Oh My Goodness

I just experienced my first heart palpitation.

Lyra, my three-year-old daughter, has had a low-grade fever for the past three days. Last night was the worst of it: her forehead was burning, we couldn't get her to eat anything but a single blue popsicle, it took us an hour to convince her to take tylenol and the only reason she did was because we threatened her with a cold bath. For hours she lay feverish in my arms before Chris was finally able to transfer her to her bed.

Something happens when you're a parent, a strengthened fear-response that allows you to jump to many conclusions in the off-chance that you need to act on any of them. When your child is sick - very sick - your mind races. Is she going to die? Should I race this child that finally fell asleep to the ER? How do I know if it's serious? And in the end you check on them every half hour just like you did when they were brand-new and you were acutely aware that every year thousands of brand-new babies die for no good reason.

That's the entire investment of parenthood. Your children have to live. Of course you want them to be happy and fulfilled, and you want to help them grow up into wonderful and caring human beings, but above all else, you want them to just... live.

At three o'clock in the morning I heard a knock on my bedroom door. Lyra stood there, sleepy-eyed and feverish, asking if she could sleep in my bed. (The last time this happened she woke me up by throwing up all over me, but parents are somehow incapable of holding this against their children.) She padded over to my bed and promptly stole my favorite pillow.

This morning I opened my eyes and stared directly into a pair of very blue lips.

For an eternity of a moment, time stopped. Instinctively I grabbed her face, her skin shockingly cold to the touch after days of hot fever, and I shook her by the shoulder, calling her name, trying to re-start time.

I don't know how I didn't wake her. I'll spoil the ending and tell you that she was very much alive, that the only response I got out of her was a scrunched-up face and a nose-rub. And I was wide awake, staring at her blue-popsicle-grubby, no-longer-feverish face, not able to comprehend a reality that went the other way but hoping that I never, ever, have to feel that feeling again.

Now Lyra's watching Bob the Builder, her lips now bright red from a new cherry popsicle. She happy. Occasionally she comments on the absurd happenings on television, but mostly she bounces around, back to her normal self. She's earned a final day home from school, I think. I'm glad to have her here.

Love CAN Be Quantified

My friend Tim and I went to Tugboat the other night, leading me to believe that locational and atmospheric properties do indeed contribute to the topics of conversation. That night the subject was love and relationships (what a sweet, sweet topic indeed). I won't share the particulars of our conversation, except that it was revealed during the course of the evening that I am a contrary and heartless individual who wouldn't know love if it beat me over the head with a stick.

I believe this particular piece of the conversation went something like this:

Me: "You know that feeling you get when you like someone, really, really like someone, and you can't stop thinking about them and you just want to spend all of your time with them and it's distracting and makes you feel all vulnerable and crazy? I hate that feeling."

Tim: "I think they call that falling in love."

Me: "Yeah. I hate that."

And it's so, so true; I do hate that feeling. I hate it so much I will go to any length to avoid it, but it sneaks up on you when you least expect it, usually when you're feeling cocky and self-assured and certain that you will never, ever fall in love with a particular someone. Like them, sure, but "like" is safe and devoid of any distasteful I-can't-wait-to-see-them-again emotions that creep into your mind and make you feel not only like a stereotypical mushy human being but also possibly a bit insane. Love makes me feel insane. Hell, I don't even want to call it "love" because that word evokes such a beautiful idea of sunshine and rose petals and the feeling that I'm really describing is more like "My heart is being choked by vicious ninjas trained in the art of Kinbaku."

Tim seems to think that people generally enjoy this feeling.

Me, not so much. And I didn't think much of it until my friend Timothy (not the same as the above-mentioned Tim) and I started talking about personality types and inspired me to peruse my own personality-type description. This is what caught my attention:

In forming relationships, INTJs tend to seek out others with similar character traits and ideologies. Agreement on theoretical concept is an important aspect of a relationship. By nature INTJs tend to be demanding in their expectations and approach relationships in a very rational manner. As a result, an INTJ may not always respond to a naturally occurring infatuation but will wait for a mate who better fits his or her set criteria. Persons with this personality type are very stable, reliable and dedicated. Harmony in relationships and home life tends to be extremely important to the INTJ. He or she tends to withhold strong emotion and does not like to "waste" time with irrational social rituals. This, however, may cause non-INTJs to perceive him or her as distant and reserved.

