This is pretty much just copied from an fb comment I made. I’m a little loopy on percocet/oxycodone, so it’s not the best post in the world. Go figure.
Hey, all! Thanks for the well wishing! I’m doing fine. I knew I shouldn’t have worried, but I did. Here’s the short version. I had three procedures: “Right endoscopic maxillary antrostomy”, “submucous resection of turbinates”, and “septoplasty”.
Stop reading now if you are squeamish. I’m not kidding. This is all pretty gross.
The first one was removing an area of bone to increase the opening between the right cheek sinus and the nasal passages. Then he removed a bunch of “gunk” — apparently a technical term — from that sinus and put a piece of degradable padding in there. This will take a year to fully heal. Yuck.
The second was carving out some tissue from my over sized turbinates, basically just making the breathing passages a little bigger.
The third one was more intense then he thought it was going to be. He wanted to carve down the deviated septum a little, again to help me breath, but it turned out to be the bone that was deviated, not just the cartilage. It’s what I get for having a rough childhood. So he detached the cartilage, cut off some of the bone, scraped off some of the cartilage, and then sowed it all back together. I now have something I think he called a ‘mattress stitch’, as well as several individual stitches, holding the inside of my nose together.
This is not a fact I was hoping to discover. Anyhoo, it’s four am, I have to get up in two hours to catch a Mega-Bus, and I figured I’d use the time to blog day 1. Fortunately, not all that much has happened, so this should be short.
My flight was technically KLM, but really Ghetto Delta. It was direct from Portland to Amsterdam, with a four hour layover before a transfer to Edinburgh. Normally I have no trouble sleeping on planes, but my insomnia had come back all last week and didn’t loose its grip just because I was shimmying across time zones.
I should confess to you, that for about a week now I’ve had a drowning, haunting feeling that something will go imminently wrong in my life. I rarely pay attention to such fanciful fears, so I assumed that when I hit the ground in the U.K. I would have a pint and the dreadful feeling would shed like a snake’s skin. I was wrong.
Anyway, I can’t complain about the flight. It was under-booked, so, luxury of luxuries, I had two seats alone together: window and isle. I’d requested “gluten free” meals, which turned out to consist almost entirely of rice (which I didn’t eat, but I came prepared: more on that later). The night was long and I flew through it. I tossed and turned. I tried every imaginable position. I didn’t sleep a wink. I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; pt 1 and later The Kings Speech. I remember them both well, but it’s a flavorless, oatmeal kind of memory.
I have a special kind of insomnia. At least I think it’s special, I haven’t met anyone else who confesses to the same symptom. When I can’t sleep, it’s an itch that keeps me awake. Literally. A small, persistent itching will afflict some random splotch of skin. If I scratch it, it will move to some other random, splotch of skin. Right now it’s the back of my left hand and my left temple. I’m not bothering to scratch either. They’ll move on their own anyway.
When I say the flight was itchy and uncomfortable, I don’t want you to blame the airline. It was a fine flight. I was not a fine passenger.
We landed in daylight, 11:23 am local, Euro time. I stumbled through the airport with my backpack and a small, Powell’s-Books paper bag I kept the few extra things I couldn’t pack. I was bringing some shoes for Tea Elf, so as soon as I unloaded them I’d have no need for the paper bag. Anyway, I found my gate (D52) and did like the only other waiting traveler: I lay down on my bags and closed my eyes. An hour and ten minutes later I awoke in the middle of a throng. There were perhaps a hundred other people who had materialized in the hour I’d slept. The first hour of sleep I’d had since Thursday night’s four hours. It was Saturday afternoon by now.
There was some triviality of a second security moving from Amsterdam to U.K., I was on the plane and, thankfully, I awoke in Scotland with another forty minutes of sleep behind my eyes. I’m breezing by something here and it’s a diservice. This second set of security was an adventure because of my provisions. I brought pemmican.
Although I break my diet on these trips, I don’t go stupid about it. When the only breakfast available is a sugary pastry, I don’t eat. Last time I hunted for food; sometimes to the annoyance of my travel-mates — may they rest in peace. No! I kid! I kid! I didn’t murder them. They’re fine. Mostly…. So this time I brought Grass Fed Pemmican from U.S. Wellness meats. Each (cherry-and-honey-free) bar has nothing but beef, tallow, and salt. 20 grams of lean protein and all the free-range fat a body could want. And before the ignorati out there start to cry about my cholesterol or some bullshit about hardened arteries, My HDL is through the roof, my triglicerides are on the floor (52) and you need to read this article: The Definitive Guide to Cholesterol. And yes, my doctor agrees with me.
