I Am Clouseau. Apparently
Now we may see how this ridiculous thing called my mind Actually Functions. It’s very much like a dog I saw once, chasing a bug in the grass with his nose.
Today I was forcibly reminded of a couple of things. We were watching a Pink Panther movie, the Partner and I, one night. The one where Clouseau is supposed to be dead, but he isn’t, and the Herbert Lom character sees him while delivering his eulogy. Shorts out, collapses. I was laughing and the Partner says, in that pre-weapons grade zinger way of his, kindly of course: You really like these don’t you? I snuffled and nodded. You relate to the Commissioner, don’t you? Again, a snuffled chortle and nod from me. Have you, he said, ever thought that you are REALLY like Clouseau? I was so stunned I got hiccups. But there is proof positive every day and I have had to learn to live with it. Today, for example. I brought the laundry in, and having folded and stacked it haphazardly and.well, my clean socks fell into the kitchen garbage. Here honey, said the Partner, I’ll carry it into the bedroom. No! No! I said…I still have to…and then of course there was a huge crash as the garage door opener flew off the laundry carrier and the whole thing tipped over and..there were coffee beans involved…He looked at me. I looked at the floor and said: I think I’m done here. Later on, in the shower, I felt quite proud of the fact that although I did drop the shaving cream can, it did not explode as it has other times. Partner, by now exhausted, skids into the bathroom, says: NOTHING IS EVER QUIET WITH YOU IS IT? This is just to point out what the backdrop to my thought process is.
Later on, instead of doing what I Should Have Been Doing, I was watching a movie featuring Hillary Swank. In this film, she portrays a teacher in Long Beach, California, who by paying attention to her students allows them to flower and succeed. I saw all my old teachers in this movie: The ones who told me I’d never amount to anything, I’d never fit in, never be anything or anybody. I also saw the ones who paid attention and who, basically, saved me. So in between all the Noise and stuff, I returned to my pondering of novels and artists and people who are in service to others, and that sort of thing. It is tremendously challenging to persist in the face of what are really almost insurmountable difficulties. But people do it every day. They learn to read, and write, and think for themselves. They see that we are here to help each other. Fear really does keep us all apart. As you may expect, I often see that fear as being fostered and fomented by a system that wants to keep itself in place: A top down arrangement where the only thing that trickles down isn’t very nice. However. The effort it takes to really look at another being and see them , just the same as you are, it opens up almost unimaginable vistas of possibility. The two novelists I mentioned yesterday, Okri (The Famished Road) and wa Thiongo (The Wizard of Crow) do this work of opening those vistas. I think at times people can say, well that doesn’t have anything to do with me, when they hear or read about someone in a (seemingly) different situation. But it always has everything to do with all of us . What we have to do is the work of translating that vista into our own lives, not hiding things about who we are and what we do, or have done. Understanding that others are not all that different from us (however..er…Clouseau like we may be). Being true to ourselves and honest with our guts, and having compassion. Compassion doesn’t mean making excuses or pretending to be something we’re not. It is realizing, as a nurse said to a woman on a gurney in an Emergency Room I worked in, that we are all in pain here. But it is beautiful anyway.
Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say
Pressing matters in other parts of the kingdom have been requiring our attention of late, so, lest you, Gentle Reader, think we’ve gone tits up in a ditch, no, we haven’t. Not yet, anyway.
We seemed to have hit a new low; or, as a financial news commentator called the economic situation, a MULTI-DECADE LOW. Baking bread helped, as usual: crust speckled with fermentation bubbles, yes. Irregular holes in interior: lace-like almost this time, yes. Still. I am continuing to be quite struck with the Difficulties of Communication.
