Cirque du Malaise

So far, turning 40 has been epically bleak. I’m not going to lie. For those of you who haven’t yet reached this milestone of despair, brace yourselves. It’s been nothing like turning 30, when I felt really, really old but also super relieved to not be in my suicidal twenties anymore. My twenties had been all about reading Sylvia Plath and Anais Nin and journaling about how nobody understands me while popping pills and going through the occasional cutting phase. My thirties, in contrast, were about yoga and Buddhism and self-care and reinvention. Unfortunately, that whole trend seemed to peak about ¾ of the way through the decade, and the last few years have been a rapid decline back into my cold hard atheist roots and occasional rebellious cigarette smoking.

So what lies ahead for the 40s? I suspect I’ll spend a big chunk of it freaking out about my looming 50^th birthday. Fuck the what. For now, I just keep repeating the phrase “I’m forty” to myself over and over, to see if it sticks.

(A friend of mine tried to cheer me up by attempting to convince me that the phrase “Life begins at forty” is a thing.  It’s not.)

I used to think that Hope For a Better Future was the one thing worth living for. You know, that future when I would have a family, kids, a front porch, etcetera? But I’ve changed my mind. The one thing worth living for, it now seems, is humor. Things that are funny. Like my friends (especially Vanessa) and Oatmeal comics and Shelby Fero on Twitter and this new Ricky Gervais show Extras. I live for other things too. The special connection I share with my feral cat, Budapest. My rich inner life.  Whipped cream.

That’s all for now. I’ll let you know if it gets any better.

Sauerkraut is really good, too. My friends made this for me. It's fucking delicious.

I loathe middle seats on airplanes. I know that no one likes them, but you guys, I really, really can't handle them. I had an aisle seat booked on my flight yesterday, but American Airlines had other ideas. (How much I hate American Airlines could be the subject of a whole nother post — nay, epic book.) While seething and pouting my way through this endless, soul-crushing flight, I came up with a great new idea that I want to float by y'all. What if, instead of asking you what seat you want, the airline made you choose which type of person you are:

PLEASE CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:

1. I have narcolepsy. I fall asleep the moment I sit in an airplane seat. I slump forward and go into a coma for the entire duration of the flight. The only time I might possibly wake up is if the "fasten seat belts" sign is on or we are actively landing. I get really annoyed when someone asks me to move so they can pee. (These people get the middle seat and aren't allowed to complain.)

2. I am the type of naive flower who still thinks it's a novelty to look out the window while landing and taking off. I actually listen to the flight attendant when he announces our route over the intercom, and yes, I care that we are flying over the Rockies and might get a glimpse of some dumb inlet or some sheep down there. I never have to pee. (These people get the window.)

3. I have to pee at least every 15 minutes even when severely dehydrated, and more often if I feel trapped, so will be asking the people next to me to move constantly unless you put me in an aisle seat.

Bet you can guess which one I am.

P.S. Virgin America? None of this applies to you. You guys are great.

Like so many people in my circles, I am plagued with first world problems that threaten to derail my fragile psyche on a semi-daily basis. Right now I am spinning my wheels about a really tough one: whether or not to buy an iPad for my upcoming trip to Thailand in September. I can't really afford it, and I thought I had talked myself out of this extravagance, until I had a nice sit-down with my good friend Michelle last night. She is one of the savviest travelers I know — one of those fine modern ladies who has traversed the entire planet with a backback and a pair of sandals on and can hang with equal aplomb in a high-end resort on the shores of Bali or in a seedy hostel in Amsterdam. Furthermore, Michelle knows me really well and she knows how attached my half-assed Buddhist ass is to my gadgetry and my ability to stay in touch via the cloud. She did not recommend that I go cold turkey off my Mac fixation.

My packing list, so far

I don't want to bring my laptop, because I don't want to be tempted to work, and also because I don't want to worry about it getting stolen or waterlogged while I'm frittering away my days on white sand beaches without a care in the world. My laptop is pretty much my most prized possession. I value its wellbeing more than I care about the welfare of my own body. If I get rufied in Thailand, I'll deal with it, but I can't risk getting a scratch on my Macbook Pro.

Michelle advised me to get the iPad. Not only will it allow me to write (what's a pen?) but it will preclude me from lugging armloads of books with me on my trip. Also, movies for the plane. Very important to be distracted on airplanes at all times. I'm sure you've all seen Bridesmaids by now. I didn't even laugh during the scene where Kristen Wiig loses her marbles on the plane for a sec. I've actually fainted on airplanes. Serial.

