The Palin-bin Laden Debate

Here's the promised argument I received by e-mail about why I shouldn't have posted an item two days ago which I titled "Osama bin Palin." (The idea was that both Palin and bin Laden want to force their world-view on others, though they use different means.)



"The problem with this pointed association of the ideology of Sarah Palin to Osama bin Laden is that - so far as we know - Sarah Palin has only threatened to squelch our liberties, but she hasn't actually committed genocide. There is probably no one who dislikes or despises George W. Bush more than I, but when I read the diatribes of well-meaning people of his favorable comparison to Hitler, I have to just accept that the thought the diatribe is intentional in its passion, it misses the opportunity for intellectual discourse with others that leads to problem-solving. It shuts a definitive soundbite door on the opportunity to use logic to evaluate the problem and determine a logical way to address it.

...It's the same sort of rhetoric Conservatives use to make their points - fill people with succinct opinions and do it all in just a few words ... the more dramatic, the better. I realize the title "Osama bin Palin" is yours and it is overtly funny. But the comments inherent in the title and the sentiments are sensational and unsubstantiated in a way that discredits the very smart and savvy nature of your blog (I respectfully submit)."


Now, I do favor good pithy soundbites. I want them to be true and memorable. They make a difference in campaigns.

However, I don't want to rant; it isn't effective.

Thoughts from you on what is decently bold in a campaign as important as this one?








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Campaign Anger

I got an email yesterday from a reader who wished I hadn't written such an aggressive post as the previous one titled "Osama bin Palen". Here's how I responded:

"You're right, of course. And I hesitated to post the piece, and then re-hesitated over my choice of inflammatory title. But I lately I've been getting exhausted by behaving judiciously in dreadfully galling circumstances.

I don't think the post did any good for the Obama cause; I don't think it did any harm either. I think it would only affect people's opinion of me, not of my candidates; and I decided I didn't mind that on this occasion. I took some pleasure in letting off steam.

Yes, it's resorting to some of the tackier tactics of opponents. No doubt about it. Guilty as charged. And for me, I do see it as an aberration -- a low-impact bit of bad behavior -- not a career strategy.

I also think that Jane was right in her specific comparison. Both Palin and bin Laden seem to want to push their own restrictive world-view on others. Their means are very different, of course.

How I wish reasoned discourse could affect this election in the next few weeks! (I like very much what Peder Zane had to say on that subject in the most recent Sunday News & Observer.) I don't think it will. I think getting out the vote is what will make the difference. And maybe Tina Fey's marvelous Saturday Night Live parody of Palin.

I do agree with you philosophically about the high road, even in matters of style. And I very much appreciate your writing. No need to hesitate at all. I expect most, if not all, reasonable people would on their best days agree with you on this. There was a notable absence of comments to that post.

(And a question: may I post your email on my site with this reply from me? I would love to continue this discussion there and perhaps get others involved Either way, thanks for pondering this and for your very thoughtful message.)

Peggy


If I do get permission, I'll post that email. And I invite and welcome continuation of this conversation here. I very much liked what Peder Zane had to say on this in Sunday's News & Observer. And I received a little while ago a piece from a psychologist arguing that Obama's idealism sets our dark side loose--our feelings of anger, resentment, etc.--leaves all that unattended. I think that's true. What we need to figure out is how to use that huge energy in a good way for a good cause. Doris Lessing has done some excellent writing on this in Prisons We Choose to Live Inside; she argues that public schools should address the fact that we all contain some angry and violent and intolerant impulses. She says we all contain some evil and need to be aware of it and educated in how to manage it nondestructively.





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Osama bin Palin

From my friend and former newspaper colleague Jane Albright:

"Sarah Palin believes that she is on God's side, so everyone else is
wrong. This puts her firmly in the same camp as Osama Bin Laden. She,
too, would like to impose her narrow world view on everyone, much as any
radical Muslim fundamentalist does.

This isn't the American Way...."

Nor is it a courageous way. No-guts living is to try to require everyone else to be and do just like me. If my way is good, it can stand comparison to other ways. It can coexist.

I like Gandhi's philosophy: "I do not want my house to be walled in on (all) sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any."

I first saw this quote on a poster in the airport terminal in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, India, when I arrived there to begin my three-month stay to research my novel Sister India. It has stuck with me.

I know that I open myself here to the charge of wanting Sarah Palin to think like me. Not so. I want her to be as different from me as she wishes. I just don't want my way made illegal.

Please consider voting for American freedom.



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How to Use Your Anger

If you're feeling outraged: Use your anti-Palin pro-Obama energy to call 25 people or knock on 25 doors. I just got my list and I'm excited. Here's the info. They give you everything you need: maps, numbers, names, scripts, etc.

Taking action is good for the cause, of course; it also helps relieve the teeth-grinding discomfort of anger.


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Facing Serious Danger

The following piece is by Eve Ensler. It reached me through American history professor and author Peter Filene. I don't have permission to republish it, but I am convinced by the piece itself that Ensler wants it as widely distributed as possible.

Whatever you might think about Ensler, Filene, Palin, offshore drilling, or me, I hope you will read this. It is blunt, bold, and well thought out. I especially like this summary sentence: "I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country choose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover."


Here it is:


Drill, Drill, Drill
Eve Ensler

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a
member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned
and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for
Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact
that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or
touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice.
Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life
trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against
them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin
choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this
choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to
Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the
earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening
our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous
choices of my lifetime, and should this country choose those candidates the
fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that
America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact
that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a
joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be
elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In
her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better
or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the
arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise
of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar
bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here
to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and
plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be
taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task
from God."


Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who
are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a
right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.


She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I
imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies
that makes.


Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has
tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people
who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity
and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next
president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse
populations on the earth.


Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She
has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of
wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But
when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared
in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the
end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America
has ever tried to be.


I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in
our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of
the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies
to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will
determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or
whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It
will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest
our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and
destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and
healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will
determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place
of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.


If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to
get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin
spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of
drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I
think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the
brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.


Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of
the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and
peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?




Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008

TMI

This post is Too Much Information. So be forewarned.

Today, while reclining in a dental chair, I vomited with such force that my dentist (I later learned) dashed to the bathroom and shampooed her hair. I only half knew what was going on, because I was so doped on the nitrous that was supposed to relax my gag reflex.

Barely conscious, I'd felt only a little gurgle in my throat, then heard my doc say, "That was spectacular." What I knew was that I was damp and unhappy and people were dabbing at my clothes. I felt like a sick person being trundled through a carwash on a stretcher.

