I wrote many a word about what Cleavage is all about but I think two people captured it even better than I did.
Aidan Donnelly Rowley gushed a little about Lindsey’s piece on Meaning (well-warranted gushing. Beautiful, thinky piece) and contemplated our ”existential cleavage“.
Gawd, I love a smart, overeducated woman with ivy league insecurities.
And the lines Jenny cited this week from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love captured it, concisely, briefly, simply:
There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history.
How much do you love me? And who’s in charge?
That’s it, exactly.
Sex, money, meaning. The lines that shape us.
Sex: how much do you love me?
Money: Who’s in charge?
Meaning: What does love mean? What is power? Who’s got it? Why? Why not?
Elizabeth Gilbert made that point, all entertaining-like, in two lines. I wrote an entire essay and only barely sorta got in the neighbourhood near it.
This is why Elizabeth Gilbert is a bestseller and I am not. Well that, and I haven’t written a book. (Mmmm, sure, that’s EXACTLY the problem…)
Existential Cleavage, The Wannabe Narrative
Speaking of books, and authors, (nice segue, yes?) Gretchen Rubin told me (in an interview for forthcoming piece that is absolutely kicking my ass and refusing to be corralled into a tidy essay) that despite all the blog-to-book hoopla, publishers are a bit wary of bloggers and narrative. In the context of a book deal, and in publishing circles, she thinks that
there is some skepticism about bloggers. Books and blogs are very different mediums. Can a blogger write a book that hangs together as a narrative?
The narrative. The journey. The frame. It is something I’ve been turning over in my mind, without the frame of framing up a book. I’ve been thinking about writing, and blogging, and storytelling and narrative.
It is the occasion for this post (a check-in: where are we in the story?) and related to my teeth-gnashing about being called a blogger.
Gretchen and I talked about this, too. Or maybe I did. I told her that my inner-print snob had to go lie down on the sofa with a damp cloth pressed to my brow every time someone calls me a blogger. Which I am, of course, but…
I’m a writer, dammit. (The blog is just a medium!)
I think, possibly, that I’m having a social media-induced identity crisis.
I love blogging, I frickin’ adore my readers, blogging has been really, REALLY good to me – even life saving – but I might not believe that I’m a Writer (even though people pay me to write for them) until I have a book published.
In short: I probably wouldn’t mind if someone referred to me as a ‘novelist’ or a ‘memoirist’ or a ‘feminist’.
I digress.
In addition to her official, seriously useful advice to All Future Authors (I promise, I WILL finish this bastard piece soon), Gretchen also told me to avoid being snarky.
This was good advice, and tricky advice because I fancy myself a social critic. It forced me to think about people I might criticize even though I love them madly. These are people I really respect. They’re part of the grand social project and when I think through those social outlines it is inevitable that I’ll question them, and their actions.
And then that led to my shortlist of people who are just too easy to criticize. It was also the occasion for my second Tyler Perry piece. I’m sorry, Tyler.
Some of you thought I was waffling and liked my snarky razor sharp critique better. I’m sorry, dearest readers.
Do You Love My Cleavage? How Much?
And did you read Josh Hanagarne’s piece, I Don’t Need You, A Love Story?
This piece hooked me, or gutted me, if I’m going to use fishing metaphors (why am I using fishing metaphors???), because in the past I have, maybe, possibly, perhaps, very definitely railed against exactly this idea:
I’m amazed at how tentatively mid-life adults approach relationships; at how we compulsively risk-manage and look for red flags (and invent them); how we’re supposed to be finished products who’ve worked on themselves and are ready for a relationship (that would be the most boring person on earth, and I’m totally not sleeping with him)….[and]how we’re supposed to be so self-contained that we want a relationship but don’t need one…
(Did I just quote myself, at length? Note to Self of a few paragraphs ago: A person with enough ego to do that is clearly NOT having an identity crisis.)
But that – meeting as finished products and being the most boring man alive -wasn’t what Josh was talking about.
