At the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 2012 in Indianapolis, the deputies and bishops will be asked to decide whether to sign the Anglican Covenant.
The Anglican Covenant is the result of further work after the Windsor Report, which came out after Gene Robinson was elected and consecrated as Bishop of New Hampshire. Wouldn't you know it, some place as isolated and, in the scheme of things, as insignificant as the Diocese of New Hampshire, would cause a tidal wave of concerns, anger and angst within the far-flung Anglican Communion.
Gene is a gay, partnered man. Gay Bishops are a dime a dozen in the Anglican Communion. But Gene was bold, honest and authentic enough to let it be known he was a gay man in a committed relationship. Sounds like the right thing to do, right?
But no. The Windsor Report and the resultant Anglican Covenant was all in response to the fair and democratic election of a great priest to be the bishop of New Hampshire. (Tiny things, in life, cause huge responses.)
Anyway, the Episcopal Church is faced with saying yes or no to this Anglican Covenant.
Honestly, 75 percent of the stuff in the first three sections of the covenant consists simply of stuff most every Anglican in the world agrees on--the Creeds, the Trinity, the Archbishop of Canterbury being 'first among equals', the autonomy of each of the 39 churches that make up the Communion, stuff about the Eucharist and independence of the various churches to make their own decisions.
So, if we all agree about that stuff already, WHY WRITE IT DOWN?
My wife and I agree on even more of life than that--90% or more. And it has never occurred to us to 'write down' what we agree on.
The rest, the stuff we don't agree on, 7% or so, is simply worked out day by day, week by week, year by year between us. Sometimes we reach a compromise. Sometimes we don't. Be we remain 'in communion' even when we don't agree at all.
The 4th section of the Anglican Covenant--look it up, you can Google it--is so dramatically Un-Anglican and non-democratic and anti-autonomous that it would be laughable if there wasn't a lobby that wanted it to be agreed to.
That 4th section violates with violence everything that comes before and sets up a process to deal with 'disagreements' between churches. (For 'disagreements' read 'how to deal with GLBT folks'--like not making them bishops.)
Gene Robinson, a duly elected, validly consecrated bishop of the Anglican Communion was not invited to the Lambeth Conference--the every 10 year meeting of all bishops in the Communion. I guess the Archbishop of Canterbury ran out of printed invitations. Something like that. Why else on earth would he neglect to invite a valid bishop of the clan?
Oh, because large and bullish members of the Communion in Africa and other parts of the developing world are frailty scared of gay folks who are honest about being gay folks since they are Biblical fundamentalist and don't think gay folks are 'children of God'. God help them.
The 4th section of the Anglican Covenant is a way to either discipline or exclude the American and Canadian Churches from the Communion since those two churches are dealing honestly and compassionately with Gay folks. (Not compassionately or honestly in CT to allow priests to follow civil law and sign the marriage licences of same sex couples who, legally, can marry in CT.)
It's all a nightmare. Goggle noanglicancovenant.org and read people more reasonable and logical that me.
The Anglican Covenant is neither 'Anglican' nor an honest, relational 'Covenant', so far as I can see.
Anglican Covenant, NO! Autonomy for the Episcopal Church, SI!
More about all this later....
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
mislabling and the Bible
I went to buy cranberry juice at the Stop and Shop. And, as I've done before, I bought a 'blend' that has apple juice, white grape juice and pomegranate juice as well as the cranberry juice I thought I was buying. It said, on the label, "100% juice" and in the small print happened to mention that the "100%" meant 'juice', not 'cranberry juice'. I'm taking it back tomorrow.
I'm a fanatic about cranberry juice since I had a urinary tract infection in September that nearly made me crazy. And it is almost impossible to distinguish between "100%" cranberry juice and lots of other kinds of juice that contains, in some amount, cranberry juice. I feel like an idiot but Bern has made the same mistake so I don't feel like an idiot since she certainly isn't.
Where the Bible comes in isn't about the cranberry juice, it's about dogs eating their own vomit.
That's somewhere in the Bible--the psalms, I think. You could google it: dogs eating vomit + the Bible.
Our dog Bela ate his breakfast and threw it up 10 minutes later in the dining room. Before I could clean it up, he ate it.
Then, an hour later, we were out on the porch having a cigarette, at least I was, Bela doesn't smoke so far as I know. He doesn't have a thumb to work a lighter or light a match or turn on the stove and the cigarettes are never where he could get to them. So, I think I'm safe in saying I was the one smoking a cigarette. Anyway, Bela was laying at my feet and jumped up and ran out into the back yard and threw up the vomit he had eaten of his breakfast. He did that crazy thing with his snout, covering up the vomit with snow and leaves. Then came back like nothing had happened.
I was worried, as I always am about this awful Puli dog, that he had stomach cancer or something. But he ate his dinner and didn't throw up. So who knows. But, just like the Bible says, he does sometimes eat his vomit.
