Scared of the wrong things
I am scared of the wrong things. This has likely always been true of me, but like most of the elements of our personalities we come to acknowledge them through events and experiences, mishaps and miscues… living.
I know that there is a popular credo – No Fear! And that there is a widely held attitude that somehow fear is a sign of weakness. But the reality is, we all have things that we are afraid of. Of these things, some are acknowledged, either because they are socially acceptable or because they are too intense to ignore. Others we hide, pretend they don’t exist, or maybe we don’t even notice them.
It is okay to say that you are afraid of snakes. People accept that snakes are scary. It is not okay to say you are afraid of going outside. People think you are psychological if you say this and you are, by the way, agoraphobic. But why is this any more irrational (or rational) than ophidiophobia?
Fear is one of the most basic survival instincts that any being possesses. It is a feeling that is brought about by a perceived threat. “Worth noting is that fear almost always relates to future events, such as worsening of a situation, or continuation of a situation that is unacceptable. Fear could also be an instant reaction to something presently happening.”
So fear is good. Right? Or wait…
A compromising position.
I was talking to T on the phone this morning as she drove to work. A major benefit of having summers off is increased phonability. Like, for instance, yesterday as I was finishing up the last-minute of “really fun” stairclimbing at the Gym (more on this soon, you can be fucking sure) my phone buzzed with a +44 number. I will never not pick up a +44 because it is going to be either Fun Bobby, RG, J, or the goddamned Queen of England. Obviously I answered. It was not the Queen. But, thanks to modern technology and my inability to be shamed into cell phone silence after five years in Hong Kong, J came along as I finished my workout, got changed, went to Safeway and entertained the checkout lady, walked to the nail place and helped me pick a color. So, this morning as I was finishing up my coffee and contemplating the mysteries of catttitude, I was pleased to see T calling in. I figured she could hang with me while cleaned the cat box, did the dishes, watered the plants and headed to yoga.
I was not disappointed. Among other subjects, in what is always worthy conversation, we began to consider the things that are fundamentally necessary for us in a relationship. More to the point we were looking at deal breakers. Or, maybe those are the same things. It’s hard to tell.
One thing we agreed on was that as we get older, (and I don’t actually mean this as a disparaging comment about aging, but rather a statement about how people change over time and perhaps, if they are lucky they get to know themselves a little better too) we seem to have developed more stringent, umm… let’s call them “standards.” It may be true that some people develop their “standards” with more expedience than T and I have, and I am not going to speak to advantages or disadvantages of efficiency in standards-establishment. However, throughout this conversation it seemed to me that the habit of compromising I had cultivated has done little to help me accurately evaluate any of my relationships.
It got us to the fundamental point of confusion. When does having a standard = being stuck-in-your-ways (rigid, frigid, cold, etc.)? Or, again from the more familiar opposite point of view, when does compromising in a relationship = compromising… yourself? I immediately took to the comfort of list making. What have I determined that I simply will not compromise?
True Stories, Vol. Ex #4
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. ~ Oscar Wilde
You know when someone says, “You want to know the truth?” that there is likely either something really offensive or outrageous coming down the pike. It is such a silly concept, that one would “want the lie.” Of course, I could get all Jack Nicholson on you and remind you that perhaps, “You can’t handle the truth!” Like a thousand little pin pricks… you can feel the truth, or its varied alter egos.
Or maybe the more salient fact is that the line between truth and less than true is not only hard to discern, but malleable, inconsistent and often prepared to order. Less often it is prêt-à-porter.
I say all of this in a Holden Caulfield kind of way. Holden tells us a whole bunch of stuff in the first two chapters of Catcher… but the leads off the third chapter by announcing: “I am the most terrific liar you ever saw. It’s awful.” We have been discussing narrative bias in my freshman English class and debating whether or not bias negates reliability or if, in fact, a story can be untrue if the raconteur is using it simply for narrative value. This comes on the heels of a rather confounding conversation I had with a writer of some stature who disagreed with an assertion I made that non-fiction is easier to write than fiction. I said that I believe non-fiction to be easier to write because it allows us to borrow from experience in a way that somehow avoids cliché, whereas in fiction our efforts to avoid cliché lead right to it. The striking blow to my position is the simple fact that there is no singular truth. By that alone, the determination of what is fiction and non-fiction becomes subjective enough that, in terms of genre, the distinction is no longer so clear.
