sundry contemplation of my travels

Continuing my last post: I think I must acknowledge that a significant reason I never try my hardest is because I enjoy not knowing my limitations. If you don't know what your limitations are, you don't have to acknowledge that you have any. Thus I am able to go through life with the firmly held belief that if I had really wanted to I could have done X or Y or Z, where X, Y and Z are whatever truly amazing feat catches my fancy that day.

Of course, there are areas where even I must acknowledge that I could never have excelled. For example, I could not make a living as a Mary Kay saleswoman. I also could not be a professional golfer, tennis player, figure skater, or really any other type of athlete. I could not have a job that required me to drive one of those big rig trucks. Or really any job involving driving. I do not think I am cut out for teaching children. High school I probably could do. But not alternative high school students who don't know how to read, like in Push (aka the Precious book, which incidentally I don't see how it could have been made into a movie without losing much of what made it great). Anything that requires patiently dealing with people who are slow to grasp things or have limited understanding I could not do. Actually anything that requires patience period. I tried learning computer programming once and had to rule that out too. I had perfect scores on everything going into the final, and then I hit a brick wall. I could not have completed that final -- I think you had to set up a sort of web site arcade that kept track of high scores on a game or something -- to save my life, in the improbable event that a web arcade would save my life. I could not be a chef. Or a waitress. Or anything else that requires being on your feet all day. I once had a job as a security guard at a museum and had to periodically find an empty gallery to squat down and rest in. I also once had a job as a receptionist and was fired because I couldn't get the hang of the phone system and kept hanging up on customers. But I wouldn't rule out receptionist entirely. I think I might be able to handle answering phones now.

On the other hand, I think younger versions of myself might be very surprised that I became a lawyer, and might have thought I wouldn't be any good at it. When in fact I am very good indeed. But not as good as I could be.

like a duck

I swam the long distance events in high school -- 500 and 200 yard free. I wasn't bad. I wasn't that good, either. I will say with all immodesty that I have a beautiful stroke. It is strong and efficient. I sliced through the water with grace. Just not with speed. Slowly my arm cleaved the water, and slowly it pushed down and through and around in a patient, carefree arc. Like I was strolling through the park, nice and easy. The coach would pace up and down, covering his mouth and chin with his hand, shaking his head. Why won't she move her arms faster? I could have, no doubt. But my beautiful stroke was so strong and efficient that I really didn't have to. I'd keep an eye on the other swimmers and keep pace with them (I was not in a terribly competitive league, so this worked), and then kick it up a little higher for the last lap to try and close in on the win. Which sometimes happened and sometimes didn't, but it didn't bother me a whole lot, as long as I made a decent showing.

That image of my coach pacing in frustration as I leisurely stroked through the water has been in my head a lot lately. It seems like a paradigm for me. I haven't had to try very hard to do pretty well, so I haven't bothered. Frankly, I'm not entirely convinced it's a bad thing. Life is too short. It should be enjoyed. But I wonder if this sort of thing, never really reaching my full potential, contributes to my dissatisfaction in some way. Would I feel more happy and fulfilled if I were trying my hardest? I'm not sure I'm capable of trying my hardest at this point. It's seems too ingrained.

I've been thinking about this in relation to Nugget, too. I don't care if he is "successful," as long as he's happy, but if people who strive are happier, then maybe I should want him to strive. How do you raise a kid who strives, particularly when he's likely to inherit my ability to get by without trying too hard? It seems to me that the problem started when I was in school and not being sufficiently challenged. How do you make sure your kid is challenged without pushing your kid so hard you take away his childhood? I had such a marvelous childhood, I really want him to have that. I worry that kids seem to grow up so fast these days. You wouldn't believe how long it took me to grow up. But that's another story. Sometimes I think "unschooling"--a type of home schooling where you let your kid do nothing until he gets so bored he starts to find learning interesting, and then follows his own interests to learn about the world--might be an answer to this. The thing is, the one time I realy do try is when I'm interested. I think that sort of lack of discipline is part of the problem.

Speaking of discipline though, I should get back to my brief.

to show virtue her own feature

(after watching the rest of the new Emma on PBS)

A: Do you like Emma?
T: The character?
A: Yes.
T: … she generally has a good heart but she’s completely blind to her own faults, and she’s a total snob.
A: When I reread Emma last week it struck me that the reason I’ve always disliked her so much is that she reminds me of me.
T: (laughs uproariously)
A: Do you think we’re alike?
T: Uh … (still laughing)
A: ?
T: I’m afraid to say …
A: ?
T: In some respects, yes.
A: Blindness to faults and snobbery?
T: More the former …
A: Yes … If I had any faults I would be blind to them.

