By Monday I'll be Gone

Growing up I had a premonition that I would die at 18. I think this was because the last semi known point of my existence was graduating high school. After high school I could not envision what would happen next, so I figured nothing would.

The one thing I did anticipate, if I managed to live through graduation and on through college to a point where I had no more educational hoops to jump through and had acquired my long-pined-for independence, was that I would grab life by the balls, so to speak. I would skate on my independence, travel to different countries, and live where I knew nobody. I couldn’t wait to do something on my own that was, for the first time, not a scripted track of “The Things White Middle-Class American Youths are Supposed to Do.”

And here I am. Bachelors degree. Living with Mitch. Still in Spokane.

I’ve been looking into Teaching English as a Foreign Language programs. Ideally, if you have your TEFL you can teach English in a lot of countries. Problem is, I’ve researched these programs and they seem to be either A) a little spendy and not worth the time or B) too spendy. Then if you get your certificate you have to get hired and if you get hired you have to figure out how to get a VISA. All the while, I’d be paying rent and loans and… I know this sounds like whining. Getting over seas is probably worth it – and it wouldn’t be much of an adventure if there weren’t risks and sacrifices involved.

What I’ve been wondering lately is if moving to another country is missing the point. Even though I’m not groping life like I thought I would be, I’m not bored. There are books to read, people to hang out with, mini dramas, and beautiful if brief images. And there are eggs to cook and flowers to plant and paintings and people saying things. There would be those things in any country, and whether Americans, Germans, or Costa Ricans, I’d be alternately astonished by their complexity and wishing to banish their existence.

And what if a meaningful and interesting life is more of a sitcom, with four cameras and three sets, than a Peter Jackson film? The point being to get to know those characters in my life while experiencing very little plot? But of course that could be the reasoning of someone settling for a quiet ride down monotony lane. I’m not sure yet.

Good Enough

“I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a big splash.” - J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

A little background:

I always knew I would do something great with my life. I knew it. I remember thinking so when I looked in the full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door. And it wasn’t my fault—there was the whole “I can do anything with Jesus” and dare to dream and “you can do anything you put your mind to.” Plus, I was an excelling third-grader; what could stand in my way?

I told Mitch, “I want to do something extraordinary with my life.” It was a kind of challenge—are you on the awesome train?

Pre-marital Counseling:

Mitch and I talked about conflict with Jerry. We (Mitch and I) had fought just the previous night, interactive learners. I mentioned that at one point in our conflict I got tired of fighting and just wanted to watch a movie. Jerry got excited—that’s exactly what I’m talking about, he said. You will have to navigate your spouse’s otherness the rest of your life and this means conflict. It’s unreasonable to expect to solve things, big things, like his addiction to FIFA, in one night. The trick is to get to a point that is good enough. The point where the pressure’s off and you can go watch a movie or something. Conflict is a matter of years, not days, and it doesn’t need to look perfect. Just good enough.

Rhetorical Questions (sorry):

And I’m like whoa. What if I took this “good enough” thing to more areas of life? What if I hoped that my life would be good enough instead of extraordinary? If I were satisfied with looking good enough instead of beautiful, making paintings that were good enough, living a story that was good enough?

What to do?

Without constant homework assignments and social activities to keep me busy, I’m thinking about the ways I can spend my time. This is a rest-of-life sort of thing. In the US we spend a lot of our time at work. What are good ways of spending our time off?

There were two guys in my basketball class last Jan term who said that they spent three hours working out every day. It was a hobby “with great benefits.”

I read a David Foster Wallace essay on television that said that, on average, Americans spend six hours a day watching the tube. Three hours of weights and cardio doesn’t seem so bad as long as it’s a substitute for six hours of TV.

I’ve broken down positive activities into some categories. If you can think of an activity that does not fit into one of these, then please add a new category. I’ve got: fixing, preserving, adding, and observing. Each of these categories can be either personal or communal.

Preserving includes all those things we do to perpetuate what’s already happening. I think we spend most of our time on this. Communal preserving is doing the dishes (if you live with other people), parenting, etc. Personal preserving is making enough money to live on, staying healthy, and keeping in touch with friends.

Fixing requires something to be broken or in the red. Communal fixing includes: saving the world, the green movement, fighting injustices, etc. Personal fixing could be weight loss, a night of heavy drinking, or doing whatever to relax or unwind.

Adding is like fixing. The difference is that fixing adds from a negative to zero, and adding starts from zero and increases. Art is generally addition. Communal adding is creating anything for other people: a meal, a painting, a piece of music, etc. Personal adding includes education, reading, and whatever else adds to your character or abilities.

Observing only applies to activities that are not for one’s own benefit. So I guess it has to be communal. You are observing when you are paying respect or noticing details because the thing has details or deserves respect. It’s reading a book because it’s beautiful – not in order to educate or amuse yourself. It’s listening in order to create space for something to be said.

I’ve listed the categories in order of appearance in life. (I really mean life after college. In college, the primary thing we spend our time doing is personal adding.)

A list of non-rhetorical questions:
Is this how it should be?
What would life look like if the order were different?
Is one category better than another? Is communal better than personal?

I’m just kicking this around today and would like to know what you think.

