The end of the world

May 21st, 2013

The end of the world

Do you fear the end of the world? I used to always worry about the end of the world coming soon, but I don’t any more.

When I was growing up, we were always told that the world could end at any time, and I waited for the world to end. I waited for Jesus to come and rescue us before the end times. I waited for the Rapture. When I ended up alone in a room or in a barn, I would look around for angels or the coming of the Lord. But God never showed up. Ever absent, God probably watched me from heaven and just kicked back and did nada.

The trick is to not fear the end of the world, but to be with the world you’ve got. And in the world we’ve got, be a creator.

The happiness myth

The happiness myth is that having more makes you happy. I think that’s all wrong. I think the less you can be happy with the better off you are.

Work: Having work you love can definitely make you happy. At least while you are working, you are happy. My daughter is graduating this year and she has been offered a job in San Francisco. I think that having a job will help keep her happy. We all need work to keep us busy.

Children: If you want children, and then you have them and they grow up and they love you and you have a great relationship with them? That’s happiness.

What takes you farther away from happiness: Needing to buy more stuff. Thinking about money all the time. Wishing others could change their ways. They don’t want to change their ways. They like their ways. And who is to say that you are right and they are wrong? Who is to say that you are right about your ways? Who is to say that you are right?

We saw Anna Karenina tonight. The days when a woman had to choose between her children and her lover are gone at least in this part of the country. If she chooses to be in love, to be with her lover, she knows she will never see her son again. There is no happy choice for her. You can’t choose to be with a lover knowing you will never see your children again and be perfectly happy. Or can you? My parents managed it just fine. They walked away from children and were completely happy. Without their kids.

But for me, it wouldn’t work.

It’s hard for me to be happy if I’m not writing. Not getting enough sleep. Spending too much time away from home. From Mark.

Happiness sometimes seems to hang by the smallest of threads. Someone doesn’t love you. You can’t be happy. Someone doesn’t like you. You can’t be happy. Someone won’t talk with you. You can’t be happy. Everyone else gets more attention than you do. You can’t be happy. You didn’t get the book published. You can’t be happy. You didn’t get the book reviewed. You can’t live like this.

You need to have people recognize you. You need to have the shoes. You need. You need.

What we all need is to have fewer needs.

We no longer live, as did Anna Karenina in a world where being divorced makes you a pariah. Where you cannot see your children because you left your husband for another man. But now, there are just as many reasons that people have for being unhappy.

Happy families are all alike. Unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way. Anna Karenina could have been happy if she had been willing to simply stay at home, but she lives in a culture where all that she has to do is get dressed and go out. Go out to the theatre, go out dancing, go out to the opera. And she cannot go out in public because she has left her husband. The movie goes on far more than is necessary. About how unhappy Anna is and how much she wants to throw herself under a train rather than live with the unhappiness.

I never think about throwing myself under a train. If I were not adequately loved to find happiness in America, surely I could find love and happiness in Peru. Peruvian lovers would bring me Peruvian food and I would enjoy it.

Making plans for summer, how to get yourself writing, Ron Carlson

In LA Story, someone is trying to make reservations at an exclusive restaurant, and
Patrick Stewart asks the question, “Where do you summer?” It’s a good question for a lot of people in LA and NY who like to “summer,” some other place. In LA, people like to go somewhere cool and in NY, they like to summer at the shore or the Hamptons.

When the kids are young, the question is first what are they going to do in the summer. Here is my suggestion. Have them do something intense for 2-4 weeks which they will remember forever thinking yes! I went to art camp, horseback riding camp, archery camp, basketball camp, that kind of thing. Kids like the camps and if you send them to the same camp year after year, they make friends and remember this as being one of the epic moments of their life.

However, the rest of the summer, you should just let your kids play. I think that kids are over-programmed in summer. They have to study math and flute and learning how to make crab cakes. Learning to dance. How about just kicking it?

