I spent the evening doing nothing that I intended to do and it was everything that I could have wanted it to be.
I have to say that for the first time in my life, after 5 roommates, I am really enjoying having a roommate.
I specifically got this apartment because I wanted to live alone. I had a whole list of reasons why I wanted to live alone, and all my previous experience with living with other people suggested to me that I could not get what I wanted unless I lived alone. So, for 3 months I lived alone. (That number is not really true, because I spent 6 weeks in there living in PPD.) I have to say that living alone was AWESOME. I guess I got to see myself in a different way than I ever had before. I saw myself as a bachelor adult and I yearned for the odd quirks and habits that come from being accountable to no one. The funny thing is that I started to see them in myself. I started to create a morning routine and I set the alarm for the same time every day. I had something of an evening routine too. I bought a pair of pajamas for the first time in my life because I found that a shower was no longer always the thing I did right before bed, but the thing I did before fixing a cup of coffee and watching Simpsons and Seinfeld. And the best part was that my "routines" were completely flexible enough to be tossed out on a whim, and I could - and did - spend the evening out without having to inform someone about how my plans had changed, and then justify it.
The point is that for the first time in my life, living alone created a sense in me that this is ALL my life - every minute of it, from the moment I wake up until I wake up again. How I manage my time and my resources is both my privilege and my responsibility. But significantly, it is mine. Living the bachelor's life is amazing, and when (and if) Mike moves out in January, I might well decide not to get another roommate.
However, I have been surprised at how cool it can be to have a roommate. It has been surprising to find that it does not necessarily mean that I can't still have some of that independent life. I still have friends over; my Doxology small group met at my house Wednesday. What I have gained, however, is daily conversation, and I did not even suspect how good that would be. Mike smokes occasionally (a couple of cigarettes every couple of days, I think) and I have gone outside with him a couple of times and sat on the balcony talking politics and religion and life, and even though we come from very different perspectives on a lot of issues, the conversation is friendly and really good. Incidentally, I'm not sure how we might have breached the conversation wall had it not been for cigarettes. "Hey, I'm going to go stand outside. You want to join me?" does not allow the same easy excuse as "Hey, I'm going to go smoke a cigarette. You want to join me?"
So tonight, Mike and I cooked spaghetti, (Cooked meals is another thing I enjoy which is so much easier when cooking for 2.) watched Simpsons and Seinfeld, and then stood out on the balcony talking for several hours, until just a few minutes ago, actually. After the conversation, we both went into our own separate rooms, agreeing to do it again sometime. Those of you who have easily come by successful adult relationships with your roommates might not understand how shocking it is for me to realize that living with someone can actually be more than an economic relationship.
I was telling my mom and dad a few days ago about how cool it is that Mike cooks regularly, (The second day he lived here, I came home to find a plate of pasta for me in the fridge.) and I jokingly said that I now understand the advantages of a wife. Besides the (joke) advantage of someone to cook for me, the actual feeling I'm getting at is that there is definitely something nice about the practical side of things, which I hadn't considered before. A relationship like that isn't just in your head or your heart, "soulmates", or something like that. There is that, but then there is also something nice about cooking dinner with someone. Cleaning dishes with someone. Just the nitty-gritty living of life with someone. It's not like, "I love this person, so clearly I would want to have her around as much as possible, so that's worth the sacrifice of my own independence. And besides, that's more practical too." It's more like, "I love this person, and it is pleasant to think of having the same life, with the same dog that needs walked and morning and evening habits that complement each other." Mike, of course, is not my wife; we are friendly at best and merely sociable under most circumstances. Even if we were best friends, he would not fit this description, because he's a guy, and because there still is something, I think, to that whole lovey-dovey side of the coin. But having a really positive roommate situation really is a new perspective for me. Of course, I do not think I could possibly have seen this perspective if I hadn't had a few weeks to understand my own independence.
So, thanks to unplanned conversation, I have a lot to do tomorrow before I leave for Tres Dias, and I have stayed up WAY too late. So it's off to bed for me now and then the weekend begins with a rush! Don't let life slow down on you, because that means the spring is winding down...
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Connecting the dots
Since I posted last...
- I am responsible for a dog who lives with me. (Though I will not say, "my dog".)
- I have a roommate who treats me like the landlord.
- I am again a teacher.
- I have begun working toward becoming a "steward" at Doxology.
I spent the evening watching football and talking about beer with my dad, who doesn't watch football or drink beer. For that matter, while I drink some beer, I don't really watch football either.