Josh wrote that when he got married he was a fixer-upper and he’s only gotten his shit together in the last year and now that he has started the renovations the house is a sexy, sexy place to be (I’m paraphrasing wildly). So there is a space where Josh and I are talking about the same thing, I think. That space might be called maturity. Maybe a Venn diagram would help.
I really do learn things from my guest post authors. Jenny, for example, also makes killer bell curves. You should check them out.
And oh yes, the Hundredaire shirt was a raging success. This week my imaginary t-shirt business with Jenny sold TWO tshirts, one to me (I really, really do not understand business) and one to our Twitter buddy, Charles, who said the shirt has magical powers and as soon as he put it on, he could feel the hundreds.
Dearest Readers, are you listening? This shirt will attract hundred dollar bills to you and they will stick to it like it is covered in invisible velcro! In fact it IS covered in invisible money velcro! Charles said so! It is basic Law of Attraction theory! The Law of Attraction is bullshit! FYI!
Charles, getting richer by the wear...
So that’s our gratuitous shot of cutie millionaire (or will be, now that he has the right attire) of the week, Charles.
Next week I’ll show you a photo of Mr. Stephen Kelly of London, UK, who bought a Porn t-shirt and will be sending me a photo to document the extent of my fashion influence on homosexual residents of Britain.
So, basically, to paraphrase Stephen’s words in the most offensive, fun way possible, I’m now Queen of the Gays, UK.
I’m so excited! I hope Cher won’t be mad.
More Cleavage(s)…
And so, in related developments, as I mull on sex, money and meaning and essential, universal (hahahahaha) life conundrums, here’s what’s coming next week:
- Faith, feminism and cleavage. Obviously.
- Toggling as a theory and practice in blogging and possibly life.
- Blogging and sex.
- My thoughts on some essential conundrums of North American, middle class family life (ie mine so therefore essential but probably not universal. Universal is like objective. Be wary.).
- My faux midlife crisis.
- And an interview with Bryce Widom on money, art, courage and all-around wonderfulness (that’s him. I can’t gush enough).
This last is really urgently interesting to me (and hopefully to you), because ’tis the pending season of my discontent.
That’s a fancy way of saying I’m contemplating new career ventures, prone to seasonal depression, and I’m Queen of the gays/non-sequiturs.
My place in the world (aka ‘my blog’) just feels different right now. Although my statistics thingy was broken/unplugged this month, which means I can’t tell for sure if my new brand
- and of COURSE I’ve already got ISSUES with my brand, and I’ll tell you more, later, in approximately 2000 quick words -
and brilliant site redesign (by Amanda Farough) are capturing more traffic, my intuitive sense is that my blog has – to borrow inimitably weird language from the loopy Havi Brooks whom I absolutely need as my business mentor – biggified.
(And this sense is augmented by very important empirical evidence. The Bloggess commented on my blog! Twice! And John Chow turned down/ignored my implied marriage proposal because he’s got moral issues with bigamy, apparently, which means I’m FAMOUS!)
All of this is FANTASTIC.
In the last several weeks, I’ve received more offers to do interesting work with more interesting people than I have the capacity to accept. It isn’t stopping me from saying yes yes yes RIGHT THERE YES, but it means I probably (definitely) have to redesign my life to make space for all this juicy opportunity.
That’s exciting. It is almost scary, but not really, because I have an unwavering faith that it will all be okay and that even if it is not okay it will still be okay.
Given this weird zone I’m walking through right now, walking with and talking to people who’ve meandered purposively down this path a little further than me is necessary, and revealing. And inspiring. I have questions. Hence, interviews. And more questions.
Cleavage, Cracks, The Cosmos, and Questions
On questions, big and little, mundane and cosmic: A twitter friend told me something that I think is true.
The answer to every question is yes.
Do you want coffee? Do you want fries with that? Are you ready to go? Have you seen my car keys? Did you bring your backpack? Did you make your bed? Is the project on schedule? Does this look okay? Shall we have a baby? Want to have sex? How ’bout a sensual massage? Was I speeding? Will you let me off, anyway? Can I have a raise? Do you love me?
