In the deep heart’s core

A few miles north of New York City, in Rockland County, there is a ghost town where I love to go walking.

Doodletown (apparently from the Dutch “dood dal” meaning “dead valley”) was evacuated by way of eminent domain in 1965, though many of these houses were abandoned before then.

All that remains of the houses is a few foundations, some flattened areas, herbs where you wouldn’t expect herbs to grow – very light traces of civilization that moved on years ago. It is strange, lonely, beautiful – all of the things I like best about ghost towns.

Somehow, though, I hadn’t noticed this rusted washtub the last few times I’ve been up there. Whether it was moved by hikers in the last few months, or I simply never noticed it – it was an arresting bit of reality in a very surreal little place.

Here is somewhere another human’s hands have been, here is a place that other people lived – and now it is home to moss and birds and bugs and squirrels.

A horror, a horror

I recently went with a friend, Bianca, to see a reading of a terrible, no-good, very-bad play. The actual writing wasn’t terrible, no-good, very-bad, although it left a great deal to be desired. Technically, it felt like a draft. The playwright might have been able to hear how those monologues didn’t work well, or notice that her characters didn’t seem internally motivated. That is possible.

What isn’t possible is for the play to be anything other than a horror, a horror, a nightmarish horror – irresponsible storytelling at its worst, so far as I’m concerned. Here is an overview: a couple’s daughter disappears at the age of 15 (or 16?) The parents are concerned, they miss her – well, the mother does. The father actually knows exactly where the daughter is – locked in a little room in the basement of their building, where he keeps her as his sex slave. She has four children by him, only one of whom she is allowed to keep – the others, he “finds” on the doorstep and arranges to raise them with his wife – the childrens’ grandmother. Kidnapped mother and her oldest daughter live in the tiny room for 20 years – the daughter has never seen outside, something happens, they are freed, everything is terrible.

I have never twitched so much during a play. I have been to terribly written works that drain all energy out of the body, and I have been to ghastly horrors that are well-written and give you some understanding of the world the characters inhabit. This was neither – it was a poorly developed horror that forced my face into a disbelieving scowl. I wasn’t drained, and it didn’t provoke any thoughts – other than “I wish this would end” and “I see what you’re trying to do and it’s not working.”

There was a talk-back at the end. I asked Bianca if she wanted to stay because I REALLY DID NOT and she said “I kind of really want to leave this room.” So we went across the street and had a beer and talked about politics. It’s true, this play was actually more enraging than politics. And it got my mind back on the track of thinking about this term I use so freely – irresponsible storytelling.

There is a portion of my brain where I fear I am perhaps too conservative. As a liberal left-wing hippie, this is one of the worst things to happen in my brain. But time and again, I find myself watching violence, as it is portrayed in our culture, and alarms go off in the back of my brain. Irresponsible! Irresponsible! Irresponsible! I picture the arguments I could have with myself about it – perhaps it is irresponsible, but don’t our first amendment rights fundamentally protect our right to be irresponsible in that fashion? They do, but does that mean we should USE that protection? The circles I’ve trod in my brain about this topic are deep and worn.

And yet I always come back to the same place: perhaps I am some sort of repressive harpy, perhaps I am a fascist at heart, but I just don’t think these stories need to be told. Not the most violent ones, the ones with no redeeming value. Violence is real, and has a place, and is something everyone must learn to grapple with and understand on some level. But in my mind, there is no reason to understand the acts of monsters, if those monsters go unredeemed.

Dude

I recently read that John Adams’ final words were “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

There is a certain amount of that which we might call dramatic irony (if it weren’t real life) in his words; in fact, Jefferson died a few hours before Adams.

There are, of course, pages and pages that have been written about the fascinating, unique relationship between Jefferson (TJ, I like to call him) and Adams. This is not going to be a part of those pages. But I have to note, for the record, that these last words of John Adams have sealed an image in my head of him as The Dude.

I know that, in context, it is actually Jefferson who is being framed as The Dude. But I really think it was Adams who was out there takin’ it easy for all us sinners. Jefferson never once took it easy.

Failure

Well, it’s only been a month or so since I said to myself, “Self, you’re wasting a lot of time looking at animal videos.”

So of course, I have to admit that watching this porcupine trying to eat out of a mug is pretty much all I want to do with my day today:

In a slightly more thoughtful vein: Leo and I went to see The Iron Lady yesterday. I have lots and lots of thoughts about it, in several different areas, but one of the things the film forces the audience to reflect on is the violence that erupted in Great Britain in the 1980s. People were poor, out of work, the economy was tanked, leadership was terrible… alarmingly familiar and close to home! Like, right here in these United States! Perhaps because I’ve been reading about the founding fathers and am therefore feeling a little more sensitive to these issues (rather than the other issues the movie dealt with about women in power, and the roles people play in families, and what conservative really means, and OH MY GOSH THE FALKLANDS) I started quizzing Leo over dinner – why, I asked, do you think we haven’t gotten to that point yet? What will it take to get our citizens to take action? I am well aware, and agree, that “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” But I also agree that “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” And it may be that we are well on that path!