But the salient point here: each stick looks like a poorly formed bar of plastic explosives. Also, it’s technically raw beef (dried below 114°F). There are some good articles (here’s one!) that explain why this is “safe” (yeah, irony quotes…). The portland security girl stared at my bag longer than I’ve ever seen a scanner operator stare at anything. Never mind that’s my food you’re irradiating, I was a little nervous. The dutch operators were quick with the scanner, but slow with the hand inspection. They were reading the tiny, cover-your-ass words printed on the package from U.S. Wellness that read “keep frozen” when I spoke up: “Protein bars.” It was only a little lie. That was when they noticed my Vibram Five fingers and my blue hair. They laughed, gave me my bag, and let me through.
Where was I? Right! So I have 17 of these things, at least at trip’s start, minus the two I ate on the plane. Hopefully I can just use them for breakfast. We’ll see.
Ugly Elf note: it’s 5:09 am here. I’ve been writing an hour. See how much I love you?
I landed in Scotland at the appointed hour, bought a tea from Costa, tried to board the bus I needed, bus 100, was rejected for not having a ticket, bought a ticket and was forced to surrender my tea — no beverages allowed on the bus. I considered mutiny but then decided there would be other teas. Je ne regrette rien.
Last time, Sommer, Michael, and I took the Waverly Station exit to get to the Castle Rock Hostel. This time I got off at the West End station and walked up from the other side. I think the walk was about the same, but it was an earlier stop so it might have saved me a little time.
Castle Rock Hostel, now with added Scaffolds.
I was only a little shocked to see the hostel completely covered in scaffolding. [I'll have to remember to insert the picture] Upstairs I found my new room just across the hall from the room we had last time I was here.
I thought I’d reserved a double twin room (two twin beds). Apparently I only had a double bed. That would work out in the end (more on this in a minute), but I blinked awkwardly at Cameron when I saw only one bed and the two of us. I hoped she didn’t think I was being skeezy. I met Adam, Cameron’s friend and the completing member of our party for the Edinburgh to Inverness portion of this trip. He’s awesome. I approve. He out-geeks me, but only by a little. We talked Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Portal, and American McGee’s Alice. I was out of the conversation when he brought up another game, Braid, I need to play.
We went to the Black Bull for dinner. They were out of fish and chips. I cried a little. But I had the chicken Kiev, which I peeled out of its breading and enjoyed its butter-and-garlic middle. I had a beer, but it was unremarkable. I should say I’ve been so grain free as to forgo beer lately. Having a beer, breaded chicken, and chips is a big departure from my usual diet. I’m planning to get fat and ache. So be it. It’s worth saying that the waitress was beautiful. I have a thing for dark hair and blue eyes. I recently met an aerialist in Portland who fits the profile. I have a crush. I’ll get over it.
We came back to the hostel after monkeying around on the scaffolding, and I showered while Cam and Adam went to the common room and did some planning. I joined them. Cam was sitting down next to a man I didn’t look at and assumed was Adam. I jammed them together in order to fit onto the tet-a-tet and only later realized this was not Adam. Bear in mind how little sleep I had. Somehow we ended up with another crew member for the night. A lovely young fellow named Axel (spelling?) who is getting his English degree in Creative writing at Tufts university in Boston. He’s originally from Argentina, but the only word I heard him speak with an accent was “tattoo”. Everything else sounded perfectly american.
The four of us went out and got a little lost, but eventually ended up at the Last Drop mostly accidentally. It, too, is a place I went last time I was here. This time, none of the natives engaged us in conversation. I missed Steven (the Last Drop) and Steve (Black Bull). I hope they’re well.
Cam and Adam huddled, drank orange juice, and discussed something important. Axel and I talked circus and creative writing. I was deliriously tired. I hope I made some sense, but I doubt it.
We came back to the hostel, tried and failed to find the bus station we needed the next morning, tried again and succeeded, and came back to the hostel.
I went to bed. The others were going to hang out for a bit down in the commons. We have to get up at 7:00am to catch our bus. Cameron was supposed to stay in the room with me, and Adam, a late member to our party, had a bed in the dorm. I slept for maybe an hour, tossed for a while, read a hundred pages of Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind, tossed some more and grabbed my laptop at four am to head downstairs. There was never any sign of Cam. She’s likely off on an adventure, I hope she’s safe.
Anyway, it’s 5:46am now. There’s an hour and change until I have to get up, so I’m going to post this thing and head up to the room and pack, maybe have a pemmican bar.
There’s nothing like a family reunion to take an exquisite index of every flaw you may / or may not have. The downside is: I’m a stress ball with stress-ball shoulders so tight that hunched is the new relaxed. The upside is: I can’t feel like any of the misfortunes that ever landed in my lap weren’t justifiably earned. That is, I don’t feel sorry for myself at all. How could I? I’m right where I’m supposed to be.
