Even in Kyoto

It feels so strange to be here without scrottie. Coming back is starting to feel like returning to Boston, the familiar intermingled with the new, trying to make sense of my sense of identity. Thinking about some of the influential individuals here who became a part of my local family but have passed away too soon, too recently (Okie, BCH). Thinking about other individuals who used to live here but who have also moved on to other places, other lives.

It's hard to be here, scrambling to write a presentation that feels so intellectually important, but for which I cannot do full justice because I am just too.damn.busy. I need to practice it so I don't stumble too horribly during delivery. It is simultaneously important (on the level of a job talk) and unimportant (instead I should be applying for jobs, working on the current experiments, writing papers, helping new-boss with grant-writing). The perpetual PhD question, too: is this really going to be an earth-shattering subject? Or is it so much fuss over a subject so trivial? I don't think so but I struggle the most with the higher-order thinking, especially when my nose is shoved up against the trees.

There's a limit to my ability to think, one that I can exercise, but a limit, nonetheless. There's a limit to how much work I can do - something I can also stretch, but only up to a point. I have to operate within these limits and not give up, in the hopes that all this work will be a worthwhile exercise.

"And then, outside a greengrocer's, it happened - something that sooner or later always happens to me on a long trip away from home. It is a moment I dread.
"I started asking myself unanswerable questions.
"Prolonged solitary travel, you see, affects people in different ways. It is an unnatural business to find yourself in a strange place with an underutilized brain and no particular reason for being there, and eventually it makes you go a little crazy. I've seen it in others often. Some solitary travelers start talking to themselves: little silently murmured conversations that they think no one else notices. Some desperately seek the company of strangers, striking up small talk at shop counters and hotel reception desks and then lingering awkwardly after it has become clear that the conversation has finished. Some become ravenous, obsessive sightseers, tramping from sight to sight with a guidebook in a lonely quest to see everything. Me, I get a sort of interrogative diarrhea. I ask private questions for which I cannot supply an answer. And so as I stood by a greengrocer's in Thurso, looking at its darkened interior with pursed lips and a more or less empty head, from out of nowhere I thought, Why do they call it a grapefruit? and I knew that the process had started."

-Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island


Bill Bryson is an excellent traveling companion. Initially I had only carried along an intense book by Simone de Beauvoir for my trip to Europe, but on the extra day in Chicago I decided to track down a local bookstore to find slightly lighter fare. Bryson's book hit the spot, especially because it's about adventures around England and English culture.

I read the above passage on the train during a point in the trip where I could relate all to easily to it. In addition to traveling all the way to Europe for the sake of a one-of-a-kind bicycling experience, I wanted to see other cities and their sights and sounds, to get a feel for what this whole human experience is all about. To get perspective.

The first time we visited Paris, some of the immigrant neighborhoods caught me by surprise. Sure, we have Chinatowns in the US, but there's nothing quite like walking down a huge city block filled with narrow shops all specializing in African weaves, each with a guy standing out front to entice you inside. There were drifts of hair blowing along the sidewalk on that street. Then there are parks that consist of small patches of gravel, completely overrun by people (men, mostly) just lounging around, looking like they have nothing to do and nowhere to go (not necessarily homeless, just without purpose). Even the crowded US cities don't feel like this.

The human experience can be uplifting, inspiring, discouraging, depressing, the whole gamut. I know I wrote briefly about feeling like London was soul-crushing without elaborating much on the sensation. If I was traveling for a sense of perspective, London and Paris both gave me that, just not the sort of perspective I'd expected. I left London with a sense of my own unimportance. It's a city that doesn't care about you and your petty aspirations, especially if you lack social class. So, why even bother? How can I continue to churn out blog entry after blog entry, knowing that most of the subject matter is trivial and will gradually disappear into a dusty corner of the Internet? Wouldn't it be better to take a more refined approach, only putting out and sharing maybe one or two all-time incredible gems, cultivated and polished over a lifetime? Could I channel my energies in that fashion? It's not that I have any wish to be famous, whatsoever. I just want to feel purposeful.

On that train trip, reading Bryson's book, however, I remembered something else.

Practice.

Magnum opuses don't come out of thin air. They are born out of hundreds of small attempts and failures. I *do* need to keep at it, even when things seem utterly futile and I don't have any idea what the future holds (by the way, this is also related to gearing up for another round of job applications). The act of writing keeps me in touch with myself, and this is necessary for the sake of channeling my voice and using it for good. Besides, the demons compel me to write, and I have a hard time ignoring them, which means I probably shouldn't ignore them.

