Youth and tides

I just spent a weekend with two hundred teens from all over the Pacific Northwest.  As always, it’s an odd thing, being an adult in a tight youth community, but the young people are welcoming and treat us well, and I feel honored to be included.

The thing that always strikes me about this particular group of humans is their deep sense of justice.  They don’t have the same ennui, fatigue, acceptance of the wrong in the world that adults do, which I find invigorating and more than a little heartbreaking.

Little kids often have questions that I can’t answer, like why are there two high tides a day in most places, but only one in some areas, like the Gulf of Mexico?  I can research it enough to understand and sort of explain using items like an orange and a grapefruit and a basketball and a rope and some magnetic dust and a magnet and Styrofoam balls and a flashlight and a clock and a centrifuge and perhaps a protractor (for the 12 degrees part) to explain it, and soon everyone is distracted enough with the props to forget the original question, which works out for me.  I can memorize the answer well enough to repeat it if I’m asked within one to five minutes of learning it, and then poof.   

In case you’re curious, I’m so sorry I've brought it up, because I’ve exceeded my five minutes.  And actually,  I read so much that I became more confused.  But I did learn that tides change the weight of a human by 10 to the minus 16, in case you care. 

I won’t tell you how much time I spent researching this question just to be able to use this particular metaphor, which isn't really working out.  The metaphor has become bigger than main topic.  And let's not count the time I spent on a failed attempt to create origami to explain once a day tides.  I should totally get a job.

Anyway, the thing about these particular youth is that don’t expect me to answer questions about why all the injustice in the world.  I’m grateful for that, because I have no idea.

Knock knock...

Dear Kortney, 

I recently moved from my parent's house to a large dormitory building. Although I love being just a short walk away from everyone, I'm not always in the mood to hang out with people from my floor.

For some reason, the common 'knock before coming in' policy has been thrown out the door by certain individuals, and once they are there they can be pretty hard to deter without saying "for god sakes go home." Is there a way to make it clear when I want to be alone and when its appropriate to stay without having to drop hints that are rarely detected?

Signed,

Introverted

Dear Introverted,

Have you ever noticed that there are three kinds of advice column letters?  

1.  Kind, polite people writing for advice on how to deal with thoughtless or impolite people without creating suffering or embarrassment for the impolite; 

2.  Impolite people who want support for their rudeness (remember that letter to the NYT from a guy who was a guest of another family at a restaurant, and the host ordered Clams Rockefeller but didn't share, so the letter writer went into the bathroom and departed through the window?  Without saying goodbye.  After the host had paid for his steak dinner and drinks.  His question was, essentially, "should I write to them and tell them how rude they were for not sharing?")

3.  People who have way too much time on their hands, and make everything into a Really Big Deal, when most of us would just move on with out a second thought.

I'd like to congratulate you on being a Category One-r.  You can put that on your resume.

But back to your problem.  Using humor is always a good, because at least it isn't boring.  Maybe a sign on the door, something like this:

______________________________________________________________________

Please do not disturb!  We are:

______  Irritable.  Really irritable.  I'm serious.  It's not even a tiny bit funny, how grouchy we are.  I wouldn't risk it if I were you.  And no, there's no sense in trying to cheer us up.  This is an actual condition, and it's highly contagious.

______  Not eating homemade brownies that my mom sent.  We absolutely do not have anything good in here.  Go away.

______  Studying.  I know!  Even at this fake hippy college, we do that.  Or at least I do.  Or at least I'm checking that off on this sign, because I don't want you to have any of the brownies, which, by the way, we aren't eating.  Who said anything about brownies?  Sheesh, now you're making stuff up. 

_______  Super boring.  Yep.  We're trading long, tedious accounts of minutia that we can't even remember very well. You know those stories that start, "Once, I think it was a Tuesday.  Wait, no, it could have been a Wednesday.  Well anyway, I was putting my shoes on, the way I do each day, those black ones.  I put my left one on.  You know, now that I think about it, it may have actually been a Thursday, because I noticed a little clump of mud on my shoe, and I think that's because it was garbage day. . . "  It's like that in here, only worse.  Tedium.  We are not the funny smart guys you've pegged us for.

___  Time travelling.  If all goes well, we'll be back yesterday.  If you really care, though, leave shoes and a robe by the door.  We may need them.  If you care about your future (or your past) don't come into the room.  That weird missing corner turns out to be a portal, and your safety is not guaranteed!  