JT FTW
This isn’t such a bad thing. It doesn’t matter what I do, everyone who loves me will have the same response; whether I’m strangling baby seals or curing cancer they’ll think the same of me. I can do anything I want; anything that will make me proud of myself or even just entertain me.
Let me put it this way: My family is a finite state machine with only one state. No matter what input I put in, there will always be the same output.
When considering my life goals, where I’m heading, the ten year plan or what have you, I don’t need to consider “what will they think of my choices?”. It simplifies the equation.
So that’s covered. Moving on.
I’m back from four days of family time in “Palm Springs”. I put that in quotes, because I never actually went to Palm Springs, I went to Rancho Mirage, a neighboring town that, to the casual observer, is part of Palm Springs. I honestly can’t tell you where one ends and the other begins and I tried to figure it out on Google Maps. But I say “Palm Springs” because it’s easier than explaining where the eff Rancho Mirage is.
But we did take a hike that took us up and around Bob Hope’s mansion. I’m not sure who owns it now; there’s a lot of construction. It looks like they’re making a big addition to it.
Anyway, like the song says, lets begin the beguine.
I flew into Palm Springs International Airport on a small plane from Portland that touched down in Sacramento long enough to offload some peeps, grab some new ones, and fuel up. The approach to Palm Springs is famously turbulent, but this was the first time I’ve ever flown in with absolutely still skies. It was so still, in fact, that the forest of pristine, white windmills were still as porcelain statues, a bizarre, post-modern homage to Don Quixote.
I spent the flight reading Kurt Vonnegut’s mother night, a solipsistic look at the futility of human action (I’ll write a book review later), while trying to ignore the bulk of a fat man next to me. Yes, that’s politically incorrect and harsh, but I was literally pressed against the wall of the plane. The armrest could not sit all the way down. His leg flowed around mine. There was some discomfort.
I love flying into Palm Springs for the view. The tiny airplane portal reveals a desert frame around a Welters Board (see the Magicians) of green, blue, and brown squares as California continues it’s war on nature. If you want to see the Colorado River, come to Palm Springs where it’s watered on every lawn, filled in every pool, falls from each fountain, and laid to rest in every man-made lake. Generally, it’s sloshed around in a manifest destiny of disregard for the nature.
We landed. I grabbed my pack off the cart and began at once to decompress in the 22°C sunshine. Palm Springs International is a tiny, big-band-era airport filled with travelers cast from beautiful people. They range from Hollywood-ugly to Hollywood-gorgeous. It’s a nice place to hang out. I had to hang out just long enough that I made a plan to get to Grandma’s house on my own when my Aunt Jane showed up, which was a lovely surprise. Aunt Jane is a peach, and I didn’t know she’d be there.
It turned out she was just staying through dinner time, but that gave me the better part of the day with her and my grandmother back at the ranch (so to speak); they were lovely company. I was a hollow shell after three hours of sleep and a day of travel.
I lay out in the sun and drank tea and later wine.
The Arkansas Family arrived, then later (great) Aunt Ky, short for Caroline, then even later my sister Diedra and her chihuahua Jolene, named after the eponymous Dolly Parton song.
The Arkansas Family is comprised of two of my brothers, a wife, a toddler and a baby. Almost at once my older brother gave me a new, abusive epithet but I’ll leave that for the restricted part of the post. I set about to win-over my two-year-old nephew by chasing and being chased while doing my monkey-gallop, and accidentally got myself a workout in the process.
The grapefruit tree was in full glory. Like a universe bush heavily laden with golden, ripe suns. I climbed it, no great feat, and brought in many fruits. I prefer to peel them and eat them like oranges, which I did with great gusto. As in previous years, they were the best grapefruit I’ve ever experienced. In surplus of past years, the tree was filled with fruit to a nearly-ridiculous proportion.
The day ended with a brief soak in the hot-tub with the brothers and the sister-in-law. I turned in early.
Jumbo Rocks Campground
The next day started with bacon and eggs, and moved quickly to me borrowing my grandmother’s car and hitting the road to Joshua Tree (J.T. to climbers). After a beautiful, desert drive of an hour and a half I met up with a gal who was at the time a friend-of-a-friend but is now simply a friend, for some great scrambling over rocks and some poor bouldering. I expected to climb below my in-door grade, I did not expect that I would only be able to accomplish the most basic beginner problems.
I was further frustrated by the banality of the climbs themselves. It was simple, if you could get enough friction on the rock to stand up, then you could grab the top, or secure such easy holds that it didn’t matter. The crux was always the first move. No joy.
