Hah!

The Gratitude Thing

Schmutzie is doing a gratitude thing called 'grace in small things'.

I realized when I was reading her cool post showing how attentive she is of the world around her that I would find some way around gratitude. I know I could use a gratitude practice to complain. I'm just that inventive.

In my comment, I said that I would say things like "I'm just so grateful that all hand lotion doesn't smell as bad as this hand lotion I have on right now."

I am filled with gratitude for this day where I am freezing my ass off because tomorrow I know it's probably going to be fucking colder even.

Gratitude requires a state of mind. I think it's hard to simply command gratitude in the guilty American: 'be grateful damnit people are starving!' mode.

We often use that, in fact, to subtly say 'shut the fuck up' to all the people who are inflicting their pain upon us, even if it is little pain.

I do think that it might do something to make us attentive to the world around us and gratitude would come, eventually, with the effort to be grateful (although my effort would not be as well-written as Schmutzie's).

Gratitude toward inanimate objects is better than forcing gratitude toward people. There is danger in gratitude as well as beauty but we can make sure gratitude doesn't lower our moral standards, make us accept injustice from others just in case they help us a little bit.

Gratitude could make us less obnoxiously privileged.

Apropos of nothing I tried to give a homeless man a big container of gourmet mushroom soup and he didn't want it.

But I'm glad he was honest! No point pretending gratitude for mushroom soup if you don't like mushrooms!And then I was grateful that he didn't take it because that mean I could eat it. And I was hungry. Thank you, homeless man.

One of the things that makes me among the more grateful people is that I live in a constant state of terror that something horrible will happen to those I love. (God forbid. Just typing that sentence freaks me out.) Thus, every day I have something to be grateful for: That the horrible thing I expect didn't happen.

In fact, I am constantly expecting awful, awful things to happen or assuming that people hate me, etc.

So I really do enjoy life in a rather heightened way because, for example, I just feel so elated when it turns out the person I thought hated me actually doesn't hate me.

And this constant dread I live with sure keeps things exciting!

At times, I wonder if I will survive this constant torment that wears away at me and that itself gives me a feeling like I'm beating the odds somehow just by making it through one more day.  What a miracle is life.

My gratitude list would boringly consist of one thing every day which is: My daughter, my daughter, my daughter. My daughter is a constant miracle and a revelation. My gratitude for her is limitless.

She's a surprise. I didn't have some big plan to have a daughter. I was not even capable of making big plans like that. (Some people do make highly specific future plans of this type, I realized later. I find that so strange.)

For many years I have been very charmed by the crazy exuberance of girls from the age of 9-14. So sometimes it seems fated that I should have a daughter--like I'm just the kind of person who is fully able to appreciate this:

Holy Fuck the Secret of Happiness You All!

Aaaaannnddd the secret of happiness is:

Be entirely resistant to the truth, the facts

Make up your own reality!

A happy, cool reality in which you are bomb and no matter how you fuck up, it's all good.

Phil Gramm. Phil Gramm knows.

Like, if I say the wrong thing in a conversation that might be construed as insensitive I cringe for hours.

I spend my life thinking shit like "Am I good at my job? Huh? Am I? Huh?"

And then thinking "Nooooooooooo...."

This (repeat experience for every single kind of indicator of human worth one can have) has made it hard to give up booze recently (again).

But then. Phil Gramm!

“Some people look at subprime lending and see evil. I look at subprime lending and I see the American dream in action,” he said. “My mother lived it as a result of a finance company making a mortgage loan that a bank would not make.”

Fuuuuccckk.

And people talk about the Dalai Lama!

This is Buddhistic, y'all. Do you see think Phil Gramm is a Boddhisatva of some kind, sent to earth, to show us that the reality we think we know is all maya, samsara, the great illusion?

I think so, maybe.

Now, how do you do that again?

Politics Is Sordid

I had this scary thought.

In a recent column, Paul Krugman described the current administration as 'monsters.'

The scary thought is: 'No, they are not monsters. They are human. In most of the crucial ways, they are just like you and me.'

As are all the evil people.

I always hear this thing in my head when I reassure my daughter that there are no monsters, monsters are just imaginary. I hear 'but then there are the humans.'

I remember when I first realized that it was the people you have to worry about. Maybe that's what monsters are for: To distract us from worrying about the people.