Shortly after I returned from Europe, my ceramics instructor from Tempe passed away. She had been diagnosed with an inoperable form of brain cancer a year or two prior. I haven't seen her since moving away, only heard the news indirectly. She lived such a public life, as a teacher, and yet I have also always had the sense that she was also a very private person, perhaps as a defense mechanism. Only every once and a while would this side of herself slip out. Just a few days after I learned that she had died, I received an alumni magazine with an article about her and her work, talking about the ceramic sculptures she's had exhibited around the world - the list of her accolades. What's most striking to me, however, is the photo showing her in her home studio space, putting on a bright face and smile even while the ravages of cancer are evident (but only to those who know). Despite the smile and warm, loving attitude, B did not have an easy life. Everything she has accomplished has been the result of tireless persistence and dedication. Porcelain clay is an unforgiving medium in an artform that is often overlooked because it's traditionally in the female "craft" arena. She was also one of the people who was a consistent champion of the things I did as a graduate student, and I know she will continue to be a source of inspiration through the low points.

And so, onward.

Today I finished work in time to get home before bedtime, something for which both I and my cat are grateful. She was unhappy when I came home late and went straight to bed last night, and who can blame her - she deserves attention. She got her revenge in the usual manner - meowing periodically in the middle of the night to wake me up.

I am especially grateful because it means I have a bit of time to write about something that has been bothering me over the last couple of days. The day after I had a long conversation with S, he e-mailed me, and then I e-mailed back, and then, after that, silence, for the past week and a half. When we broke up, he said he would probably withdraw for "some time," and accordingly un-"friended" me here and on other social media platforms. I observed a blog post that I wasn't sure I was supposed to see, and let him know in a very brief message (not sure what the right etiquette is for that situation), but again, silence. That's not the specific bother, but is tied to it.

It's hard to listen to that silence, especially after becoming accustomed to frequent contact, especially coping with the ambiguity of the situation. I had gotten to feel like there wasn't much "relating" going on in what was left of our relationship (felt like a litany of complaints directed at me), and like I was no longer sure whether we were really good for each other, which to me was a sign that it was time to put on the brakes. [I try to not be a Flounce Majeure sort of person, but at times it feels necessary to take a step back from things, the overall goal being one to restore a sense of self-balance so as to be able to think and act from the heart].

Over the last couple of days, tied to coping with the silence, the recurring thought and bother has been about a letter and an e-mail I sent, that were both incredibly hard to write, best summarized by the e-mail subject line, "Things about myself I need to work on." I wrote both things focused around myself because I was starting to feel like outside labels were imposing themselves on my actions, BUT I also wanted to acknowledge that I am aware that I am a far from perfect human being, I do things that are hurtful to others, and need to work on recognizing that, and especially recognizing that I need to work on being patient and listening.

So it is hard to let that silence extend out, a good week and a half now.

But let me touch on the more general subject of this post, on non-reciprocity in relationships, before returning to the specific bother. One of the items I found in one of the boxes of mementos was a copy of a typewritten letter I'd sent to my Writing professor at Tufts, concerning a conflict I was having with her over some of the final assignments for our Peer Writing Tutor class. The details of the conflict aren't critical, but the outcome is. Instead of acknowledging and addressing my concerns, she basically said to me, "Well, _I_ am the professor and you are the student, end of story." So I finished that course still deeply unhappy with how things were handled, and I've had to carry conflicting feelings with me ever since then. There's really no chance for resolution, because it all happened about 15 years ago, and besides, she passed away from cancer.

What do we do, about these things? Many would argue that reciprocity an intimate part of forming friendships - I think tied to the concept of social exchange theory, but this could be inaccurate. That's part of why, when going on bike rides here in town with strangers right after S and I broke up, I didn't run around going, "Hi, my name is Rebecca, and I just broke up with my boyfriend!!" I could have done so, but that assumes an often unwelcome level of intimacy and familiarity with strangers. Instead, they ask where I have moved from, and to reciprocate I ask about where they are from (general answer: Nebraska, heh). So when things go non-reciprocal, my sense of what's right and proper gets violated, and I get rocked back on my heels. I think humans are also equipped with extremely good bullshit detectors on this front, such that I readily register the difference between a thoughtful response and something parroted back at me.

But non-reciprocity is as much a part of life as reciprocity. After struggling with waiting, I've had to remind myself that it's still patience that I need to work on, and that I can't tell someone else to write their own homework assignment of "Things I need to work on" to reciprocate my own list. Wow, that would be a good way to get exactly the WRONG thing. So that's the answer to my bother, after several days of thinking.

