pjthompson | Entries tagged with control

Random quote of the day:

“That’s one of the most ruthless lessons trauma teaches you: You are not in charge. All you can control is your reaction to whatever grenades the demented universe rolls in your path. Beginning with whether you get out of bed.”

—Jennifer Senior, “What Bobby Mcilvaine Left Behind,” The Atlantic, September 2021

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Swimming has taught me a lot about the true chemistry of feeling good. It's very easy to believe that levels of personal happiness are entirely reliant on all the exterior factors impinging on your life at that time—financial fortunes, friendships, relationships, ups and downs with work—but being in the water, particularly being in a large natural body of water, brings you away from that line of thinking, makes you realize how many of these influencing factors are beyond your control, and ultimately unsolvable, and that at any time your happiness can be primarily down to your immediate environment at that exact moment, if you let go and allow it.

—Tom Cox, Ring the Hill

Random quote of the day:

“As soon as you say ‘I do,’ you will discover that marriage is like a car. Yeah, both of you might be sitting in the front seat, but only one of you is driving. Most marriages are more like a motorcycle than a car. Somebody has to sit in the back, and you have to yell to be heard.”

—Wanda Sykes, Yeah, I Said It

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

In the evenings, I pause in my chores to take the cat on a supervised trip into the back yard. She’s proven time and again she can’t be trusted not to jump over the wall and go walkabout—which, I suspect, is how she got lost from her previous owners. She does so love the back yard. She’s quite insistent on going out, fussing and whining until I relent.

I always relent, because my dirty little secret is that I go out there as much for myself as her. Min makes a great excuse. I love to feel the wind in my face, listen to the birds, watch the gloaming slowly overtake the leaves of trees and plants, golden and syrup-rich. I love the sense of presence out there. It’s serene, one of the few things in my life right now that fills me up rather than takes away.

So as I sat in my serene place last night, I thought—mostly in a peaceful way—about letting go of so many layers of things. Letting go of fears, letting go of needless guilt and worry, of giving it up to the inexorable ebb and flow of the universe. Not give up on life, you understand. Still in there, still fighting the good fight, just reconciling myself to the fact that the universe will always have its way in the end, no matter what I or anyone else does. What I needed, what I need, is to give up the illusion of control, to make peace with that.

We’re none of us helpless flotsam in the grand old river of the universe. I truly believe things travel along with us, keeping us in the free-flowing stream as long as possible, as much as possible. Little markers of hope and fellow-feeling, sometimes larger things that buffer and stand guard. At times, the smallest things can bring the largest upwelling of hope, allowing us to float free. I don’t know what these things are, where they come from, wouldn’t care to define them in narrow human terms, but they are there as long as we allow them to be. We can’t be protected forever. Nothing can be. Sometimes we’re going to smash into rocks, sometimes we’re going to dip below the surface. Sometimes, when the time has come, we’re going to drown. It’s the nature of the journey. It’s easy to be philosophical about all this when I’m in my serene place. Difficult when I’m having trouble treading water.

From the perspective of my usual chair last night I tried to think of some better way of treading water. I wondered if, along with the illusion of control, I also had an illusion of receiving help along the way. I looked at a patch of ground near the bird bath where a few days ago I’d moved a brick that had been overgrown with moss. I saw a little face, tilted to the side, peering back at me from the fringe of the moss, just before the precipice where the brick had nestled. One little arm was raised as if she swam hard against the pushing tide of moss. I was far enough away to wonder if she might be an optical illusion, a trompe l’oeil composed of bits of leaf matter, blossoms, and hope.

I got up and drew close. There was a face, and a tiny arm, a small ceramic figurine lodged into the ground. When I pulled her out I saw she was a little fairy maiden, sitting on a leaf, resting one hand on a thimble while the other, the one she’d been swimming with, rested under her chin. I could see from her back that she’d broken off some larger piece. She had quite an Alice in Wonderland quality to her face, but I don’t recall ever owning a piece of garden ceramic with such a whimsical girl. I’d swear she hadn’t been there when I moved the brick. My hand was right there two days ago, but I didn’t remember seeing her. Clearly, she’d nestled amongst the moss a while because she was partly embedded in the soil, leaving a hollow when I pulled her free. The moss had surrounded her as it had the brick. Perhaps I’d been too distracted at the time and hadn’t noticed her, or…

I looked up at the faces hanging on the garden wall. Flora and Ivy smiled serenely back at me. Green Man looked grumpy, as always, but I wouldn’t absolutely swear there wasn’t a twinkle in his eyes. Probably the gloaming. Magic always happen in the heavy, rich light of twilight.