Here’s what our kids did in summer: They went to summer camp for a few weeks. They went swimming a lot; they took lifeguard training. They lay around in the hammock and they ate a lot of Otter Pops. Kids need more loose time, more unstructured time.

What about for adults? Don’t we need more unstructured time? I think so. I tend to over-program the summer. I have stacks of books to read. I have stacks of writing projects. Gardening projects. I plan to start yoga this summer. I plan to read, think, write, swim, do yoga, go to the beach, go camping, go hiking, cook over a campfire, get caught up on sleep, make new friends and influence people.

Speaking of which, my daughter is going to take the Dale Carnegie course this summer thus possibly becoming the most powerful lesbian on her block. I am the most powerful woman living in my house at this time. But that’s because Nicelle just went home, otherwise we’d be duking it out for that role.

How do you find time to write? How does anyone? We write because we push everything else out of the way and just do it. If you want to run, you have to do it. If you want to write, you have to do it. For me, that’s easier said than done. Everything else tries to push into the way. Ron Carlson writes every day. T. C. Boyle writes every day.

“Whatever you do, stay in the room,” Ron Carlson says. In an interview with Tim Hedges, Tim writes, “He knows what world exists on the other side of the door: a world full of televised sports, dirty dishes, iced mochachinos. A world full of distraction from the task at hand. Writing, he argues, is about staying in the room, pushing beyond the point where your eyes glaze over and your fingers refuse to type. That’s where the magic lies.”

http://fictionwritersreview.com/interviews/learning-about-the-dark-an-interview-with-ron-carlson

Why don’t you write more?, Why don’t you sing more?, Why don’t you act more?

You could ask this about any number of things that you perhaps should do more. And do less. Some things we focus too much attention on and we shouldn’t.

When they say, “Don’t sweat the small stuff and it’s all small stuff,” they lie. The problem is that we lose track of what is small stuff. So, I’m going to tell you what is totally important and what is absolutely inconsequential. Here you go.

Things you do not need to do at all.

1. You don’t need to go to church. Nobody ever regretted on their deathbed not going to more church. You aren’t going to become a better human by going to church.
2. You don’t need to work more. You probably work enough.
3. You don’t need to spend more time with your any annoying co-workers. You don’t need to spend more time with your boss.
4. You don’t need to spend more time shopping.
5. You don’t need to spend time on your resume.
6. You don’t need to spend more time watching television. No one ever dies wishing that they watched more TV.
7. You don’t need to play more video games. That is rotting your brain.
8. You don’t need to smoke more weed. You smoke enough already.
9. You don’t need to drink more. You probably drink more than enough.
10. You don’t need to straighten other people out. If they don’t want to change, they aren’t going to. Work on yourself though.
11. You don’t need to talk about people that annoy you. Just drop it.
12. You don’t need to go over and over your budget. You don’t have enough money. Just breathe.
13. You don’t need to straighten anybody out.
14. You don’t need to fix the world. Just fix yourself.
15. You don’t need to change anybody else. Changing yourself would be a great start.

What you should do more:

1. You should drink more water. Everybody should drink more water.
2. You should eat more vegetables.
3. You should exercise more.
4. You should do more cardio.
5. You should do yoga. If you already do yoga, you should do more. Yoga is good for you.
6. You should sleep more. This will interfere with the exercising and yoga, but still.
7. You should go out more with friends. You only live once.
8. You need to dance more.
9. You need to swim more. Everyone should swim more.
10. You need to love more. Live more. Kiss more. Make love more.
11. Cook more.
12. Laugh more.
13. Hang with people you can be completely yourself with.
14. Smile more.
15. Relax. It isn’t going to matter if you don’t do it all perfectly, just breathe.

If I were a rich woman, what would I do then?

When people think about wishing to be “rich,” whatever that means these days, they dream of the following:

1. Not having to work so hard. Or to have to work at all.
2. Having cooler stuff.
3. People being nice to you.

What’s interesting about this is that most people who really love their lives do so because they love the work they do. I rarely find myself disengaging from my work, but that’s because for the most part, I find my work very satisfying. I don’t like all the details—too much email, budgets hurt my head sometimes, and talking on the phone is one of my least favorite parts of the job, also driving and then finding my car in the vast parking lots of universities and corporations (the truth about why I hate malls. I get lost in the mall and it takes me forever to find my car,) but for the most part, I like my job.

