Surviving anniversaries and remembering the 70s-80s-90s

By my standards, this is a long time between blog posts.  I have survived a deeply weird week and kind of hellacious weekend of anniversaries.  Saturday was the 5th anniversary of my wedding and Sunday was the 5th anniversary of my miscarriage, both of course for the first time without my husband from whom I am separated and headed towards divorce.

The week before the fun-fest weekend was taken up with a mixture of grieving and dreading the weekend upcoming and filling out applications for teaching and a postdoc.  This was a strange way to spend a holiday week perhaps, but also necessary.  Sunday and Monday were spent grading many, many research papers and reading my acting students' journals.

I spent time seeing some friends and a show, a review of which I will add soon (The Storm by Blessed Unrest, which is definitely worth a look-in).  More later on that in next post as I think it's best to separate the reviews from the personal posts, mostly for the sake of the people being reviewed.

The thing I am most happy about, if happy is the right word given the circumstances, is that I did what I needed to do this week, talked to people to whom I need to talk, connected with myself and didn't bail on my emotions or my work.  I do wonder if perhaps I 'should' have spent the time doing something more like be on a yoga retreat or something, but then was reminded by friends: you know, whatever gets you through the night and if that includes applications for jobs (which you need - a teaching job that is), then so be it.  The only thing I can't do is take a drink or a drug...all the rest is gravy.

One of the people I spent time with, along with older friends, is one of the people who took my workshop, who is around the same age and going through the strange in-between time that I am.  I am beginning to think this may be a somewhat common thing for people my age and in particular my generation.  The one I have dubbed the who-the-fuck-are-you generation - not GenXers, not Baby Boomers... somewhere in the fulcrum...a transitional generation.

I was speaking with another person my age today who is a writer, I've mentioned him before here - he was a boyfriend in high school (only briefly, because I couldn't handle being with someone who actually liked me and was nice - you know the drill: zero self-esteem + being a girl = bad choices, etc.).  He, too, though happily married and doing well is also in a transitional place with his career - stuck in the eternal adjunct-ing world even with five - count them five - published novels.  But hey, why does that matter?  Luckily for him, his wife has been luckier in the academic world, but then apparently she feels somewhat suffocated by the amount of work of her full time teaching and how much time it takes from her writing (which is also published and very well-regarded).

Another friend of mine, also around my age, is a wildly successful director of a mental health facility - doing groundbreaking work, considered a national voice on the matter.  He wanted to be a writer originally and because he spends so much time at his job, he cannot spend the time he wants to writing.

I know many such stories.

There are of course a handful of people in my generation that I don't know that well, but are acquaintances, who are doing quite well in their chosen artistic paths.  I don't know how they feel inside, but of course it is possible to succeed on one's own terms as well.  However, the operative word there is 'handful' as in: not many.  Maybe it has always been thus, probably has...but there's something I sense about people in my generation and have for a long time...

In the same way that we are not identifiable as a generation per se and are not marketed to like at all (apparently we're just too tricky so the advertisers have given up on us - hooray for that), our voices as artists are not immediately recognizable either.  This is not, I hasten to add, necessarily a bad thing, but it makes it difficult for us in the short term (in artist-years 'short term' means: while we are alive or at least not until we are 80+).

There are many beautiful things I have seen written, created and made by people my age or thereabouts, so I do not despair for us, I'm just noting that on the whole we are not as visible as artists who are about 10 years older or younger than us.  In case you have not been following this blog, I'm 48 just to give you an idea of the age-group I am discussing (people about 45-50ish).

I fear this sounds too whiny, so I want to add that I also feel good about being my age, about what I have to offer from this vantage point and that I am glad I can see forward and backward a good ways.  I  was alive and politically aware before Reagan so remember a time when poor people were considered unfortunate and the inevitable cost of capitalism ergo helping poor people was considered a good idea versus from Reagan onward when poor people became somehow diseased, lazy, stupid or whatever - but something that made poverty the poor person's own personal failing and was therefore their fault and theirs alone to shoulder.

I'm glad I lived before that 'reality' became solidified here in the US...which so-called reality we have exported to the rest of the world (see in re: Euro-collapse 'austerity' plans, etc.) even to China of all places, which is sad-hilarious-kinda.

I was tweeting back and forth with a younger colleague in London who was watching 'If..." and telling him that we were shown that film at boarding school in the chapel at Choate Rosemary Hall (not a crunchy granola place, trust me on that) in 1979.  He was amazed that any school would show that film (which culminates in an armed insurrection of British boarding school students, FYI), never mind a high-school....I told him that even more than that my British drama teacher Mr. Symonds complained  that he was disappointed that we just watched and didn't riot afterwards as the boys had done in 1973 when they had shown it then.  (In 1973 CRH was Choate and a boy's school).