I hung out at the campsite with my friend and two of her friends, had a beer, ate dried mangoes in such quantity it would have killed a lesser man, and eventually returned back to the ranch (so to speak).
The evening was pleasant and uneventful. I began a new appreciation for white wine. I failed only in not making it to the hot tub, which had been my goal. Getting to sleep early was a worthy substitute.
Sunday was a hell of a day.
By Sunday everyone preferred my epithet over my name. Including my grandmother and her sister, my great aunt Ky. It was a little disturbing hearing the two call me a vulgarity. They insisted it was fitting, and in the context of me, cute.
I was proud to have kept outside my normal family patterns. My brother had tried to pick a few fights and I’d avoided them. I’d not fought back against the epithet, though I tried to steer away from it, and tried to take the high-road. Still, my ego was wearing down. My grandmother had already pointed out to me that I couldn’t afford a house, but perhaps that was for the best. And later my older brother pointed out the same fact without the silver lining.
Asleep on dad's shoulders.
The main activity of the morning was a cute-little, dog-friendly hike up to Bob Hope’s maison. It couldn’t have been four kilometers. My older brother carried his son on his shoulders. Later, on the phone, my sister would refer to it as a “death march”, but nerves were frayed by then.
The afternoon was spent dividing up what was left of my late father’s things. This was mostly artwork he had made throughout his life. He was a talented artist. The process upset my sister greatly. It may come as a consolation that she got the pieces she was interested in; we were happy to let her have them. I think we all got what we were interested in.
There were family pictures in the hoard. My grandmother, sadly, pointed out to us that I wasn’t in any of them. I’d been born, but my parents never wanted me in the pictures. My mother explained to me why, often enough. I’ll leave that for the protected part of the post as well.
Diedra left for San Diego after dinner. She went to address some friend and family drama. That is, drama surrounding a friend of hers and that friend’s family.
Everyone else, except for me and my nephew, Billy, had something of an icecream social after dinner.
I’m sorry to tell you this, but you aren’t working hard enough. And by you, I mean me.
This is a post to motivate myself to work harder, at everything, thinly disguised as a didactic an entertaining post about, what else, circus. I could have picked any subject, but this one suits me.
OK. I’ve failed to write this post three times. I’m not sure why. It either comes off angry-ranty, or whingy-bitchy. No good.
Eff it. Let’s start out with a little entertainment.
I don’t watch much TV — that’s only a little bit of a lie — mostly just when I’m cooking or eating. Sometimes when I’m stretching, but usually I listen to audio books then.
PBS put out a six part program what filled me with love. (BTW. This is the carrot side of the post. The stick to follow.) The documentary creators at PBS tried to do a reality show on the Big Apple Circus. It feels like a low-budget documentary with poor production values, but that just makes me love it more.
Like anything I watch, you can find the whole thing online. You can find all six episodes Online at PBS.
While I enjoyed it, and I think you will too, it feels to me like they missed the point. They obsessed on one sad clown. We get it. Clowns are sad. They gave too much time to another clown who’s a jerk. We never get a sense of what the incredible performers went through to become incredible. They tried to make it personal, but lost the personality. The tight-rope walker has one boyfriend in the beginning and we’re given the impression she’s always been with him. At the end she’s moving back to Europe with her boyfriend, a different performer, who she’s also always been with — no sign of bf #1.
It’s a circus in every sense of the word.
They almost do one thing right. [SPOILER ALERT] There’s a group of performers that are exceptional in that they don’t come from circus families. They weren’t raised circus, they chose circus.
And they fail.
Most of the time, to be that good you have to do it from the time you can walk. Even before you can run.
Failure segues to motivation.
Unless you’re an idiot, failure is motivating. Just ask any scientist. Don’t get it? We need to have a long talk. For now, I’ll give you the two second version.
First second: If you expect something to work and it does, you haven’t learned anything. If you expect something to work and it doesn’t, now you’ve learned something.
Learning things is cool.
Second second: If a pretty girl corrects your misused word, it doesn’t mean you’re an idiot. It means you just learned something.
Learning things is cool.
Are you picking up on a pattern?
Conclusion: Learning things makes you a better person. Therefore, handling failure well makes you a better person. Fail fast and correct well. Now you’re cool.
Anyhoo, back on target. PBS Circus.
What do we learn from this show?
Sort-of-average, extra-crazy people can do amazing things. You also learn that the clowns are ass holes. Don’t be a clown. And managers everywhere suck. Don’t be a manager.
Oh, hey! I’m average with a dash of extra-crazy… maybe I can do something amazing!
I just checked.
I cannot.
Also, ouch.