When I woke up, I learned how truly spectacular the event had been. I will spare you further details except to say that I borrowed a lab coat to wear and a plastic bag for my clothing. While I was in the bathroom "freshening up," staff had gathered in the front office to marvel at my capabilities and to see me off.

On the way back to my office, I stopped at a thrift shop to buy a top so I could change out of the medical outfit that, I then discovered, I had snapped up all wrong.


Now to wring meaning from this, which I like to do, especially with unpleasant experiences.

Here's what I've come to: a brief glimmer of the freedom of not being fully responsible.

I go around acting civilized and in charge about 98% of the time. This morning, by contrast, I felt undone, literally swamped, back to chaos and primordial slime. While still zonked, I had the thought: this is how it would feel to be sick and dying, too weak to do anything, but still aware. I felt how close and huge the universe-of-what-I-don't-control is all of the time. I felt amazed that it's ever possible to forget that. (See Ernest Becker's thrillingly profound Denial of Death for more about this sort of thing.)

So throwing up on my dentist simply brings me back to the old mortality thing, the business of being temporary. I've been here before very briefly. Most of the time I find a gut awareness of death to be Too Much Information.

For one thing, it's a bit insulting, since I go to so much trouble to keep my shoes lined up in my closet, and my email all answered.

I do see the potential, though, for the awareness to be liberating, not having to be in charge, but staying interested in the ride. All of which is much easier to think about in clean dry clothes.



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Necessary Courage

From Samuel Johnson (first found on a website I can't seem to get to identify itsef):

"Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice."

The part of that I'm focused on is that courage is basic and daily, not just for firefighters and paratroopers.

It's also crucial for life for the rest of us, at our desks, in meetings, in the car, in the kitchen, on the phone.



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Steinem on Palin

Gloria Steinem, mother of bold, speaks to Hillary Clinton supporters in an article in the L.A. Times.

"To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, 'Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs.'"

This comes from a woman who knows about protest, and what kind works, and what kind doesn't.


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Seeking Divine Intervention

Here's an item of a sort that I usually hesitate to speak of:

Last night I decided to ask God to help me take better care of myself, and to ask often. This change I'm after has to do with small daily practices like not having coconut popsicles (only) for dinner, skipping exercise, and generally runnng short on sleep.

The decision in itself relaxed me, which is large. That alone is a serious benefit.

I'm very curious to see how it goes from here.

I write about this, not because I think it's a bold move, but because I have to take a deep breath in order to say it aloud here. And maybe there's good reason for that. I'm not sure. But I thought I'd test the hesitation.

Making declarations of goals public usually helps to make them happen. We'll see.




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Cheating Is Chicken

An interesting correlation: college students who score highest on tests for courage are also least likely to cheat. I like that connection. The non-cheaters are the ones who are spunky enough to travel under their own steam.



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Getting Me to Do Right

Boldness is everything, at least on this blog. For me, all other virtues fall under this label.

I realized that when I decided what I wanted to write today: this weekend's big "bold" move. It was not going kayaking when thunder started rolling.

That might seem to be simply a reasonable decision (not to mention a reflexive one) rather than bold.

But I had my boat pumped up (as you see) and ready to go. I was pretty pumped up about getting out there myself. I was so tempted to go out for a few minutes anyway.




I'd heard one little rumble a while earlier, but decided it was an anomaly. Then I saw boats start coming off the lake just when I was starting to push in. One guy was wading ashore to get his car and trailer. "Did you hear thunder out there?" I asked him.

"I sure did," he said. "Some real slappers. My daughter said, 'Get me out of here.'"

So I pulled the plugs, deflating both kayak and would-be paddler.

This might seem like elementary wisdom, rather than boldness. But if I thought of it as wise or reasonable, I might not be persuaded, since wisdom can seem rather tedious to a late-middle-aged adolescent like me. If instead I think of the necessary, wise, and reasonable choice as bold, then it's easier.

Does that make sense? I'm simply making the right choice and coding it as "bold." This could work for a lot of things, I now realize. The technique definitely has possibilities: i.e., only the truly bold individual finishes returning all her phone calls today.

Parents use this sort of thinking with children: "only big girls get to...make up their own beds..."

Well, I'm starting to see the potential for using it on myself. For an artist, or anyone self-employed or working at home, skills of self-management, however seemingly silly, are crucial.





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Obama the Mensch

Did you watch last night? I found Obama's acceptance speech so exciting that I was almost afraid to be excited. It made me proud of us, I know that for sure. We've come a long way since my childhood in Wilmington, NC.

And now we have a real leader in Barack Obama. He presented big bold ideas; he said flat-out what he means to do. He was specific. He didn't pander or equivocate.

He has both warmth and gravitas, natural persuasiveness and presidential bearing, the kind of courage that looks sunny and relaxed. Obama the Bold. I like the sound of that too.



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Hail Hillary!

She did the right thing when she asked the delegates to the Democratic convention: were you in it for me, or for the wounded soldier, the single mother of autistic kids...?

That question has to make a voter sit back and think. And then, I hope, vote for Obama.

Update just in case you haven't been on this planet this week: Hillary Clinton gracefully and generously asked her 18 million supporters to vote for Barack Obama for president. She did it like a champ!

I can only begin to understand what it must have taken to do that, when I think about giving my new novel away to be published as some other writer's, just to get the work out to the world. I don't think I'd do it.

My admiration and thanks to Senator Clinton who did.



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Encouragingly Bright Color

"Sitting with someone in the hospital gives one many day and night hours to think. About color. About colorful." This is from photographer, writer, accountant Mamie Potter's blog.

I admire the fact that sitting in a hospital room brings color to her mind. That's probably not everyone's response to such a situation.

In musing about this, she has posted some boldly colorful photos on her blog. On this post. And this one.

Do go gaze upon them; they are emboldening.




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Hillary Kennedy Obama

TV has been setting us some good examples recently.

First came the Olympians, who have persevered for years in their sport and competed, for all to see, against the best in the world.

Last night came Michelle Obama, Senator Ted Kennedy, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. Each of them, in their different ways, has come a long, long way.

Ted Kennedy hauled himself out of the hospital to to make a speech on behalf of both Obama and the good causes he has championed in his own 46 years in the Senate. I certainly don't see Kennedy's life as one of perfect virtue; as a 20 year-old intern, I wrote a fairly damning editorial about him in the Wilmington, NC paper on the morning after Mary Jo Kopechne's death. But he has gone on from that night, persistently doing good, for the public and for his vast family. That takes guts.

Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, who has endured more losses than anyone should have to face, introduced him, saying he has taught his nieces and nephews and their 60 children, "how to chart our course, take the helm and sail against the wind."

Then came Michelle Obama. She and her husband Barack have both traveled a long way from their beginnings, and she told their stories with such grace.

