Category Archives: Ruminations

Old apartment versus new

Posted on by LtL
Reply

Things I will miss most about my current apartment:

  • the view
  • living on the top floor and thus having nobody above me
  • the built-in dresser unit in my bedroom
  • the view
  • the prodigious amounts of light that we get with windows facing the north and the west
  • being high up enough that only the loudest of drunk undergrads can be heard as they walk by
  • the level of intellectual discourse I share with my roommate (this one is a bit of a cheat because he’d be leaving even if I were staying in this apartment)

Things I will enjoy about my new apartment:

  • having a full bath instead of just a shower
  • having trees outside of my windows
  • keeping the place as tidy as I want with nobody else’s mess to deal with
  • being able to put my futon against a wall instead of in the middle of the room
  • a more “cozy” feel to the place
  • I will not be dependent on other’s to renew my lease next year and will hopefully not move until I leave Pittsburgh

So Long, Kiva Han

Posted on by LtL

We tend to think about ourselves, our identity, as a noun. A thing. A quantum of personhood. It is, however, not all that deep to realize that it may be more advantageous see our identity as a verb, a process, a doing. We are what we do. But we are also, I think, where we are. The places and environments in which we spend our lives are as much a part of our identity as any activity (writing, researching, directing, playing music, etc.) that go into making us who we are. I’m not saying that places merely shape our identity. Rather, that places constitute, fundamentally, part of who we are as people. Whether through extending ourselves into certain spaces, or certain spaces extending themselves into us, place becomes as much who are are as our emotions and actions.

Which is to say:

I miss Kiva Han.

It’s been around three weeks since my favorite coffee shop in Pittsburgh closed, and I’m still feeling—yes, I know it’s a strong word—bereft. Like a part of me is missing. Kiva Han, even before I’d moved close to school, was a warm and inviting place, a space where I could get good breakfasts and go upstairs and get an always surprising amount of work done. In the last few weeks of my first semester, I would often get up at 6:00 am get down to Kiva by 6:30 – 7:00 to be the first one in. I’d have breakfast, coffee and write for several hours. After moving closer to school, I became even more a regular. Yes, I liked their food, and yes, I liked the people (still miss Ruthie a bit after she left the place to go live in New Zealand for a year), and yes, I liked the fact that I’d become such a regular that, when their credit card machine wasn’t working one morning and I had no cash on me, the owner told me to just bring in the money for my breakfast the next time I was in, since I was in so often. But the real feeling of loss comes from Kiva as a work space. The upstairs, while it would often get way too hot in the winter, was even when full, quiet enough to work and yet still have the white noise of the music and conversation from downstairs. I tried working downstairs sometimes, and it was possible, but it was really the corner by the window on the second floor that was “my” spot.

Having a place that can, for whatever reasons, produce a kind of flow in my research and writing, is, I’m realizing now that I’ve lost it, hugely important. Home can be good for some of the time. I like my apartment and I like my room. But there was something about Kiva that lent itself to a mental flow that I find hard to achieve other places. Certainly none of the other coffee shops in and around school work. Neither does the library (though I may be spending more time there as an ersatz solutions). In addition, none of the other coffee shops have full kitchens or make real food.

The real loss, the real pain, however, comes from the fact that, quite simply, Kiva had become part of my identity. Part of who I am and now it’s gone. This is, of course, not unusual. Places, activities, knowledge, people . . . everything that goes into creating the story of who we are—the story we tell ourselves anew each and every day—are never fixed. Never static. Continuity is less a fact and more a trick of perspective.

Still, I really, really, wish Kiva Han was still a continuity in my life and identity.

More Thoughts Related to Just Ok

Posted on by LtL

The greyness of ok. Of getting up in the morning because I have to, because I have set goals for myself and I am striving to fulfill them. I don’t seem to take much pleasure in the things I do, even the things I ought to . . . no, things I do enjoy . . . everything just feels muted. Soft pastels. Grey shades.