Multiple times over the past couple of years, S suggested that he and I "take a break," although he never explained what he meant by that or how it differed from living two timezones apart and communicating only sporadically. He also suggested that I go and date some other Mister Perfect and said he doesn't need to hear about it, at which point I go, to me, being in a relationship with someone, whether it's a friendship or otherwise, means I should be able to share things about my life with that person, and not have to sneak around or hide anything!! For one thing, I'm not interested in dating other people (good Lord, especially not right now, and especially not in Lincoln), and for another thing, I absolutely reject the notion that I should have to separate out parts of my life in that fashion. [And why does Miss Perfect get left out all the time?? It's always Mister Perfect that causes the paranoia.]

And so here I am, sitting home alone with my cat in my lap, purring, as I have been spending most evenings lately. As I think even further, I think, inasmuch as S declares that he wishes I find Mister Perfect, you know, altogether, I will continue to hope that he finds meaning and satisfaction in his life's pursuits, whether those pursuits involve finding a deep and satisfying relationship with another person, or otherwise. I cannot know whether that will be the case, but I hope that it is true for all of you as well.

Lastly, I would return to the same notion as I put as the title for my previous post, because sometimes it deserves repeating: when I write things about other people, in actuality I am mostly just saying things about myself.

I am still really bad at practicing patience, especially with myself.

But I think I am learning some things and reaching a direction, as much as anyone can.

Thank you for listening while I batter myself against this thing.

One of the things I deeply appreciate about scrottie is his strong drive to do work on projects. There's a piece of that drive that could be labeled "introversion," but it's more than just that. I relate to this aspect of S because after a certain point I grow weary of neverending parades and parties and social occasions and talking. Weary of sitting and watching movies, too. I have a higher tolerance of these things than he does, but the underlying sentiment is the same. Enough; let me go do things on my own, take time to think and not speak.

A couple of visits back, my uncle F and I had a brief conversation about projects. He pointed out a simple insight he'd had, that the thing that has kept him up and moving in the long term has been projects. If he didn't develop projects in his workplace, he said he wouldn't have managed to keep burning the rubber to get to work every morning. He went over one day to check out the activity happening at a retired neighbor's house, spying a group of guys hanging out and watching a construction crew, and they all knowingly glanced at each other and said, "Projects." Even in retirement, that's what keeps them going. If I'm kept too long from my stream of projects, I know I get anxious. But I know many other people who have been content with sliding into something of a mental vegetable state. Did they make that choice consciously? Is it the result of some sort of giving up? Are they stuck in a state of struggling to survive that makes it hard to think of much else?

For me, the projects are a piece of the Existential Crisis. It's important to be aware of that. In many ways, they're a struggle against many of the conveniences handed to us on a platter by modern socioeconomic circumstances present in the United States of America. I don't really need to finish making a quilt; it would be cheaper, easier, and far, far faster to just go to a store and buy one, especially if I'm willing to be completely blind to the conditions in which the quilt is made. The quilt also isn't even art in the Western sense, as it's being made for a small audience, and won't be particularly good or nice because it's my first quilt ever and I don't entirely know what I'm doing. But it's there, and I *will* work on it.

The projects are also not hustle and bustle in an attempt to cover up the silence. The silence still creeps through and sends me back to books like Man's Search for Meaning. We'll see about Goedel, Escher, Bach and whether or not it speaks to me at all. I want to go visit the silence, actually, on mountaintops or on lakes.

Is it possible to shift the national discourse away from happiness? It's written into the Declaration of Independence, and yet I'm inclined to agree with Man's Search for Meaning that happiness doesn't relate back to fundamental aspects of the human experience. Advertisers have long exploited the idea because it's an effective selling point.

Religious practice or spiritual development can be a form of project - for many, if not most, a very worthwhile one. Rowing, for me, has been a long-term project.

I remember, quite distinctly, waking up one morning while I lived in the Farmer House, the white light of the Arizona sun shining in through the white curtains, reflecting off the white walls, making the room almost impossibly bright. I had the distinct sensation that my arm, made up of its billions of tiny, metabolically active cells, wasn't fully a part of me, that it would one day return to dust. Then the inner demons compelled me to get up and get back to work.

For the better part of the week, I've been pondering writing something entitled "Sloughing," about how it has been so far to live with reduced possessions. [short answer: I should've emptied out my wardrobe sooner!! I've hardly missed anything else!]

