me. And now I can send them out into the world to, hopefully, impact someone else. Bye-bye, books! (I’m now picturing each book carrying a little hobo-style stick with a bandana at the end. Why do I do stuff like that?)
But first, if you’ll bear with me, a few goodbyes.
Goodbye, Don DeLillo’s White Noise. I read you on the subway in New York and laughed out loud and didn’t care at all (no one else cared, either — yay, New York!). I made Clare Bundy Haygood read you – or was it the other way around? — and then we referred to the “airborne toxic event” and “the point of Babette” in daily conversation, cracking ourselves up.
Goodbye, Leviathan, The Music of Chance, and all the other Paul Auster books I read during my Postmodern Existential Phase. I seriously could not have been postmodern or existential without you. Oh, those were heady days!
Goodbye, Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer. You came at exactly the right time, when I wanted to leave postmodern behind and enter gritty realism, you know? I read you all in one day and night, sitting in my big armchair on my apartment on West 95th Street, after which I sat, stunned.
Goodbye, Of Woman Born, by Adrienne Rich. Dog-eared and yellowed, you survived so many book purges. You are a symbol of my life at Vassar College all those years ago. Having transferred from a more conservative, Southern school, I could hardly believe the co-ed bathrooms, lesbian clubs, and woman power you showed me. (It wasn’t all about that stuff — we also drank tons of beer and danced to Soul II Soul and edited movies on real film and drove to New York to eat Indian food and talked and talked and talked… I loved every minute of it.)
Goodbye, Casino, by Nicholas Pileggi. The book on which Martin Scorsese’s film was based is not a favorite of mine per se, but it has survived the years due to the personal inscription to me from Nick Pileggi: “To Lise, who always remembered the cards at the Drake.” Explanation: This was when I worked for Marty and he and Nick needed a space where they could transform the story to movie scenes, via index cards (Marty is super old school) so I rented a room at the Drake Hotel, across from our office in midtown. I was responsible for the cards, which by the end, wound around the room like a long Candyland path. So, if you liked that movie, you’re welcome; I could have really messed that shit up.
Goodbye, Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt. Man, you were a freakin’ downer, I gotta be honest. Yowsa. But you spurred my interest (and the world’s) in memoir, and that love has stayed with me since then. (I am, in fact, trying to write a memoir, which I suspect is something I’ll be saying for the next twenty years.)
Goodbye, Of Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett. Goodbye, What Is the What?, by Dave Eggers. Goodbye, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien. You made me think about war in terms of the individual people involved. I don’t think I had done that before.
Goodbye, American Films of the 1970s, by Peter Lev. You provided inspiration for the class of the same name that I taught at Suffolk University in Boston. We watched Easy Rider, Badlands, Chinatown — ahhh! So good! Must watch one soon.
And, finally, goodbye, Raising Your Spirited Child, by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. Actually, maybe I’ll keep that one. A-hem.
The books are packed now, and I’d be lying if I said I’m not just a little sad. I think I’ll hold on to the boxes for a couple of days. It’s not that I think I will change my mind. I’m just thinking that one of you might call and ask if you can pick them up.
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Pulp Picks
Image by aafromaa via Flickr
I know many people look for beach and vacation reading during the summer so it seems like a good time for my first — and, let’s be honest, probably my last — edition of Pulp Picks.
Personally, I am most excited for Ann Patchett’s latest, State of Wonder. I loved Bel Canto and Truth and Beauty, and even her less stellar efforts, like Run, kept me hooked. I am, in fact, so excited about State of Wonder that I keep putting it off; I guess I don’t want to have the best book of the summer completed by early July. So, here’s what I’ve been reading in the meantime:
This Life Is in Your Hands: One Family, Sixty Acres and a Life Undone, by Melissa Coleman
This Life is a memoir that recounts the author’s life growing up on a farm in northern Maine in the 1970s. Her parents basically went “off the grid” right after they were married, and lived the homesteading life — they grew and sold their own (organic) food and lived in a small cottage built by her father, where their mother canned food for the long winters and made yogurt from their goats’ milk. You get the picture. Given the recent interest in small farms and CSAs and such, I thought it would be interesting to hear about a couple who, along with their role models, Helen and Scott Nearing, pioneered the movement back when it just sounded crazy.