Moments occur, moments of laughter. Moments of joy. When Hope came downstairs when Jay was reading her a bedtime story, came downstairs just to hug me good night. Yeah, that was a lovely moment. Times spent with friends and family, moments of grace. Laughter. Safety. Love.

And I feel . . . sometimes deeply. I get weepy while watching TED talks sometimes, or seeing moments of beauty and grace in this world. I find myself wanting to cry at moments of honesty and connection. So it’s not like I’m shut down, not by a long shot. I feel . . . I just don’t seem to feel entirely connected to my own life, to my own possibilities. Everything is ok. But ok isn’t enough, is it? I mean, it’s so much better than bad, so much better than pain, so much better than complete emptiness or depression. It’s so much better than so many people’s lives. But . . . no, I can have more. I deserve more. I don’t know why or who, but the ok-ness seems connected to a lack of faith in myself . . . not that’s not quite right . . . or maybe it is. The thing is . . . the thing is that I stopped believing, not in myself, but in the potential for me to be someone greater than myself, in the potential to take the me of now and go meet the me that is even better.

I’d forgotten that I am invited, by anyone, to do anything:

So here I am, wondering, what next, how to take the grey of ok and paint my life in brighter colors, splashes of vibrant blue and orange and crimson and yellow; how to embrace potential, change, growth, challenge, and creativity with excitement and energy; how to stop being tired, stop being in physical pain (mostly the muscles in my upper back and neck, and on a very regular basis), stop settling for bad skin and the 20-30 pounds of too heavy; how to stop settling, period.

Look, yeah, the alienation bit, the loneliness, kinda sucks at times. Sometimes worse than others. There’s this quote which I absolutely, one-hundred percent grok:

”Loneliness isn’t a need for company, but a longing for kindred souls.” Marylin French

Yeah, I see other people who have found their groups of kindred souls, especially creative kindred souls and I feel jealous of what they have because, for whatever reason, I haven’t really found my creative kin and god how I yearn for that: to have other artists to create with, to inspire, to challenge, to make me come alive with ideas and problems and anxieties and solutions and beauty and art and to collaborate and make things that mean things and that mark this world in some real and important, even if small, way. Partners-in-crime. Compadres.

I’ve been waiting in the grey for them to come along. To spark the sky with either sunrise or sunset instead of this dreary, fine, ok fog. But that’s not working. And time is ticking. Ticking. Ticking.

Away.

“Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day”

No more waiting. It’s time to start painting in the colors of my life, going outside the lines if I want to. I know I need some help to do this and that it won’t happen overnight and that, as Jen texted last night ODAAT (which, if you are like me and had no frakin’ clue what that meant, it’s “one day at a time”).

If I had the hair to comb, this would be the song I would leave you with:

But I don’t. And can’t really comb my hair in any style (which, I’ll be honest, is the worst thing about the whole bald thing: you can’t fuck around with your look). So instead, I’ll leave you with song I’ll hopefully feel, deeply and intensely, sometime sooner rather than . . . well, never.

Broken, Part 1

Posted on by LtL

I’ve been putting off writing this essay all day because I am rather frightened of putting these thoughts into words and putting those words out to the world. But I have done nearly all my other work for the day and I need to maintain my current goal of writing 500 words every day. So, here goes.

I think I’m broken.

Stop. Hold on. Let me back up to how I was originally going to start this essay as if formed in my head this morning at 7 am while I was struggling to get motivated to get up . . .

The thing about Hawaii is that each and every morning I was there, I was eager to get up, to see the sunrise, to feel the wind, to smell the air. Each and every day I was up early and excited for the day. I’m sure that the time change had something to do with it, even Joya, who is decidedly not a morning person was getting up early. I’m also sure it was the newness and excitement of being on vacation. Still, days when I’m genuinely excited and looking forward to the day are . . . well, let’s just say very, very rare.

So that’s where I was going to start. A safe place, a positive memory. So why start with “I think I’m broken”? Because, I think it’s true and I think I need to work on fixing it before I go back to Hawaii because if I don’t, if I go to Hawaii and find that, after the newness wears off, I go back to dragging myself out of bed each and every morning instead of embracing the day and feeling excited . . . well, I just don’t know what I’d do.