Leo thought for a moment, and suggested that perhaps it is because the critical mass of poverty hasn’t been reached. People in our country are are poor, very poor indeed. But until and unless the population at large has to suffer deprivations – you can only have 3 gallons of gasoline this week! – it is unlikely that the critical mass will take to the streets. Occupy was a step in this direction – obviously – but the weight just isn’t there.

And I worry about the day when it is.

The art of…

I have, of late, been developing a terribly pragmatic streak. This has inspired some complicated feelings! On the one hand, I have never been nearly as pragmatic (or practical) as I felt I wanted to be.

On the other hand, I’ve spent most of this adult life being terrible at articulating my flights of fancy, so it’s really for the best if I keep them to a minimum. Reality: it just might win!

 

Mastering

Knitting has been a part of my life for a very, very long time – ever since I was about eight years old, when my parents took me to the local yarn store to learn how to knit.

I learned the basics, on big needles and with ugly yarn. I still have those needles – size 10 wooden circulars. It makes me smile to know how long I’ve had them, how many times they’ve moved with me. It is especially surprising to still have them when you consider the fact that I stopped knitting entirely in sixth grade. It wasn’t a question of being too cool, that is certain. There just isn’t necessarily time in an 11-year-old’s life for a meditative, time-consuming art.

I came back to knitting when I was about 24. I felt a need to create, and so I bought some needles and some yarn and re-taught myself the motions I remembered from so long ago.

I was, to be honest, still too busy to be a knitter. During those years I worked ridiculously long days (and nights) and threw myself into action, activity, motion. “Sleep when you’re dead,” I said. More than once. Even so, I learned how to knit lace and worked on progressively tinier needles with progressively finer yarn. I once spent an entire summer making an incredibly delicate scarf of merino and mohair. And then I ripped it out.

If I am honest with myself, it wasn’t until just about two years ago that I really, truly became a knitter. It happened when I stopped stage managing. And it has transformed my life.

Now, at the center of my artistic life, I have a pursuit that is my own. I never had this experience with theater, or music, or dance. Those were arts I lived in, breathed in, worked for – but in the end, it was always someone else’s vision I was making, whether it was a dance solo or setting light cues. Knitting, though, is different. I choose everything, from start to finish, and anything I do is entirely my own responsibility. There is no one else who can screw it up – and there is no one else who can fix it. There is gratification in this – it calls me to task when I am being lazy, and frees me from the opportunity to blame anyone else for my mistakes. Having that clarity has helped me to unravel the threads of other parts of my life – the parts of my life where I haven’t always been as clear-thinking as I could be.

So. All that being said, there is a piece that I have been working on for… a really long time. This is a shawl that I started working on last summer, as part of my goals for 2011. I set it aside in September when I started working on Christmas gifts, and didn’t pick it back up until right after the New Year. It was strange – and nice – to come back to this bit of work. An old friend, something I don’t have to strain my brain about while I do the pattern repeats.

Except. Do you see it?

Pardon how incredibly unblocked it is. When I finish, I imagine I’m going to have to block the HELL out of it to make it look nice. But no, that’s not what I’m referring to.

A few rows from the top of the work, I repeated a row of the pattern that shouldn’t have been repeated. And I didn’t notice until about six rows later. And then I came to a conundrum.

It is, in the much larger scheme of things, a fairly minimal mistake. Especially since the finished piece is for me, and probably no one EXCEPT me will ever look at it that closely. And frogging back six rows of a lace pattern is annoying and…and… and I had to fix it.

There was a time not very long ago when I wouldn’t have fixed it. When I would have shrugged and rationalized and moved on with the work and felt bad about it forever. It’s very likely that I would have abandoned it after just a couple more days of work, and then it would have joined every other unfinished project in my life’s collection of unfinished projects.

It took quitting what I thought was the core of my life in order to be able to see things like this. And it took quitting what I thought was the core of my life to realize that no, it wasn’t the core of my life. And for all of this, I am very, very thankful.

Prez

As part of what may become a life-long endeavor, I recently decided that I’d like to read biographies of all the presidents of the United States. Since there’s only so much White Guy stuff I can take, this could take a while. (Ha, inside joke for…um…three of you.)