Conductors live the longest because they love what they do. Oh yes, I would too! Listening to music, swinging a stick, wearing a tuxedo and having people clap! Yes! Sign me up! I want to do it!

What I most want for my kids is that they enjoy the work they do. That they find satisfying and meaningful employment that makes them feel they are changing the world.

How about having cooler stuff? Again, what you think is that people will envy your cool stuff, but in reality, probably not. Only in commercials do we notice what car our neighbor drives. I have no idea what anyone on my street drives. Most people I know have better cars than I do and everybody has better furniture and a better wardrobe and better taste in clothing. I don’t wish I were other people with their cool stuff. I’m cool with my own stuff. When I finally get another car, I will appreciate it, but I won’t be happier.

What about getting respect? Well, in reality, if you were rich and everyone was nice to you just because of that, you wouldn’t know who your real friends are. When people are nice to me, I know it’s because they like me and think that I rock. They do not think that I will do stuff for them because I probably won’t unless you count being invited to cool parties at our house.

You can’t control how others treat you. Even if you have money, some people are going to be rude to you. And maybe, that’s what makes us human. You can’t transport yourself into a pink cotton candy world where everyone is nice to you. That’s being a child. We have to grow up.

But, I can’t help thinking that if I had more money it would be fun to walk into a store and have people recognize me and want to come over and wait on me. Mostly, though, I’d settle for the rich promises in The Fiddler on the Roof.

I’d fill my yard with chicks and turkeys and geese and ducks
For the town to see and hear.
Squawking just as noisily as they can.
With each loud “cheep” “squawk” “honk” “quack”
Would land like a trumpet on the ear,
As if to say “Here lives a wealthy man.”

What do you to relax or do you even know how any more?

I remember the first summer before graduate school. I read in a hammock. I lay in the hammock that my boyfriend strung between two trees. I read Clarissa, Brothers Karamozov, Anna Karenina. I read books, and I drank wine. Also tequila. I went dancing in the evening with my friends. I had a computer, but it was 1988, so I had no internet. I tried to never answer the phone. I cooked bacon for my boyfriend and laid the bacon out on paper towels. My boyfriend would eat the bacon while he worked in the back yard. He planted trees and I planted flowers. I liked calla lilies, especially pink and orange calla lilies. I liked the way their delicate blooms opened in the early morning. I liked the white calla lilies too. They grow wild all over San Francisco, but they had to be coaxed along in Los Angeles heat. I planted bougainvilleas along the front fence and they galloped over the yard. The pink flowers trundled over the brick fence in front of the house, into the yard. I read while the flowers bloomed. My boyrfriend ate his bacon and in the evening we went out to sushi.

I relaxed. I taught dance in the afternoon, and I gave French lessons. It was just one peachy summer. By the next fall, I had a baby, and then I relaxed even more. I sat around in the sunlight and nursed that baby. I took her out into the back yard and let her crawl around. She crawled in the grass and I turned on the sprinklers, and she got muddy. I taught one or two days a week, but I didn’t stress about it. I thought I would work more later. When my kids were young, I was in the yawning yellow space of summer heat in Los Angeles. I was very young and very much in love with my children. I remember many evenings of just playing with the kids. I remember taking an hour to bathe them and letting them play in the bathtub with their letters. We made puzzles which took forever. We colored, we played with play doh. And then they grew up. They were growing and I was driving them. Driving them to school, to practice, to see relatives. The hot air sizzled. And then they were growing and I was tired and working all the time.

Now we never breathe. Now we never breathe once. We simply work all the time. We simply work. What do we do to relax? We have the internet. We do not breathe. We do not know what we do to relax because we do not relax. We cannot.