The bad news is that I didn’t find all the homesteading stuff that interesting on its own; it turns out I don’t really want to read about the specifics of the nutrients that need to be added to soil blah blah blah. The good news is that the story of a young family dealing with loss (even though the back of the book tells you who dies, I don’t feel like saying it), and ultimately coming unravelled is sad and fascinating and profound. Although the writing is often lovely and poetic, I actually wished that it was simpler, but that’s just me. Sometimes I just don’t like all them flowery werds. Grade: B
Before that, I read Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, by Piper Kerman. I’ve never really understood the whole concept of “beach reading” — why would you want to read a crappy book just because you’re at the beach? — but I guess this is the kind of l-i-t-e stuff that fits into that genre.
Piper Kerman was 34 -years-old and a Smith College graduate when she self-surrendered and was sentenced to 15 months in prison for some weird money laundering stuff she got caught up in after college — it’s not explained all that well. But it was intriguing to me because Kerman seems like someone I would have known in college — or, hell, like ME in college — and I know I would flip if I had to go to jail. No joke; I would freak the hell out.
The thing about Kerman is that she doesn’t freak out. She is a self-described stoic and, while I’m sure that came in handy while she was incarcerated, it’s maybe not the best characteristic of a memoir writer. Her lessons are basic, and we know all of them without reading the book: Prison sucks, it doesn’t make sense as a way to make people act better, and there are good and bad people in prison, as there are everywhere else. Now you can go back to staring at the ocean. Grade: C+
In stark contrast with the above memoir, Townie: A Memoir, by Andre Dubus III, is the real deal, and I’m not just saying that because Dubus’ kids go to the same school as my kid, or because the setting of the memoir is the same area where I’ve lived for much of my life.
Townie is essentially a coming-of-age story and I know we’ve all been there before, so what makes it different? The details, and the brutal honesty. There’s a lot of violence in the story, mostly fights among young men, but the most violent incident involves his sister and he paints a picture I won’t soon forget. As with This Life, this is ultimately the story of a family and how they handle what’s thrown at them. It’s not pretty, but it’s real. And also, you should buy it soon, before they make it into a movie and you can only get the copy with the movie’s star on the cover. I hate that. Grade: A-
And, lastly, a quick mention of The Summer Guest, by Justin Cronin, the only book on here that’s not recent (it was published in 2004). I read this because I’d heard such great things about Cronin but I simply could not stomach his most recent book, The Passage. Simply put, I do not do vampires. Period. (Or zombies, just so you know.) I figured I’d check out one of his previous books and I LOVED The Summer Guest. I was so sad when it ended that I had to immediately jump into Mary and O’Neil, which also was lovely, but I’m not reviewing it here, so please stop asking me about it. That’s just rude.
Anyway, for some reason, I don’t really feel like talking much about the plot of The Summer Guest. It takes place mostly at a rustic camp in Maine, a place where wealthy people come for fishing vacations. It’s one of those books where each chapter is about a different character and it takes a while to figure out how it’s all going to come together. The writing is deeee-licious. I’ll leave it at that; if you agree with any of my other reviews than you should just believe me and read one of these two books by Cronin. Grade for each: A-
Speaking of books that weren’t written recently, my book group is reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith, this summer. How I’ve never read this before is beyond me, but it’s in the queue now. It will have to wait until after State of Wonder, of course, as will anything else I read.
Okay, I’m done. What are you reading this summer?
How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love my Kindle.
Cover via Amazon
It’s time for me to come out of the Kindle closet.
Yes! I have a Kindle! I know, I know — I didn’t tell you. Don’t feel bad, I didn’t really tell anyone, but I’ve been reading books pretty much exclusively on my Kindle since I received it as a surprise Christmas gift from my husband. He was definitely more excited than I was as I opened it; it seemed, on paper at least, to be the perfect gift for me — a life-long, avid reader!
And yet, the Kindle made me uncomfortable from the start.
I thought, at first, that it was too extravagant of a gift, but then I realized that, uh, it actually wasn’t. Also, the lower price for e-books (and now their availability in some libraries) would soon pay for the cost of the actual device which, incidentally, fits into even my smallest handbag.
Maybe I’m just not an electronic gadgets kind of girl. I still use a years-old MacBook, and I even had the keyboard replaced recently, instead of just getting a whole new laptop as my husband suggested. I don’t even upgrade the software on my iPhone, and I’d probably still be viewing the Web on Mosaic if David hadn’t continually upgraded me over the years — hell, I’d still be calling the A/V department to get the slide projector running. (For those who are aware that I have an advanced degree from a program that prides itself about being on the cutting edge of all technology, I will point out that, even then, I was all about the content. I always viewed technology as a tool, not as something fascinating in and of itself.)
