Archive for November, 2006

Holidays Hollow Daze

November 30, 2006 at 6:53 pm · Filed under Being single

dawn wrote about one of the unglittery (matte?) aspects of the holiday season: people without families can feel deep loneliness at this time of year.

dawn’s not alone. There are so many expectations of how one should feel, or what one should be doing, or what one should be interested in…it’s a bit like being the kid in the class who doesn’t get but a few valentines in their gaily decorated shoebox. Even the most self-possessed can feel a bit trampled upon at this oh-so-cheerful time of year. One has to be ever-mindful of the best part of holiday meaning, but one can get sore jaw from gritting teeth!

I don’t particularly care for holidays one or another. Is it all programmers who think of holidays as nice quiet days when people don’t call and interrupt coding? Holidays aren’t a problem for me, maybe because I spend them with what small family I have, but I know what dawn means whenever I have to walk into a party alone. And I suspect I’ll have some emotional adjustment the first few holidays after my mom dies.

When my mom moved to Albuquerque where I lived with my then-husband, we figured out that none of us cared a wit about the expected holiday traditions. Family holidays when I was a kid were full of stress, unspoken resentments, and impossible expectations. So Mom, Michael and I made holidays an opportunity for a hike. The day before Thanksgiving M. and I cooked a turkey so we could have sandwiches for a picnic, which we had at the Bosque Del Apache wildlife refuge. The BDA is a lovely spot, and arosed genuine feelings of gratitude and joy…especially when the geese and cranes flew in at dusk. You might think we’d have the place to ourselves, but there were scads of like-minded people.

Since my mom can’t do those activities anymore, we’ve made up other traditions such as our Orphan’s Christmas dinner. Singlets, widowed older women, younger divorced women, just plain singlets would have dinner together and oh, what a lot of fun we had. A friend here in Seattle was facing what could have been a difficult Thanksgiving, so she hosted one of these sorts of dinners.

Friends of my mom have invited her to join them for festivities now that we live in different cities. I’m grateful to people who can reach out beyond their immediate circle and embrace friends and make them welcome. And the circles will need to make an opening for an outside since singlets can’t ask to join in.

dawn is right, even when you try to make alternate plans, this holiday season can be depressing as so many have noted.

Marching to a different drum only feels wrong when you’re surrounded by the wrong beat.

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BODIES: The Exhibit

November 30, 2006 at 6:20 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

I am looking forward to attending the incredible BODIES The Exhibition. BODIES is an exhibition of human bodies that have been dissected, preserved, and posed to demonstrate our architecture. Displays feature everything from a skeleton posed in opposition to the same body’s musculature to an intact and isolated central nervous system to an emphysema-diseased lung.

Who would be interested in such a show? Anyone interested in medicine, anatomy, figurative art, science, biology, or just curiousity about us. In short, who wouldn’t be interested?

The exhibit is fascinating many people, offending others (this is Seattle, after all), and horrifying most everyone else. I don’t understand the squeamish distaste and would do a disservice to the opinion if I tried to explain it. In any case, the show doesn’t feature any gore.

The protestors are upset because the bodies are Chinese, and the Chinese government has a woeful human rights record, or so goes the argument. Granting the human rights record, there is no evidence that the bodies were prisoners, much less that murder was done. So, that’s just silly.

My interest is in the way the skeleton and muscules inform figure drawing. My drawing was so-so until I took a class with Joan Boyden, a one-time fellow student and favorite artist. Joan stressed anatomy and had us drawing the skeleton. It wasn’t enough that we drew it, we also had to learn the bones (the major ones, anyway) and how they worked together to make us go. Joan had us learn how the muscles and tendons were attached, which muscles were surficial and thus would influence what a draughtsman sees. Joan’s approach taught me to love figure drawing and left me with a deep and ongoing interest in anatomy.

One can see the difference studying anatomy makes by comparing Greek and Roman figures. The Greeks didn’t dissect humans (they did dissect other animals, however). Even if one’s style is abstract, understanding anatomy helps one construct an internally consistent reality.

Even if you’re not an artist or in the medical field, you might consider going. It will fill one with wonder to see a profoundly intimate, yet unfamilar view of ourselves.

How about you? How do you feel about contemplating what lies beneath the skin?

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I used to be lonely, but then I got a divorce.

November 22, 2006 at 7:18 pm · Filed under Dating

I don’t recall where I heard the quote that is the title of this post. I heard it in the midst of a happy time during my marriage. Although it gave me a chuckle, I had no inkling how apt to my life it would prove to be.

Yes, once more another provocative post by the Dating Goddess has inspired me. Sorry, to be so lazy with my own ideas: she writes such good stuff! In any case, DG wrote a lovely post about not letting a bad relationship keep you from dating. I agree with what I believe is the main idea: don’t let a bad relationship control you long past the actual breakup. Hear! Hear!

However, I did bristle a bit at what is probably the unintentional message that the only well-adjusted choice is start dating again. Good friends have told me they believe that unless one is in a relationship, once can’t be whole and happy. That it is somehow unnatural to not be paired up.

I could get into a pissing contest listing pros and cons for being…um…not necessarily celibate, but not dating. However, I’m not interested in convincing anyone to remain single, nor am I worried about being a singleton. I understand the impulse and applaud my friends who continue to seek out and build new relationships. I hope my friends Ponzi and Chris grow very old and very contented together. I wish for them the very best of the happiest marriages and no insurmountable challenges.

