Not-Real Time

Not-Real Time

This morning I ran the Peachtree. As unique and discrete experiences go, you can’t beat it. Last year it didn’t happen. (It was virtual and I have a t-shirt, but it wasn’t THIS.) It starts with a car race to the train station with the other runners from my area (because we are the only people on the highway before six in the morning on a national holiday). The train cars fill with racers. There’s some quiet chatting about weather and stops. We all get off at Lenox and move as one- a murmuration of strangers- some with running partners, but many, like me, alone. But not. I am so not alone it makes me giggle to myself like a weirdo. 

Standing in Buckhead with ten thousand other people, stretching on curbs, taking pictures, athletically milling (until you cross the starting line, as far as these folks know you could be as swift as the falcon, so try to look like it while they still don’t know), I was struck dizzy by a time skip. It was as though last year never happened. It was as real a feeling as being touched. I felt it briefly this past May on my deck with friends, unmasked, drinking wine and laughing; but today it stayed with me. It felt like I’d jumped lanes into a parallel time. I was aware of the devastation and the crippling loneliness in the lane beside me, but that wasn’t the lane I was in. In my lane, everything had always been normal because the experience I was having felt unbroken.

Is this what traditions do for people? Being unsentimental, I am careless with traditions, but that callousness has shortsighted me. Because our time-travel is constant and involuntary, the traditions are a rest-stop. We need some time on the access road to be in repose from uncertainty and fear and the relentless requirement of progress. 

I am no longer Catholic, but I think a lot about this... For almost two thousand years, at every moment, somewhere Mass is being said. There is never a minute in time that has no Mass in it. For the faithful, what an amazing river to walk into. Alongside, but outside of time, like groundwater.

The upshot is that I have to make space for the rest stops. Not everyone wants to run with me (there’s been a lot of clarity around that). I will make space for college football, for Mass, for sitting on a bar deck with wings and beer. I shouldn’t scorn someone else’s right to-or choice of-a respite, any more than another person should try to force everyone to take up permanent residence in their tradition, no matter how fear-insulated it makes them feel. So, as usual, grace.

(Note: I wrote about this awhile back in http://singingonthetreadmill.squarespace.com/songs/2015/11/25/hello-tom, if you’re interested in my dad’s attachment to tradition.)

Marrying

I have been asked to officiate the wedding of a couple most dear to me.

I am overwhelmed.

I am ordained!

But most gleefully, I am briefly persuaded that this makes me An Authority On Marriage.

Unroll your eyes. I know I’m not. My sample size is two. But my enthusiasm-nostalgia-ego brain is running around like a nine-year-old at laser tag, so I’m getting this out of my system.

I will be marrying these lovely people, but what an absurd idea that is! The verbs are all wrong. Nothing I could say or do would make them married. Only they can do that, and they will need to do it every day.

I am a runner. The only reason I can claim that is because I choose to drag my dumb butt out of bed and step into the dark and run. If I stop making those choices and trotting those miles, I am not a runner. The doing makes the status.*

Marrying is the same.

It is the choice, every day, to be with a person authentically, generously, patiently-with humor and character and grace. Just like some runs aren’t great, some days the marrying might be sluggish or clumsy, or cut short. That’s okay. You wake up the next day, throw some forgiveness at the day before, and get back to marrying.

I believe most couples are actively marrying, on average, about 40 minutes a day, and that’s not even in a row. The rest is working or parenting or playing, or any of the hundred other things we do when we’re awake. If we can bring love and generosity and compassion to 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there, marrying isn’t that hard.

Being an adult is hard, though. Use hacks. But choose your hacks with intention, or they’ll choose you (looking at you, alcohol). Play some Yahtzee. Listen to music. Watch some standup. (Pro tip: Naked is the best hack. Take good care of your sex life and everything else will be 20% easier.**)

I could write a book about all my groundbreaking marriage theories, but really it would be 200 pages of be thoughtful and maybe have some sex.

I would be remiss not to say all this brilliance is due to three people: my parents, who for 50+ years put on a master class in marrying; and the other person who doesn't want me to gush about how wonderful he is because "I have a reputation to maintain."

* I am slow, and top out at 10K, so don’t get ideas.

** Apologies to my children, but I swear I’m right.

Dork Your Ride for America!

I've dorked mine. You can, too!