Yesterday, I drove to Crockett alone, which is one of the longer drives I've made alone, and probably the longest drive I've made alone at night. I hung out with a bunch of old guys I didn't know who know my dad and took care of some stuff and had kind of a weird experience where I didn't feel like I needed my dad to be there or needed to be carefully unassociated with him.
Sometimes I look at what's happening around me and wonder "Is this my life?" and then something extraordinarily stupid happens and I think, "Yeap, yeah, this is the one." The past two weeks have been like this.
The tagline for the New York Times is something like "All the news that's fit to print." Well, it's amazing to me that in the past two and a half weeks, there has been - it seems - no news that's fit to print. The key phrase here is "fit to print." Instead, 17 days fill up with an enormous amount of dots or data. One of these days, something is going to happen that will be the key, and the past 2 weeks will somehow make sense. But for now, I won't bother with all the news that isn't fit to print.
And it's really a great way to describe how I feel these days: waiting. Waiting. Waiting.
And so for now, I will read a book and listen to music and type away on my typewriter and keep my eyes open for that last dot to make the picture make sense.
And this posting doesn't make any sense.
- I am responsible for a dog who lives with me. (Though I will not say, "my dog".)
- I have a roommate who treats me like the landlord.
- I am again a teacher.
- I have begun working toward becoming a "steward" at Doxology.
I spent the evening watching football and talking about beer with my dad, who doesn't watch football or drink beer. For that matter, while I drink some beer, I don't really watch football either.
Yesterday, I drove to Crockett alone, which is one of the longer drives I've made alone, and probably the longest drive I've made alone at night. I hung out with a bunch of old guys I didn't know who know my dad and took care of some stuff and had kind of a weird experience where I didn't feel like I needed my dad to be there or needed to be carefully unassociated with him.
Sometimes I look at what's happening around me and wonder "Is this my life?" and then something extraordinarily stupid happens and I think, "Yeap, yeah, this is the one." The past two weeks have been like this.
The tagline for the New York Times is something like "All the news that's fit to print." Well, it's amazing to me that in the past two and a half weeks, there has been - it seems - no news that's fit to print. The key phrase here is "fit to print." Instead, 17 days fill up with an enormous amount of dots or data. One of these days, something is going to happen that will be the key, and the past 2 weeks will somehow make sense. But for now, I won't bother with all the news that isn't fit to print.
And it's really a great way to describe how I feel these days: waiting. Waiting. Waiting.
And so for now, I will read a book and listen to music and type away on my typewriter and keep my eyes open for that last dot to make the picture make sense.
And this posting doesn't make any sense.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
IN FAVOR OF IDIOCY, BROKENNESS, AND IMMATURITY
Imagine, if you will, a person who has it all together. Call her Jane, because, you know, why not? Jane's finances are perfect - free of any real debt to speak of because she exercises admirable restraint and foresight when she spends her money. Her time is always her own to spend, and it too is budgeted carefully and spent with restraint and foresight. Her emotions are always positive, or else smooth as glass, and nothing seems to affect her inner tranquility or budge her emotional stability. Her faith and beliefs - whatever they might be - are rock-solid and immutable, neither swaying nor breaking, even in the most extreme conditions. Overall, Jane is a real rock in the storm, a true beacon of maturity.
Of course, Jane is entirely imaginary: I have never met such a flawless soul and don't anticipate it ever happening; usually those who seem at first to fit Jane's description turn out - as you get to know them - to be as flawed as everyone else. For another obvious statement, Jane is, I think, very definitely an admirable person, a hero.
Now, imagine another person, Jack, who seems to have always had it all together. Jack has never been so deep in debt that he can't see a way out, and doesn't know what it is like to look at a bank balance with a clenching guilty feeling in the pit of his stomach and wonder, Where did it all go, and have no answer except a long series of movies and dinners out, or one, big, stupid, and impulsive purchase. Jack has never failed miserably, publicly, embarrassingly, or put his head in his hands and said to no one: "What was I thinking?" He doesn't understand so thinks suspiciously of those whose faith slips through their fingers sometimes, who doubt and question. Jack has never had to fight for a place in life or claw his way back to okay.
Jack, needless to say, is even more imaginary than Jane; if few are really mature then none could have been born with this maturity. As my grandfather would put it: "You can't put an old man's head on a young man's shoulders." However, it feels to me like - whether we say it or not - many people hold Jack up as an ideal to be sought after personally and in those we love. To put it another way, if maturity is a good thing, then the earlier a person comes by it, the better it will be for them.
