Circadian Rhythm, or what of it.

Every so often, I'm reminded.

Sometimes the things that we rethink, whatever minor memory has escaped us for so long, such an incident, a small but life-seizing interaction, can bring us to a place of relief. Of true gratitude for what we've overcome or learned or lived through.

We have all lived through without realizing it. It comes back to us someday when we are watching nothing or laughing loudly or checking time or sitting back. Suddenly we're transported, composed by our memory alone, gently lifted back to the time we found forgiveness or absolute fear or wondered if you would ever again feel anything but sadness at the thought of your own two hands.

We are reminded that we have survived peculiar feats, such specific pains that we were convinced, we were quite certain, from which we would never recover. But we have. In time, we have been eased backwards, we have felt less. We have moved on, we have bought new furniture, we have replaced loved ones, we have taken down photographs, we have let our histories gather dust beneath our present days, we have shut our lifetimes behind doors, we have looked forward forever, until now. Until the now where we are reminded of what we come from, of what we've needed thus far.

This is the type of release that surely may bring back whatever part of that pain remains. Perhaps just the stretch that it caused us to feel, the small ache of reaching for something, for another. There is ultimately more tragedy in what we can reach but somehow still fail to grasp.

When we are back to those moments of our lives, whether the song on the radio delivered us to it, whether it was the way you held your face against the window or the sound of faint conversation that brought you back, it may feel good to see the distance between where we stand and where we've stood. It's breathing. It's solace for time spent.

We can remember our pasts continuously. We can go by each day with a new memory, an I-haven't-thought-of-this-in-years situation, and there's an awfully good chance we'll never go back to it again.

Sometimes, however, the ways we are reminded are outside of ourselves, out on the edge of elsewhere, having to do with something much larger than our own inconsistencies, misgivings, aspirations. Who we've been is no longer relevant. We are. And we reflect. And we learn from the outside world; unrelated circumstances reveal themselves in full light. We have nowhere to look but directly into it, no matter where that leaves us.

And that, I must say, is much worse.

It is far easier to be embarrassed by our own faults then to face head on the faults of living that we exist in but cannot change.

We can rewrite where we've been. We can omit certain asides, we don't have to give it all up, we can broadcast our good points, we can pick our easiest flaws, if we're feeling honest. Who we are is our choice to reveal, to those we trust, or to no one at all.

But when reality reveals itself, uninvited and, on most occasions, unwanted, it's often ugly. It's harsh lines force themselves our way. We have to stare into what we know is there, what stands so blatant and upright before us, and say things like, this is how it is, we can't change this, or, should we dare: well, life's not fair.

It's maddening, yet undeniable. What diverts the fairness from reaching us? We can understand what fair would seem to be. We can dare to imagine what it would look like, somewhat gossamery, full of unknown light. We can expect all this with sincere earnest, we can truly believe in its possibility, however many times we've been let down before. And then a simple switch occurs, and suddenly we've lost our income, our lover, our hope. We've driven over a small creature, the smallest being that only meant to safely get from one patch of nature to the next, simply crushed under anybody's tires.

Then, what's fair?

When we're reminded of things such as this, what then should we believe in learning? More, pardon me, awful things such as, All things happen for a reason, may race to our minds.

I, for one, have trouble with such certain measure.

Yes, the cyclicality of life outweighs our ability to understand it.

Still. I'd like a little truth. As much as it would surely hurt, I would like to understand why we are where we are. What happens happens, whether to us or because of us, and fair does not become our situation, not often, not today. It's the pattern to our dilemma.

We merely pulse. Carry on. Repeat.

Time, Again.

For every one thing that we do with true excellence, I think there are a thousand blanketing things that we've done without interest or joy, no meditation, no attempt to learn. Done instead out of some insinuated necessity, but without wanting it, without taking it as part of our jumbled and purposed living.

So now we have to go to work, or to school, to jury duty, to cross the street. So shift it back.

And don't worry. I'm not addressing anyone but me. If you concur at all or nod along with me, if you feel even a touch of "Well, okay," then it can be for you, too. I won't mind.

And it's not about talent. Which of course, everyone has in one way or another. Sometimes it takes forever to tap into them, catch them, if you will, hone them, demonstrate them. But they are there, waiting to be discovered and exercised, sitting on the hind legs of their ability, ready to wave, here I am, can you see me now. They are the things we do with inherent skill, with a somewhat breathtaking ease, in a way that causes your audience, your world, to stop, to stir, to soak in your resurrection or dissertation or execution.

Perhaps your talents are quiet, buried. Maybe you are a natural in starting conversation. You can do handstands, make jokes, be sincere. Maybe you strike poetry in whatever you see. Perhaps you are patient.

We could spend our hours or our lives doing things that we're simply good at, but what exactly are we good for? Just because we may do something doesn't mean we should, or just because we are doing anything doesn't mean it's what we're intended to do or how we are meant to do it.

