In dealing with women, men are famously insubordinate.

 

Romance is the stage before love, if that ever happens. Romance is a projection of your fantasy of the perfect man or woman onto the other. As such, it tends to not get off the ground if burdened by too much detail, especially negative, about the other. So it might be wise, while dating and before becoming lovers, to be quiet about all your problems.

Or present them as small, which they may be: “Yes, sometimes I get a little depressed.” But when I do, I just change the subject.

If s/he sees you as better than you think you are, they might even be right. It’s all so subjective. You might be better for them then you are for yourself.

Also, as compared to whom? The great catches are already taken.

I thought romance was aided by intimacy, which was achieved by self-revelation. I’m rethinking my strategy. I suspect romance depends more on being a good projection screen.

Another consideration is that if you’re knocking yourself out trying to please someone you probably sound desperate.

We probably are.

 

Community requires that we take care of people. It also involves giving up a certain amount of privacy.  You can choose to live without community, but you will find it lonely.

 

Whatever I’m doing – writing, reading, politics – I always feel like I should be doing something else. I have a magical view of life as something that is always happening elsewhere. And I always want to hurry through whatever I’m doing right now, so I can get to the good stuff. Whatever that is.

There’s no time like the future. Because we never get there. The future, like Brigadoon, exists outside of time.

It doesn’t exist.

 

I think it’s control issues that kill marriages. People say they fight about money or sex, but at the bottom it’s control. We all want some control over our lives, and most of us have so little.

 

I’m noticing a pattern: menopausal women prefer cold houses. Also people who are overweight, which seems to be most of the population. I guess it saves energy, but cold makes me uncomfortable. At what age does menopause end? I would like to live with a woman with whom I wouldn’t have to fight over the thermostat.

 

I’m always trying to find a suitable frame, to fit things into.

 

I’m beginning to find happy people annoying. Their missionary zeal. Their assumption that everyone should be happy and if you aren’t there must be something wrong with you. Their avoidance of social issues. I would rather be unhappy than wear blinders.

It’s really bizarre to live in a culture that regards unhappiness as a personality defect. As if happiness were the norm. It’s not. Too many of us are awake. We shouldn’t have to pretend to be cheerful. That just adds insult to injury.

 

Might we not all have been kinder and saner if we had said that discontent is our natural condition, that we are the Ishmael of the species, that while we belong in the world, we have no place in it. – Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam, excerpt sent to me by another writer

 

She suggests that our new dietary rules – eat more fish – are destroying sea life and taking food away from poor people. And driving up prices. I remember when fish was not popular, and cheap.

 

In our culture everything is personal and nothing is social. But then honestly, outside of politics I’m not very social either. So much trouble.

 

A friend says she’s very tired of the IST movement – “insipid small talk.”

 

In an email, someone advises me to read the Bible but also says, “Thank you for being my catalyst.” You’re more than welcome. Thank you for getting it.

 

Oh my god, am I here, all alone? – Bob Dylan

 

Gertrude Stein wrote of Oakland, California, “There’s no there there.” I’ve found there’s no there anywhere. There is only here.

 

Someone has to give the Minority Report.

I didn’t actually volunteer.

 

This is what you do when you have bad relationships – you’re always returning, to make them right. – Jonathan Winters, 77, AARP The Magazine

 

Along with the separation of church and state, it’s too bad the U.S. Constitution doesn’t mandate the separation of business and state.

 

The parallel process of internationalism of production provides new weapons to undermine working people in the West, who must accept an end to their “luxurious” lifestyle and agree to “flexibility of labor markets” (not knowing whether you have a job tomorrow), the business press orates happily. – Noam Chomsky, Profit Over People

 

People living in poverty are nearly four times as likely to suffer chronic depression as affluent people, the survey reported. – The Oregonian

 

I’ve noticed that not everyone believes in the germ theory of disease.

 

Conversation is such a narrow road, most of the time, things you aren’t allowed to say, things they’re not interested in, rules. Writing is freer because there’s no relationship.