Can you even begin to imagine that happening now, like, anywhere?  Anywhere at all?  And that was only a little over 30 years ago.  By then we were considered the more conservative students (not quite Boomers we were the ones who would get 'graduated' out of school into Reagan's America and many people my age became Yuppies of course...though there were the hold-outs like me, who were not happy with The Plan...but we were a minority, it's true...the ones who you see milling around Occupy Wall Street gatherings with the greying hair and warily optimistic smiles).

I then watched the Reagan-Thatcher revolution, followed of course by the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Europe under that regime...All of this happening so quickly while I changed file codes at an international law firm to reflect the new countries that were popping up daily, while typing frantic letters to these countries in search of Trademark Attorneys to brand the Products of the New Capitalism.

Until we find ourselves here now, the frogs almost boiled to death in the slowly increasing heat - not quite dead of course, just so fucking scared and tired from being almost cooked, that we allow law after law get passed to deny us our basic First Amendment rights while more get passed ensuring fake Second Amendment Rights (a well ordered militia surely including concealed weapons) and denying women the right to control their own bodies (that according to conservatives is miraculously not government intrusion, which just beggars belief in terms of logic).

But worse than all that is the fact that the movie 'If..." could not be shown at a school, because it would be considered too controversial.  There is, along with everything else, this Wonder-breadization of thought, basic critical thought.  While we are given more and more and more products and strange stratifications of these products (how many kinds of nail polish remover does anyone need  for fucks' sake???), our thought process is being dumbed down to the most moronic level.  Add to that the ADD-inducing 'smart' phone (the one that makes you stupid), social-networking, video games and the like, who has time to even have a thought, never mind act on one.

I know there have been some heartening rebellions throughout the world recently, and long may they continue, but here in the Great Super Mall of America, I feel/see/sense again the Great Stagnation.  Even in Britain, where there is more critical thought as a whole, my colleague could not imagine the movie being shown at a school...and he teaches at university.

Pseudo-Health and safety being the operative term that comes to mind to name this state of affairs.  I am not talking here about sensible work safety rules, but the larger issue of cosseting ourselves and each other from anything uncomfortable ever.  It is a pervasive disease.

I feel grateful that when I was growing up this culture of the feather pillow everywhere had not yet taken hold, that for all the pain and weirdness I encountered, there was also a sense abroad in the land that you could handle things, as a young person especially - that ideas were not dangerous but exciting and good, that conflict was good.  I don't mean armed conflict or violence, I mean - gasp - conflict of ideas.  I remember huge arguments with classmates, in class, with teachers, between teachers, etc.  This was encouraged.  It was considered a good thing.

Now, it seems like there is an expectation that you go along to get along, that anyone challenging anyone's authority is a troublemaker instead of someone trying to stimulate thought and - dare I say it - debate.  Now, if you disagree with (or don't recognize) someone, you carry a concealed weapon, say you are Standing Your Ground and shoot them in 'self-defense'.  What is up with that?

No wonder there are so many random shootings.  Who are we to become - automatons with guns?  If so, what do you expect to come out of that?

Ah yes, this rant, this rant makes me know: I am home.  I am back in the US.  It reads like one of my plays.  Here I am, sitting at home, ready to rumble.  Somehow, I find that oddly comforting. 

But, I should also add, I am glad to be the age I am.  Glad to feel for the first time ever that I am OK as I am.  I know that sounds like the biggest cliche horse-shit line ever, but it's true and it's been a long time coming.  I can trust myself.  I am not clinging to anyone else for that knowledge, overtly or covertly.  I am in fact standing my ground, but not with a gun.  Just me.  Just standing here, breathing, taking up some space, and for once, for once not feeling like I have to apologize for that fact.

My cat has come to sit down next to me to remind me - I think - that I have been typing a long time and perhaps he, Ugo the Cat, deserves some love...so will take that cue to stop for now.

Spring happens

Hello after a long pause.  I am still not entirely sure what to say right now, but have some photos of early spring in Inwood and that seems of note.

I have an ambivalent relationship with spring because it leads inexorably to anniversary of April 14, my wedding day followed by April 15, miscarriage day.  While this was five years ago, I still have no children and that's a wrap, and now I am separated from my husband, mostly likely for good.  This is my first year facing these days without him.  Because of the miscarriage, our anniversary was never just an easy day, but I had been looking forward to the time when that would change.  But now, that won't happen.  On the other hand, because we are not together, I don't have to pretend to be happy on April 14, so I guess that's a grace note.

This is the general tone right now, hence the reason I have not written in close to a week.  I don't want to just be a purveyor of sadness or violin background music.  On the other hand, I can't pretend I'm not grieving.

I have spent this past week meditating and making up teaching work left undone because of a month of being sick.  So part of it is simply tiredness.  And let's face it, I'm also depressed.  And no, I don't want to take fucking drugs for that, so please don't suggest it.  I'm not suicidal, I'm just really sad.