And I think that when this is the way we arrange ourselves, the way we set ourselves into molds we can certainly contort for but not quite capture. We end up waking up numb, traveling dead.

When Henry David Thoreau compared the killing of time to the permanent debilitation of eternity, I stopped. And each time some passing person has often commented, well, at least we're halfway through the week, or, can't wait until this year is over, or, one more day until the weekend, with lifted hands of hope, I've stopped. And I've been confused. And I have been torn in my response to these reactions. I've yet to understood why we've been encouraged to merely pass our lives. To skip ahead to the better points, to wish for forwarding along, for faster pace, for seemingly dull or uninteresting moments to simply go by unnoticed.

On that note, I find it difficult even to comprehend boredom. I find it inherently impossible. With a moving world, an earth that overflows with newness, a place that expresses its constant need for us to stand at attention. To be here, and to wish to pass time? To wish for the end of the day as a new one has just begun?

Something's wrong, then.

Something is wrong with the way we are cherishing (or not cherishing) what we have and what we are doing with it.

If we don't want time, then we have not used it well. We have not seen it, really seen it, as infinitely miraculous.

I propose that we love our Tuesdays with the same unabashed ardor that we do our Sunday afternoons. Let's love winter. After we are embarrassed by our mistakes, let's remember them. Let's not wait for another day to do what matters to us right now, to do what we appreciate, to exercise our right to (dare I say it) enjoy being alive. Whatever natural rules and restrictions are above you, whatever bookends hold you in a certain corner, if some constraint should tie you or toss you, digress. It is there, and it is purposed, hopefully. It has not come to stand in your way to be. Instead, it is part of your being, difficulty and all, it is your time, it is you.

So to pass time, to kill time even. Why want to get it over with before it has been loved? Endured, often, yes, but truly full, truly magnetized for what it has given you, not what it has taken from you, rejected of you, required of you.

If Thoreau understands that our time is intentional, and if nature beats on without asking permission, then what exactly are we waiting for?

Why are we the first to create the movement, yet always the last to get on board?

No, we aren't only supposed to forever sit in a basement just painting masterpieces. Though if that is your vestal need, hold on to it. Because the best part of living is that it is balanced, even without our even footing. I'm not suggesting that we live only for ourselves or only for what we deem entertaining or easy. I'm just hoping we can find what is good in what we go through, that we'll never reach a point where we sincerely wish for the end of something, wanting to wander ahead, wanting to do without, to only carry on.

Don't wait.

Don't miss this.

But don't wait.

Wild + Precious = ?

In the acknowledgement of absence, head bowed as it may be, there is this:

Lately, I've had a thing for deliberation.

We're not exactly serious yet, we would not dare to be exclusive. But we have met from time to time, over nothing or something, we have shared a history, a knowingness, often awkward but rather intimate encounters.

We have together faced thinking about consciousness, even while in and out of it. How often we've been faced with the odd necessity of decision, forks in the road, words to live by, having a toss-up, rolling the dice. Whatever dice, any dice.

With all of this, I speak only for myself to say I haven't come to any consistent conclusions, which I find is quite usual. What I have found in light of living deliberately, or with deliberation itself, in speaking of drive or even hope, I fear our similarities: that most of us will, eventually, have unknowingly or worse, contentedly, settled for less. We will have existed, even enjoyed, without awareness, without purpose or intention.

So now I'm uncomfortable. I'm on the very edge of the edge, looking from side to never-ending side, and I'm not sure if anyone's standing here with me. I'm dissatisfied with what we wish for and what we do not chase. I am relentlessly opposed to this general preparation for better, the need we have to start small and hope big, to wait and wait and wait until our patience or, pardon me, complacency, instead becomes the very rut where we build our lives, where we cultivate our dullness, where we go no further than our own four corners.

All saving and never spending. For what?

I don't want to be a hundred years old before anything actually happens. I don't want another year or moment to go by before anything actually happens. And wait wait wait. If we're going to talk about occurrences, we might as well breach the tragic predicament of plans. Yes, I've had a thing for plans, too. And though we've since called an end to our off-and-on rendezvous, our somewhat devastating decline got me thinking. I realized how attached I was to the idea of plans. To making them, to planning to make them, to planning how they would be executed. I was thinking about how, though I had no exact timeline in mind, I had certain expectations for the past twenty and the next twenty years of my life. There were marks to hit, give or take the time or schooling or money necessary. There were relationships to foster, roots to cultivate, bonds to break, bags to pack.

There was a world I hadn't seen that demanded my witness.