I want to see one more example of boldness and grace at this convention. I want the admirable Hillary Clinton to say to her 18 million supporters: Honor me now and in November by voting for Obama; for the good of my country, that's the gesture of support I want.



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Edgy Art: the Luminarium

Friday night Bob and I strolled through the mist-filled tubular corridors of something called a luminarium.

It was, in short, a mighty balloon with a flap door, sitting on the ground in downtown Raleigh for a festival called Art on the Edge. The pictures in the paper had looked like people were wandering through Gulliver's internal organs.

The pictures didn't prepare me for entering that flowing glowing trembling labyrinth, full of shifting colors and soft music. It's titled Levity III and billed as being a bit like a cathedral, a bit like a mosque. In any event, it's other-worldly.

At the same time, it feels like something alive. Visitors leave their shoes at the entrance, explore the dim interior with bare feet. The floor and walls feel like cool flesh, they have a kind of "give" that invites further contact. We were among the many to lie down for a while. (That's Bob in the cell phone picture I shot.)

I emerged feeling mentally and physically refreshed, delighted by an experience entirely new to me. Downtown seemed more vivid than when I'd entered the balloon. And nobody was pumping any mind-altering smoke in there. This was just a piece of art, doing its job.



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Derrida on the Fear of Writing

I'm sure you've heard of Jacques Derrida, inventor of the theory known as deconstruction. Highly controversial guy--a skewed translation of his thinking wrecked a few good English departments for a while there.

His idea--simplistically, that we have no one piece of solid ground to stand on to observe an objective reality (I think I have that right)--was somehow turned into a basis for treating literature as primarily a demonstration of political and cultural assumptions.

Aside from that wild misapplication, this theory is so sound an addition to what we know that it seems like a no-brainer: as if, surely, we always knew that. The name Derrida and the idea itself seem to have been in the atmosphere forever, like the Metropolitan Opera or St. Patrick's Day.

And so I was very surprised to run into Derrida on Youtube, of all places, talking about the fear of writing. The short version is: he is full of fire and conviction while he's writing and full of fear of what he's doing in the moments when he starts to go to sleep. Doesn't seem to have gotten in his way; he's published 45 books.

But it's an interesting version of the experience that most of us deal with in one way or another, well worth listening to. I'm always interested in the kind of conversation between the conscious and the unconscious that he describes. Also,he speaks French (with subtitles) slowly enough to be understood (especially with the subtitles) by a struggling American French-speaker.

Furthermore, I'd sort of assumed the guy was dead. Not a bit. In fact, he seems rather a hottie. So the video undermined at least one of my false assumptions. Who knew the iconic Derrida was cute?



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Lift Depression (Literally)

"The next time you are feeling a little depressed, try looking up. That's right, look up. Reach your arms overhead and let your eyes follow. You may be surprised to find that it is impossible to stay depressed while looking up into the air. You see, looking upward engages our visual sensory files, that part of our mind that sees pictures. Depression is usually a result of something we are hearing us tell ourselves." from blogger Ajay Kumar K.S. at Life Is a Quest to Find Something (Someone)

I love the simplicity of this technique. I don't know that it's the answer to major clinical episodes. But I will try it the next time I'm feeling low, should that ever happen again. Because it's been my experience that a depressed person is never as bold as she could be.




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Quailmail Courage

I'm trying something new in getting feedback on a manuscript. I'm putting out a call on the Quailmail e-newsletter of Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books asking for a few readers-who don't know me in any way and aren't writers or editors--to read my novel in progress and tell me unsparingly what they think.

Should be interesting. Wish me luck and honest readers.


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Erotica Writer and Brazen Careerist

Two bold individuals:

Penelope Trunk of The Brazen Careerist:

Her target audience is predominantly youngish people starting their careers in organizations, but an aged freelancer can also make good use of her wisdom. Her advice is goal-oriented, irreverent, free-thinking, and way cheeky. Even her more outrageous ideas I find useful in making me question my thinking. Basically she overturns a lot of assumptions. In today's blog she begins: "The idea that we somehow have a certain amount of potential that we must live up to is a complete crock." What a liberating idea!


Susie Bright, eroticist: Among other credits, she's editor of Simon & Schuster's bestselling Best American Erotica series. With a pile of books on the subject and columns in various major magazines, she has almost made sex mainstream. She's also quite forthcoming about her own life and an activist politically. Rolling Stone says that she "could not be accused of shutting up." Today's subject: "Sex Addiction: The Big Con".

I find that having a look at what someone else is doing makes it easier for me to venture out more in my own way for my own causes. Once when I was writing a scary part of my current novel, I'd stop every few minutes and read an extremely revealing memoir by a friend of mine and think: well, if she can do this, I can certainly write one more paragraph of gritty fiction.



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Scandals and Confessions

Years ago, when I was a reporter covering the NC legislature, I was standing talking with someone outside an office door, when the representative came out and jokingly handed me his tear-off calendar page for the day. The wisdom thereon was: Sin Boldly, which is attributed to religious revolutionary Martin Luther.

Perhaps because of the context and the fellow who was handing it to me (good-looking and known as squeaky-clean), I've always remembered it.

Having recently watched the John Edwards political disaster right here on my home turf, I've decided I want to expand the original adage.

Here's my version: If, after careful thought of potential wreckage, you're going to break a deal or violate your own values, do it boldly and honestly, with graceful acceptance of the consequences. Or tell reporters: It's private. Buzz off! Or at least don't tell indignant lies into the lens of a TV camera.

Most of us tend to have a jovial interest in an out-and-out rogue, and sympathy for a good guy who stumbles and comes clean. One way or the other, we tend to admire the boldness of full honesty (which is different from Too Much highly personal Information.)

But it's a rare individual who admires furtiveness. And it's such a human impulse to ward off blame. I remember saying once to my brother Franc: No, no, you have those papers, not me. It came out of my mouth like a reflex, a hasty self-defense; at best, I think I was hoping he had those papers. Turned out they'd been with me all along.

So I can't throw stones at the sneaky; it comes so naturally to us all.

But I do admire those who can say from the first: Yeah, I did that. That was me.








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Life Lessons from Olympic Sports

Syndicated columnist Rick Horowitz has written a funny and spot-on creed based on what we learn from days of Olympic TV watching.

"From this day forward, I stick my landings. ... From now on, where I land is where I stand....I will maintain my positions for at least two seconds."

And of course this solemn declaration ends with cutting to a commercial. Check it out, if you haven't already read it. It's both inspiring and funny.





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How To Make an Entrance

In case you missed it last Friday night, have a look at this 8 minute video of the 2,008 drummers at the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing.

I want this group to announce the publication of my next book.