At random, I picked a PJ Harvey CD from my collection To Bring You My Love and am listening to it now.  I have not been able to bear listening to this album for years, because it reminded me of a time when I was way more open with myself and with B (our first year together - somehow we seemed to be falling away from each other for all the subsequent years even though we tried the getting married thing - didn't help - not really...I have some suspicions of why this is so but will not recount them here).  I spent the rest of the years trying to pretend this part of me that Harvey's music touches didn't exist.  I didn't do that consciously.  But I did it.  I knew there was a loss.  I probably blamed it on B, on the UK, whatever.  But the fact is: I was the one faking myself out, not anyone else.  No one forced me to stay in an untenable situation.  That was all me.

Dear God, I never want to do that again.  I feel like it's Groundhog Day as I write that.  Said it after my first marriage, too, for slightly different reasons, but not That different.  So, how do I trust myself ever again in relationship world?  Not sure I do.

But this I am doing differently: I am not even looking to be involved with anyone else right now.  Not even looking.  Seriously.  I know this and only this much: I am damaged, I need to heal.  I don't mean damaged by B to be clear.  I just mean damaged by the whole experience much of which was by my own hands, though of course we were both there.  Not to mention all the childhood stuff, etc.

After my first marriage while I didn't go flying out to find someone, I ended up in various romantic-ish intrigues fairly soon - some of which were real, some of which were loosely based on fact (like a hack job bio).  When B and I first separated, I felt like I should go find someone new right away, even though that wasn't 'healthy' mostly because I was sick to death with always trying to be 'healthy' which seemed to have produced nothing but yet another failed marriage, a kind of endless grieving process over a miscarriage, my father's death and a sense of chronic dislocation...etc., etc...Years of therapy and various recovery processes and where was I?  Sobbing in my bed at 2am.  Fab.

Quickly, however, cooler heads (mine) prevailed and I realized: You Are So Not Ready to Be With Anyone.  And so here I am - still alone.  No prospects.  I'm assuming B is with someone by now, but don't know for sure.  But then again, I always assume stuff like that.

This album, the one I have on now, I sent to him after our first 10 fall-in-love-like-in-a-movie days together in NYC, for Valentine's Day.  Up to that moment, we seemed to be on the same page - open and absurdly in love.  Then his response to this CD was somewhat muted and I was - secretly - crushed.  I didn't say anything of course, but I felt what I continued to feel for 10 years: I'm too much for him.  I have to back off.  I'm too intense.  I'm too....fill in the blank... Be careful.

10 years.  Be careful.  I'm too much.

See?

Who would do that for 10 years?  Whose fault is that?  B's?  Nope.  Mine.

Until I can honestly say to myself that I will never sell myself down the river like that again, it's me and my cat and a cup of tea.

I can't tell myself that honestly until I know in my bones that I am worthy of taking up space on this planet.  I would like to tell you after my 5 million years of recovery/therapy etc. that I can do that, but honestly, I'm not sure.  Sometimes I fear I am irrevocably damaged and real love is just a bridge too far for me in this lifetime.  Maybe that's true.  I don't know.

I do know I feel real love for a few close friends.  I have acted in moments out of unconditional love for a handful of people.  Those moments and the relationships that include those moments are the most precious things to me in the world.  Unlike all other transitory happiness, the memory of those times and what has resulted from that never dies.  There's a saying where I hang out a lot: you've got to give it away to keep it.  Yes.

I don't know if I will ever write something that I feel is what I could do if only....If only what?  Not sure...Had enough time, wisdom, real ability with words...was better, more observant, richer so I had that sensibility...more something.  Too much of that, not enough of this...etc.

But for all that, spring happens....not only in nature.  In me.

I love this PJ Harvey album tonight.  I am Not afraid of this part of myself tonight, the part with passion, love, need and that can cry it out loud.  I am reclaiming her.  Thank God/dess.

It's tentative like the buds on the trees in photos below.  But she will grow back, re-emerge.  She's not dead.  Because I have the opportunity to start over again - even if it feels a bit old at 48, here I am.  Again.  New again.  Spring again.

Yeah, there's grief.  Yeah it fucking sucks.  And yeah there's spring.  Spring tears my fucking heart out.  I want to cry all the time, but I will walk around in the woods.  I will breath in the new plants.  I will love the shit out of it even if it rips my guts out.

I don't want to ever feel like too much of anything ever again.

The beauty of NYC remains: it is impossible to feel too much of anything for this place.  That includes my friends here and everything I've been doing so far - teaching, friendships, readings, writing...etc.  If anything, I feel I have to get bigger, learn to take up space again.  I spent too many years trying to get smaller.  As my cousin Darcy's mother said to her once about trying to make yourself 'fit' in a relationship: "You can never be small enough."  She was right.

So I will leave you with some very early spring photos on this Daylight Savings Time night in the US.  The one good thing Bush did as president was move this day earlier in the year.  More sun.  Good thing.

Here's to never being too much....and to PJ Harvey.  An excellent British export.

no matter what...spring happens

relentless buds...

grass returns pushing away dead leaves

profligate yellow defying the brown (a lesson...?)

Ugo chillin'

ducks chillin'