Slogging On

Missed a good surfing day today, which always puts me in a funk. I only have myself to blame, though. I got lazy, and it was just so cold. I'm getting soft; I can't handle the cold anymore. We didn't really heat our apartment at all last year. Now I feel like I have to have the heater running all the time. Plus, our apartment has zero insulation, another feature of this place that we won't be missing when we finally move out of here (hopefully soon).

The last few days of 2006, and here I am whining about the heat (or lack thereof). I can't believe we're most of the way through the first decade of the new millenium. In a few months I'll be twenty-nine; in another year, thirty. It doesn't feel like I've got all that much to show for it yet. Here's to next year.

Thanatos

My own sirens I recognize as such, but that doesn't make them any less attractive. It's not a desire for death, so much as a fascination with it. Maybe it's part of my need to imagine the worst, so that it can't catch me by surprise. I do it, but even I don't believe that it really helps. The worst can always be worse than you imagined it.

James et al.

Today's subject is literary greatness. Why is it so hard to pinpoint what makes a great work such? One of the (many) reasons that Hemingway is great is because he is a master wordsmith: there are no extraneous words. Similarly, Cormac McCarthy and Ray Carver. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, Henry James, another acknowledged Great Writer: by the time you read to the end of a Jamesian sentence, you've (or at least, I've) forgotten what the beginning said.

And what about characters? O'Hara and Fitzgerald, who pin characters down to the last detail. Versus those like Eco, whose work is more symbolic. Yet Great Writers all.

Is there no rule? How can we separate the bad from the good from the great without some sort of guideline? Or am I being too much the lawyer again?

Wanting Things

I used to think that I was not a very materialistic person, but it seems like lately all I can think about is buying things. It feels like every day I add something(s) to the list of things that I want. And it never feels like enough, even when I get them: the list continues to grow. I got the new cellphone, but then I needed a bluetooth headset. I've got fifty purses, but I can't stop thinking about this messenger bag I've had my eye on for months (now on sale, but still unjustifiable given the many, many messenger bags and laptop cases I've got in my closet). I got the turquoise cuff, but now I want pink pearls. And I don't even wear jewelry. What's happening to me? It's like the evil spirits of greed and desire and envy have come to rest in my body and made themselves at home.

Something else is happening. It sounds cliched, but it's true. There's a hole in my spirit that I keep trying to fill with things. The things I want are just building blocks, and I'm using them to try to construct the person I want to be, the life I want to lead. But it doesn't work that way. I'm not going to be a better person with my new Coach purse. I'm not going to be more beloved for owning one more cashmere sweater. I already have so many things, material and intangible, for which to be thankful.

I hate how this season has been coopted by retailers. We worry about buying the right things, trying to fulfill people's material desires, and it's sickening when you compare this preoccupation with the real reason for the season: that Christ's birth was a creation-changing occasion, the arrival of God in the flesh. And He came for one reason: to die on a cross, in order to save us. Christmas is really about Calgary and Easter.

Let me remember this, and be tempted no more.

In the Eye

We, my husband and I, were in a crowded restaurant the other day, sitting at a table in close proximity to a mother and her two children. The two children were sitting opposite their mother. All three of them bore a striking resemblance to each other: frizzy brown hair, round freckled faces, upturned noses, decided lack of cheekbones or distinct bone structure. I bring this up only to give context to the conversation we overheard.

The mother was telling her two children that they had been blessed with an extraordinary physical beauty. The two children's faces as they listened to her were intent, so focused that their eyes bulged slightly and their soft mouths hung open. It could have been comical, but I found myself fervently hoping that they would believe their mother, that they would always believe their mother, no matter who else came along in their lives or what else was ever said to them.

How many of us really believe that we are beautiful, no matter how many times we are told or who tells us? It's always easier to believe the opposite. Back in high school, I had a bad breakup with a boy who is probably now dead (this is a long and unrelated story). I took up with another boy, who I loved (or rather, was slightly obsessed with, which in high school amounts to more or less the same thing). We were good for each other in some ways, and really, really terrible in most others. At some point in our pseudo-but-non-relationship, he told me he thought I was a seven and a half. I felt humiliated. The pain and embarrassment of it was so strong that it still rankles, ten years later, and I have never told anyone else about it.

Even now, I can't help believing it, no matter how many times I hear otherwise - from strangers, acquaintances, friends, family, my husband. I've had men I don't know offer to buy me flowers, stop me on the street to tell me I'm beautiful; once, in LA, someone got down on his knees and started singing. Once, in a restaurant, it was even a woman: she stopped at my table and asked me what it was like to be beautiful. This is weird for me; I look in the mirror and I just don't see it. That seven and a half, it hasn't left me.

Mean

Everyone has a certain image of him/herself. A certain way you want other people to see you. The things we say, the way we act, the clothes we wear - all these things are chosen to make a representation to other people as to who you are.