Yes. Yes yes yes.

See, the problem with falling in love is that you can't control who you fall in love with unless you take a certain number of steps to avoid them ahead of time, and naturally you can't predict who is a "bad match," so to speak, until you get to know them.

I feel like I need to invent a checklist:

1) Do you believe in God? Yes/No

If you checked "No" : Proceed to question 2.
If you checked "Yes" :

1a) Is your major referential source of God-belief a religious text? Yes/No
1b) Does your God-belief entail a personal God? Yes/No
1c) Is "God" not simply a fancy term for "probable higher intelligence"? Yes/No
1d) Would you fear a reality in which there were no God? Yes/No

If you checked "No" to all of the above, please explain your God-belief on a separate piece of paper and proceed to question 2.

2) Do you believe that the mind is immaterial? Yes/No

If you checked "No" : please proceed to question 3.

3) Do you believe that all occurrences are products of physical/explainable processes? Yes/No

If you checked "Yes" : please proceed to question 4.

4) Do you believe that the mind-body problem is an illusory in nature? Yes/No

If you checked "Yes" : please explain in sufficient detail before proceeding to question 5.

5) Are you wondering why I'm asking these question? Yes/No, I understand completely!

If you checked "No, I understand completely!" please move on to these non-theoretical questions:

6) Are you adverse to any of the following: children, cats, horseback-riding, a multitude of male friends, moving to foreign countries (with or without cause), coffee, long naps, frequent sex, reading, museums of any kind, excessive travel, long discussions and comfortable silences? Yes/No

If you checked "No" : please proceed to question 7.

7 a) Are you adverse to your partner spending 2-4 hours a day alone with her thoughts? Yes/No
b) Will you harass/interrupt your partner during these hours for any reason, with the exception of unusually impressive sex or impending doom? Yes/No
c) Does silence disturb you? Yes/No

If you checked "No" to all of the above: please proceed to question 8.

8) Do you write or produce art or music of any kind, professionally or as a hobby? Yes/No

9) Do you believe that the circumstances of your life are largely within your control? Yes/No

10) Do you generally relish your existence and feel strongly that you are an interesting and valuable person? Yes/No

If you checked "Yes" on questions 7-10: Congratulations! Given further personality characteristics, professional compatibility, geographical proximity and a host of other factors out of our control, we could possibly be a good match! Well done.

Being excruciatingly picky may not get you laid, but it sure does make life easier.

List O' Week

Last night I had a long conversation with myself. I've gone through (ahem, caused) a massive amount of change in my life in the past few months. Change is good. One of the better things about change is that it forces you to reevaluate your life, your plans, your goals. What do you want? What do you need? What are you willing to work for?

The conversation I had with myself was something of a non-surprising eye-opener, as all good personal conversations should be. Everything that I learned about myself last night I already knew. What I hadn't done until last night was prioritize; I hadn't given myself permission to accept my real goals in favor of what I felt I wanted. And here's my list:

1) The key to productivity is understanding yourself: Balance is everything.

Twice in my academic career I've created for myself what amounts to an existential nightmare. Both times were during terms in which I've taken nothing but philosophy classes. This is not because I don't love philosophy, but because I need to get my hands dirty on a daily basis to be a happy, functioning human being. Philosophy classes alone entail ten weeks of nothing but reading, and reading is not work. Reading is leisure. Math and science, and the daily homework that accompanies them, are mandatory. Everyone has their own particular balance, and this is mine.

Not coincidentally, the single term that I took nothing but science and math I ended up reading more philosophical works than any other period of my life. They were a good mental workout in comparison to the work I was doing in school, but even better, I was able to focus only on the philosophers that I loved and whose work I was interested in reading.

2) The key to productivity is understanding yourself: Play is not Play if there's no Work.

I was able to do nothing for four days and 17 hours. Then I got a job.

I am not happy when I have nothing to do. I am happy when I have pressing things to do that I can put off for a short period of time: what I call the procrastination/productivity continuum. When I am able to procrastinate, I can accomplish all sorts of things that, minus the pressure, I would never, ever do. I write. I make time to play. I thought that I would spend this summer writing and reading and doing whatever pleases me, but no. This is not how I spent my four days and 17 hours. Without deadlines, I learned the meaning of the four-hour nap. Then I watched two seasons of Grey's Anatomy. Afterwards, I took another four-hour nap, and woke up with a cobwebby nap-hangover. Then I had a long, long conversation with myself.