I’m pretty sure you’ve ignored everything I’ve said. You haven’t even watched your 240-some-odd minutes of PBS Circus, have you? You failed. But that’s OK! Failure is cool!
But before we go on, we need the proper ambiance.
I’m'ma set the mood up in dis betch.
This is the theme song to that show you totally didn’t watch. Listen to this, it’ll make sense later and it’s only 1:16s long.
It’s a 1’16″ long! you still haven’t listened to it? Jeebus, you people are redeemable irremediable.
Now we’ve come to the stick portion of our talk.
People often fail because they’re afraid to really push themselves. They make excuses. They claim they’ll get injured if they try X. Or they’ll get sick if they give up eating Y. In both cases they’re usually talking to someone who’s doing X or has given up Y and improved their health.
Yet these people, the non-giver-uppers, think they’re different. They’re special and can’t give-up/do those things. Or they think the opposite that the doer/giver-upper-of-crap-food is special. It’s bullshit. You’re not special. Neither am I.
Every infantrymen learns this lesson well. When I went through basic training, we were a motley mix of ages and backgrounds. The youngest was 17. The oldest was 33. Everybody pushed. Everybody adapted. You can too.
When in doubt, try it out.
I put a personal anecdote here, but it was boring and preachy. I’ve pulled it.
Sailing along. You don’t need to go through the army to learn that you’re not special. You can do that right here! You don’t need a couple months of a Drill Sgt. screaming at you to learn how to push yourself further than you’ve ever gone.
You need to fail.
I’m serious. If you don’t try, you’ll never get there. You have to try, and fail, and think about it reasonably; change your strategy and try again. Changing your strategy is the important part. Don’t just keep on the wrong path to the right goal. As the conjoined efforts of that Annoying Sunday paper classic, Family Circus and the esteemed favorite of psycho’s everywhere, Friedrich Nietzsche can show you here.
What I’m telling you is: don’t be an asshole. Don’t be the asshole who’s “eating healthy” for ten years and getting fatter every one of them. You’re not eating healthy. It’s not your age. Age has nothing to do with it. It’s not your family or your genes. You’re being an asshole again. Do you really want to be the asshole who brought guns to Narnia? Oh wait. That’s a different rant. Anyway. Try something new. You failed. Celebrate your failure and move on.
Now that I’ve made you so sad that even your puppy is crying, I have to show you this thing.
First I have to say that most of us are pretty good at learning from the mistakes of others. Few are good at learning from other’s successes. If you see someone do it, you can do it too.
Don’t believe me? Listen to the experts.
That’s not the thing. That’s Radio Lab. Which is awesome and you should listen to every single one of them several times. Take away point, just keep doing it for 10,000 hours and you’ll be an expert. No Problem! Right?
Right! The thing!
The thing is another documentary. It’s from PBS again, but totally different producers. They have this series called “Global Voices.” Each episode is a documentary on something. That’s about as unifying as it gets. One of them was on a Chinese circus school. I’m SO glad American schools aren’t like this. Sit down or cook dinner and watch this:
If you haven’t watched it yet, this next part won’t make sense. Read it if you want, but read it again after you watch the video.
No one can push you. Not really. You can let people encourage you or force you forward or anything else, but really, you push yourself. Those kids push themselves.
What do we learn from this?
If you’re not injured, frightened, upside down, sweating bullets, and crying snot while feeling worthless and incompetent, you can push harder. You’ve got more in you.
Push.
See the way they stretched out that kids leg? He cried. He begged. He didn’t break. He got more flexible without injury. When you’re training your splits, don’t let pain be your limiter. Push through the pain.
You just have to decide who you are and who you want to be. The difference is the effort required. I know this personally from my time in the infantry. If you don’t want to learn it yourself, just watch that poor bastard hand-balancer push.
You can push.
So here we are, It’s like we never really left the start.
Time heals the wound but then there’s still a scar
to remind us of the way it’s meant to be.
…
Here’s to tomorrow or whatever get’s you by.
I was home, sick in bed. I don’t get sick very often, but I was sick then. The funny thing is, I didn’t even know about the tree until days later when neighbors I’d never spoken to started recognizing me as the owner of the lucky car and showing cell-phone pictures of my “amazing luck”.
Here’s the short version: While I was sick in bed in the early hours of the morning, lulled into a deep and restive slumber by the comforting wailing of a wind-storm (don’t ask, it reminds me of my childhood), a tree on the street came down. It was a huge old birch with a bifurcated trunk. One trunk landed on either side of my car, the point where it narrowed was so close to my car that witnesses had to walk up to my car to see that it wasn’t hit.