So here is a true story for you.
A couple of weeks ago I discovered that Ex #4 has remarried (for the record, we were never married). I examined how I felt about this from a variety of perspectives. I picked at old sore spots to see if I had any sort of reaction. Nothing much came up. Which is not to say I did not have some thoughts on the matter. That he married a tall blonde coach who he had hired at his school (and who was in a relationship at the time they met) was not lost on me, for example. But I have no idea if the parallels are as similar as they seem. Who knows if they became a couple in the same sordid way that he and I did, or if there was some other force at work. It is what it is. And it has nothing to do with me anymore.
That is the truth.
A week later I found myself at SFMoMA with Frenchie and I saw this painting:
I know that some people say that art speaks to them. Sometimes art speaks to me. This painting screamed at me:
“THIS COULD HAVE BEEN YOU!”
“THIS WAS YOU!”
I am not sure I have ever experienced such immediate and simultaneous recognition and relief. I looked at the painting for a while. The part of the painting that I could not stop looking at is the little bit of the eaves of the houses on the other side of the fence. That has to mean something. She was so apparent, and apparently unaware of what lie beyond the fence. Though I am most certainly projecting. I was not even sure of the artist or the title*. It didn’t really matter. What matters is that I am no longer in that painting. And that she is so glad she is in the painting makes me happy. For everyone. For the universe.
This is the painting** I belong in:
That is also, the truth.
* Robert Bechtle, American, b. 1932. Watsonville Olympia, 1977. (center image)
** Elliott Hundley, America, b. 1975. Agave, 2010. (first and last images)
#5 is alive and, well… yeah, alive.
I received an email from #5 yesterday. It was rather out of the blue. I had emailed him in October on the passing of my milestone birthday as we share a sun sign, among many other things (not sicknesses or a fondness for China White, however) so it was a reply to my email – technically – though you would not know as it referenced not one thing in the email I sent. It was like a preprogrammed response. It brought on a sense of dejavu that was erie. Where had I seen this before… oh… yeah….
I was glad to get it because it is nice to know that he is still among the living. When I told C$ about this she raised her eyebrow and I had to reflect on what it says about my relationship choices that the fact that an ex remains alive is considered significant. Yes, well, we all know, my choices are notoriously contentious. At best.
Still, the email caught me off-guard and the subsequent emotional responses I had were very strange. It was certainly distracting, but it was also kind of amazing to see the words he chose in a temporally and spatially detached context. I read it several times. In so doing, I recalled the emails he used to send to his ex-girlfriend when we were together and the interpretations of his then-reality that he would describe to her. I always thought that he was trying to ease her mind of any potential worry she might have for him. How often did I feel like telling him, that after the way they ended their relationship he could rest assured that she was not worried – she was relieved to be free. And to what end did he think the bullshit he proffered up would come? Why tell her he was drug free (as if) or that he had finally gotten his shit together (ibid) and was a changed man (ibid). I remembered feeling mildly superior to her in that I knew the reality and she was getting shit. [In hindsight, I think it is clear who was really getting the shit. Or at least the current load of it.] I recalled how she had a sense of propriety over him, like that he would always love her, as the saying goes, as he told her about me. Why would he do this? In this confessional tone? I remembered watching it all.
And I remembered ignoring all the signs that this kind of behavior was not only cyclical, but cyclical(ly – for Jeanne) bullshit.
You get a number when I’m through with you.
There is much talk in many circles of abandoning the ego. How the ego is the root of all our suffering and the ego causes us to make so many of the bad choices that we make and the ego is the impetus behind our anger/judgment/fear/loathing. This is probably true. I mean if Buddha, Patanjali, Jesus, the Dalai Lama, Shiva, and anyone else whose ever been nominated for the Second Coming of Something all agree on this point, it is worth contemplating at the very least.
The Ego.
My ego has certainly been behind some of my greatest suffering, compounded only by the fact that you also kick you own ass after the fact, because whatever went wrong was inevitably avoidable and you are pissed that you allowed it to happen. It is a dirty, vicious cycle.
Think of the things your ego has encouraged you to do:
- White lies?
- Levy unfair (or fair – ) insults?
- Brag?
- End up in some unintended, barely manageable circumstance?
Perhaps some combination of all of the above.