I have recently decided that I wholeheartedly disagree. While that is true on the simple, immediate level, (More maturity equals less pain.) I think that, in the long run, this idea is absolutely false. Not only is it impossible to put an old man's head on a young man's shoulders, such a feat is highly undesirable and potentially dangerous. If forced to choose between an easy maturity and a difficult journey with no end before death, I hope I might choose what I see from the outside to be the best option: a hopeless journey.
Why? This is a tricky question to answer. Before we attempt to, I should mention that I am not interested in "early maturity" in children. A seven-year old who acts like an adult (a sight more frequently seen in the movies than in real life) does not really, I think, mean very much at all. I remember one time when I was about thirteen or so, sitting in a Randall's café, talking to my mom about someone we knew who was thinking about dropping everything to move to California to marry a girl he had only ever met online - clearly, a bad idea. I remember Mom saying something to the effect that at thirteen, I knew it was a bad idea, and at thirty-something, she knew it was a bad idea, but that sometimes, when you're in the thick of something, you can't see how bad an idea that thing really is, or else you hope in spite of reality, betting against the odds. The impression I got from Mom was to be very careful about putting yourself into that kind of situation, and that a wise person knows not to get so far in that you can't still tell what the wise thing to do is. I also felt, at thirteen, like a cloud of stupidity must descend on you at about fifteen and not evaporate until about twenty-five.
This, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), is true. It is not, however, a cloud of stupidity as much as a narrow canyon that suddenly opens up onto a vast plain of new possibilities and freedoms to fail or succeed at, and the only way to understand this plain upon arrival is to take a series of breathtakingly-stupid risks.
I can think of two kinds of people who begin their journey across the ever-changing plain of life without somehow "destroying their lives" at some point or another: those who keep their eyes to the ground, refusing to acknowledge the vastness of possibility, and taking each step slowly and carefully for fear of tripping, and those who are extremely lucky and whose every risky decision works out in their favor. The first situation can only create timid naivety and the second can only create cocky naivety. Neither creates real wisdom. No matter how "together" such a person seems, I do not think that their wisdom lasts. Whether you are careful or lucky, eventually, life trips you up and breaks you down, and those who never learned to fall are the worst for it.
I first fell - really fell - for writing. Specifically, I fell for my idea of what it means to be a writer. I have to admit, by the way, that this is still an idiotic idea that I haven't quite let go of, but I have come to realize that I am not the only one with this idea. I wept to hear Garrison Keillor tell the story of one place this pursuit took him, but then I've become a big sap recently. Basically, I am not of the personality to naturally take risks, but since I was young, I have longed to find a really cool story to tell or an amazing experience or emotion to capture. It seemed to me when I was younger that no real writer could ever come out of a happy, middle-class, suburban, idyllic upbringing, so I spent a long time making myself miserable to I could talk about it down the line somewhere. Yeah, I know. The moment I walked into my first job and saw the strange, addictive community of servers, I thought these people were so much more interesting than anyone else I knew, and immediately wanted to become a part of that group and figure out their story. It wasn't until I started at UT and left home that I found myself in that community, but that search for another experience to write about led me to stupid risks and I finally found my long-lacked immaturity.
After three semesters at UT, I found myself out on my butt, suffering the consequences of my foolishness. I didn't need to do that, and would not recommend it to future college students, but it is a very important part of who I am today. As a side note, I have found that I can tell a lot about a person by the look on their face when I talk about flunking out of school. The people I have the most difficulty relating to are those who look at me confused and a little disgusted and say, "But why?" and the coolest "grown-ups" are the ones who say "No, I didn't go through that, but man, it sure coulda happened."
In the end, I think I prefer the company of fools over the company of our artificially wise friend, Jack. I prefer those who are broken and fallen and hurting over the cocky fool. I am deep awe of those who are healed enough to be truly wise, who tread carefully because they know what it is to fall and be hurt, but also know what can be gained by leaping, so sometimes they still look like fools and sometimes are broken down. These people truly amaze me.
It's not a new idea to praise the value of suffering - the depth and complexity of character created - but I don't think many seem to be lauding the self-inflicted suffering of fools and idiots, the immature and the risk-takers, and this makes no sense to me, because I'd rather learn to fall by leaping than by being pushed. In fact, I hope that I never have it all together until the day I die, that I'm always taking risks everyone tells me are stupid, hoping against hope that the unlikely will happen.