I think I’m saying something, simple usually, and it turns out the other person simply isn’t listening. Then when it becomes necessary to research the interaction, the memory of the person who wasn’t listening is the one that sticks. Whoever sticks to hearing whatever it is they want to hear, instead of what was really said, is generally the winner in such events. The model for this was firmly entrenched during the past eight years, of course, leaving me at least with an ongoing residual sense of somehow being totally lost. Words really matter to me; I love and admire them, and when they appear to have no meaning I get confused. REALLY confused. And this lack of meaning? Seems quite often to be covering up something that doesn’t smell right at all. It is as though everything was built on a non-existent foundation and quick as a flash, it’s all gone. Except that those who live in this world are still here amidst the rubble, whether or not they believed in WMDs, Santa Claus, affordable housing, having schools for children, or a consistent income and a trustworthy place to put it.
I listened to President Obama’s speech last night and as usual was impressed by his thought process and command of the language. He seems to be someone whose words actually mean what..well, what those words mean when you look them up in a dictionary. It’s refreshing indeed. However when I listen to the parts about sacrifice and responsibility, I feel very tired. I have already sacrificed and fought for what I believe in through all the channels this society provides. I have assumed responsibility for my consumption, my “carbon footprint”, my attitude, and all the rest of it. I guess I am waiting for others to truly step up and join in the work and begin to cooperate. There are some heartening signs in this direction but also many in the opposite direction. This is where the Words come in. Lots of people really don’t seem to understand them at all anymore. This, I find frightening.
It connects, somehow, to another thing that has occupied a portion of my mind that hasn’t been busy keeping dragons from torching the far ends of the kingdom, and that is an article in the New Yorker, relatively recently, on the writer Chinua Achebe. I have read and loved African writers, having had the good fortune in college to have a friend who read and shared them with me. It is true that there is a phantasmagorical quality to some of the writing, but in my view it is also completely real: the words of Ben Okri or Ngugi wa Thiongo describe things as they ARE. The words mean what they mean. In the aforementioned article, discussion was devoted to the issue of what language an African novelist “should” write in. English or the native tongue? This really made me stop and think. English being the language of the colonizer, the oppressor, the foreigner: However eloquent a language it is, it is still not the language that an African writer learns life in as a child. Yet in this case writing in one’s own language limits, at times quite drastically, the numbers of people who will read that writing. What a horrible dilemma, I thought. Then, I thought: What an incredible expansion it provides in a way for a writer. One has to learn the language of someone who, for good or ill, has vanquished one’s society. This means taking in the understanding of the world and the psychology of that language as well. Then, to weave it into a whole that expresses one’s own reality and response to all that has gone on before. This is an extraordinary achievement and it seems that may be what needs to be done now: relearn our “mother tongue” so that it no longer seems like a foreign language to us, and then truly understand what we are saying.
And now for something completely different
Food, that’s what it is. And cooking.
I got a clue a very, very long time ago when I realized that watching Julia Child was the main thing keeping me from walking out into traffic. My mom is a great cook so I grew up watching and learning how things are supposed to taste. Ultimately, cooking is what I do almost as a daily meditation. Who knew? The trend now of purchasing already made food, and prepared foods, and all of that….I find rather strange. How did we get to a place where we don’t have time to feed ourselves or the people we love? Making something for someone to eat is, in my opinion, one of the most healing things that can be done. To me the fact that it is no longer routine is very symptomatic of what ails us as a culture, but We’re Not Going There Today. No, today we’re going to review Things I’ve Made Lately To Avert Irretrievable Mental Breakdown.
First: chocolate sauce. We had The Abomination as a next door neighbor for quite some time. He finally, blessedly, moved out. This was with the same activity level as when he moved in, i.e., it all transpired between midnight and 3 a.m., lotsa noise. The police came twice. The move-in had involved him parking a HUGE diesel truck..where? Need you ask? in our driveway. Then revving it full throttle with lights and beeping backup noises and fumes at 4:45 a.m. It felt like the house had been rammed. Not a good start. So this time? After the first police visit (his behest; the story of his fleet of junkers can wait for another time) I thought: Hmmm. Action must be taken here. So I went into the kitchen and thought: chocolate. Thomas Keller has a great, easy chocolate sauce recipe, the magic ingredient in which is corn syrup (small amount). So I made chocolate sauce, put it on ice cream, and peace was restored in OUR household at least. See how easy.