OK, this is pretty nasty to me. I asked Bern if she lost respect for Bela for eating his vomit. She said, 'no, it just reminds me he's a dog.' I was about to tell her that it was in the Bible when Bela wanted out--Bern and I were on the back porch smoking--so I let him out.
(Some people, I know, think smoking is the human equivalent of a dog eating vomit. But what do I care about such opinions?)
Bela ran down into the back yard, I thought to pee (a neighbor of ours once told me he hated having dogs 'urinate' on his yard. Since his yard is the side of the street where the sidewalk is, I thought he didn't understand dogs very well. They don't wait until the next Mobile station on the Parkway to "Urinate"...they 'pee' when the smell is right and the spirit moves them.)
But Bern went inside to watch "House"--the first new episode--while I waited for Bela to come back so he and I could join her. (Bela actually doesn't watch House, or anything on TV, but when both of us are in the TV room, he is there.)
He didn't come back and didn't come back and none of our flashlights work so I went down in the dark to drive him back.
I think he was eating the vomit he threw up from the vomit he ate from what he threw up after breakfast. With some leaves and snow and dirt as well.
Pretty amazing to me: he ate his vomit twice--the same vomit.
The second time he ate it, it must have been a bit frozen, like a vomit Italian Ice or something. "Give me one watermelon ice, one chocolate ice and one vomit ice...." I wonder what the folks down at the Italian Ice places on Wooster Street in New Haven would think of that order?
Twice eaten vomit isn't a new concept--think of refried beans or twice-baked potatoes.
Sort of a gourmet treat for dogs.
I'm a fanatic about cranberry juice since I had a urinary tract infection in September that nearly made me crazy. And it is almost impossible to distinguish between "100%" cranberry juice and lots of other kinds of juice that contains, in some amount, cranberry juice. I feel like an idiot but Bern has made the same mistake so I don't feel like an idiot since she certainly isn't.
Where the Bible comes in isn't about the cranberry juice, it's about dogs eating their own vomit.
That's somewhere in the Bible--the psalms, I think. You could google it: dogs eating vomit + the Bible.
Our dog Bela ate his breakfast and threw it up 10 minutes later in the dining room. Before I could clean it up, he ate it.
Then, an hour later, we were out on the porch having a cigarette, at least I was, Bela doesn't smoke so far as I know. He doesn't have a thumb to work a lighter or light a match or turn on the stove and the cigarettes are never where he could get to them. So, I think I'm safe in saying I was the one smoking a cigarette. Anyway, Bela was laying at my feet and jumped up and ran out into the back yard and threw up the vomit he had eaten of his breakfast. He did that crazy thing with his snout, covering up the vomit with snow and leaves. Then came back like nothing had happened.
I was worried, as I always am about this awful Puli dog, that he had stomach cancer or something. But he ate his dinner and didn't throw up. So who knows. But, just like the Bible says, he does sometimes eat his vomit.
OK, this is pretty nasty to me. I asked Bern if she lost respect for Bela for eating his vomit. She said, 'no, it just reminds me he's a dog.' I was about to tell her that it was in the Bible when Bela wanted out--Bern and I were on the back porch smoking--so I let him out.
(Some people, I know, think smoking is the human equivalent of a dog eating vomit. But what do I care about such opinions?)
Bela ran down into the back yard, I thought to pee (a neighbor of ours once told me he hated having dogs 'urinate' on his yard. Since his yard is the side of the street where the sidewalk is, I thought he didn't understand dogs very well. They don't wait until the next Mobile station on the Parkway to "Urinate"...they 'pee' when the smell is right and the spirit moves them.)
But Bern went inside to watch "House"--the first new episode--while I waited for Bela to come back so he and I could join her. (Bela actually doesn't watch House, or anything on TV, but when both of us are in the TV room, he is there.)
He didn't come back and didn't come back and none of our flashlights work so I went down in the dark to drive him back.
I think he was eating the vomit he threw up from the vomit he ate from what he threw up after breakfast. With some leaves and snow and dirt as well.
Pretty amazing to me: he ate his vomit twice--the same vomit.
The second time he ate it, it must have been a bit frozen, like a vomit Italian Ice or something. "Give me one watermelon ice, one chocolate ice and one vomit ice...." I wonder what the folks down at the Italian Ice places on Wooster Street in New Haven would think of that order?
Twice eaten vomit isn't a new concept--think of refried beans or twice-baked potatoes.
Sort of a gourmet treat for dogs.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Memory Lane is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there
I wrote a few days ago about all the ancient writings Bern found when she was rearranging one of the guest bedrooms. I've spent a lot of time reading that stuff since then.
It is remarkable to listen to my much younger self's words and consider what it was that I, back then, thought and pondered and wondered about.
I was much more intense and existential back then. And though I think of myself as terribly 'ironic' today, back then I was 'ironic' to the point of nihilism , it seems to me.
