NaNoWriMo

This is going to be my novel. I am writing for the National Novel Writing Month project. Goal: 50,000 words by Nov 30. Here we go.

y ideas and stuff.

One theory to explain the Stockholm syndrome is cognitive dissonance. Specifically, people don't like being unhappy for long periods of time, but when people are kidnapped for a long period of time, they will be unhappy for that time, unless they come to love their captors. Thus, to resolve the cognitive dissonance, the victim may begin to identify with the captors.^[4]

The above is a thought -- What I am thinking about (and have been all of my life) is how the culture (family, religion, ethnicity, etc) you were born into is both a cradle, a haven and a prison.

In my case, the family I was raised in was also part of an odd little sect, Plymouth Brethren. SO there was a lot of family and a lot of believing going on. A lot of "This is how WE do it" and "This is what WE believe about that."

For part of my life I embraced the beliefs AND the sect. For part of my life I continued to embrace the beliefs (fundamental Christianity) but NOT the sect. Then I shifted to Liberal Christian Theology, then became a secular humanist/agnostic -- which is where I am today.

Today's post is essentially a prefatory essay. I am thinking about culture as prison and also thinking about who, exactly, the captors are. As I see it, my captors were/are my parents, my idea of God/Jesus, the Bible and Christianity, various church and para-church organizations and to a lesser extent, my relatives. But beside my parents, I think that IDEAS were the primary captors.

The line in the quote above (wikipedia, of course) "people don't like being unhappy for long periods of time, but when people are kidnapped for a long period of time, they will be unhappy for that time, unless they come to love their captors." struck a chord with me. Of course! People hate being unhappy, so will find a way to BE happy. With a family religion it's even easier, because, presumably, the captive (child) already loves the captors. 

This is, however, all a distraction (this essay, I mean). If I am going to write about my captivity and my attempted escapes (I do not consider myself entirely free yet -- I have a great deal of cognitive dissonance daily), I should get to that, via the novel.

Born in Captivity

It was an exciting day at Kindergarten. It was the first school day after Packy the elephant had been born in the Portland Zoo.  All year we had been singing "Jumbo the Elephant" during music, but today. Mrs. Wilkins changed the words! This was revelatory for me. I did not know that it was possible to change the words of a song or that it was permissible. Apparently it was! So we sang,

Packy the elephant

Packy the elephant

You live in the Portland Zoo

Packy the elephant

Packy the elephant

It's fun to look at you.

Packy was the first elephant born in the western hemisphere in more than 40 years. Portland's zoo was famous! 

I walked home from Kindergarten that April day in 1962, with my big brother. I told him about the new words to the song. He said, "Jumbo the Elephant is the real song. You are singing pretend words."

I decided I would not tell my parents about the song. If Tim thought it was a mistake, then I was sure they would not approve.

When we got home, I went upstairs and changed out of my school clothes into play clothes. I went outside to see if Susie Hansen could play. We walked along the curb together -- one foot on the curb, the other splashing in the April puddles. "Are you saved?" I asked her. "Saved from what?" she said, puzzled. I dropped the subject. I did not know the answer to her question. I thought everyone knew if they were saved or not. I knew Susie went to Blessed Sacrament school, and my parents had always told me they believed in God, but they were Catholics. I knew her mom and dad smoked, and her mom wore "worldly" make up and jewelry -- but what did believing in God mean if she didn't know if she was "saved" or not?

Her question had me worried, though. She didn't know about being saved and I didn't know what I was supposed to be saved from. I made sure to pay attention the next Sunday in Aunt Shirley's Sunday School class.

As it turned out, the flannel graph story was about Paul and Silas in the jail. I liked the flannel board, and I got to help put the people on it. This story had the jail before the earthquake and the jail (rubble) after the earthquake. I thought it was a little silly that Paul and Silas didn't just walk out when the walls were no longer there. But -- the jailer, who was afraid he would lose his job when all the prisoners left, asked Paul and Silas, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" and they told him, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved..." 

I still hadn't heard from WHAT, though. But then Aunt Shirley asked, "Why did Jesus die on the cross?" and I remembered (partly) -- "To save our sins!" I said. Tim rolled his eyes and corrected me: "To save us FROM our sins."

"That's right!" said Aunt Shirley, as I tucked my head down trying to hide my red face. He died on the cross to save us from our sins -- to save our souls so we can go to heaven."

OK. Now I had the answer to Susie's question. And now that I heard it, and was paying attention, I knew, of course, that I had heard about a thousand times before. But I did not like the pictures in my mind when I heard those words: "soul" and "heaven". My imagined soul was a wispy, ghosty, sheer-curtainy thing, sort of in a person shape. I don't know where I got the image first (maybe from 'The Family Circus' cartoons). But it was the default image whenever the word was mentioned. It was not interesting. Even though I knew we would get new bodies in heaven, the new bodies looked like more substantial souls. All sort of the same. 