My neighbors were even more amazed that the tree’s branches hovered over my car without touching or scratching. The only branches pointed toward it were above the hood, not above the top of the car, and even those over the hood ended before leaving so much as a scratch. It’s like when your sister sticks her finger close to your face and yells “I’m not touching you.” Except with trees and cars.
When I saw the first picture, days later, my first reaction was to be glad. I didn’t have to deal with insurance, or insurance rate increases; I didn’t have to find a new car; I wouldn’t have car payments; I had nothing to worry about. But then part of me was disappointed. It would’ve been an exciting thing to talk about; I’m fully insured and what am I paying for if not to pay for damages; And I’d love a nice, efficient hybrid.
So it didn’t hit, but if it had, there would have been some very good, some very bad, and some middling feelings. But apparently, getting hit by a falling tree is not the sort of thing that happens to my car; it’s the sort of thing that happens to other people’s cars.
And that’s why I haven’t written anything lately, because the stuff that’s happening is happening to other people, not to me.
OK. It’s not a perfect metaphor, but based on the post title, you should have expected as much.
All around me people are getting sick, reaching new fitness goals, losing their jobs, getting promoted, breaking up, falling in love, getting married, getting injured, making babies, getting published, and generally having spectacular events happen to them.
My life is pleasantly boring. Now in my book, any day that isn’t bad is good, and I’ve had enough bad days to never forget it — but while I approve of this, it doesn’t leave me with anything to write about.
I went to the beach. Hung out with friends. Explored a haunted lighthouse (it wasn’t haunted; I just wanted to impress you). I climb. I take classes. I work. Notice how few adjectives are in this paragraph? Nothing to declare.
Anyway, I’ll let you all know as soon as something stellar happens. In the mean time, enjoy the calm.
Pics or it didn't happen.
As a last note, I have been working on the next post for Euroland. It will be done soon, but before I put it online I’ll be hiding away the entire euroland page. I’ll make an account for any friend who wants to see it, but other than that, it will be invisible.
I’m feeling bad—really guilty—for something I did today. I said something that “crossed the line” and was “rude.” So I’m feeling awful. But honestly, I shouldn’t. And It’s taken me way too long to realize why I shouldn’t.
I was in a class earlier, a nearly empty class, and the teacher said she might just cancel the class since no one was showing up. I said it was probably because of the price, and if she lowered it a little a lot more people might show up and she would make more money.”
She got pissed.
I apologized. She had a right to be angry, and she explained it to me. She has an unusual relationship with her students: she’s a friend and a teacher, and it’s really hard for her when one of us, like me, tried to “nickel and dime her to death.” That we needed to understand that “just because we were friends didn’t mean we could try to take advantage of her.” Those were the words she used. She also said that so many friends were “rude” like this, and she couldn’t be friends any more because of it. I didn’t, and still don’t know if she was talking about our friendship.
I’ve had female friends give me the silent treatment and stop being friends with me for less. For Tapas even (the fucking tapas).
Anyway, she said she’d been running her own studio for more than two years and people should know that she knew how to run it and she didn’t want to talk about money with them.
Needless to say, I apologized profusely. She was right. I had been rude. She’d asked me to drop it, so I did. I tried to make small talk. I forced cheeriness. But ten minutes later, half an hour before the class was supposed to end, she dismissed me and ended the class abruptly.
I sat in my car feeling horrible and brutish for ten minutes before I could drive. How could I have been so rude? How could I have shoved my foot so far in my mouth, again?! Why was I unable to see it coming?
And slowly I started to realize why: because All Laws are Local.
Bear with me.
Now I’ve had friends that I’ve bought cars from. I’ve sold cars to friends. I’ve sold and bought furniture. At its base, I’ve had a commodity and I’ve sold it to friends. Or my friend has had a commodity and I’ve bought it from them. Did we talk about money? Hell yes. Did we negotiate prices? You bet your sweet bippy.
And finally I started thinking about my friendship with this and other teachers I’ve had. I realized this was not a special or unusual relationship at all for this sort of thing. Across most of my circus, music, dance, climbing, and body-weight conditioning classes I’ve formed friendships with teachers. In many cases even close friendships that have lasted much longer than my interest in the subject they taught.
Have we talked about the price of classes? Yes. Has it ever been a problem. No. I had to think long and hard about that one, but no. I’ve never had an issue talking about money with any of these teachers & friends. No one has ever taken it as me trying to nickel-and-dime them before.
So based on my previous experiences, hundreds of them, I couldn’t have foreseen her reaction.
But then we come back to it. Was she wrong to think what I had done was rude?
No.