I wrote very long paragraphs and dozens of sonnets in strict iambic pentameter. The prose is interesting to me. The poems, I fear, are just awful--sentimental, inflated and nihilistic all at once. That combination, let me assure you, makes for a terrible poem.
There were some blank verse poems. Here's one written when I was a freshman in college (18 or 19 years old). It is about an actual event. I watched out my dorm window as a man fell to his death from the fifth or sixth floor of a construction site.
The falling man
A man fell yesterday, I saw him fall...
So sure of foot and balance that he came, he came,
too near
the edge.
And (it seems to me, watching from this very spot)
he watched as well--he watched a bird
that soared lightly, without steel beams to hold
him high.
As the bird was
flashing past his face,
the man leaned out
and seemed suspended
one short second--seeming to smile--
though I was so far away,
and fell.
The bare shoulders of the men
who rushed to him
glistened in the sun.
They seemed to be talking softly
so not to be heard
by the gathering crowd.
A girl I know passed by
with long and shimmering legs,
walking her dog, Natasha.
Today there is black crepe
hanging from that floor,
gently waving to the
passing birds.
It is too easy--the allegory we should avoid--
that he is just like all...
all of us....
Only he has fallen
and we,
we are creeping edgeward.
***
Rather dark and negative, it seems to me.
But there are nuggets among the sand of what the 'me' I was over 40 years ago wrote.
I'll seek some out to share...and ponder....
It is remarkable to listen to my much younger self's words and consider what it was that I, back then, thought and pondered and wondered about.
I was much more intense and existential back then. And though I think of myself as terribly 'ironic' today, back then I was 'ironic' to the point of nihilism , it seems to me.
I wrote very long paragraphs and dozens of sonnets in strict iambic pentameter. The prose is interesting to me. The poems, I fear, are just awful--sentimental, inflated and nihilistic all at once. That combination, let me assure you, makes for a terrible poem.
There were some blank verse poems. Here's one written when I was a freshman in college (18 or 19 years old). It is about an actual event. I watched out my dorm window as a man fell to his death from the fifth or sixth floor of a construction site.
The falling man
A man fell yesterday, I saw him fall...
So sure of foot and balance that he came, he came,
too near
the edge.
And (it seems to me, watching from this very spot)
he watched as well--he watched a bird
that soared lightly, without steel beams to hold
him high.
As the bird was
flashing past his face,
the man leaned out
and seemed suspended
one short second--seeming to smile--
though I was so far away,
and fell.
The bare shoulders of the men
who rushed to him
glistened in the sun.
They seemed to be talking softly
so not to be heard
by the gathering crowd.
A girl I know passed by
with long and shimmering legs,
walking her dog, Natasha.
Today there is black crepe
hanging from that floor,
gently waving to the
passing birds.
It is too easy--the allegory we should avoid--
that he is just like all...
all of us....
Only he has fallen
and we,
we are creeping edgeward.
***
Rather dark and negative, it seems to me.
But there are nuggets among the sand of what the 'me' I was over 40 years ago wrote.
I'll seek some out to share...and ponder....
Creatures in the walls
There are some kind of creatures in some of our walls.
There used to be squirrels in the attic, but Bern got a machine whose purpose is to make a noise that apparently makes squirrels psychotic if they don't leave. So we don't hear squirrels skritching across the ceiling of our bedroom or TV room anymore.
But I hear something in the walls of the dining room. I would like to convince myself that it is a family of those Brownies (wasn't that the name?) that lived in the walls of a house in New York in books I used to read to our children. (I'm not sure, by the way, that convincing kids that little people live in the walls is a particularly good idea....)
But I know these aren't Brownies or Fairies or Elves. And I'm calling someone I found in the phone book to come next week and tell us what to do.
Someone came last year, when the squirrels were playing what sounded like soccer in our attic. He assured us there was no way for them to get in except through a window we kept open in the attic with a fan to blow out hot air in the summer. So we closed the windows and got the crazy making squirrel machine.
Mostly I hear them in the wall near the dining room fireplace that we never use. We don't use it because a chimney sweep (there are still such professionals, though they don't look like Dick Van Dyke) told us there were chinks in the bricks in that chimney. Fixing it would have been like a million dollars, or at least the equivalent of that in our budget. So we filled the grate area with about 70 candles. The chimney in the kitchen fireplace is fine, so we use that in the winter. (By the way, a fireplace in the kitchen is one of the best ideas I can think of.)
When the squirrels were holding parties in the attic, I also got one of those squirrel traps that are open at each end but close when a squirrel goes in. Not killing the squirrels was high on our list for possible solutions. Driving them crazy with noise seemed preferable somehow. The quality of life of a psychotic squirrel, though not intense, seemed better than that of a dead squirrel.