Then I got a job.

3) Settling is for people who settle.

Last night I was genuinely concerned that I would be unable to find work. Someone I met recently suggested working in grocery; they were hiring, after all. This did not please me.

When unemployment looks you straight in the face, it's easy to settle. Surely settling is better than going hungry, eh? Well, maybe... maybe not. Last night, in the middle of my long conversation with myself, I decided that I would take no action that was irrelevant to my goals.

Grocery is not relevant (to me. I know a lot of lovely people in grocery).

Interestingly, I had been trucking up to school every day for the last two weeks, trying to hunt down the head of the Environmental Sciences department, who had offered me a job about six months ago. While I was still ambivalent about whether I really wanted a job or not, I had had no luck. This morning, after my long, long conversation with myself, I found her. Then I got a job.

4) Happiness is more than a decision.

There's a lot to the idea that you can decide to be happy, that you can make the leap from glass-is-half-empty to glass-is-half-full. I think the mistake lies in that people think they can be truly happy doing work they hate or don't believe in, just by making this decision.

If anything, making this decision should allow you the courage to face your situation head-on. Choosing happiness isn't forcing happiness; it's caring enough about yourself to be honest about what you want and accepting the fact that what you want is (unfortunately) attainable.

Which means that it's your fault if you don't get it.

5) Sacrifice doesn't bother you when it's for something you love.

My mother always told me that if it hadn't have been for her mom, she would have been an astronaut. For years I translated this in my head as, "If only I wouldn't have listened to my mother, I would have been an astronaut."

I just realized she meant this literally.

I love my mother. I really do. She and I are both equally strange, somewhat aggressive people. We behave in many similar ways. She likes to think of herself as a fighter, someone tough, who doesn't take no for an answer and will achieve whatever she damn well feels like achieving. You don't stand in my mother's way.

Unless, of course, you're her mother.

I suppose parenthood makes fools of us all. My mother, who laments frequently over her broken dreams, still finds herself telling me not to go to graduate school, to stay home and raise babies and support my husband, and that I shouldn't leave my marriage just because we're completely incompatible and unhappy.

I've ignored such pleas my entire life. In high school, when she found out I was dropping choir to take journalism instead, we had to have a long and painful discussion about commitment and sticking to things and how-am-I-ever-going-to-get-into-college. A year later, when I dropped journalism for photography, we pretty much had the exact same discussion. These were relatively minor decisions, sure, but you wouldn't have been able to tell from the depth and agony of these conversations.

In other words, I learned a long time ago that the path to personal fulfillment is not through listening to your mother.

I'm still sad that she did, though.

Like it or not, we're role models for our children. I could stay with my husband; I could even stay home and pursue a career of four-hour naps. But I can't: it simply isn't physically possible to live a life you're incapable of living. Secondly, even if I could, I wouldn't. I have a moral responsibility to pursue my own happiness, so Lyra can see that this is a good way to live.

Most importantly, though, I can't place the blame for my unhappiness on Lyra's shoulders. I can't point to her and say, "If only it weren't for you." My decisions are not her fault.

6) Everything comes around and back again. You just can't tell when you're making the right decision for the wrong reasons.

A few months ago, I agreed to enter into a different graduate program than the one I had been planning because someone (cough, cough) didn't want to move.

Then I said to hell with it, I'm going to move anyway.

The liberation that comes with such a decision is breath-taking. Wondrous, even. And so I was happy, happy that I would be doing something that I love.

Then I had a long, long conversation with myself. And I decided to take the other graduate program anyway, not because someone wants to stay in Portland, but because it's right for me: the right balance, the right fit, the right pursuits and the right pleasures. I just couldn't see it because I wasn't looking at it in the right way.

Life is funny like that.

The end.

Muddy Waters

Coffee. Early morning brownie. Table all of my own.

Mr. I'm-a-PhD-candidate (yes, that's your clever little pseudonym, hope you LIKE it) pointed a gun to my head and forced me to rewrite every word of my paper, which I did, submissively and gladly. Then I threw it at him.

Never make friends with your teachers. Then you can't embarrass yourself over four beers and a bottle of wine at Portland's nicest restaurant while you complain about how Professor so-and-so never gave you any worthwhile feedback on your paper and how 95% of undergraduates should probably just be taken out back and shot. And also, Carnap was a freaking GENIUS (who says that? Me, drunk, that's who).

