A Most Remarkable Event

This may qualify as a unique occurrence in the history of psychoanalysis.

I was having my head shrunk the other day, working over a problem that's been feeding on my for some time, going around in circles with it, and generally feeling my insides twist into a tighter and tighter knot of stressful misery. And then, it happened.

My therapist leaned back, smiled, and said something. It took her quite a while to say it, but when she was done...I was better. And I mean, all better.

Let me restate that: something my therapist said made me, instantly, feel 100% better--as in, the problem that I came in with was resolved and I walked out feeling perfectly together on that one issue.

How often does that happen, I ask you?!

(And no, that's not to say that I'm done being head-shrunk. I continue to be a delightful melange of neuroses and hang-ups. But this was a bad, bad issue--and now, it's not. That woman earned her freaking co-pay yesterday. Hell, I practically felt the irresistable urge to tip her as I left...)

They're Up To Something

Seriously--18 different squirrels spotted during a 15 minute walk through a residential neighborhood? That's too many, right? Two more, and we'd be in "look at all the crows on the jungle gym" territory. I'm unnerved...

Investment

Curious moment, recently. I'm forced, by the 'temp' nature of my employment here, to go back out onto the job market this fall. (The folks here may yet hire me permanently, which would be swell, but I can't gamble with my--what's the word?--life by just sitting back and waiting for them to do so. I have to keep my options open, which means going through the application process again; please see previous posts here and back on the old blog for why this has me stocking up at the discount liquor store on a semi-weekly basis.) And in going over the list of available jobs for this year, one popped up that struck me as...both menacing and intriguing. It's out-of-country. In an interesting place. (Class instruction would be in English, but I'd definitely have to crack out the language tapes if I was going to stay there.)

The thing about foreign jobs is this: they're permanent. As in, for reasons I don't quite fathom, the American academic community will not hire someone who has taught overseas. (This is true even of places like the Sorbonne; I think Oxford and Cambridge are the only ones you can book a round-trip ticket to.) So if I were to apply, and if they were to offer it to me, I would be leaving for good.

This does not horrify me as much as it should. And the fact that it doesn't horrify me, horrifies me.

It's not that there aren't people here than I'm attached to in varying degrees. It's not that I wouldn't--I'm sure--realize when/if I got there that I'd taken many things for granted (like, I don't know, easy access to hot water or electricity or who knows what--this place is definitely 'first world,' but one never knows what other countries will present in the way of challenges to the day-to-day necessities you haven't thought about because they've never been challenges.) I recognize that going there would be a sacrifice.

And yet--

I don't know. There's so much I wouldn't miss. There's so much I could never see or hear again and be happier for the loss. And the thing is, I could go. I look around and I realize that what sets me apart from the people in my life is that they, unlike me, are placed. Homes, jobs, families, lives--nothing about them is 'temporary.' Whereas I--well, the record reflects a state of nearly permanent impermanence thus far--school until 21, with its constant sense of 'next year' and 'prepping for the real world'--then for several years after that, floundering around in jobs I had no intention of keeping because I knew that none of them was 'what I wanted to do with my life'--then back into graduate school, and again we're back to the sense of 'next year' and 'finish the diss' and 'lecture until you get The Job' and so on. And now--even now--I'm still unplaced. No job security beyond next year. No wife/kids. I rent, not own. Nothing has really held me here--and I'm realizing that that's been true for a long, long time.

I'm not depressed by this thought, mind you--I suspect that a lot of people, even the people I think of as being 'placed', feel a lot more temporary than they admit to others. I imagine that most people live in what feel like houses rather than homes. Or have jobs rather than careers. Or hobbies rather than lives. But I looked at this job, and thought about how, if it were to be offered to me (and by the way, this is not likely--as with all academic jobs, the number of applicants precludes any confidence of acquisition), and I took it, I would be completely and utterly placed. Which didn't feel bad, frankly.

So I'm going to apply. And if they offer--and nothing else comes up--I think I'll take it. I'm 37. It's time to stop temping.

Fortune Cookie Conduct

The last three times--from three different Chinese restaurants, mind you--I cracked open my fortune cookie, I was singularly impressed with the advice given therein. At some point--I wasn't paying attention--fortune cookies stopped being about vague predictions of the future ("You will soon go on a long journey"--see, read metaphorically, that could mean just about anything, and in a world of relativity and Zeno's paradox, simply crossing the room could count as 'long') or half-hearted attempts to 'read the secrets of the present' ("You are admired for your wisdom and prudence"--again, this is pretty much a lock, since all it takes is *one* person to think this for it to be true, and we can't ask *everyone* in our lives if they admire us for our wisdom and prudence--how the hell do you initiate *that* conversation?), and switched towards giving actual advice. And, as hinted earlier, the advice I've been given has been both simple and sound.

"Give a loving gift." Well, fuck it. I went out and did just that--nothing much, nothing fancy, but it was given with love to someone who is terribly dear to me, and said person genuinely loved it, and it was a moment of, well, small-but-poignant pleasure between us. There's something to be said for giving someone a loving gift, whether it's a carefully conceived birthday present, or just a "what the hell, he/she would totally get a kick out of this" moment (actually, those are particularly good.) I've continued to follow this piece of advice, and I've never been disappointed.