 

I wonder why it’s so hard for people to ever just let things happen?

 

Most of the things we “should” do we don’t want to do. It really is that simple.

 

America is such an “I” centered country that the “I” runs dry. We drain all the energy out of it promoting ourselves, telling other people who we are.  I’m thinking I would like to be quiet for awhile, do some reading. Silence is how we recreate ourselves. Sometimes it’s such a relief not to talk.

 

It is difficult to pass on wisdom. It sounds so improbable, who would believe it?

Or so simple. Avoid foods that make you sick. I write this as my body is busy purging itself after two potlucks in a row. Nothing wrong with the food, my body just won’t tolerate it. One of the side effects of ageing.

 

In the movie White Palace (1990), a waitress takes a man home. The electricity has been turned off because she didn’t pay the bill. He makes some incredulous comment like, “You didn’t pay the bill?” She says, “Yeah, aren’t poor people disgusting?”

The French had the right idea, after their revolution, the final solution to the aristocrat problem. Off with their heads.

Impractical in America, where every middle-class person thinks like an aristocrat.

One of the things I like about Noam Chomsky is that he turns the language and style of the aristocracy against it. All very civilized, but reeking of acid. Gore Vidal is also good at that: nasty populist sentiments in high-born language. Conservative upper class commentator William Buckley said once that he would like to punch Chomsky in the mouth. Being unable, I guess, to compete intellectually.

 

There is only one important issue in the Salem budget debate: whether the 2003-2005 budget will cut human services essential for survival. Lately the state legislature has been killing people. At public meetings Democratic legislators are pointing the finger at Republicans, but Democrats have half the votes in the state senate, plus the governor’s veto, so they are equally responsible. If the next budget is also a killer, I will be voting against all incumbents in the next election.

 

Perhaps we run away from personal peace because our nervous systems think it’s boring. Plants are peaceful, not knowing any better.

 

Retirement is when you get to live your own life, instead of someone else’s.

 

Men are competitive with other men, and sometimes with women. A lot of us know this isn’t cool and we say we don’t do it, but we still do it, often without realizing we’re doing it. We’re fiercely independent, when we can get away with it, but we play dominance games with other people. This is much easier for me to recognize in other men – it’s like watching children – than in myself.

Probably my form of competition/dominance would be lecturing. I love to explain things. Although the intent may be innocent, conscious or unconscious, that doesn’t matter if the effect is felt as oppressive by the audience/victim.

There is also just plain boredom. Americans are generally not interested in absorbing a lot of detail, unless the subject is one they feel passionately about. I’m not. When I see someone’s eyes glaze over and they start edging away, I know I’ve gone too far.

As a result of that kind of feedback I’ve tried to develop a minimalist, sound bite style in both talking and writing. I try to give people the short version first, then more if they ask for it. Usually they don’t. It always surprises me when people tell me they would like to know more about something. Really? Well sit right down!

I think people want stories, not facts or analysis. I wish I were better at telling stories.

Lecturing is the intellectual style of dominance. By explaining something to you, we put you in a subordinate position. I think it’s less offensive in writing, because it’s not personal and easier to avoid than in talking.

Conversation needs to be about 50-50 to work. If you’re doing more than half of the talking, it’s not working for the other person.

My older sister helped break my habit of giving long detailed explanations – I wanted to start at the beginning! – by interrupting me in mid sentence and changing the subject. Which is very rude, but I learned not to tell her things, in great detail, that she didn’t want to know. When I mentioned it to her, she said she didn’t even realize she was doing it. Her mind would just wander.

I’m often frustrated that other people are not interested in what I‘m interested in, such as politics. That’s one reason I write. People still may not be interested, but they usually don’t tell me about it.

Sometimes a lack of communication is a blessing.

 

An American who lived for many years in Japan told me that Japanese do not go to therapists. Not part of their culture. They talk to bartenders. I wonder if they might have less to talk about than we do. Andrew Stoll, in The Omega-3 Connection, says that depression rates in Japan are ten times lower than in the U.S. He attributes this to their high fish consumption, which provides Omega-3 fatty acids.

