Category Archives: musing

Whiner 5-8-14

The doctor, after taking pains to impress on me that he would have treated a long-time patient like me for free, that he had nothing to do with his group’s three month wait to participate in the Affordable Care Act, shook my hand and said we’d talk when the blood test came back in a few days.  

We did not talk, though I got a bill for $445 from his office for the twenty minute visit.  Mysterious, since I’d presented a valid insurance card and the wellness visit was supposed to be “free”.   Also mysterious, the $300 charge for a wellness visit and another $145 for a wellness consultation.

Whine no. 1:  no call back yesterday from the good doctor to talk about what my blood might have to say about the state of my health, though the bill, I was told, had been paid by insurance.

The internet is still not working here, increasing my feeling of isolation and dislocation.   Verizon is supposed to be here any minute to restore it.   Verizon’s DSL service, it must be said, is pretty crappy under the best of circumstances.   Rain seems to make it much worse, and it rained last night.   We’ll see if they show up and fix the line, three more hours left in their appointment window.  (He arrived, determined problem was in basement, door locked, super busy.  He’ll try again tomorrow, armed with super’s number.  Still no service)

Without the internet I can’t send follow-up emails to my unreturned calls from yesterday.   The businessman who sits on the board of the largest public after-school program in the country, among those calls.   I can’t have a look at that wealthy non-profit’s website to familiarize myself with its operation, to sound better informed than I am now.

Another call back that was promised but never came is from the controller of the outfit that is currently employing the animation workshop, unpaid, for months.  Second promise to immediately send the checks was made on April 17 when I sent the unpaid invoices again.  Left town, got back, no checks arrived in the intervening three weeks.

Whine no. 2:  people are weasels, and overbooked weasels at that.

Instead of attending to anything productive, like taming the skin-crawling chaos on and around my desk, I open at random a recently received proof of Philippe Petit’s Creativity: The Perfect Crime.   On the page, now dog-eared, in a list called The jackals of negativity, I spot a familiar jackal, disguised as a fact:

Fact:  I can’t do it alone, I need help.

Petit, a man who repeatedly snuck into the new World Trade Center, casing it until he was able to solve all technical challenges, rig a tightrope between its twin towers, and stroll serenely across space, dismisses these jackals as mere excuses.   “Impossible, what is that?”  asks Petit.

Every problem can be solved over time, with enough attention and persistence.  Provided a person has the burning desire to walk the next step a thousand feet above the pavement to which most people fix their eyes.   A world of darkness, yes, but look also at all those beautiful colors.  Amazing, really, how colorful this hopeless world also is.

What gives the world its marvelous color?   Creativity.   Try living a day without it, you will find yourself fucked, wondering what the point of any of this exertion is.

I can do it alone.  I could use help, of course, but I can do it alone.  It will take much longer than it should, if I had the small team that would be so useful, but I am the man for the job.  If I can stop wasting time tapping my cane against the darkness.

Legs Zoff

Until around 1997 I had never used email.   I didn’t really know much about the internet before I started law school.  The computer was a word processor to me, and a wonderful one.  I spent hours typing and mechanically cutting and pasting, rearranging, effortlessly murdering my darlings.   It was fantastic.  Later I found pictures of pretty women on the internet and thought how cool that was, but I wasn’t connected on-line yet.

Fast forward 17 years or so, the lifespan of those who grew up with electronic devices connecting them to each other, and, on discovering I have no internet service today, I feel like I’ve had me legs chopped off.

Among my emails is a possibly very important phone number, the direct line to a board member on the largest, best-funded, public school after-school program in the country, based in NYC.  This fellow found the promo I sent him very cool and invited me to call him when I got back in town.  But his number is inaccessible now from my internetless apartment.

As are the limitless informational possibilities that the internet represents.   Dag.

Can’t even call my internet provider, Verizon, a chickenshit outfit, because their number is… on line.   Unless I can dig up a paper bill and find a tech support number there.

My plan is to bring the iPad to a local coffee shop, connect over there, with a notebook by my side to jot down numbers in.  Damn it.  They do have good coffee though.

Living in the Moment

Easier said than done, of course, but worth focusing on if a person is to live their life as productively as possible.   Nothing that happened a few days ago, or in childhood, should cast a dark enough shadow on the moment to prevent it from being lived fully.  Easy to say, hard to do.

