Nothing:Part 18

Bad days are inevitable.  In every life some bad days must fall, we just have to train ourselves to take them in our stride, stay unruffled, unworried, especially when we are sure of ourselves.

Had to close my ears to hubby's screams of frustation bright and early in the morning.  He didn't think the snowfall was bad enough for me to ask him to drive me to my park and ride, especially when he had things to do and places to be.  He made me appear selfish and inconsiderate and let out his frustrations by pounding on the steering wheel and screaming at the other drivers on the road.  Funny how he kept asking if I wanted to be driven even further in order to catch up with the bus that I thought I might miss.  Even funnier how people take such pleasure in mind games like this.  The only reason he asked me if I wanted to be driven even further, was to test me, to see if I would say yes, so he could further underscore my selfishness and inconsideration.  The question was repeated despite my being content with waiting in the falling snow for 30 minutes while I waited for the next bus.

So could I have driven myself to the bus stop today? Was the snowfall manageable?  The answers are yes to both questions.  I wanted to borrow his keys and drive myself in his All Wheel Drive car, my car tends not to do so well in icy conditions. 

In my defense, I didn't start my morning with behavior that might be construed as burdensome to him.  But when I asked for his keys he said that he needed to drop me off if it was snowing because he would need his car for his own drive.  As it turned out the snow was light enough, the temperature was above freezing and we ended up taking my car instead of his, since his car was blocked by mine.  So now it looked like:

• the car we were driving was my inadequate one
• the weather was fine
• there was no reason for him to have chauffeuring duties

But when we were already half the way there and he started screaming and having a fit about his situation, what could I possibly have done? Should I have asked him to turn back so that he could get off at home and I could resume driving myself, wouldn't that have cost him more time? Should I have genuflected and apologized for my crass behavior? What? So I just closed my ears, chose stoicism and silence.

The day got worse when the dodge ball that five bosses seem to be playing with one - employee - me - took on surreal proportions with the "direct line" boss saying that the other "dotted line" bosses had some concerns, the "dotted line" bosses denying everything and telling me that they've never once had an iota of concern!  And me appearing like a defensive and reactive moron simply because I was trying to share my perspective on things. 

I can't function well enough in a senseless world where my perspective doesn't count and my reasons for doing things a certain way, based on precedence, or prior arrangements don't count.   I need direct dealing, and an environment that lacks political ramifications.  I have never been adept at dodging the ball in dodgeball.

The family tragedy forms a baseline drone to everything, the headache grows to gargantuan proportions on the eve of vacation that I was looking forward to before but the thought of which fills me with nothing but the shrill noise of trepidation in my head.

But in the grand scheme of things I am not a Chilean or a Haitian.  My heart goes out to them, my one bad day is so meaningless in light of all their tragedies.  I know my tomorrow will be different.  I also know that there are many friends and well wishers out there who will read this bit of whining.  They'll be alarmed, they'll be concerned about my well-being, my life, my reactions, my headache, my trepidations.  Some will tell me this too shall pass, some will offer hugs, some might even say, "Oh get over yourself!" 

Thank you all in advance for those reactions.  I love you all for caring.  But just know that I know my tomorrow will be different.  So many other days in my life will be different.  There will be happier moments, better circumstances, better days - filled with euphoria and a bounce in my step.

This day was just not one of them.

On the bright side, the hubby did send me a text saying he got to his meeting on time and that he is sorry for his "tude" this morning.  I'll go home and tell him he was right he didn't need to drive me and that I need to stop being so afraid of the snow and more self sufficient on snowy days.

Or...better yet...make a decision to change my life; warmer climes, easier commutes, be less like a workhorse, be more devoted to my interests and passions than to circumstances that ceased bringing me any joy a long time ago.

Nothing...