 

It seems to me that irritability is characteristic of our culture. It might be our diet, as Stoll suggests, since irritability is one symptom of depression. It might also be the competitive nature of our culture, excessive stimulation or population density. We get on each other’s nerves.

 

We all get caught by the assumption that others are like ourselves. They’re not. We get more unlike as we get older and more defined, differentiated. Even when we have similar values, as many of the people I know do, there are large differences in how we see the world, what we think is “normal,” what is acceptable, reasonable behavior. Which causes many conflicts. I think this is what destroys marriages. “What, you want to save money?” “You want sex every day?” My god, I married a freak!

 

My moving meditation this time of year is just walking around the neighborhood.

 

What would I do if I had lots of money? Buy a 1960 Corvette and travel aimlessly.

 

Ken Burns’ OPB program on jazz says that America is an immigrant culture, which lead to a sense of displacement and disconnection. I don’t think we ever lost that feeling. It’s fed by rapid change, destruction and rebuilding, so that everything is new and there is nothing to anchor us in time, nothing we can hang onto, no continuity. Also the constant movement that goes with economic change, so we are not anchored in place. And the high divorce rate, along with all our moving around, destroys our connections to other people.

 

The pioneers, I’ve read, were fleeing bad economic conditions in the east.

 

The problem I have with both alcohol and marijuana is that weeds still come up through the concrete. I’m giving it a rest.

 

Reading A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar, the story of mathematical genius and schizophrenic John Nash, I wonder if it is only in this culture that being solitary is considered odd and unhealthy. I have a friend who prefers to spend most of her time, outside of her work, alone.

I need a large amount of solitude to stay calm. I find people interesting, but often unsettling. I never know when they’re going to get a bug up their ass about something, and I’ll find myself in the middle of an unwelcome conflict.

Sometimes the bug is up my ass. I’ve learned it’s often better to just shut up and let the little stuff go by. It’s too easy to be hard to please. I think that’s what happens to a lot of marriages: we just will not leave well enough alone. Pick, pick, pick.

Also, and so easy to forget, human beings are naturally unstable. We weren’t designed to be the same all the time.

Harry Golden wrote, “It is with rivers as with people. The greatest are not always the best, nor the easiest to live with.”

 

Los Angeles:

 

There is a great audacity in the willingness to change, more than a little optimism, and a serious dose of courage. It was the courage that I admired most, even though the results often made me cringe. After all, the people who came to Los Angeles are looking for change. Everyone else just stays home. – Robert Crais, L.A. Requiem

 

One of those drifting thoughts while falling asleep: “At least I’m not making progress.”

 

I live on $561 a month in Social Security plus food stamps. To do this, you have to live with other people to get cheap rent, and you can’t have a car. You can’t buy medical insurance, so you have to depend on Medicaid or, after 65, Medicare. Both of which politicians are always looking for a way to destroy.

Without any supplemental income, it’s just barely doable. The benefit is that I don’t have to waste my time and energy at some shitty job. If I could even get one. Employers are not interested in hiring old people. People past 60. Even in your 50s you may find a lot of doors closed.

The main drawback to poverty is loss of control. A lot fewer choices in my living situation, a lot harder to change anything. Less room for error, so better work at staying healthy.

I try to compensate by very careful control of spending. I use the system from the book Your Money Or Your Life:

1.      Carry a notebook with you and write down everything you spend.

2.      Organize it into categories and add it up at the end of the month.

3.      Put the totals into an income and expenses chart.

4.      Keep a graph showing income and expense over a long period of time.

What all this does is make you acutely conscious of where your money is going, which tends to gradually reduce your spending and rechannel some of it. You discover that you’re wasting some of your money on things that aren’t worth it – in my case, fast food, dumb movies like The Matrix Reloaded, paperback books instead of going to the library, wine and beer. You make conscious decisions about how you want to spend your money, instead of just drifting. (There is a time to drift and a time not to.)

