Landscape

This last weekend was beautiful, the weather so warm and perfect. Even on the coast, it was warm in a way that it rarely is here in Northern California, a heat so perfect that even the cold of the water couldn't quench it. Driving to work, the hills are hazed in a mist gently glowing from the rising sun. What could be better than fall in California?

KIT

One of the bizarre things about Facebook is that suddenly everyone wants to be your friend. Even people I don't know from Adam have been trying to friend me. Usually I reject these friend requests. But lately they've been coming from people who claim to have gone to high school with me. Some of them I remember, some of them I don't. Some of them are people who I recognize but who I'm sure I've never spoken to in my life. Usually I feel bad about rejecting these requests - we did, after all, go to high school together. Why are all these people suddenly feeling so nostalgic? Is it because we're hurtling toward thirty?

One Year

It's been over a year since I left my old firm, over a year since I started seriously trying to write. It's been over a month since I started the new job at this new firm. And it's been almost three months since my niece was born. These are the benchmarks of my life. Where has the time gone? Sometimes it feels like I never left the practice of law, and then, other times, I look around me and wonder what I'm doing, in this office, and what happened to the days when life was lived inside my head.

I don't have much time to write these days. Well, that's not strictly true. I do have time, but creative is the last thing I feel when I get home from work. Most days I feel like my brain isn't functioning properly and I worry that I'm going senile or something, before the age of thirty. It's possible, isn't it?

It's been a weird month. We've got a lot of friends in SD and LA, and it's been worrying, with the fires and everything. Four years since the last bad fires, six years since 9/11, all the heartbreaks and nightmares.

Life of the Mind

It's a common saying that it isn't a good thing to live too much inside one's own head. But why? Are most people really that prone to depressive thinking, that to be inside their own heads too much is so bad? Aren't there any happy people out there, who will continue to be happy even if inside their own heads all the time?

It's another common saying that crazy people don't see reality the way other people do. Maybe this is why so many writers end up committing suicide or otherwise dying young. What is being a writer but creating reality, seeing things differently from other people? Is hearing and speaking and living with your characters day in and day out really any different from "hearing voices"? I guess in the former, you are aware that they're not real. But how distinct is the line?

I was reading an article in an issue of the New Yorker from a couple of weeks ago, about neuroscience and research into so-called vegetables. In one part of the article, it discussed people with a certain condition, who are not aware that they see or hear something, but react to the stimulus nevertheless. For example, they are shown two pictures, one of a burning house, and one of a nice, normal house. They are not aware of what they are seeing, don't know that they're seeing anything, because some wire in their brains got crossed somehow. But when asked which picture they preferred, they almost always pick the one with the normal house.

It made me wonder if there isn't some level of "vision" out there that "normal" people haven't achieved, that we are, all of us, deficient and missing a piece of the picture. And yet we feel its presence. Maybe God lives out there. We don't know we're seeing Him, but, for the most part, we choose to live in the house where He is.

And maybe it's like being a writer, an artist. Maybe there's something out there we don't see, but somehow, it makes its way into our subconscious. And it guides us.

Squeaky clean

Today I came home and the house was sparkly clean. There was no dust anywhere. The carpets had been vacuumed, the mirrors polished, the tub scrubbed. It was the best ninety dollars I've spent in a long time. I finally caved in to the arguments of my husband and in-laws, who kept telling me that it wasn't worth what little free time I have to be cleaning. And frankly, I could not have done as good a job as these gals did. It's funny what a difference it made to my mood. I haven't been well lately: still have the shingles, and a cough I can't shake, a difficult week at work, difficulties in my personal life. I've been really down, in fact. But the clean house put a smile on my face. The first one all week.

Pain Tolerance

I have a pretty high level of pain tolerance when it comes to physical pain. I started my job while suffering from shingles (which I've still got), I got my wisdom teeth pulled without any anesthesia, I routinely dislocate my shoulder and pop it back in on my own.

But I've got a very low pain tolerance when it comes to emotional pain. I get my feelings hurt pretty easily. When someone hurts me, sometimes it hurts so bad that I'm literally incapacitated. Sometimes it hurts so bad I would almost rather die, even though I know I don't really want to.

My tolerance for emotional pain is so low that there is nowhere I feel safe. Unconditional love...do I really believe in it, outside of the context of God's love? A friend of mine once got incredibly angry with me for saying that I didn't, but then, he didn't believe in God. Didn't believe in God, yet somehow believed that human beings were capable of unconditional love. Maybe it's the Chicago-trained economist in me: people act out of their own self-interest. People love you as long as you're useful. If you can't come to terms with that, it's only going to open up more vistas of pain in the end.

Old hand

Already halfway through my third week in the new job, the new life. Hard to believe it; it feels like just yesterday I was walking in those doors for the first time, wondering what I'd gotten myself into. But it hasn't been so bad, so far. I've been busy, the hours have been long, but I've been interested in what I've been doing. My brain feels like it's been getting a workout. It's not where I thought I'd be a year ago, six months ago, but I guess I'd have to say that I'm glad I'm here. At least for now, it feels like it's where I need to be.