 

An action brings up a strong, familiar feeling that was so painful so many times? Very hard to remain in the moment, with that old tightness in the lungs, choking down the desire to strike back somehow.   A friend keeps saying “remember, we are not helpless eight year-olds now.”  True dat, though it’s something the feelings don’t always take into consideration.

 

Days spent stewing over the disrespectful, pugnacious, other-blaming “office manager” at the local tax-in-the-box where I have been trying to have my tax filed.  Feet up on the desk, legs apart, ESPN flashing box scores on the screen next to him, a smirk like a sideways ass crack on his face, he said, after a week of zero service, lying and wrong information given “you can’t intimidate me by trying to get my boss’s contact info.  I’m not giving it to you anyway.”   He then added, for the benefit of his cow-faced associates, and to make his contempt crystal clear, “you’re the only customer I’ve ever had a problem with.”

 

That the problem he referred to was his failure to keep any of several promises to the customer, or to follow up, or to have the correct software installed for the half hour late appointment, or confidently giving the wrong advice regarding what needed to be filed, and the rest?  Not his problem.  The problem of the unreasonable customer, you dig?

 

I spent days unable to stop choking over having my nose rubbed in my “powerlessness”, even as a paying customer, or the 48 hour delay in his immediate supervisor getting back to me (I dug up her email address from a correspondence a year ago), pleasantly, only mildly defensive.   I wrote back to her, making sure she forwarded our correspondence to her boss. Then, because we live in a society where nobody apologizes voluntarily, and offense is often employed to bolster defense, she felt compelled to add that my tax filing was a year late (I owe no tax, so that’s not strictly relevant) and that she “left a message immediately after i had completed the return with information provided and knew exactly what I needed to finalize the return.  I will ask Michelle to call.  Have a great weekend.”

 

To which I replied: 

 

YOU knew exactly what you needed to finalize the return, you are just sharing that with me now, more than a week after my appointment. Have a great weekend

 

The meaning of that “have a great weekend” is universally understood in this context.  Not ten minutes later, the call I’d been waiting a week for arrived.  Michelle, the boss, eventually conceded that she was sorry that I felt I had not received good service.  

 

I corrected her.  She should not be sorry that I felt I had not received good service, she should acknowledge that the service I received was objectively the opposite of good service.  She needed to acknowledge that anyone would have felt disrespected by the unprofessional treatment I’d received. That I was not looking for an apology because my sensitive feelings were hurt, but because I was put through an unprofessional and disrespectful series of aggravations that nobody, let alone a paying customer, should ever have to tolerate.  She conceded as much, telling me that she was sorry and would talk to the jerk in question about his attitude.  

 

And because I was reasonable, and didn’t browbeat her once I’d extracted the apology, things going forward will be fine whenever I get the paperwork this jackass told me I don’t need.

 

In the midst of it, when all that exists is an unwanted, undeserved hassle with a belligerent and unyielding moron, there is no completely putting it out of mind, no 100% focus available for the other difficult concentrated work a person in a tight corner must do to get out of that corner.   In the moment, all is possible, truly, if you can focus completely on what you have immediately in front of you to focus on.   Dealing with multiple moments at once, or several aggravating ones at once, is a recipe for bad karma, poor sleep and unhealthy eating.

Better to breathe, smile, remember what you love to do, and do it as much of the time as you can arrange to do it.

Signs of Lurking Insanity

The signs are all around, for those ready to be alarmed by such signs.   I’m not speaking now of the obvious ones– cutting food stamps for millions of hungry American children (“takers”) while limitless money is spent sending armies to kill vaguely identified enemies, along with massive, classified ‘collateral damage’ and things like that.   I’m speaking of the subtler ones, the more personal signs, like the ones I gave in yesterday’s post here.

Sekhnet recoiled slightly from the immodest idea that someone would recommend oneself for a MacArthur grant.   An act of supreme desperation, clearly, to say: even though I have no idea how to monetize my idea or bring it to market, to truly scale or even sustain it, I nonetheless deserve half a million dollars from a gigantic foundation to show what I could do if I didn’t have to worry about those things.  The reason I deserve it?   The idea is genius.

“Wimp!”

“Coward!”