The funny thing about plans, though, is that they don't matter. Dreams matter, of course. Dreams matter more than anything else you can cling to, should you cling to anything, and I will argue that case with fervency. But plotting them out with any echo of rigidity, deciding when and where and how they will come to be, will most likely leave you hanging. It will make you wonder what went wrong, when really, things only happened. People left or came or securities fell through or guarantees were not so certain or other opportunities were suddenly popping their heads out of the ground, brand new blooms staring up, seeing nothing but sky sky sky. Promising better outcomes, fertile ground, new chances.

So things changed. So plans, whatever they may be, adapted accordingly. Not willingly, at times, but they fell in line, they digressed, they shifted. They sighed and allowed.

So when life intervenes, or excuses itself, or hounds you relentlessly, what will change? Or rather, what is worth changing? What has to happen in order to make you quit your vision, to give up what you really want in exchange for what's already here? What situations will reshape your wants, will make you look to around you, to your empty hands, to convenience and say, well, okay, well this will do.

When I think of these things, these questions that leave us feeling hunted and out of time, Mary Oliver seems to understand us. And by us I mean quite every human being, as we all go racing on and on. She tends to gather our dilemmas, sort them through her musings on nature and then redirect them: to give them back to us in new packaging, wrapped precisely with new hands and new eyes.

She asks so delicately, with such intricate inquisition and sincerity,

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

She acknowledges that you've made lists, that certain checkpoints gather more urgency, that you have general ideas, that you have strong dislikes. She senses our lives as irreplaceable and sweet, with an indelible importance, with equal purpose in what is simple and what is not. Wild and precious may be her biggest compliment to us all.

I don't think she's making fun of us. I think she really wants to know. I think she wants to know if you're going to make a sandwich or read the paper or think about your first love or swear up and down to never drink again. I think our plans, to her, and now to me, involve more than working up to achieve our biggest desires. She wants to know, but what about your every day existence, the ways in which we choose to spend our time, to bask in our time, perhaps our only time, perhaps the very last chance we will ever have to fall asleep on a rainy day or write a letter to a friend now living miles and miles and miles from where we happen to be.

I don't expect too much from anyone. Oliver, I truly sense though truly only guess, feels the same. I don't want to hear about how you will change problems or solve crimes or discover cures. Even though I know you will, it is okay if these things just happen, if we all live by daily choice, if we take the pressure off, if we breathe deep and keep going.

What we want matters. What we think we will accomplish can not only motivate us, but revive us, remind us that in any attempt to discover what we're here for, maybe what we want is all we have to give here and to each other, maybe our goals, however big or small, are our ways of contributing, of progressing, of shifting back, of sharing the weight of living.

So let's live.

Also, I thank you for your patience. Words are, delicately stated, as important as they are unimportant. To me, they are everything. I don't apologize; I continue on.

To Blog or Not To Blog

Okay, so more than one month since I've last done this means I'm officially slacking or unofficially stumped for original thought.

And here's what I think about that: slacking, in whatever sense of the word, is purely a situational and relative conundrum. What I mean is, what I may choose to be dragged down or distracted by might just add up to be another man's inspiration. So maybe these winter blues are beating the hell out of the sliver of my brain that remains creative, while the guy next to me can't get enough of these dreary skies and freezing temperatures.

Well, screw it, because original thought also chalks up to only being who said what and when they said it and what it meant for the time and what it meant later, if anything at all. So you might as well say whatever you want whenever you feel like it because whether it's a repeat or the first words ever spoken, someone has said it, someone will say it, so if it's how you feel, you might as well make one of those someones be you.

So my thoughts are still occasionally boring and I'm probably still shirking my personal responsibility as writer (yes, even as I sit here, writing this) by ignoring some bigger problem to instead record my latest bumbling musings in a blog. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with blogging, I suppose.

But I've been thinking. Often times people have described blogging as a way to get your work out there, even if nobody wants it. Meaning, have all sects of the writing industry rejected your many attempts at publication? Have you had many resumes, samples, and submissions go unanswered? Well, then by all means, blog it out, because now even if it still remains unread, at least it's out there in the universe, for anyone who may or may not stumble across it and may or may not be interested in what you currently find outrageous or endearing. (If I may: they will not, and they do not, by any means, more often than not, give a damn. Any industry related to expression requires honesty, even with yourself. Myself. You understand.)

Not that I'm ungrateful to the phenomenon of the instantaneous name-in-print situation. But I find it confusing. And tragically unsatisfying. Google, as much as I adore you for your ability to find me photo after photo of polar bear cubs, you are not the New Yorker. May it be known now and forever, this is not an equal substitute.

Really, though. Talk to any writers. If fact, talk to real writers, if you are lucky enough to know any and can also find them emerged in sunlight, (most likely only to be smoking nervously or pacing angrily), long enough to catch them in conversation. They don't have time for this nonsense. They have schedules. Certain times of day that are religiously and rigorously dedicated to their craft. It is not a hobby or a maybe or a side project. It is their drive, it's their life's decision, it's their way of picking up the world, tossing it around for awhile in their own senses, and telling us about what they've seen.