_______________________

 One other idea I have is to run an "advice column" seminar once a week.  Have people  read an advice column problem, and discuss the answers.    My son and I did that for years and I think he turned out great.  At the college you go to, I wouldn't doubt if you could get credit and possibly a small budget for such an endeavor.  At any rate, Introverted, you sound like a fine young man.  Namaste.

XO

N'3lvra (pronounced Courtney, the three is silent)

P.S.  It's been a long time since Khortnee got a letter!  If anyone else has a problem, you can write to her here.

Mapophilia or Cartomancy?

For some reason, an ad popped up on my screen for a psychic reading, and I decided to look at it, because really?  I mean, if those people really are psychic, and they put that message on my screen, well, it's kind of a message within a message, if you follow.

At any rate, the particular psychic offers the service of "cartomancy", which I assumed was another word for a romance with maps.  Which made me think they really are psychic, because how else would they know about my thing for maps?  This seems perfect, I thought to myself, but now I'm thinking it to you, because I began to envision me with my vasculum and my thing for maps, getting guidance for the future.  As if a metaphorical candle dropped onto my computer screen.

Alas, it's not that at all, but rather, using cards to predict the future.  From Wikipdia:

Cartomancy has also been criticized for not providing a proposed physical mechanism by which cards could be used to predict one's future. Additionally, there have been no tests to date that show that cartomancy does any better than chance in either predicting the future or determining traits about individuals, despite large incentives to cartomancers who can show a successful test

 I hate to confess how much time I've spent on this, but the point is, I think I have way too much time on my hands.  I also think I need a service dog.

Vague Predictions

Aries (3/21 – 4/19):  The other night I went to Italy, or at least a cheap Italian restaurant.  More like a cafeteria, if you must know.  But we call it Italy.  Aries, the point is that you can believe you're in a newish suburban mall-like complex built on the bones of a beautiful old farm, or you can believe you're in Italy.  La scelta è la vostro.  Yeah, I used google for that too.  Take your week somewhere good.

Taurus (4/20 – 5/20):   I'm reading this book, and ahh, it's so good, and it makes me feel like I waste way too much time when I should be out and about with a vasculum around my neck.  This week, strap that vasculum around your neck and find stuff.  (Do you even have a vasuculum?)

Gemini (5/21 – 6/21):  So on our way to Italy, the young people were talking about how they went to see the King Tut exhibit, and among other interesting facts, it came out that every 15 minutes, the museum lets 40 people in, and each person pays $25 or so.  Every day of the week, every fifteen minutes since last May, 40 times 25 dollars, which, without even doing the math, you can tell is bucketloads of money.

"We should totally open a museum," I suggested.

Without missing a beat, one of the lovely young people said she had an old wooden elephant statue that would be good in a museum, and it turns out I have a wooden elephant myself.  Coincidence, or kismet?  The other young person has a very old (circa 1993) nerf gun.  It's going to be an amazing museum, and you may want to just go ahead and get a lifetime membership.  Otherwise, you'll be standing in the mob, 40 people at a time, every 15 minutes, elbow to elbow with the commoners, trying to peer over the heads of someone tall to glimpse the ancient nerf gun.

Cancer 6/22 – 7/21:  Today I was talking to someone who was complaining about his job, how much they expect of him, work work work all day, half the weekend, and into the evenings, making software for the masses.  It reminded me of my own work, which is almost exactly like that, without all the "work work work" bit.  This week, for example, 'll meet a customer for a Happy Hour drink to talk about his project. (Is that weird, or kind of metro?  I can't tell.),  And then on another day there's a very important e-mail I must send.  It just never stops, I tell you.  Cancer, slow it down this week.  Be right here.  Put that rock down.

Leo (7/23 – 8/22):  I went to Seattle the other day with The Librarian, which was extremely fun and involved laughter and food and so on, but we weren't just goofing around.  We were on a mission to gather supplies to make our own shoes, and although it seems a little weird to be going from the land of the roadkill into the big city to buy leather, it turns out I'm okay with that.  Anyway, the store has every kind of skin you could imagine except dog and human.  You could make some badass shoes if you know what you're doing, which of course, I don't.  I just can't decide between being a museum curator, a cobbler, a person with a vasculum around my neck, or the kind of person who meets people for a drink to talk about their permit.  So many choices.  At any rate, I approached the lady behind the counter.  "So, we're thinking of making shoes.  Any tips?"