“Braggart!”

Yes, of course.  I can see it so clearly now, and am slightly red-faced to see it so clearly.  I wrote the words yesterday to give myself a bit of hope during a discouraging time.  I will now sprout a few more signs of lurking insanity as I conclude.

What is hope but an act of imagination?   If we cannot imagine something different, and work to make it happen, where does hope come from?   Hope is faith, based on the percieved soundness of an imagined outcome and the steps toward it that have already been taken.   Does the idea seem to work in practice?  Grounds for hope.  Without hope, baby, game over.

As surely as one can find reason to be hopeful, there are many more reasons to lose hope.  I have a few right in front of me now, cackling with bad breath as I type, a couple behind me, coughing with vague menace.   Do you need further proof of the desperate situation I find myself in today than this attempt to climb out of a greased pit?

“The People rest, Your Horror.”

 

You Know What I’d Love?

Working in a crowded classroom today, with eight or ten kids who have just spent a long Monday in school, the kids are distracted, cannot focus, some do their homework.   Two brothers, both very talented, sit outside the room, one doing his homework, the other staring at the screen of his phone.  The animation workshop is set up, the materials arrayed, endless possibilities all around them, but the after-school program is ineptly run at this place, and the kids come into the room mostly unhappy.   It takes a good 40 minutes for the beehive to start humming and the two paid adults in the room to get busy.  Sadly, that leaves 20 minutes or so of animation. My assistant, who sets up and breaks down the animation workshop, is well-paid and I pay the guy who runs the workshop the same thing I was paid for a session twice as long, and myself, as so often, I pay nothing, even though I am actually still running the workshop.

“You’re an idiot,” says an observer.

An idiot with a fond dream.  Like Woody Allen’s father in Love and Death who loved his little piece of land.   The camera pans back to show the demented old man fondly petting a square of sod he is holding close to his beaming face.  “My father was an idiot,” says Allen’s character, the cowardly braggart based lovingly on Bob Hope.

You know what I’d love?   Not so much the widespread success of my “business”, which would be very gratifying.  Not so much giving the children of the poor, the crazy, unteachable kids that society gives up on, the chance to shine, to show the billionaire funders of school innovation what poor children are actually capable of, sing their songs, improvise in a climate of tolerant appreciation for wild creativity.  Not so much an award and handshake (instead of a kiss!) from the lying sociopath who is our president at any given time.

What I would love, and it does not seem ridiculous to me, even as it may be galling to read the words here, is a MacArthur Grant.   Not so much the grant to hire the staff I need, or to rent a storefront where the workshop could have a home base, not a grant to pay some internet designer a fraction of what one was paid to design the wonderful Obamacare site– a grant for me, personally, in recognition of my evolving life’s work, to allow me to continue that work without the frequent knot in my stomach because I am failing to find a way to pay myself, even as I pay two or three young people very well for their hourly services.

I am not a selfish man, nor greedy.  I’m not acquisitive.  The MacArthur grant would enable me to work to build a more just, verdant and peaceful world, to carry out the mission of the MacArthur Foundation for more than a decade to come, should I live that long.  I would be freed from the wheel I am bound to now.   I would be able to walk into a room and smile, because the best smile to smile is the smile of a person who needs nothing but friendship from those people he likes.

I know the world I am living in, and so continue on up the long, greasy slope, muttering as I go, employing my current version of a smile whenever I can.  But, if it was up to me, I am exactly the kind of person this grant was designed for, if you know what I’m saying.

(I told her not to put the copyright notices on these stickers….)

 

Image

Reminder: there’s rarely a good reason to twitch

Yeah, yeah, the twitch reflex, I know, as primitive and deep as reflexes go.   Something surprises you from the periphery: flinch!  True, and a good practice, to err on the side of caution, good for survival.

But I am thinking about the times I feel hurried, and twitchy, and, moving quickly, sometimes stumble, when what I need to do is take a moment to pause, breathe, gather poise, realize that five or ten seconds are better spent doing this than starting to sprint with a shoelace untied.  

An important thing I was reminded of yesterday, as I delivered well-thought out remarks in a rushed and not well-thought out way.   A lot was going on, I had many things on my mind, the stakes in some ways were high– all the more reason to remember:  take a moment to take it all in, smile, pause.  Being gracious enough can often be lost when rushing, as it was yesterday.  Be gracious, then breathe again.    

