General nonsense

Smoked Mozzarella, Experientialism, Psychic Nature and Magic

Standard

Am I psychic or was it just coincidental? Did I manifest smoked mozzarella out of thin air? Two days ago I was thinking hard about the absence of smoked mozzarella – not really a favorite food or anything, but suddenly I felt I really wanted and needed smoked mozzarella but I knew I had never seen it here.

But then tonight I went to the store and had no intention of looking for smoked mozzarella – but there it was – on sale no less!

Who knew it would be so exciting to find?

On the way back from the store I was thinking about how it is so easy to get caught in the trap of thinking one is becoming happier and more fulfilled because they have more stuff. I have been alone and worked to buy more things – but I have not been any more fulfilled by having. I began to think about how experience can be so much more enriching – and then found an article on that very subject.

It really is all about the experience – “experientialism”, as the article puts it. Learning to breathe after the “stuffocation” modern society engenders.

And sometimes experience is magic.

Overdosing on Banshee on TV and enjoying the latest from Neneh Cherry and Robyn.

Mistaking Sad for Mad: Desperado

Standard

If someone repeats the same kind of non-action annoyance almost every day and knows it is an “apologizable offense” – why is it that they keep repeating it? Habit? Don’t know they are doing it? Don’t recognize how damaging it is?

Disappointment is a funny thing – you can build up hopes for something without even realizing you have created or are relying on expectations. Even when you know better than to expect anything. And it can be for the littlest, funniest stuff. The hurt one feels after any of these slights/disappointments is often misinterpreted as anger. But anger and hurt are different aspects of the same kind of emotion.

Life (and the interactions I have in it) seems to be on an unending loop of “all talk, no action” incursions. “The enemy is illiterate.”

Vowel
–Nina Cassian (Romania)

A clean vowel
in my morning
Latin pronunciation
in the murmur of confused time.
With rational syllables
I’m trying to clear the occult mind
and promiscuous violence.
My linguistic protest
has no power.
The enemy is illiterate.

There come moments when poetry has all the perfect lines to describe what I feel.

My annoyance at someone deciding that playing The Eagles at a housewarming party is welcoming and relaxing is at an all-time high. “Desperado” – Don Henley – kiss my ass. I never had such vitriolic hatred for The Eagles in my early life, but sometime in junior high, spending weekends with my then-best friend Terra, we wanted MTV to show things we actually liked, but the channel tended to repeat Don Henley Unplugged – a lot. It seemed every time we turned on the TV, we turned it on right when there was a close-up of Henley’s aged face, singing with his eyes closed, straining to release his solo version of “Desperado” – much to our teenage dismay.

As if I needed more reasons and reminders as to why I steer clear of parties.

Don’t make promises you can’t keep, people.

“You’re a hard one, but I know that you got your reasons/these things that are pleasin’ you, can hurt you somehow.”

Why I Changed My Mind: Matthew McConaughey

Standard

I know I am not alone in having shifted my view on Matthew McConaughey in recent months. With the swift one-two punch of his performances in Dallas Buyers Club and, more importantly, HBO’s True Detective, it’s hard to ignore his shift. Half-naked king of the romcom for much of his career, coupled with what seemed like very little personality, McConaughey has always been easy to peg, apart from a few good turns in a few mostly overlooked earlier films (A Time to Kill, Contact, Amistad and Frailty spring to mind. These films touched the surface of what McConaughey might be capable of, but he did not go in that direction – or perhaps he did not get the opportunity to do so until later – confirming the idea that men become more interesting as they get older – at least for me).

His path to “career rebranding”, which some have referred to as his “McConnaissance”, is chronicled in a number of articles that actually point to McConaughey’s wife, crediting her influence for his recent choices – not pushing him but supporting him to make his own choices. I have given that concept a lot of thought (i.e. “Behind every great man is an even greater woman”). While something quite that extreme might not be completely the case, I have seen a lot of cases where a person (man or woman) can be more of a follower until someone who is totally supportive of them and their vision for themselves inspires them to lead their own way. Perhaps this grounding influence moved McConaughey out of the mindless and shirtless romcom arena, in the more thoughtful direction his current career has taken him. As the New Yorker article observes: “The McConaughey that we are getting now is casually weird and much darker than expected. He seems unshackled after decades of trying to be a matinée idol, an affable, guileless human glass of sweet tea.” What better way to describe it?

McConaughey’s roles in small, somewhat overlooked films (later in his career), such as Bernie, quietly propelled him in a new direction. Then with a powerhouse succession of small and large roles in Mud, Magic Mike, The Wolf of Wall Street (the only part of the movie I liked), he was well-primed to take people by surprise in the aforementioned Dallas Buyers Club and the great True Detective.

Considered, reconsidered: I can’t definitively say that I love and revere McConaughey as an actor, but he is the best thing in a great show (True Detective) – I was hooked immediately. I do hope this trend of interesting and unusual choices continues.