Because I am a 6, making minor decisions is really challenging for me. I will end a relationship and move cross-country into a brand new apartment in the blink of an eye — and have done so many, many, oh too many times in my life — but ask me what kind of pizza toppings I want and I'm likely to develop adult-onset epilepsy. So this particular decision is really weighing on me.

Can you guys be a lamb and decide for me?

I’m turning 40 quite soon. How do I feel about this?

Let me illustrate by telling you about a nightmare I’ve been having: I’m driving a giant truck speeding down a freeway; the brakes don’t work; I can’t slow down; there is a big-rig on fire spinning out of control and about to jackknife into me; oh, and I’m going backwards.

That pretty much sums it up. Thanks, brain.

This morning I had a meeting with a longtime friend client, Cynthia Simon. She said, “How are you?” and I said, “I’m freaking out about turning 40.” Cynthia — who is a beautiful, stunning, radiant post-40 woman herself, laughed and said, “You’re doing fucking great.” I appreciated that — mostly because of the swearing. But, I’m not actually doing that great. I’m doing pretty terribly, if you want the honest truth. I’m kind of losing my mind about it.

I just so happen to be reading By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham, a novel about two self-involved yuppie New Yorkers in their early 40s who constantly refer to themselves as “middle aged.” Really? Middle aged? I asked a few friends of mine this weekend — women about my age or slightly older — whether they think we are in fact “middle aged.” They all basically agreed that we are (as did Wikipedia, fucker). I nodded as if I could handle this information on a cerebral level, but inside, I was quaking with terror and rage at this concept.

In my mind, “middle aged” applies to people who have gray hair (that they don’t, ahem, color), retirement plans, and grandchildren. “Middle aged” does not under any circumstances apply to people who have barely figured their shit out, are single, live paycheck to paycheck, and still remember the sordid moments of their bohemian childhood quite vividly. Yes, my grandmother was technically just a few years older than me when she became a grandmother, but things were different then.

Incidentally, I had a lovely session with another of the intuitive Cynthias in my life —Cynthia Mellon — and she informed me that I have what’s called “renunciant karma.” She explained that in other times and cultures they might have called this “nun karma.” Remember when we were teenagers and endured tragic breakups with our boyfriends and then exclaimed in a tone of abject despair: “That’s it! I’m just going to be a nun!” Ironically, I actually am, apparently, going to be a nun. You win again, 13-year-old Joslyn.

Still, the middle aged thing is not sitting comfortably in my mind.

What does this all mean? I wish I had a nice tidy answer for you. But at the moment, all I have is this recent shoe purchase to tide me over:

Would a middle aged person wear THESE?

I only fell down 4 or 5 times when I tried to wear these today. I’m gonna push through. A homeless dude at the Whole asked me why I was wearing them. I said, for practice. He said, for practice for what? And I said, to be good at it. And he said, kindly, that he would teach me how to play the bass guitar if I need to be good at something.

That really happened.

More and more these days I am starting to realize how the closeness of my relationships with so many of my friends and family members is contingent upon one crucial factor: how they choose to communicate.

I’m not talking about feelings (see my last post for that), or their vocabulary skillz, or their ability to articulate themselves. I’m talking about how they literally prefer to communicate, technologically.

Personally? I loathe the telephone. I communicate with friends, family, clients, and associates all day, every day by text message, email, Facebook, Twitter, chat, Words With Friends chat, and actual letters. In fact, I have an awesome pen pal relationship going with my dad right now via the postal service that has helped us get to know each other a lot better, and it’s been pretty sweet.

But the phone? No.

I was never a big fan to begin with, but for so many years it was a necessary evil. It was the only way, really, of quickly connecting with someone who wasn’t standing right in front of you. Because I moved 3,000 miles away from home and now have friends and family spread out all over the world, being able to communicate with people long-distance is important.

As a writer (a way of being and not just a job), I naturally gravitate toward communicating in writing. And as a neurotic shy person, the phone makes me highly anxious. First of all, anyone who tells you it’s “easier to just pick up the phone” is lying. Small talk sucks my soul dry every time I try to connect with someone reallyquick to find out what time the movie is playing, or whatever. Also, personally, I type incredibly fast. I can write a novella quicker than most people can have a basic phone call about remembering to bring home milk.

Beyond the convenience factor, I find the phone unsettling. The ringing of a phone shoots like a bolt of arsenic through my nervous system. When my phone rings (and actually, it never rings, because I never turn the ringer on, but it does light up and command my attention if it’s in my peripheral vision) I get distracted. Distracted is not good. Distracted means that I stop doing whatever I was doing and a few of my brain cells die with a silent scream.