I call these posts nothing.  Sometimes they emerge coherent and appear to be about something.  But they really are one vast stretch of nothingness in the grand scheme of things.  I am reminded of the idea of "nothing" encore while reading bassist Victor Wooten's book called The Music Lesson where an interesting cast of characters make successive incursions into Mr Wooten's life and talk to him about rhythm, intonation, tone, dynamics and other aspects of music. 

One of his lessons is about nothingness.  The teacher who teaches him about the importance of nothing, of nothing being the base (or bass - an instrument that forms a base).  She highlights for him how the addition of zero or nothing to any number multiplies it by ten. 

When nothingness is all pervasive we start to sense the things that matter, the things that count. 

Death brings us face to face with nothingness.  It settles in like several zeroes stacking up behind the living, mutiplying their grief tenfold several times over, as hopes and dreams crash, as wave upon wave of memories crash over us, splintering into several pieces that can never be glued together again.  And words...words can never express how we feel.

My dear cousin, only 19 years of age, is no more.  He lost his life on the first day of March, 2010 leaving us all in tears, unable to make sense of it all.  I did not know him well.  I had only seen him on a couple of occasions, once when he was very young, four or five years old.  I remember him moving around the house, never without his notebook and pencil, looking like the little scholar he grew up to be.  I met him again a few years ago.  This time he was a lovable teenager doing justice to his name - Anurag (love).  He spent several fun filled hours with my daughter who was four at the time.

Now he's gone.  I never had a chance to get to know him well.  His mom is my mausi (my mom's youngest sister).  The age difference between her and my mom is immense and my parents have loved her as though she's another daughter.  I have always been close to her and since hearing the news all I can think of are my memories of her, of how much I enjoyed her company while growing up.  She was always smiling, always cheerful, very giving and fiercely protective of every family member.  She made every summer vacation spent in her company memorable for my brother and I.  I could never imagine a grief of such immense proportions ever crossing her angelic countenance. 

I am stunned and speechless at the unfairness and senselessness of it all.  Every word sounds trite, every feeling inadequate and yet one reaches, one tries to order the events, attribute a cause, find someone or something to blame, wondering why if there's a God would he allow such a thing to happen to someone who should never have experienced such grief, seen such tragedy.

And when all wondering hits a grim brick wall one sinks to the ground in utter hopelessness, the meaninglessness of it all. 

The sea of nothingness appears like the only reality with no lessons to offer, no takeaways, no morals to the story.  That's when the things that count emerge in sharp focus; the people around us, the need to never take anyone we love for granted, to live every moment like it's our last, to dance on the beaches that surround the inky waters of nothingness.

 

Some validation

Roger Cohen's column here is a validation of sorts for whatever I was thinking when I wrote "Nothing: Part 17"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/opinion/23iht-edcohen.html?em

Nothing: Part 17

Have been thinking about polarized opinions.  It doesn't take too long for two camps to form within seconds of the looming of a new issue on the horizon.  The opinions are sclerotic at birth with no room for consideration, deference or deliberation.  As if the infant thought looked into the eyes of Medusa at birth.

I came across this Schopenhauer quote in the "Train of Thought" series that appear in NY subway trains:

"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."

Funny how stray thoughts tend to get validated in this fashion.

Wonder why it's so difficult for us to acknowledge the existence of other points of view.  Why is it so hard to agree to disagree instead of forcing our opinions down other throats and always trying to find converts and followers? This same sense of wonder extends to our conscious efforts to declare ourselves a brand.  We all have virtual soapboxes to climb these days and we want to shout out our "brands". 

The word "wondering" often hints at a setting apart of oneself.  Even though I am using inclusive pronouns to declare that I am as guilty of it all as everyone else.  The use of the word "guilty" in the previous sentence further betrays my prejudice and lack of non-judgemental impartiality.  I wonder about my own motivations.  Stating my own opinion about the entrenched opinions of others is making me feel uncomfortably opinionated. 

