All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
Tonight, on Friday the 13th, at 8:20 p.m., will be Manhattanhenge — that magic day (well, two different days each year) when the sun sets in alignment with the Manhattan street grid.
The forecast is for scattered thunderstorms, but I’m hoping we get a clear view.
I mean, the results of this color quiz aren’t perfect or anything — my situation is changing rapidly, and these descriptions often fit better for where I was three weeks ago, or five months ago — but they hit on a lot nevertheless. And not wholly by being nebulous.
Your Existing Situation
Having difficulty in standing up to the demands imposed on him. Finds a great effort is involved and wishes to have the situation eased.
Your Stress Sources
An existing situation or relationship is unsatisfactory, but he feels unable to change it to bring about the sense of belonging which he needs. Unwilling to expose his vulnerability, he therefore continues to resist this state of affairs, but feels dependent on the attachment. This not only depresses him, but makes him irritable and impatient, producing considerable restlessness and the urge to get away from the situation, either actually or, at least, mentally. Ability to concentrate may suffer.
Your Restrained Characteristics
Trying to calm down and unwind after a period of over-agitation which has left him listless and devoid of energy. In need of peace and quiet; becomes irritable if this is denied him.
Clings to his belief that his hopes and ideas are realistic, but needs encouragement and reassurance. Applies very exacting standards to his choice of a partner and wants guarantees against loss or disappointment.
Circumstances are such that he feels forced to compromise for the time being if he is to avoid being cut off from affection or from full participation.
Your Desired Objective
Wishes to find his stimulation in a voluptuous atmosphere of sensuous luxury.
Your Actual Problem
Anxiety and a restless dissatisfaction, either with circumstances or with unfulfilled emotional requirements, have produced considerable stress. He tries to escape into an idealized atmosphere of sympathy and understanding, or into a substitute environment of estheticism and beauty.
Meme is lifted from Pagan Mom, who characterized it as “annoyingly accurate” and is not wrong.
I have been afraid of being alone for a long time. When I was very small, I surrounded myself with stuffed animals when it was time for bed, but sometimes they weren’t enough. Then I would get up and go to my parents, who, understandably, tried to get me back to bed. When I’d gotten up one too many times, my mother would send me back to my room and tell me not to come out again for 15 minutes.
This was unfair, I felt, for two reasons. First, I didn’t have a clock in my room, and even if I did, I couldn’t read it. But second, and far more vexing, was the fact that if a burglar were to come, he would have to come within some 15-minute period, so how could my mother be sure it wasn’t this 15 minutes? How would she like it if a burglar came and instead of coming out to get help, I stayed put until he snatched me away?
I have no idea how I came to fear burglars specifically. Our subdivision had had exactly one burglar in its entire history, and he had turned 18 and been arrested and sent away by the time I was old enough for two-syllable words. People left their doors unlocked and still do. But I was afraid a burglar would come, see the fire-department-issued “C” sticker on my windown (for Child’s Room) and decide to break in on the weakest member of the family.
This fear was connected to McDonald’s. Specifically, I had a fear of the Hamburglar and his hamburger-shaped head. The privet outside my window cast a shadow in that awful shape against the curtain, and it filled me with dread.
Except it turns out the Hamburglar never had a hamburger head. All these years, I’d conflated the Hamburglar with Mayor McCheese, putting the head of the latter on the body of the former.
Somehow this seems important. How many of my other childhood fears, still buried deep and leeching their toxins into the soil of my unconscious, are just as nonsensical? To what extent is every hurt and disaster in my life the product of a misapprehension?
As Zen Master Seung Sahn put it, “Only don’t know.”
Golden Age (YouTube) | Paper Tiger (YouTube) | Guess I’m Doin’ Fine (YouTube) | Lonesome Tears (YouTube) | Lost Cause (YouTube) | It’s All in Your Mind (YouTube) | Round the Bend (YouTube) | Sunday Sun (YouTube) | Little One (YouTube) by Beck (Sea Change)
In 2002, while Jenny and I were in Nepal, Beck came out with Sea Change, a beautiful album about the aftermath of a broken heart. Jenny and I were already engaged by then, and I remember thinking that this particular record would always remain a little distant from me — that the subject matter wasn’t something I’d ever be going through again.