Allow me to quote Waylon Lewis in a recent article* he wrote for Elephant Journal: “Text me. Email me. If you call, I won’t answer if I don’t recognize the number. If I do recognize the number, I won’t talk to you—I’m in the middle of something 99% of the time.” I, too, am almost never in a place/frame of mind/mood to answer the phone. 99% of the time, I am:

• Writing
• Reading
• Otherwise working in such a way that requires creative space
• Hanging out with someone, in person
• At a movie
• Doing yoga
• Hiking

Under none of the above circumstances would I ever answer the phone. Occasionally, very occasionally, I am driving. If I’m driving, I may answer the phone, if:

• I have adequate reception (which is almost never; I have AT&T) AND
• I’m in the mood AND
• I’m not listening to a really awesome Moth podcast AND
• I have a pair of headphones in the car

Luckily for me, I live in a beautiful woodsy part of Mill Valley — a sweet little town on the outskirts of San Francisco — where cell phones get zero bars. Sometimes I get a half a bar, which conveniently, is just enough to text. It’s ideal, really. I sometimes go days without even noticing that I’ve missed a call. I’m not that awesome at checking voicemails, unfortunately, but I’m working on it.

* FYI read Waylon’s very short piece on Elephant and scroll down to read the nasty little comment exchange I engaged in where so-and-so insisted that “this generation’s” preference for new technology versus the phone is a symbol of our disenfranchised attitude toward community and connection, and I said wah? How does that even make sense? How is talking on the telephone equated with community and connection any more than Facebook/email/texting/what-have-you? At the end of the day, the phone is a technical medium for communication that a) is not in-person and therefore is handicapped in terms of real connection and b) is frought with lots of issues and is c) archaic and outdated!

P.S. although I am attached at the hip to my iPhone, I average about 45 minutes a month of actual talk time. If I had my way, I’d sign up for a plan that didn’t allow talking at all.

Recently I was talking to a friend about dudes who claim that their “feelings were hurt” for highly trivial reasons subsequent to displaying shockingly sociopathic lacks of feelings during breakups. No one in particular. Just, you know, in general.

I am not really a big “feelings” girl myself. Never have been. Don’t like sappy movies; not crazy about over-processing things; once had a boyfriend who would get mad at me for not squeezing his hand back when he’d squeeze mine. (The latter is a first world relationship problem and I kind of wish I’d hung in there longer on that one.)

Don’t get me wrong. I have feelings. LOTS of them. Lots and lots and lots. Boy do I have feelings.

I’m just not very good at talking about my feelings. And especially not with someone I have feelings for. In fact, if I am talking to you about my feelings, chances are it’s cuz I don’t have any. For you.

Still, I think I understand what feelings are all about.

I used to work for a yoga teacher who was big on the Marshall Rosenberg school of Nonviolent Conflict talk. In this paradigm, every conversation sounds something like this:

“Dude, when you disrespect me, I feel hurt.”

See what I did there? I simultaneously let Dude know that he/she disrespected me, without actually assigning Dude the blame for my feelings. Cuz, in reality, no one can make you feel anything. You’re pretty much in charge of your own feelings, sadly.

When we were on yoga retreats (aka yoga “bootcamps”), we would exercise this type of nonviolent speech according to a predefined shortlist of acceptable feelings. The list looked something like this:

List of Possible Feelings

• Angry
• Sad
• Hurt
• Happy
• Shameful

Occasionally people would try to sneak in other feelings like “bored” or “irritated,” but Teacher would gently put them in their place and let them know that “irritated” actually means “angry” and “bored” actually means “sad,” or whatever.

○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

A few years after I learned how to communicate in nonviolent conflict terms, I found myself in therapy with a live-in boyfriend who we’ll call DB. At some point during our short-lived attempt to repair our godawful relationship, our bargain therapist suggested that he get better about talking about his feelings and that I, in turn, practice listening and respecting them. I was game.

Until, that is, the night that DB decided to exercise his right to have feelings. The conversation went something like this:

DB: “I’m gonna go out with my friend Ryan and get some beers.”

Me: But we have plans?

DB: But I feel like going out with Ryan instead.

Me: What? That’s not cool.

DB: You’re doing it. You’re not listening to my feelings.

Me: What?

DB: I said that I feel like going out with Ryan.

Me: Wait. Do you think that “going out with Ryan” is a feeling?

DB: That’s what I said.

Me: [Blank stare.]

Needless to say, therapy didn’t go anywhere, and neither did our relationship.

The end.

(I've discovered a new literary tool — when you can't think of a good ending for a story you just end it with "The End." Works literally every single time!)