This is your chance to make voting easier for people all around you, and say to the community where you live and work,
"My politics are so Right Side of History, so Idealistically American, so COOL, that I am willing to Dork My Ride (TM*) to turn out the vote and cement my Democracy Cred." (Just an aside, how badly do you think my kids are cringing right now? I bet it's A LOT!)

Here's a letter-size pdf of the link to the Georgia My Voter Page. Anyone can scan it and check their voter registration status (important since Kemp purged the rolls), or register to vote if they have not yet. You can register until October 9 for the November election.

High school teacher? Post one in your classroom! As long as a student will be 18 by election day, that student can register NOW for the upcoming election. And we'll need these voters again in the spring for the MARTA referendum. Plus it's 100% bias-free, has a solid AKS tie-in, and student voter registration in our schools was endorsed from the tippy-top.

My back window is slanty (because I am a sporty old lady), so I taped mine to the back side windows. Just put the tape all the way around the edges so you can roll your windows up and down. Don't ask how I know this.

*Dork My Ride is not technically (or even remotely) trademarked, but I'm thinking about it...

No Choice

Choosing fatherhood. Choosing fathers. Now it is clear. The abortion debate wasn’t just about choosing babies, or choosing life, or choosing motherhood, or choosing our own futures. For so many who would never carry a baby, it was about choosing fathers.

Contrary to the media noise about the diminishing opinion of fathers, women take fatherhood very seriously. The stakes are so high that half the women ending a pregnancy choose to do so rather than face the hardship and heartbreak of raising a child with a man unsuited to the role, or raising the child alone.*

For decades anti-choice leaders, especially from religions led by men, have decried the uncoupling of sex from procreation. Now I understand why, but the reason isn’t moral consequences. The reason is evolution. The urge to have sex is strong, and it gets a lot of its oomph from the much deeper biological urge to propagate. The bar a man has to clear to get laid is fairly low, and is largely determined by physical characteristics. When women get to choose, the bar for becoming a father is higher, and different. It’s about character. Maybe it’s the wherewithal to get and keep a job. Maybe it’s the capacity for consideration, or the emotional intelligence to share an adult life. Maybe it’s the self-discipline to come home.

So many women who had abortions in their late teens or 20s went on to have children. Many of the happily married, happily momming women I know had abortions when they were younger.

The idea that women are cavalier about having babies couldn’t be less true. Legal abortion is important because women take parenthood deadly seriously; and if abortion becomes illegal, women will risk death if they need to make that choice. They always have.

Making abortion illegal isn’t going to end abortion or bring back some fantasy of the traditional family from t.v. shows. It’s going to result in more single mothers, more children raised in poverty, more dead women**, and an economy unprepared for the poisonous consequences of generations of women whose options were squashed.

This week I watched so many old white men gloat about the imminent end of legal abortion in America, and, I couldn’t understand why. Why do they care so much? It can’t be about life, or kindness, or the importance of family- these same men are perfectly happy to rip families apart at our border, or take healthcare from those who can least afford to lose it. It isn’t about the fetuses. It’s about the choice. It’s about women’s ability to say, “Not you.”

*Finer LB et al., Reasons U.S. women have abortions: quantitative and qualitative perspectives, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2005, 37(3):110–118, doi:10.1363/3711005.

**https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2709326/

Why risk it?

When I was in my 20s, I thought people who had kids were nuts. Why would you do it? Give up the freedom, the money, the precious sleep? It was contrary to both reason and pleasure, and I was a big fan of both. But some things are bigger than reason, and I made the deal so many of us do. Who needs money and sleep when I can trade them for a noise machine that vomits in my hair? I’ll take two!

And then, right out of the box, when they’re shrieking and puking like a Courtney Love action figure, I realize that I must do everything in my power, make any sacrifice, do ANYTHING to protect this squishy damp siren* because I am madly in love it with, and now I need it. So I am a parent, and I make those choices. The same choices we all make, for the same reason- to protect our families, and provide the best life we can for our children.

We move to good neighborhoods, we choose school districts; we monitor our kids’ friends and environment, on the lookout for obstacles both physical and psychological. We are vigilant, responsible, comforting, and safe. Without even thinking too much about it, we keep our families secure by knowing and following the rules and minding the boundaries. As much as we can, we steer clear of the edges. Living in the home we know, being risk-averse is a way we take care of our children. A stable, functional environment where this approach works is a privilege we enjoy. We can go to horror movies about parents shepherding their families through relentless violence and chaos, if we have the stomach for that kind of thing.