On that subject--death--I heard today that four deceased people were on ballots around the country during the mid-term elections. They died after the ballots were printed and before the election. One of them won. Imagine being defeated by a dead guy....If 'brain dead' was the same as 'dead dead' I would suggest that quite a number of dead people won in that election....Oh well, I'll have to get over it. My next door neighbor, Mark, said today what Mark Twain once said, (I don't know if Mark knew he was quoting Twain...) "If you don't like the Congress, wait two years..."
Anyway, whatever is in the walls I no longer object to killing. There's just something a little eerie about having creatures in your walls....
There used to be squirrels in the attic, but Bern got a machine whose purpose is to make a noise that apparently makes squirrels psychotic if they don't leave. So we don't hear squirrels skritching across the ceiling of our bedroom or TV room anymore.
But I hear something in the walls of the dining room. I would like to convince myself that it is a family of those Brownies (wasn't that the name?) that lived in the walls of a house in New York in books I used to read to our children. (I'm not sure, by the way, that convincing kids that little people live in the walls is a particularly good idea....)
But I know these aren't Brownies or Fairies or Elves. And I'm calling someone I found in the phone book to come next week and tell us what to do.
Someone came last year, when the squirrels were playing what sounded like soccer in our attic. He assured us there was no way for them to get in except through a window we kept open in the attic with a fan to blow out hot air in the summer. So we closed the windows and got the crazy making squirrel machine.
Mostly I hear them in the wall near the dining room fireplace that we never use. We don't use it because a chimney sweep (there are still such professionals, though they don't look like Dick Van Dyke) told us there were chinks in the bricks in that chimney. Fixing it would have been like a million dollars, or at least the equivalent of that in our budget. So we filled the grate area with about 70 candles. The chimney in the kitchen fireplace is fine, so we use that in the winter. (By the way, a fireplace in the kitchen is one of the best ideas I can think of.)
When the squirrels were holding parties in the attic, I also got one of those squirrel traps that are open at each end but close when a squirrel goes in. Not killing the squirrels was high on our list for possible solutions. Driving them crazy with noise seemed preferable somehow. The quality of life of a psychotic squirrel, though not intense, seemed better than that of a dead squirrel.
On that subject--death--I heard today that four deceased people were on ballots around the country during the mid-term elections. They died after the ballots were printed and before the election. One of them won. Imagine being defeated by a dead guy....If 'brain dead' was the same as 'dead dead' I would suggest that quite a number of dead people won in that election....Oh well, I'll have to get over it. My next door neighbor, Mark, said today what Mark Twain once said, (I don't know if Mark knew he was quoting Twain...) "If you don't like the Congress, wait two years..."
Anyway, whatever is in the walls I no longer object to killing. There's just something a little eerie about having creatures in your walls....
Friday, November 5, 2010
A Treasure Trove
Bern was working on the bed room that the new bed from (starts with "I" ends with "A" and sounds a bit like 'Idea'--the place I dare not speak its name, when she emptied out a large, two drawer storage thing and found a treasure of stuff not unlike the Dead Sea Scrolls to me.
It was stuff I'd written years ago, some of it 30 or 40 years old that I thought was gone forever!
In it was the novel I wrote as a teenager called "The Old Gods Go". It was, in my teen mind, to be a trilogy whose titles would be based on a short poem by Carl Sandburg.
Day by day
and hour by hour,
the old gods go
and the new gods come.
Today, I worship the hammer.
I read a few pages and remember it not! What an adventure it is going to be to read it from such a distance and try to figure out who I was when I wrote it and why, by the way, I thought it had to be down on paper.
There were also a bunch of short stories I had not forgotten but thought were lost forever. Some of the titles are: 'Once softly, October', 'Being a Man', 'The Pepperoni Cure-all', 'Blackberry Winter', 'Gladys Spinnet is Dying', 'The Old Folks', and several other. I studied creative writing in college and some of them go back that far. Others were pre-1989, before we moved to Cheshire. Most of this stuff was probably in the two drawer chest when the movers moved it from New Haven! There were also a lot of sonnets I wrote to Bern when we were not much more than children, trying to woo her. (I'll have to read them to see if they are any good at all, but the 'wooing' part must have worked.
I'm so excited by this home archaeological discovery. I'll probably spend the weekend reading this stuff.
Also, among the flotsam and jetsam of half or more a lifetime ago, there were 12 pieces of stiff paper (40 weight or so) that were all about 12 inches long and 3 inches wide. They have sayings on them in my writing. I have no frigging idea where they came from or what I used them for or why I saved them or how they fit into my life. I kind of like them though. So I'll share them with you. They are each worth pondering as we sit under our castor oil trees. But I have no idea whatsoever what context they belong in.
Here they are, in no particular order, since I can't imagine there would be an order to them:
HAVE YOU HAD YOUR RITUAL TODAY?
SMOKE AND MIRRORS WORK!
CULTURE, SI! FLOWCHARTS, NO!
