Each term must be defined and I find myself copying entire articles in order to dissect each sentence and release its embedded meaning. I am making connections, establishing relationships, building hierarchies, contrasting opposites. A picture forms in my head, a three-dimensional matrix. I learn Japanese this way, too. It is laborious, but complete. I'm not drawing a map through the territory; I'm modelling the territory.
I wake up filled with words and phrases floating in my mind, flowing from my unconscious. As the day progresses, I use up my daily ration of words; I find it more and more difficult to articulate my thoughts. Often, on very stressful days, by 3PM, I'll run out of words. Nouns are the first to go, the ability to name people, places, and things. My conversation is littered with "thingy" and "whatsit". I gesture a lot.
A year ago, when I was on vacation in England, I decided that I had spent too much of my life looking back at the past and worrying about the future. I've always had problems simply being in the present moment and I vowed, "No more regrets and no more longing." So I turned my back on the intensity that had defined my life for so long.
I have achieved a stillness in my life.
If a pendulum stops swinging, is it still a pendulum? Is life about doing or being?
How can I be fulfilled if I don't know what will fill me?
I've always considered myself a generalist, a person with a wide range of interests who stops in at the entrance to a subject, peeks inside, notes the inhabitants, and moves on. At our last lunch together, MDM recommended I Could Do Anything: If I Only Knew What It Was. Reading Chapter 6, in which Barbara Sher discusses scanners (generalists) and divers (specialists, made me wonder if I'm really a specialist after all. She describes the case of the odd diver who behaves like a scanner--a specialist who is afraid of committing to a specialization.
As July 31st rolls over to August 1st, my life tends to change direction completely. In 1989, just as I was feeling a sense of comfort and achievement in my relatively new career writing software documentation, I packed everything I owned into a 5x10 foot storage shed, sold my car, and started a new life in Japan, bringing only two large suitcases and my 10-year-old son.
In 1991, I reversed the process. But on my return to the US I had no job prospects, and found that it was more difficult than I had imagined to reestablish my identitify with potential employers, car insurance companies, and banks.
In 1993, I gave up independent contracting and returned to life as a full-time employee to enjoy the comraderie of teamwork and the benefits of medical insurance.
In 1998, JQS moved into the condo that today he is vacating.
In 2001, the patterns and habits of eight years dissolved and I had to create new ones.
Today, exactly a year later, I feel as if the cards in my life's deck are being reshuffled and redealt. A new life begins for me tomorrow. And although it is what I've always wanted, I've learned to be wary of getting exactly what I wish for. Fulfilled desires often bring unexpected consequences.
Are you a starter or a finisher?
No hesitation. I'm a starter. I love to start a new project. As a teenager, when I used to sew a lot, I always had several projects going on at once; I'd wear dresses to school that were still pinned together in places because I couldn't wait to finish them. I worked on the same patchwork quilt for ten years. I did get the top pieced together, but had just begun the actual quilting. That didn't stop me from using though. I wore it out before I ever finished it.
Fall. The season of beginnings. A new notebook. A new pencil box. And a new pair of glasses, especially for reading the 6 point type common in Japanese dictionaries or the even smaller furigana print above words that indicates their pronunciation.
Never in my first round of student life did I pay any attention to fashion. All my money went for books, and when I was older, for records. I lived inside my head. But now that I'm settled and have few responsibilites, I think it would be fun to dress up for school, to play the part of the student, to try on a new life.
In David Cronenberg's The Fly Seth Brundle watches in morbid fascination as parts of his human body fall away during his metamorphises into the Brundle-Fly. The older I get, the more I empathize. I'm falling apart here.
conspicuous consumption, end of "small is beautiful", end of thrift, Yuppies, high-interest rates, buy now pay later, rise in homelessness, mentally ill released into the streets, air-traffic controllers fired, James Watt the Secretary of the Interior selling off our national heritage, huge national debt
I can't focus the energy to weave my disjointed memories of the 1980s into a cohesive analysis. I agree, though, that it marked a turning point in our national character: from the thrifty, self-sufficient, can-do attitude of our pioneer forebears, to a greedy, grubbing, to hell-with-the-consequences-I-want-mine selfishness. I think this is when we stopped being citizens and began being consumers.
Trailer Park Girl, too, has been inundated in a wave of 1980's nostalgia.
Which reminds me, one bright side of the material world of the 1980s was the boom of personal electronics. It was the decade of my first CD player, my first laserdisc player, and my first Mac (512k). The seeds of Austin's hi-tech industry were planted in the 1980s. I took classes at ACC and became a technical writer just in time for the 1990s.
Happy and I'm smiling, walk a mile to drink your water. You know I'd love to love you, and above you there's no other.-- Jethro Tull. Living In the Past.
I woke up with a tune in my head which had to play itself to the chorus before I recognized it. Oh, yeah.Living In the Past. I moved here 30 years ago this week.
Thirty years ago, Austinites complained about road construction and delays as the upper deck on IH35 was being built. The MoPac hadn't opened and we'd drive all the way up Burnet Road to Anderson Lane when we went to the ice rink at the fancy new Northcross Mall. Loop 360 had no bridge, and where it met Ben White, the Brodie farm still had sheep.