China has announced itself boldly. Though I've always been a fan of understatement, yet this is thrilling. I'm also a fan of individual voices, and yet the impact of this many drums beating together is like no other.

Perhaps it's good to be flexible, to be able to be loud wen needed, and part of a group when that's the best way to get your message across.




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Small Town Grace?

Walking up to a stranger at a gathering and starting a conversation takes a little psychic effort for a lot of us.

Yesterday, I saw that done repeatedly as if it were as effortless as checking email.

I was at a funeral at a Baptist Church in the little town of Buies Creek in eastern North Carolina. As I paused in the narthex after the service, and later at the lunch in an assembly room, people one after another came up to me and introduced themselves, explained how they knew the family, how they were related, and so on.

They did it so gracefully that I began to develop a theory: that they were all members of the congregation and this was their Sunday morning practice with visitors. That's true in churches I've attended, but I've never been the one to go over and speak to the stranger. Here the greeting habit seemed culture-wide.

It was very nice. I felt welcomed and engaged; the greetings turned easily into interesting brief conversations. These encounters did not seem dutiful. Each chat seemed motivated by genuine interest and good nature. (This doesn't happen to me everywhere I go, and I did not spark it by wearing a funny hat.)

It made me feel like leaving some walls down and seeing what happens.



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The Happiness Project

Wednesday, which is today, is "Tip Day" at the site called The Happiness Project. If you look to the lower left side of that site you'll find the index of previous Wednesday tip lists for what I think of as: how to live.

Examples:
July 2: 5 tips for giving good praise.
July 16: 9 useful yet REALISTIC personal productivity tips. (..."don’t postpone any task that can be done in less than one minute.")
June 25: Tips for talking to someone about an impending divorce: dos and don'ts.

As I see it, "how to live" is really what we talk about on this site as well. Boldness and Happiness are both about living right, or effectively, or satisfyingly.

Is it safe to say that we have to be bold to be happy? Hellen Keller thought so, saying that life was either a great adventure or it was nothing. What do you think?



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Boldness and True Colors

I know an attorney, a black man who has a white girlfriend and an office in a yellow house with a red motorcycle parked on the porch. Once he came to my office door eating a lollipop of I-forget-what brilliant color.

Something tells me this is a bold man, with a life in "living color."



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Anxiety is So Damn Tiring

In an average month, roughly 4 million people Google the word "anxiety." Last month, that number was up to about 5 million. That's a lot of us. And some of us who tend to be tense have never even done a search on the word.

I bring this up because I'm prone to freefloating anxiety myself, which expresses itself, for example, in the fear I made some ghastly error which I'll soon find out about or left a door unlocked or a burner on. Weird intangible stuff like that.

When I have real things to worry about or to be upset about, my perverse reflexive strategy is to feel anxious about something unrelated.

For example, I'm currently feeling the effects of a distant relative dying Saturday (a blow for a bunch of people who are close to me), another family member having tests for worrisome symptoms (a long drawn-out process), and yet another one who is sick and refusing treatment that could solve the problem.

My response: to worry about my work, to fear (quite irrationally) that I won't get projects finished fast enough, to be a bit twitchy, and feel my immune system going on vacation. This is all just as crazy as driving back to the office at night to be sure I locked the door. To deal with this, I'm advised to:

1. meditate
2. exercise
3. be sad
4. and then just go about my business.
But these are the times that it's difficult to get myself to meditate and get exercise, to stick to the usual disciplines.

Instead, I would like to simply stop being anxious, without having to do all that. Conversely, I could simply decide that anxious is how I am just now and ignore it.

The main thing is: it's tiring. It takes energy I could use in better ways.

And based on Google figures, I'm not the only person like this. So what shall we do about this? Meditate and exercise? Surely there's an easier way.

Let's invent one. (Note: when it gets pathological, drugs help a lot, but aren't the whole answer.) (Additional note: overeating while feeling nothing is not a good strategy at all.)

Imagine how the world might improve if four million people a month were doing something more interesting than Googling "anxiety."



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Why Create This Blog?

I've asked myself this question a number of times: why blog? For a writer, it does provide exposure and interaction with readers. It's promotional.

That's the supposed explanation.

But the fact is, I don't think that a huge percentage of people who visit here immediately rush to find one of my books. (Could be wrong, I hope so.)

I think I do this because I feel like it. It's a pulpit, a place to vent a bit, an easy outlet: no editors, no delays. I like the feeling of it.

So I tell myself, as I spend a significant amount of my work time doing this, that

1. I'm writing, and that's always a good thing
2. I may well publish some of this sometime in a collection that people will pay for, which is important since writing and consulting to writers are my "day job"
3. this fast and casual writing gives me ideas (is that true? does it really? not sure)
4. it primes the pump for work on my book (that's true for sure)
5. it does create at least some interest in my other work

But back to the main truth: I like doing it. It reminds me of what's fun about writing, which can get lost in revising for publication and all the attendant struggles. Writing itself is what inspires me to keep writing.



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Courage as a Way of Life

I hesitate to mention this, since it could easily be viewed in a "sideshow" way. However, on this occasion my better instincts are at work, and I'd like to ask you to look at this situation in an empathetic way.

Last night, as I was doing my crunches and channel surfing, I came across on The Learning Channel a documentary on a pair of conjoined twins, formerly called Siamese twins. These girls, Abby and Brittany Hensel are 15; they are two distinct personalities, two people. Each girl has a head and a face and a mind, and otherwise the two of them share one body, each with feeling on her respective side of that body.

At first glance, it didn't seem possible. After watching them being interviewed for a few minutes, my startlement wore off and they seemed to present simply another of the endless million variations on ways to be human, on how to be confident, outgoing sixteen year old girls.

One of the experts interviewed said that the singlets in the world have a couple of important things to learn from those who are conjoined. One is openness to a wider range of human differences, and the other is cooperation. Brittany and Abby have to somehow come to an agreement moment by moment about their every action, and they have to coordinate movements, each of them in charge of one arm. Even so, they manage to drive a car, type email, etc. I can barely imagine the complication and difficulty of that.

Neither they nor their parents treat them as limited. Their friends seem to see them as two regular girls. Anyone who ever felt odd in high school would have to be profoundly impressed by what these girls take on every day and treat as normal life. I'd add a third item to what I can learn, and that is courage as a way of life.



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Take Charge of Your Situation

"I once ran into a wise old friend, and he asked how I was doing.

'Fine, under the circumstances,' I replied.

He raised his eyebrows and laughed:

'What, pray tell, are you doing under there?'


What circumstances are you under? List three moves you can make to rise above those conditions?"