CREATE A RANDOM METAPHOR
SYMBOL OVER SUBSTANCE
DON'T MISS THE MYTH
PUT YOUR PROBLEM INTO A STORY AND TELL IT
DECLARE IT DONE!
RECYCLE 'GARBAGE CANS'
MANAGE BY MAGIC!
SAYING SO MAKES IT SO....
IT'S ALL A GAME--PLAY HARD....
What a mystery to me among the treasures. I have no idea why I cut that paper--obviously I cut it into 3 inch pieces--or why I wrote those sayings on it or what it all means.
I know the memory and the knees are the first to go....but why don't I know what all that means? I actually like it and, in a weird way, like no knowing what it means.
It's like a message --or 12 messages--to me from a younger me. It must be a message I need to ponder. You are welcome to ponder it as well.
After all, "It's all a game--PLAY HARD...."
It was stuff I'd written years ago, some of it 30 or 40 years old that I thought was gone forever!
In it was the novel I wrote as a teenager called "The Old Gods Go". It was, in my teen mind, to be a trilogy whose titles would be based on a short poem by Carl Sandburg.
Day by day
and hour by hour,
the old gods go
and the new gods come.
Today, I worship the hammer.
I read a few pages and remember it not! What an adventure it is going to be to read it from such a distance and try to figure out who I was when I wrote it and why, by the way, I thought it had to be down on paper.
There were also a bunch of short stories I had not forgotten but thought were lost forever. Some of the titles are: 'Once softly, October', 'Being a Man', 'The Pepperoni Cure-all', 'Blackberry Winter', 'Gladys Spinnet is Dying', 'The Old Folks', and several other. I studied creative writing in college and some of them go back that far. Others were pre-1989, before we moved to Cheshire. Most of this stuff was probably in the two drawer chest when the movers moved it from New Haven! There were also a lot of sonnets I wrote to Bern when we were not much more than children, trying to woo her. (I'll have to read them to see if they are any good at all, but the 'wooing' part must have worked.
I'm so excited by this home archaeological discovery. I'll probably spend the weekend reading this stuff.
Also, among the flotsam and jetsam of half or more a lifetime ago, there were 12 pieces of stiff paper (40 weight or so) that were all about 12 inches long and 3 inches wide. They have sayings on them in my writing. I have no frigging idea where they came from or what I used them for or why I saved them or how they fit into my life. I kind of like them though. So I'll share them with you. They are each worth pondering as we sit under our castor oil trees. But I have no idea whatsoever what context they belong in.
Here they are, in no particular order, since I can't imagine there would be an order to them:
HAVE YOU HAD YOUR RITUAL TODAY?
SMOKE AND MIRRORS WORK!
CULTURE, SI! FLOWCHARTS, NO!
CREATE A RANDOM METAPHOR
SYMBOL OVER SUBSTANCE
DON'T MISS THE MYTH
PUT YOUR PROBLEM INTO A STORY AND TELL IT
DECLARE IT DONE!
RECYCLE 'GARBAGE CANS'
MANAGE BY MAGIC!
SAYING SO MAKES IT SO....
IT'S ALL A GAME--PLAY HARD....
What a mystery to me among the treasures. I have no idea why I cut that paper--obviously I cut it into 3 inch pieces--or why I wrote those sayings on it or what it all means.
I know the memory and the knees are the first to go....but why don't I know what all that means? I actually like it and, in a weird way, like no knowing what it means.
It's like a message --or 12 messages--to me from a younger me. It must be a message I need to ponder. You are welcome to ponder it as well.
After all, "It's all a game--PLAY HARD...."
Thursday, November 4, 2010
To the 8th ring of hell...
I wanted to write about all this yesterday, when it happened, but I knew I had to calm my nerves and steel myself to face a keyboard. I didn't have even a single glass of wine last night, knowing any alcohol at all would send me spinning into memories and thoughts I didn't want to revisit or have.
No, I'm not talking about the elections nationwide--that was only the 4th ring of hell (being a liberal, I actually feel more comfortable when I know I'm in the minority and that the Conservatives have to bumble around pretending to govern and will look goofy by the 2012 elections....)
Yesterday morning, I was eating breakfast, licking my Tea Party inflicted wounds, when Bern innocently asked, "what do you have planned for this morning?"
I actually had nothing planned, preferring to mope around and feel sorry for myself in a world where John Bayner is Speaker of the House. So I told her I was free.
"Good," she said, "I want to go to Ikea...."
My blood pressure plummeted and I dropped my cereal spoon in the remaining milk. I felt cold fingers pressing on my temples and spine. Oh No, Not Ikea!
I know lots of people love, simply love Ikea. But I fear it like the Plague. The store in New Haven is huge--I can't even picture how huge it is because of the way they've made both floors into Labyrinths worthy of Greek mythology. But I know a store that has walk ways called things like "Short Cut to Lighting" is enormous.