The funny thing is that all the stupid things I know are stupid are things I want to - and have to - fix! To choose not to grow up and mature when you know how to is irresponsible and dangerous. I have a cigarette-burn, cross-shaped scar on my forearm, self-inflicted, from a time when I wanted a visual symbol of a pain and had not yet discovered poetry. (Incidentally, I wrote my first poem around that same time.) My sister and my parents and basically everyone told me that it was a stupid idea. Looking back, I know that it was a colossally-stupid idea. One of those moments mentioned before when you put your head in your hands and think, "What was I thinking? Why on earth would I want to be so dramatic?" And I can tell you. I was being romantic, playing a role, filling someone else's shoes. More significantly, it had recently (finally) gotten through my skull, actually gotten into my head, that I had been very depressed for a very long time, and I wanted to do something - anything - to break through my ice cocoon and remind me that it is okay to hurt. Once I got the image of ice in my head, fire seemed the perfect solution. And wonderfully romantic. Now, a couple of years later, I can tell you that I did not have to do that; I can tell you it was idiotic. But do you know what? It worked. Do I regret it? Well, given the choice, I couldn't do it again, so it's probably good I have no choice, because, really, I wouldn't want it any other way. Now I might have decided to keep burning myself with cigarettes so I don't have to admit it had been a silly mistake. A fool, a real fool, beyond the kind of fool I've been praising, would recognize the idiocy of his actions but keep doing them for whatever reason.
So we do stupid things, immature things, things we know won't turn out like we want them to (but we have to try anyway). We do them until we see them fail, then we stop, and try something new. We fail, pay the consequences, grow from the experience, deciding not to step on that mousetrap again, then we move on to the next trap hoping (in spite of all the odds) fora day when we've figured it all out.
Now isn't that idiotic?
"Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid."
~John Keates
"[The young poet] should stay the hell out of writing classes and find out what's happening around the corner. And bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything very well."
~ Charles Bukowski
Of course, Jane is entirely imaginary: I have never met such a flawless soul and don't anticipate it ever happening; usually those who seem at first to fit Jane's description turn out - as you get to know them - to be as flawed as everyone else. For another obvious statement, Jane is, I think, very definitely an admirable person, a hero.
Now, imagine another person, Jack, who seems to have always had it all together. Jack has never been so deep in debt that he can't see a way out, and doesn't know what it is like to look at a bank balance with a clenching guilty feeling in the pit of his stomach and wonder, Where did it all go, and have no answer except a long series of movies and dinners out, or one, big, stupid, and impulsive purchase. Jack has never failed miserably, publicly, embarrassingly, or put his head in his hands and said to no one: "What was I thinking?" He doesn't understand so thinks suspiciously of those whose faith slips through their fingers sometimes, who doubt and question. Jack has never had to fight for a place in life or claw his way back to okay.
Jack, needless to say, is even more imaginary than Jane; if few are really mature then none could have been born with this maturity. As my grandfather would put it: "You can't put an old man's head on a young man's shoulders." However, it feels to me like - whether we say it or not - many people hold Jack up as an ideal to be sought after personally and in those we love. To put it another way, if maturity is a good thing, then the earlier a person comes by it, the better it will be for them.
I have recently decided that I wholeheartedly disagree. While that is true on the simple, immediate level, (More maturity equals less pain.) I think that, in the long run, this idea is absolutely false. Not only is it impossible to put an old man's head on a young man's shoulders, such a feat is highly undesirable and potentially dangerous. If forced to choose between an easy maturity and a difficult journey with no end before death, I hope I might choose what I see from the outside to be the best option: a hopeless journey.
Why? This is a tricky question to answer. Before we attempt to, I should mention that I am not interested in "early maturity" in children. A seven-year old who acts like an adult (a sight more frequently seen in the movies than in real life) does not really, I think, mean very much at all. I remember one time when I was about thirteen or so, sitting in a Randall's café, talking to my mom about someone we knew who was thinking about dropping everything to move to California to marry a girl he had only ever met online - clearly, a bad idea. I remember Mom saying something to the effect that at thirteen, I knew it was a bad idea, and at thirty-something, she knew it was a bad idea, but that sometimes, when you're in the thick of something, you can't see how bad an idea that thing really is, or else you hope in spite of reality, betting against the odds. The impression I got from Mom was to be very careful about putting yourself into that kind of situation, and that a wise person knows not to get so far in that you can't still tell what the wise thing to do is. I also felt, at thirteen, like a cloud of stupidity must descend on you at about fifteen and not evaporate until about twenty-five.
This, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), is true. It is not, however, a cloud of stupidity as much as a narrow canyon that suddenly opens up onto a vast plain of new possibilities and freedoms to fail or succeed at, and the only way to understand this plain upon arrival is to take a series of breathtakingly-stupid risks.