But who else can talk about logical positivism over sushi? WHO ELSE?! Only philosophy professors, that's who. And now so can Mr. I'm-a-PhD-candidate.

Can't Make It

I'm tired. I feel selfish. I feel bad.

I'm tired about bitching about things I should be doing and don't want to do. Since Tucson I've been severely intellectually selfish, not wanting to explore concepts or ideas of any kind that don't seem in some way relevant to the particular ideas that I want to explore, and this is detrimental to me in many ways. Grade-wise, for instance. Limiting my avenues of intellectual exploration.

Frankly, how I really feel is that there's only so much brain-space to be allotted per day. I have things to read, things to think about, things to write. I don't wanna play nice with the other kids anymore.

This leaves me confused, mostly. Luckily I have an entire summer of forced vacation, so I won't be pursuing anything distracting unless I'd like to.

I'm jealous of certain people. Chris, for one. Others, too. I wish I could just make the "choice," so to speak, to pursue one thing over another and be done with it. Life-mission accomplished. No more wasting time thinking about THAT. I've felt that sense of completion just once, when I decided to go to medical school, knowing full well that before a year was up I would have changed my mind again and run off to what I considered a bigger and better pursuit. But I'm left feeling not only dissatisfied but with the sneaking suspicion that the chase is better than the catch; that I don't really want a purpose so much as the excitement of feeling that perhaps I've found my purpose. But if you ask Chris, for example, software engineering isn't his purpose at all; it just happens to be something he's suited for, talented at, and highly lucrative.

Yay Chris.

Me, I've always been a softie, unspoiled by the toil of hard labor. Never once have I had to work for a living or do anything other than pine for my intellectual calling - I've always had the luxury of dabbling in one thing and then another and never making up my mind. Part of me understands that I would do myself a favor to throw myself out in the street and learn to fend for myself, but another part of me revolts at the idea of spending my time, well, working. I don't want to work; I don't want work to feel like work. I want to pursue a passion and incidentally get paid for it.

This all sounds so simple-minded, and I realize that. Of course we'd all like to do precisely what we'd like to do - no compromise entailed - but at certain junctures we invariably have to work when we don't want to, finish a project we don't particularly care about, and turn down the opportunity to run in the other direction just so we can earn the right to continue on in THIS direction. That's the part I don't get.

Being an adult, I mean.

Reading over this just now, I notice that the flow and feel of my writing directly corresponds to my mental state. I'm feeling flat and frustrated and uninspired, and my writing reflects that. No surprise, of course, but I miss the buoyancy of a happy writer, or even the anguish of an unhappy one. I can't be an apathetic writer; it will NEVER pay the bills.

Best Cities in the World

The top 50 cities in the world, according to www.citymayors.com, and I've lived in two of them. Portland barely made it on the list, checking in at #48 (but out of, oh, HOW many cities? That's pretty good). Duesseldorf (still haven't figured out the umlaut, damn) made #5. Technically, I didn't live in Duesseldorf; I lived in this "tiny by European standards" town right OUTSIDE Duesseldorf, but I ate enough ice cream and drank enough beer and spent New Year's Eve 2000 there, so it totally counts.

Zurich topped the list at #1 (anybody got a clue about the umlaut?). Vienna, my all-time most favorite city and the place I plan on spending all of my future days, made #2 (yay!). Switzerland and Germany both had three cities apiece in the top ten, because they're awesome like that, and the US didn't even make it on the list until Honolulu at #28, but then we squeezed eight whole cities on before the end so I guess we did ok.

Damn. I can't remember where this post was going. Too bad.

I Only Wash My Dog with Aveda All-Natural

Every time Spring rolls around I think that someone chased Ginger down with a seam-ripper and tore into her ass.

In case you didn't know, Corgis have this super-dense undercoat; so dense, in fact, that Corgi fans everywhere dread the two times of the year they have to deal with what they lovingly refer to as "tufting": when the stuffing falls from your Corgi by the pound (directly onto your couch). Until this afternoon, Ginger had more or less resembled a much-loved but little-repaired teddy bear, her fur danglingly helplessly from her rear-end.