Although the book doesn’t recommend it, I also do budgets at the beginning of each month, and check about halfway through the month to see if I’m on track. I don’t have the option of overspending.

This probably sounds oppressive to you. At first it is, but I found that after a while it becomes automatic and seems pretty simple. This is not brain surgery. Mostly it’s addition. You can do that.

 

I wonder at the silence that overtakes men so often in our lives. So that while women are chattering away we stand mute. Having recognized the impossibility of communication. And not wanting to give it away.

Maybe silence is a relief. We don’t have to pretend, as women do, that everything is all right.

You know it isn’t, right?

Sorry.

 

I’ve been told that my writing is angry. No shit. At least it’s not IST.

 

Ralph Nader is the American left’s declaration of independence from the Democrats, our statement that we will no longer support empire, corporate welfare or the decimation of the safety net.

 

The problem with economic complexity is that it pulls power from all those who cannot understand it, which is most of the population, and especially those on the bottom. Complexity is the friend of the rich.

Thus, for example, hard to compare long distance providers. Or medical insurance. You have to study to understand what it would actually do for you.

 

My sister said politics is making me unhappy and I should get a new hobby. I told her it’s not a hobby, it’s a war.

I should get a new war.

 

I think civic leaders support big business, through blabbing and tax cuts, because that’s who they admire and identify with. People with power worship those who have more.

 

It has been a few weeks since I got stoned, not sure why, maybe life was just too serious. Now high, I again have that blessed feeling that there is plenty of time.

 

I wonder if “success” might be linked to the ability to extract pleasure from the environment? Which ability I suspect we’re born with. Those of us with less flamboyant nervous systems, or even nervous nervous systems, take drugs.

Woody Allen said in Annie Hall, “I suffer from anhedonia. That’s the inability to experience pleasure.”

The nervous system, I guess, was invented to let us interact with the environment. Did we ever consider, in our lengthy evolution, that less might be more? That many of us might actually prefer to graze peacefully, completely unaware that we were about to die in great pain, and then be eaten?

Surely consciousness is an acquired taste.

 

The worst thing about working, aside from the boredom, was that constant feeling of being in an alien culture. It felt weird to be there. The only reason I was there was to survive. I think there are a lot of people like me.

 

I was disappointed, reading A Beautiful Mind, to find that the movie was mostly fictional.

 

Marches are leftists’ community-affirming events. That’s when we realize that yes, there are a lot of us, depending on what the definition of “us” is.

 

Liberalism and the Democratic party: not so much that they bet on the wrong horse, but on one that doesn’t exist.

 

Is small business a form of gambling?

 

When I was young I didn’t have such strong preferences. I would read anything I got my hands on.

A good book is one that has something in it I feel like quoting. Most books have nothing.

 

It’s possible that people are being real even when they don’t seem to be.

 

At quarter after 9 on a June night the sky still has some light west toward Mt. Tabor. Window open, listening to the neighborhood, which is mostly the sound of cars and power tools. Everything getting shadowy, fading to black, losing the light.

 

I’ve found it risky to use analogies. People focus on the analogy rather than my point.

 

Today I had a phone message from a woman who said she was from my “specialist’s” office. She just wanted to do a “phone check” to “verify” my name, address, date of birth, etc., and would I please call her back? Yeah, sure. Identity theft. Someone out there, a good voice actress, living off the land.

I have to admire that, but I feel sorry for those who would fall for it.

“My specialist’s office, you mean my oncologist?”

“Yes, your oncologist.”

 

Pretty amazing that plants evolved which produce chemicals that affect human brain chemistry. I wonder if anyone has a theory about that. Coincidence? A way to get its seeds eaten and distributed?

 

I’m struggling to expand my idea of “normal” to include even people who get on my nerves. Which, at least occasionally, includes just about everyone. You too, right?

This is why romance is so difficult. We’ve grown so sensitive. How did that happen? Are we disappointed with mechanical life?