All this makes me reexamine the old ideal of having the strength of one's convictions.  Maybe the entrenchment of opinions is a consequence of being rigidly ideal-bound, of fighting a perception of spinelessness and amorality, of being seen as someone who dwells in grey areas rather than the pristine world of black and white.  But flexibility in thought need not be an ugly grey.  Why not see it as an entire spectrum of possibilities between opposing poles of thought?

This will get classified under idle deliberation but I do hope to personally "tend to" (channeling Calculus) a place where there is room for more cooperation, consideration and tolerance rather than rabid competition and an unyielding entrenchment of opinions.

Nothing: Part 16

I never learnt how to ride a bike.  I remember trying to learn.  I remember my Dad giving me riding lessons.  There was a brief moment when I thought I had it.  I felt free, as though I was flying, as though I had finally got the hang of it.  Right at that moment I asked my Dad to let go so I could give it a shot on my own.  When there was no response from him I realized he wasn't around.  He had let go several minutes ago and was watching from a distance.  I had been riding on my own.  This realization and my fall were simultaneous.  I never attempted to ride again.

When I am practicing my violin, on some days I don't think about the minutiae of playing.  On these days I trust (trust being the key word - could have used faith as well) I'll read fluently, absorb the rhythm, tempo, the dynamics, and just play, occasionally with my eyes closed.  But then, after a lull, and as if on cue, I'm suddenly aware that it's all going rather well.  As soon as that happens, I switch gears and try to control some aspects of my playing, pay special attention to the accents on certain notes, or the crescendo signs in the music, or I suddenly start wondering whether my sound is mezzo forte when the music requires it to be piano.  As soon as I start worrying about these tiny details I introduce a scratchiness to the tone, I start hitting wrong notes and I just find myself baffled at how everything fell apart as soon as I decided to exercise some level of conscious control.  It's almost as if my mind got in the way.

I've talked about driving before.  When I drive I never think about the driving itself.  I have the larger goal of transporting myself safely from one point to another.  My safety would be hampered if I never took my eyes off the dashboard indicators or if I kept worrying about my hands being at the perfect 10-2 position on the wheel rather than having a sense of the bigger picture and the larger goal.  After all these years I've learnt to trust (there's that word again) that something else controls the minutiae, that my conscious attention to these matters is not required, that the brain is dealing with this at a deeper more subtle level.

My husband has faith in a red thread around his wrist.  The red thread might give the impression of extreme religiosity or superstition.  But that's not what I think it is.  My mom is a big believer in prayer and in having faith.  She prays for our well being and success and the red thread she then sends us renders those wishes and prayers tangible.  My husband keeps the thread on forever...until my mom sends him a new one.  I don't think he sees the thread as a magical thing that would bring him luck, or maybe he does believe that, who knows!  I believe having it around his wrist enables him to relinquish some of the conscious control I talked about before.  It enables a shedding of worries about where the next paycheck would come from, what our future holds, the what-ifs about the next contract being more than a year away...such thoughts could stump him and paralyze him.  But once the thread is on his wrist he gets more focussed on the task of making phone calls, sending out resumes, doing all the things that will take him to the next level.

I always start my day saying a couple of Sanskrit shlokas that I don't even truly understand.  I chant them out aloud.  It's my own way of setting aside some baggage, telling myself to not micro-manage my life to such an extent that I am petrified, immobilized.  I relinquish some degree of conscious control when I say the words and it I am not even sure I want to understand what the words really mean, that would defeat the purpose.  Has this helped me? Perhaps.  Worrying about whether this has helped or not would also be defeating the purpose.

What I've come to realize is that the words: prayers, faith, beliefs in a higher power - these words are secular in their intent.  They don't represent a belief in God, they don't make one religious.  They are probably a very scientific and healthy means of surrender.  As an agnostic, I am inclined to see them as surrender to some part of our very complex brains; a relegation of these niggling thoughts to the part of the left brain where they belong - so that our 'mind' isn't always tripping us up.

