Little fixes between the heavy lifting

I have been doing a lot of walking lately.

I try always to do a lot of walking, but since I have been hard at some gnarly change-making, I have actually been doing a lot of walking. When I feel like it, I take a walk. When I don't feel like it, I take an even longer one.

No matter what kind of walk I take, though, I try always to walk with a purpose. I know, I know, walking should be purpose enough on its own, for the mental health benefits, let alone the physical ones. But I still associate walks sans errand with my Crohn's recovery, and sorry, I just don't want to be reminded of that right now. I have made a small concession to non-utility by walking sans headphones, but that's as far as I'm prepared to go right now. So to speak.¹

Anyway. For today's walk I decided to drop the Netflix envelope in the corner mailbox, so I might get Disc 4, Season 2 of In Treatment a wee bit faster. (Hel-lo, Gabriel Byrne, and Gabriel Byrne's sexy Irish accent, and Gabriel Byrne's sexy Season 2 haircut!) It wasn't a long enough walk, so I brought along a book to return to the library. It was not due, but it would do.²

As I walked, to double-dip, I thought about what I might write about today.

Then I thought, "I'm tired."

Then I thought, "I'm a baby for being so tired when there are people in the world who have REAL troubles making them tired."

Then I thought, "Damn, I'm mean to myself. If someone else said this to anyone, even me, I'd give them a piece of my mind."

Then I thought, "I really hope I'm not saying too much of this out loud." Because I have been doing that a LOT more lately.

Then I stuck the library book in the return slot and it struck me: I clean my library books; I wonder if anyone else does that.

I do clean my library books. Each one of them, after I get them home and before I read them. I take some window cleaner, spray it onto a paper towel, and wipe all the schmutz off of the protective covers. Because (sorry) I have found a few things lodged inside of library books that made me wonder about the hands, the dozens and dozens of filthy hands, touching the outsides of library books. And even though I know that by the time the next patron who actually checks out any of the books I've checked out finally touches the book, it might be contaminated again, at least I know it will look nice. Nicer. That there may be a germ or two there, but the crusts of filth I found it with will not be there.

It occurred to me, in other words, that I do a (very) small thing that makes life nicer. For other people, I hope, but definitely for me. Which got me to wondering whether there were other little "hacks" like this that I had come up with which I could share, so that maybe people who hadn't heard of them could use them, or that maybe people who had could say, "Hey! I do that, and I also do this...." Because you know me: I like a good hack.

So here is a very short list of things I have done that have made my life nicer far out of proportion to the amount of time, money or effort they took to implement. I only wish I'd learned them earlier in life.

• I carry dog treats. I recently bought a bunch of Charlee Bear liver treats which I parceled into little baggies (previously purchased! I'm repenting!) and distributed in the pockets of my jackets. I like saying "hi" to dogs on my walk, and if the owner is amenable, I will give the dog a tiny treat.
• I bought two dozen each of my favorite pens and pads, and stuck them everywhere. I still end up without one or the other at times, but far fewer times. They're both more expensive than such things need to be, but it finally occurred to me that when I did have them around, I used them more because I enjoyed them more.
• I wear a vest in the house in cool weather. I'm actually wearing a cardigan right now, because I had it on under the vest while I walked, and it is a little chilly. But I love the freedom of movement and air flow afforded by the vest (nylon, quilted) compared with another set of sleeves. I also wear a very old cotton jersey scarf from the moment it gets at all cool in L.A. (under 75ºF, for me). If you are a weenie, or have throat issues, you might find it comforting, too.
• I put a tiny bit of water at the bottom of the votive receptacles. My sister taught me this, I think. She is a retired professional candle expert. Makes the melty stuff at the very bottom pop right out. Pop!
• I keep an extra set of Tweezerman tweezers in the change drawer of my car. Believe it or don't, the rear-view mirror is the most awesome thing to look in for eyebrow plucking. In daylight, when you're parked, and hopefully no one is looking. Fantastic quality glass, and you can really get in there. When you have a big honker, this is an issue.
• I also keep about five neatly folded up dollar bills in there. You see people at off ramps all the time here in L.A. Lots more, recently, it seems, although maybe that's Yellow Volkswagen Syndrome talking. I used to stress out about it: what do I give them? Will the light change? Do I have small enough bills? Will they be offended if I just give them parking quarters instead? Now I just roll down the window and hand them a dollar bill with a "Good luck." Easy-peasy.
• I keep "enh" food on me at ALL times. I learned this on the SCD. If you have non-awful food on you, you will be less likely to eat crap food. The Apple Pie and Cherry Pie flavors of LaraBars are "enh"–palatable, but not so delicious I will eat them out of boredom. If I carried the Coconut Cream Pie ones, on the other hand, I would weigh 200lbs. Holy fucknuts, are they good.