Now, what do I mean by “broken.” I honestly don’t quite know exactly. I know that I’m not clinically depressed: I can laugh when I’m with people I care about and trust, I can deeply enjoy books and movies. I am able, despite the fact that I am never actually excited by the day, to get up and to work and to create and to get some regular—if not enough—exercise. I have started playing my guitar again and am thinking of even attempting an open mic night before the summer ends. I am very happy with my new apartment and feel so much more positive about my surroundings on a daily basis because of it. Although, while I say “very happy”, I’ll be honest: I don’t know what that means. I certainly appreciate my new apartment and even love it in some ways, but happiness . . . happiness seems like it’s something other people do. I have moments of joy, moments of laughter, and moments of great contentment. Most of those moments have to do with being around people I feel safe with and who I genuinely like/love. But they remain moments. Happiness . . . happiness . . . I don’t think I know what that means. At least not in any kind of real, sustained way.

“Are you happy,” Emily asked me when we met for lunch while I was in RI.
“I’m working on it,” I replied.

We talked more, though she was asking most of the questions. At one point, she asked if I’d considered getting help. The word “drugs” was mentioned. She wasn’t the first to have mentioned getting help. Joya had suggested, several times, that I might benefit from either talk therapy or, possibly (and she would broach the subject carefully), some combination of drugs might be in order. I wouldn’t hear of it. I mean, it’s all my fault: I don’t get enough sleep, I don’t exercise enough, I don’t maintain a decent creative output, I don’t meditate, I don’t do yoga, I don’t seem able to find the right group friends who will spark me in the right way.1 If I just did all the things I ought to do, I’d be happy. Right?

Right?

“Are you happy?”

I’m reminded of the scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall when, after breaking up with Annie, his character approaches a beautiful looking couple and says that they look like a happy couple, very much in love, what is their secret? The woman responds, “Uh, I’m very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say,” and her partner follows her with, “And I’m exactly the same way.” But, as much as I might find that scene amusing, it’s cheap and cynical, and exactly the kind of defensive maneuver that . . .

wait.

No. Wait up. Hold on. I’m avoiding the issue.

The issue is I’m lonely. The issue is I can’t remember the last time I woke up genuinely excited and looking forward to the day. The issue is that I am constantly struggling to do the things I love to do and to be the person I know I want to be. The issue is that I prefer staying in my apartment, alone, because the feeling of being alone in a crowd when I’m surrounded by others is getting to be so heart-breakingly difficult that I sometimes want to cry while walking down the street and watching all these people, this whole other species of beings that seem to have figured out (or at least that’s how I am perceiving them), how to do this life thing.

The underlying issue is this: I’m lost. Lost in a mind that hasn’t let me be fully me in a long, long time. And I’ve gotten used to living on a level that denies me full access to my love of self and of others; to my love of my work and my thoughts; to my courage and desire to be a force in this world instead of running away from it.

As I write these words, with the plan of posting them in public view on my website, I feel sick with worry about my mother’s response, about my father’s thoughts—not that they will judge me or think ill of me, but I don’t know how to face their concern and love in this matter without reading it as pity—no, that’s not quite right either. It’s their sorrow I am terrified of.

I’m also worried about the fact that my colleagues in the department may very well read these words, colleagues who I respect as students, historians, academics, and scholars but who are not, for the most part, close friends. I don’t want people to know, especially people I’m not close to, that I don’t have my own shit together and that I’m not fully and completely capable of being as completely self-sufficient as possible.

Also, this means that I am making a commitment to try to change things. That I am, in public, committing myself to get better and to make an effort, no matter how uncomfortable that effort might be, to regain the me I distantly remember from a long time ago.