From Zing: Five Steps and 101 Tips for Creativity on Command by Sam Harrison


(Added thought from Peggy: when you write down what circumstances you're under, keep it short, a sentence or two. The idea is to go beyond the situation, not sink deeper into the mire of it.)




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Throw Off Minor Depression

I was in a truly shitty mood this morning: bitter, sad, angry, depressed simultaneously. (In short, visit with adult stepson did not go well.) The mood threatened to last for the rest of my life.

It lifted when I did one useful small thing that made me feel effective. All I did was drive to a Verizon store and say that two phone accessories weren't working right. One they replaced for free; the other for $16 (it hadn't come from Verizon.)

I left with working equipment and rising spirits. Not simply because I had a headset and a recharger that worked. Instead, because I'd demonstrated to myself that I could be effective, even at running a small errand that had no connection with the original problem.

That kind of remedy is always available. Maybe I'll remember it quicker, should I ever fall into such a state again.

Oh, it's good to have a blog to be able to share such wisdom!





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Brilliant Brillante Blogs

This blog has received the Brillante Award. I'm taking that to mean brilliant, and am delighted to be selected.

I'm to pass the honor on to seven other bloggers whom I find sparkling. The following are quite different from each other and all hold my attention:

The Growing Life, "Alternative productivity,anti-hacks for living"

Diva Marketing "An approach to marketing that's fun, bold, and savvy..."

Four Angels Momma: "Learning to soar with our feet on the ground."

Daily Spiritual Guide "Insights for a healthy and positive life."

The Sartorialist "Selected as on of Time magazine's top 100 design influencers."

Metaxu Cafe "A network of book and cultural blogs..."

60 going on 16 Reading and writing in the English countryside




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Go To the Trouble to Have an Adventure

A few years back I realized that I'm sometimes too lazy to do the little things that would make me more comfortable. Like get out of bed and get a quilt. Or turn on another light, or get a tool I need. Because it's just easier not to stir myself.

At that point I started telling myself: go to the trouble to get comfortable. It's really worth the effort involved.

This week I was driving home from work a little early, it was still light. Passing Jordan Lake, I realized that if I pulled over, I could inflate my kayak, which was in my trunk, and take it for a sunset spin. So what that my work clothes would get wet; they were washable.

So I took the trouble, paddled out on the glassy lake for about a half hour, and came in feeling as if I'd had a week's vacation. It had taken fifteen minutes of effort to get the boat out and pumped up. Well worth the "trouble," even for such a wee adventure. I mean to remind myself of that when I'm feeling like not bothering.




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Gandhi in the 'Hood

After almost four years in my downtown Raleigh office, I have discovered that a larger-than-life-size statue of my hero Gandhi stands in a courtyard three blocks from my desk.

Here he is, located behind The Marbles Kids Museum, the model of a man who put his boldness to good use.



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Fear and Power

The wickedly funny David Sedaris confided to People magazine recently that he'd been "here" for almost fifty years and was still afraid of everyone and everything.

An earlier People profile had suggested that he'd gotten over his fears. "An anxious child, he found an outlet for his energies in high school theater and art programs. 'I thought he'd be a normal kid eventually,' his father observes. It took a while."

In fact, Sedaris has made a career and a splendid body of work out of his anxious responses to the world. (See him on Letterman on YouTube.) Instead of wasting energy fighting himself, he uses his peculiarities, his fears as rocket fuel.

It's a strategy that came to my mind once in an unexpected way. Years ago, I found that night after night when I meditated, Gandhi would show up in my mind and say, "Play Chinese checkers." He didn't respond to questions about why.

Then one afternoon in my office I was in a terrible mood. Employing one of my standard perk-up devices, I left to wander for a bit in a nearby antiques mall. There I saw hanging on the side of a booth an old Chinese checker board, with all the dents for the marbles. A voice in my head said: "Use the obstacles to get where you're going."

At that point I remembered how the game is played. In order to move your marbles to their destination, you have to have an opponent in front of you to leapfrog over. You have to "use the obstacles to get where you're going."

And that's what Sedaris has so brilliantly done.





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Blocking Out the Consequences

"Courage is the ability to block out consequences and do what you think you have to do."
Glenn Fitzpatrick, Esquire general
manager, in an essay on his life with Lou
Gehrig's disease

Gandhi said something similar: forget the fruits of your labors, simply do the work and then step back.

How to step back? Not so easy. But I find that the intention itself takes me a long way toward that goal.

What this all translates to for me is: writing without worrying about whether the piece is going to sell. Curiously, satisfyingly, I find writing that way has turned out more easily saleable work.




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Tough Love

“I used to think that self-care meant taking it easy, pampering myself, and avoiding things when stress hit. Now I know that doing the thing I'm most afraid to do is the best way to take care of myself.”
--Cory Fransway, from Judith Wright's More e-zine



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Do Something Extra

Last night, for the sheer fun of it, I wrote the most bizarre little item I've ever written (and there's considerable competition in my oeuvre for that honor.) It was a one-pager, a humor piece (my intent, anyway), aimed at the slot that The New Yorker fills with satire and wordplay.

I won't burden you just now with the details of that story. What I want to say is that it was a delight to do. It wasn't like work at all. Not like revising my long-time novel-in-progress, which has its pleasures but is work.

The light free feeling came because this writing was extra, and I had no thoughts weighing on me about whether the piece was going to turn out to be good, or saleable, or both, or neither. Writing it was a loose unweighted walk, after a day of backpacking. Though it took four and a half hours, a substantial amount of time.

The same principle--do a little something extra--works in other arenas than writing. The book I co-authored with Allan Luks, The Healing Power of Doing Good, notes that people dealing with overwhelming job pressures and looming burnout can ease their feelings sometimes by doing some little useful extra that nobody expects or requires of them.

It works because:
*it puts the power back into the hands of the doer
*it's a reminder of how much fun the work (without external pressures) can be



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Creativity Equals Fearlessness?

Once when I was talking about my novel Sister India at a book club, one of the members made a comment about days when she feels creative.

I thought to myself: Feel creative? What's that like?

I take a rather workaday approach to writing: come into office, sit down at computer, write. There's no special feeling involved.

But today, I have to say, I think I felt what she was talking about. Maybe. What I realized was that I had no sense of dread or hesitation about taking on anything. I felt fairly confident I could do it well enough, whatever it was. (We're not talking about curing cancer, instead about writing paragraphs.)

Many days I start in again on a project in spite of a nettlesome grain of doubt, a feel of driving with the brake on. Once I'm working that goes away. Today it wasn't there at all, don't know why. But the absence of it, I have to say, felt creative. I'd like to work that way every day.

What's your experience? Is this kind of hesitation familiar? Do you simply force yourself past it, as I so often do? Or do you sail into your most challenging work with full glee?