I could go on (and I might, later, if the Heavy Lifting Phase continues). Instead, though, I will take my leave with a final "ask": looking over this list, are there things that you're thinking of that you do that offer such a high ROI on enjoyment and comfort without being totally jackass?

Because really, I would love to soak in a bunch of those right about now.³

xxx
c

Image by emdot via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

¹Oh, god. You have no idea how off my game I am these days. Puns. Ugh. And too tired to fix them. UGH.

²YOU SEE? Ugh. Sweet Mother of Pearl, get me through this Heavy Lifting Phrase before I accidentally kill myself with blunt wordplay.

³And I realize that to a degree, this is what Lifehacker and similar sites are all about. But I'm looking for serendipity, not a long wade through a swamp. What have you found, O Wandering Fellow who has landed here?

Poetry Thursday: The whole point of it

Take yourself back to first grade
or kindergarten
or nursery school
or wherever you first learned
how to really learn:

One thing at a time.
One fascinating thing
that intrigued you at first
pulling you in,
with its shiny
sexy
foreign
just-a-bit-beyond-you
mystery 
and newness.

Your shoes,
maybe,
the first time you pictured
them going from untied
to tied
without grownup
intervention.

A carrot,
perhaps,
lumpy and long,
with delicate hairs
someone showed you
how to shave off
slowly,
in curls,
onto a paper towel.

You whittled at least one
down to nothing at all
I'll bet.
You put your left arm 
into your right sleeve,
at least a hundred times,
maybe more.
You made your "e"s backwards
and your grass purple
and your shoelaces, knots.

Again and again,
a thousand times
eleventy-billion times
you did it
R-O-N-G

And now you say
this is hard?

This omelet?
This iambic pentameter?
This 1040EZ
backhand
bar chord
start-up
dismount
mea culpa
marriage?

Of course it's hard.
That's
why
you
do
it.

xxx
c

Image by Beth Nazario via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Derailment, deconstructed

1. Launch writing program to begin rewriting work for the day.

2. Work on rewrite for 10 minutes. Hit snag, and decide I need grounding exercise writing buddy created for me last week when I hit previous rewriting snag.

3. Open email client to track down writing buddy's note, because I appear to have willfully refused to keep the usual three or four redundant copies handy, and email is the only place I know I can find a copy.

4. Note new email in inbox!

5. Read first new email. It contains a simple request for information, accompanied by a factual error. Rather than fulfilling request (which could be dispatched in roughly 15 seconds), I fixate on factual error, moving swiftly from assessment of my history with correspondent (contentious, fraught) to speculative analysis of his intent (passive-aggression? none?) to my own response (judgmental, assumptive). Briefly reflect on the subject of mirrors. Succumb to mounting moral indignation over misguided accusation of imprecision, and begin hashing out a reply.

6. Catch myself acting like horse's ass and save email to "drafts" folder. Win!

7. Read next email. It is an autoresponse from a company whose product I downloaded for trial yesterday during a promotion. Robo-mail notes that I have not replied, and extends grace period of an additional 24 hours, but at what looks like a reduced percentage off. Simultaneously pulled toward the deal and suspicious that it is less of a deal than offered yesterday. Consider going through "Trash" folder, then realize I emptied it last night in obsessive-compulsion-fueled panic attack." This series of thoughts apparently creates just enough distance to remind me that I passed on deal yesterday because I'd realized I had zero immediate/projected use for the product. Determine that these needs have likely not changed overnight. Delete email.