Sin-o-matic (Okay – cinematic is what I meant…) and middle-aged sex lives

Standard

To accompany a stack of bureaucratic kind of stuff I needed to do this weekend but had been shuttling off to some dark corner for “another day”, I decided to watch a bunch of films (or half-watch, as was sometimes the case). Strangely when binge watching in that kind of succession, I don’t remember everything I watched. The other night I saw a decade-old Japanese film called Quill, about the life and training of a dog that went on to be a service dog (and its eventual death). I can only remark that the Japanese make fascinatingly weird movies and observations, and I am always astounded by how much Japanese I actually remember. (It is definitely a use-it-or-lose-it language, but its grammatical simplicity lends itself to quick recall – at least for me.)

As for today’s viewing, I cannot even remember what I watched. I remember In a World because it just finished now. I expected to hate it because Lake Bell normally grates on me hard – and a vehicle that is written and directed by and starred in by HER – could I expect something positive? Expect, no. But be pleasantly surprised – yes.

But what else? I was in and out of the house all day, doing these bureaucratic tasks and baking some muffins – meaning that the films weren’t really my priority. And there were some tv shows thrown into it just to mix things up (and mix up my memory). I saw a German film called Lore (since World War II stories so ably buoy one’s spirits…). And a French film called Sexual Chronicles of a French Family. And then… what? There was something earlier that completely slipped my mind until I was semi-immersed (when I was not in the middle of making a frittata, anyway) in the Sexual Chronicles film – the discussions on middle-aged (and older) sex lives made me feel a kind of strange melancholy, made me think a bit of a poem from Howard Nemerov (“Reading Pornography in Old Age”*) and then took me back a few hours to the film I had seen earlier in the day – Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the late James Gandolfini (one of his, if not the, last roles). They are two regular, divorced, middle-aged people navigating the dating world, which – by their portrayal – makes it look just as awkward and fraught with missteps as dating at every other stage in life (even if things start out auspiciously enough – as though they have both gotten past insecurities and issues that tripped them up in earlier life). Yes, middle-aged, divorced dating movies, despite the sweetness of this one and its charming, funny and self-deprecating dialogue, depress me.

Hmm. And that’s enough said.

I leave you in Nemerov’s capable hands.

*Reading Pornography in Old Age

Unbridled licentiousness with no holds barred,
Immediate and mutual lust, satisfiable
In the heat, upon demand, aroused again
And satisfied again, lechery unlimited.

Till space runs out at the bottom of the page
And another pair of lovers, forever young,
Prepotent, endlessly receptive, renews
The daylong, nightlong, interminable grind.

How decent it is, and how unlike our lives
Where “Fuck you” is a term of vengeful scorn
And the murmur of “sorry, partner” as often heard
As ever in mixed doubles or at bridge.

Though I suspect the stuff is written by
Elderly homosexuals manacled to their
Machines, it’s mildly touching all the same,
A reminiscence of the life that was in Eden

Before the Fall, when we were beautiful
And shameless, and untouched by memory:
Before we were driven out to the laboring world
Of the money and the garbage and the kids

In which we read this nonsense and are moved
At all that was always lost for good, in which
We think about sex obsessively except
During the act, when our minds tend to wander.

The changing workscape: Women, self-awe and flex(ed) work and muscles…

Standard

The other day, in the haze of being a bit too tired to censor myself and my own moment of self-congratulations, I told someone that I am actually “in awe of myself”. Mostly this is because I felt in awe of the copious amounts of work I was able to complete all at once and my general ability to produce prolifically without a huge effort. I was almost immediately embarrassed about saying something so arrogant, even if it really was an expression of surprise at how much I had done (and can do) more than it was a boastful statement.

But then I thought – why shouldn’t I be in awe of myself? Why shouldn’t we all be in awe of ourselves – or strive to be?

In fact women in particular, finally starting to make progress on finding a work-life balance (supposedly, at least), should start from a place of feeling in awe. Not awestruck as in overwhelmed. But awe as in excitement about all the things that

Being able to “have it all” (which, quite honestly, I know nothing about since I don’t really have it all in the way this expression is generally used) does require a bit of rejiggering and sometimes making choices that no one likes. One way women are starting to be able to “have it all” and do more – and thus feel a more tangible sense of resolve and awe – is by being able to have more flexibility in their work lives. Balance, according to a recent Forbes article, is taking on a clearer shape with remote and virtual work arrangements.

I have written a lot about remote work and allowing for flexibility in the workplace – and I too benefit from negotiating for a bit of flexibility. My own work-life balance has improved – and has actually shaped my ability to be more productive and thus in more in awe. 🙂

Holding pattern – Flying blind

Standard

Feeling half-blind after a completely sleepless 24 hours (I tried) and driving three hours in the darkness, encountering a few timid deer and one idiot riding a bicycle on a winding country road at 2 a.m. (no lights, no reflectors, dark clothing – death wish!), I can only think of a poem I have cited before. I feel like one of these “between-creatures” myself.