But it has been a difficult week, on both superficial and deep levels, so my mind has primarily been elsewhere. I'm only going to talk about one superficial example: on Tuesday, after posting about bike commuting, I experienced catastrophic bike-transit failure - so catastrophic it was pretty much ridiculous. I needed to get stuff at the library on the main campus, so towards the end of the day I biked over there, hauling the bike trailer. That took longer than I'd hoped, so there I was, running late, with all the extra weight and the bike trailer, trying to hustle my bustle out to Lake Bryan. I'd had the idea of stopping by the homestead to swap out the Jolly Roger + trailer for Froinlavin, with Froinlavin's brand-new wheel, which would be more efficient and also more pleasant to ride home in the dark. I made it about 3 blocks from home on Froinlavin (hearing an odd clicking sound) before I realized I wasn't carrying my pannier with spare tools and cell phone and sunglasses. Back home. Then I made it about a third of the way out to the lake before getting the first of three flats, and quickly discovering that I'd failed to tighten the cassette's lockring when I swapped wheels. When things start to snowball like that, it's time to just throw in the towel, turn around, and go home. So much for rowing.

Maybe I could conclude the week by being pissed off and upset at humanity both individually and in the collective for all of the pain and suffering that occurs in the world and in my daily life. Maybe I should dwell on my imperfections and re-experience them in excruciating detail, spend time agonizing over all of the fun things I'm missing out on all of the time.

But sorry, pushback. As I wrote not too long ago, I do think there's an element of choice to how we spend our mental energies. That doesn't mean "suppress bad feelings," but don't seek out things that amplify them pointlessly (I'm looking at you, TeeVee News Media). Simple psychological experiments have actually shown that if people are made to arrange their facial features in a smile-like expression, they report more positive emotions and respond more positively to events*. The self-fulfilling prophecy can be positive OR negative, depending on what is prophesied. "Regression to the mean" will factor in, too. All of these might be why we can find incredible and beautiful expressions of humanity in people who have survived genocides, not universally bitter, alienated, isolated persons. Not saying it's easy, though the struggle through will probably be worthwhile.

I'm not advocating blind optimism. Just saying that, when the demons arise, take it as a sign to seek out the positive and the life-affirming. Respond by reaching out, not retracting. Here are a few such things for me, right now.

http://momastery.com/blog/2014/08/11/give-liberty-give-debt/ (This is so fun. I think you'll see what I mean.)

Robin Williams talking about the dark side of humor in an interview with Terry Gross - but read the last thing he says in the "choice excerpts," which is part of why he resonates with so many people, and why we're grateful for him even while sad about a beautiful life cut short.

Coping with uncertainty - again, useful to remember that this is part of our shared human experience.


*Standard caveats for psychological research apply.

Through an accumulation of events, I've shied away from putting too much personal content out on teh internets, but there are certain points in one's life where things don't all happen in neat, tidy packages, and so here I am. From the sounds of things, Dad's surgery yesterday went as smoothly as it could, so now he's on the long, slow road towards healing for the time being (still without fully knowing about certain parts of this whole "cancer" puzzle, but hey, much of our lives is about the unknown, right?). It still weirds me out a bit, making the private, inner workings of someone else's body the focus of so much attention, but it's all part of the experience of life, I suppose, particularly as we get older and more fully realize our intimate dependence on others. Hardest when we return to a stage where we can no longer wipe our own asses. He shared a poem/prayer with friends and family that he said is giving him comfort through this process, which I'll put at the end of this post.

At certain points, our minds respond to difficult situations with emotional numbness. I have a partial sensation of speaking and thinking through a sort of thick styrofoam, tinged by the sadness of loved ones all being very far away. I had one of those moments yesterday where I was a bit shocked by the notion and remembrance that life has continued to advance without me in Phoenix, just as over the years I've come to watch the city of Seattle move on.

But in the meantime, things continue to move and grow here, as well. The thunderstorms and heavy rains which drenched me last Thursday on an aborted bike ride out to Lake Bryan meant that the boatyard grass has grown again. Yesterday I was ever so grateful to be bicycling out to the lake, if only because it would be a welcome distraction through the wait while Dad was in surgery. Practice consisted of a continuation of equipment maintenance, so while others worked on cleaning out the boats and painting the oars, I fired up the lawnmower and shoved it around the boatyard. The mower was such a beast that it made me miss Mr. Pushy, although I don't know if Mr. Pushy could have handled the grass out there. At least it wasn't as crazy as two summers ago, when we had to tackle it with weed whackers because it had gotten so overgrown. It's always amusing to go out to the lake and work hard, because for most of the other people in this region the lake represents a destination for idle recreation. Rowers, however, are all people who relish the hard work itself on some level.



PSALM OF A WAKE FOR A CHANGING BODY, by Edward Hays

Wakes are for the dead;
even the term leaves me cold.
I usually prefer to deny my death,
which comes by inches,
but comes relentlessly all the same.