There was no getting around it: the Kindle felt wrong to me. I didn’t want to push a button to turn the page; I wanted to turn the actual page — you know, the one made out of paper? I missed seeing the cover art of books, and knowing what page I was on, instead of just what percentage of a book I’d read. (For those non-Kindle users, the fact that you can easily adjust the type size means that the e-book pages do not necessarily correspond to the real book pages.) The first book I downloaded (Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray) seemed to take forever to read, and it wasn’t until I later saw it in a book store that I realized why: It was over 700 pages long! I had no idea.
But over the following weeks, my feelings changed. As I have with other new technologies, I got used to the Kindle. Once it felt familiar, I realized that my Kindle, like the rest of the technology around here, does grant me easier access to meaningful things: good books and magazines (or shows, music, and movies, in the case of those other technologies, like Sonos and TiVO, that David has quietly added over the years).
Most importantly, I now see that I am reading at least twice as much as is normal for me. Believe it or not, the time that you save in turning the pages by pushing a button really adds up! And the biggest advantage is that I now purchase a few books at a time, as they are recommended to me, so I always have a book waiting for me, in my Netflix-like queue. The other night, I finished reading Andre Dubus’ latest (and best, in my opinion), Townie, around 9pm. I still felt like reading, so I immediately delved into The Summer Guest, by Justin Cronin (also excellent). My lag time in between books has gone from many days to…nothing. We are just five months into the year and I’ve already completed seven novels. That’s about what I usually read in a whole year.
So why does part of me still feel like owning a Kindle is the equivalent of driving a Hummer or eating at McDonald’s? I think it has more to do with an unwanted side effect: there’s no getting around the fact that all e-book readers are contributing to the demise of local book stores, stores that I love and have patronized for years — and still do! And what about the people who make books and design cover art and set the type (do people still do that?)? What happens to a whole industry? (I worry less about libraries because they provide such an invaluable resource to so many people, I believe libraries will remain relevant.)
Maybe to assuage the guilt, some righteous Kindle owners claim that we are helping save the planet by saving trees from being made into books, but what they’re selling, I’m not buying. For starters, where are we going to put all the unwanted Kindles after they break or we get a newer version?
Despite the unresolved issues, for now, I really enjoy my Kindle — how can I resist a more convenient and, in the long run, cheaper way to read? But I’m telling you now: If this thing craps out on me in the middle of a great book, I will kick it to the curb. Because, ultimately, it’s not the Kindle that I love, it’s the words it delivers.
On Lying and Leprechauns
Image via Wikipedia
A caveat: If the following incident had occurred on a different week, it very likely would not have been a big deal. But for various reasons, this was a Difficult Week.* Strange behavior issues with the five-and-a-half-year-old led to insecurities in the parenting department. If you’re a parent, I’m certain you’ve had one of those days (months?) where you ask yourself, “Who the hell is in charge here?!” And then you realize, with some discomfort, that it is you. This was one of those days.
Let’s start here: A few days ago was St. Patrick’s Day. In my house, this usually means that we dig through drawers and closets to find mismatched green items, and then we wear whatever we find. Fun, right? Well, apparently, in other houses, leprechaun traps are set out the night before. And, although actual leprechauns are rarely, if ever, actually caught, those cute little guys leave behind treats, gifts, and notes! Sometimes, a little shred of green clothing or even a tiny leprechaun hat is found at the scene! I even heard that if you leave a potato under your pillow, the leprechauns will take the potato and leave you money.
Not knowing any of this, we sent our poor child off to school with nothing to show for herself but a green t-shirt. And it gets even worse. But can I first say to the parents of the world: Can we please get our shit together and be on the same page with this stuff?! Between that damn “elf on the shelf” at Christmastime and now this, I feel like we need some kind of holiday manual. So, tell me: Is there anything I need to know about Flag Day? (Also, please insert rant about “getting back to the real meaning of holidays blah blah commercialization blah does every holiday have to be about treats and presents blah blah” here.)
So, having spent the whole St. Patrick’s Day at school hearing about all her friends’ leprechaun traps, my kid decided to build her own leprechaun trap that night. She was undeterred by my comment that “I think we were supposed to do this last night. I don’t think they come out again until next year.” Trap set, she went to bed — and I went to CVS, to buy…anything green, and preferably something on sale since it was 8pm and St. Patrick’s Day was basically over (unless of course you were at a bar, where it was just getting started).
The next morning, March 18th, I was hoping she’d go off to school without remembering the trap and we could put this behind us for a year. Of course, she walked in the dining room and, after a long pause, I heard, “Mum! There was a leprechaun in here!” She sounded so excited. I felt uneasy, still not comfortable with this whole situation.