8. Open last new email, which contains references to a "branding expert." Briefly wonder why sender of email does not consider me a "branding expert." Tar-pit balloon of mixed gases (anxiety, hurt, anger) bubbles to surface. As it swells, I consider clicking on outbound link to view further information on "branding expert." Miraculously, it pops, covering me with filthy shame, but allowing the clearheaded realization that I have no extra time, ever, to view videos of any "branding expert." Wipe shame from battered psyche. Delete email.

9. Close email client. Win!

10. Find myself staring at browser window previously hidden by document and mail client windows. It contains Amazon affiliate income information. Wonder why Amazon affiliate income is so low. Wonder where I have failed to provide sufficient value for hot clickthru action. Wonder whether, if I do empty my affiliate income stash to buy that Kindle 3G I've been wanting, I will ever earn enough affiliate income to fill Kindle 3G with books. Wonder where my privileged life has gone off the rails that I am spending perfectly good (re)writing time wondering about jerkoff assclown B.S. like Amazon affiliate income and overpriced digital reading devices. Remember that I am supposed to be (re)writing right now.

11. Minimize browser window and maximize document window. Stare at rewrite. Realize I have forgotten to retrieve my writing buddy's notes.

12. Decide to transcribe rabbit-hole behavior, because unpacking things and examining them is only way I have ever learned how to change patterns. Recall Beverly Sills quote I am forever spouting off to others. Sigh inwardly.

13. Decide to post rabbit-hole experience to the blog, after rewriting it.

14. Finish rewriting original rewriting chore, sans writing-buddy notes. Note that the Earth appears to be turning on axis.

15. Post to blog. Wonder if post should have been rewritten further.

xxx
c

Image by Smath. via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

The hardest thing I did all weekend, the hardest thing I'll do all week

On Saturday night, I went to bed at 8:30pm.¹

I didn't go to sleep at 8:30; it took me a full hour and a half of fighting myself to do that, with an assist from the back third of Breaker Morant and the front quarter of John Adams. Still, me, in bed by 8:30 on any night is tremendous. That I had just set the goal for myself that very day to be in bed by 8pm and only missed it by a half-hour was icing on the cake.

I am not quite done unpacking all of the reasons why it's so hard for me to call it a day, even on a weekend, but I have a short list:

1. I was an only child for five and a half years. I grew up around grown-ups, and was treated like one, albeit a short, ignorant one. That treatment very reasonably ended at my being able to partake in certain grown-up activities, such as operating a motor vehicle and consuming adult beverages and staying up past 8pm and fire. So now, I'LL SHOW THEM. (I know, I know. A genius of logic, I am not. Still, I love driving, liquor and espresso, and my place is lousy with candles and incense, so at least I'm consistently illogical.)
2. I am an overachiever. With a crippling case of eyes-bigger-than-stomach syndrome, time-wise. I always, always, always think I can get more done in a day than I can, and much less than is reasonable. So I feel like I should have gotten more done, always, and I feel like the answer to actually doing it is just pushing harder and harder, rather than revising my notions of what is right and proper.
3. I am human. I want "me" time, or rather, "me, unplugged" time. Me-not-worky time. Me-veg-out time. And since I am relentless and/or a nimrod, time-management-wise, right up until I hit my limit, I insist on treating myself to whoop-dee-do time at night, by which time I'm so exhausted all my body wants to do is rest up for the next day of battle with my will. "Whoop-dee-do" equals an adult beverage and/or TV, since I am still dealing with my inner five-and-a-half-year-old's unmet needs.

So. Even though I missed the mark by a half-hour and spent my wind-down time consuming video entertainment, I'm calling it progress. Hard-won. Hard, period.

At the same time I'm tackling this staying-up-late/overexerting-myself nonsense, I'm also dealing with a surprise problem. It's so ridiculous, I'm embarrassed to say it, or, rather, I've been too embarrassed to say it in the two weeks since I discovered it. Now, I'm saying it:

I do not know how to rewrite.