Another signal from my body,
another sign of age,
has visited me, with its foreboding forecast
that l’m growing older.

I look with envy at the young
and am often tempted to try
a wizard’s wonder herb
to restore my aging body
to its former age of agility
that was free of aches and pains.

Today I must mourn,
aware that those who hold enough wakes
die with dignity
and even dance with death
in a Chronos childhood play.

To wake with great love each small death and loss
and then move on to what life offers next:
it is thus that i can honestly rejoice
at another’s youthful beauty.

I sense that by observing enough wakes
I'll awaken, to my surprise,
to a new, mature magnetic beauty
that radiates from those
whom time has tanned into a handsome hybrid
of the eternal youth.

To follow up on my previous, more important post:

Last night, Richard Dawkins gave a talk at ASU based on his latest, best-selling book, The God Delusion. The audience was one of the largest audiences he has ever addressed (Gammage Auditorium was filled). Although he praised science and the process of natural selection, he did not explain these two concepts fully. Much of his talk focused instead on logical fallacies associated with typical arguments used to support the existence of the Westernized Judeo-Christian concept of God, as well as on addressing the fundamental logical flaws associated with Intelligent Design (I was pleased to see the phrase "Failure of imagination" appear on one Powerpoint slide). He also gave some time to the subject of raising consciousness about how religions/religious thinking appear in societies (can we really label 4-year-old children as Jewish, Muslim, and Christian?).

None of these subjects was surprising, and also unsurprisingly the content overlapped considerably with Dennett's recent book Breaking the Spell, though Dawkins was perhaps even more forthright about the fact that by nature he is not inclined to be highly diplomatic in his dealings with religious thinkers. I also appreciated his mention of the fact that he does not think it necessary to be highly versed in theological studies to be able to hold the above discussion (does that mean, by extension, that I am qualified to hold a philosophical standpoint despite being poorly-versed in classical philosophical texts?).

But. There were a few moments that I wish I could remember better, when the audience laughed or applauded inappropriately, still demonstrating a sheep-like response to the presented ideas. To that, I object. And I think the two points raised in my earlier post still stand. As I've said to a few people before, I have found my studies of Biology quite humbling for what they have revealed to me about the limitations of science as a way of knowing.

After Dawkins's talk, I'm still thinking about writing a letter to Dennett about those two points. I just wonder if there's even a remote chance that I will get an honest response. Perhaps I should omit the fact that though I'm a rationalist, I never claim to be rational.

Lastly, I think I'll never get over the fact that Dawkins was perhaps overly successful in his coining of the term "meme" in The Selfish Gene, for the word has been co-opted to mean something much less meaningful than he originally intended, and its utility as originally intended is still incredibly questionable in my mind at least (augh, the "meme" meme! So Meta.).

Silly scientists. If only it were possible to intelligently discuss these things and derive some meaning from the discussion. Alas, it's but a spin of a hamster wheel. Perhaps it's time for some poetry or art instead.

Yesterday, while walking to Scrabble with D, D shared a really cool idea with me--she'd been thinking about two subjects I've written about, the DIY scene and life in the Greater Phoenix Suburb-o-politan Area (or GPSA for short).

She'd had a recent conversation with a friend who is trying to decide where to move next, and he'd expressed some dissatisfaction with the idea of moving somewhere like the GPSA because so much of it is so new. Instead, he figured he'd prefer somewhere with more established history like Seattle or Boston. Their conversation moved onward, but his opinion stuck with D and made her think about how she relates to life in this place.

The simple thing that got D really excited was the idea of extending the DIY concept to the GPSA in general. Sure, there isn't as much established history (in some respects; ancient history lingers but is subtle), but that means that we have to adopt a different sort of mentality, a freedom to explore and recognize imperfections and try to change them or learn to cope differently. With that kind of attitude, I can change from missing delicious Cupcake Royale cupcakes and instead celebrate and relish the fact that I've learned how to make my own, a satisfying process that might not have happened if I had remained spoon-fed in another place. There's so much to be gained from the struggle of learning to ride my bicycle around a town that is learning to become more bicycle-friendly.

I'm going to think about this idea some more as I continue to make meaning of my life and my presence here. But thank you, D, for making that simple yet exciting connection.

Sometimes, the only way to deal with them is to medicate with the likes of The Way Things Go
(this isn't the entirety, nor should it be--I should really add it to my List of Things to Acquire--it was the saving grace of the Hirshhorn museum when last I visited--no, that's a lie, it has many good things to it)