I generally find this amusing. The endless vacuuming, however, not so much. My mother, convinced that I will one day channel the domestic goddess inside, purchased for me the high-end Dyson Animal vacuum cleaner, the one designed to "never lose suction" and guaranteed to remove all pet hair from all surfaces for five years (unless you try to vacuum water... what?). I actually did the one thing I swore I would never ever do: I vacuumed and then covered by beautiful red couches with FLORAL SHEETS in an effort to keep Ginger's endless supply of hair at bay. It didn't work. It's gotten to the point where vacuuming at all is a worthless enterprise; the rug and the furniture don't stand a chance for more than five minutes, and no, I can't just put Ginger outside; she's not that kind of dog.

Anyway. Today I took the Ging out on the front porch and de-tufted her as much as I could possibly stand, decorated my yard with her hair in the hopes that some lazy bird didn't make a nest yet, threw Ginger in the tub and hosed her down. She did not like this, but she tolerated it, and I realized that this was the first bath I had given my dog in the three-plus years she's been sleeping on my very hairy couch (there may be a correlation). But believe it or not, this is not the point of my story.

No, the point of this story is that as I was recoiling from the shower Ginger bestowed on me after she hopped from the tub (even little short dogs can shake shake shake), I noticed some... hair. Under the sink. Now this shouldn't have been unusual; I was just describing to you how my entire house is covered in hair most all of the time, right? But no no, this hair was long. And blond. And... where was Lyra?

There's a point during every day of parenthood where you just stop, take a deep breath, and suck it up. Before finding your kid, of course. With the scissors you already know she has. Chopping her hair off. On your couch. The hair that you just had professionally cut, for the first time, and the couch that you just de-dog-haired (not for the first time).

Hair. Gone.

My daughter is now bald, in spots. And furthermore, she is FINE WITH THIS. Because she "likes it that way," she says. And I... I am okay, as well. I am okay.

Back to Atheism

I changed my official description to "agnostic" for about three weeks there because I was feeling noncommittal but now I believe I've rectified the gap between agnosticism and atheism well enough for my intents and purposes.

Atheists profess to a lack of god-belief while agnostics, traditionally, claim that we are unable to know, unable to intelligibly approach questions such as the existence of God.

I think we're talking about something else.

Heartbroken

Twice today, my little glass heart crushed to splintery shards.

First, this, found perusing the advice section:

Dear Carolyn:

I have no problem with sleeping with many women. None. The only guilt I feel is sin, and I go to confession and try to stop, but I just love the "chase" too much. I want to get married (I'm 40) when I find the right girl. I want a sweet, innocent girl who actually says no to me. I know you think I am a rat, but women have made it far too easy to sleep with them . . . at least in N.Y.C.

New York

Oh, sweet and gentle person... these innocent girls you chase are no less innocent for sleeping with you, though they won't be when you're done. Sex isn't a barometer of moral fortitude, something with which to test someone and discard the next day like a pair of sweaty socks... though it can be a vulnerability. Everyone learns someday that placing your trust with someone does not mean that they deserve it. You don't deserve it.

Heartbroken.

Then Jezebel, sweet Jezebel, how you rage against men for objectifying women, for minimizing women, for subjecting women to judgment and stereotypes. Then you print this, that I can't even copy here due to its sheer length, an email from a man pouring his heart and soul out to a woman who doesn't want it. Because she doesn't want it, it's humiliation, something to be mocked and scorned and picked apart. But what it is - someone's feelings, someone's vulnerability - that's not an email there, that's life. That's love.

Heartbroken.

The goal of love isn't to receive; it's to give, to offer it up and release it without expectations. We're all afraid of our love falling to the ground uncaught and so we mock those who give it freely and unashamedly, when it's we who should be ashamed. They, at least, are living, their hearts not yet fossilized by their fear.

Me So Sexy

Is there any possible chance that you guys have been able to avoid those dating service advertisements on myspace? You know, with the guy all grinning at what is, apparently, just his computer screen, the one covered with hot hot chicks dying to meet him, and he's like, yay, baby, oooh... and he runs his hands through his hair, smiles some more, makes some meaningful eye contact with the camera? That one. Because it's supposed to make you all "Wow, I'm going to sign up right now but only if I can have THAT guy!" But of course THAT guy, the one who spends all day grinning at his computer, isn't going to be on the site.

Natch.