Yes.
That’s the answer to pretty much any question and that’s why we ask questions. Affirmation. Social lubricant. We need it.
That’s why I’m talking to (and writing about) artists and creatives about making leaps into innerpreneurship. I want to know that it is possible. That I will be able to pay for my kids’ swimming lessons (and food, and shelter) if I scrap the salaried thing.
Yes?
guest post by Jenny
“I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, ‘There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And who’s in charge?’” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
I read Eat, Pray, Love as a newly single 22-year-old.
I was folding envelopes to pay for a grad degree I wasn’t sure I wanted and I had just returned from a trip with a surprise final scene that left me sitting in an airport lobby drinking beers alone. If Coldplay has a marketing team, it missed an opportunity in that Charlotte airport.
But with one line, Elizabeth Gilbert kneaded a simple message into my brain: you’re not the first and you’re not the last, baby. Sure, the melody varies, Mr. Darcy goes by a different name, but the struggle to find meaningful, lasting love has always had a seat at the head table in the lives of women.
And with Ms. Gilbert’s glimpse of perspective, the uncertainty made a little more sense. It seemed a little more human and a little less like a problem that needed to be solved. What time will the trains pass each other? Who fucking cares?
I mean, imagine a world where Bubba gets the promotion and Bobby Jean never breaks his heart. Can’t happen. Dancehalls across the U.S. would be filled with flesh-covered robots aimlessly kicking and turning in circles to steel guitar instrumentals.
So with humanity as a foothold, why do we still hop from pad to pad to avoid the marsh?
Why Is It So Difficult to…
- Realize that without the gray it’s much more difficult to appreciate the 70 degrees and sunny?
- Appreciate that our wavering about, our travels through the gray skies are some of the most defining days of our lives? That these days are what separate us from the chips and processors that threaten to take our jobs?
- Be thankful the Tin Man is just a phenomenal idea for a Halloween costume, not reality?
- Remember which way you spell gray if you’re talking about skies (seriously, I mean, shit!)
Yes, I prefer purely positive emotion.
I’m no masochist, but there’s something refreshingly humiliating and awesome about the memory of a 19-year-old version of me performing the world’s worst rendition of Dido’s “White Flag” for my dorm roommate after some stupid guy decided to lose my phone number because I awkwardly gave one word answers throughout our entire date at Steak ‘n’ Shake.
There’s something refreshingly freeing about the memory of hiccupping through “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” on the ride home from a night out at the bars with my go-to grad school wing girl.
And there’s something refreshing about adopting a Pat Green-esque philosophy* during gray skies:
“Sometimes I sleep with all the lights on,
It helps me to appreciate the night,
I hear people talk about life all the time
All they remember are times so sad,
Don’t you thing that life would be awfully boring,
If the good time were all that we had.” – Pat Green, Crazy
I didn’t have it all together then, but I’m glad I took in the scenery. I think it’ll help me appreciate clear skies in the future.
What do you think?
Are you in the gray? Just make it back to the solid ground? What did you learn along the way?
Or are you hiding on the lily pads?
*Kelly, I so just introduced Texas country to your blogging community.
_________________________________
Jenny believes The Bloggess to be her mother and is mildly/aggressively angry about the abandonment, neglect and shit-ton of imaginary child support owed or would be if she didn’t want to follow her mother/lover around like a puppy dog/dog in heat when she’s not stalking Hugh McLeod by Twitter. True story.
I mean, that is what Jenny’s (not The Bloggess Jenny, her abandoned daughter Jenny, do you see how they have the same name? Not a coincidence, methinks) blog is all about, right?
Workinonaramp is code for “I LOVE THE BLOGGESS SO MUCH even though she abandons children and puppy dogs and ignores my weird tweets but gives William Shatner shit for doing the same thing to her”.
Jenny (the daughter one who wrote this post, not The Bloggess) did not send me a bio. This is what happens when you do not include a bio with your guest post. PEOPLE TOTALLY MAKE ONE UP.