Secondly, sourdough bread. I referred to the baguettes earlier, but really. Gentle Readers, I was at the ravelled wet end of that week’s rope. Pulling myself up off the floor, I made the baguettes. It’s a two day process but not that big a deal once you get the hang of it. By the time they came out of the oven the next morning, I felt like a real human bean again. An amazing lightness of spirit. Plus, good value. For about $4 I had $8 worth of excellent bread.
Thirdly, that hoary chestnut Coq au Vin. For an expenditure of…$10? I had a meal that served 8 and was…fancy-seeming. Chicken drumsticks and thighs and a $4 bottle of red wine created something very special indeed. And easy! I made that to celebrate the Inauguration, actually. My wine merchant friend gave me a lovely bottle of Spanish Cava which was just the perfect thing. Bliss.
Fourthly, the last Exceptionally Challenging Few Days. Cooking saved me once again. The Partner is waaaaaaay under the weather and on clear liquids. I decided to make things that I liked, that he isn’t crazy about, to see if I could tweak them around so he WOULD like them at some future time. I managed to make a tofu and cellophane noodle thing (cheap! fast! easy!) (Really. $4 worth of ingredients and about 25 minutes to make. For me that is REALLY amazing as I am the original slow food person. *SIGH*) that he roused himself to sniff, insisted on tasting, and said: wow. That’s great. I’d eat that. Success, people. Up to now he has hissed and made the sign of the cross at the mere mention of cellophane noodles. Another small triumph, which was also quick and inexpensive, involved rigatoni, canned tuna, kalamata olives, grilled green bell peppers (which you could skip but I happened to have some. 99 cent bag of elderly peppers from produce market, bake in oven, keep in old mayo jar with olive oil and there it is) and spinach (or mache), with feta tossed in. It was really yummy. Partner agreed, and tuna/pasta things are another matter for hissing around here usually.
So I submit to you, even though I may appear to be a Major ThrowBack what with making everything myself, that cooking your own meals can really save your bacon. Next installment will feature Ancient Secrets of Gravy.
The Ultimate Ouch
At one time there was a beauty salon in San Francisco, on the border between North Beach and Chinatown, that I drove by frequently. The sign was in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and the English portion read, in flowing purple script, ” The Ultimate Ouch.” One would have thought they’d just sneak in a “T”, but then again, they probably weren’t aiming at the English speaking crowd. Somehow it seemed approriate, nonetheless, as a name.
I am starting to feel as though I have a non-stop appointment at The Ultimate Ouch.
Still and all, as far as problem solving goes, these past some days have proven to be a real refresher course. Actually managing to prevail over cable company screw ups and switcheroos, emergency room visits, feeling rotten all round, sleeplessness and pouring rain has been no mean feat. Even Boozilla has succumbed to the lure of moodiness. Our transmission to you today was interrupted by lengthy screaming, backed up by slamming doors in another part of the kingdom with demands for quiet or diplomatic relations would be irreparably damaged. This Required My Complete and Immediate Attention. As I write, B. is posed coquetteishly on her cage door, giving me what I think of as the Glittering T. Rex eye. Meanwhile whatever train of thought I had has puffed off into the distance without me.