I started with His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph Ellis. Because if you’re going to do something, you may as well start at the beginning! Also, Leo happened to have it on his bookshelf. I had realized at some point in December that I knew almost nothing about ol’ George other than some mythology (wooden teeth and cherry trees? Wooden trees and cherry teeth?) and some super basic facts. Like: first president! Married to someone named Martha!

Embarrassing.

So I read the biography, and I learned quite a bit. Washington was apparently one of those incredibly strong-willed but passionate people who, through whatever early traumas, force themselves to be the masters of their passions and train themselves to be made of iron so they never yield to anyone else’s demands. He seemed fairly unhappy, although happiness also seemed not to enter into his calculations for life.

He was, unfortunately, maybe kind of a douche?

That, then, is the second part of this goal – to read these biographies, and then offer extremely reductive opinions about the actions and characters of the men who shaped the United States.

So, then – George Washington was kind of a douche.

And Jefferson, I am in the process of learning, was very sensitive and had a… uh… rich inner life. He was totally an INFJ. (I have felt embarrassingly sympathetic toward him while reading about some of his sillier behaviors. Like calling in sick with a migraine to the Continental Congress.)

So yes! Check back with me in 20 years, perhaps I’ll have caught up by then!

If only I could, I’d be running up that hill…

Every January, I get amused because the gym is suddenly so crowded. I had the day off work on Monday, so I went to the gym in the mid-morning – a time I never really get to work out on a weekday.

It was packed. But not ridiculous. Last night, however, was out of control. Long lines for everything. People looking confused about treadmill controls.

These days, I’m a Monday-Wednesday-Friday-plus-weekend day gym-goer. I love it, even when I hate it. I have never in my life regretted a trip to the gym – even when I’m exhausted, or feel like I might be getting sick, or just super whiny, I come away from it feeling better.

I wonder about all of the people who come to the gym for the month of January, and then slowly disappear throughout the coming months. Where do they go? Do they keep paying these INSANE rates for a membership they don’t use? Is that not, quite possibly, one of the more amazing first world problems – spending $80 a month for a resource you don’t use that is supposed to keep you from getting fat from eating too much McDonald’s, but you just can’t work yourself up enough to go?

I saw a woman attempting to wriggle herself into a brand-new looking shirt from lululemon, her sneakers pristine, and I wondered if it was possible that she might fall in love with working out. If she doesn’t, I wonder what she’ll do with all that expensive workout gear. I wonder if it will lurk in her drawers, and make her feel guilty for not following through on her early-January pledge.

I wonder if the pot is calling the kettle black with all this wondering.

The things we carry

The days, lately, are anything but dull. It is nice! I haven’t been able to claim boredom in a very long time – and there are never enough minutes in a day to do all the things I want.

My heart is torn out time and again by beauty, by cuteness, by kindness, by love. I think I feel safer about letting it be torn out these days, partly because it is easier to pull it back. Much like a child who is raised with boundaries (and therefore grows up to feel safe in the world) my heart is starting to see things a little more rationally, and feel a little safer with thinner walls.

I was on the phone with my sister a couple of days ago and before we hung up she said, “oh! I wanted to tell you before I forget! When I was putting P to bed the other night, she told me ‘I miss my other mom.’ I asked who she was talking about, and she said it was you. ‘She’s pretty and she smells nice and she’s cuddly and she’s soft!’”

Well, just rip my heart out, little niece! I miss all those things about you, too!

So there is the fantasy life, where I get to see my friends and family and loved ones. That is a nice life!

And there is the activist part of my life, where I get to build language around issues that I care about, and interact with like-minded people and actually take action and write letters and Show Up and generally be less of a lazypants about whining-without-doing. That is a nice life, too!

There is the creative part of my life, where I am able to take things from images in my head to creations in the real world, and I am extremely grateful for that, even on days when my hands feel completely torn up and arthritic. (Being old: totally awesome!) That is a nice life, too!

Unfortunately, it is far too easy to let those things slip by and out of my hands while I dig into the things that are hard for me. While I obsess about dreams that are lost and things I’ve done wrong, time is passing that isn’t being used well! Especially when the worries that have started cropping up are so common, so mundane – (“Hosting an event: you’re doing it wrong!”) they hardly feel like things a person should think about.

When I was a little girl, my father wrote a poem. He penned it in his beautiful calligraphy on lovely paper, and it hung on the wall of my parents’ bedroom for as long as it was their bedroom together. This would have been after my mother had her last miscarriage, the “moonchild” she lost after my younger brother was born. The final line of the poem, which is about grief and loss and picking up and carrying on, is “we live and we breathe and we hug our possessions.”

And we do. And hopefully, somewhere in there, we love and serve as well.