Home Sweet Home

(at least I have a nice office)

serve, love, and obey

Masterpiece Theater showed the first part of a new Emma Sunday night, which left me hungry for more and thus I had no choice but to get online and immediately start rereading the book -- unfortunately my books are all still at my parents' house, which is very irritating at times like that. I never got around to retrieving the book all week, so I read the whole thing online: coming home from 10 or so hours of staring at a computer screen at work to stare at a computer screen several more hours before bed. My eyes are shot. E-books are not for me. But bless the copyright laws that have the good sense to set a book free at a certain point so that I have access to full text online! I have a strange relationship with copyright law. You'd think, as someone who has always gotten a living on intellectual property of some sort or another that I would be a strident supporter of them, and yet I've always felt offended by being denied free access to information I happen to want. But I'm not prepared to try and sort through my thoughts on that right now, I came here intending to write about Ms. Austen.

There's just no escaping her conservatism. You can probably avoid it in P&P and S&S -- or maybe I just haven't read them in a while. But it's unavoidable in Emma. Everyone must stay in the socioeconomic sphere to which they were destined by birth, or bad things happen. It's so hard to reconcile such odious politics with my passion for the books. Particularly when the central focus of every book is the very sort of paternalistic love story that grinds my gizzard the most. All of Austen's heroines marry father figures who mold and teach them how to be a better woman. Emma's intended, who is 16 years her senior, tells her he fell in love with her when she was 13! Sweet Jesus. Her heroines are strong, assertive women, there is no doubt about that. But all that is cured by falling in love. It's exasperating to confront this sort of thing in a writer I adore. And it worries me: here I've been reading these books from an impressionable age, no doubt forming many of my ideas about love and romance on them. What insidious inflence might they have had on me?

When I was about 10 or so I was reading a collection of feminist fairy tales -- Don't Bet on the Prince, edited by Jack Zipes -- while at tennis camp and one of the camp counselors, a woman in her twenties I'd guess, asked me, with obvious horror, whether my mother knew I was reading that book. She gave it to me, I answered, extremely puzzled. I'm still puzzled by it, although I also now find it extemely amusing. What on earth did she find so shocking? Would she have been similarly disturbed had I been reading a collection of traditional fairy tales, in all their violent misogynism?

I tell this story here because it occurs to me that Austen's nefarious influences probably had some counterbalance in my reading habits. Now I just have to wonder whether I should feel dirty about the pleasure I still get from her books -- which, to be honest, has as much to do with her exquisitely crafted plots, in all their matrimonial obsession, as it does with her wickedly sparkling prose.

the purpose of playing

The back pages of The Best American Short Stories contain brief bios of the authors and their comments about the stories they wrote. One of the things that struck me as I was reading this year's is that so many of those bios sound so impressive, e.g.:

Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum is the author of Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine is Sleeping, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, The Georgia Review, and The Best American Short Stories 2004.

And yet ... Sarah Who? How thrilled would I be to get a story published, to finish a novel , to publish a novel, to have it nominated for an award, to have it be finalist for an award ... and then what? Then it's just a line in your bio and you have to get back on the horse because you haven't "made it" yet. It's ... daunting.

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I can't remember where I read or heard this recently, which is driving me nuts, but it was an offhand sort of comment by an established author about how in writing workshops one is always exhorted to show rather than tell. It made me wonder whether my legal training has ruined me for writing fiction. I've spent a number of years honing my ability to get straight to the point. On the other hand, it occurs to me as I'm writing this, I've also learned to support every sentence with a citation to factual evidence or legal authority. I sometimes think of footnotes as the nails from which I hang my sentences and thereby construct an argument. Isn't that showing, rather than telling?

even to the edge of doom

I have these little calluses on the tip of my left thumb and forefinger, and I have no idea why. I think I might have developed a habit of unconsciously biting them. The reason I deem this worth blogging about--not that it's a very high bar, as may be apparent--is that my husband has calluses like that on pretty much every fingertip, from biting them. I've always thought that was further evidence that he is crazy, and I don't mean crazy in love, although that is undoubtedly also true. I can't believe he's got me doing it. So maybe it is true that married people start to look and act like each other? That does not bode well for either of us. Compounding the crazy.
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I recently put a statcounter on this blog (and got rid of my google ads, which were only there because they gave me a hit count) that allows me to see how people got here. Apparently using Shakespeare quotes as titles for every blog post is a good way to increase hits, because I get a lot of people linking from google searches for the language I nick from old Bill. But none of those people ever stick around to read my other posts, which is clearly their loss. Off hunting after more Shakespeare, no doubt. Fools!
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We saw Noel Coward's Private Lives on Friday. Altough it was a very light comedy, there were a couple exchanges in it that touched on some very deep stuff, like the inherent loneliness of the human condition. I tried to find one of the lines for a dogeared but Google Books failed me. Damned intellectual property laws. Anyway it struck me as very interesting that there were those few little nuggets in a play that was mostly highly entertaining nonsense.
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I went to my first bar mitzvah on Saturday and was struck by how meaningful the ceremony was. It seemed much more meaningful than Catholic Confirmation, and I thought in large part because the focus was on just the one kid, rather than a whole class together. He had to lead the congregation -- he was given the responsibility of adulthood. That strikes me as much more effective than anything I went through for Confirmation. The flip side, of course, is that I'm pretty sure the party cost more than my wedding, all in honor of a 13-year-old. I think the message that sends might cancel out the ceremony.