“Look! He left me a note! It says, ‘Maybe next year you’ll catch me!’ And he left me some stickers!” I couldn’t even deal. My husband went in to do the “Wow!”s.
About ten minutes later, when she and I were alone, she dropped the bomb: “Mum? Was there really a leprechaun here, or did you leave that stuff in there?”
Shit.
“Mum?”
I had only two sips of coffee in me, definitely not enough to be facing a Parental Moment. “Well, what do you think?”
“I don’t know, that’s why I want you to tell me. Did you leave the stuff?”
Very quickly, I thought, “Okay, we’re talking about leprechauns; they are way low in the Pretend Holiday Characters food chain. This is not a big deal!” I decided to tell my daughter the truth. The truth! That is (almost) always the right thing to tell someone, right?
“Yes. I left the stuff. I’m not sure leprechauns are real, but I wanted you to have some fun St. Patrick’s Day treats anyway.”
“Oh.” She paused, as all the fun and excitement from a few minutes prior exited the room. “How did you write so messy?”
“I used my left hand.”
“Oh.” Even longer pause. “Leprechauns ARE real, though. Maybe I will catch one next year.”
“Are you sure they’re real?”
“Yes.”
And that’s when I knew I had made the wrong decision. I should have lied. Why? Because she wants to believe. The kid had a rough year, and she wants to believe that a tiny man wearing a tiny green hat snuck into her house and left her a present.
And, really — of all the reasons that adults are in therapy to work through childhood issues, have you ever heard ANYONE say that they are mad at their parents for letting them believe, when they were five years old, in leprechauns, or the Tooth Fairy, or even Santa Claus? Do any of you harbor anger towards your parents for having lied, at some point, to keep you believing? (If they told you when you were 27 that Santa was real, I am with you: Not cool.)
I saw my daughter later that day in her classroom, too, when I went in to volunteer. She had her four-leafed clover stickers and she was giving one to a friend. She came over to say hello and I bent down to whisper in her ear.
“Are you mad at me about the leprechaun stuff?” I asked.
“No.”
“If you want, we can pretend that there was a leprechaun,” I said.
She smiled. I smiled. But mine was a sad smile. I don’t know what made her even think to question the magic on that particular day — I had carefully removed price tags and buried the CVS bag in the trash — but I’m glad that, despite my efforts to the contrary, she decided to still believe in leprechauns. I wish we could go back in time. I would say, “What?! No! I wasn’t even in that room!” and she would go to school with her own tale of the leprechaun that got away.
And now, I can only hope that I haven’t opened the door for Santa’s untimely demise.
* In light of the horrific events in Japan this week, calling my week “difficult” gave me pause. You will have to trust me when I say that it is not just this leprechaun nonsense that messed up my head; there were other issues and, in fact, they were all framed by this almost-impossible-to-grasp situation in Japan, which caused serious turmoil in the brain and a heaviness in the heart.
Also, stupid Daylight Savings didn’t help.
Pandora
I want to be very clear here: I love Pandora, the free Internet radio service (as opposed to Pandora, that overpriced create-your-own jewelry line, which I do not love). Having stated my love for Pandora, I will now go on to complain about it for several paragraphs (but not this next one).
The reason I love Pandora is straightforward: It makes it easier and faster for me to hear good (as defined by me) music. I can listen to Pandora for hours in my car, with few commercial interruptions. I can put it on at home (we have Sonos, which I also love) when guests are arriving, and I don’t have to think about music again for the rest of the night; and, if things start out mellow but then get more upbeat, I can just quickly change the station. And back before we were buried under yards of snow, when I used to run/walk a few miles most mornings, I could crank the Kanye West or even Rihanna to get myself moving. All easy, all free.
But lately I’ve noticed a couple of flaws in the system. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Pandora — as far as I’m concerned, it totally delivers on its promise. The issues I’m having are bigger than Pandora, more about how the way we listen to music is changing.
For example, the experience of listening to an entire album has been, for the most part, lost. With iTunes and MP3 players and iPod shuffle, we’ve been headed the way of the single for a long time. I can’t remember the last album (do we still use that word? LP?) I listened to from start to finish (not that I would have time to do this anymore, but still). Here’s the example that just popped into my head: A Tribe Called Quest’s “People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.” Even the title gives you a clue as to how the songs form a journey with a beginning, middle and end.