And heaven -- the golden streets and the gates, and the many mansions and the line from a Sunday School song: "Around the throne of God in heaven will many children sing..." gave me the idea that heaven was a hard-surfaced, marbly, metallic, shiny place where children had to stand and sing at God on his throne for eternity. Although sometimes we would be kneeling (but on palace floors or golden surfaces?). I had heard that we would not need to eat or sleep, and that really, all we would want to do would be to sing God's praises all the time. I couldn't quite make it work for me. I loved to eat, and I loved to be comfy, and while I liked music, I did not like the kind of music we had at meeting.

"Meeting" is what we called our church. The Plymouth Brethren, if known for anything, are known for splitting hairs, mincing words and divisions. "Church" meant the whole universal church -- the people -- the Body of Christ. It was not a building, and we did not belong to a church -- we belonged to Jesus. We went to a "meeting room" and we gathered with the "assembly" -- with "the saints gathered to His name in Portland" to be exact. And we were told by visiting preachers and the older brethren that if people asked us where we went to church, we should correct them and make sure they understood all this. It was a bit much for me, as a 5-year-old, to take on. But I always felt a little guilty when someone asked me to do something on Sunday, or why I couldn't join Brownies or Bluebirds, and I had to tell them because of my "church". I knew I shouldn't use that word, but I was also shy, and not a proper apologist for my faith yet. 

Susie and I never talked about religion again. Even though I felt more able to answer her "saved from what" question, I didn't feel like bringing it up again. The whole exchange had made me feel very uncomfortable and inept. Being playmates was great, and I liked her -- I decided to trust God to make sure she didn't end up burning in hell.

I, however, was not convinced that I was safe from the lake of fire. I "believed" on the Lord Jesus Christ, but I thought maybe there was something else I needed to do to get saved.

One night before bed, Mom told us how she got saved. She lived in Hoquiam, and so did many of her relatives: aunts, uncles, cousins, grandfather. In fact, Grandpa and some of the uncles lived with them. She came home from school one day and no one was at home. She walked around the block to Uncle Vernie's house, and no one was there, either, By the time she got to Uncle Alden and Aunt Kay's similarly deserted house, she was sure the Lord had come and taken his people home to heaven and she had been left behind! She knelt on their front porch and confessed her sins and asked Jesus into her heart -- to save her.

That story shook me up. I went and knelt behind the kitchen door (I was a private, shy person) and prayed that same prayer and felt safe. I was saved!

The (so far imaginary) Reinvention Project

So summer is about over, and I did not ever plant anything, and I did not do any art.

What did I do? I watched a lot of TV, saw some movies, went to the beach and floated down a river.

Oh. I also went to work.

I had planned to go on an individual retreat to a monastery out in the islands -- to sort of kick off the reinvention of self. But the fucking nuns who run it canceled on me. I probably shouldn't say "fucking nuns" but it does point out the dire need for self-reinvention. It also gives me scapegoats for the lack of reinvention. Or scapenuns. I think they have goats, though.

Anyway, don't worry, because I am still percolating. I have watched a bunch of motivational speakers on PBS and also have looked at weight-loss websites, and even donated some money to Kiva, where you make micro-loans to folks in developing countries. So, you know -- it's a start.

I thought of making this blog a riff on the Julie and Julia conceit -- and maybe cook my way through the Better Homes and Gardens or Betty Crocker cookbook from, like, 1960 or something. It would be so wasteful, though, and no one would want to eat a Crown Roast of Spam, or a "pineapple" made of liver pate and glazed with gelatin. But it was a thought.

I could also make it about my children, but I am trying to get a life apart from them. But you should know that they are remarkable. Well, remarkably good to me, anyway. Which is all that counts.

I guess you can see that I am sort of floundering as a single, empty-nest 50-something woman. But I am not going to keep floundering. Is it "floundering" or "foundering"? Now I will have to look that up. One sec.

"People often confuse the verbs founder and flounder. Founder comes from a Latin word meaning “bottom” (as in foundation) and originally referred to knocking enemies down; people now use it also to mean “to fail utterly, collapse”: The business started well but foundered. Flounder means “to move clumsily, thrash about” and hence “to proceed in confusion.” Thus if John is foundering in Chemistry 1, he had better drop the course; if he is floundering, he may yet pull through."

OK -- I will stick with "floundering" because I am not quite ready to drop the course. Of life. 

I do not have a clear, well-thought-out plan. I think I might have to go sifting through my past (gah!) to look for clues about what I should do.

While THAT percolates, I will tell you about floating down the river.

I went to Spokane (well, a place near Spokane) for a friend's 60th birthday. This friend was in a book club I was in for about 16 years or so. So several of us went over to Spokane (where she moved to some time ago) to camp (not a thing I do) and celebrate.