Then, be gracious.  Take a moment, smile, look around, breathe.  Then, after a human pause, be gracious.  

 

Encouraged vs. Discouraged

When you are discouraged, as I am at the moment, simple things look impossible.  Taking action seems as difficult as walking up a greasy wall in flip flops.  In biblical times discouraged people, then called sluggards, were heard to say “there is a lion in the way, yea, a lion!”  Of course there’s a lion in the way, there is always a lion.

When we are encouraged, by events, people, luck, the world looks entirely different.   It is no longer a problem that stops you in your tracks that there is a lion in the way.   Here you go, lion.

Courage, it has been said many times, is not the absence of fear but the presence of mind to carry on in spite of fear.  Easy to think of it as a matter of character, the brave die but once and so forth, but there are also tides, and winds that blow, amines in the brain, events, people, luck that will either aid your courage or sap it.

It is important to remind yourself, in times of low tide, that tides turn, that the moon and other forces are arranging it even as hope seems far over the barnacle and slime encrusted rocks.  If all goes well, everything will be fine.  If not, there will probably be time to cry about it.  

“Eh, you’re just trying to make yourself feel better, loser,” says a voice less charitable than one might wish to hear when you are feeling discouraged.

“You’re probably right,” you think to say, but wisely say nothing instead.

Walking Uphill

When you are tired and heading up a steep incline, and have an unknown distance to the place where you can rest, sometimes the wind will start blowing hard.   It feels like an immense, heavy hand in your chest, like a continuous slow motion punch removing all the air from your struggling lungs.   Your companions on this uphill walk share frightened looks, they are already depressed about the difficulty of the seemingly endless climb.  

It will not do to give them a bracing whiff of your own desperation at this time.  So you cheerfully have everyone to stop for a moment, turn their backs to the wind, drink some water, rest their legs.  They will appreciate this kindness and so will you.

If things get much worse, and finally the expedition is actually doomed, there will be plenty of time to give everyone a bracing whiff of your own desperation.  Until that time, remain cheerful, no matter how bracing the whiff of your own desperation may be to you.

Cheer Up

It’s hard to watch somebody suffering.  People don’t know what to do.  What do you say to an emaciated ninety year-old woman, lying on her back, hands curled on her chest in a pose of death, face impassive, eyes staring, composing a prayer: “please help me die”?   You bend over and kiss her dry, cool cheek.   She cannot speak.  What do you say after that?

“You’re looking well….”

“How are you?”

“I see you’re not feeling well and that you can’t speak, is there any way you can tell me what you want?   Shall I go?  Shall I keep talking?”

“I have my ukulele here, would you like a little music?”  And if she doesn’t, how is she going to let you know?

Her daughter is at a loss.  Maybe not the easiest relationship, going back to when the woman was a child and this now cadaverous looking old lady in the bed was up and around and raising her.  This disabling disease has surely not made things easier betwen them.  She complains about her mother’s depression, that she just will not look on the bright side.

If the old woman could talk she’d say “there is no bright side for me, bedridden, unable to even communicate, in constant pain from a disease that, with maniacal slowness, continues to get worse and worse, more disabling and more painful.  In a merciful world I’d be allowed to die.  I have a fucking DNR on the door, why can’t I just have a goddamned stroke already like everyone else?”

But the old woman cannot talk, though she’s expressed her wish to die to her daughter whenever she’s been able to.  I play the ukulele, her daughter and Sekhnet, both wearing surgical masks against the daughter’s bronchitis, sing.   At a certain point she manages to raise one finger which her daughter translates “one more?”  The old woman gives a kind of nod.

We play Goodnight, by the Beatles, the one sung so fetchingly by Ringo at the end of the White Album.  We do not perform it anywhere near as fetchingly as Ringo and the boys did, but, under the circumstance, even if Ringo and the boys were there, John and George alive again and at the peak of their powers, with a string section, it wouldn’t have mattered that much.

I think of how much worse many people have it than I do at the moment.  It is only a dream of mine that is on a respirator, after all, not me myself or any loved one.  I try to cheer up, much like the old woman being urged to make the best of her disabling Parkinson’s Disease.