But really, the resistance and the pain and the tears of writing this, of posting this for all to see is that I am, here and now, admitting to something that is the hardest fucking thing in the world for me to admit:

I need help.2

  1. I console myself with the thought that at least I’m not blaming the universe for just being a harsh an unfair place like I spent most of my twenties doing. At least there’s that. [↩]
  2. I’m staring at this damn blinking cursor trying to work up the courage to post this and my mind is already thinking of ways to back away from some of what I’ve just written, to pass it off as nothing but too much wine and a lonely Friday night; that I’m being self-pitying and self-indulgent and that my problem is that I’m just lazy and think too much and I just need to work harder, exercise more, get more sleep, and it’ll all be better, I can fix this all on my own, really I can. Really. There’s nothing really wrong with me at all, forget what I just said. Of course, I need to post this for back-pedaling and disclaimers to mean anything. Still staring. I guess if you’ve read this, I have, at some point, hit Control+Command+P. [↩]

A Problem of Translation

Posted on by LtL

Is there a voice for the junkies and the homeless and the lost in contemporary literature? In theatre? And not a patronizing middle-class “oh look at the poor folk” voice, but one that takes the time to live in that world, to respect the lives of those in the streets and trenches that make up our war on drugs and who live the poverty that makes wealth possible?

Is our contemporary theatre anemic, in part, because we write and produce only for a middle- to upper-class demographic? Would they be interested in seeing something that is not a reflection of their world or a perspective on other worlds (ethnic, economic) that serves to ease their conscious and make them feel like they are part of a solution through voyeurism?

I don’t think so.

I sit here in a bus station, listening to fragments of lives that are full of pain and anger and fear and resignation and a strange strength that is both alien and frightening to my middle-class, highly educated, white and male privileged life, and I wonder who writes for these people? Is it even possible to tell their stories without exploiting them, without stealing them?

Our culture fantasizes, in books and movies and comics and tv, about various post-apocalyptic scenarios. All the while ignoring that many people are already living in a world that is constantly hostile and where each day is a battle to merely survive and who understand that the smallest joys can be the biggest of victories, but that victory is a perishable commodity and there are no guarantees it will come ’round again.

I sit. I do not listen to my music through noise-isolating earphones. Instead I listen to the people around me. I wonder. I have no answers, no solutions, only questions. I have learned nothing. But I have heard, if only in snatches and only for an hour, the language of another world.

In the end, I also wonder just how much privilege and pretension is apparent in these wonderings and questions.

A Tale of Two Selves

Posted on by LtL

One of the reasons I chose “Living the Liminal” as the title of my site and the nom de plume of my blogging self is because I have, for as long as I can remember, felt as if I was poised between two selves, struggling to reconcile equal and opposite impulses. Stuck on the threshold between two selves. I am a homebody who has never found a place to call home. I desire order and structure to my life and to my days and yet feel stifled and resentful of anything less than the freedom to come and go and do what I wish. I yearn for a loving and intense and supportive relationship and yet I also crave solitude and fear the responsibility that comes from relationships.

These things are not just jumbled up in my head, making my goals and desires something less than a straight line. I really do feel like there are two of myself competing for what I want out of life. Of course we all have competing desires, and maybe what I feel is more normal than I like to believe. But I think that one of the reasons I continue to feel liminal and displaced from my life and isolated from people is this division of myself, this continual pulling in opposite directions. (I think my tendency to look at people around me with a sense of alienation is not necessarily bound up specifically with this particular issue, but I don’t think feeling constantly between selves helps the matter. And by alienation, I’m talking less about individual interactions and referring more to those times when I look around at people going about their lives, falling in love, having families, staying in one place for longer than 4 years, managing to have careers, building communities, etc. and feel an emotional vertigo that makes all of that seem, well, alien.)

What’s even more frustrating about my two selves is that one is not necessarily “bad” or self-destructive or purely desire driven. If it were simply a matter of the id fighting the ego that would be one thing. It might lead to problems, sure, but it least identifying what was necessary for balance would be easier.

I don’t really know what I’m trying to say here. I am trying to write more about myself as a means to enunciate some of my emotions and map out my mental landscape for myself. However, one of the reasons I generally don’t offer up this kind of writing is precisely because I don’t have a narrative or any real sense of what my point is. I mean, just because I feel something doesn’t make it worthwhile as writing.