Evolution
–Marin Sorescu (Romania)
It is time to learn from the bats
The between-creatures
Who can home in the dark.

Learn flying blind.
Dispense with the sun.
The future is dark.

Feeling – Poetry – Moments / Momentos

Standard

Another one of those poems stumbled upon again in reaching for words that explain the malaise, the feeling of waiting for something and being perched on the edge of something that never quite arrives.

Moments – Julia de Burgos

Me, fatalist,
watching life coming and going
from my contemporaries.
Me, inside myself,
always waiting for something
that my mind can’t define.

Me, multiple,
as in a contradiction,
tied to a sentiment without edges
that binds and unbinds me
alternately,
to the world.

Me, universal,
drinking life
in each shooting star,
in each sterile scream,
in each sentiment without edges.

And all for what?
-To go on being the same.

Momentos
Yo, fatalista,
mirando la vida llegandóse y alejándose
de mis semejantes.

Yo, dentro de mí misma,
siempre en espera de algo
que no acierta mi mente.

Yo, múltiple,
como en contradicción,
atada a un sentimiento sin orillas
que me une y me desune,
alternativamente,
al mundo.

Yo, universal,
bebiéndome la vida
en cada estrella desorbitada,
en cada grito estéril,
en cada sentimiento sin orillas.

¿Y todo para qué?
-Para seguir siendo la misma.

Feeling – Poetry – Morning Blues

Standard

Today’s feeling is a lot like I stumbled across in a poem, “Morning Blues” by Radmila Lazic:

I’m fed up with faking happiness,
Play acting contentment
As if it was all just fine,
As if things are beginning to go well
Now that I’ve played the role of my life
And won the big prize at the lottery.

I yearn for something I have no name for,
For something that would change my life,
Turn it upside down,
make it leave the rails on which I travel
making punctual stops.

Lovesick – Layers and processes

Standard

I have a lot of work to do – a prioritized, organized to-do list but cannot seem to focus clearly because I am feeling a bit like a lovesick teenager. I have never really gone through such a thing before – certainly not in this way. It’s belated, arriving only in my middle-aged life, when I find myself much more sentimental than I was in my youth.

The nice thing about it, despite its obvious distractions, is that it is simple. I can’t control it, can’t plan it – can’t do anything except give in to it.

Its simplicity is the exact opposite of the corporate world. Almost every day, new layers and processes are added to already convoluted layers and processes – none of which are useful or mean anything or help anyone. I am convinced that people spend so much time creating these processes, endeavors, initiatives, efforts, workshops, sessions, meetings, summits and whatever else to convince themselves that what they are doing is much more complicated than it really is. It also masks the considerable overlap in job functions – so many people are present creating and then following nebulous “processes”, completely sure they are contributing – and more importantly – busy. And that’s what counts – look and feel busy.

The only similarity with the lovesick thing is that the addition of these processes and layers is completely out of my (your, our) control. Every time a new “thing” is introduced, I find myself shaking my head, sarcastically muttering under my breath, “Oh yes, more processes and layers of management – that’s always better.”

Seeing things: Faces in the wood

Standard

It’s been one of those frenzied evenings that is a bit too productive – as evidenced by the sudden disappearance of unanswered emails from my email inbox. In an overzealous and optimistic fit of some sort, I archived a handful of messages and had to go back and find them. Funny how you can think you’re so on top of it, so organized and yet are still doing silly, thoughtless stuff like that.

Sometimes when I can’t sleep (like now) I stare at the ceiling and try to see things in the knots and patterns in the wood. I have never been a visual person (at all) and often don’t see things that are right in front of me – but all my life I have had a strange fascination with staring at pieces of wood or even wood paneling to discern images or – usually – faces. I remember seeing distinct faces in some wood paneling during my childhood and actually feeling some kind of empathy with these people hidden in the wood. One “woman” looked so worried and mysterious. Half of her face was hidden, as though she were standing behind a door, maybe eavesdropping on a conversation in the next room or … who knows what? This was the kind of storytelling that would play itself out in my head as a child (also when I struggled with sleep).

To this day, imagination and any visual inclinations long ago beat out of me, I find faces in wood. Just now I looked up and quite suddenly the knots appeared as the face of a baby seal. Hahaha. I know – it sounds crazy. I cling to this in some way though because it is a kind of creativity that is not really a part of who I am – and I think if I had more discipline or interest, I might be able to focus it better to use it for something more than seeing things that are not there in pieces of wood.

(Makes me think of the ridiculous and bad Jim Carrey film The Mask, when his character takes his wooden mask to someone – to get some answers or something – I don’t know, I barely remember the film – and the Ben Stein character dryly comments, “This is a piece of wood” after Carrey’s character tells him an outlandish tale about what the mask can do. Never in my life did I imagine an occasion on which I would cite The Mask for any reason. Oh, and don’t let it scare you or make you feel old or anything, but The Mask turns 20 this year…).