"You need to make a long overdue decision." An example of advice that I did *not* follow, and paid the price for said failure on my part. I knew exactly when I read it that, in fact, I *did* have a long overdue decision--one that I just simply could not bring myself to nut up and make--and even in the face of this advice, I continued to dither. Guess what? Blew up in my face. Ended badly. The decision, such as it was, was made for me, and I realized that had I made the decision, I'd've gone the other way and been much happier. I suck, and all because I didn't listen to the fortune cookie.

(Then there was the one that told me "God has annointed you His Chosen Instrument--you must Cleanse The Temple in the Blood of the Unrighteous." I'm still working through that one, but by golly, when I figure it out, you can be sure you're gonna hear about it!)

But I suppose my incredibly lame point here is that if the world offers you good advice, take it, regardless of its source. I'm not suggesting the intervention of deity or fate, mind you--these were freaking fortune cookies, for crying out loud, but what the hell? If a slogan on a billboard, or an overheard remark made to someone else in the line at the DMV, or some such unconsidered trifle jogs you, listen to it. The world is full of a lot of noise--if some piece of that noise reaches through the fog and speaks to you, chances are there's something in you that needed to be reached. Just don't, you know, tell anyone where you got your small piece of wisdom from.

Like I just did.

Fuck.

Back To The Grindstone

So today was the first day of classes--Poetry Survey, Early Brit-Lit Survey, and what we would call 'remedial' composition if for some reason 'remedial' didn't hurt the oh-so-tender self-esteems of our students (actually, I suspect the people it really pisses off are their parents, but whatever.) The work promises to be its usual combination of exhausting and invigorating--and while I'm on the subject, yes I'm still going to the gym and no not just to use the vending machines, so don't nag, I'm being good, dammit.

It is a struggle, however, as it is truly balls-hot here--and humid? Dear Lord. Look, I'm not a weather-wuss, but even the natives are restless; it's that combination of blistering and soupy that makes people in Southern states go nuts and commit incest and hate-crimes in the same afternoon. (Here, we just drink more beer. A lot more.) And I've got to wear 'professional' wear in stuffy classrooms with no goddamned air-conditioning because the one building my classes are in is the 'historically preserved' one which maintains its antebellum charm right down to a questionable plumbing system. I can open all the windows I want, but I swear, I can hear the still air snickering at my hope for a passing breeze. And so I sweat like I'm having a heart attack, and look less than my usual cool-and-dapper self, and I can't help but worry that this has a deleterious effect on my teaching.

Nevertheless, I persevere. Those sonnets aren't going to teach themselves...

God I Hate This Guy

So yesterday, Dubya went to Eye-rack (which is how he pronounces it, presumably for the same reason he pronounces the word "nu-kew-lur", which is: to give people who paid attention in school a throbbing headache--Mission Accomplished, George), and stood before a collection of servicemen (and "servicewomen," yes, but can we all just grow up and go back to the use of the gender neutral, please?!) and told them that, if they were really really good, and did their jobs really really well, that maybe, just maybe, some of them might get to come home in the foreseeable future.

That...is the act of a complete and total dick, and I'm not even going to bother censoring the expletive, that's how dickish it was. That's the kind of manipulative bullshit that bad parents use when making promises that they have no intention of keeping to their children. (Which also pretty much explains why the Bush twins are total fucking messes--the only reason those two skanks don't make such lunatic spectacles of themselves as Ms. Lohan and Ms. Hilton is that the latter two don't have Secret Service protection with orders to shoot to kill all paparazzi and onlookers when their charges back up over a line of people waiting outside the club while whacked out their skulls on Ketamine. With a father like that--someone who lies, and lies badly, and lies cruelly every time he draws breath, I'd do everything I could think of to get even with the son of a bitch, too.)

Let's review: he skipped into Anbar Province--a nice long way from Baghdad, where he might have to see something icky--on his way to a week of free Chinese food in his Far East trip, and dangled escape from the nightmare of Iraq (pronounced "Ee-rock", Mr. President, in case you're curious, which you're not) to a bunch of poor kids who know in their heart of hearts that he is lying, but who want so badly to go home that they will no doubt return to their duties determined to do better--which is like Sisyphus going back to that boulder thinking "This time, I'm gettin' it over that hill!"--tortured by the cruelty of hope. A hope that Bush has no intent of fulfilling. None. Zero. He will not reduce troop numbers. At all. And he knows this. He has made up his mind that he will "stay the course" so as to leave this miserable clusterfuck in the lap of his successor (good luck, Hillary!), and thus not have to face the shame of being seen as retreating from his idiotic gamble with his tail between his legs. (One thinks of James Buchanan who, as Southern states seceded, basically holed himself up in the White House, pretending that if he stayed really quiet, no one would remember that he was President and supposed to do something about this.)

He told a cruel lie to the men and women who are going to suffer more as a result of his having told it. Nice one, Big Guy. How about telling the nations's children that if their parents all vote Republican in '08, they'll all maybe get a pony? You absolutely unspeakable dick.

And we've got another year and a half of this to look forward to. I've said it before: when history judges the actions of the American voter, one of the blackest of marks against us is that we re-elected this man. It was a vote for a proven track-record of incompetence and evil. Shame on us.