Jenny and I have an imaginary t-shirt business together. Mostly we buy the t-shirts ourselves, but you’re welcome to play, too.
I’m up nights worrying about Tyler Perry.
In an earlier post, I worried about what the money-making, commercially successful films of Tyler Perry were saying about sex, gender and race. Implicitly, I worried about art and money and money corrupting art and money-making not really being terribly arty.
This isn’t terribly unusual since I regularly worry - oh the hand-wringing! oh the teeth-gnashing! - about sex, money and meaning.
It may not be an unexpected cause for teeth-grinding and ink-spilling but the money/art conundrum is a false dilemma. Money and art can go together nicely. Just because something makes a lot of money does not disqualify it from the footrace to artistic merit.
This is what I was up late, worrying about. The word “hypocrite” may hve looped around my head a few times. I worried about Tyler Perry’s fragile feelings and I worried about my future.
One day, my bff Oprah Winfrey will invite me to lunch and Tyler Perry – single, artistic, entrepreneurial, brave, resilient, charitable Tyler Perry – will be there and I will die a little inside because I said something bitchy and unfounded about his work.
I don’t care how much money he has or how strong he is or how he doesn’t even know I’m alive. Did I really need to be snarky?
No. I didn’t.
I blame the intersection between my medium (blog=snark) and my gd scholarly training.
My university background is political science. Political scientists (ahem) like to pretend that politics can be analyzed in a systematic, scientific way.
I know. Crazy. Arts majors are so creative.
Anyhoo, in the social sciences (ahem), we’re trained to think critically which is a conceit at best and at worst means we’re trained to tear shit apart. Even stuff we like. Especially stuff we like. The more we like it, the more we have to interrogate it, lest our liking-it bias be revealed, thereby demonstrating our **hushed tones** lack of objectivity.
I know. Objectivity is bullshit. Like all vices, academic habits die hard.
The academic insistence on finding fault in the name of objectivity is much like ‘split the difference’ journalism. I decry split the difference journalism. It is weak. Tepid. Safe. The antithesis of any kind of useful thinking.
Academic critics attempt, paradoxically, to insulate themselves and their works from critique by clinging to a nebulous, fabled beast, the sasquatch. I mean objectivity. They’re equally real.
But blogs are different than academic critique. Blogs are personal.
The personal, immediate, reactive, (and sometimes snarky) nature of blogs means that dry, seemingly objective (don’t get me started again) academic investigation and critique don’t work here. Even the most apparently thoughtful, high-brow critique ends up feeling ad-hominem-y and snarky.
Even if my piece on Tyler Perry was academic critique (it wasn’t), it was still lazy-ass critique.
Here’s why: I have seen two out of eight Tyler Perry films. Is that a basis from which to conclusively claim “errr, not so much” about his movies?
Errr, no. It is not reasonable to dismiss his entire oevre based on 25% of his work.
Even more than that, my piece about Tyler Perry was disingenuous. After I wrote that piece, I started thinking about “Why Did I Get Married?”.
Specifically, I started thinking about Jill Scott’s character. In the film, her husband used her weight to emotionally bully her and as justification for cheating on her. They split, and she blossoms, and next time she sees him, she’s all radiant and empowered and in love and he is soooooooo sorry. Was that a lil’ FA in there? That sneaky Tyler Perry.
That’s the other thing about Tyler Perry’s films. In them, fat people exist.
I KNOW!
Here’s another thing about Tyler Perry films: at heart, they are about justice. They are about the win and the underdog and the winsome underdog winning.
Take Medea, for example. You know why Medea is loved, and recognized? Because she embodies absolute, knee-jerk justice.
Don’t we all need that? Thirst for it? Isn’t it rare? Aren’t there times when you’ve bared your soul to a friend about how you’ve been done wrong, and what you absolutely, resolutely, positively thirsted for was this:
Ima kill that bastard.
Yes.
Yes.
HELL YES.
Maybe that’s just me.