But there are some good things to come out of this, because those ads have inspired me to practice my own sexy I'm-alone-with-my-computer face. There's lots of grinning and little pigeon-neck how-ya-doin's and occasionally I run my fingers through my hair all huh. And then I make sexy sexy eye contact with my imaginary camera. Yee-ahh! Hotness strikes.

Ok, that was supposed to be a joke, but now I'm totally going to DO that. And you know what? I bet I'm not the ONLY ONE.

HUNGRY

I just cannot get enough to EAT today. It's like my liver is saying LOOK, it's going to take approximately three weeks and 62,000 calories to undo last night's damage, let's get cracking.

I won't even tell you everything I've scarfed, but let's just say that I could use some more of that yellowtail. Mmm... deliciousness. And then Chris had to go off to a stupid barbeque that I can't even think about without salivating, and so I hate him - just for having the audacity to feast on roast pork and barbequed ribs dripping with their own delicious fats and juices. Hate hate hate.

(I bet you never knew how much of a barbarian I can be.)

When I was pregnant I would wake up in the morning, make myself a glass of juice, a glass of milk, and a cup of super-great decaf green tea (which they won't even let pregnant people drink anymore, by the way, because they prefer that pregnant people just don't even breathe because guess what - life kills - and if it will kill you then it will DEFINITELY kill that unborn fetus within), and I'd make a sandwich. For breakfast. And a bowl of cereal, as well as, usually, a bowl of oatmeal. And possibly some french toast. Then I would spoon-feed myself peanut butter and nearly barf because when you're pregnant, that's just really gross, but I was convinced I wasn't getting enough protein so I'd spoon it down anyway.

I gained FORTY pounds when I was pregnant. I think I weighed all of a buck ten when I got pregnant, which is what I weigh now, and by the end of it I was just a walking balloon of myself. Like some huge person came along and ATE ME. I could just never, ever get enough, my existence was this demented diet wonderland where I would sit down and add up all the calories I consumed from this non-stop eat-fest and when I clicked "calculate" it would only add up to twenty-four. I remember finally losing my shit and hauling out a buffalo burger, slapping a fried egg and ten pounds of cheese on top and stuffing it in my face, just so I could hit 3,500 calories.

Do you know how much FOOD is in 3,500 calories? My dear sweet Jesus. No one should have to eat all of that in one day.

I was convinced I was going to give birth to a twenty-pound whale of a kid, but actually, she was quite tiny. And the baby weight? I retained not one ounce of it, prompting mothers of all kinds to say things like, "What? You gave birth only THREE YEARS AGO?! Get out of here!" Which I totally do not understand. I mean, three years? Really?! Let it go, THAT is not baby weight.

Baby weight is having to carry a three-year-old twelve blocks because she says her legs are too short. Not that she's lying or anything, they really are quite short. Remarkably short.

We cut her hair two days ago and I nearly cried, because she looks like an old person. I mean, an old-ER person, one that isn't just too young to know anything. She asks her aunt things like, "Do you see the Blue Morpho butterfly?" and she's started saying "Whatever, Mommy. I just DO NOT care."

She takes after me. The weird, frenetic, straight up-and-down jumping, though, she gets that from her father. And the climbing. His mother told me once that they had a parakeet when Chris was really small, and the only thing it ever learned how to say was, "Chris get down! Chris get down!" And I laughed. I think I was more of a horizontal rather than vertical explorer, and either way you still get tons of bruises, but us horizontal types do tend to have fewer concussions.

God, I'm hungry. What is it about being hungry that turns me into a pansy-cake? I have this delectable lobster ravioli in the fridge, just begging to have some sauce slathered on top and devoured, but I'm like, oh no. That would be Effort. When really, I want... Delivery. Except I don't want to eat anything that anyone would deliver.

Food - or the lack thereof - can be so emotional, especially when you're incredibly hungry and your blood sugar is low and your nerves just feel so, so frayed. Once I cried in a restaurant (I was pregnant!) when I ordered the blueberry pancakes and they served them to me covered in this disgusting "compote" with whipped cream melting down the sides. I felt like my deepest desire had just been desecrated. I cried sad, sloppy tears. What did they expect me to do with this, eat it? What happened to butter and syrup? My dining companion actually had to take it back FOR ME because I wasn't just sad, I took it personally. I was deeply offended at what these people had done to my food, and just what sort of person did they think I was, anyway, that would want to eat something as sickeningly sweet and horrible as THAT?