At UT, the PCL was just a huge Texas-shaped hole in the ground which we'd skirt on our way to Dobie Mall (which had a sandy brown facade, not aqua) or to watch movies at the Varsity. The Armadillo was still a place to listen to music or watch the Austin Ballet Theater. But there were no bats under the Congress Avenue bridge. And no Chronicle.
The economy was terrible and there were lots of people with Master's degrees flipping burgers. Nixon had just been impeached. Gas prices were soon to double--going from 45 cents to $1.00. Long necks and rednecks. In Austin, we all got along. Seems weird now. But that's why we want to keep Austin weird.
-- The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi MasterFew things are stronger than
The mind's need for diverse
Experience.
I am glad
Not many men or women can remain
Faithful lovers to the unreal.
There is a kind of adultery
That God encourages:
Your spirit needs to leave the bed
Of fear.
The gross, the subtle, the mental worlds
Become as a worthless husband.
1974. Flash from the past. First week of college. Freedom...
Update: May 20, 2005
M2 discovered that the Alamo Drafthouse is bringing "Viva Les Amis" back for two more showings in June.
Related
Another viewpoint from Celluloid Eyes who arrived at the party a little late. I agree that we shouldn't blame everything on Starbucks. The landlords seeking the highest profits possible run out tenants like Waterloo Brewery or Terra Toys. But they have to pay their taxes and can't subsidize lesser paying tenants if the property tax rate all around them is going up. Maybe the City Council should offer more tax incentives for small, local businesses that contribute to the Keep Austin Weird atmosphere that they want to cultivate. The unique flavor of Austin culture is a tourist attraction.
One Sunday last summer Jim came over to spend the day. According to me we were lying on the east lawn discussing linguistics. According to Jim we would have to broaden the definition of the term "lawn" considerably before we could include the patch of dead, brown grass in my front yard.
Later we went inside to eat cheesecake. (It was his birthday.) He informed me that his chair wobbled.
"Pretend it doesn't."
"Julia. You need to provide a list of illusions for your guests."
That idea pleased me. If only he were serious.
Recently I've returned from the Edward Albee School of Illusions (or disillusionment) where we learned we can't begin to really live until we cast off our illusions. Illusions are crutches which keep us from facing reality; we can build a life based on truth only after destroying our illusions.
I've given it a try and it seems to work, but it makes life very dreary.
Update: 2006-06-15
I received this email from BRATS director, Donna Musil, inviting us brats to a free screening on Sunday June 18, 2006.
Dear Friends of BRATS,
The new documentary film about growing up in a military family, "Brats Our Journey Home," will be screened in the Messiah Lutheran Church fellowship hall at 5701 Cameron Road in Austin on Sunday, June 18, 2006 at 3 p.m.
A seven-year work of passion by independent filmmaker Donna Musil, BRATS features narration and songs by Air Force Brat Kris Kristofferson, rare archival footage, photographs, and home movies from post-war Japan and Germany.
In the film, American military BRATS of all ethnicities share intimate memories about their interesting childhoods - growing up on military bases around the world, then struggling to fit into an America with which they have little in common, but for whom they sacrificed their youth.
Filmmaker Donna Musil will be at the screening to answer any questions you might have about the making of the film.
Admission is free. Please let any military brats you may know about the screening of this film.
Dateline: 2005-06-06
When I returned to Texas after teaching English in Japan for two years, I experienced reverse culture shock. More importantly, I realized, for the first time, that I was experiencing exactly the same kind of alienation and disorientation that I felt years earlier when we moved back to the states a few months before my 13th birthday. Then I had a difficult time adjusting to junior high school. I dismissed it as part of becoming a teenager and to the fact that I was the new kid.
If I were a corporation, August 1 would be the beginning of my fiscal year. Five times on this date I've embarked on new lives, not just changing course, but taking a different ship.
In 1975, I followed my family back to Las Vegas when my Dad retired from the Air Force. I tried to return to the life I'd known before we moved to Texas and couldn't. Then I tried to return to the life I'd sampled in Texas and couldn't.
In 1989, my 10-year-old and I packed our lives into a suitcase each and moved to Japan.
In 1991, I returned to Austin without a job or any prospects.
In 1993, after a couple of years of freelance writing, I retreated to life as an employee and the reassurance of a monthly paycheck and health insurance. I gave that little startup my life. In return, although only incidentally, I got a house and a husband.
In 2001, I was laid off. I sought work for a long time and struggled with the idea of being a dependent and a housewife. I'm still not any good in either role.
This year no major change is on the horizon. However, I indulged myself with the present of a new, expensive journal. I hesitate to write the lines of my life in a new blank book. Once my actions are set in ink, I'm bound to one course. I've never been able to stride confidently down the straight, true path of life. I can't see my way clearly. If I start down one path, what guarantee have I that it is the correct one. So I prevaricate, wander astray on any tangent that comes into view to avoid stepping forward. I find wandering in circles, going nowhere, preferable to facing my fear of heading down the wrong path.
Recently I've recognized that my inability to commit has its roots in my rootless unbringing. Moving around every couple of years as a brat meant I was always trying on new lives. When all lives seem possible, I find it impossible to choose among them. I've always wanted to live both lives and sometimes I have.