Long silence, followed by, "Take some old shoes that you really like," she suggested, "cut them up, and use them for a pattern."

I have a bad feeling about that, so I'm not doing it.  But, my dear Leo, what you could do is pick an old week that you really liked, cut it up, and pattern the coming week after it.  Or, you could just make a fake week out of felt and wear it for a while, which is what we'll probably end up doing with the shoes.

Virgo (8/23 – 9/22):  Speaking of shoes, I bought some converse sneakers at Value Village a few weeks ago, and they were marked $5, which, if you're the kind who doesn't balk at buying used shoes, is a pretty good deal.  I took them up to the counter, and the cashier looked at me and said, "Do you get the Senior citizen discount?"

"Uh, no."

"Really?  It's 65.  You only have to be 65."

"Uh, no, I'm not 65."

"Or older."

"Yeah, I don't get the discount.  But thanks."

He gave me the discount anyway, and made a big point of circling it on the receipt and pointing it out to me.

Okay, sidebar: most of my life, people have assumed I'm younger than I am, like I routinely got carded when I ordered a drink into my 40's, and once when I was about 38, I gave a presentation at a professional conference, and the moderator introduced the Q & A session with, "Hey, let's help this poor kid out and come up with a few questions."  There are lots of other inconvenient discrediting things that happen when you don't look your age.  Thank god that tide has apparently turned!  But anyway, C. said he was probably just flirting with me, which brings me to the point:  If you're trying to flirt with someone, suggesting that they look like an old person who doesn't have five bucks for a pair of shoes is perhaps not the best strategy.

Libra (9/23 – 10/22):  Farewell to George McGovern, who was a great man.  When I was 12, my sister and I had a bake sale and mailed the $7 proceeds to his presidential campaign, and I was pretty sure it would make a difference, especially because the incumbent was under investigation for some serious shit.  That year, election day fell on the day before my sister's birthday, and I remember my sweet sister, crying as she ate her birthday breakfast, because we had no idea that he was going to lose.   Badly.  RIP, George.

Scorpio (10/23 – 11/21):  And speaking of the presidential race, really?  What is going on with these swing states?  Are there actually people who change their mind as frequently as all that?  I look at the poll history for Florida, and think sheesh.  I still don't get how people who are paying attention and planning to vote can change their mind every few days.   Most of those swing states, I think yeah, not surprising, but New Hampshire?  Really, NH?  Live free or vascilate?  You're tearing me up inside.

Sagittarius (11/22 – 12/21):  So, one reason this blog isn't updated very often is that there's not a lot going on here.  As we know, there are basically two plots:  Stranger comes to town, and hero goes on a journey.  A good story does not involve, "I woke up, deliberated about whether to put on clothes for yoga or yard work, ignored the mess in my house, read for a while, sent an e-mail or two, went in the woods to look for mushrooms, blah blah blah.  I guess what I'm saying is that for the first time in my life, I have absolutely no where to be on any kind of schedule, no one expects jackshit out of me, and every single thing that happens each day is up to me, which marks the strange border between pleasure and pain.  Sag, choose pleasure every time.

Capricorn (12/22 – 1/19):  Someone mentioned that my neighborhood has a posse comitatus feel to it, and I tend to agree.  But it goes along with a weird pioneer thing, maybe because we don't have running water very often.  In the past 5 days, I've made coffee out of stale tonic water twice, and each time, I go outside and there's a gush of water crossing the road and a guy with a shovel digging around.  That seems good, right?

Aquarius (1/20 – 2/18):  I went to see this exhibit with one of my dear old friends, and I think the Suzanne Valadon odalisque is my new favorite odalisque (ousting "Olympia", by Manet from the top slot).  It makes me wish I could paint.  It's also depressing that all of these excellent artists are all crammed in to one exhibit because they have one thing in common:  vaginas.  I can't imagine a similar exhibit of men's art:  Oh, Picasso, Renoir, Toulouse-Loutrec, Singer Sargent, you each get to have one picture in our big exhibit honoring men!

Pisces (2/19 – 3/20): Pisces, I did a little research to learn what makes a good horoscope. Briefly, it involves writing general statements that can't be confirmed, putting it in the reader's lap to make stuff happen, and this last one, "Just speak your mind whatever you are feeling tell others that they are feeling the same, that way you are doing good in the world by making everyone equal." Whatever that means. So Pisces, something good is coming your way if you'll only wake up, drag yourself out of bed, put on your working shoes, and get to it. It's all up to you.