I am not eloquent enough to say all that I want to say on the subject but I like the message behind the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

--Reinhold Niebuhr

I would be inclined to replace all the God references with "Left Brain Neurons and Synapses" (LBNS) but I would still be surrendering and relinquishing control. 

I am reminded of this very funny scene in a Ben Kingsley movie, I am forgetting the name (it'll come back to me at midnight when I've relinquished control and stopped thinking about it), where he plays an assassin who has a drinking problem.  He doesn't believe in God so his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor tells him to surrender to a higher power, anything, anyone.  His character then catches sight of the Golden Gate bridge and decides to surrender to it.

Nothing: Part 15

Multi-tasking. The word sounds cliched and ugly to me these days. I considered myself an expert at it before, took so much pride in my parallel processing abilities. I can still do it with ease but it brings me no joy. It doesn't come with the feather in the cap of having packed each 24 hour period with so much. But it makes me feel as though things are just a short step away from spiralling out of control even if it's about having a conversation while the television is on. I want to go back to giving my full attention to one thing at a time...within reason...I still don't think I can drive without listening to music; so maybe two things at a time.

Is it age or exhaustion? I am averse to attributing anything to age; the same pair of eyes are staring at the greyness of my office cubicle as did at the colorful kiddy drawings that used to be tacked up on school bulletin boards. Afterall, some neurons stay with us for life. It's just a deep desire to turn away from all the noise, from nerves jangled by the informational juggernaut that bears down on me, unrelenting in its approach.

We had to work for our information before, travel to it, swim upstream or downstream for it and now we stand still, rooted and catatonic but awash in news that's old even before it can be fully processed by our brain.  Perhaps there's such a thing as information erosion, stripping away my epithelials, a layer at a time while I stand still, buffetted and battered by the toxic waves.  And of course there is an inability to move away from it all, to acknowledge the corrosive effects.

I never thought I would resort to yearning for things as they were before, but it used to be so much more satisfying to pull The New York Times out of its translucent blue sleeve and read it, a section at a time, instead of picking up on tinyurl tweeted by someone.  Everyone finds the same things interesting, everyone forwards the same things to all of their followers, constantly trying to be the first ones who picked up on something, anything.  Why the race?

The only concept I somewhat retained from my awful MBA corporate finance course is that information is old almost as soon as it qualifies as information.  By the time one decides to make investment decisions on information that they now have it would already be too late.  But now we have corporations stocking up on "social media" employees to monitor every social networking site to watch for trends, to monitor things like "buzz" and "hits" and "trending topics".  Isn't this counter-intuitive? If you didn't create the trend then you are a pathetic follower! By the time your corporation decides to act on what's hot it will long be cold and dead! So what is the point of it all? To my mind it's an image of a car that's attempting to cross a drawbridge that suddenly opens up and rises steeply in front of the driver before he or she has a chance to go across, leaving the pull of gravity as the only outcome for car and driver.

I want to turn away from it all, I don't want to get snagged in things that have just gone "viral".   I don't want Google to track my location and figure out where my clacking keyboard is, I don't want iTunes and amazon.com to "recommend" more of the same things to me, emailing me what my previous preferences show I am interested in and I don't want Facebook telling me I should befriend someone because he or she is a friend of a friend of a friend. 

The only option is to walk away, to stop being hynotized and so mesmerized by it all.  I am growing to resent being told to like more of what I've liked in the past and to like something because others are liking it. 

I want them to think chaos theory when they see my profile...refer to Jurassic Park again where Jeff Goldblum so lucidly illustrates how it's impossible to tell the direction in which a drop of water will branch out as it trickles.  Just because I looked for books written by surfers shouldn't make these prying eyes comfortable with the idea of marketing surfing equipment to me.   I read an article in the last issue of The New Yorker, in the personal history section, about fishing for chain pickerel.  I liked what I read.  I learnt so much about pickerel, how they eat their own kind, how you see crayfish and frogs hop out of pickerel if you slice it open and how you often find a pickerel inside a pickerel because they devour their young.  I might be curious enough to do some searches on pickerel, pike or walleye, now that my mind is open to it.  Would they then peg me as an intrepid pickerel fisherwoman?