This Is Sordid, In An Odd Way

Something very odd has happened to me. I've started to dislike British people. I mean, really dislike them. The men, in particular. Oxbridge people tend to be the only British people I meet so it might only be people who to go to Cambridge or Oxford. Not all people who go to Oxford.

The only way people would ever understand this is if they became very closely acquainted with the British. You have to get to know them well to see what is so objectionable.  From a distance, they look quite harmless. Up close, it's grisly.

This is bad, I know it's bad. But I can't be the only one, can I?

I think I'm the only one.

We Need a Word For...

So here's another thing we need a word for.

What do we call it when your mind is on something and then something happens to confirm the thing that your mind is on.

I'm thinking specifically about interpretations of the world. For example, you are thinking about how no one can be trusted and two hours later, you discover someone has betrayed you.

Or you are fearing poverty and you go to the mailbox and there is a collection notice, waiting for you.

I make these negative because these sorts of confirmations tend to be negative, if you are me. But they also might be positive.

Simply: A word for when the world confirms your momentary attitude about it.

I Am Better Than What I Am

This is the thing. You can't say you are better than what or who you are. Only that you are better than what or who you appear.

I'm having one of those cringey weeks of torment. Where I can't bear to be who I am but I have this tiny sliver of hope that this, somehow, isn't who I am.

I complain alot I know. But I did have these little torments, like the miscarriages and the many fertility treatments which drove me over the edge or the total FAIL of it all. Without some kind of miracle.

Combined with the financial insolvency that makes adoption impossible.

I think what was funny was that, as I was having this exact cringey thought--how do I defend what I am, that I'm not this awful me--, I found that a blogger whose writing I quite like had deleted all my comments. Which can only mean one thing (I think): I upset this person. I said something insulting. That seems so incredible to me but it must be true. It's one of those internet things, I think, where the written words are not interpretable as spoken words are. Since honest to Pete, I'm so rarely mean. It can't be that I was mean. Or deeply insensitive. Or cruel. I must have been more like, 'free and easy'--I gave an opinion-- but in a way that was somehow upsetting.

Eesh. I feel guilty, not hurt. I'm so down and--in my moment of projection here, on this unsuspecting person--I can only imagine that she must be sensitive, very sensitive. So sensitive=down and that means I kicked someone when she was down. I kicked a down person, a nice unsuspecting person who was down.

Somehow. I'm not sure how I kicked her and what did the kicking. But I did.

Apologizing would therefore be odd. And also magnify the mistake, whatever it was, since I'd be reminding her of something I said that upset her and I don't want to do that.

I'm more and less alert at various times to the fact I suck and the one consolation I've got is that, overall, I'm kind or try to be kind.

But I wasn't kind somehow. And I don't even know how. Since I can't imagine being unkind to this person. Why would I be? I like this person. I identified with some things she wrote. I have not the slightest tinge of bitterness toward her but only wish her well in that vague internet way one does. (That safe and empty internet way. But it still counts, a little?)

There ARE people I want to be unkind to. Particularly when I'm jacked up on one crazy cancer-causing hormone after another in the doomed effort to have a baby. Some stranger was chewing loudly in the library  and I could almost see myself throwing a book at his head. Or even saying 'stop chewing!' But I would never do that. That is, in real life, if I knew something would hurt someone's feelings I would refrain from saying it.

In any case, I was thinking about my many efforts to be kind to people even though I am not necessarily inclined to do so (the library doesn't count--that was simple self restraint) and realizing that I always score myself lower because the kindness isn't always accompanied by a feeling of comradery or sympathy but is sometimes simply effort.

Then I was thinking: Well, is this actually so bad? How much control do I have over such feelings?  Must every kind action be accompanied by the emotions that are supposed to go with kindness?  Or is it alright if I just remember what kindness feels like and then replicate it from my currently dead husk of a self? 

It isn't fake kindness. It isn't that I wish them ill and I conceal this fact. It is that I simply do not want to speak to anyone, interact with anyone, or have anyone interact with me. With the exception of my daughter and most of the time, my husband.  So I'm not thinking the person I am kind to (a student or some old lady on the bus. etc.) is an actual pain in the ass by virtue of their nature. But that they are a pain in my ass because I want to live in a cabin all alone in the woods where no one can ever, ever, ever speak to me or bother me ever again. And this is my own idiosyncracy, not their failing.

Hm. I hate the internet but it might be the internet is made for people like me since I would otherwise avoid social ties even more than I do.

However, I guess I am not kind on the internet. And that sucks.