But as large as it is, and as tasteful, I feel claustrophobic inside it, as if I'm locked in a bright, well designed closet or an attractive, well-lit coffin. I've tried to analyse my reaction to Ikea to no avail. In fact, if each department were in a separate building--like lots of small shops in a large strip mall--I would objectively like it. I like the stuff, marvel at its ingenuity and how cheaply the Swedes can make quality stuff. But put together in a building about the size of the Sistine Chapel, with too many walls and walkways and maps that are impossible to make sense of and 'short cut to bedding' signs, I can't cope.
We went to buy a bed and mattress for one of the guest rooms that was an old bed left to me by my Uncle Russell with three futon pads piled one on top of the other rather than a real mattress. And, being from the 1940's or 50's, you sleep a yard or so above the floor. I believe you could get nosebleed being in that bed. Short people need to take a run to get onto it. So the need was real and serious, but why not Sears, why oh why Ikea, building of anxiety and nightmares.
I'm sure many of you (4 or 5 of the dozen or so people who read this--why don't you tell all your friends about it?) have been to Ikea. It is, after all, an icon of our culture. And, even I, Ikea-phobic as I am, must admit the stuff is neat and...well, cheap. But you have to wander around endlessly to find what your looking for--the maps are a waste of time though there are maps everywhere, along with huge yellow bags and 'shopping lists' with golf pencils. Then, when you find the department you want you have about a gazillion choices of the same item. There were at least 50 different bed frames and even more styles of mattresses. Then you have to write down the name of the item, the price, the Bin and row #'s and a 15 character 'item number' on your shopping list. Then it takes what seems like hours to find the place where you get a huge cart and gather your stuff from the bins and rows. Then you have to check out and I've never been there when there were enough lanes open. Even the self-serve lane gets backed up because most people can't figure out how to use the little bar code reader. (Most instructions in Ikea are literal translations, it seems to me, of what it would be in Swedish and Swedish, it seems to me, has a much different syntax that English. So you get instructions that are the equivalent of "Throw Papa, down the stairs, his hat" kind of syntax.)
When we finally got to the check out I realized one of the boxes of bed didn't have a bar code and had to retrace my anxious steps to find the proper bin and row again (to give you a taste of the scale of the Ikea store, the bins and aisles of compulsively neat merchandise takes up as much space as your normal Wall Mart, just the Bins and Rows, never mind the tastefully displayed areas of merchandise with short cuts to other tastefully displayed areas of merchandise) and get another box of bed parts. While looking for the bar code in the first place, back up in the check out line, I hit my head on a shelf that had about 50 Christmas Ornaments (unbreakable at that) for $8.99. How do they sell stuff so cheaply?
I was shaking and wishing for psycho-therapeutic drugs by the time we got home. It had only been a couple of hours but I felt I had made a three day trek through various small, enclosed spaces and spent some time in a Chilean mine (though a tasteful, well-lit mine, full of interesting and attractive stuff if it hadn't been in a mine....)
All that, at least, took my mind off the debacle of the election....
No, I'm not talking about the elections nationwide--that was only the 4th ring of hell (being a liberal, I actually feel more comfortable when I know I'm in the minority and that the Conservatives have to bumble around pretending to govern and will look goofy by the 2012 elections....)
Yesterday morning, I was eating breakfast, licking my Tea Party inflicted wounds, when Bern innocently asked, "what do you have planned for this morning?"
I actually had nothing planned, preferring to mope around and feel sorry for myself in a world where John Bayner is Speaker of the House. So I told her I was free.
"Good," she said, "I want to go to Ikea...."
My blood pressure plummeted and I dropped my cereal spoon in the remaining milk. I felt cold fingers pressing on my temples and spine. Oh No, Not Ikea!
I know lots of people love, simply love Ikea. But I fear it like the Plague. The store in New Haven is huge--I can't even picture how huge it is because of the way they've made both floors into Labyrinths worthy of Greek mythology. But I know a store that has walk ways called things like "Short Cut to Lighting" is enormous.
But as large as it is, and as tasteful, I feel claustrophobic inside it, as if I'm locked in a bright, well designed closet or an attractive, well-lit coffin. I've tried to analyse my reaction to Ikea to no avail. In fact, if each department were in a separate building--like lots of small shops in a large strip mall--I would objectively like it. I like the stuff, marvel at its ingenuity and how cheaply the Swedes can make quality stuff. But put together in a building about the size of the Sistine Chapel, with too many walls and walkways and maps that are impossible to make sense of and 'short cut to bedding' signs, I can't cope.
We went to buy a bed and mattress for one of the guest rooms that was an old bed left to me by my Uncle Russell with three futon pads piled one on top of the other rather than a real mattress. And, being from the 1940's or 50's, you sleep a yard or so above the floor. I believe you could get nosebleed being in that bed. Short people need to take a run to get onto it. So the need was real and serious, but why not Sears, why oh why Ikea, building of anxiety and nightmares.