Why can't I go along with it? Let people pick their own image and pretend to see it too? I take sick pleasure in showing people how they are posing themselves, in twisting their representations to show them that they are not who they want to be. I do this even with people I love. I don't know why I do it; part of me recoils at the thought of hurting my friends, but there is a part of me that presses forward nevertheless. I think I must be a terrible person.

Quiet

Rain bothers me. Particularly rain against tall gray buildings. Out by the ocean, or in a forest, I don't mind it so much. But rainy cities, yes. Rainy suburbs are the worst. All those strip malls, drenched in rain. People going about their mundane business is bad enough on a sunny day. In the rain, it's unbearable. Watching a middle-aged lady in nondescript clothes struggling to get her soggy groceries into her nondescript car - how can anyone not get depressed by this? It's not the woman, or the groceries, or even really the rain. It's the idea that we get up in the morning, go to bed at night, and no matter who we are or how special we find ourselves, what we do in between is really just killing time.

Learning to Play Nice

The wife of a friend constantly talks about "mani-pedis" and trips to the spa. Every little bump in the road of life warrants a trip to the spa. Because she doesn't work, life's bumps usually take the form of cooking for a dinner party, or just feeling blue.

Why does this irritate me so much? Okay, so mani-pedis aren't my thing: I can't get used to having long fingernails (a result of years of piano and sports) and I don't wear strappy little shoes often enough to warrant a pedicure (although I am rather fond of my feet, which just look so quintessentially feet). But why does it annoy me that someone else might take pleasure in these things?

It's not that I envy her lifestyle. Now that I work from home, my schedule is certainly free enough to allow me the occasional trip to the spa (something I would never have had time for in my former incarnation as a corporate lawyer). I no longer make any money, but my husband makes enough for a monthly or bi-monthly mani-pedi.

I think that may be it: maybe it's the picture of a woman going to the spa and getting manicures and pedicures while her husband is off at work, doing far more important things. The picture of a frivolous woman, "kept" in the way a house pet is kept. I fear that woman. I fear that she lives in me, too. Certainly most people might justifiably confuse me with her. I don't have a corporate job or a regular salary anymore. I spend a lot of time shopping (although, to be fair to me, this is because it's nearing Christmas). I am my little family's primary meal-cooker, home-cleaner, and errand girl.

In sum, I guess my friend's wife irritates me because she brings up yet again the question over which I have been obsessing for the last four months: did I do the right thing in quitting my job to pursue what may well prove to be a chimera?

Ice

The water is supposed to be warmer during El Nino years, but I almost froze to death while surfing. As soon as I touched the water, I realized it was colder than normal, but I was there, I'd struggled into my wetsuit and with strapping and unstrapping the board, and damn it, I was going to surf. Fifteen minutes in, my fingers and toes were tingling with pain. Half an hour later, I could no longer feel them, which I had at first thought was a positive development. An hour later, my lips and nailbeds were blue and I thought I should get out. But I hadn't caught anything to speak of, and there were finally waves coming in. Two hours later, still having caught nothing, I could no longer paddle. My arms felt like they were lead, or big blocks of ice. I finally got out. It took me another two hours after that, and a very long shower, to feel like myself again.

Into the Woods

We live close to a park, and every morning, when I open the blinds, I look out onto sunrise over the tops of the trees across the way. It's beautiful, and it makes me happy to be here, even if the apartment has been a disappointment in other respects. In general, I've been feeling much happier lately. Part of it is the excitement of the holidays, and friends and family coming into town. Part of it is...I don't know. Better attitude?

My biggest source of worry these days is my sister. She recently broke up with her boyfriend, and, while everyone who cares about her agrees that this is a good thing, she has been taking it rather hard. I wish there was something I could do. I'm not sure that setting her up with someone new would help that much. And even if it would, I don't know anyone. I used to know a lot of single guys, but in recent years they have all become part of couples. Plus, she's my little sister and I don't want to set her up with just anyone. He has to be perfect, or as close to it as possible.

Worry...it's funny, even though I no longer work for the Man, I feel like I still have just as much worry in my life, although it is a different kind of worry. Things that I didn't have time to worry about before, but now I do. What's that rule, the one that says that things expand to take up as much time or as much room as has been left for them? I guess worry is the same way.

It Shows

December already. A new month, almost a new year. I can't believe how cold it is, but I'm excited for the holidays. Friends coming into town, holiday lights and spirit, and all that. I'm also excited for Mavericks to start breaking, so I can go watch the truly hardcore tangle with the rocks and the sharks. It's never been about the adrenaline for me, but I admire the people who get out there.

I can't believe it's almost 2007. Where did the first decade of the new millenium go? I was listening to the radio this morning, and they were taking calls from parents on the topic of whether they would let their eleven- or twelve-year-olds date. My immediate response was, NO WAY. I can't imagine letting a kid that young date. And then I had a sudden flashback. When I was twelve years old and boys would call me, my parents would freak out. I thought they were so unreasonable. At twelve, having boys call and want to ask you out seemed like the most vital thing in the world. How could my parents deprive me of that? Now, sixteen years later, I'm thinking more like a parent and not like a kid. When did this transition happen? The age, it's starting to show.