They have lives, too. Ways and times of observing, of recording, the hunt-and-gather process, the storing up for the dry spells, the winters, the blockage that so inevitably and so often comes. They prepare themselves to do poorly, to wake up feeling congested and overtired, to be running late getting the kids to school, to start eating badly and feeling ornery. They will have days of awful indecision, where the plot stays senseless, the characters elusive, the worlds crashing and the words not coming. These are the more common days of being a writer.

But. Should you get one awful and perfect truth, one sentence circling itself beautifully, once a month, once a year, it should be savored as solid and lucky and solitarily wonderful, because for all any of us know, it will be the last time anything says that particular thing in such an unforgettable way.

That, or tomorrow you will be cheated by some beady-eyed onlooker and all that discovery and explanation will be wasted on everyone but you, you the only one who knows how it actually happened.

In fact, this is why I have to believe that so many of our writers could not stand the world, or instead loved it so much that it hurt them to observe it, to be a part of it, to try to explain it to everyone else who wasn't paying attention. It's the handful of creative types that have to escape the world, I think. For their sanity. Or to embrace where sanity does not matter. Having these worlds constantly collide is an overwhelming task to take on. If anything, they chose to make things simpler, to return to the beginning. To lie intelligently, to rewrite their histories and then leave us, to give us something important and turn away before we knew to thank them.

So it doesn't make much sense. And I feel that it isn't supposed to. If your mark is as big as a thumbprint, then it matters. And if it's out there on the internet and one person finds you astounding to the twelve who only shrugged, then it's important.

And if all you can do is express yourself in the dark, repeat someone else's mystery, wonder about the meaning of things, if it cures your insomnia or eases your mind, it is, and remains, vital to us all.

Something About Doing Something

Let's see, let's see.

I'm thinking about striking out with an extremely delicate topic, and the instant advice that I give myself is: watch my words.

Then again, if the topic is delicate and the words are the same, then I'm not sure we're giving needed notice to an often skirted issue. We're not giving it any fight. We're just looking just over the top of its head, muttering under our breath, calling it taboo or messy, and moving on.

If you don't mind, because I certainly don't, I'd like to stick on it, this soon-to-be-named topic, for just a second. I'd like us all to be appropriately uncomfortable for about a minute and a half, or however long it will take you to skim through this. (A minute and a half assuming that a. you will either skip the boring parts or b. stop reading because you're pissed or hungry or something).

Ready?

And the subject is: passivity! Which, should you need an exact definition, is the act of accepting or allowing what happens or what others do without active response or resistance.

See, that wasn't so hard, was it. To mention a dirty (or maybe just confusing) word, to define it openly, to announce it's pertinence in today's post.

I get that this topic is a little scabby, that it's not something we're all that good at sitting still about. It's even a little awkward. And it's certainly a little personal, considering it could be spun towards topics of war and such, a subject that isn't likely to leave our lips and minds anytime soon.

These things thoughtfully in mind, I'd like to dig into that word. And by that I mean that I want to get to the root of its meaning, to the heart of its practice (or lack of practice, whichever makes more sense). Not the actual, genuine Greek roots per say, but. You know. I'm saying there's a problem here, and I'm attempting to start digging towards the bottom. I want to figure out where it began and how it justifies itself and where it appropriates its appearance.

What originally got me thinking about this notion of passiveness, in comparison to activeness, is the current book I am reading, Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. I would normally say "the book I am enjoying" rather than reading. And though I intensely enjoy reading, especially when the words are that of Safran Foer's, his honest (and dear God, yet again necessary) unveiling of the cruelty behind factory farming falls far below enjoyable. Though his words, as always, resound, a more appropriate description of my reaction to every other page would be heart-brokenness, some confusion, extreme nausea, and anger anger anger.

Basically, Safran Foer wants to know, and therefore writes to find out, what we should think about eating animals. He wants to know why it's socially acceptable to eat a dog in parts of Asia, but that in North America (where it is actually legal in forty-four of the United States) it would be considered gasp-worthy, shameful, perhaps even (to some) grounds for prosecution. He wants to know who determines the edibility of certain species, and how. He demands answers and adjustments for how factory farmers house and feed their livestock. He wants to know why we're treating living objects like corporate material. He wants to know why we feel comfortable raising a life-turned-machine merely to provide bacon for our Sunday brunches, drumsticks for our dinners.

I'm only a third of the way through the book. And already I'm squirming. Which is okay. In fact, I expected it. I knew what I was getting myself into. I was aware of what was likely to happen, and I tried to remain unafraid of that. It's hard to prepare yourself for change. It's hard to say to yourself, Okay, this could very likely turn something I accept into something I question, but I'm looking to grow, expand my horizons, see another point of view. I'm willing to admit that maybe I'm not right.