People keep asking me how I’m doing. I don’t know how to answer, but the lyrics to “Guess I’m Doin’ Fine” keep running through my head. The lyrics to the whole record, really.
I know they’re asking about the divorce. I’m never sure whether they want to hear the despair or the hope — there is hope too — or just want me to say something cursory. And it’s nearly impossible to say how I’ve been, or how I will be, because it keeps changing.
What’s happening now in my life is tremendously painful and disorienting. Things I thought I understood about myself, about Jenny, about my life, turn out to be completely wrong. Plans and certainties are crumbling away. The ground has given out beneath me, and I don’t know at all where I stand.
The hardest and most baffling thing right now is the discovery of how little Jenny and I seem to have known each other. We spent six years as a couple and lived together even longer, yet we were able to misunderstand each other almost totally as we struggled to save our marriage. And I know there were parts of me that Jenny never saw or guessed at, because it destroyed our marriage when I revealed them.
Right now, the idea of ever trusting anyone so deeply seems impossible. How could we have been so wrong? So blind? So blind to our blindness? How will I ever be sure of anyone else?
Even so, I know that I will almost certainly trust again. Life goes on — when I first started telling people about the divorce, they kept reassuring me that it wouldn’t kill me, as if this were good news — and eventually pain recedes.
My hope — I did mention that there was hope — is that I can continue in my process of recovery to become a person with integrity and without secrets. It’s the secrets that have brought me to this pass — the hidden parts in myself, and the way they resonated with the hidden parts in Jenny — and so I need to reach a point of fundamental honesty with myself. That will take a lot of work and involve facing many things I haven’t ever been willing to face, loneliness not least among them.
There are also more mundane hopes — for a new job, for a new home, for new friends and a new future. They will come in time. Sometimes these hopes buoy me up and make me feel almost good. Then there’s also a lot of anxiety about all the logistical steps I have to take. And there are moments when I’m able to turn my life over to the care of God, feeling relief in letting go and trusting the universe to take me where it will.
For the most part, though, what I feel is a deep ache, just on the edge of weeping.
Sorrow. I feel sorrow.
Why is there suffering? Not what causes it, but why is the universe constituted in such a way that these causes manifest? Why do we live in a universe in which our Buddha natures are concealed?
If we all have Buddha nature and enlightenment is available to anyone, why have so few people achieved it?
If samsara has existed for infinite time and enlightenment is available to all sentient beings, why are not all sentient beings already enlightened?
United Abominations (YouTube) by Megadeth (United Abominations)
Is it worth arguing with fools? I don’t mean people who are genuinely stupid, but those who are wedded to some wrongheaded ideology or who have been led astray by some sort of faulty reasoning?
Obviously it depends on the situation, but there’s something to be said for countering even the most obviously specious arguments of those who advocate dangerous politics from any sort of public platform.
Alas, this category includes Dave Mustaine, the leader of Megadeth, who is now 46 years old and should know better. Granted, Mustaine was never exactly a genius. He made the politics of a young James Hetfield look positively insightful. Still, what is charmingly antisocial stupidity at 25 is just depressing at 46. Mustaine is no longer angry youth; now he’s your drunken uncle, ranting at someone’s birthday about the Trilateral Commission and JFK.
Mustaine’s latest album (Megadeth has always been a solo project) is entitled United Abominations, and the cover depicts the UN Headquarters under military attack. The title track is an anti-UN screed that seems to blame the organization for all that’s wrong in the world. It seems too stupid to take seriously, but I guess it’s good that UN Dispatch, a blog on the UN, has posted a point-by-point takedown of this very silly song. If you’re concerned to know exactly how and why Mustaine is being a schmuck, well, now you can. (Thanks, Daniel!)
Yesterday, as I stepped out of my office, I ran into Lt. Col. Kim, our military attaché. “Happy birthday!” he said, flashing a grin.