Why we want to leave the room

We get bored. You are talking too much. You are not talking about anything that interests us. You are not very interesting. You are not very smart. You do not have anything to say. This conversation is not going anywhere. We are in the engine room and the engine seems to be going along, but we are not going anywhere.

We should be seeing stars by now, but what we actually see nothing. Just people in strange clothing wandering in a strange room gripping glass objects full of strange liquids that are making the room tilt and whirl.

Where are you now? Why are you here? We keep asking questions, but there are no answers. Perhaps we need more sleep. Inertia? Boredom? We wish something would happen, something significant. Something like a big spaceship de-cloaking in space. We are in fact only going to see bad guys in space ships if we are playing a video game. And life is not a video game. It is not a computer game.

Are there any life signs on your ship? In your part of the galaxy? In your quadrant?

Here’s the deal. We want to leave the room because it seems like nothing is happening and we want excitement.

I am already exciting enough, I’m exhausted by my own excitement. What I want is a rest. I want to be going somewhere epic in my life, but I also want to rest.

We can’t have everything. Those howls you hear in the basement may be your own.

Do you eat bugs? Do you eat sand? Do you eat gravel? Do you eat porcupine flesh? Do you eat road kill?

Do you eat bugs? Do you eat sand? Do you eat gravel? Do you eat porcupine flesh? Do you eat road kill?

Cultures have different ways of eating and one of the many things that ties us with other cultures or divides us is food and the foods we can’t bear eating.

The UN suggests that eating ants, grasshoppers and other insects could help the problems of world hunger. About two billion people already eat insects which have more protein than you might think. Eating insects instead of so much burger would certainly help some of America’s obesity problems; however, most Americans don’t like the idea of eating bugs.

Americans like to eat red meat; but people in India and Nepal believe –for the most part—that eating beef is unholy.

Americans are willing to eat hotdogs and other lunch meat all of which is made out of the disgusting parts of pigs and cows.

Vegetarianism is very common in many parts of the world especially in the Netherlands.

Okay, list of foods that I have tried that are different:

1. Fish eyes—actual raw fish eyes. I ate them.
2. Oysters.
3. Squirrel.
4. Snake—doesn’t taste that good
5. Sushi is kind of weird, but it is delicious.
6. Seaweed
7. Mochi
8. Horchata
9. Duck
10. Tongue—I don’t eat meat any more, but tongue is weird.

List of foods that I don’t want to try:

1. Veal
2. Lamb
3. Pork
4. Beef
5. Insects
6. pudding
7. cheesecake
8. cream pies
9. jello—nasty
10. grilled cheese sandwiches with American cheese.

What’s interesting about foods is that even within a country, there are foods that people like or don’t like. Like most of us here in California, I don’t like the thought of Southern food. Fried chicken is a no. Collard greens are good though just not with bacon. Other foods in the South that I don’t understand: Grits, biscuits and oatmeal are all foods that I would prefer not to have.

Yet people in the South are not craving what is a normal California diet –rice and fresh fish, tacos, salads, avocados and salsa. A mix of Asian, Mexican, and fresh vegetables, salads and fruit. In the Midwest or in the South, this might not be considered be filling and delicious, but here we like it.

We judge people by what they eat or don’t eat. If you don’t eat sushi, people might think you’re provincial. If you like Red Lobster and Macaronis, the idea is that you don’t like good food. But then there are people who like the kind of food that’s in Good Housekeeping –meatloaf, mashed potatoes, jello salad and sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top.

Don’t yuck on my yum. If others like to eat bugs, let them eat bugs. If they like eating tater tots, let them eat tater tots.

There’s no need for you to control others. Let them eat roadkill. Let them eat shark. Let them eat blue foods. Let them eat green eggs and ham.

Don’t yuck on my yum.

Damocles’ sword

Los Angeles is hot, and back in the heat, I feel exhausted. Mark did all the driving, but I’m still tired.