Something needs to give. Marketers need to rewrite their algorithms to account for eclectic tastes.  Information won't stop coming at us, so we need to install personal dams, dykes, whatever it takes to slow down, divert the flow...irrigate our minds efficiently and not chaotically.

In the meantime, I find myself revisiting the song Amazing Grace, and seeing the beauty in the Serenity Prayer and making a conscious effort to just slow down, even if the effort is still imperceptible, the intention will drive it.

More on why an agnostic like me is thinking of these prayers and the issue of surrender in the next post...

Nothing: Part 14

A woman sat across from me in the subway car. I couldn't stop staring. Her face was a study in symmetry. Every feature flawless, the skin unblemished, the complexion luminous, incandescent. The hair was dark and thick with a lock falling over her left eye when she bent down. Her lashes were long, each downward swoop concealing a twinkling intelligence. It embarrassed me to be caught staring. It's true what they say - you can always tell when someone's staring.

As I stole glances at her I tried picturing her as a central character in a novel. I wanted to come up with words to describe her to a reader. Would it be possible to describe her in a sentence that wasn't burdened with adjectives? Could I divine anything about her simply by looking at her as so many novelists believe can be done? It seemed impossible.

I started studying others in the car, wondering if other more seasoned faces offered insights into the souls within. Some reflected stress through their furrowed brows, some painted a picture of resignation, some showed anger and discouraged eye contact. But the only difference between her face and others seated around her was the absence of any surface clues in hers. What traits would I attribute to her if I forced her into a novel of mine?

My stop was next and she soon became a passing thought. But it did make me ponder physical descriptions in the novels I've read. The authors spend time getting it right, making the person real to the reader. For instance the woman defined by her concavity: concave torso, concave cheeks; her concavity being the only outstanding physical attribute in Will Self's short story - Ward 9. I look at the folks around me and wonder if I would have ever been able to describe a rather pinched looking person with all that the word "concave" implies...caving in on oneself, imploding...

Novelists always highlight a central character by assigning attributes which would result in instant admiration, revulsion, sympathy or pity for their creation. A character in a novel spots another for the first time and accurately guesses most things about the person, things like...the confidence masking an underlying vulnerability, the clothes telling a story, the nails, the hair, the body fat, all leading the audience toward a definitive conclusion about the person being regarded. Is such accurate assessment possible in real life?

Perhaps it is, because one sees it even in memoirs: Sting seeing Trudie for the first time at his neighbor's place, noting the long scar on her face, her lips, the lips that reminded him of a former girlfriend who had just passed away...and feeling an instant attraction. Others writing about their lives and saying how they knew someone was THE ONE when they met him or her. Does it seem so in hindsight, perhaps? A false memory, a conflation that makes one believe what they felt was instantaneous rather than gradual or incremental?

I think I need to pay more attention to faces if I ever want to realize any latent dreams about being a writer of fiction. I would have to hone the skills of surreptitious viewing and analysis of facial expressions and other physical attributes and body languages. Some blinders would have to go, some inhibitions discarded. I would have to be immune to the embarrassment of embarrassing someone with my intense regard.

Ah, on second thoughts, who wants to appear so creepy!! Forget novel writing!

I caught sight of my own reflection in a shop window and had to make some instant adjustments - my lower lip appeared to be pushing upwards at my upper lip, chin tilted upwards, giving my mouth a sad and defiant look all at once. How confused would that make another wannabe writer who was trying to come to some conclusions about what a sad and defiant face signalled about me? That's assuming I'd be a protagonist in this imaginary sly watcher's future literary effort, and not some mediocre sideliner.