For the families coming to our border seeking asylum, the opposite is true. To protect their families-- to do all things we strive to do for the same exact reasons-- they must take an unimaginable risk. They have to flee their homes and travel to an unknown land, praying that strangers will make a place for them. And they have to trust that one of the few nations on the planet founded on principles is as good as its word.

They have the right idea. After all, people who risked everything to make a better life for their families and their communities built this country. These immigrants, these asylum-seekers, have so much in common with us. They are moved by the same desire that made this nation come to life. They are like us.

For some, the idea of pressing this government to do the right thing- to be public with our revulsion over the treatment of these families- feels uncomfortable. Extortion is an ugly word. Fighting feels risky. But how we face this moment is not just about making these families whole again (though that would be reason enough), it is fighting for our country, too. When we speak up for them, we speak up for us. How profoundly un-American it would be to risk nothing in this moment, to look away from the parents whose dreams mirror our own. How wrongheaded it would be to think they are different from us at all.

*here, device on an emergency vehicle, not alluring boatwrecker.

Convenient Monsters

I am exhausted and ashamed from participating in the carnival of horrors that came to life in Charlottesville this weekend. 

I was not there. I watched it all from the news, and followed along on Twitter as people identified the contorted faces of the white supremacists, relieved that my name didn't come up.

How do I describe seeing the sins I pretend I have not committed take life and walk the streets? Is it a horrifying gift, or an indictment? Did the poisons in my blood extract themselves, or just mutate in a funhouse mirror?

I am no white supremacist. How easy is that to say! I am not that. I can wallow in the convenience of this Tidy Other until I am nauseous, and still will not look in the mirror.

Huffing during rush hour at someone. Standing silent while people sympathize that my kids being white is a disadvantage, college-money wise, these days. Standing silent while people mutter about EBT cards and welfare queens.

Standing silent. If I put the Black Lives Matter sticker on my car, will it change how people treat me at work? Will I get yelled at in traffic? But at least I'm not a white supremacist! Where's that bumper sticker?

Violent racists walked the streets, screaming, fighting, and ultimately killing. Donald Trump couldn't bring himself to denounce the the white supremacists, and risk offending his base. 

I wore myself out playing a righteous whack-a-mole game with only 2 holes. I scored really high. Why don't I feel prouder? 

Running the American Experiment

I have been been baffled and underwater for so many weeks now I worried that I’d lost the ability to see what’s true, but the Senate healthcare bill and response to it has cleared my vision. (So, “thanks for that, Mitch McConnell?”)

There are many problems with the bill. It is cruel beyond measure, it is fiscally nonsensical, it is naked class warfare. I am knocked back by an additional thing. It is profoundly un-American.

I am a big fan of America. The ideas we were founded upon move me. “We the people,” “all men are created equal,” “more perfect union,” and “promote the general welfare,” are stanzas in a hymn to best we are capable of. Our forefathers and foremothers took up arms, risking their real lives, living children, and actual fortunes because they believed that the experiment would work.

It has worked. Not always, and often with monstrous failures. But we check the results and decide to make changes, to dust off our better selves and try again.

The Kochs, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and a handful of very rich white men have a different idea. They care not for the experiment, and have decided that they’re in a position to pull the plug. Since The New Deal, through Brown, Loving, and Roe, the ideals of this nation have matured beyond their framing capacity, but because they have confused America with a marketplace and freedom with capital, they want to run a new experiment.

They envision a vile laboratory funhouse where Randian hallucination dissolves over the mirror-deep morality of the prosperity gospel, creating a land where sick children are an expression of the sins of their parents, and the gods of the market will punish them until they get perfect or get dead. They want a system without humility, without compassion, without lawful justice.

This is really old-world stuff. Only the ancient gods will be at home here. Power derives from strength, and those with it can take what they want as long as they don’t anger someone more powerful. Those without will lie low, do their work, and avoid the swans.

I am hanging all my hope on the belief that they are very wrong. We are alive, and idea of the commons is not dead. These pretenders are not Jupiter. They know that they have the resources but not the numbers, and their window is small. They’re in a hurry, so they will err. And we will show up, and keep showing up. And we, the many, will keep running this experiment.

A Privilege of Bluebirds

I have a family of bluebirds at my feeder causing me tremendous stress.