Obviously, the whole premise of Pandora is based on analyzing each piece of music (Music Genome Project) as it stands alone. But, the classification system sometimes does too good of a job of finding similar music. While I often appreciate that Arcade Fire leads to Iron and Wine, which leads to Andrew Bird and Belle and Sebastian and the Nationals and so on, I find myself wishing something totally unexpected would pop up.
It’s like when you’re listening to an exceptional college radio station and a skillful DJ will throw out a crazy mix of music, jumping from reggae to indie to rap to alt.folk in a way that makes perfect sense. (This can also be infuriating about college stations — just when you are really getting into the mix a new DJ comes in to play “all Frank Sinatra!” or “all a capella!”)
Musical nirvana can also be achieved with the very best of mix CDs or, in rare cases, the Quickmix option on Pandora, or the “shuffle” mode on your iPod. More frequently, though, these options lead to some bad situations, like the Violent Femmes followed by, say Laurie Berkner. Not good. (Note to self: Delete Laurie Berkner!)
I’ve also noticed that Pandora does not seem to do much cross-decade programming — to be fair, neither does traditional radio. I mean, do kids today even know that all their favorite alternative-rock-or-whatever-it’s-called bands are a derivation of 80s bands like Bauhaus, Echo and the Bunnymen, New Order, The Church?
I guess what I’m saying is, I love Pandora — except when I don’t. And despite the amazing scope of the Music Genome Project, there is still something to be said for having an actual person — a friend, DJ, or even a couple of strangers talking on the train — help choose your music.
Consider this metaphor: Say there was a Pandora-like program for visual art, which categorized millions of pieces of art and then presented you with art that was based on what you said you like. If you said that you liked Kandinsky, you’d be presented with other Russian artists from the early 1900s, and other artists who use bold color and images, some abstract landscapes, and so on. But it is very unlikely that you’d be presented with a contemporary video artist or an African folk artist, and in that way, your choices have been greatly diminished.
So, I will continue to listen to and love Pandora and I hope you will, too. But keep sharing your recommendations, so we don’t fall into the trap of letting technology tell us what we like. As anyone who’s used an online dating service knows, just because you are “matched,” doesn’t mean you are a match.
I’m off to create some new stations. Suggestions? I’d love to hear what you are listening to, and how you listen to it. By the way, here’s a link to one of the most fun musical line-ups I’ve recently experienced, NPR and All Songs Considered’s Best Songs of 2010.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments OffI Don’t Know What the Hell I am Talking About.
- Image via Wikipedia
Really? You clicked on a link that said “I don’t know what the hell I am talking about?” Interesting. I’m not sure what that says about you.
But enough about you; I’m baaaaaack! You may not have noticed my absence (it’s okay, I can take it), but I can’t tell you how many times during the past couple of months I have thought about, and missed, writing. It’s a good feeling, to have affirmed my passion! (I also missed cooking and, of all things, jogging, which is both shocking and good, but probably too tangential to discuss here and now.)
Of course, now that I actually have a little window of opportunity, I can’t seem to grasp what it is I want to say. My awkwardness, I believe, has to do with re-entering regular life a bit after an intense period of medical scariness (not my own, but a family member’s experience).
In a nutshell: Being in a hospital day after day, even if you are just there to visit, will make you weird. I have a new-found and enormous amount of respect for anyone who spends a lot of time in the hospital. Being someone’s advocate is like being plunked down, Survivor-style, in the middle of a foreign land where you don’t know the language. There’s NG tubes and Heparin and Zofran and PICC lines and a hundred other things that you really didn’t ever want to know about, but you must learn about, and immediately. All the other little issues of daily living, like getting a hair cut and raking leaves and having the carpet cleaned, take a back seat.
I remember checking my email while sitting in the ICU a few week back. My gaze landed on a subject line, which read: Seven Great Desk Lamps! I remember thinking, “Uh…are you kidding me?” It seemed so incredibly ridiculous that I was in the ICU, where everything is, literally, a matter of life and death, and I was reading about desk lamps. And, really, how great could they be — and why seven?
A couple weeks later, I was walking through the hallway of the same hospital as a gurney, pushed by two orderlies, rolled by me. On it lay a woman about my age, with a bandage around her head. She was holding the ubiquitous vomit bucket that you see in every room in every hospital. As she passed by I offered up one of those inadequate, awkward half-smiles, but she looked right at me and said, “I like your scarf.”
She liked my scarf. The woman with the bandage and the bucket, being wheeled to a hospital room, liked my scarf. I hope I said thank-you.
What is the connection here? And what the hell am I talking about?
I don’t know! I feel like I made that clear with my title!