I wouldn't consider myself a radical in any sense. I'm not a member of PETA. In fact, I ate turkey chili just the other day. I'm not saying that eating a steak for dinner is getting you sent to hell. In fact, I'm not even meaning to write about whether or not we should eat animals. (Though probably, at least once I'm halfway through the book and the question becomes too overwhelming to ignore, I will probably have a thing or two more to say/wonder about it). I get that factory farming provides more affordable food for people. I also get that our country is grossly over-provided for. I get that traditional family farms have become nearly obsolete. I also get that a chicken should never be "produced" simply to live in and never leave a 67-square-inch pen, be scientifically processed to lay eggs round the clock, urinated on, have its beak cut off and/or then sent directly into a machine much like a wood chipper, while live, because it was eventually rendered useless. In case you aren't sure, 67-square inches is about the size of half a shoebox. And yes, there have been recorded cases of slaughterhouse employees pissing on already heavily abused livestock.

Seriously, that's about as much as I can give you on that topic so far. But it's going to come back up. If that alone isn't enough to get you thinking, then I guess you can just skip that future post, whenever it comes around.

Anyway; what I'm wondering about this time is how we react to things like this. To hearing these facts, to knowing what's really going on, to even sometimes seeing with our own eyes the indiscretions that often times go under the radar, that have people craning to look the other way. (Don't worry; though the eating animals question is a big and important one, this is where I'm starting to direct this towards all situations where we have a choice to do something or not.)

So I guess that's it: to do or not to do. What will "doing" something actually cost us, what will the results be, if any, will there be any progress, will it take much effort? Will it actually matter?

I think that our education, however we choose to take it, lends a realm of responsibility that, if denied, turns into instant progress of fear, of laziness, of a hoping that someone else will do the dirty work, someone else will deal with the raging mob. But if everyone else is waiting for your move, and if you keep waiting for a sign that it's safe again, we're looking at a dramatic decrease in belief, in the right to say, Here's what I think, and here's what I'm going to do about it. Suddenly it will seem pushy to have an opinion. Suddenly everyone that has an idea is a raving loon, certainly certifiable and, in most cases, quite mouthy.

I knew that picking up this book meant I was going to learn a lot of really disgusting things. A lot of awful facts about diseases, about malnutrition, about abuse. I was even told, by several people, that they knew I was going to want to change after reading it. I was told I would feel guilty, upset. Enough so that I would be inclined to change my habits.

I'm worried that these people had too much faith in me.

I haven't landed on either side of the line yet. But that isn't the point. The point is the information is out there now. The startling and often times unbelievable information is in my hands, between a hardback kelly green dust jacket. And what I'm starting to think is this: I don't know if we should be willing to learn the truth if we aren't willing to work with it. (Again, going beyond the dilemma of an omnivore's lifestyle.) We shouldn't ask for the facts if we're just going to shrug and resume. I'd like to know that you still bought chicken from your grocery store because you weren't aware of the automated "throat-slitter" they are put through, often times still fully conscious, rather than because you just simply couldn't give up McNuggets.

If you aren't aware of something, no one can expect much of you, right?

Well. Right. To a point. There are some issues that people would be shocked to hear you weren't informed of. The loop of Catch-22 type drama has never been more abundant. Still, a lot of times we ignore the news or the headlines (or the animals) because we don't want to have to do something. We don't want to know what we can't afford to invest. We don't want to donate, we don't want to spend time, we don't want to worry, we don't want to flex a little, cut back, put forth, speak up.

And nobody wants some pushy picketer shouting in their face. No one wants dead raccoons in their office or blood smeared on their furs. Punching people in the guts with your beliefs isn't really going to get you anything but a lot of enemies. If I know anything, no one likes to be told how to live.

I'm not saying that doing something means you become one of those people. Your heart, if it's going to be at all protected, should probably steer away from your sleeve vicinity. Your changes should change your life. If they can change the circumstances, fantastic. If they can make a tiny dent in some crater of a problem, it matters. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, not even yourself. Often times, that's where our lack of active is born and buried. We're all ready to start forth, to have a brand new day. Until we buy clothes made in a sweatshop, or food from a factory farm, or ignore the evening news for a Gilmore Girls rerun.

This is our world. We're entirely responsible for this shit that we seem to be up to our necks in. And don't be confused, I'm not a good person. I make a lot of phenomenal mistakes, and writing this has mostly been a pep talk for me to move on to the next chapter of Eating Animals. Admitting that something needs to be done is beyond easy. Doing something, even if it's a change only you can see, is what's going to take everything you've got.

I'm not ready for a lot of things, I admit. Being informed carries the weight of being motivated in an exceptional way. And some days we have to fight for that, if only that. What comes next is preparing for the change and preparing for it to hurt. We need to brace ourselves to be uncomfortable, to say what we really mean, and to accept being disagreed with, looked down on, brushed aside.