No really, she wasn’t wrong. Why? Because all laws are local. Because the mores of a group or the sensibilities of an individual are always local, and in this case, really local. Most of my friends who are teachers compartmentalize. They deal friendship in one area of their brains, and business in another. They don’t have any trouble separating the two. This teacher couldn’t do that. There was no compartmentalizing. I was a friend, friends have your back, her back is her business, by mentioning a money thing I had stabbed her in the back.
So she wasn’t wrong to think of this thing as rude. But honestly, she was wrong to get mad at me. She was wrong in assuming I would know what would offend her. She was wrong to believe that her mores were more right than mine.
all laws are local
Stay with me on this one. It comes up all the time. When I was in France this summer, I discovered (the hard way) that the French think it’s very rude for you to ask them something in English without first asking in french if they speak any english. A friend who was with me, and was a French-American, said of course it was rude. Didn’t I know anything? Even in America it’s rude to ask somebody for directions in a foreign language. And I had to think about it. Was she right?
By and large, for the specific cases of America and France, she was. We both have a majority population that believes you shouldn’t come to this country unless you speak the language. This is less true for America than for France.
Many of you are probably revolting at my saying it’s largely true; you yourselves having given directions, aid, or at least a comforting smile to strangers speaking spanish or german and not even trying for english with you. I have too. But we’re the exception here, not the rule. Think about how many people have cried for, or voted against ESL support in public schools. Think about the “anti-brown” laws that have plagued the central U.S. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re flattered when someone assumes you speak their foreign language, here on U.S. streets. But you’re the exception. Most people are offended.
So if my own country is offended by this behavior, why didn’t I anticipate the French reaction? Because I’d already traveled too much. From Central America, to the Polynesian islands, to Indonesia, I’d spoken english first and never offended anyone. The reaction I would later experience in Iceland was the typical one, if they didn’t speak my language, they would still, happily, make comforting “poor-lost-tourist” noises while I pointed at the place on the map I was trying to get to, and with a mixture of pantomime and language that was lost on me, tell me how to get where I was going. It’s the more common reaction in the world. But the French, and the Americans have forgotten that all laws are local.
The author Cory Doctorow recently did a much better job of explaining this than I’m doing. In his Locus Article, A Cosmopolitan Literature for the Cosmopolitan Web Doctorow essentially defines being cosmopolitan as being aware that all laws are local.
You should hop over there and read the whole article, but I want you to especially consider these two paragraphs:
Behind every torturer’s mask, behind every terrible crusade, behind every book-burning and war-drum is someone who has forgotten (or never learned) that all laws are local. Forgetting that all laws are local is the ultimate in hubris, and it is the province of yokels and bumpkins who assume that just because they do something in a particular way, all right-thinking people always have and always will. For a mild contemporary example, consider the TV executive who blithely asserts that her industry is safe, because no matter what happens in the future, the majority of us will want to come home, flop down on the sofa, and turn on the goggle-box – despite the fact that TV has existed for less than a century, a flashing eyeblink in the long history of hominids, most of whom have gotten by just fine without anesthetizing themselves with a sitcom at the end of a long day.
Which is not to say that cosmopolitans don’t believe in anything. To be cosmopolitan is to know that all laws are local, and to use that intellectual liberty to decide for yourself what moral code you’ll subscribe to. It is the freedom to invent your own ethics from the ground up, knowing that the larger social code you’re rejecting is no more or less right than your own – at least from the point of view of a Martian peering through a notional telescope at us piddling Earthlings.
Read that second paragraph again. I agree with it one-hundred percent. It was perfectly right for my teacher to invent her own ethics, her own code of what was rude and what was in the friend’s domain. But then she went exactly wrong, and for a moment there, so did I. She shouldn’t have forgotten that all laws are local. That she invented her law, and I may not know the local custom.
It would have been fine for her to tell me that she didn’t want to talk about it, but she shouldn’t have gotten angry with me the very first time I unknowing blundered across her invisible line. Believe me, I won’t talk about it again. And wouldn’t have even if she’d been nice when she explained it. I guess I just hope I haven’t lost yet another friend this year just because they don’t understand that all laws are local, and I’m a freaking alien.
And if you’re one of my many, many friends or erstwhile friends who I’ve offended. I’m sorry. I really didn’t know. And believe me: I still feel guilty anyway. I always will. I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings.
I’m annoyed so I’m going to rant now. This might be a good time to remind you that you don’t have to read this. I hear there are other things to look at on the internets.
Why am I annoyed? Because most people don’t seem to think “sorry” means what I think it means.
Too many people use “I’m sorry” to mean “you can’t hold it against me.” “I’m Sorry” is their magic get-out-of-jail-free card.
Bullshit.
“I’m sorry” means two things:
1) I will never do this again.
2) I will do everything in my power to make this right.