She recently found out her husband of 33 years had been having an affair for the past few years.  We sort of assumed, that being the case, he wouldn't be at her birthday camp out. But there he was -- pretending he was sex on a stick (if sex looks like a skinny, stringy-haired, snaggle-toothed, bald, hairy-eared, hairy-nostrilled old man) and nothing was amiss.

We got permission from our birthday girl to be as mean as we wanted to Mr. Stick.

So the Main Event was to float down the Little Spokane River on individual flotation devices such as tiny rubber rafts, tubes, etc. Birthday Girls told us it would take about 3 hours. 

Five and a half hours later . . . yeah. It was nice for the first hour, and then I hated it. My friend Joni and I floated together for a lot of the time, and it was a slow, shallow river -- trickle -- whatever. We passed some of the time by thinking of all the ways that river was like life. We pretty much exhausted the river metaphor, but it boiled down to the fact that once you're in it, you just have to stay in it until the take-out point. At the beginning it's nice and lovely and novel -- then it seems like it's just more of the same damned thing over and over and you pretty much hate it.

Anyway, Mr. Stick kept floating up to us and trying to be all jokey and friendly but we were having none of it. Finally Joni said, "If you don't shut up, I'm going to shove this paddle up your ass." Then he left us alone.

By the end, I had a headache and was nauseated -- probably from twirling around and around and being in 100 degrees all day. 

It did make me remember though, that when I was a teenager, I loved being outdoors and thought I wanted to have a job in the out of doors. In fact, I had applied to Prescott College -- known at the time as "Kayak College" -- and now I can't remember why I wanted to do that.

I have lost touch almost entirely with the person who wanted to work outdoors.

I will put that on my list of things to explore in the reinvention project.

I will also make a pledge to write weekly.

Master Gardeners Lack Social Skills

Oh Gosh. I am not a new person as promised in the last episode. I did NOT get plants OR seeds (although I DID get a plastic tray for the windowsill to put plants in). I went to the Farmer's Market and asked the "Master Gardeners" free gardening advice booth-dwellers about herb gardening and such indoors. They looked at me in a WHOLLY indifferent way that seemed to say, "YOU are not a plant. I do not know how to communicate with you."

I pushed the issue a little (because their sign said they were there to help solve gardening problems and answer questions. Maybe they didn't know what their sign said.)  So I asked, "What do you think about some herbs -- like basil, thyme, chives?" and they said, "Well, I guess you could do that." As if to say, "That is something I am not interested in, so I cannot pull up enough imagination, knowledge, empathy, or WORDS to make up a useful reply." Eventually I toddled off and they did not seem to notice (because I was not a plant).

So then I felt discouraged because although I think gardening might make me into a different person, I might become one of THOSE people, and that is not a thing to be desired.

I was also going to look into getting art supplies, but I just didn't and I can't remember why now -- it's probably because I don't go more than walking distance from my house on weekends, and also because I ran out of money.

So I am still me, and not a gardener or working artist. But I feel pretty happy about being able to talk to people and to appreciate art. I am also still thinking about getting some supplies. But the Master Gardener folks pretty much turned me against trying to grow herbs forever.

My apartment is all topsy-turvy because Nelson came home from college with all her gear from her dorm. I need to clean out my closet and make some more room. Maybe this week I will become someone who cleans. That would also be novel and unlike myself. There are endless possibilities I tell ya.

Rude waiter, planting and painting

We went to lunch for Mark's 50th birthday -- about 15 of us. We had made a reservation, but our waiter acted like we were an affront to his existence. He dashed and panted and scowled and made rude comments: "I suppose you all want separate checks." (all Eeyoreish). It took more than an hour to get food, and by then (since it was a work day) we mostly had to get back to the office. So we asked for boxes (before we started eating, some of us). Angry waiter: "Oh, sure, I'll just stop everything and go get you a box!" WOW.

I didn't even get my salad before I had to leave, then he tried to make Julie pay for it. She got all bossy on him -- apparently -- and he backed down. 

I guess I see the hardships in his life -- having to do separate checks for a large group -- sure -- no fun. But he IS a waiter and part of the contract he makes with us is to be kind of pleasant, right?

I tried to work up some sympathy, empathy, pity -- but he made it hard.

Now I am having a four-day weekend and I am going to look around for something to do other than my usual: Coffee, paper, books, one or two small household tasks --

I think I should do something uncharacteristic. I might plant something or go get some art supplies. I have been thinking about both of those things for a while.

My apartment is so light, and there's the unused sun room that might be good for an art studio. The dining room window would be fine for an indoor herb garden, maybe? I don't know enough about growing anything to even say that, but I am thinking about learning.

Yeah -- Maybe both! Growing things and painting things! I will be a different person at the end of the weekend!