Self-flagellation in public

Except, of course, it’s not really self-flagellation. Not really. I mean, look up self-flagellation, the act of, and you’ll see that the real thing still goes on.

Nevertheless. This is my little blurb sent out into the (not really ether anymore and I’m off the word cyber for the time being) world to say I wish I’d written more here over this past year, and by doing so,  making myself feel then that I must, absolutely must, write more here. I know. It sounds so mild, big deal. And it is mild. A lament, and a wish.

Tissue of lies

Not too long ago I was reading this profile of Cindy McCain and as I read this part:

Then she told another favorite story: she was twenty-four when she met John McCain at that cocktail party in Honolulu, but she told him that she was twenty-seven. McCain claimed to be thirty-seven; he was in fact forty-two. Cindy McCain giggled as she explained that they did not fess up until their marriage announcement was published in the local newspaper. “We started our marriage on a tissue of lies,” she said with a smile, as the audience laughed.

I thought, ‘Tissue of lies.’ I know I’ve heard that somewhere before. Turns out it was Madame Bovary, which I’ve recently had reason to reread.

From that moment her existence was but one long tissue of lies, in which she enveloped her love as in veils to hide it. It was a want, a mania, a pleasure carried to such an estent that if she said she had the day before walked on the right side of a road, one might know she had taken the left.

Well, now, isn’t that something? Cindy = Emma?

(Someone/site going by grammarphobia tries to track down the origin of tissue of lies, if you’re interested.)

The traveling writer

As in:

INTERVIEWER: Do you write in your study or do you occupy every room of the house?

ROBINSON: I do a lot in the study, but the couch also, and so on. It’s nice to be able to move around and not be completely bound to one place or another, the way some people are.

That I can relate to. Reading the interview with Marilynn Robinson (The Paris Review, The Art of Fiction No. 198) I’m reminded of why I do bother those times I do to read author interviews. It’s fun to read of the [revered, successful] writer whose practices or ways of doing it are your own, and in this case, it’s fun to have debunked the idea that one must have one’s regular spot. This is what’s assured and promoted in such [good] handbooks as The War of Art and Eric Maisel’s Deep Writing, and a few others. It’s not that I don’t see the reason for it, as part of the ritual, and the reason for the ritual — how it shortcuts and avoids a lot of anxieties and unnecessary diversions and energy drains, etc and so on — but it’s important to me to be fully alive, to not be a robotron. Write anywhere! I say. Write anytime! What is the point otherwise?

On the other hand, I appreciate tremendously how she says that she needs to forget the physical — yes — and therefore dresses like a slob, so that she can forget herself:

I dress like a bum. John Cheever would wear a suit and a hat and go down from his apartment to the basement of his building with an attaché case. But that’s not me. I like to be as forgetful of my own physical being as I can be.

(I will make no comment on her religiousness. Other than to say at least she has given it thought.)

Because hiking in Marin County

is some of the best to be had. I mean, available to me here daily! Mt. Tam, the ocean. Coyote Canyon. Outside my door.

Hanging in the tree at the start of a trail head

Neighbors’ chimes

Since this weekend, there’s a new sound, unavoidable. I sleep with my windows open. The neighbors have hung some new chimes. They have a high tinkling, perhaps not what I would have chosen. They put their house up for sale, then hung the chimes.

War dream

Here’s the dream I had:

I was a soldier in the Iraq war; there was no choice about it. So that I wouldn’t have to hurt anyone, I had a position of serving as target practice. I stood in the middle of a circle, with my right arm extended, surrounded by other soldiers who practiced shooting off my arm. It seems that my arm was not really like a flesh-and-blood arm in that when someone shot it, the arm came off like perhaps a cardboard or tin object in a carnival shooting gallery. It was removed entirely and then just as quickly “regenerated” itself so that it could be torn away again, and again. I was happy with the arrangement, experiencing only the mildest twinge of anxiety that someone else might decide that I was getting off too easily and my job would therefore be taken from me. Then, someone shot and this time the bullet did not remove my arm but instead entered my arm about six inches above my wrist, and I felt this (I did not feel or have sensation of the other shots). It was incredibly painful and I began to cry and beg someone to hurry up and shoot again and remove the entire arm.

I suppose that on the most obvious level the dream seems to say that I have a willingness to sacrifice myself in order to avoid hurting others, and I don’t really feel very pleased with that.

Responsible for being understood

While we’re packing up to move out of here, we’re getting visits from family members who we haven’t seen for a while, who figure, I suppose, that it will be even longer before they come out to CA. (The latter is not necessarily a bad thing, really.) These visits have prompted, as they will, self-reflection, and reflection, in general. (Note the previous post.)

So, self-reflection. Losing my personal religion. Those beliefs that I’m not entirely aware of or consciously operating from. Such as?

The latest: I seem to believe that it is on me to make myself understood. To the extent that I will articulate things in a variety of ways, often re-articulate, substituting synonyms, creating metaphors. This is all well and good, fine for a teacher, which I have been, useful for a writer, which I am. I have been praised for being such a good communicator, no surprise. Yet, is it necessary to bring professional skills into (casual) conversation?

It came to me during my mother-in-law’s visit at one point as I realized that, once again, she did not get me, just did not understand, that I had put the onus on me to do my damnedest to have her understand, and that I had always taken that responsibility. And not just with her. I see that I have in the past walked away from communication breakdowns knowing better but feeling as if they were failures on my part.

I think it’s time

I wish for a moratorium on bad feelings between family members. It’s not my family of origin but P’s, and more specifically, it’s among his siblings and him mainly… and me, also. I don’t know what it takes or how it can happen or that it can. It’s just a wish and a desire. (I guess my feeling is that it’s probably not possible, probably not desired by those who it’s most up to.)

Big Sur getaway

A new favorite wine

Benziger — Biodynamic:

the highest form of organic farming. It goes beyond the elimination of all chemical inputs. It incorporates the environment in and around the vineyard and works with nature to apply the knowledge of life forces to bring about balance and healing in the soil.

Delicious.