Cloudy with drizzle and courage

I am wearing my bathrobe today. All day. Until I go to work. Or for a walk through the town to be braver about the weather than I am right now. Now I am safe and indoors with a lovely view of things from the distance of my father's desk.

My desk no longer offers such safety - it is covered with a letter half-created and three more to write today. I cannot say that they will be wonderful these letters, but I do not believe that they will suffer for it - rhythms are most often reached through repetition. It is the repetition's crash that I find difficult.

Any writer or artist will tell you this: the act of doing is indescribable. The act of having done is freefall and reaction. It sucks. The only way that I have ever found to keep some of that under control is to limit the amount of time I spend doing the words into some kind of order thing, or to limit the words, or to make certain that what is written is meaningless and disconnected. But these are all false and they do not work.

It is an act of bravery that will get me off my ass here and back on my ass in there, typewriter to hand, words in no pre-determined order put down on paper to be sent to unsuspecting friends and acquaintances. They are all of good humor. I hope.

I am reading The Geography of Strabo (in translation, of course) and am struck by something that is so terribly human and yet so terribly limiting. Strabo spends a good amount of time criticizing the words and works of others. There are various and valid reasons for this: to establish the correctness of the sources he uses; to define what are the limits of geography in terms of geometry, astronomy and physics; to define a vocabulary and expectation of word use; and to be kind of a jackass at people who he thinks are just wrong, and blind and make dangerous assumptions (cough cough).

At one point, he discusses a map that was drawn and became very popular and well read and he complains, rightly, that even though the map does not represent what is known of the known world at the time (even when it was drawn), and that many scholars and scientists recognized the problems with the map, it was not redrawn and the mistakes must be explained over and again because people used it, they believed it. It was written. If, as someone recently said to me, if we acknowledge that every writer is a product of time and place, then how much can I imagine it would take not only to publicize a map, to defend it and distribute it, but what would it take to do more than point and scoff at its mistakes. To make an argument of a conversation, to willingly engage with another person's intellect, ability and experience in order to alter a thing which has been made almost concrete; these are acts of confidence and openness that always astonish me.

It is one thing to blather on a will. I do that all the time. Even in my brain, when I'm not talking to anyone or writing anything, there is blather. Really. It doesn't ever actually stop. But rarely is it well-thought out and even more rarely am I prepared to brook dissent and argument. (Granted, most of the arguments that have been leveled at me are of a personal nature and do not much more than convince me that most people are not as willing to see things from different perspectives as I generally find desirable (really).(in other words, we don't hang out.))

Most of my relationships involve a certain degree of distance. Usually that distance is intellectual or emotional. Now that it is physical and not likely to become less as time goes on, but more, I find that there is a need for courage.

The sky glows light gray in front of the afternoon sun. I've boxes to move yet and letters to ponder. This evening I will take a long way to work.

A difficulty, considered...

I am going to India.
The money is paid, the tickets are bought.
One of my best friends is getting married Hindu-style to one of the best men I know, and my parents made sure that I can be there.

So, that's awesome, right?

I just got a job - it pays minimum wage, it involves standing and stuffing inserts into papers for 3 hours one night a week and not more than 12 hours another night.
It is work. It is a paycheck. It is a start.

Last night was the first shift I'd worked since I learned I'm going to India this winter, so I took a moment and told my boss that I will be gone from work for probably 3 weeks over Christmas.

Her response was "Well, I guess I'll have to let you go," which I interpreted as she'd have to fire me and hire someone else for the season (a thing which I kind of feel is not entirely unreasonable) and then, "I usually like to only have one person gone at a time, and I think someone else is going to be gone, but since you're going to India, I guess I'll have to let you."

A) I will quit if it comes down to that.
B) "Let" me go? Are you sure about that?

and then this happened in my brain:

Minimum wage work tends to be the most physically demanding, both in terms of the kind of work that is done and the lack of flexibility there is in doing it. The people who do what I think of as necessary grunt work are treated as replaceable and yet are reminded of their responsibility to show up and work hard and to not expect any of kind respect or meaningful acknowledgment. I have worked many of these jobs, and am forever astonished at the callous ways in which my co-workers and myself have been treated, especially as the timeliness and correctness of the work we did was always somehow crucial to the future lives of other people. They needed us and yet we were inferior and dismissed.