Oh well. It’s written. And with a simply key combination it’s about to be posted.

Thoughts on Kauai

Posted on by LtL

Hawaii_44

Clean, ocean air. Silence broken only by waves. Mornings that greet you with brightness and expectation and warmth, like a friend’s embrace. Aloha. Kauai.

As I write these words, casting my mind to the brief times I spent, in 2005 and 2006, on that island, I can feel my body suffused with desire and longing. Yearning. For the air, the silence, the stars.

The stars.

I have spent a great deal of my adult life moving about, going from one place to another. Sometimes searching for a home, sometimes trying to outrun myself and find a new me (that never seems to work), sometimes in the pursuit of knowledge or love or a dream of a place. Because of this—and mostly because of my habit of running away instead of toward something—I am suspicious of my motivations when I consider moving someplace. So I struggle against my yearning, not trusting it, sizing it up to see if it’s going to turn around and bite me. Yet it remains, this fantasy of someday moving to Kauai.

(And no, I’m not talking about even considering this until after my PhD is complete.)

If the greatest gift I received from Joya is her love and support (lasting even after we are no longer “together”), the second greatest was the opportunity, with her family, of going to Kauai and spending time on this beautiful island, of allowing me to experience the air and the silence and the mornings full of warmth and light and the rainbows and the chickens and the ocean and the feeling of being in a place that felt so entirely safe and that made me feel grounded in ways that I cannot really attribute to any other place I’ve visited.1

But then the voice inside warns: this is nostalgia, this is a feeling that you have inscribed and re-inscribed over the years and made all the bigger and more beautiful than it ever was in real life, and you are just looking for a place to run, a place to hide from the world and yourself, a place that is nearly as far away as you can get.

Stupid voice.

And I wonder: what is the difference between a necessary fantasy and actual necessity? Is going to Hawaii a necessary thing for me to do? A goal that I should plan for and figure out how to make happen despite any logistical issues? Do I ignore the voice who argues against it and listen to desire or do I listen to practicality and ignore the yearning for a place I’ve only been in for what, 20 days? 20 days out of 40 years. Even if I were to go back for another 10, 25, 20, even 30 days, how could I know that moving there is the right thing to do? Instincts? Gut feeling? I don’t necessarily trust those. At least not unreservedly so. Even if I did seriously plan for this, I would need a job, preferably teaching, that could help pay back my student loans in addition to supporting me and, really, what are the chances of there being a job in the University or Community college system out there just when I become available for the job market? But if this is more than just a fantasy, should I assume that I can overcome those kinds of obstacles in order to make it happen? When I tell someone about these plans, when I mention how I felt more peaceful and grounded on that small island in the Pacific then anywhere else I can remember, I will sometimes choke back tears because something in me has been wounded for years and is desperate to recapture that feeling of peace and of being grounded, of being in a place that will allow me the security and space to be more fully myself. Is the lesson here that I deserve to go there and find what I’m looking for or that I need to find a way to make my peace here and now, to recover myself to myself in Pittsburgh?

Ok, so I know the answer to this is the latter and that it would be folly to expect a place, even a place as beautiful as Kauai, to “fix” me in any real way. Still, is there something wrong with wanting to be in a place that resonates in such a way as to give you strength and courage and that might reveal yourself more fully to yourself than other places? I don’t know. I don’t need to know. At least not today. Not this year even. Not for several years. Still, I wonder, I dream, I doubt, I yearn for the air, the ocean, the silence, the stars, the light, the warmth, the island, Kauai.

Aloha.