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Flunking Creativity

The Epstein Creativity Competencies Inventory for Individuals just scored my answers on a 5 minute questionnaire. My score: a pitiable 70%!!! This is well below the level where I'm told I should be concerned.

I lost major points for not keeping a tape recorder by my bed at night, and not changing my work environment very often. (My office partner moves her office doodads and arranges flowers and such almost every morning. Me, I check my e-mail.)

Go take the test and see how you come out. It's at the very least a reminder of useful creativity techniques. (But how could I flunk, when I've never run short of ideas?)



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No-Brainer Time Management

I've discovered another difference between boldness and bad planning.

On Saturday morning I drove 5 hours to work with my brother on his house renovation. Got there in time to do about four hours of work. Spent one night. Worked about four hours again. Need I mention the heat?! Then another five hours on the road going home, feeling good. I'd had a good time and really gotten a fine workout.

Monday. Today. I drove up to my office building, turned the car off, and fell asleep. Woke up an hour later in the same position. My office partner driving up behind me hadn't waked me. Neither had the impressive heat in the closed car.

I pronounced myself rested and went into my office, where I felt mildly crazed the rest of the morning and then took a nap of nearly four hours. Which brings me up to the moment and my present conclusion: nothing is gained by making a three day trip in two days. It's going to require three days anyway, at least if one is over the age of 25.

Planning that uses the Evel Knievel approach--going against natural laws, etc.--is probably not the best way.



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Braving Sadness and Sorrow

Recently I was advised to be sad about sad things, that sadness is the root of tenderness. When anger starts to rise, I'm to check and see if the real feeling is sadness.

Well, talk about bold! The idea of voluntarily wandering into that grim and mucky swamp, which is the way I tend to view sadness, is seriously off-putting.

However, thinking of it in combo with tenderness changes the picture. Then its damp-and-wilted-ness begins to seem like aloe healing a burn.



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How to Brainstorm Better

One of my favorite movie scenes is a hands-on brainstorming session in Apollo 13, when the astronauts have a technical glitch ("Houston, we have a problem") and a team of engineers at homebase is given the precise materials available on board the spacecraft in order to patch together a solution. Fascinating and exciting!

There's also a good brainstorming scene in another Tom Hanks movie about an adman (I forget the title) in which the agency staff play office basketball while they toss around ideas. Thinking as a playful team sport.


Excellent article in Best Life magazine's August issue on how to think in cooperation with others. It sets one thing straight from the start: twice as many ideas are generated by people working solo than by a similar number of groups.

However, it's not uncommon to find ourselves in a group problem-solving situation. I did this sort of thing often in ad agencies back when I was freelancing ad copy, and finally got comfortable and happy with it. (Though my favorite kind of assignment was solo: bill us for x hours and send your list of ideas.)

Here are tips from Susan Welsh's "The Road to Eureka," which she takes from Sam Harrison's book Zing! Five Steps and 101 Tips for Creativity on Command.

*use brainstorming to build on and improve existing ideas, rather than to come up with new ones (I've usually seen the reverse)
*keep the group to a max of 5
*start by spending a few minutes on an unrelated exercise, such as finding ways to solve an imaginary problem
*when ready, encourage wild ideas that are focused on the goal
*people should blurt out their ideas, rather than taking turns talking
*allow no critical response to any idea
*don't go longer than an hour
*schedule a second session to allow ideas to perk

This process of fast blurting turned out to be fun once I got used to it. Sort of like pool volleyball. And getting into the swing of it really helps build the boldness muscles.



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Running Behind?

Probably no one feels as "behind" as the writer struggling to get a second novel written and published. Certainly that was true for me; my wrestle with the first and the ongoing business of the third have lacked the dreadful under-the-gun feeling I had before Sister India was released.

In "Success Sucks" U.K. writer Hamish MacFarlane has written a funny and "spot-on" piece about getting over sophomore slump to get going on his second novel.

"...I want to be read. I want people to see my take and say, you’re spot-on about that, and you put it in such a pretty way, too. I know this is true because it’s the opposite of my enduring number one fear of writing, not that I’ll fail to be published but that people will read my work and say, oh you freak, that’s not what the rest of us think at all."

It hasn't been easy for him. It wasn't easy for a lot of us. New kinds of boldness are needed, just when you think you had it made and didn't need all that sort of thing any more.

MacFarlane simply realized that the stories start to form anyway, best to just write them down instead of feeling guilty about not doing it. Plus, he wants to see how the story turns out. This attitude is part of what I think of as distance-runner boldness: endurance.

A note: MacFarlane complains (and you must go read it) about people constantly asking how's that new novel going? That question drove me crazy for a long time before Sister India came out. And then my annoyance faded, don't know how or why.

But I heard a good piece of advice about dealing with it. A woman I know who does strategic planning for movie studios, etc. said: just keep in mind that When's-your-next-one-coming-out? simply means Hello. It's something to say to show friendly interest, not asking you what you got on your report card.




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Twitching

At the time, she thought her elementary school teacher was Jezebel, my friend said at lunch today. In addition to whatever else K. suspected about her teacher, the woman did one thing that was really, really annoying. She allowed no twitching, no finger drumming. She required that the students sit still.

The very thought makes my nervous mannerisms go into full play. (Now taking off bracelet, flipping it around in circles.)

And what a harsh thing to do to a bunch of kids.

But she was right about the twitching, K. says. It sidetracks energy away from the focus of attention. Sitting completely still allows a more intense focus. That's the idea.

I don't argue with that.

However, for me the twitching, even multi-tasking, helps to keep me from a kind of hyperattentiveness that can be as destructive as neglect. This hyper-focus is also known as trying too hard.

Ideally, I'd get rid of the trying too hard, and then be able to sit still, and then take in third grade math in a blinding flash. (Reach for the stars!) But without the near-continuous leg swinging, toe tapping, finger drumming, doodling and twiddling, I fear I'd gain a hundred pounds. Seriously. Steady movement burns a lot of delicious calories.

Anyway, I may try this stillness experiment--I realize now that my right foot is bouncing. But I'm going to be careful with it. I'd be interested in anyone else's experience with the pros and cons of full focus.






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Self-Management

This morning I began an experiment with a new system of my own devising.

I think the matter of "managing" one's self well is pretty much central to everything, not just for freelance writers facing totally unstructured time. Seems to me that a personal management policy applies to every decision anyone makes: whether during "work time" to dig into the novel-in-progress or file tax receipts; whether, at lunch, to get the side of slaw or fries; even whether to give money to a particular panhandling homeless guy. None of these are no-brainers.

Here's my new system: I face each decision with two guidelines. 1) What do I feel like doing? 2) What choice would be "doing right by myself?" I don't get into an inner debate, I just bring these two questions into consciousness and then act.

