News and Tidbits

Hello, Readers. It’s taking a monumental amount of willpower to avoid the big, combed-over elephant in the room. The news has been riveting. But I am not writing about that. And I’m trying to marinate in it less overall. What this means is a short and scattered blog post. 

Tidbits and News:

Following my own advice from last week’s post on dealing with distraction, I have tried, somewhat successfully, to limit my exposure to the media, both formal and social, and to focus on my writing. That advice really came from the example of my friend C, mentioned last week, who has found the months since November 9th to be some of the most productive of her career. I tried to follow her example and to forge ahead. The result is that I do have a rough draft of approximately 90,000 words. All written last week. 

No, not really. That’s about 240 pages. Not possible for me to amass in one week. But the draft did start to coalesce over the last week. I read a little of Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird every night to inspire me. In case anyone in the world hasn’t read that book, the title refers to advice her father gave her brother when he had a report on birds to write from scratch and it was due the next day. Take it bird by bird, was the advice, extrapolated to any writing and by larger and further effort to any daunting endeavor. Bird by bird. A way to get one’s writer self into the chair. 

Turning off the web browser is another crucial element I employed last week. 

In other news, the dog is afraid of the kitchen. I think he’s actually afraid of bees, but more specifically of things that buzz, including but not limited to bees, and by extension he is afraid of the places where things that buzz have recently been buzzing. That would be the kitchen. 

Now I’m not going to have any of that. He needs more grit, does that dog. And also he needs to be reprogrammed to like the kitchen again. I am hopeful that a little play therapy with him in the kitchen every day will work magic. I started out with one of the puzzles I bought him during a phase when I felt extremely guilty for his under stimulating life. And he does love the puzzles, which he solves with nose and paws, and which reward him with treats. 

Anxious dog

The college student is home for the summer! I picked her up on Saturday at noon, and I am happy to report that she was all packed up and ready to load the car. This kid is no snowflake. This kid has grit. What she doesn’t have is a job. She thought she had one, but it fell through. So she has been looking, along with every other recently arrived home college student who didn’t get a job over spring break. Which she did. But I guess not really. 

I read Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, and I liked it. I didn't love or lurv it, but I did like it. I liked its Buddhist elements, such as how life is full of suffering people and how we all need to be compassionate towards one another - and towards ourselves.

That’s about all. I think all that writing while trying to avoid getting sucked all the way into the news used up my available willpower and I’m depleted. That happens with willpower. It’s something that can be strengthened, according to Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, but it also has limits. Like a muscle, it can grow stronger by use, but it can also fail from overuse. However, overuse, like a vigorous workout, will lead to strength. Unless of course you tear something. I haven’t torn anything, but I have worn out my willpower muscle. So keep me away from the cookies and the chocolate. And please consider this post a gentle limbering exercise.

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Annals of Successful Parenting & Life

"It turned out that this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And he said - gently - that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at one, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born - and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible."  - Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott

I’m reading Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott. It’s part of my required reading for my book - reading other memoirs, or memoir-type books that might be kind of like mine. Of course we are all unique and different and individuals and all that jazz, but still, we are links in a chain. Maybe it’s odd to be a secular, mostly atheist Jew with Buddhist tendencies who relates to Anne Lamott. Anne Lamott is a born-again Christian with neurotic tendencies and a sense of humor. Well, then I’m odd. So there you go. She’s funny and honest and upfront about her shortcomings and in that way I think the Venn Diagram of our writing overlaps.

If that is not being too bold.

Which it is not, I hasten to add.

Although I don’t exactly believe my own words.

And so it goes. Welcome to the mind of moi, Hope Perlman.

So what I wanted to say was, Hello, Readers, I am just coming off the two week visit of our French “exchange” student. The visit involved so much more field tripping and spending time around other humans than I usually want that upon delivering her to the grotty and miserable bus station in Albany at 4 a.m. Tuesday morning - yes, the 4 a.m. that is before the crack of dawn; the four a.m. that is the time of infinite night terrors; the 4 a.m. of insomnia — and then finding that the bus had been overbooked, and then standing around with fifteen or was it twenty or was it two hundred other bleary and annoyed parents delivering other visiting French students, and also with our own children, who promptly passed the ensuing hour sitting on the filthy floor of the station and playing hand games with their friends and crying and hugging until the new bus arrived at 5:15 am - I promptly came down with a fever, aches, weird stomach pains and postnasal drip. I had so very much else to do that day of the 4 a.m. delivery that I didn’t really admit to illness until it was all done and night had come. One of the first things, by the way, that I did, was to instruct the 9th grader to deposit the clothes she had been wearing when sitting upon the station floor into the laundry. Then I was on to other fry.

But yesterday there was no denying the illness, and so I spent a day doing what my body needed. It was a wonderful relief, Readers. I recommend it.

One of the benefits of having our “exchange” student (please see previous post to understand why I use quotation marks) was that I finally had that coffee with a mom friend that we’d been planning for a long time. I hadn’t seen her since before the election, and in fact, I was kind of afraid to. Not because we are on different political sides, but because I was afraid the thin gauze of optimism I have managed to enshroud myself with would disintegrate with a good old political discussion. But we had more immediate things to discuss, like how in hell to entertain French teenagers in Albany for two weeks. So we met and brainstormed, and my mom friend, who is more pessimistic than I am, even though my thin gauze of optimism is so very thin and gauzy, and I came up with some good activities.