So, with this in mind, and to flesh out my critique a little, I did a little extra-credit research this weekend.
The occasion: H1N1 and deep sense of regret about my largely unfounded opinions about Tyler Perry’s work.
The result: I watched another of Tyler Perry’s films (Medea Goes to Jail) and, based on the three films I’ve seen so far, this is what I have to say:
Yeah, I was wrong.
What Tyler Perry does in his films is what I argue romance novels do for women.
They deliver the win. The underdog triumphs. The underdog is you.
All the stock, arguably offensive stereotypes to which Spike Lee et al object are laugh bait (and Tyler Perry admits this). They get your ass in the chair so that you’ll sit through the sermon. Is there anything wrong with a good belly laugh?
Yet, arguably, a Tyler Perry movie offers more than a belly laugh. It is a shot in the arm, a pat on the ass, a football huh! as you huddle and that shit’s just empowering.
Ask Erin Brockovich, the movie. I can’t get enough of Julia Robert’s boobs and bad-ass attitude. Tyler Perry, I argue, is doing the same thing with his plays and movies. He’s inspiring you, teaching you, preaching to you, and he’s making it fun.
Empowerment can be light. Empowerment is light. But you know what is not empowering?
Asking of an auteur,
Can you please make movies that I will never see? In poverty?
Don’t go away. It is still me, but this time I’m all dressed up and ready to go. Let me tell you all about it…
*
Recently my three year old and I were out-and-about when she told me she needed to pee.
When a three year old tells you that she needs to pee, what she really means is “I needed to pee five minutes ago”.
Accordingly, I assessed the situation as CRITICAL.
We were at a festival and nowhere near anything resembling a toilet so I suggested that she go on the grass behind a log.
She looked at me in abject, outraged horror and exclaimed,
Mommy, I am not a DOG. I don’t pee on the GRASS. I am a HUMAN. I use the BATHROOM.
**
So this blog revamp is like that.
You’re accustomed to better. You deserve more. You weren’t getting it on my old site.
The comments on my old blog were awkward to use so conversations got short-shrift. There were no pages telling you about me, what I do, or even about the blog, itself. There was no focus. No map of our subject matter. No pins saying “you are here” or “let’s go there!”, together.
The old blog was just ungainly and uncivilized. It was camping.
Camping is fine when it is temporary. After that, it is too much work for too little reward and then there are mosquitoes.
We needed new, vastly improved digs for our party.
I want you to have a beautifully designed space that is clean and easy to use and encourages you to stay awhile and say your piece.
But no peeing. Anywhere. Thank you.
(I know you wouldn’t. It was my fault for drawing a blog/bathroom/camping analogy. What was I thinking???)
***
Why the revamp? It was time. It was way past time. Blogs without a focus are a waste of time.
I think this is true. I started blogging as a soul-sick, art-hungry act of desperation. My blog was a writing prompt. I wanted to write on a regular basis and have my work read and that was the extent of my goal. There was no lens to peer through, no grand strategy, and no name.
And then I found you.
Even though there nothing telling you what to expect, and why you should come back, you kept coming back.
For that, I am grateful. Truly.
****
So now that I’m all dressed up, wearing my good bra, and oh-so-ready for our steamy liaison, where are we going and what are we going to do together?
Here at Cleavage - a sexy word that means more than you might think - we’re going to talk about sex, money and meaning. We’re going to think, talk, write, and live our way through the lines that shape us.
But only if you want to. I hope you do. Please tell me.
———
my blog wants to know: doncha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?
If so, you should talk to Amanda at violetminded.com. She’s the designer/developer extraordinaire who translated my million page brief into this much, much, MUCH simpler, sexier look. On Twitter, she’s @mandalove. Go now, follow her, and shower her with superlatives. She likes that sorta thing.
Photo: I (heart) balancing rocks by James Jordan.
Work life balance: what a waste of time.
Googling “work-life balance” is like getting dropped from the sky, hard, probably by aliens, into the middle of an August cornfield: the stalks (and the stakes) are so high and plentiful that you can lift your eyes to the sky and see the heavens – the end of it all, sweet haysoos – but not much else.