Does that look like nothing to you? Look again:

I am a writer. I have made my living writing. I have had things I've written performed on professional stages. I have written a monthly column for actors, one in which I not infrequently stress the necessity of working incessantly at one's craft, for over four years. I have written posts on this very blog for over six years. Just this summer, I helped teach a teleclass about writing.² And I do not know how to rewrite.

I will go into the long and boring and painful story of my revelation another day.³ For now, what is relevant and necessary to share is this: there's always something to do next. ALWAYS. I watched some of a documentary about Ram Dass. In it, he talks about his stroke, and how his reaction as he was having it was the opposite of spiritual. As someone on the spiritual path, he gave himself an "F". So he's working with his teacher, the stroke, to learn more stuff.

Ram-freakin'-Dass!

Anyway, once you're on the other side of whatever morass you need to see your way through, you might see how that's a good thing. Bumping up against trouble and working your way through it, on the other hand, requires vast stores of energy and patience. I'm running short on the former these days, and I've never had much of the latter.

Changing these things, my relationship to time, my ability to rewrite, may also change how I approach the blog. I'm finally ceding to the reality of finite amounts of time and energy, and I really, really, really want to get some more complex and intricate forms of writing out into the world. Books take vast amounts of time, and fuckloads of rewriting. It's one thing to dash off a pretty good first draft of a 1,000-word piece; it's another to do the same for a 60,000-word memoir. There is no dashing that.

As I move forward, then, I suppose I will do what I can do, and what I've done thus far: share what I can, when it is useful. It's just that prior to this alarming discovery, "can" had a lot more to do with my ability to process than my levels of energy or my available hours. It should be an interesting six months, if I remain committed to this new learning.

In the meantime, one thing I am very interested in doing is immersing myself in the techniques and mindset of rewriting, if there are any. An initial couple of searches didn't turn up much, which intrigues me. If writing is rewriting, shouldn't there be a lot more writing about rewriting? Or maybe there is, and I've blinded myself to it.

I have enlisted actual help in this, by the way. My writing-group buddy (we're down to just two of us) is, as it turns out, as good at rewriting as I am bad at it. And she's a mom, so she's got the patience thing down.

Still. You know. Resources and stories of how you licked the problem would be most welcome at this juncture.

xxx
c

¹And please, don't waste one second feeling sorry for me being home on a Satiddy night. First, I am 49, I've had a million of 'em. Second, Saturday night? Feh. It's second only to New Year's Eve and most Sundays in line for the title of "Worst Night to Go Out, Ever."

²Despite my inadequacies, the stuff I did talk about, I actually knew something about. The course is really good, with tons of great information and exercises and practices, so if you're looking for a self-directed course on writing, I highly recommend you check it out. And yes, I make money if you buy through that link. Or this one! Or this one! I wrestle with it inside, this affiliate-linking thing, and I need to write up a formal policy and make explicit my reasons for affiliate-linking (or not). But for now, know that it's just that, and Amazon, and Groupon that I link to that way. Period.

³But just to head off certain questions at the pass, the reason I've been able to skate for so long is two-fold. First, like some autistic savant or functional illiterate, I used the superpowers and will I did have to get really, really good at writing a first draft. My first drafts are not perfect, but they're better than plenty of people's second drafts to pass, and good enough for gov'mint work almost all of the time. Second, whenever I did need to rewrite, I had help, bosses, clients, art directors, fellow Groundlings, whatever. Even then, change was minimal and excruciating. Whatever the opposite of fun is, it was that. And if you don't believe me (although I don't know why you wouldn't, since I'm pretty frank on this here blog), a final kind of Q.E.D. is this set of footnotes: they exist because I'm not even going to try to fancy-first-draft this. I'm too tired to rewrite to get them into the draft, so they're just going, and staying, here.

Image by slettvet via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Poetry Thursday: Thick of it

I will not lie to you,
I have chewed my nails
down to nubs
to keep from grabbing
a fresh cigarette.

I have wept
before pieces
of chocolate cake
and crusty heels
of bread.