I do know that — and here’s that wow moment you’ve been waiting for — it has something to do with the Meaning of Life. Something about how all those little things — the funny Facebook posts about kids and dogs, and dinky little two-miles jogs, the impulse-buying of a pretty scarf — they all seem so far away sometimes. Until you (you=me in this scenario) realize how much you miss all the seemingly insignificant bits that make up your day-to-day existence, and you suddenly realize how totally f-ing great your little life is, with its homemade soup, wine with friends, well-written episodes of Mad Men, laughs with a five-year-old, and good books waiting on the night stand.
And if you finally figure out how to listen to Pandora on your iPhone in your car, as I did? Well, that is just the cream cheese icing on the Barefoot Contessa coconut cupcake of life.
As for the desk lamps, if someone wants to get really amped about that, who am I to rain on their parade? I mean, if the subject line had been “Seven Great Lip Balms,” or “Seven Great Stinky Cheeses,” I probably would have read the whole email. Because, for me, it IS about the little things.
And as for the patient, she’s doing well. It’ll be a long road.
Thanks for sticking with me while I get back in the groove with my writing. Next time I’ll figure out what the hell I am talking about before I start writing. Until then…
To BP or not to BP? That is the question.
- Image via Wikipedia
Let’s play make believe.
Imagine for a minute that you are a gas station owner — let’s just say that you’re located in a town north of Boston and that you had owned and run a Getty station for almost twenty years when a corporate deal that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time converted your Getty station to a BP station. It’s just a name, right? No one will care, you told yourself.
Just for the hell of it, let’s say your name is Jim Daaboul. And let’s say that this week is when the change-over to BP is occurring — a switch that’s been in the works for almost two years –at your gas station. What do you think you would be feeling as the BP signs were hoisted over your gas station amidst the coverage of BP’s two-month old, and ongoing, disaster in the Gulf of Mexico?
I’m guessing you’d be thinking something along the lines of this: “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.”
Okay, now stop the pretending — what are you, five years old!? No need to pretend, anyway — Jim Daaboul is a real person! He owns a gas station in my town; you can read the local paper’s story here. Prior to reading his story I had been a de facto participant in the BP boycott. (It was de facto in that I never really patronized BP to begin with. So, Take that, BP! I am going to continue to not go to your gas station! Powerful stuff.)
The other reason I haven’t been fully on board with the boycott is that if I am voting against BP, then I feel like I am voting for whichever company I go to instead. So, please tell me, which oil company is the Good Guy? Have you done all your research and do you feel confident with your vote?
And, lastly, without removing any of the enormous and deserved blame on BP, I would also like to state the obvious, which is that oil companies exist because we as a nation use a royal ass-load of oil. So, it’s nice that we have a Bad Guy now — and they are definitely the Bad Guy! — but let’s just recognize that it’s a complicated situation. ‘Lotta ins, ‘lotta outs.
Meanwhile, north of Boston, there’s this guy, Jim. In the article Jim says,”I’m just a small guy. Customers need to look at the service, not the sign.” He also points out that BP supplies oil to other big-name companies, too. So you could be patronizing a Mobil station and filling your tank with BP fuel.
So what’s a girl like me, who likes to do the right thing, to do? This gas station is about 1/2 mile from my house. I drove by yesterday, the day this story was published, and I looked over to see a man (I’m guessing it was Jim) pumping gas; oddly, he looked up and we made and held eye contact as I drove by. It didn’t feel accidental. It felt like he was standing out there, at his shiny new BP station, and purposely looking at the drivers of passing cars, just waiting for someone to yell something obscene or to tell him that he should be ashamed.
I didn’t honk my horn or yell, “BP kills birds and ruins lives!” (Both of which is true.) But I also didn’t yell, “I support you, Jim!” And I didn’t stop to get gas, either. I looked away.
Will Power
- Image via Wikipedia
I didn’t get the gene for will power. It is a lucky thing for me that I don’t like cigarettes and I’m not addicted to diet pills, or I’d be a lifelong resident of the Valley of the Dolls.
Most examples of my lack of self-control involve food. Here’s one from just yesterday: A neighbor stopped by with some chocolate; he had borrowed a stroller from us and the chocolate was a nice little thank-you gift. We chatted and then, literally, as he was walking away, I tore into the chocolate like a rabid ferret. My neighbor was still on the sidewalk in front of my house! That’s just not cool.