The whole reason I buy birdseed and suet cakes is for this. In early spring I get bluebirds and cardinals and woodpeckers, and crazy yellow finches. The bluebird babies are screaming toddlers, and if they weren’t birds you would judge their parenting. The adolescent cardinals are disheveled assholes, and I shoot sympathetic thoughts to their parents while I drink my coffee. “I know, man. He’ll leave the nest eventually, I promise.”

The stress is guilt. I cannot shake the feeling that every moment I spend counting bluebirds I could be calling my senator or setting up a protest group. In the back of my head I believe there is a manual somewhere that lays out what a normal human being can change in extraordinary times, and still keep their nerves inside their skin. Do you reorder 30% of your non-work, non-family time? 70%? What’s the sweet spot between saving your community without smashing your life like a piggy bank? No one has flowcharted it for me yet, so I can only assume I’m doing it wrong.

I know from history that heroes sacrifice everything: their families, their jobs, their security. I’m no hero, so I’m looking for guidance. I have spent the last 20 years droning on about the value of pleasure, of being present to the sublime funhouse of our senses. And in this new present, in which my neighbors are too frightened to drive and our government talks about rounding up the outsiders like we’re Vichy, I am guilty. All my pleasures are possible because of the safety of my skin. I have the unearned luck of getting to be appalled but not terrified.

Is that what we are, great and small, two sizes on the same body? Can I fight with my time and money and know in the back of my head that part of the reason I am fighting is because I want to drink wine and crack filthy jokes again? (Don’t get me wrong- I’m still drinking wine, but for the wrong reasons now.) Can I be a caring citizen and insufferable twit at the same time?

The answer to that is obviously yes. I am a caring citizen. I am such an insufferable twit. And I suppose that I will fight as hard as I can for as long as it takes so that eventually I can go back to really digging deep into twitdom. Because I want to count bluebirds and make dick jokes.

Our Grotesque Public Marriage

Andrew Sullivan wrote on Friday, “One of the great achievements of free society in a stable democracy is that many people, for much of the time, need not think about politics at all.” Sullivan is always good, and it’s oddly comforting to have his insightful (if excitable) voice back in the mix. Plus, he put his finger on my exhaustion.

My husband and I sit at the kitchen counter with our heads on our hands, having one more drink than we used to on a weeknight, rehashing. Or worse, trying to think of something else to talk about, but failing. We are already tired of this, and worried that we’re boring each other; which is a sad and uneasy place to be stuck in the greatest date of my life. But we are consumed. We are all consumed.

And I remember how this dominates your every breath, because I have been here before. I was in a long relationship with someone with psychological pathologies, and I know how to sleep with one eye open. I could rest, but never truly relax. I never stopped wondering what would come next, what form it would take, and what it would ruin. But I had no control. I spent the first ⅔ of the relationship believing that if I figured out how to say the right thing or do the right thing or explain correctly, the behavior was changeable. We’re intelligent people, right? What I never understood, because it seemed so contrary to reason, was that the whole thing was working for him. He didn’t want it to change, or to end. That I was careening between frantic and despondent didn’t even register. That I wasn’t on board just meant I was too dumb to keep up.

This idea is hard to let go of: if the president is confronted with the hypocrisy or the evidence of counterproductive cruelty, that he will change his behavior. It will never happen. This is working for him. He is the eye of the storm. Our existence is fictional. Spending our finite energy on incredulously parsing the effects of his every boneheaded tweet is a poor use of that resource.

Figure out how we got here, examine the weaknesses that led to this, but don’t get bogged down in blame. We’re here now. Focus on what we can change. Fight to protect what he’s casually destroying. Keep our eyes on 2018, and get our ducks in a row. The separation that will be the midterms won’t happen without a fight so ugly it will surprise us, and the divorce of 2020 will happen in a maelstrom of insane desperation that will suck all the oxygen out of our lives.

Last night I had the best distraction in weeks. I spent a few hours with a delightful toddler, and remembered how charmingly random that experience is. Her adoring parents were happy zombies- exhausted and blissed-out slaves. Now imagine her with a knife and a credit card in her hands. That’s where we all are now.

Postcards that won't eat your consumables like so much onion dip

Why does the Women's March on Washington, an organization that has claimed my heart, time, and cash, hate me?

They don't really hate me, they hate my printer. This is a point of connection, I suppose, because I also hate my printer, but the WMOW doesn't have to listen to it beep and shudder running 1-up postcards.