“What do you mean?” I asked — my birthday, after all, isn’t until September 8. Then I caught on: “Oh, for my country. Yes, thank you!”
Another Fourth of July story: Allen and I often go to lunch together at the UN cafeteria. Yesterday we ran into First Secretary Lim Jung-taek, who joined us and at some point asked for verification that Macy’s was really sponsoring the fireworks today. “In my country, the government would pay for such thing,” he said. I think that’s probably true in most countries, and as far as I can tell, it’s true for our fireworks on the National Mall in Washington, DC. But here in New York, it’s always Macy’s, and other municipalities, it’s other sponsors (Liberty Mutual in Boston, Sunoco in Philadelphia, ClearChannel in San Francisco; but I couldn’t find a sponsor for Chicago, interestingly). Do any other countries do this sort of thing on their national days? Is this something great about America, or something ominous, or maybe a touch of both?
I think I’ve told everyone who needs to be told rather than finding out this way. Anyway, I’m getting tired of telling people. So here goes.
After four years of marriage, Jenny and I are getting divorced. This is not an outcome either of us wanted, but it has become inevitable. The reasons are our own, but you are welcome to ask either one of us, and we’ll tell you what we feel we should.
In terms of the logistical realities, it looks like I will be getting a new job over the next few months, then finding a new place to live. Where I go depends on where I get hired. Jenny and I are dealing with the details amicably. If you know of any positions for writers or any leads on getting into strategic consulting or corporate communications, let me know. They needn’t be in New York.
In terms of the personal realities, this has been absolutely devastating. I have a great deal of uncertainty ahead, and very much sadness. I hope that this choice will bring Jenny happiness, and that I too can look back years from now and see that this was the beginning of new and positive developments in my life. But all that is in the future. For now, it just hurts.
SENTENCE: Tomorrow, with a single stroke of his cruel veto pen, President Bush will dash the hopes of millions of Americans seeking cures through the miracle of stem cell research.
WHERE: Mass email from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
CORRECTION: Tomorrow, with one cruel stroke of his veto pen, President Bush will dash the hopes of millions of Americans seeking cures through the promise of stem cell research.
CRITIQUE: Okay, so this one isn’t about grammar, but about egregiously silly rhetoric.
I’m fine with the idea that an inanimate object can be invested with metaphoric intentionality. Where would the whole fantasy genre be without “cruel sword”? And I will admit that Dubya has used his veto power exclusively for idiotic reasons that smack of callousness. But somehow I have a hard time with “cruel veto pen.” First of all, it’s not like Bush does all his vetoing with the same evil pen. Secondly, while a sword is an essential player in the cruelty it inflicts, the role of the veto pen seems to me somehow smaller — less vorpal, perhaps? — and I think the focus of the cruelty really ought to be on the signer, not his poor, abused Bic.
Next, I’d rather not see the word “miracle” anywhere in the rhetoric of those who think scientific research should go ahead despite the supposed objections of someone’s God. Furthermore, considering that stem cell research hasn’t cured anything yet, “miracle” seems like a strong word. Pelosi’s side is supposed to be against faith-based healing.
Pelosi’s odd sentence is a good reminder that you can make all your grammar line up just fine and still say silly things.
Daniel McKleinfeld (who is appearing in Hamlet, so go see it), sent me a link to a Chuck Closterman piece about bands that are neither over- nor underrated, but rated perfectly, which contained this gem about Blue Öyster Cult:
The BÖC song everyone pays attention to is the suicide anthem “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” However, that song is stupid and doesn’t use enough cowbell. The BÖC song almost no one pays attention to is the pro-monster plod-athon “Godzilla,” and that song is spine-crushingly great. So, in the final analysis, Blue Öyster Cult is accurately rated — by accident. This happens on occasion; look at Scottie Pippen.
This is precisely true, so I went looking on YouTube, and OH MY GOD but look at what I found. Those glasses! That beard! That crappy stage monster and psychedelic drum solo! And keep an eye out for the bass player’s severe case of sissyneck1 during his solo.
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1. Beck once explained that the song “Sissyneck” is named for the weird pecking motion that is mysteriously common to bass players getting their groove on.