Aside from the mysteries of the body, and what healing means, what it takes, how it happens, (another blog!) I guess I have been thinking lately about Shame. It’s an interesting emotion when you think about it. Webster’s defines it as: “A painful emotion excited by a consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety.” I saw a postcard on Post Secret on Monday that spoke to this: This woman was too ashamed to use the welfare medical coverage her family got after a job loss to even take her children to their doctor. She didn’t want to be judged. I saw this myself at the hospital as well. One feels somehow less, not good, “wrong”, for not having money, not having health insurance. All part of that lovely paradigm, money = goodness and moral propriety. No money = bad. As it happens, staff at the hospital don’t all have health insurance either. That must be particularly galling. The fact is, of course, that the health care system is so out of whack it really doesn’t matter, almost, whether you have insurance or not. Except it does, because your care options are very limited with no insurance. Health insurance is now prohibitively expensive, and even with insurance, you can still sit and wait for the doctor with whom you have a 2 p.m. appointment for three hours because he’s running behind. And you don’t want to leave because then you have to make another appointment and miss another day of work. That is, if you have a job. Or, if you don’t, you can go the the County Emergency Room and wait for six hours, surrounded by suffering and pain. Everyone seems to be operating at top speed, and too busy. We all have to pay attention not just to what we’re doing and what we need, but to what the person working with us is doing, just to be sure we get what we came for.
But, back to shame. What I would REALLY LIKE TO KNOW? is why do I feel ashamed in these fiscal fiascos, and the CEO of Citicorp does not? Far from it, in fact. Bland and digressive under questioning, the delusion, if that is what we may call it, continues unabated for these guys. A friend alerted me to this coming Sunday’s Sixty Minutes program, which will air a segment on just exactly how much the banking industry really knew about what was happening to the economy, from an inside perspective. Common sense tells us this situation didn’t just come out of nowhere. Now of course there will be proof. Apparently we have a whole new breed out there: Those who are incapable of shame or apparently any human feeling at all. Except greed. Shame on them.
Is My Hair On Fire Yet?
It’s all kind of seeming like a really bad horror movie with a really bad country western sound track. Admittedly, long ago and far away one of my favorite songs was a country western zinger called “I Don’t Know Whether to Commit Suicide or Go Bowling”. That was until I found that bowling is one of those activities, like cutting picture mats or water skiing or doing Proofs of Service, that I will be made to perform endlessly in Hell. Which thus also precludes the former activity in the song. Excuse me, but I want to avoid bowling as long as possible. There you are again with the smoking hair.
The Partner watches the financial news intently every day. What I thought today was, Geez. The Stock Market is just like legalized gambling for rich people and we’re the ones who get our legs broken. It has got to stop: my knees can’t take anymore. Today, in the program medley, I heard what I imagine was supposed to be an upbeat job search item, and that is what pushed me over the edge. “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” was the advice being tossed around for job seekers, and those with jobs seeking improvement. In the sweet name of all that is divine stop the burning! Stop it! This is ridiculous advice. Yes, have a dream. Yes, have a desire in life to do something. By all means, follow that. Try not to be afraid, yes. Educate yourself and keep at it. But keep the fairy dust off it. Success is arrived at after a mountain of failure (” “) and it is time to be real about that. Success takes time. Success also takes a certain amount of luck, but one can persevere and accomplish things and move forward dynamically in any event. The question is: What is your goal? This business of “do what you love knowing you can’t fail” is part of a mindset and language process that makes me crazy. You don’t go out in life and do things because you know what’s going to happen. Good and Bad in many of these situations are artificial constructs built around money, not values of truth and beauty, and not values of common good either. Of course this sentence is supposed to convey an inspiring message of hope and belief in one’s self and the overall process. Which is wonderful. But proceeding as though it is all there for you, (and incidentally who ARE all these other people here with hopes and dreams and cellphone conversations during high speed left turns and boomboxes on bikes blaring out song lyrics like “b**** i’m tryin’a pull a train here and if you don’t like my d**** I’ll give you my stick”? just for starters make them go away and then I can ignore all the other people with real problems) is part of the selfishness that has brought on the need for major revision. There really are no guarantees. Period. The focus must be on more than oneself, whatever the outcome may be. I suspect many feel the same fear and array of emotions now, so my feeling is, let us move forward together and work for each other’s good and wellbeing. Not just our own “success”.
Meanwhile I smell smoke.