It’s true that number 2 may not be achievable. But it’s the effort that makes you forgivable. If you say you’re sorry and then do nothing to repair the situation and then do the same censurable behavior, you’re not sorry. You never were sorry. And on top of it, for saying you’re sorry when you didn’t mean it, you’ve violated Wheaton’s Law: Don’t be a Dick.
OK, OK. I haven’t been writing. I’ve been busy, true, though no more busy than normal. I think the bigger problem is I’ve switched off coffee and onto tea. Why you ask? Wait, you don’t care? Well I’ll tell you anyway. Hand shake. No, two words. Not handshake. I literally shake a lot. Don’t know why exactly. But with my favorite past time equilibre, shake is a major problem.
I don’t drink much booze, and never the night before a hand balancing class. I don’t eat sugar, starchy plants, or grains, but I shake like mad all the same. Switching from two cups of coffee (16oz total) in the morning and two cups of tea (again, 16oz total) in the afternoon, to nothing but two cups of tea in the morning has been rough. I’m not going to lie to you. Damn, I love me some wine-of-the-bean.
But as for no writing, that’s the coffee too. I find I’m not creative, my writing is stilted and dull, and I have little urge to commit thought to paper without my good friend Caffeine. It’s sad, and I like to think she misses me as much as I miss her—my mistress of the dark and twitchy.
Anyway, I almost have a post ready that has all the sources I use for information on conditioning. So, you know, that’s exciting. I guess. If that’s what you’re into.
I really want to start getting some book reviews up here. And most exciting, I’ll be traveling in Europe starting in a week, going for almost two weeks. That’s probably what I’ll write about.
On May 18th, 1983, my dad died. It wasn’t cancer, or an auto accident; not hypertension, CVD, or Hepatitis C. He died because he killed himself.
Needless to say, the man had issues.
But I was six, I don’t remember (many of) the issues. I remember little magic tricks; a compulsion to tease one if it would make everyone else laugh; cans of mandarin oranges in the Christmas stocking because “it’s not Christmas without mandarin oranges”; watching him and my brother shooting rifles in the woods; dark hair, dark eyes, and an even darker smile–something was eating that man; I remember the painting of a tiger he made (it was stolen, along with everything else I owned, in 98); I remember his love of photography, rural life, science, and acoustic guitar; I remember long train rides, short answers, and questioning looks….
The man had issues, sure, we all have issues, but the man didn’t get something that seems pretty basic to me: you don’t go out because there are things bringing you down, you go on because there are things bringing you up. I accept that some things I’ve been through will never stop hurting, time does not heal every wound, but I also know that around the next corner is something delighting. I don’t live for the pain, I live because of conversations, stories, art, poetry, music, experience, circus, movement, relationships–and yes, relationship failures. All the wonderful little things, warm kittens, hot coffee, daydreaming, and funny textures below my fingertips.
I miss you dad. Honest truth: I doubt you’d be proud of me (but you’d be proud of Gannon! that man has done well!), but you wouldn’t be ashamed of me either. Your sister always thought I was a changling babe, and maybe I was, I don’t know. What I do know is I’m not going out like you. No. I’m going to go out the way nature intended, the way millions of years of ancestors went out: by picking a fight with tasty-looking woodland creatures… or maybe of old age in my bed. That’s cool too.
Monday night. Maybe that’s all that needs to be said.
I’ve returned from tumbling class, my fourth tumbling class, and I’m bitter, and a little sad, and a little disappointed. All emotions that are totally out of place. I should be totally happy. Honestly, part of it is that I have an unwritten story do tomorrow for class, and the stress colors everything ugly. But I am the Ugly Elf, so what did you expect?
After the first class I was as optimistic as a kitten with gallon of milk and a belly full of worms—things hurt, but I was going to finish the whole damn thing. By the next week my body was not put back together; I had pain, but I also had less ability. I wanted to go forward, and instead I’d gone back. I was OK with it. I knew there was some serious body adaptation that was needed. Now that the fourth class is over, and I’ll have to pay again next week, I’m disappointed that I’m still not up to where I was after the first class. I can’t do a back tuck. My front handspring is worse, not better. My handstands are non-existent, and my wrists and my pride hurt.
But this is what I signed up for. This is what I do. I’m not good at things, but I get better. Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more; or we’ll fill the wall up with our English dead.
Why else do I do it? Because of the people. I know I’m being healthy (or whatever), and it’s fun stuff, but above and beyond the monkey goodness are the people. They’re wonderful, friendly, helpful, and inviting. What more could I ask for on a Monday night? It’s pretty much that or skulk at home with the cats (thick as foxes). Fuck that.
So thank you, wonderful people of the Rose City Gymnastics, thank you. I’ll see you next Monday.