 

Over 20 years ago a young woman told me she was depressed. I told her I thought walking helped. She said, “Suppose you’re feeling too depressed to walk?”

What I do: leave the computer off, do little or no work, read stories, let time go by. I think it helps to just get the pressure off. This means that I’m only intermittently fully functional.

On the other hand, sometimes accomplishment also helps. If I can get something done that feels meaningful, I can see that life actually has some point to it.

 

The trick with politics is, don’t get in too deep. As soon as it feels like I’ve got to make something happen, I should stop for a while, see where the river is flowing. Politics is a joint effort. You have to be able to sense how the other fish are swimming.

More realistically, it’s stressful so you have to take timeouts.

But also, remember it’s not about you.

It isn’t?

 

In Oregon it looks like both the left and the right are losing. People are just hunkering down. Leave me alone.

 

When things go wrong for someone, it usually starts with losing their job. Which is a common event built into our economy. Lately more common. Oregon at 8.1 percent unemployment. A recession seems like a storm – we don’t know what causes it, and we just wait for it to blow over, trying to stay alive. At the mercy, for our unemployment checks, of a bunch of rich politicians.

 

Men: we need to give less advice, and quit trying to solve everyone’s problem. Allow people to enjoy their problems.

Women, I’ve read, want men to listen, not try to solve their problems.

Problems have always felt like an imposition to me, like there shouldn’t be any.

But if I can solve your problem, everything will be all right.

 

I keep thinking of a line from a song on a Joan Baez album, don’t know if she wrote it: “The beggerman and the thief, getting a little relief.”

 

The past dies long before we do.

 

One of the problems with romance is that it has no objective reality. It’s all feelings, like spiritual experiences. No way to make it happen. Doesn’t suit the action-oriented male temperament. Put us into a situation where there’s no clear plan of action and we’re helpless. You mean we’re just supposed to hang out with women and wait for this love thing to happen? Not knowing if it ever will?

Looking at our watches.

I miss the romantic part of romance, the making up stories, believing they’re true…. The long-term marriages I see, that has gone away. What is left is a chilly hardcore realism. But people do take care of each other, in very basic, practical ways. Which is more than we single people have. Maybe marriage is just having someone to watch your back.

 

Humans are rule-making animals. We are always trying to domesticate each other. Too much work.

 

The left gives Bush too much credit. He’s an expression of our culture. Americans love aggression, dominance and wealth. Getting rid of Bush would not make everything right.

 

At 63, when I get up in the morning I feel stiff and a little weak. Usually I do some stretching exercises to get my muscles to work right. Feel groggy, hard to wake up, takes an hour or two to feel normal. Less energy than I used to have, tire more easily, need to sleep more. I joke about “senior moments,” but I suspect I’ve always had those. Spacey.

For exercise, I do a fair amount of walking. It continually amazes me that I see very few others doing likewise. What do they think is going to happen to them if they don’t get out and move?

Every now and then my body does something weird, which is scary, but just as I’m thinking this is serious and I better call the doctor, the problem goes away. I’m always grateful to get back to normal.

I live in a different world than people in their 50s. In my world a lot of things are too much trouble physically to bother with; it’s impossible to get any kind of decent job; I don’t believe in a lot of things they believe in; and I’m impatient with repetition of ideas I’ve heard too many times before, even if I agree with them. I’m more detached and crankier. I need more depth.

This is not all bad. Letting go of  stuff that no longer serves you allows you to move on. I don’t have to put up with as much crap. I see most of what goes on in America as crap.

I just want to get a few things done that still feel significant. The rest I will do my best to avoid. Leave me alone.

I’m way too polite for my own good. Still hard to say no, to not get involved in other peoples’ crap.

I wonder if most people get more detached in their old age? Partly I guess it’s been-there-done-that, but also maybe we’re preparing to leave. And preparing you for our leaving. My mother said before she died, “The body wears out, you know.”

I know activists in their 70s and 80s, people I admire, who are still passionately engaged. But not all the time.

I’ve been seeking silence, but it hasn’t come to me.