Namaste, Odocoileus

Last night involved so much that I loved:  a few of my favorite people, including my awesome rock-star, rock-mover daughter and her fine and integrity-full bf, and C and the Linguist.  And riding the bus while knitting, and being in the room while they taped this fine podcast, and knitting there too because I'm trying to make some mittens for R, and having a drink beforehand, which is always festive with C and the Linguist, because they even order their drinks fun.  She had a Skinny Bitch, and he had a tankard of dead guy.  Right?  We laughed and ate and drank and walked through the city at night, arriving at the bus stop exactly when the bus was arriving.

It was such a nice evening, and I got home so late that I decided to skip 7 am yoga today, because, sure, I could quit any time.  I planned to sleep in, wake up slowly and write for a bit, and then garden, and then oh, right, work.  Because I’m exactly like that Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, without the newborn baby and the desire to work all the freakin’ time, even when I’m bleeding and my milk hasn’t come in.  No judgment there, by the way.  Just sorrow.  

Also, there’s this other thing going on around here right now.  If you aren’t in the PNW, you might not understand, but it hasn’t rained in like 80 or a hundred days.  And that’s super fucking rare, and the way it goes is that if it’s nice out, you’re kind of an idiot if you don’t at least try to be outside every single minute.  Because any day now, it’s going to rain, and keep raining until next July, and it’s going to get really dark.  So we’re all desperately enjoying this last bit of sun, but it keeps going on and on and on, and frankly, we’re tired.  It’s like that deathbed scene with a loved one, where you say goodbye and it’s sad and sweet, and then the person  doesn’t die, and you see them the next day, and the next, and on and on.  It’s like that, but we're also putting off stuff, like naps and cleaning and writing and soup. 

But I woke up at 5:30 this morning, and when I say I woke up, I’d actually been awake off and on for a while, listening to a new (to me) podcast, the Savage Lovecast, because I’m trying to decide whether I can’t stand Dan Savage, or I’m a fan.  I guess it’s a bit of both, because he doesn’t ever get stuck in the doldrums of neutrality.

So I got up and ate my first breakfast and drank my first coffee, and was driving down the hill so excited to go to yoga, which I do about four times a week so it’s a marvel that it's still something to get excited about, but it is.  And then this deer leapt out in front of my car, way too late for me to do anything but slam, ineffectively, on the brakes. The deer, a sub-adult, probably the deer equivalent of the kids in my youth group, bounced on my car once, and then twice, and then leapt one final time and collapsed on the side of the road like a ragdoll. 

I saw this all happen, but didn’t really connect with it.  I wondered what I should do, and there didn’t seem to be anything to do for the deer anymore, so I drove on to yoga, feeling all the while like there was something seriously wrong with me.  Is this shock, or am I a sociopath, I wondered as I drove.  It was horrible, but it happened out there, and it wasn’t real.

When I got to yoga, Sara greeted me with a hug the way she does, and suddenly it became real, that I had just snuffed out the life of a large, innocent mammal. She dedicated our practice to the deer, and talked about how deer are keepers of the magic and all that magic has been just released into the world, and we should honor it, and, in our asana way, we did.  I’m not inclined to believe in certain animals carrying things that get released, but I love Sara greatly, and it was way more comforting than the alternative.

Because the alternative is this vague sense of dread, like I’ve caused harm in the world and this will mark a turning point in the book, where bad things start to happen.  I felt that. And then I looked back at my horoscope for this week, speaking of how crazy I am.  Yes, I write the horoscope, for myself, not believing in horoscopes one little bit, and then I look back to see what it said when shit happens.  Right, that's not crazy at all.  But what it said was this:

This week, Libra, each of your actions will start a chain of events too!  Be careful what you set in motion.

So, I’m hoping that what I set in motion was a room full of kind people doing downward dogs and warrior three together, honoring the life that was lost and the tender fragile thing that is life.  

All the people at yoga were the lovely way they are, saying things like, "That deer is so lucky it was you who hit him," and although I doubt the deer experienced any of this as luck, it was a nice thing to say just the same.

After a while in town, I came home, and felt dread as I rounded the corner where I'd encounter the scene of the crime.  And there was no deer.  Gone.  I suppose that means one of the hungry Wilderness School kids found it and made stew and shoes out of it.  If you see some  magical shoes on one of those sweet hippy children, the ones who smell of Cannabis and sweat, bow your head.