This post was originally written in July of 2011 when I was struggling with being the sole caregiver for my 90-something mother. I am no longer a caregiver, but the idea that something will be there for us when we need it most remains a great comfort to me.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“You are in control of your life. Don’t ever forget that. You are what you are because of the conscious and subconscious choices you have made.”

—Barbara Hall, A Summons to New Orleans

I don’t usually inject my own opinion into the quotes, preferring to let people make up their own minds about things. But this quote strikes me as particularly ironic in regards to my own life. You see, the lesson I have been learning, constantly reinforced over recent months and years, is that control is an illusion that we humans comfort ourselves with. I do believe we have free will, but often that amounts to how we react to the uncontrollable forces that swirl around us. You may, of course, have another opinion—such is the nature of opinions. And I have no control over that.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

I’ve been coming to terms with my own physical limitations for the last week. I blew my knee out over the weekend and have had a hard time getting around. I had to borrow my mother’s spare walker, which was a huge blow to my ego, especially bringing it to work. I hate the melodrama of it—but it works better and causes me less pain than using a cane. The knee is progressively getting better. I’m hopeful that if I keep off my feet as much as possible this weekend I can do without the walker on Monday. Still, it feels like a ghostly voice whispering in my ear, “You are getting old.”

The truth is, I’ve been dealing with these physical limitations for awhile now. I’ve known for over a year that I need surgery in both knees. I’ve got no cartilage left at all. But I’ve been limping along because . . . who will take care of Mom when I’m laid up?

The recovery is actually a lot quicker than I thought it would be. My doctor says most people are walking up stairs after a couple of weeks. And I want to be able to walk again! This last week has shown me that the time for procrastination is done. Since there’s no one in the family to help me, I’m just going to have to scrape up the money to hire someone. Fortunately, Mom is still relatively high function. We’re talking about someone to run errands, cook meals, keep her on track with the meds and therapies, take her to doctor’s appointments. I’ve got an ambulance company that can take her to and from dialysis. I just have to let go of my protective need to take care of everything myself.

That, of course, is the hardest thing of all to do.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Money is how people with no talent keep score. Control is how others with no money keep score.”

—Michael S. Hart, A Brief History of the Internet

(Thanks to mount_oregano for this quote.)

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Money is how people with no talent keep score. Control is how others with no money keep score.”

—Michael S. Hart, A Brief History of the Internet

(Thanks to mount_oregano for this quote.)

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

1. I finally got around to watching the taped season finale of Castle and the fourth season premiere. This is what I hate about episodic TV and why I stopped watching it: every season, no matter how dramatic or world-changing the finale, by the end of the premiere episode everything has been reset to square one. There’s no regard for character growth, the hard left turns in the script give you whiplash, but everything goes back to the way things have always been. Even on Castle, which is a better written show than most episodic TV. Yeah, there are hints that things will continue in a slightly altered vein, but the premiere really had to do some unlikely contortions to achieve their reset.

2. We’ve got summer weather this October, as often happens in L.A. in October. I wore short sleeves today, forgetting the fall/stress rash on my forearm which is now on display for all to see. Oh well. It had mostly simmered down so it isn’t too humiliating. Driving back from taking Mom to the clinic, everything was sunny and bright until I got to Santa Monica. Then the fog seeped down the highway and I wished that I’d brought my sweater.

3. Driving to the clinic, my mother and I discussed the weird perception of waking up and not knowing where you are, thinking maybe you’re in some place you lived in two or three moves ago, or whatever. These days that sensation has gone a step further for Mom: she wakes up and although she knows where everything is and everything looks the same, the neighborhood is familiar, she feels as if the house isn’t where it’s supposed to be. Somehow it’s moved, she knows not where. I said, “Maybe we’ve slipped into an alternate reality and you’re the only one who realizes it.” She laughed. “Maybe so.”

4. I sometimes have moments of hope these days—and that scares me. So much is beyond my control. I can concentrate only on the here and now. I have to let go of the rest. Whenever I get caught up in anger or frustration or trying to will my will in situations where my will has no effect, I tell myself, “You haven’t got time for this. Let it go. Save your energy for fights you can win.” This is a very difficult lesson to learn, not just for me, but it’s one the Universe has been trying to teach me for many long years: live this moment, and this moment, and this moment, and this . . .