Romantic relationships won’t guarantee that you’ll find “the love you want and deserve,” as the DG says so sweetly. It’s possible to find love and contentment alone.That said, there is that wedding I have to go to sans male escort. But then again, it’s all about the bride and groom, isn’t it? ;-D

So, staying single doesn’t mean one is scared to ride the horse (tho’ I am, I admit). It just means there are more ways than the horse to get from here to there.

Happy life…in the here and now!

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Dating and managing feelings

November 14, 2006 at 7:41 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

I’m a regular reader of the Dating Goddess, even though I don’t date and have no desire to date. After relating a brutal “kiss-off” from a *gentleman*, DG asks “How do you manage your disappointments?”

The end of my last relationship left me feeling something I’d never felt for any past significant other: rage and hatred. The reasons aren’t interesting or relevant. Suffice it to say this was unusual, and unexpected. (I didn’t felt like this about my ex-husband or ex-fiancé!) My feelings weren’t of disappointment (I  knew the relationship was ridiculous 6 months into it) , but how did I manage the feelings? I did try to manage the feelings for quite a while because I didn’t like that I could be a person who felt such ugly things for a human being, and I absolutely didn’t like how the feelings absorbed almost all my energy and focus. I made no progress–and I was becoming downright ill. Eventually, I stopped trying to manage the feelings. Instead, I started thinking about them and the fact of them.

As DG mentions in her post “There must be a pony in here,” I started looking into what the feelings were telling me and what I could learn from the relationship and my feelings about the breakup. Most importantly I accepted that it would take time–time without any romantic entanglements–to really let go of the anger.

What I’ve found after nearly 2-1/2 years is that I don’t want a relationship. Or rather I don’t want a romantic relationship. Instead I’m building relationships with friends and a new home city, family, and focusing on my business. I’m happy that I can be a friend to my mom who is facing some big end-of-lifetime types issues. I’m also deeply affected by my relationships with the kids I tutor.

So, rather than managing the feelings (we do seem rather hell-bent on always managing feelings don’t we?) I found relief by accepting them (not acquiescing or wallowing) and looking for different ways to fill the need I’d tried to fill with an entirely ridiculous relationship.

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Do You Vote on Every Candidate, Referendum, Initiative, etc?

November 8, 2006 at 2:22 am · Filed under Uncategorized

Do you feel like you have to have an opinion on everything on the ballot? I don’t–and I am one opinionated SOB, I tell you. I don’t vote on items I can’t muster any interest in, and I don’t vote on items I don’t feel I really have a good grasp of. Why don’t I mind leaving some choices empty?
Lyndon LaRouche, is why. I recall hearing many years ago that the citizens of Chicago, IIRC, managed to elect someone from this nutbag’s camp because they didn’t like who they had. So, people voted for anybody-but. When they woke up to this result, one person said, “Oh. That’s who [they] are? I didn’t know who I was voting for, I just knew who I wanted to vote against.”

I do feel better about voting this year despite casting my votes for three despicable candidates because I despise their opponents more. Yeah, there are some serious problems with this system, and I’ve been on the verge becoming a non-voter lately. It’s still the system we make it: we unfurl our glory and beauty as well as our small-minded provincialism.

I do wish we could vote for None of the Above. A much better choice than anybody-but.

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Pushing Back the Cynicism: Voting

November 1, 2006 at 6:25 pm · Filed under Politics

I’ve been mulling over a post about overcoming cynicism as the voting season comes to an end. Chris Pirillo post today about what he dislikes about campaigns, inspires me to stop mulling and write.

I’ve gone from getting goosebumps before voting to despising the process. Happily, I’ve had a civics lesson this year that has reminded me that a healthy government doesn’t come from passive citizenry.

I volunteer for an organization that has a drastic cut in funding. We anticipated some of it–5 year grants were ending; however, the city cut out our funding unexpectedly. We discovered that while there were some concrete and excellent suggestions we can follow to improve both our program and our proposals, the biggest problem was that the councilors didn’t know who we were, who we serve, and why our services matter.

So, we’ve spent the intervening months increasing our visibility, honing our message, and making program improvements. As a result the budget committee chairman has become a supporter. Monday night was the last public comment hearing on the budget.

I admit that I was awfully excited to be in the council chambers with scads of people waiting to speak about their hopes and needs. I was interested in the people and issues that people brought up.

When it was our group’s turn to speak, and the 5 people who’d been asked to speak on our behalf got up, the chairman asked for everyone associated with the group to stand up (we all had bright yellow name tags, so he knew we scattered throughout). I’m lousy at estimating crowd numbers, but perhaps 50 people stood up: staff, volunteers, but more importantly, there were kids the program serves (tutoring) and their parents. It was an impressive group, if I do say so myself. :-D .

People know now what we do, and why it’s important. We made a noise, and it mattered. We may NOT make it into this budget, because we started late. But we’re definitely a better organization for the effort, we have advocates in the council, and kids have had a voice in this process, which is, well, pretty damned cool.

A corporate mentor once advised me to make myself known to any executive I could get in front of. “At the very least, ” he said, “they have a harder time cutting someone they’ve met than someone who’s just a name.”

I may not get goosebumps when I go to vote next week, but I’ll sure as hell feel better about it.

As an aside, my city council has a list of reasonable recommendations for making the strongest possible case. I see where we could be stronger still. It’s a bit like reporting bugs to Microsoft. If you just say “Word crashes! You suck!” you’re not likely to get much satisfaction. If you submit a cogent bug report, they’ll listen. They might not be able to do anything about it, but they listen.

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