We're Wizards and We're Bored

I was watching Harry Potter 6 the other day. I’ve spent a lot of time on the couch for the past two weeks, and flying around on broomsticks, nothing but the most romantic lighting, and having a dark lord to fight looked pretty appealing. Escapism, folks: Narnia, Middle Earth, and whatever other book or TV series that makes you bummed you live in the real world. How is it that authors can create worlds that are so much more compelling than the one their readers live in? It seems like the realness – the fact that it is there – should outweigh the fantasy that glows two-dimensionally on a piece of furniture.

I listened to a Louis CK recently. Check out this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LkusicUL2s. Plus, people and information are available to me through the Internet. It’s like some sort of legendary spring of knowledge, but I frequent only two sites and get bored.

We Westovarians put together a Life board game. We included all the typical events in life after graduation: unemployment, weight gain, marriage, winning the lottery, etc. You hit certain squares based on a dice roll. The random and deterministic qualities were bleak – and satisfying due to our post-grad fashionable jadedness. It was a little uncomfortable how easily we could map out the big events in a middle-class American’s life. Deterministic, impersonal, and bullshit. It was tough to whip out our senses of adventure.

But one square said, “Make an omelet.” I get to make breakfast almost every day for the rest of my life.

If we all lived in Harry Potter land – we’d transfigure instead of problem solve, wear robes instead of jeans, and escape from Basilisks instead of going grocery shopping – would we be excited and entertained all the time? I can’t imagine what it would be like if we were. Ron says to Harry for chapters at a time, “Holy bloody smokes Harry, we’re wizards.”

Holy bloody smokes.

Spokane

Casey’s bar on Monroe Street is full of wrap-around couches. The tables are black, the floor is black tile, and the walls are crimson lit by weak gold lamps. At the table next to me are four thirty-somethings. They’ve had a couple of drinks and already have those far-away grins. One man’s wearing over-sized NFL gear and the women’s pants fit too tight. Up front, a woman in a black cowboy hat dances to somebody singing karaoke. A light pink shirt covers her cascading tummy and is tucked into her jeans. She doesn’t dance wildly – it’s more like she’s happily and comfortably at home.

And that’s the thing about Spokane – it’s not dancing for you.

There’s nothing about the way Spokane looks or its culture that will make you pay attention. I grew up living in the foothills of Pikes Peak – nine degrees south and 5,000 ft higher than Spokane. The Rocky Mountains and the intensity of the Colorado sun confront you. It’s like coming out of a long tunnel and gulping for air. Seattle also confronts you with its tall reflective buildings, winding exits, and deep green trees. And the Sound, going from light blue to steel grey, catches the city up in itself. Both places demand recognition for their beauty. Colorado shows off with its sunshine and clear air, and Seattle does the same with its moodiness and narrow streets.

But Spokane tends to be dark for five months. The sky matches the asphalt – all slate except for the half hour at dusk when the clouds light up pink and the gold street lamps come on. The old brick industrial buildings let restaurants and offices gut them and move in. Smokestacks stand unused.

If you go a few minutes south of downtown, you run into massive silos, the only buildings with curves. One to the east on Market has graffiti of Obama and McCain looking like buddies.

A couple of minutes towards Argonne open up into wheat fields. After harvest, the rolling fields glitter like Rumplestiltskin’s gold, and the power lines stand like resting giants. The fall light is so long (The sun is so low in the sky that the light goes through a lot of atmosphere.) that everything is red-shifted. Blues and greens hardly show up – the pine trees look black.

Spokane doesn’t care what you think. It’s not going to lose twenty pounds and put on a miniskirt. The brick sits through snow that won’t melt and doesn’t hear complaints. It’s fine with its Monroe dive bars and getting dark at 4:30. As long as you’re expecting it to impress you, it won’t.

Boobs

There’s a problem with gym class. The first time I had to change for one was terrifying. There were girls in middle school who would eat you alive out of boredom. The last thing I ever wanted to do was change in front of them.

The first time I was old enough to change in the women's locker room at the Y, the sight both horrified me and created a strange fascination. Huge women were standing naked in the aisles. Some were talking to one another! Their arms were like giant sausages wrapped in old paper lunch sacks; their skin hung on their backs like lava flow. My mom explained to me that when you mature you don’t mind changing in front of other people.

Swimmers, I guess, are more mature than I am. I try to figure out what time swim practice gets out so I can avoid using the locker room. Swimmers stand around with their suit pulled down to their wastes, and I’ll explain the problem with that in a second.

In the locker room after water aerobics, Elise noted how convenient it would be if we were all more comfortable with our bodies. There would be no more holding a towel in your teeth while struggling to put each leg into its correct leg hole. No hopelessly getting tangled in your bra/swim suit while trying to keep your boobs covered. One could get properly dry without falling over.

But the problem is not the lack of body-image comfort. I don’t mind running around naked, but unlike the ladies at the Y, I do not want to subject my peers to that. Boobs are ugly. They look like cycloptic creatures that have been accidentally caught upper-terrestrially. They prefer damp dark caverns… something out of a Tolkien novel. There’s just no way to be comfortable with them.

I excused myself from WA class to go to the bathroom. The swimming class before us was changing. All three stalls were full. I was getting impatient. They were taking forever, and no one was even using the toilet. Three girls were stealing my chance to go to the bathroom by changing in the stalls. My class was going on without me and I didn’t want to miss 15 minutes waiting for the bathroom. I was thinking about how stupid girls are – using the damn bathroom to change. I left and had to hold it the rest of class.

I can see no solution. Boobs are the problem with gym class.