It started innocently enough several months ago. I had to run to the bank, so I parked (entirely legally) in a parking garage in the Marina that I often use as my go-to when hitting up Chase on Chestnut. I was in the bank for seven minutes, tops, and when I got back to my car I was chagrined to find a ticket: for not having a front license plate.

I have and have always had a front license plate. Confusion.

Perplexed, I decided to shrug it off, laugh a little bit at the absurdity of it (who gets a parking ticket inside a parking garage anyway?) and did what anyone in my place would do: I took a picture of my very obviously real front license plate with my iPhone, and sent it in with a courteous and only mildly snide letter the very next day.

Thus ensued several months of periodic mail from the DMV telling me that they had received my rebuttal and were processing and pondering over it.

In due time, I got their final word: “Sorry, you lose.” I was in fact going to have to pay a $110 fine for an imaginary infraction. My complacent, calm attitude toward the unscrupulousness of meter maids started to wear thin.

But there was a loophole. This was a FIX-IT TICKET, so I could, if I chose, go to the DMV and ask a DMV employee to look at my car with his eyes, verify that I do in fact have a front license plate, and sign off on my ticket.

Now, you may ask yourself, why would a picture of the car with the license plate on it not be enough to prove that I do in fact have a license plate? Innocently, I asked a kindly DMV worker that same question. She said, “How would we know that you didn’t just temporarily put that plate on just for the picture?” Right. That makes perfect sense. It’s entirely plausible that I carry around my rightful, legitimate license plate in the hatchback of my car so that I can put it on temporarily in emergency situations, but then take it right off again and put it back in my car for safekeeping. The fuck?

I chose today to go to the DMV. The conditions were perfect: I was in the right part of my lunar cycle to not be overly homicidal with strangers; my workload is relatively light this week; I got myself psyched up.

Forty-five minutes into the line, I was still feeling stoic. When the disaffected counter dude told me that I didn’t need a number, but should just drive my car up to the dark, desolate far side of the DMV and “wait there,” I trusted. An hour later, after exhausting all possible modes of iPhone entertainment and not having seen hide nor hair of a single DMV employee, I got only slightly fidgety. In fact, I did not start to actually cry until I went back into the DMV and politely asked a worker if, in his opinion, someone would ever come help me. He looked at me like I had just crawled out from a sewer pipe behind the building and pretended not to speak the language.

(At this point, the refrain of “Alice’s Restaurant” was looping through my head ominously.)

About twenty more minutes later, a large, expressionless, highly exasperated DMV matron showed up to sign off on my piece o’ paper, but not before I witnessed her have a very long drawn out conversation with a policeman (what in DMV parlance is ironically called a “peace officer,” it turns out) who then left the premises. About thirty seconds into my conversation with the DMV worker, she deduced that — contrary to what this piece of paper said — I couldn’t actually have her sign it, but needed a “peace officer,” and “Sorry, that one just left for the day.”

She suggested that I drive over to the police station, and with a wave of the hand in a vague southwesterly direction she presumably sent me to the nearest one. Off I went to drive in circles for about another half hour while trying to find this elusive police station she talked so highly of, which turned out to exist only in her imagination. After a futile Google Map search I ended up back in my town, where I started, at the Mill Valley police station, which, mind you, has two possible entranceways—both with clear “do not enter signs.”

I parked across the street and walked on foot to the closest doorway, where I pleaded my by-now-nearly-hysterical case to a nice lady cop, who laughed, and signed my piece of paper, and didn’t even look at my car. Which made me remember why I love living in Mill Valley. And wonder if maybe I should just never leave my little bubble of a town.

And then I went off to the Whole/Blithedale to drown my sorrows in a big fat almond milk shake.

Stay tuned for part two… when I try to find a stamp to mail the freaking letter.

My mother used to say: "There are no boring things; only boring people." (Usually in response to my complaint about being bored because we didn't have a T.V.) I've taken this concept to heart my entire life since and am pretty awesome at keeping myself busy — at least mentally. I can entertain myself in a dark windowless box with only my imagination for company. This is one of the reasons that meditation is both easy and incredibly hard for me.

I’ve always thought that this quality would come in handy if I ever ended up in prison or stuck on a desert island. However, I recently discovered that I am a fraud when it comes to being impenetrably unbore-able. There is, it turns out, one situation that induces acute boredom for me: FISHING.