1-up postcards? With black backgrounds? WTAF, WMOW? I can't properly express my passion for women's rights, Black Lives Matter, healthcare, refugee care, immigrant rights, and the host of other issues I care about right now IF MY INK CARTRIDGES ARE DRAINING LIKE A BOTA BOX ON FRIDAY NIGHT!

So I made these. They print 2-up on letter size paper (print actual size, not fit on paper), and trimmed to the marks are standard 7x5 postcard size. They are for anyone who wants them. (If anyone has ideas for more, send me a comment.)

Added cards and sizes! Woo hoo!

This project is taking on a life of its own, like a tumor in my brain. The 4-up cards trim to a standard postcard size, and no fussy internal crops. Remember to print actual size, not fit on paper. Let me know if there's anything you'd like to see.

Pink slips for March 15, and a simple question card

The White House address pdf is here if you want to back up your pink slips for easy addressing. The I have a question... card is a very simple black and white card that will work for many issues, like maybe Why did Jeff Sessions feel compelled to perjure himself? or When will you demand that the American people see Trump's taxes? These all print 4-up at full size on 8.5 x 11 paper.

prints 4-up (see below for link to 2-up)

prints 2-up 7x5

St. Louis_Courage and Compassion 4-up version

Muslim Ban 2-up version

Hear Our Voice 4-up version

prints 2-up 7x5 (see below for link to 4-up)

prints 4-up

prints 2-up 7x5 (see below for link to 4-up)

prints 4-up
This is new, no longer references cabinet picks.

Cockamamie Neuroscience

or It’s ALL Brain Surgery

Awhile back, a good friend advised another who was anxious about how to do something she was unsure of to “just do it like someone else would.” I thought this was the dumbest, most inauthentic direction I’d ever heard. As usual, I was wrong.

Through several unrelated situations (shopping and putting a dog down) I came to understand that what she was talking about was accessing the neural connections in our own brains that have been altered by the people we know well, the people we let in.

Example 1: I am a terrible shopper. I am cheap, I hate to try on clothes, and I have no imagination. But I need clothes, as I am a professional woman, but not the works-naked kind. So in a moment of desperation, I decided to try shopping as someone else. But that’s not what I did. I just fired the neurons lovingly installed by my Particle-Accelerator friend. So my brain walked into an Ann Taylor and bought 2 skirts because they were what I needed, without caveats. It was like discovering a secret compartment in my head.

Example 2: Dead dog. (I should mention that, as a blogger, if my dog dies I am legally obligated to blog about it. Look it up.) Our 14 year old dog’s cognitive function degenerated suddenly, and she lost control of her legs. I knew what to do and had the ability to do it because my father did major construction in my brain when I was young. I didn’t just remember what he said; I accessed his perspective, his will, and his own bottomless love for his dogs when I needed it.

So much changes our brain- our physical, biological brain. So why not people? When you really build a connection over time, let someone in to rummage around, borrow your own ideas, and leave their own lying around, your brain changes. You get neural connections you wouldn’t have formed on your own. You exercise functions you would have let wither otherwise, or neglect functions you should have been flexing.

So we are all brain surgeons, and patients on the table. And we are all choosing the people who will open our head and rewire it.

If you don't know where you're going, know who you're going with

...we must accept the idea that reality is only interaction.
Carlo Rovelli, chapter Quanta; Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

I am, in a sense, lost in time right now. I thought I learned important things, and now I don’t know if they’re true. I thought I had a general idea of what the future would be like, and now it is opaque to me. I want to fight for the future of my children and their friends, but I cannot find the battleground.

All this concern with no place to offload it makes me anxious, and fearful that I’m wasting valuable energy. (Had I been paying attention, I would have noticed the world lobbing answers at me, but I never see the tennis ball until it hits my noggin.)

The way is right in front of me, and beside me, and staring into the pantry looking for the good chips. I cannot fight a battle that hasn’t begun, but I can see the people fighting with me, and shower them with so much love and care and snacks and wine and coffee that when we show up for the hard parts, our connection is a superpower in itself. I can see the organizations already in place, who have been making America great for 100 years, and give them a share of my privilege (i.e. money).

I am not smart enough to predict what this country will be like in a year; so I don’t know exactly who to oppose, or how. But I can see who’s ready to fight for all the people and the place they live, so I can start by supporting them. And I am lucky enough that I already love some of them, so this feels effective AND easy, like a well-timed stomach bug. Which, if you’re on Team Obtuse Bad Metaphor, you know for the compliment it is.