I’ve been thinking about the ego in a more specific way recently. There is much ego involved in teaching. In fact, I would say most teachers I know are overly ego rich in the first place. I mean, paid know-it-alls, right? Of course, anyone reading this who is a Thinker knows that their best teachers were those who were fully aware of the limits of their knowledge and the reality that much of the world will always lay beyond our ken (major ego defeater.) And in teaching my issue was less to do with knowing it all, than it was being completely consumed by appearing in such a light and being, well, perfect.
Yeah, I know it is bullshit, but the thing is, one can actually convince themselves that perfection is possible and consequently spend huge percentages of their time striving for this impossibility.
That has been the modus operandi of my ego – believing that it could be Perfect. What horseshit. Even more ridiculous is the categorical belief that other people really give a shit about said perfection, like that people are really paying that much attention to you. It is ludicrous. I mean, you are not paying attention to them, right? And why not? Because you are so caught up in your own pursuit of your perception of their perfection, you cannot be bothered to look around at what they are doing and the same goes for them.
It just is not all about you
Shocker.
Really? You took one of each dish?
Today I moved a whole bunch of boxes into my new apartment. This was a very satisfying activity (though of course it underscores a whole bunch more work that I need to do…) and I was reminded of all my favorite parts of a move. Things like knowing exactly what is in your house and where for that one shining moment; or being clean down to the baseboards. And that supremely satisfying feeling of plopping down on the couch, or in my studio-dwelling reality the bed and surveying all that is yours to behold.
That all sounds great.
Reminders.
Once upon a time there was a girl who thought that things should be a certain way. And she believed that because she thought they should be, that they would be. [We forgive this girl certain sillinesses because she was in her twenties...] This girl was sort of a late bloomer into the girlie ways of things but it was okay, by the time she hit her twenties she had a boyfriend, which seemed to be the point of all things at that juncture for some reason.
So, she was successful. Things were as they should be.
But then she got a little bit bored. A big transition was approaching: she was graduating from college and would be heading to Europe for a while, and then off to unknown, but certainly thrilling and impressive and amazing things, that should be. She decided to remedy this feeling of moderate angst by taking a road trip and seeing a Show, as she did. She would meet her friends and hang out and smile and dance and laugh, as you should. And there would also be this other rather interesting individual there who she had met at another Show long before… sleeping on the floor in a crowded hotel room in Northern California… was it the Ramada? Who knows, but she certainly remembered the boy on the floor.
After being deposited at a very specific entrance to the Show she met her friends and the boy was there. And it was nice. She believed this was now how it should be.
And so it was.
She graduated a month later, spent the summer playing in the Southern California surf and then headed home for a week before heading off off to the Mediterranean where obvious adventures awaited. While biding time in Northern California she turned 23 and went to see Peter Gabriel with the boy from the floor who made her smile and tickled her brain.
Then she went to Europe, because travel is what she wanted to do. More than anything: to travel and to take pictures. Many years later she would forget that this had always been what she wanted to do, but right then she knew, as you should.
While she was in Europe she listened to very specific music: and though now it seems too obvious a ploy to name the music as the boy, who is now a man, might read this story but let us anyways. The Grateful Dead; The Stereo MCs; Peter Gabriel. Over and over and over again.
When she came back from Europe she was very disoriented and amiss. She took this out on the boy who stood by her all the while. As he should have. She talked about all the things she would do one day. All places she would go. When she met his family, he told her later that they liked her a lot, but that they worried.
Why?
Because they think you want something you can’t have. Here.
What? No…
She couldn’t imagine that he wouldn’t be able to give her everything that she wanted. That was how she thought it should be. So that is how it would be. But she never really asked him. And then it happened: she decided that she had to do something else and she didn’t ask him and it made him angry and confused. As it would have, and of course, as it should have.
Twelve years later, she found him on an insidious internet social network and she dared to say: Is it you? She had looked for him before but it was now that she found him because it was now that she could, so she would. Yes. It. Is.
Now can we be friends?
He has made a beautiful life for himself… a beautiful family and a beautiful wife. He is happy and peaceful. And they talked and said what they should have said a long time ago. I am sorry. And she looked at his life with a bit of benevolent envy and so he gave her the gift of a lifetime:
He said: You are doing what you always said you wanted to do, remember?
And then she did.
And she smiled right where she was.
Amanda