In my usual day-to-day life I can work around my apparent lack of self-control. I don’t buy loads of treats, because I would sit down and eat all of them, but I always keep a dark chocolate bar on hand, so when I need a little sumthin’ I can break off a square (or Trader Joe’s Nutty Bits — love). I am blessed with decent metabolism and, although I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to lose ten pounds for five years, I don’t usually obsess over such things. Because when it comes right down to it, my desire to eat delicious food and drink delicious wine is, almost always, either equal or greater than my desire to lose a little weight.
My lack of will power has become an issue of late, though, because of a new medication I’ve been taking. Without going into my whole medical history, I will just say that after years and years of explaining my symptoms to doctors and allergists and ear/nose/throat specialists and eye doctors, I was recently diagnosed with migraines. It was an oddly emotional moment for me, in the doctor’s office, because I had long ago given up on getting any relief from the ear-popping and headaches and car-sickness-like feeling I’ve had, a lot of the time, for years. And then, unexpectedly, this one doctor connected the dots that no one else had been able to connect. The fact that he is also quite handsome was making me feel uneasy, like I had somehow walked into a soap opera where handsome doctors have all the answers.
In the interest of time let’s just say this: It took me a while but I finally decided to take the medication. I can say without hesitation that I am more focused, I have more energy, I sleep way better, and I feel generally better than I have felt in a long, long time…and I’ve gained five pounds.
I know, I know — five pounds is not a big deal. But if you add it to that other ten pounds I mentioned before, things get a little dicey. And what if I’ve only gained five pounds so far? If it’s five pounds total, that is one thing; five pounds every two months? No. That’s not going to work at all.
My first thought was, Well, I have to stop taking it! Then, I got myself under control (I can do it for a few minutes sometimes) and realized that the medical issue would take precedence over my own vanity. And, perhaps, instead of cutting off my proverbial nose to spite my proverbial face, or shooting myself in my proverbial foot, I could go for some walks? Play tennis? Eat a little bit less? I mean, we finally have lettuce and vegetables growing, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.
Then, a few days ago, I took Caralena to my parent’s house and to run some errands. It was not a particularly fun day for an almost-five-year-old, but she hung in there and was great. So, on the way home, when she saw a Dunkin’ Donuts and asked if she could get a few Munchkins, I said, Yes, yes, you can! I ordered at the drive-thru: one chocolate, one glazed, and one jelly Munchkin. We were both happy; she was about to eat her treat of sugary goodness and — here’s the important part — I didn’t order any Munchkins for myself! I am putting this is both bold and italics, because who the hell could pass up one tiny Munchkin? Someone with serious will power, that’s who!
I was high on my own self-control and it felt good, I tell you. It. Felt. Good.
And then we got to the window. I paid, took the bag, and was about to drive away when the cashier woman smiled at me and winked — winked! — as she said these words: “I put an extra one in there for you.”
She put an extra one in there. For me. What?!? I can think of 8000 other times when I would have been thrilled if someone slipped me a free Munchkin. This wasn’t one of them.
And that is the end of this story. The End.
Wait – what? You want to know whether or not I ate it? Oh, please.
“What do YOU do?”
I find it odd that “What do you do?” is one of the first questions we ask when we meet people. (I gather this is an American habit so I guess we=Americans in this scenario. I’m also guessing The Question was originally, “What do you do for a living?” since, if you really think about it, “What do you do?” is a weird thing to ask. Ya know what else is weird? Inserting a long, parenthetical statement at the very beginning of an essay. Onward.) I mean, it makes sense to pose The Question at work-related gatherings but it seems to have wormed its way into the first few minutes of any conversation with someone new.
Up until a little over a year ago, when I was employed, I at least had an easy answer to The Question, one that people seemed to like: “I own a women’s clothing and shoe shop in Newburyport.” Done.
When I first closed my shop (thereby ending my own job), there was a grace period when I could talk to people about closing the business and why I made that decision. When asked what I was going to do next I said something like, “I have some ideas but first I’m going to take some time off.” People seemed to think that was fine. “You always come up with something!” they said.
Now that it’s been over a year since I’ve been employed I have come to dread The Question — I’ve even gone out of my way to avoid situations where I know it will repeatedly be asked (no speed-dating for me!). As much as I don’t think that people should be defined solely by their jobs, much of my own identity was clearly wrapped up in being the owner of a small retail business. Giving it up felt like losing a part of my personality.
I quickly filled all those hours with the other tasks; when you have a young child, a mother with a health issue, a husband, a house, and a dog, there is no shortage of projects. But even though I was constantly occupied, I still didn’t know what I was doing. When people posed The Question, I’d awkwardly ramble on and then end with a vague reference to “some ideas I’m pursuing.” I’m pretty sure I was getting some smiles and nods while people were really thinking, “Wow, she’s really letting it all go!”