  1. Actually, Lila is probably the second greatest gift, with traveling to Hawaii as 3rd. [↩]

A Memory Series: Shooting at Ghosts

Posted on by LtL

The plastic guns were bright orange. The ghosts emanated from a record of haunted house sounds that was played on a small, self-contained record player that was very similar to this one:

Vintage Record Player

This was in Wells, ME and I played this game with another kid whose name, I think, was Matt. We would put the record on and, as ghostly sounds filled the room, we’d shoot at the air, yelling over there and duck and watch out and got it and we’d run around the room and throw ourselves on the floor away from invisible enemies and shoot at specters until the record ended—the needle, out of grooves schg-ghg schg-ghg schg-ghg schg-ghg until we picked it up, turned the vinyl disc over, and started all over again.

I don’t remember what Matt looked like. I don’t remember any other play activities that we did, and we must have done many others, I don’t remember the first time we shot at ghosts or whose idea it was or when we stopped. All I remember are those bright orange guns and the thrill of having a friend who I trusted completely to watch my back when the ghosts attacked.

Me and My Stuff

Posted on by LtL

Since I’m traveling a bunch this summer (3ish weeks in the SF/Bay area, a couple of weeks in New England with some stops in NY and a brief excursion to MD likely), I’ve been considering what I will be taking with me on these trips and am just about 100% certain that I’ll be leaving behind my computer and taking only my iPhone and iPad. This is partly dependent on getting my PodCastle episodes done and submitted ahead of my trips as the iPad doesn’t really have a good app for putting those together. However, I’m also thinking that even if I don’t get all of those episodes done before my travels, as long as I can borrow someone’s computer for a couple of hours I can put them together that way.

Thinking about these trips and carrying the minimal amounts of stuff I need so I don’t have to check bags and can travel light, I have also been thinking about my life in general and my relationship with stuff. It’s been changing for a while now, and I think I’m going to make some further changes this summer by making some assessments about what I need and how “light” I want to travel through life. There are some great sites that talk about living a “minimal” lifestyle, including mnmlist.com, Minimal Mac, and Art of Minimalism and I’m not going to get rid of everything I own: especially as I’ll be moving into a new apartment this summer, and one that I’ll be sharing with a friend from school. So yes, things like my futon, kitchen table and chairs, and a few other pieces of furniture are, at present, non-negotiable. Bookshelves, for a grad student are nothing less than a necessity, as is the need to own a lot of books. In reality, I don’t have a lot of stuff, but I do have things I don’t need and/or use, clothes that I no longer wear, knick-knacks and the odd electronic equipment that I don’t really need.

After the end of the semester, I plan on doing a thorough cleaning of my apartment and make sure that everything I own can be put into one of the following categories: Trash/Recycle/Donate, Necessity, Useful for Now, and Unsure. The first two are completely self-explanatory. By Useful for Now, I mean things like furniture and other household items. This is stuff that is not necessary per se, but considering the fact that I am going to be living in Pittsburgh for at least 3-4 more years, there is no reason to get rid of it. Unsure will be all those things that I might not use presently but I should at least give myself time to consider the cost of replacing down the line if it turns out that the item may become useful. An example of this is my small, hand-turned washing “machine” and electric spin-dryer. I don’t use them regularly any more, but they might prove an essential in case of a) a long power outage, b) the apocalypse, c) a long camping trip with friends, or d) the rather likely chance that I might, sometime in the future, move into an apartment that does not have laundry facilities. (Ok, so I’ve just convinced myself that these will actually go into a new category: Worth Keeping.)

Of course, all of these kinds of choices are contextual and there is no correct “right” way for everyone. If I lived 40 miles outside of a city my necessities would be different than they are now. If I weren’t in grad school I might very well shift away from owning physical copies of any but my most favorite books and rely on digital books and libraries. If I end up moving to Hawaii sometime in the future, you can bet that most anything that seems useful will quickly become something I sell or donate. The point isn’t to indulge in minimalism for it’s own sake, but, as Merlin Mann has pointed out, to find out what is enough for the task at hand—in this case that task is living my life—and then stop pointlessly adding on more and more stuff.

At it’s most basic level, the issue resolves to the basic question: do you own your things or do your things own you? I suspect, for most of us, the answer is mixed and complex (as the answers to most “basic” questions often are), but I am definitely feeling the urge to really think hard about that question and the relationship between me and my stuff.