The lack of shame usually works for my college students, in that they dare to say and do all kinds of productive things in my classes. It can also, of course, work against them, like when they blithely ask me to define the central terms of the course two days before the end of the semester. But mostly it’s an enabling lack of shame that I find inspiring. If they’re so willing to trust that their honesty and efforts will be rewarded, why am I not able to do the same?

I would say that cynicism about other people’s motives comes with age and experiences of failure, but my childhood was full of cruelty and embarrassment. If I learned anything from being a child, it was that I was too ugly and too weird to be loved, and that my motivations would always be misread. I found there was so much I didn’t understand and couldn’t do, no matter how much effort I put into it.

And then there was that magical age when no failure was enough to shame me. I got C’s in courses I worked hard in. I was rejected and betrayed by people I loved. But it didn’t get to me–didn’t change my basic assumption that I was fine.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve lost this usefully arrogant delusion. It worries me that people think ill of me, or are irritated by my personality. I soften myself, quiet myself, try not to make such a fool of myself. I stop myself from saying what I want to say, even to people I love.

My fantasy when I was young was that I would hit my peak around 45. At 45, I’d know myself, and be smart and kind and honest all the time. I’d wear my hair gray and put on comfortable shoes and be beautiful, with the peace that comes from having negotiated with all my limitations.

At 30, I find I have a long way to go. 30 is the new 12. Did I say something stupid? Does he think I’m ugly? Why doesn’t she want to be my friend? Maybe I should buy some new clothes. Maybe I should apologize. Maybe I should shut up.

It’s awkward to realize, as an adult, when I’ve never been more intelligent, mature, or able than I am now, that I lack the basic resources to try to do things that I had as a dumb college student. I like looking forward to that person I want to be at 45, but more often I look back fondly on that stupid, reckless, joyful girl I was at 19.

Yes, it’s the summer session.

During the summer session, I have three and a half weeks to teach two entire courses on literature and writing. My students range from those who are passionately interested in the material to those who have flunked a course several times and are hoping that, somehow, doing it at 5x speed will finally make it stick. I don’t have time to run real office hours. I am not home often enough to attend to email. During my two-hour commute each way to campus, I’m either grading or prepping. I have no life.

I have no life, and I want your braaaaains.

There’s something wonderful about working this much. During the past year, I was pretty down in the dumps because I didn’t have enough work to do at one of my positions, which was not an instructional job, and my life looked sort of similar. I slept too much, didn’t get anything done, couldn’t be bothered to communicate with people. But this feels different. At least while I’m in the classroom, I have a purpose, and I feel needed. If I give it my all, my all is hardly enough.

Working this much and this hard really clarifies the world. I remember from reading Trainspotting in high school that one of Irvine Welsh’s most insistent arguments about heroin addiction is that it renders all other life-decisions pointless. Part of the addiction is physical, a need to get a fix as soon as possible, but the other part, the psychological part, is a desire for simplicity. I cannot worry about my relationships; I need heroin. I cannot wonder about whether I am a good person or if I can fulfill hopes and dreams; I need heroin.

Hard work does the same thing. It makes all your real cares and anxieties go away. You don’t have to keep up with people or panic about consequences; you have work to do. It’s an artificial high that distances you from yourself in a blissful place where you have no will. How can you have a will when you have work to do?

I realize that this temporary existence that I have each June, when I am a teaching zombie, is sort of how everyone else lives their lives all the time. I remember dating a young lawyer once who would get up at 4, race to work, and stay there until 8 or 9 at night, and when I saw him after one of these days, he’d be glowing with pleasure. He’d worked all day, and would work all day the next day. He couldn’t figure out what he wanted from our relationship or where to have dinner or what would happen on the weekend–he was working. He was work.

When one works like this, who can find the time for sadness or longing? Who has time for having a soul? It’s rather marvelous not to have a soul for a while.

Courtesy of Stella: an interesting Rorschach test.

Listening to my mother’s voice on the phone on Tuesday, I was struck by how much we’ve forgotten the marvel of it all. Here, in Los Angeles, I listen to the a fairly faithful mechanical and digital reproduction of my mother’s voice. I hear her annoyance at the lack of reading materials, the relief of speaking to her distant son, and the fine balance between hope and worry. I also her the start and stop of breaths, the additional pauses as she leans on the oxygen supply to help her finish longer thoughts and sentences. There’s a constant reminder of the mechanics of breathing, of taking in the air and letting it go.

We breathe unthinkingly. Each moment the world in particulate form passes into us and makes its way through us. Some of it stays behind. Some of it journeys onward. All around us, there is a chorus of breathing. An ocean of taking in and letting go. A constant trembling, even in stillness.

I am struck as well by how often we lose ourselves in that flow. Here’s something not about breathing exactly, but of losing ourselves and of the beauty that sometimes slips into these moments unaware, unbidden.

Programmer F, Descending

1.
This is not Chile.

The land does not end under his desk,
nor reach back across 5600 miles,
though F sleeps there as if it were his home,
a familiar metal cave and its flame.
His white shirt brilliant in the dark,
the collar, two bent wings of light.

He has sunk down
like a lost tooth
rolled into the earth
or last year’s seed
tossed out with the wind.

Above his head,
the machine’s fan whirs.

This is America.

2.
The heart of the machine
is silicon and gold,
a square city run through
with thin streets and wire.

At this hour, its sides
are hot enough to burn
a misplaced hand.

Night has occupied the corners,
filled the last pockets of our floor,
and even now someone is asking himself

whether the language spoken in this city
is a net of lures cast wide over the world
or merely the sum total of discrete truths,
each a fire or the absence of fire?

3.
F is sleeping
and we are all slipping
further beneath
the rising blade of the moon.

How blind we are
to have missed this
to have forgotten

how the memory of a place
can take form above us
in the empty case.

F descends
into the dark dream of numbers,
folding one void
into another, writing a name
then erasing it before dawn.

First published in Weave Magazine, Issue 3

What did your monster look like?  Describe the qualities of the monster.  How did you choose to kill it?  If you did this exercise with someone else compare and contrast.

A couple of decades ago I took part in this exercise at a weekend conference for dramatherapists.  At the time, I was considering this career path.  This exercise has stayed with me.  I remember my monster clearly.  It had a big satanic head and small body.  Another woman and I chose daggers.  We hid behind a chair then ran out and stabbed our monsters and ran back into hiding.  There was tremendous diversity in the group’s monsters and weapons and style of attack.  We did a little analysis…mine has a big scary head, but actually the body is weak and small.  So maybe my monster is more bark than bite.  The killing was exhilerated.  There was a real frisson of fear and then the euphoria of conquest and security.

I cannot recall the name of the woman who led the workshop, but she was a pioneer in dramatherapy techniques for children who had suffered abuse.  She had four bags of small toys and figurines.  Each bag had a  different character; I remember one was full of human characters, another had animals and creatures, another had tactile toys that were squishy or soft or hard.  She would have the kids choose the toys and communicate through their play.

She told the story of one little boy whose parents were drug addicts and they would give him drugs as well to “take care” of him while they were tripping.  I think it was something like heroin or acid.  He would choose a jeep style vehicle with a mummy, daddy and child place in it.  They would take trips into space, to the moon, to other planets.  One day they returned to earth and he decided they didn’t need to take any more trips.

The story is the healing.  As much as I believe in the benefits of talk therapy, it has limited impact.  We can analyze ourselves to death, but the processing of emotion is so much more effectively achieved through symbolic story telling and ritual.  It bypasses our busy little brains and goes straight to the heart.  Those Greek dramatists were onto something with that whole catharsis kick.