One of my favorite stories as a kid was Damocles’ sword. In the story, Damocles is allowed to be king, but only if he is willing to have a sword hanging over his head. Many of us are willing to live in what feels like peril as long as we can have something we want.

The thing I was most afraid of was being kicked out on my own, leaving the Farm which was the only way to Heaven, and not knowing anyone and being out in the cold. And then it was happening, and it was cold, but it was always wonderful. The thing we are most afraid of is sometimes the thing that when it’s traveling toward us at light speed, it might be the best thing for you and you don’t know it. That breakup, leaving your job, having your car blow up like George Clooney’s did in Michael Clayton. And all that is rushing toward you and you wake up and you know that you’re in a new part of your life, and that part is an adventure too. But that adventure scares us.

When you sit on one side of the hill, you’re crouched there, often afraid that there are tigers on the other side of the hill. People tell you that the tigers want to eat you, but they don’t. The tigers are on the other side of the hill, lying in a field of lilies and in those lilies, there you are. The tigers are not really going to hurt you.

That isn’t to say that people don’t quit their job and sometimes wish they hadn’t or leave their spouse and then regret it. But, even in those tangled webs, we learn that we aren’t as smart as we thought we were. That’s how we move forward.

Oddly, we resist change in others. Four people I know are hitting the rocks with their relationships, and at least most of them, I wish would stay with their partners. We get used to people being together and we wish for them to stay with their partners. We get used to them as a couple. And even when they’re telling everyone loud and clear that they need to move on, people around them like to stick them back together like paper dolls and glue.

Whenever change happens at the press, I wish things would stay the same, but the changes are always for the best. That’s work.

But love and relationships change and move. Relationships must move around like water. They cannot stay static. Some of the changes feel good. Others feel like we are a star expanding and contracting and we’re not ready to be galactic beings. Or we don’t think we are, but we are. We are.

A very good Mother’s Day. We got to Skype with Steve in Australia. Technology is an amazing thing; we can skype with our iPhones and his phone is just running on local Wifi; it’s not even turned on for our plan. It sounds like he is having a good time and has met some Australian girls which is good. The girls in New Zealand were nice, and it was sad to leave them behind. There was a lot of other news, but little of it was fit to print, so let’s just say he seems like he’s doing just super.

We went to brunch at this great place where they have good food but very slow service. We got there at 11:30 and we drank champagne until 1 when they finally served us. But the food, when it arrived was very good.

We walked around the city for a while and then went to dinner at Mark’s brother’s house. His wife Annette is very nice, and she is reading my favorite play, Long Day’s Journey into Night in her literature class, a story about how sad a family can be when they never really speak honestly to each other. It’s a very American play. We talk around or ignore what we do not understand.

Mark’s brother made fresh pasta and fresh key lime pie. I’m going to have diet for a month to make up for it, but it was worth it. The key lime pie was just crazy good. I love pie.

Here are pies that I like:

Strawberry rhubarb
Strawberry
Apple
Key lime
Berry pie

Pies I’m not so crazy about:
Weird pies like coconut cream

We had a very good time. They had wine and their garden is coming in, they have such lovely fruit trees. Lemon, avocado, apple and they even have some blackberries growing up against the wall. In other parts of the country, one can’t imagine simply planting trees and berries; they have wisteria climbing over the fence and trailing up the walls. Northern California allows for berries, apples, hydrangea and foxgloves, all of which are difficult in Southern California.

The children of Israel dreamed of a promised land, a land of milk and honey, a land where wine flows and fruit grow in abundance. Perhaps, we’ve all continued to hope for a land where the windows open into fruit and flowers, where there the signature we leave in time and space is one of relaxation.

Mother’s Day was good, more relaxing than I had expected. Tomorrow we drive back to So Cal where it’s so much hotter, where our avocado tree is struggling, our lemon tree still small, our blood orange tree taking up the sky. I want do to more exercise, sleep more, read more, start doing yoga, and feel myself stretching into the warm parts of life, the parts where you take deep breaths, spend more time with my kids and with the hubby, but mostly breathe.