I can think of two kinds of people who begin their journey across the ever-changing plain of life without somehow "destroying their lives" at some point or another: those who keep their eyes to the ground, refusing to acknowledge the vastness of possibility, and taking each step slowly and carefully for fear of tripping, and those who are extremely lucky and whose every risky decision works out in their favor. The first situation can only create timid naivety and the second can only create cocky naivety. Neither creates real wisdom. No matter how "together" such a person seems, I do not think that their wisdom lasts. Whether you are careful or lucky, eventually, life trips you up and breaks you down, and those who never learned to fall are the worst for it.
I first fell - really fell - for writing. Specifically, I fell for my idea of what it means to be a writer. I have to admit, by the way, that this is still an idiotic idea that I haven't quite let go of, but I have come to realize that I am not the only one with this idea. I wept to hear Garrison Keillor tell the story of one place this pursuit took him, but then I've become a big sap recently. Basically, I am not of the personality to naturally take risks, but since I was young, I have longed to find a really cool story to tell or an amazing experience or emotion to capture. It seemed to me when I was younger that no real writer could ever come out of a happy, middle-class, suburban, idyllic upbringing, so I spent a long time making myself miserable to I could talk about it down the line somewhere. Yeah, I know. The moment I walked into my first job and saw the strange, addictive community of servers, I thought these people were so much more interesting than anyone else I knew, and immediately wanted to become a part of that group and figure out their story. It wasn't until I started at UT and left home that I found myself in that community, but that search for another experience to write about led me to stupid risks and I finally found my long-lacked immaturity.
After three semesters at UT, I found myself out on my butt, suffering the consequences of my foolishness. I didn't need to do that, and would not recommend it to future college students, but it is a very important part of who I am today. As a side note, I have found that I can tell a lot about a person by the look on their face when I talk about flunking out of school. The people I have the most difficulty relating to are those who look at me confused and a little disgusted and say, "But why?" and the coolest "grown-ups" are the ones who say "No, I didn't go through that, but man, it sure coulda happened."
In the end, I think I prefer the company of fools over the company of our artificially wise friend, Jack. I prefer those who are broken and fallen and hurting over the cocky fool. I am deep awe of those who are healed enough to be truly wise, who tread carefully because they know what it is to fall and be hurt, but also know what can be gained by leaping, so sometimes they still look like fools and sometimes are broken down. These people truly amaze me.
It's not a new idea to praise the value of suffering - the depth and complexity of character created - but I don't think many seem to be lauding the self-inflicted suffering of fools and idiots, the immature and the risk-takers, and this makes no sense to me, because I'd rather learn to fall by leaping than by being pushed. In fact, I hope that I never have it all together until the day I die, that I'm always taking risks everyone tells me are stupid, hoping against hope that the unlikely will happen.
The funny thing is that all the stupid things I know are stupid are things I want to - and have to - fix! To choose not to grow up and mature when you know how to is irresponsible and dangerous. I have a cigarette-burn, cross-shaped scar on my forearm, self-inflicted, from a time when I wanted a visual symbol of a pain and had not yet discovered poetry. (Incidentally, I wrote my first poem around that same time.) My sister and my parents and basically everyone told me that it was a stupid idea. Looking back, I know that it was a colossally-stupid idea. One of those moments mentioned before when you put your head in your hands and think, "What was I thinking? Why on earth would I want to be so dramatic?" And I can tell you. I was being romantic, playing a role, filling someone else's shoes. More significantly, it had recently (finally) gotten through my skull, actually gotten into my head, that I had been very depressed for a very long time, and I wanted to do something - anything - to break through my ice cocoon and remind me that it is okay to hurt. Once I got the image of ice in my head, fire seemed the perfect solution. And wonderfully romantic. Now, a couple of years later, I can tell you that I did not have to do that; I can tell you it was idiotic. But do you know what? It worked. Do I regret it? Well, given the choice, I couldn't do it again, so it's probably good I have no choice, because, really, I wouldn't want it any other way. Now I might have decided to keep burning myself with cigarettes so I don't have to admit it had been a silly mistake. A fool, a real fool, beyond the kind of fool I've been praising, would recognize the idiocy of his actions but keep doing them for whatever reason.
So we do stupid things, immature things, things we know won't turn out like we want them to (but we have to try anyway). We do them until we see them fail, then we stop, and try something new. We fail, pay the consequences, grow from the experience, deciding not to step on that mousetrap again, then we move on to the next trap hoping (in spite of all the odds) fora day when we've figured it all out.
Now isn't that idiotic?
"Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid."
~John Keates
"[The young poet] should stay the hell out of writing classes and find out what's happening around the corner. And bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything very well."
~ Charles Bukowski
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