(Did you know that there are “corn-maze consultants”? Neither did I until I googled directions to my local corn-maze at which point I discovered, to my surprised and delighted horror, that there is an entire corn-maze INDUSTRY. There is art, too, but only pilots and Canadian geese can appreciate the hidden wonder of it.)
I digress. I’m glad that corn-maze consultants can invent jobs around their passion for vegetables. That’s the only explanation for this phenomena, really. I’m convinced that some dude got carried away with the ‘do what you love’ philosophy and voila! a new niche.
I’m also willing to bet that corn-maze consultants are intensely, overwhelmingly busy 2-3 months of the year and just basically make peace with the fact that their lives have gone tilt-a-whirl. They don’t chase work-life balance when it is time to rock out the cornfield.
(I do believe I’m going to have to interview a corn-maze consultant to find out if it is as glam as all that. Maybe it is rock-star. Maybe there are secret drug lairs and groupie grottos and THAT is what you’re trying to find when you pay your $5 and wander around for two hours, getting your shoes dirty and thinking: I just paid $5 to wander around in some guy’s field. Effing hell. What a racket.)
The other criminal racket that perturbs me is the work-life balance syndicate. It has franchises everywhere and it is selling you (me) turn-key, uninspired solutions:
1. Outsource your life. Increases your expenses to pay for services so you can have time.
2. Simplify your life. Reduce your expenses so you don’t have to work as much and can have time.
The objectives are the same the but the approaches are vastly different. And neither approach works for me.
There’s a hidden assumption in both solutions: that you have enough disposable income that you can make sacrifices and pay to gain time; or that you have enough disposable income to spend frivolously and therefore those expenses can be pruned judiciously in the service of free time.
Either way, both formulations pivot on the assumption of enough, or more than enough. I suspect the eternal work-life crisis comes from the hidden truth that many don’t have enough (any!) disposable income to outsource anything, and, given that information, you’d be safe in assuming that there are few, if any, expenses that can be ’simplified’.
I also suspect the quest for balance displays a truly sad truth: that we’re doing too much of what we don’t like, and isn’t rewarding, and not enough of the cosmically important stuff. So the seeking of work-life balance is really about taming the job and the bastards that wear you down. ‘Cuz when you love it, really love it, yes you need rest, but even the work doesn’t feel like work. Because it is play, mostly.
I’m not there yet. I know I’m not alone.
So, what to do when you’re workin’ 9-5 (I am all about 70s women, this week!), raising semi-humans (that’s what they feel like, this week!) and trying to break out and charge after your vision? (And let’s not bitch that we’re busy: Kelly Diels, I’m a-talking to you.)
Balance? How weak.
Let’s think about balance. Think about teeter totters. Equilibrium is hard to come by, and when it does, you just want to start bouncing up and down again. I know this for a fact. I have kids. The thrill is in the wobble.
(Did you know that teeter totters are an endangered species in North American playgrounds? No word of a lie.)
Think about tightwires. Think about raised bars. Sobriety tests and white lines. Skating and weak ankles. Weak ankles, period.
When I set up a situation where it is imperative that I don’t wobble or fall, I’m in trouble. It helps not to mull on it (bad blog post! bad!) and just keep going. Hold on. Move. Holding on is a form of movement but it is most definitely not balance. Hold. Run. Charge. Close your eyes. Leap. Leap-frog. Keep it hoppin’.
I’m lucky. I’m in love, with my life, my kids, my work, my dream and my extras. They’re all wearing me out just as fast as they fuel me. It is a bizarre high-speed stasis.
Define it all as life and you’re good. Overscheduled, overwrought and overwhelmed, yes, but at least then you’re not guilty about your lack of balance. Feeling conflicted about being conflicted and guilty about feeling guilty is a lot of work.
Guilt, in general, is a waste of time and energy. It is a smokescreen for a real emotion. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find something real, like anger. Sadness. Aspiration. Those are worthwhile. They’re fuel for something bigger and better.