Compote. Gross.

You know what's NOT gross? Raw, delicious yellowtail served on a dainty little bed of rice. Sweet. Sticky. Rice.

Oy. Because... oy.

What a gorgeous day!

In between the whining over my vodka-induced headache and the much drinking of jasmine tea, the sun emerged from its cloudy blankets long enough to make a lasting impression on my hungover mentality.

We even had to make a Ben and Jerry's run for hot fudge sundaes. And then another run for yellowtail and Philadelphia rolls. (Lyra's now using the chopsticks in some weird, intricate performance that she calls a "pony dance" and asking me about when she was a little baby and why, exactly, she does not have a "baby in her tummy." Don't worry, I am a master of answer-avoidance. I tell her only that she has to be much, MUCH taller.)

Last night was an evening of delightful drunkenness and only slightly embarrassed karaoke singing. I have never done this before (and I won't be doing it again, I don't think). But it was wonderfully fun, thanks to Yule's most excellent company and an unfortunate, endless supply of vodka and cranberry juice.

Drunken conversations are just so... entertaining. I distinctly remember the most bizarre snippets of information, such as one person's highly detailed account of their ethnic heritage and the napkin caricatures another person made of his friends. (By the end of the night, everyone is your best friend, no?) I wrote someone a secret message... in German. Another guy tried to convince me that my body is just a vessel for my immortal soul, to which I could only give a non-committal "hhmph." That's just not a conversation best served drunk.

Anyway, oy. I am STILL hungover, but luckily for me the day was gorgeous and I could be hungover in style. And also, thank goodness for sushi.

Back to Silliness

I'm getting a tattoo. Because I'm CRAZY like that. Here it is:




Except it'll be just the inner five stars with their symbols and the green outline. And when Lyra asks me what the hell is on my arm, I'll say, "You."

Hiatus Schmiatus

Hiatuses are for wimps.

I realized something yesterday. I realized that the whole purpose of the hiatus was to go within, figure it out, come back with something of some modicum of value. But that's not the way knowledge works... what if the questions that I ask have no real answers? What if the most important questions have only the answers that we give them?

I have a suspicion this is very much the case, but a curious arrangement arises out of such a perspective: you can't be wrong. Initially this is dis-settling. We like to be wrong; being wrong tells us that we can, if we try/think/look/listen long enough, be right. This is a familiar enough concept to metaphysical realists: the problem is that if you aren't aware of the true nature of reality, you're just... done. Taken along for a ride. Screwed. Deprived of truth.

This is why I hate epistemology.

At some point we have to accept that even the most basic perception is relative: we don't see individual atoms because this is unhelpful to us, being composed as we are, giant, lumbering organisms. But there's an important distinction here between the observability of atoms and one's musings over meaning and role within the universe, namely that one is, over the other, definitive. To some extent, at any rate.

Last night I fell asleep during a show about the Big Bang, dozing off to Einstein's displeasure with an idea of a universe with a beginning, his preference for a static, eternal universe with no end, no beginning. I can understand that sort of frustration; how your own theories upset your deepest convictions, how he must have felt (and how the church must have felt) when the evidence pointed to a universe that exploded into being in a singular moment of force, fire, and expansion. Neither is really the easy path, though, is it? Whether it's a static universe or one that expands and contracts and expands again, the question remains: where did this matter come from?

Did you see that question coming? What I mean is that it isn't just God that's an infinite regress; the Big Bang is just a fancier version. How did the universe begin? At the singularity. How did the singularity occur? Because of the contraction of the universe. Why did the universe contract? Because it stopped expanding. What caused the expansion? The singularity.

I think it would be funny if the universe began in utter paradox, if someone found a way to travel infinitely far into the past and as they did spacetime was invented to accommodate them and then BAM! they were shrunk to the size of an electron. And then BAM! again, explosion-city. Universe created. Thanks!

What was I talking about? Oh, right. The hiatus. See, the thing was that I thought that just by looking within, I could find some sort of definitive method of dealing with the world around me. But I just can't. I need to be outside, out in the world, fumbling around and making mistakes and loving and learning and trying to be the best I can be, every day... that's how I learn. The very best way, in fact.