I felt a little like country mouse and city mouse with my mom friend, by the way, since she’s a leggy ectomorph who dresses entirely in fleece and hiking gear and, well, I am not. But anyway, that was fun. But one of the ways our conversation got a little sharp and threatening to my gauzy wrap was our discussion of incivility and how rampant it is and how awful the things we hear on the news are that people say about one another and the partisan divide and the gap between the blah and the blah. And so on. And it was distressing to go over it all. And it is distressing.

And so I was distressed when I left our coffee. But then later I thought about this incivility, and I thought about where I see it. On Facebook, on Twitter, on snippets of the news that I watch on Facebook and Twitter. Of course on comments in the failing New York Times, but everyone knows better than to read those. And then I thought about my regular life, and I thought about incivility there, and you know what? I didn’t find a lot. I found mostly people being nice. Even the ones that might have voted for You Know Who. Like the retired guy down the street who mows his not very big lawn on a riding mower in a sleeveless undershirt. Always been downright civil to me, obviously a liberal feminist with a fancy dog. He’s the guy who once suggested that I “get a couple a frozen meatballs, put ‘em in a dog bag, throw ‘em in the freezer. When you go for your walk, take the bag out of the freezer, and there you go. Cop sees you. You got a bag. Smells a lot better.” See what I mean? Civil. And probably votes for You Know Who.

And then there’s me. I mentioned this before, but it remains true. I still feel this gentle little careful spot inside me that I am tending. It’s me being nice to people I encounter. Nicer, I should say. And it’s a result of the hammering my guts took by the election. It’s an awareness there are a lot of angry, miserable people out there, and I might as well try to not increase their reasons for their anger and misery. I’m thinking if I feel that way, a lot of other people feel that way, too, because I’m not so special or different. I’m not particularly mean or kind. And so that makes a lot of us trying to be nicer to everyone, and therefore increasing civility.

Today I came across this little nugget in Anne Lamott’s book. According to a guy she met who worked for the Dalai Lama, the Buddhists - or maybe the Dalai Lama and his workers - believe that when lots of things are going wrong all around us, it’s to make room for something beautiful to be born.

Random Ideas - Kindness and Vulnerability

Readers, these are the times that try men's souls. Soul-trying times. And while I'm not a man, my soul feels tried. Of late, I've thought how much I would love to be a Jewish Anne Lamott.  But I lack her faith, seeing as how I'm pretty much an atheist with some yearnings for agnosticism. Furthermore, I lack her dexterity in the whole "radical self-care" thing. I'm more of a moderate in that department. And really, have I any wisdom to impart? Hers is the wisdom of giving in to self-acceptance. That one is a tough lesson to grok.

Have I learned anything? Have I changed at all? Am I any wiser?

For example, just the other day I was remarking to myself that I seem to have become kinder. I’m less prone to road rage - now it’s just road irkedness seasoned with a soupçon of crudity. I’m more patient. I look upon my fella humans with more compassion than I once did. I cry about elephants and gorillas and feel they probably, along with other animals, are much more intelligent than we have thought them to be. 

I ponder this softening. I welcome this late arrival of tact and nuance. I thought perhaps it was an effect of meditating, something I have done, off and on, for almost two decades. 

Then I got into the car, because I live in the suburbs so I am repeatedly getting into my car, and tuned into the TED Radio Hour in progress on my local public radio station to hear some TED speaker talk about how humans grow kinder as we grow older. 

Hunh, I thought. And blammo, all credit for my self-improvement disappeared with the click of a slide. There went any pretense to wisdom or enlightenment. If I’m kinder, it’s just because I’m older. That’s no accomplishment. That’s just time and luck. Furthermore, when I think about others in my life who are kinder than me - and there are many - and that they will continue to grow kinder than they currently are, and that I’m already at a deficit for kindness….

Well, these are thoughts that drive others to drink. 

But not me, they just drive me to despair. I’m not much for drinking. Alas, I am still the person I am. Needy, often blind to nuance, desperate for validation from others. And right now, I really don’t like that person. I never particularly liked that person. And this is a pity, isn’t it? To grow old without accepting yourself. 

Thus, the quest for success.

Recently, I read a profile of an astounding personality, philosopher Martha Nussbaum. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/martha-nussbaums-moral-philosophies

A sort of android of productivity and intellect, a person of incredible career success, of apparently unbounded confidence, of intense personal power, of many ex-lovers. According to The New Yorker, she has “published twenty-four books and five hundred and nine papers and received fifty-seven honorary degrees.” She has won so many awards that she apparently compares them to potato chips - something to enjoy, but "warily". 

I have never read anything Martha Nussbaum has written. I feel as if I’ve heard of her, but then again, her name is not uncommon. I’m fairly certain she has no stake in the Nussbaum & Wu eatery on Broadway and 114th Street in Manhattan. I suppose I ought to check out her works, but I was more taken with her relentless schedule and her incredible self-discipline. We’re talking ninety-minute workouts, followed by an hour of singing, daily. Did I mention she is sixty-nine years old?  Her work calls for, she says, “a society of citizens who admit that they are needy and vulnerable.” 

Here I am! But, oops, where is she? She comes across as anything but needy and vulnerable.Talk about radical self-care. Did I mention the "Lamaze is for wimps" comment re: her daughter's birth? The colonoscopy sans sedation? Strength run amok has its allure, as anyone knows who is a fan of Tracy Lord in “The Philadelphia Story.” Isn’t it much more enticing to watch for slivers of vulnerability in the strong than to wade through the marshes of vulnerability with the, well, vulnerable? The possibility that the strong and invulnerable outside will turn out to be on the inside a litter of warm puppies who escape and rollick and frolic in public adorability - isn’t that one of those seven universal plots we love so much? 

Anyhoo. 

Happy week. 

Vive la République!