I started this morning. The noticeable changes so far are that I ate a healthy breakfast and lunch. No fast food at all. And no quart of my beloved Mickey D's Sweet Tea, as is my usual custom. I don't feel deprived at all. I have no regimen I have to stick to; if lard feels like the right thing for supper, then that's what I'll have.

This new system is a blend of two I've tried that don't work: do what I want to and do what I ought to. Neither one of these alone takes me to a very good place. "Ought" leads me to fury and rebellious excess. "Want" leads me to leave off exercise, vegetables, meditation almost entirely.

Some months ago, at the start of the New Year, I announced here that I was moving to a new system which I think of as Act Like You've Got Some Sense or Follow the Will of God. This has worked better than others. And this new approach is simply a way of divining "the will of God." And it doesn't require sense of me all the time. It doesn't require anything.



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On Hating or Not Hating Jesse Helms

In my days as a freelance news reporter, I once shared a car with the late Sen. Jesse Helms and two or three other news people. We rode from one news event to the next in central Raleigh, perhaps a dozen blocks. In that time, the senator was courteous, didn't swear at any of us or try to hog up more than his share of space in the backseat. Getting out at the downtown Holiday Inn, he said a very pleasant thank you for the ride.

A lot of people say they admired the notoriously right-wing and anti-integration senator because he had nice manners and stood by his positions however wrong.

But decent manners and loyalty to injustice are likely qualities of many of the world's worst dictators. His courtesy was not enough to make me admire him. As he swung his long legs around to get out of the car, I could only look at him in morbid fascination, the same way I like to look from a safe distance at snakes and murderers.

The fact that throughout his career he stuck to his dreadful politics--this should make him better somehow? I don't follow the logic.

I'm certainly in favor of forgiveness and have never spent any energy hating Helms. (Though I'm close to finishing a novel about a notorious right-wing racist Southern senator named Billy, who is charming and seductive as well as famously inflexible.)

I do understand friendship and love that transcend politics. I covered the NC legislature for 11 years and care very much about more than one person who has opposed my interests.

So what if I'd worked around Helms regularly, spent more time with him? Would I have been swayed by his personal manner to acting as if his actions and philosophy on race were not so bad?

Ideally, I could like somebody without being moved in the slightest toward supporting their destructive behavior, either in my voting or in my writing. Not easy. Not even easy to monitor in one's self. But it's what we have to aim for, I'm convinced, to actually achieve justice. It won't come from dividing people into categories of good and bad.

I do know I admire anyone who can maintain such a balance of opposing the injustice and still behaving decently to, even drinking coffee with, the unjust. I consider that bold.



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Stormy Lake Adventure

I have an urgent need to tell you my Fourth of July weekend outdoor experience, my small-scale "hero story." Now this episode was not bold, instead mildly stupidly reckless, and yet a fine little adventure with some lasting satisfaction.

Sunday afternoon I felt a strong pull to take my little inflatable Sea Eagle kayak out for a paddle on nearby Jordan Lake. It had been too long, and the sun was shining. Never mind that thunderstorms were predicted.

Once out on the lake, I could see that there was a dark smudge along the treeline on the horizon, but it was only about a foot wide. Intellectually I know that things get larger as they get closer, but I was still sure that with my lightning paddling speed, I'd be able to dodge it. The lake is huge and many-armed; I'd just avoid the weather, if it even traveled in my direction.

I had a particular and exciting goal in mind, finding the mouth of a creek that I regularly drive across a few miles away on my way to work and back. I had a pretty good idea where it would enter the lake.

Well, I'd paddled hard for over an hour, found a beautiful little cove I'd never seen, scared seven great blue herons out of the trees there, cruised along at the edge of a tall thicket of water grass, and still not found the creek mouth, when the rain began to fall. And, in instant, the thunder and lightning were cracking overhead.

I wasn't going to dodge the weather after all, and I was a very long way from anything but heavily forested shore with bits of exposed sand at the edge here and there. Plus, I was using a metal paddle, in the state with the highest number of lightning deaths per year (or so I'm told.)

So I took the paddle apart and used only the plastic blades, one in each hand, and slowly scoop-scooped my way to one of those little strips of sand, just in time. Five seconds after I pulled up onto this sliver of beach, huge wind whipped up and flipped the boat over as a big pelting rain started, and suddenly the lake was all grey surf. The waves were big enough to break and roll, to force water several feet up the strand and under my feet where quickly I'd positioned myself, lying beneath my overturned my boat, holding it down against the force of the wind.

Within moments, I felt cozy under there, a little warmish cave, with hard rain beating down on airfilled compartments overhead and on the sand on either side of me. The sound was like that of a tin roof in a storm, but all within a foot of my face. I could see out from under the edge of the boat and watch the long waves break into white against dark sky.

I'm accustomed to water. I grew up at the beach, living in Wilmington and spending much of my time at Wrightsville, and I continued going along on some surf fishing and deep sea expeditions in my early twenties. And my eldest nephew tried to teach me to surf fairly recently. But it had been thirty years at least since I was so surrounded by the raw edge of the elements. And this time alone, and definitely not in a charter boat.

As soon as I got under the shelter of my dear little boat I found I was immediately deep in trance. I was comfortable in spite of being drenched, and lying half across a broken branch and having one shoulder hanging out in the rain and dealing with some aggressive ants. For most of the hour and a quarter I was under there, I had little sense of the passage of time. I had a feeling of gratitude, for both the shelter and the nature drama, that was almost tangible, like a shawl of warmer air.

I wasn't really worried. The worst likely to happen was that the storm wouldn't let up until late night, and a small embarrassing search for me would begin. Husband Bob wasn't likely to be worried prematurely though; he's not a worrier and has also decided I'm invincible. I hope never to dissuade him.

I didn't want to be rescued, but I did wonder briefly where the bullhorns were. Once, out on this same lake on a sunny afternoon, I was floating in what was essentially a toy boat, an $11 blow-up vessel with plastic paddles that I got at Best Buy. I probably looked pretty ridiculous because the paddles were tiny and the boat not much bigger than an innertube; my legs were stuck up in the air. A huge cruiser chugged up close by, with enough waves to swamp me. From up on the bridge of the boat, a man in some kind of government park service uniform called: "Ma'am, are you all right?" I was just fine. It was a gorgeous day. There was no threat in sight. But on the day when a storm hits and lifts my 30 pound kayak into the air, I saw no crisply nautically uniformed man cruising up alongside. No doubt, he has the sense to stay in on such afternoons.

The rain quit once for about five minutes, then started again, quiet and steady. The thunder gradually became a little more distant. The surf died down. I crept out. I regathered my metal belongings from where I'd tossed them: glasses, earrings, the pole of the double paddle.