If I become a vegetarian after I finish this book, a lot of people are going to think that's stupid. Some of them while knowing all the exact same things I will, some of them knowing nothing at all about it. Some people will approve, some people won't care.

What I'm saying is, this doesn't matter. Whether or not you do something isn't so you can have a band of followers or someone to discuss your beliefs with. While that would be nice, and while it does exist at times, this is a purely ridiculous reason for incentive.

If you do something small, something that only you may notice, this is action, as far as I'm concerned. It's not changing the world. But it's making a small difference in your own. It's not obnoxious (hopefully) or forcing someone else to agree with you by attacking them (again, really never the way to go if you're looking for someone to hear you out). I mean, of course, you are completely entitled to discuss your beliefs with those around you. This is, in fact, what I'm doing right now. And I'm not the type to shy away from disagreement. I just feel like to passively accept something means we're going to take it lying down. We're just going to allow disasters and sigh over them a bit, shake our heads in disapproval, and trot along, looking for another thing to be disappointed over. Until then, however, we'll just decide not to mind.

But I mind. I mind that animals are mistreated. So if all I can do is no longer choose to support such an operation, then I guess I've gone from passive to active.

You do something you believe in because, just that: you believe it. You have learned, and you sense a required change. So you make the change, and you stick to it. Or you try. Either way, what you learn should be determined by what you are willing to do about it.

So far, what I'm willing to do is keep reading. After this book, probably others. If you decide that you're open to the knowledge, be open to what it's going to bring you to, be open to that being difficult and untimely.

It is, after all, almost Christmas. I guess I'll be skipping the ham this year. That is, in case it turns out I'll be giving it up for good.

Practicing Goodness With Anne Lamott

I just recently finished reading Anne Lamott's honest musings on human interaction, life, etc. in her new(est) book Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith.

I feel like every bone in that woman's body has got to be made of sarcasm and joy.

As a writer, I find that I'm drawn to other writers who are exceptionally good at telling the truth.

Wait.

Isn't that, after all, what we're all (and I don't mean writers but everyone) trying to do? I think, however, that the separation from the crowd begins with their ability to tell the truth in simple ways without compromising the meaning therein. Without a doubt, Lamott's life experience turned phenomenal skill (miraculously) fits within these brackets of description. Though it only seems appropriate that I imagine her, elbows up, trying to widen the gap. She has that sort of spunk.

What I love most about Lamott's memoir-ic prose is her complete disregard for creating herself elegantly, making things seem rosier than they may have been, not always having the appropriate amount of time to catch her dignity as it often slips down off the countertop and tumbles to the floor. Crashing halts and whatnot, she's still manages to gracefully reveal her sometimes ungraceful humanity, and not only does this make for stunning humility, but also somewhat hilarious prose.

One of Lamott's questions that resounds most through this interrogation of faith is her wondering what we are truly like as people, and what elements of our nature are most defining. I think that if she doubts herself at all, it is only because she is not sure if our more feasible and despicable natures outshines our moments of quiet gentility. Or vice versa.

For example, am I myself right now, as I sit here with wet hair, in old slippers, no one to impress with a cup of tea in my hand (with incredibly dry skin, even) and the unexplainable need to scratch my neck every few seconds? Is this a definitive moment? Or are we instead to come to terms with ourselves through bigger circumstances, more elaborate occasions, places and moments where we are forced to make difficult or unmake-able decisions? Are the ordinary days equal in importance to the milestones? Does it matter excessively? Not quite at all? Who are we in front of others compared to who we are in front of ourselves, in those simple, forgettable times against our limelights, our debuts, moments of glory and shame?

Surely there are immense differences.

Lamott's assertion is that we do this as a form of self-protection. That we know our ugliness and are intrinsically designed to be ashamed of that. That we are well aware of how to behave when we need to, but that it is in fact exhausting to be good. So we use all our energy to be publicly balanced and then as soon as we are behind that curtain or closet door we are a mass of screaming madness, we have hatred, we have fears.

But if we are aware of how we should be, and if we can in fact obey what we are convinced is better than our self's reality, then are we not capable of betterment, however forced? Is this better half an equal portion to our negatives, our shortcomings?

Is pretending to be better the same as being good? Sometimes, anyway?

I don't know. I'm not sure if Lamott knows, or if her opinions (strong as they usually are) necessarily go in one direct way or another. This, however, is what she says:

".. And it's good to be out where others can see you, so you can't be your ghastly, spoiled self. It forces you to act slightly more elegantly, and this improves your thoughts and thereby the world."

Well, much as I love her. Every time I manage to have one good thought (and by that I mean, "I like pears" or something so equally simplistic that finding something bad about it would be extraordinarily difficult) I am not quite convinced that the world is becoming a more livable place.