5. My creative life is stretching taut over my bones, but it’s swimming in my blood. I thought it was dead for a time, but it isn’t dead. It is not dead.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

In the evenings, I pause in my chores to take the cat on a supervised trip into the back yard. She’s proven time and again she can’t be trusted not to jump over the wall and go walkabouts—which, we suspect, is how she got lost from her previous owners. She does so love the back yard. She’s quite insistent on going out there, fussing and whining until I relent.

I always relent, because my dirty little secret is that I go out there as much for myself as her. Min makes a great excuse. I love to to feel the wind in my face, listen to the birds, watch the gloaming slowly overtake the leaves of trees and plants, golden and syrup-rich. It’s serene, one of the few things in my life right now that fills me up rather than takes away.

I got up and drew close. There was a face, and a tiny arm, a small ceramic figurine lodged into the ground. When I pulled her out I saw she was a little fairy maiden, sitting on a leaf, resting one elbow on a thimble while the other, the one she’d been swimming with, rested on air where she’d broken off something. She had quite an Alice in Wonderland quality to her face, but I don’t recall ever owning a piece of garden ceramic with such a whimsical girl. I’d swear she hadn’t been there when I moved the brick. My hand was right there two days ago, but I didn’t remember seeing her. Clearly, she’d nestled amongst the moss a while because she was partly embedded in the soil, leaving a hollow when I pulled her free. The moss had surrounded her as it had the brick. Perhaps I’d been too distracted at the time and hadn’t noticed her, or…

I looked up at the faces hanging on the garden wall. Flora and Ivy smiled serenely back at me. Green Man looked grumpy, as always, but I wouldn’t absolutely swear there wasn’t a twinkle in his eyes. Probably the gloaming. Magic things always happen in the heavy, rich light of twilight.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

From the quote file:

"The world is made less of nouns than of verbs. It doesn't consist merely in objects and things; it is filled with useful, playful, and intriguing opportunities."

—James Hillman, The Soul's Code

Lately my life has certainly had a high verb count. Things are calmer this week, an eye in the storm. A hurry up and wait week.

Some days, though, my verbs are quite minimal: eat, sleep, read, watch—and a few other basic body verbs that really have no place in a public blog. Concentrated periods of inactivism are just as important as activism. Some days I have the need for serious sloth because most days, especially during the week, it feels like I'm burning the candle at both ends, even when I'm not crashing at work, doing rewrites, moving offices, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

Maybe that's an artist thing? No matter what art you're doing, even if you consider it a craft, I think artists have a tendency to never truly be inactive. The mind is always churning. Even when we're asleep, even when we're holding conversations on other topics, below the surface that other channel is working—like a vast aquifer, never still, always pushing slowly and infinitely towards the sea.

Maybe that's a me thing? I've talked to other artists/craftists, though, who have a similar duality, a feeling of things always pushing, of things moving even when we want them to stop, of ideas swimming and brewing and fermenting. I guess that's the need thing, the need to do art, the can't-live-without-it thing. In some ways it makes us (me) crazy, in other ways it makes us (me) sane.

I have an acquaintance who has a schizophrenic brother. She loves drawing parallels between his world and mine. False parallels, I hasten to add. She's fascinated by my process and the fact that characters are always alive in some part of my brain and that they take on a certain reality to me. Although unlike her brother, I can tell the difference between the things I create and consensus reality. Most days. :-) She doesn't understand the creative process, or at least not this deep need to do creative things. She thinks creativity is something you discover one day, like someone shows you how to sew and suddenly your hands know how to make astonishing quilts as if by magic. She laments not being creative and thinks that the reason she's not is that she's just never found the thing that will unlock her creativity. Maybe she's right, but from where I'm sitting, I think she's got it backwards. The creativity comes first, the vehicle for its expression comes second. Creativity is an activist process, not a passive one. It doesn't wait to be discovered. It's intrinsic and ongoing, insist, persistent—a good stopping off point on the road to the loony bin.

I don't think creative people are better human beings then other folks. Some of the most miserable, messed up people I know are highly creative; also some of the best people I know. Which is by way of saying that quality of personality, moral character, all that stuff, are separate issues. Creativity is just another aspect of being human.