I'm sure many of you (4 or 5 of the dozen or so people who read this--why don't you tell all your friends about it?) have been to Ikea. It is, after all, an icon of our culture. And, even I, Ikea-phobic as I am, must admit the stuff is neat and...well, cheap. But you have to wander around endlessly to find what your looking for--the maps are a waste of time though there are maps everywhere, along with huge yellow bags and 'shopping lists' with golf pencils. Then, when you find the department you want you have about a gazillion choices of the same item. There were at least 50 different bed frames and even more styles of mattresses. Then you have to write down the name of the item, the price, the Bin and row #'s and a 15 character 'item number' on your shopping list. Then it takes what seems like hours to find the place where you get a huge cart and gather your stuff from the bins and rows. Then you have to check out and I've never been there when there were enough lanes open. Even the self-serve lane gets backed up because most people can't figure out how to use the little bar code reader. (Most instructions in Ikea are literal translations, it seems to me, of what it would be in Swedish and Swedish, it seems to me, has a much different syntax that English. So you get instructions that are the equivalent of "Throw Papa, down the stairs, his hat" kind of syntax.)
When we finally got to the check out I realized one of the boxes of bed didn't have a bar code and had to retrace my anxious steps to find the proper bin and row again (to give you a taste of the scale of the Ikea store, the bins and aisles of compulsively neat merchandise takes up as much space as your normal Wall Mart, just the Bins and Rows, never mind the tastefully displayed areas of merchandise with short cuts to other tastefully displayed areas of merchandise) and get another box of bed parts. While looking for the bar code in the first place, back up in the check out line, I hit my head on a shelf that had about 50 Christmas Ornaments (unbreakable at that) for $8.99. How do they sell stuff so cheaply?
I was shaking and wishing for psycho-therapeutic drugs by the time we got home. It had only been a couple of hours but I felt I had made a three day trek through various small, enclosed spaces and spent some time in a Chilean mine (though a tasteful, well-lit mine, full of interesting and attractive stuff if it hadn't been in a mine....)
All that, at least, took my mind off the debacle of the election....
Monday, November 1, 2010
the meaning of humility
Ok, all of yesterday and today, I've been rearranging and changing my office. My office is an L-shaped landing at the top of the back stairs that looks like this:
_______________________________
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
----------------
l
l
l
l
l stairs
-----------------------------------------------
Maybe 10 x 14 with a staircase taking up a piece of it all.
I've worked, probably 14 hours. It's now finished. I like it a lot.
I would have never done this if bern hadn't told me a few weeks ago: "If you'd let me, I would rearrange your office....."
By blood ran cold. I started sweating. My blood pressure plummeted (stress makes my blood pressure go down) and I felt both faint and disembodied.
CHANGE MY OFFICE!!! CHANGE MY SPACE!!! CHANGE ANYTHING!!!
(ok, I know I've built my life--my career and personal life--around being the most flexible and change-friendly person you could find. AND I AM....Until it comes to MY OFFICE! MY SPACE! MY LIFE!)
Bern moves and rearranges things endlessly. The table my computer rests on has been in three rooms in our house. There are chairs and end tables and bookshelves that have been in four or five rooms--and we only have eight rooms! Our bed is a futon and it has been in three rooms and once it became our bed it has been in three different places in that room. When I used to go to work and leave bern at home I would steel myself for what changes might greet me when I returned. Now I'm mostly here and when I see that "I want to move s*** around" look on her face--I know that look intimately--I go to the library or the grocery store or a movie and steel myself.....
So, to stop her moving my stuff around, I did it.
I made a list with 17 items that laid out my plan. It involved moving a bookcase within the office, moving a bookcase from outside the office to the office, cleaning out a file cabinet and throwing that away, putting together a table stashed under a guest room bed, moving my computer's printer, restructuring the use of the printer piece of furniture, getting rid of a small desk and a bamboo table that hid the office's air conditioner, moving the air conditioner until next summer, taking down two built in shelves and moving some stuff on the walls.
It sounds like a lot, but this is a 120 square foot area with a stairway taking up 20 square feet of that. How hard could that be???
Friggin' Hard--that's how hard. 14 hours of work hard.
And every step of the way I was reminded how inept I am at anything requiring manual dexterity, the use of tools and brute strength.
Humbling. For 14 hours I was humbled.
(Perhaps that is good for the Soul--but it's a bitch on the Ego.)
Fourteen hours later, after moving some papers and boxes and stuff at least a dozen times just to make room to work in such a small space, after an hour long trip to Hines Hardware store to find the right missing hardware for the table I was assembling (looking through an immensity of little drawers with screws and bolts and a dozen things I don't have names for), after several vacuumings of floor that hasn't seen the light of day because stuff was on it for the last two decades plus (I could move into a furnished apartment and never move the furniture for as long as I was there--I've known Bern to move furniture in a Motel room we'd be in one night...go figure how we've been married 40 years....), after taking books out and putting them back and moving them again, after what seemed like the 6th ring of hell for 14 hours because of my previously mentioned (and humility inspiring) ineptitude for any of what I did for 14 hours, it was finished.