The idea, however, seems worth a shot.

We learn by practice, right? Those piano lessons that you hated growing up, the scale excercises, the chord sequences, they only got easier when you did them for twenty minutes a day, did they not? You certainly had no interest in doing it, and you could never quite understand your mother when she insisted that if would make you a well-rounded individual. All you could understand was that you were missing out on other activities, on hide-and-seek, on cartoons.

So to see you would display a miserable face and dragging hands, an obvious discontent to be hung over eighty-eight keys playing Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer."

But to hear you meant you could play it. And that, after all, was all.

So if we can learn to play the piano, or speak a language, or the rules of chess, how to tend to tulip bulbs, to recite a prayer, if we can willfully put the time in to practice these things and retain them by repetition, then will our stabs at goodness, perhaps for twenty minutes a day (though for myself it is often less) produce a similar result?

In the same way, if we neglect our transitive verbs or let our rooks and knights settle under a timely coat of dust, will we also lose our ability to smile at strangers, have compassion for the unlikable, think well of those who have mistreated us?

Lamott, throughout her writings, feels fully free to admit to all of us when she has fallen short of such tasks. She even speaks of often immediately regretting ill words or thoughts, unfair or immature reactions, silent grumbling. She gets it, she says. She knows that we all need just enough space to make a big mess. Just as long as our willingness to clean up doesn't leave us, we're going to be okay.

So I guess really what Lamott means is that we should do a little good even when we don't want to. When we have been snapped at by a customer, we should smile, even if we'd really like to pop their head like a balloon.

And she gets that some days you're going to go for the popping, which could leave you hugely embarrassed or with one disgusting mess. Either way, we're entitled to losing it. No one, least of all Anne, is expecting you to glide through, blessing every miscreant you come across. She is, instead, trying to give you (and I) a small nudge and a knowing look that says, Sure, today you're the victim. But tomorrow you'll be the one who needs compassion.

So, for today, let it slide. If you can, that is. If you have yet to exhaust your daily token of goodness for the world, let it go.

Practice won't make (umm), well you know. But, as Lamott would agree, it could certainly be the start of something better.

Holiday Hours: Come Again? (And more)

I was thinking about holidays.

Not just "the" holidays, whatever that is intended to mean, but rather the tradition of a general holiday. How they were designed to christen a significant moment; how that moment was celebrated and recognized and passed on and remembered. How what that celebration recognized, more importantly than the day it was held, was that the times it represented remained important, that they had over time retained their right to be relived.

This musing was, I guess, (initially) stirred by the fact that the definition of the Christmas season gradually becomes more and more vague, beginning with how it seems to seep further and further into autumn every year: decorations going up in October, Santa showing up at the mall on the first of November, carols streaming through the radio twenty-four hours a days. All this so that by the time December 25th rolls around, the two months of previous and unharnessed anticiaption have exhausted everyone out of enjoying the actual day, forget even remembering why it mattered in the first place.

Oh, and this isn't going to be one of those "It's the spirit, not the gifts, that count" shake-downs though, don't get me wrong, me + you + everyone could stand to check ourselves in that department.

Instead, I'm just wondering why (or maybe how) this season can be hyped and amplified until everyone is deaf and dumb to the fact of it, and yet when the actual and designated day of celebration arrives, all sense of tradition is often lost or, worse, rejected?

It's a loaded question. But it's a genuine one.

Here's an example, and brace yourself: I'm a barista at Starbucks. (In case anyone was or wasn't wondering, that's not necessarily ever going to be a statement I can proudly make. While I take pride in hard work no matter its form, the corporate man has a way of sucking away the soul. Don't worry yet; my grip's quite good. Also, obviously since my first post, "The Advantages of the Unemployed," times have changed. For the better? We'll see).

Okay, we'll start again: I'm a barista at Starbucks. (See earlier disclaimer). And a fact I was not aware of until my rather recent employment at said company is that Starbucks does not ever close its doors. Now, of course there are opening and closing times, hours that the stores operate by, unless of course you happen upon one of those 24 hour establishments.

But they do not close on Thanksgiving. Not on Christmas Eve. Not on Christmas Day. Not on New Year's, not Yom Kippur, no to Easter, not for the Dali Lama, should he make such a request even on his personalized stationary. Though, for Starbuck's sake (ahem), I am not aware that this last event has ever occurred; so if in the future Tanzin decides to drop a note, we will see how it all plays out. Until then, I stand by my statement.

All that slight exaggeration to say: wherever and whenever you are, you can get your disastrously priced fix.

This, my friends, is where my dilemma began, where my monstrous, huge-ass questions began to form.

If a place like Starbucks can insist on opening their doors on Christmas morning, it must be because they are expecting to make a profit. After all, profit is the heart and soul (though I expect they'd have neither) of corporate America. They are expecting customers. They are expecting moms and dads and teenagers and elderly to arrive, demanding specifically-temperatured, sugar-laced beverages in exchanged for their green dollar bills.