With all due respect to the self-described SAHMs out there, I never considered “I’m at stay-at-home mom” as The Answer. Maybe it’s because I worked for the first three years of my daughter’s life, which is when women traditionally decide to be a SAHM. I also have some issues with the SAHM label — specifically, the “stay-at-home” part doesn’t work for me. I’d be more comfortable with something like “the running around like a maniac, trying to get everything done in the few hours that you are in school so we can spend after-school hours baking and crafting so you will remember me as a FUN mom and not one who was always stressed and talking about how I missed yoga AGAIN and –wait, how can we be out of wine?!” mom. I know — too long.
Most importantly, being a mother is only part of what I do. I am also a caregiver and advocate, a writer and editor, a household organizer and cleaner, a cook, and a whole lot of other things. (Holy poop-on-a-stick, I sound like I’m channeling Stuart Smalley!) And I’m also incredibly lucky that some days I find time to make soup (yesterday), write a blog post (today), or plant some flowers (it’s on the list).*
Depending on the day, my mood, and who’s asking, I now reply to The Question with a variety of answers — it can be anything from “I’m taking some writing classes,” to “Some days I just walk around my house and pick things up all day.” (I like to have one snarky option on hand.) It doesn’t really matter what I say because, in the words of Staurt Smalley, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”
Of course, he also said, “I’m gonna die homeless and penniless and twenty pounds overweight.” No! I will not go into a shame spiral!
*I’m not going to get into the reasons why it doesn’t make sense for me to get a “real job” at this point but, trust me, it doesn’t make sense.
You are Here.
Our first stop after landing in Austin last week was a Tex-Mex joint we remembered from our previous trip — food is a major part of our love of Austin, so why postpone the pleasure?
After that, we decided to visit Zilker Park so Caralena could run around. We hopped in the (giant, size of a studio apartment in NYC) truck — it was the only “car” available after a little mix-up at the airport. David was fiddling with his iphone to get his fancy, talking GPS app running when I told him that we didn’t need it — I remembered the route to Zilker, or at least the general direction, from two years prior.
“Okay,” he said. “Which way?” The truck was not moving.
“Back to Cesar Chavez, towards downtown,” I said.
“Okay, which way is that?” he asked.
Granted, we had just arrived in Austin. But I could have told David to drive straight, right, left, or in reverse and he wouldn’t have thought twice. This was when it struck me that David — who is a CEO and a computer programmer and who pretty much can master anything he puts his mind to, from gardening to chess to whatever else he picks — has ZERO sense of direction.
This isn’t a pick-on-the-David post; I have seen it many times. Last year, when we visited David’s sister in PA, David was driving while his sister directed us to a pizza place in the next town. After dinner, we got back in the car, and David asked which way he should turn out of the parking lot.
I was shocked! How could you not know which way you had driven down a road a half hour previously? How could you not know whether you turned right or left to get into a parking lot? I’m fairly certain I could have navigated us all the way back to their house, down rural back roads, through corn fields. But when I expressed my surprise, David’s sister laughed and said that she is the exact same way when it comes to a total lack of sense of direction — and she is a smartie, too!
Clearly, a sense of direction has nothing to do with intelligence and it’s not something you learn; you either have it or you don’t. As a quick test, answer the following question to yourself, without thinking for more than three seconds: What direction are you facing right now? (I am facing south. That took me 1.5 seconds.) Now try this one: Point in the direction of your nearest post office, the one you visit. Was that easy or difficult?
In and of itself, this isn’t all that interesting; some people can roll their tongues and others can’t, but who really cares? It becomes compelling to me, though, when I think how this relates to how people envision space differently. I was very aware, when we were in Austin, of where I was not just within the city, but where we were on a map of the United States. And no matter where I travel, I constantly update this visual picture in my mind, of where I am in relation to other points, and where I am in relation to where I usually am, in the northeast.
The one time I got tripped up was when we were in CA last year. The confusion stemmed from the fact that, living on the East Coast, I am programmed to think that if the ocean is on your left, you are headed south. Obviously, this rule did not work in CA, and I remember a couple times where I had a second or two of a vertigo-like feeling, as my internal GPS re-configured itself.
So, when it comes to your sense of direction are you a Lise or a David? Is it part of my OCD that I always know in which direction I am facing? Perhaps. But I can’t imagine walking or driving around without a bigger picture in my mind, of where I am. For better or worse, I guess I am like my own little GPS.