In the end, the quest for balance is bogus. Love your burdens. Love them hard. And when your loves knock you down or your weak ankles trip you up, stop worrying about balancing – ‘cuz you’re not – and bounce.
I
Me: I’m trying to find my people.
Friend: I would have thought that you’re trying to find yourself.
Me: I’m not trying to find myself. That’s a battle I surrendered, long ago.
I lied. I only raised the white flag recently, after being provoked by Kate Harding’s excellent essay/polemic/battlecry, The Fantasy of Being Thin. Charge!
The reality is, I will never be the kind of person who thinks roughing it in Tibet sounds like a hoot; give me a decent hotel in London any day. I will probably never learn to waterski well, or snow ski at all, or do a back handspring. I can be outgoing and charismatic in small doses, but I will always then need time to recharge my batteries with the dogs and a good book; I’ll never be someone with a chock-full social calendar, because I would find that unbearably exhausting. (And no matter how well I’ve learned to fake it — and thus how much this surprises some people who know me — new social situations will most likely always intimidate the crap out of me.) I might learn to speak one foreign language fluently over the course of my life, but probably not five. I will never publish a novel until I finish writing one. I will always have to be aware of my natural tendency toward depression and might always have to medicate it. Smart money says I am never going to chuck city life to buy an alpaca farm or start a new career as a river guide. And my chances of marrying George Clooney are very, very slim.
None of that is because I’m fat. It’s because I’m me.
Exactly. So I know who I am. I don’t always know who I will be but I’m well acquainted with the basic context.
Still, I know all of this from the inside out. Naturally I’m curious about the view from outside.
II
Lindsey at
A Design So Vast often plucks my melancholy, needy cords. We share a dilemma: we worry about what other people think.
We worry about worrying about what other people think.
We’re conflicted. We’re conflicted about being conflicted.
We want to be self-sufficient machines who don’t require praise or reflections from other robots. We should be so grounded that it should be irrelevant. We shouldn’t be so motivated by the perceptions of others or by external validation. We ought to be healthily individuated, dammit.
We ought..we should..we shouldn’t…
Bah.Talk like that is a beauty pageant reply.
III
I slip into beauty pageant replies when I talk about men or dating or the man I’m dating.
When I speak about these things, I’m conscious of the fact that my words and actions are being measured against discourses of The Healthy Independent Individual, The Woman Who Doesn’t Let a Man Define Her, and How To Date Without Appearing Needy or Heaven Forbid Desperate or Even Worse Trampy.
I know that if I say I need a man, that I’m going to hear “you want a man, you don’ t need a man.” Because that’s not healthy. That’s not independent.
When I say that I need praise, I’m going to hear “isn’t that a bit co-dependent?”I’m not even going to go into The Rules. I don’t do The Rules. I do men.
So I often steer my stories into beauty pageant replies to circumvent judgement. I construct the emotionally, relationally healthy narrative.
Or I just don’t say anything at all, because I know that tales of my dating adventures might require a call to the Healthy Relationship Police.
Or I blog it. FTW.
IV
I think it is normal and universal, and yegads, healthy to need to see yourself in the eyes of others. To need to hear it. To require feedback.
It just is, and this is why: it is damn near impossible to get perspective on yourself because you see yourself from the inside out.
We seek perspective. That’s why we have mirrors. Some of them hang on walls. Others are found in the eyes of our loved ones and the impartial gazes of outsiders.
V
I used to say that I was shy. Nobody believes me. Maybe I’m not really shy. Maybe I’m just awkward and groups are not my medium.
So I struggle. It is an effort. It is shocking to me when that effort doesn’t show. I’m not alone.
VI
“There is no such thing as a complete lack of order, only a design so vast it appears unrepetitive up close.” – Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace
Think about the difference between these views: Google Earth and Google Street. Then think about the view of the world and the street from inside the house. This is vantage. Perspective. It is a shifty, slippery character.