My dad is out visiting, and since we have literally nothing in common, I have been scrambling to find things we might enjoy doing together. Luckily, my good friend Maynard shares one hobby with my dad that I coerced him into letting us piggyback along for. So to be fair, this was absolutely my idea and Maynard really did his best to be accommodating, despite the fact that I spent probably the entire time complaining about:

1. Being cold
2. Being hungry
3. Having to pee
4. Being bored

And, out of the 10+ hours* that Maynard and Curt were fishing off the pier in Tiburon, I only actually tried to be a good sport for about ten minutes, total. The rest of the time, I sat shivering in my East Coast down puffy jacket in the nearest coffee shop, drinking hot Earl Grey tea with milk and playing Words With Friends on my iPhone.

I’ve never been a recreational activities sort of girl and I should know by now to try not to act cool about maybe potentially being one after all. But a nice leisurely day of casting lines on the Bay in December… that sounded kind of poetic in my pre-mind.

Sadly, it turns out that my imagination’s ability to babysit itself can be overridden quickly by biting cold Bay Area December weather and the merciless damp rocks that I was sitting on. (I have to admit that my dad’s really awful Polack jokes didn’t help.)

I am duly humbled and must redact my original statement about how I don’t get bored, or at least modify it: I don’t get bored… as long as I’m in my comfort zone.

On the positive side, it’s nice to realize that, in the absence of a parental visit to remind me how utterly uncool I really am, I’ve found a nice sort of harmony in my life so that the boredom rarely manifests. I’m a little worried about that desert island scenario, though.

* Just so I don’t get in trouble for hyperbole I must confess that “we” were fishing for about two hours, not ten. But, it felt like ten.

I am a smart girl. I always got good grades in school and can usually figure out moderately challenging mind puzzles (as long as they don’t involve numbers or require an attention span). However, there are some things I would have prefered to remain dumb about, thanks. For example:

That when you drink Diet Coke, it metabolizes into formaldehyde in your body, which, as a colleague pointed out, is good for halting the aging process, but maybe not so great for the liver. The acupuncturist who told me this horrible thing basically destroyed my number one guilty pleasure for the rest of my life. I tried to shrug it off and be all, “I know that” and “so what?” but the truth is, the Diet Coke I was drinking when she informed me of this monstrous terribleness did not taste so good. It tasted kind of like embalming fluid, actually.

That you can get ringworm from tanning beds. I’ll take my chances with skin cancer, but ringworm? No thanks. I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to do about my S.A.D. now. Thanks a lot, V.

That Glee is actually a really cute and funny show. I wish I didn’t know this, and, more importantly, I wish I didn’t admit it so freely.

I don’t really miss childhood much, but I do miss that time in my life when I was blissfully ignorant of these sorts of things. I am pretty confident that dumber people are generally happier. And ordinarily I could come up with a lot more examples, but I have a blazing head cold of the sort that makes your brain disintegrate into mushy slop. (Speaking of dumbness.)

You know what I am stoked to know about? This t-shirt:

My friend Stirling promised to order me one so I can wear it to Whole Foods Mill Valley every day. Thank you Stirling!

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now." *

I have a new project swirling through my right mind. Ages ago I bought the domain name www.recoveringyogi.com with the idea of turning it into an online "refuge for the spiritually disenfranchised." A forum where those who've been burned by the yoga world—or just are just flipping sick of hearing people talk about manifesting and chakras—can come together to embrace their East Coast-ness and be real. I have several columnists in mind, along with Vanessa Fiola's cheeky art, and I'm starting to get momentum around this idea.

I think it's important to say here that recoveringyogi.com is not going to be a yoga hater site. Yoga as a practice is awesome, and does a body/mind/spirit good—if it's your thing. Recoveringyogi.com is specifically about the culty vapid culture of mainstream yoga in America. Of which I am tragically familiar.

Anyhoodle, the point of all this is that I've been thinking a lot about Recovering Yogi over the last few days, wrote an article for Elephant Journal yesterday about why I stopped teaching yoga, and then suddenly got this exquisite piece of junk in the mail. Look closely:

I own the domain name, yes, but otherwise have never registered this name, talked about it, signed anything with it.... where did this come from? Awesome.

Incidentally, the quote above? I know it sound an awful lot like it's about manifesting. It's not. It's about synchronicity. Different. Yogis talk endlessly and mindlessly about "manifesting." Artists make things.

~~~

* (By the way no one seems to know where this quote actually came from, but when trying to research it I found this on some random blog on Wordpress:    "The Goethe couplet Murray refers to is from a loose translation of Faust 214-30 made by John Anster in 1835. Anster translating Faust written by Goethe and quoted by Murray (reference at The Goethe Society of North America).  Like I learned from my art professors at MCAD, there are no original thoughts.")