And I love it. I have the table for my computer and a larger table in an L where I can read and do other things without moving my keyboard. And I have two huge bookcases and a small storage case on wheels and stuff on the wall in places it should be and I am a happy camper.
(I had to ask Bern to help me with manual things more than I hoped--like screwing things and assembling things, MANly things I'm no good at). But when I thanked her for helping me, she had the good sense and the knowledge of the depths of my humiliation to say, "I didn't help that much...." Bless her. Maybe it's not amazing we've been married 40 years, as different as we are...)
{I just looked around for a minute or two. My space is more usable and seems larger. Maybe 14 hours isn't as long as it seemed to me. Maybe humiliation is good for the Soul....and the Ego, in an odd way, as well.}
I look upon my work (with Bern's help) and can say: "It is Good".
[Maybe I need a little more humility since I'm quoting Yahweh's observation about Creation....]
_______________________________
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
----------------
l
l
l
l
l stairs
-----------------------------------------------
Maybe 10 x 14 with a staircase taking up a piece of it all.
I've worked, probably 14 hours. It's now finished. I like it a lot.
I would have never done this if bern hadn't told me a few weeks ago: "If you'd let me, I would rearrange your office....."
By blood ran cold. I started sweating. My blood pressure plummeted (stress makes my blood pressure go down) and I felt both faint and disembodied.
CHANGE MY OFFICE!!! CHANGE MY SPACE!!! CHANGE ANYTHING!!!
(ok, I know I've built my life--my career and personal life--around being the most flexible and change-friendly person you could find. AND I AM....Until it comes to MY OFFICE! MY SPACE! MY LIFE!)
Bern moves and rearranges things endlessly. The table my computer rests on has been in three rooms in our house. There are chairs and end tables and bookshelves that have been in four or five rooms--and we only have eight rooms! Our bed is a futon and it has been in three rooms and once it became our bed it has been in three different places in that room. When I used to go to work and leave bern at home I would steel myself for what changes might greet me when I returned. Now I'm mostly here and when I see that "I want to move s*** around" look on her face--I know that look intimately--I go to the library or the grocery store or a movie and steel myself.....
So, to stop her moving my stuff around, I did it.
I made a list with 17 items that laid out my plan. It involved moving a bookcase within the office, moving a bookcase from outside the office to the office, cleaning out a file cabinet and throwing that away, putting together a table stashed under a guest room bed, moving my computer's printer, restructuring the use of the printer piece of furniture, getting rid of a small desk and a bamboo table that hid the office's air conditioner, moving the air conditioner until next summer, taking down two built in shelves and moving some stuff on the walls.
It sounds like a lot, but this is a 120 square foot area with a stairway taking up 20 square feet of that. How hard could that be???
Friggin' Hard--that's how hard. 14 hours of work hard.
And every step of the way I was reminded how inept I am at anything requiring manual dexterity, the use of tools and brute strength.
Humbling. For 14 hours I was humbled.
(Perhaps that is good for the Soul--but it's a bitch on the Ego.)
Fourteen hours later, after moving some papers and boxes and stuff at least a dozen times just to make room to work in such a small space, after an hour long trip to Hines Hardware store to find the right missing hardware for the table I was assembling (looking through an immensity of little drawers with screws and bolts and a dozen things I don't have names for), after several vacuumings of floor that hasn't seen the light of day because stuff was on it for the last two decades plus (I could move into a furnished apartment and never move the furniture for as long as I was there--I've known Bern to move furniture in a Motel room we'd be in one night...go figure how we've been married 40 years....), after taking books out and putting them back and moving them again, after what seemed like the 6th ring of hell for 14 hours because of my previously mentioned (and humility inspiring) ineptitude for any of what I did for 14 hours, it was finished.
And I love it. I have the table for my computer and a larger table in an L where I can read and do other things without moving my keyboard. And I have two huge bookcases and a small storage case on wheels and stuff on the wall in places it should be and I am a happy camper.
(I had to ask Bern to help me with manual things more than I hoped--like screwing things and assembling things, MANly things I'm no good at). But when I thanked her for helping me, she had the good sense and the knowledge of the depths of my humiliation to say, "I didn't help that much...." Bless her. Maybe it's not amazing we've been married 40 years, as different as we are...)
{I just looked around for a minute or two. My space is more usable and seems larger. Maybe 14 hours isn't as long as it seemed to me. Maybe humiliation is good for the Soul....and the Ego, in an odd way, as well.}
I look upon my work (with Bern's help) and can say: "It is Good".
[Maybe I need a little more humility since I'm quoting Yahweh's observation about Creation....]
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