As for the rest of it, I can't say. Can I find God? If I do, it will be a deeply personal experience, and even then I don't know if I could fully surrender. Nor can I fully subscribe to strong atheism - the belief in no-god, not just a lack of belief in God - because it relies on the same conviction, the same belief in rightness. Instead I will learn to be more comfortable in my discomfort, my not-knowing.

So that's it, then. If you want to follow along with me in my trial and error and success, please do. You won't always get a giggle, but then again, you might. You might curse at my stupidity, or, more frequently, just curse at my very bad writing. But I won't censor myself anymore - this is real. The only thing that's ever stood between you or me or anything else has been fear. Fear of the unknown.

And, well, fear be damned.

Hiatus

The purpose of my questions has always been to find an operational stance with which to approach the world, a method of translating thought and feeling into action. Traditionally, I've always had the impression that until I knew how to think about the world, I couldn't know how to feel about the world, much less how to act within the world.

It occurs to me that until I find a decisive approach I'll continue to sit here, thinking, without finding any sort of peace or taking any sort of action.

Finding a philosophy of action that is cohesive with not only the external "facts" but primarily with my internal realities is difficult, to say the least. For one, the internal reality is mutable, so any operational stance begins within and is projected onto the external world. The question, then, becomes one of "how can I think about this in an effective way?" I want to know how to approach myself and see who I am really am (or, more importantly, who I can become) so that I can answer the larger (or maybe the smaller) questions.

I can think a great many thoughts, all of them proceeding from what appears to be a truth or a reality, but when I'm confronted by two or more contradicting, seemingly logical conclusions, it's difficult to see where the fault lies: in the origin, the method, or the deductions. I have as yet no way of deciding or rectifying these ideas.

So, I've decided to start over. Tear the house down, as they say, and begin again. As such, I won't be posting for a while, but I'll be back soon, and hopefully I'll have learned something new and have something to say.

Adios.

When Reality Hits, it Hits Hard

Warning: Strong emotional content.

While I'm writing this, Lyra is working on devouring an entire box of shredded wheat, and we're watching cartoons. The sun's out, sort of, and the birds are singing and Chris is doing the crossword. This all seems so normal, so very placid and mundane, almost a cruel contrast to my turbulent inner world.

When you've spent five years of your life trying to be someone else, trying to be someone responsible and mundane and concerned with nice houses, nice furniture, a nice education; trying to raise children and not run away; just trying to be a normal American with a normal life... when you let that go, when you step outside of yourself for just one moment, the result can be earth-shattering.

Last night, I cried in a movie theater. The movie, Persepolis, shook me to my core, making real for me a reality that I could never emotionally comprehend through history books or the daily newspaper.

The last time I remember crying like that was in July 2006. The day before my birthday, Hezbollah launched rockets at small Israeli border towns... the day of my birthday, Israel retaliated by bombing, I think, a Lebanese hospital. I didn't know this until the next day, when the front page of The Oregonian showed a man turning away from the wreakage, his face iced over with the shock and the sadness. In his arms was a dead boy.

I just... cried. What else could I do? I was immobilized by this picture of the man and the boy; I didn't know what was going on, how these people could bear to even live, day after day. I couldn't understand how I could live my little tidy life, fretting over the grade I got on a paper or whether I shouldn't be feeding my one-year-old more organic foods. I didn't know how to break free of this blindness, because that's what it is, it's blindness but also ignorance and desensitization to the happenings in our world.

Of course, the next day I was fine.

And then, this. This that has again shaken my world except that this time I feel ashamed. I feel shame for getting on with my life, for saying things like hating the war but not ever doing anything, you know? Because we don't know what there is TO do; we don't know anything, really. Sometimes we read about the casualties in the paper and feel bad for their families, but really the overriding emotion tends to be one of mute disbelief, wondering if the kid thought that war would be glamorous, if he thought he was serving his country, if he believed in the righteousness of the war, if he really thought that he was somehow invincible. Didn't he know that war kills?

Do I really know that war kills? Isn't it an abstract concept, really, to those of us who have never even seen death? Have you ever seen someone shot or crushed beneath the rubble of a bombed building? Have you had to live with yourself after shooting someone else?

I don't know what to do, don't know how to rectify the darkness of this feeling with a new possible reality. I don't know how to help. I'm afraid that this feeling is going to be replaced by numbness; that I'll go on with my own hen-pecking concerns and forget all about this.

For now, I can only learn about the world around me: the world I know so shamefully little about.