I recognize that a degree in higher education and/or specialized training and skill development get rewarded. I intend to go to graduate school and to develop specialized skills so that I can be rewarded. It is not unfamiliar to me, nor is it to me unfair. I do not intend to ever be at a job where I am not working. I do not intend to pursue a career in something that allows me to ignore it for hours a day or days a month or months a year while still insuring me an unbalanced allotment of power. I intend to work with people whose skills are not necessarily the same as mine, but are respected by me and by each other.

So here is the observation: The people who are not paid enough to provide themselves with adequate (much less desirable) medical treatment are the ones who are also not offered benefits as opposed to the people who can afford to pay for private doctors and full-coverage insurance without having to go through an employer. The people who cannot afford to not work for a few days (much less to travel (more on that later)) are not even offered vacation days. This is an imbalance that seems more than unfair, it seems unspoken. There is nothing that makes me less of a human being than someone who makes 4 times what I do in one day. And yet there is this expectation of disregard and distrust and its resultant anger and despair.

My experience of people is that while we speak words that seem to express our general sentiment that we are all created equal, we all do live lives that continue to reinforce the idea that some of us are more equal than others, and that there is somehow a moral component attached to a paycheck. Better people deserve more nice things to themselves. Those of us who have accepted generous gifts offered by people in our lives are not as good as the people who have provided these things for themselves. (Having said that: it is humbling to accept such gifts, and my gratitude knows no bounds. Travel is the thing that I do when I am the most myself, and nothing can express how happy I am whenever I get to pursue it.)

I would be self-sustaining. I would thrive and in some ways profit. I do not doubt that I've gotten my life into a position where it has to become creative and active and all the things that it needs to be in order to be more than it was 5 months ago. That was sort of the point.

None of this makes me a better person. I would not give up the physical act of work just because it seems that the society in which I live ascribes a certain level of negativity to it.

Much of the frustration in my life over the last several years has been an inability to express discontent in any way that does not seem irrational or self-indulgent or illogical. I am in no way free from my own politics, but that does not mean that I am shackled to a position or perspective. I have no idea what I will do with this slightly less shrieky approach to inhumanity in the world, but I like the idea that I can listen more easily.

On the outside

The day is brilliant and clear and I carry with me many books filled with information and advice and science and poetry and it is good.

The difficulty with unemployment (for now the only one) is mostly one of filling up my time in meaningful and positive ways. I am very focused on that combination of requirements of late. Not sure where they came from, but they are specific and I approve. I've accomplished nearly all of my goals for the day. There is one more bit of financial responsibility that I need to commit and then I will go and find another book and head home in the sunshine and happy to the land of face-buried felines and a new yoga routine. It is unnerving to think of starting new moves and different breathing and I think I'll do just fine.

I have not practiced for two days. It is not okay.

I remember only bits from one dream of last night and it was jarring. There were threads. Actual threads, one white, one orange (saffron?). I woke and struggled with something that has become a non-entity of late: despair. It is hardly unnatural or never to be expected, especially as so much changes between last week and the middle of August, and next fall and spring and the August that follows and every semester again and there really is no end to the movements of living. My heart has been very still of late, settling down past floodwater lines that I've never noticed before and telling me stories that have never had a voice. So to experience the fringes of pointless sadness was something not to be ignored, though also not to be embraced.

In my half-sleep the notion that this life is no longer on a conveyor belt, that the path it follows is walked and strolled and jogged and still and not inevitable or doomed, found words and they pleased me. I am not all for ego-strong free will, and I am not not not about to give it up to predestination. Life happens. And we/I decide what to do about it. It's very much a balance, a conversation, where pride and bravado and violence can seem to have more strength than sweetness and silence and the gentleness of a held hand.

In my vain attempts to prevent noticing the 'waiting' I have lectures to hear, books to read and projects to finish or start knitting and beading and crocheting and gluing and cleaning. I have about a week before anything exciting really happens again.

It is good to find my way here.