Although it does feel like a divine fire sometimes when your brain is burning and your hand can't get the ideas down fast enough. I don't know what it is, frankly. But I do know certain aspects of it quite well: creativity is mostly about letting go and allowing, of getting out of the way and letting it flow through, about not second guessing and trying to control until the thing is well and truly outside of you and you can then enforce all the damned control and second-guessing your left brain is itching for. It's that flow that I live for, though. It's that great, non-judging activist plunge into the void that makes everything else worthwhile.

So, in that sense, maybe my acquaintance is right: she's never found the thing that allows her to let go of control and give herself permission. Maybe she doesn't lack creativity (because the egalitarian in me says everyone has some creative spark). Maybe she just can't let go. I don't know. I operate on faith and instinct. Analysis is always secondary, always a rewrite.

Current Mood: philosomophical
Current Music: "Working On A Chain Gang" by Sam Cooke

If you haven't already, and get a chance to, I recommend you read the Jeffrey Ford interview in the July 2004 issue of Locus. It'll be posted here:

http://www.locusmag.com/2004/Issues/07Ford.html

Shortly, according to the web site.

Jeffrey Ford is a particular favorite of mine, and what I particularly liked about this interview was how hauntingly familiar some of his process is. I'm light years away from being in Mr. Ford's class—quite possibly will never get there—but it's always a comfort when I can look at someone successful and recognize some, or a lot, of my crazy technique in their way of doing things. I guess it means I'm not totally crazy. Or if I am, there are other crazy people out there who've made a go of it.

Other than the egocentric stuff, I also liked what he had to say about genre vs. literary writing. "Works laboring under either of these artificial labels can be great or lousy. Basically, I don't have time for these arguments and I just have to pay attention to the work...."

I've always thought Jeffrey Ford was one of the more literary guys in the field, one of those pushing the boundaries out beyond the ghetto. He says, and I agree, that this is a liberating time for sff. The boundaries are being expanded. Or, at the very least, smudged so that it's difficult to tell where they lie. This is a good thing. This is a healthy thing.

He also makes the point that in the past, phenomenal experience and scientific projection were regarded as part of human experience, something to be included in serious works of literary art. Ask Mary Shelley, ask Shakespeare, Plato, Milton. Realism is a recent development in the history of writing. And I think, whether we are skeptics or believers, we can't deny that aspect of our humanity which exists in dreams, in the subconscious, in the phenomenal world of pure imagination. All of that messy and contradictory and emotional stuff makes us human. They're part of our animal natures, sure, filtered through the layers of our brain from the reptilian stem to the human-making frontal lobes, but they can't be separated out or denied. We may be technically advanced, but we're techno savages beneath our pinstripes—monkeys with gizmos.

SFF, and the best literary writers, recognize this, I think. We are more than the sum of our mechanistic parts and our gadgets.

Ford quotes his teacher, John Gardner, about writing being "a vivid and continuous dream." Ford goes on to say that unlike dreams, "with writing it's not something that ends in a few minutes; it carries on through the length of a story or book....you see the story in your head and then basically try to record what you see. You don't comment on it, and you almost fall into a trance. If you do it well, it allows you to get in touch with things that make the story work that you're not even conscious of." He tells his writing students that less control will get them in touch with what the story is really about.

Sure, I know so-called "organized" writers (vs. us messy organic types) will probably disagree. But...

Yeah, for people like me it's about haunting the boundaries of reason and pushing through the paper wall that separates us from...the other. That may be me talking, not Jeffrey Ford, but he definitely put me in the zone to think about this stuff.

Writing isn't a mechanical process—just like life isn't. Writing is an experience, a search after meaning, a way of trying to make sense out of things that may be contradictory or beyond our previous experience. It's a process of reconciling irreconcilable differences, of holding more than one truth inside your head at a time, of stretching beyond your level of understanding or emotional maturity. It's about taking risks and pushing the envelope, even if the envelope is only the one inside your own soul. Writing is standing on the edge of a precipice and not being afraid to see if you can fly. It's also about jumping and falling on your face. But hey, it wouldn't be any fun if there wasn't the risk of catastrophic failure, now would it?

Current Mood: flighty
Current Music: "Falling Down" by Tom Waits

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Echoes in a Hollow Space

I'm here because I'm here because I'm here

Entries tagged with control

Trauma

Swimming

Ring

I know not where she came from

The illusion of control

Letting go

Keeping score

Keeping score

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I know not where she came from

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Haunting Boundaries

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