Problem, and question, number one. Why are these people at a chain coffee shop on Christmas Day? Let's see, they are Jewish. No, they are atheists. They don't celebrate. No, they are widowed, no, they don't care.

And number two; why are there Starbucks employees working on Christmas Day? Fine, they're Jewish. No? They're atheists. Don't celebrate, lost their husband, they don't give a damn.

Can this possibly be true?

I'm sure that the one angry girl you work with who is no doubt extremely mad at God or the lack of God that she believes in is having struggles hoping for a greater power or good or reason. So maybe she works on Christmas and frowns at everyone and drinks by herself when she gets home.

And I guess that the man who entered wearing a threadbare and weather-inappropriate jacket didn't have anywhere to go, so he came here, for the warmth, for the surprising openness. For a cup of coffee and a seat in the corner.

And maybe there are customers on their way to holiday parties or family get-togethers who need a quick double espresso for the hour drive ahead of them. Maybe the people serving them don't mind at all. Maybe they are, instead, happy to do so, on today as much as any other day. Maybe even the good spiritedness they feel has encouraged them to serve even more. If so, then it is certain they are all better people than me.

I understand that even if holidays retained their intended respect that there would always be those who either choose to remain disinterested, or simply feel excluded, or the weather was bad so traveling became a pain, or they haven't spoken to their brother in a decade, or they don't believe, or they can't believe, or they're bitter, or they forget, or they're alone.

Someone will always have to be the one to say, okay, I'll take one for the the team, I'll lose my parents, I'll never marry, I'll be an only child, I'll have no real friends, I'll be the outsider, yes, okay, I guess if no one else wants it, I'll be the one who's alone.

It's like when I see an old man sitting in a diner by himself. And he's ordered a hamburger. Just a plain hamburger, no fries, not even a pickle on the plate. And I sit there, watching him methodically cut his burger into four quarters on the plate that is next to his felt fedora, sitting slightly crushed on the table next to him.

I want to run to that table, offer to join him, offer him my friendship, be his savior, make sure he isn't lonely, rescue him from that position that I hope to never be in!

But I never do. I just start to feel silly, to think that maybe he wants to spend an afternoon with just himself, that his wife has been nagging him, that the gutters need to be cleaned, the grass cut, and oh if he could just steal one hour outside of the house with no interruptions, well that would just be goddamn peachy.

So he sits there, and maybe every few minutes I look up to make sure he isn't weeping or staring into space (which undoubtedly is the physical projection of loneliness), and usually what I find is that he's dozed off in between bites, appearing, if not being, perfectly content.

So I've diverted. And I'll get back to demanding to know why towns don't close down anymore in honor of tradition. Is that absurd? Slightly, I suppose. Too nostalgic? Oh, absolutely.

Honestly, though, I'm not sure I can help it. I understand that the hospitals and police stations can't close. I get that we need protection and refuge, I get that someone has to sacrifice, and I get that some people don't mind doing it.

I'm not even saying that I would mind. I would question it. But I would try not to mind.

Even if I think it would be better to say to that man (threadbare coat, remember?), hey, you're welcome in our home, it's Christmas, we have more than we need, and I'd like to offer you more than a solo cup of coffee.

Maybe he'd think I was crazy. He'd be entirely correct, if not necessarily for this precise reason.

Still, it's a thought. It's an idea that I think we cast off too long ago, that celebration is exclusive, or that establishments and businesses turn on their "Open" signs because it's a Wednesday.

Hell, remember when places used to close just because it was Sunday?

Exactly.

(Oh, just a note: I get that not everyone takes their day of rest on the same day. Just speaking in some traditions, Sunday was the first day that came to mind).

I guess if I mean anything, I mean this: just because we spent the last 60 days decking the halls doesn't mean that the actual day(s), Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, etcetera, aren't more important. Because they are. And you shouldn't have to work that day. Unless you want to, or volunteer to, or genuinely decide that it's how you want to spend your time.

And if you volunteer, or cooperate willingly, despite the fact that you have kids or beliefs or parents in town, then I wholeheartedly commend you.

Sincere offering is a talent, not a trait. And holidays don't decrease in worth or necessity because they aren't spent huddled around fireplaces holding hands with your dearest loved ones.

But they do (or rather should) evoke a sense of family that has long been discarded. It has become that if you cannot be with such people then, whoever they may be to you, that it is inconsequential, that it is a day, that other opportunities will arise.

And of course they will. Constantly, if you are lucky and wide-awake. But let's not quite yet or entirely lose the need for togetherness that these days reserve. We will need each other every day, that is certain. But we will need each other then as well; even if that is an ordinary statement, idea, or truth, let it not be forgotten.