No one view is more real than the other, no more “truthy” than the other. I see the world from inside the apartment – my own eyes, my own experience, me – more often than any other. That is why external perceptions are so damn interesting. And surprising. And needed.
Objectivity is in short supply when you’re the subject. That’s what subjectivity means. It is personal, partial, limited, incomplete.There is a difference between seeking to find yourself in the gaze of others and seeking reflections of yourself in both inanimate and flesh mirrors.
VII
Maybe the reason we tell ourselves that it is a problem to worry how others perceive us is because we’re trying to reduce an internal conflict.
We think there is a conflict between how a healthily differentiated adult functions (no need for validation, approval, reflections) and how we experience ourselves (embedded in relationships. needy. curious). So we call it cognitive dissonance. We strive to deduce that disharmony. Oil the friction.
But there is no conflict. This is the truth, according to me. There is nothing to reconcile. Shift.
VIII
Still, this conflict is an essential, eternal existential dilemna in western thought: the duality of mind and body.
Inside vs outside. Society vs self. It is grand,
Cartesian, effing
Jude The Obscure, history of thought and philosophy stuff. I don’t even want to go there. Seven years of university extinguished my fire for this subject. It is a thought cul-de-sac.
There are other ways.
You can find a solution in adding to, or fractioning, or fracturing these dyads. Worship the gods of multiplicity. There is no objectivity, no self, no other, and no truth, so stop seeking it. Wait for Godot.
Find Foucault. Tear it up.
Or you can erase the friction and find unity. Define it all as one. There is no distinction between mind and body, self and other. It is all one.
Or you can embrace the poles and oscillate between them. Develop, like justice, a theory of scales. It is both/and. Balance. Forgive yourself. Accept and embrace yourself and all your eternal, contradictory, heat-seeking needs for self-knowledge and the the reflections of others.
Marvel at it. Marvel at the old lady on the bus who speaks frankly and tells you look more put together than you feel. Marvel at the polish that shines all the shinier because you’re constantly working away at it.
IX
Think about oiled wood furniture.
Think about diamonds.
Realize that it is often unremarked effort that produces shine.
You’re privy to the effort so it is not a character deficiency to seek others to note the glow.
I’m over at World’s Strongest Librarian today, writing about being a fragile flower, criticism, and self-image. I ‘fess up to receiving not one but TWO marriage proposals online. Gotta love comments. Keep ‘em coming.
Let’s assume that you and a former love must stay in contact. You have business together. A dog. Shared custody of a super famous painting.
Or, more likely, you have kids together.
This means that while THE relationship is over, A relationship continues.
This also means that all the stupid, irritating, habitual, minor but painfully-inflamed things you fought over will continue to be stupid, irritating, habitual and ONFUCKINGFIRE.
(Except the socks on the floor or best-towel-as-a-bathmat or cheating-every-time-your-back-is-turned things. Those are all someone else’s babies, now.)
I know only one thing about how to let go of an ex and it is this: you must stop fighting the same fights.
What’s Your Problem?
For me, it is time. I hate lateness. Time is fluid but clocks are not.
I used to upbraid and berate and freak and pout and sulk and cast evil eyes loudly and vexedly. And an apology and a promise not to, anymore, would be issued. And then there would be another late, next time, inevitably, always.
So it was when we were together. It was our first fight but it would never be our last fight, because we continued to fight about it even after the relationship clock had stopped ticking.
We split. Lates continued. I continued to upbraid and berate and freak and pout and sulk and cast evil eyes loudly and vexedly. Aapologies and promises not to, anymore, continued to be issued. And then there would be another late, next time, inevitably, always.
Does that paragraph look eerily repetitive?
Just Stop It
Instead of being over, our relationship was on a continuous loop, circling back on itself. Over and over again. And then lightning struck me dead.
I realized that we were just living in different houses while fighting over the same things in exactly the same ways.
To get out of a relationship, to let go of the relationship, and to truly set the other person and yourself free, you have to let go of the patterns of behaviour that defined both the togetherness and the split.
And I did.
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