I set out on the water again, again using only the blades, one in each hand, one on either side of the boat, to paddle. There was still too much thunder and lightning nearby for me to want to be flashing a metal rod over my head. I don't know that any of my safeguards actually make any difference--I'm going to learn about that before my next storm chase--but I was doing what I could.

It was one damn long dog-paddle before I could even see the paved ramp where I'd left my car. And by the time I got there it was too dark wearing my prescription sunglasses to see anything at all. But the water was deliciously warm, and I found myself talking to it, every few times I dug a blade in, almost as if it were a pet: "nice warm water, such nice water." It felt as delicious as the shawl of air. Good thing: because if I paused in my paddling for a second, I slid backwards fast. The wind was not going my way.

By the time I made it back to the put-in ramp and was onshore deflating The Boat, packing it in the trunk of my car, I was shivering all over, ready for towels and a hot shower and more towels. And I was enjoying a strong sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, in spite of the basic dumbness of the escapade.

This morning, the day after my adventure, I drove across one of the lake bridges coming into town and thought: "My lake." I felt as if we'd spent a night together, this body of water and I. And we very nearly did.

I'd spent afternoons on or beside this lake before, but never so memorably, or to such effect. This trip melted me into the place, and brought back another location where I'd been so connected before.

When I was a kid, I had this kind of lying-in-the-wet-dirt intimacy with my whole neighborhood on Mimosa Place, knew how the grass grew under the drip line of the Lynch's roof, and could draw precise maps of the major branches of a lot of the trees. It's been a long time since I've had that cell-to-cell connection, even though I'm a gardener and love the plot I raggedly cultivate.

I'm glad to rediscover that deep earth-to-human infrastructure, to remember it exists. When it's active it feels like a combo of raw storm energy and puppy affection, born of nothing but intense prolonged close-up attention to the place and dependence on knowing those details. I didn't know I'd missed that feeling. A funny thing to rediscover on an Independence Day weekend.

What I did know, while I was out there, was that I was going to relish telling this story.



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Happy Boldness Day

For people of the USA, there's never a better day than the 4th of July to make a significant and positive bold move. If you do make one, be sure to report it here. It will inspire all.


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Two Free Tickets to a Bold Performance

To the first person to comment here who can plan to attend, I'm giving two tickets to this Saturday's Raleigh performance by the Brussels Chamber Orchestra.

It's the American premier of this group and they are hot; their second American performance, to be held in the Hamptons next week, just got a nice calendar notice in The New Yorker.

Setting up the Raleigh appearance is the very bold project of my office partner Carrie Knowles, whose 26 year-old son Neil Leiter plays with the group. She single-handedly turned the news that the group was coming to New York into the creation of an annual international classical music festival for Raleigh. A successful visual artist, gallery owner, and author, she says its the largest project she has undertaken, and that is saying a lot.

If you want to buy tickets ($15), call 919 757-9279. The performance is Saturday, July 5, at Raleigh's AJ Fletcher Auditorium. The musicians, eleven young talents from six countries, will come out front and meet the audience at the close of the program.




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The Fear of Separation

I recently finished watching the full six years of The Sopranos TV series a couple of weeks ago, in sequence in my living room on Netflix DVDs. Through the last weeks with the famous "Mafia" family, I had come to dread the inevitable end of the disks, so great was my attachment to these people.

I even did that dumb thing that people do--that I thought I'd never do--when someone close is dying. I started to withdraw in advance, in order to ward off the full impact of the blow.

I was surprised at myself. If there ever an example of "cowards die a thousand times before their deaths, the brave but once" or whatever that quote is*, this was it. And provoked by nothing more serious than the loss of fictional characters I can always rent again.

Ideally, one stays involved full-tilt to the end, even with fictional people. At least that's what I think. That strikes me as the boldest and most satisfying approach. No numbing out, no missing of the final intensity. That's what I mean to do should I ever face another such loss.

But I can't even imagine it. I agree with New Yorker editor David Remnick: The Sopranos were the best thing that ever hit TV. I also think the show was the best characterization I've ever seen on film. I'm pleased that this particular piece of art unfurled in my lifeime.

Surely that deserves full engagement.

I'm doing one thing right in this process though. I thought about immediately starting to rent The Wire or My So-Called Life or some other series. But I'm not yet ready for another relationship. First I need time.



*
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar




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My Beaded Fish: A Writer's Cross-Training

Last week, during my stay-home-and-clean-up-the-house vacation, I finished this little craft project that I'd let sit for about two years.

Because of popular demand (one request, thank you, Mamie) I'm displaying it here. I mean for it to go outdoors, hanging from a tree near our little "farm" pond. But I hung it up overnight in front of the curtains in the den, and decided for the moment that I like it there.

She's a quarter of an inch shy of three feet long. This kind of goofy free-hand playful handiwork does a lot for loosening up my creative juices for writing. It's very helpful to me to switch gears so radically: to place little physical widgens of color rather than words.

And to not have to meet any standards of quality or of market limitations. Very freeing. It's also nice to literally tie up some loose threads.







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Day Five: Clean and Organize

Many emotional stages to this process: last night I felt my efforts at helping Bob clean out his junk room weren't being properly appreciated. I had a talk with Gandhi who reminded me that we need to refrain from focusing on the fruits of our labors; "do the work and then step back."

Also had a talk with Bob; there were points on both sides. Today I'm feeling much more appreciated.

I feel I know Bob a bit better, from seeing the things he has saved for twenty, forty, sixty years. It's rather moving to me.

And then I come back to earlier bits of my life in the process too. Had to pause for a while over a 1969 Yackety Yack (UNC yearbook, for the non-North Carolinian.) Even though I'm a Dukie, that was pretty stirring.


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Day Four: Clean and Organize

Hoo boy. We have taken on something large here. Yesterday morning Bob and I started on his "junk room," which is also the kennel location of his 125 pound serious-shedder of a dog. This morning Bob likened the process to remodeling; it tears up everything and leaves it a mess for a long time.

It's satisfying though. We're making progress.

And I'm also doing smaller projects that are actually finishable: the bathroom drawer, the upstairs chatchke bowl, and a more inventive little undertaking: sewing corner extenders onto the sheets so that they don't come untucked.

I started that last one because I have a larger sewing project in mind that I don't want to do by hand as I usually do these things. So Sunday I bought one of those little $15 hand-held battery sewing machines at Target and I'm trying to learn how to use it. Haven't quite got the hang of it yet. It feels like a cross between a stapler and a hamster.

This is all so grounding, this real-world nonverbal stuff. I say that somewhat ironically, but it's true.



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