I have powered through
eight kinds of pain
to run one more mile
lift five more pounds
bend one more inch.

I have force-fed myself
video
after
video
in my valiant attempts
to not make the call,
to not send the email,
to stop my thoughts
from veering off
the straight and narrow
into the Land of the Dark Places.

I have braved rush-hour traffic
and hostile crowds
and disinterested rooms
to move from one world
to another.

And you don't want to know
how many buckets
of bile and confusion
I've bailed 
from the deep
and overflowing reservoirs
of my head and my heart 
onto god-knows-how-many
blue-lined spiral-bound pages.

They are nothing,
NOTHING,
compared to the exquisite torture
of sitting still 
and doing 
absolutely
nothing.

Sometimes
the hardest thing about change
is slowing down enough
to see
exactly
what you need
to do next.

xxx
c

Image by Sarah G via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Overcoming overwhelm one straw at a time

I spent the better part of the weekend immersed in garbage.

The garbage in question was plastic, specifically, the vast quantities of plastic pollution that are turning up everywhere: on beaches, in "far away" landfills,* in swirling aquatic gyres, and yes, even in our bodies. The immersion technique was an all-day event here in Los Angeles, the TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch conference.

And even though 12 hours in a room with 100 people is like Death By Extraversion for a freaky INFJ like me, it really was the better part of my weekend. Better even than being treated to a Houston's burger and a Sunday-afternoon matinée of The Social Network by my bestie, L.A. Jan, and that was pretty damned great. Because while it is always shocking and frequently painful to be woken up, to be given the tools of change so lovingly and thoughtfully and brilliantly is overwhelming in the good way.

The facts are overwhelming in the bad way. A floating island twice the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Babies born with plastic in their blood. Birds dead with plastic in their bellies. As a similarly shell-shocked friend and I joked morbidly during a break in the onslaught, you could count at least one slide in each presentation to send you spiraling down the vortex of "We're f*cked."

We may be. but that's not the point. I mean, a gigantic asteroid could take us all out tomorrow morning, but that doesn't mean we should all act like assholes tonight, right? Okay, false analogy. How about this, friends of change: you will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever get done all of the things you want to do in this lifetime; does that mean you shouldn't try?

Change sucks! Change is awesome!

For most of us, most kinds of change require a delicate balance of incremental application and wholesale commitment. Even when I uncharacteristically changed like THAT, chucking my cigarettes, say, or switching to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet 100% in an afternoon, there was always a trail of trigger events leading up to the change itself, and a long, long haul of re-aligning my thoughts and actions afterward. There's backsliding, too, and setbacks. I fell off the 100%-SCD wagon a little, then a lot, but I learned a little, then a lot, and six years later, I'm back on again.

So perhaps it will be more useful to focus on what you can do. It was definitely the part of the day that I found most inspiring, all the stories of people who woke up, one way or another, to the problem and immediately set themselves to the challenge of becoming the solution. Artist Dianna Cohen morphed into activist Dianna Cohen when the discarded plastic she used to make her art started breaking down, and she started to learn what that meant. Beth Terry, accountant, turned into Beth Terry, agent of change, when she saw a picture of a dead bird filled filled with discarded plastic. Teenager Jordan Howard became leader-of-teens, and aspiring teens, and long-retired teens, Jordan Howard after waking up in a class about sustainability. So many inspiring stories, so little time to time to get moving.

One straw at a time.

I am no hero. My house is filled with plastic, as is my life in general. And this, from someone who (usually) carries an aluminum water bottle and refillable hot cup. I'm a little better than I was, and I have a long way to go. Still, because I know myself and my easily overwhelmed nature, I will start small: no more straws.

I became a huge fan of the bendy straw during my hospitalization back in 2002, when they were the only way (outside of an IV, which is NO fun) to reliably get liquid from a container into my body. During my convalescence, they comforted me, having a bendy straw in my water or juice or smoothie not only helped increase my consumption of liquids, but reminded me in a deep, Proustian way of being cared for by my grandparents as a child. I got hooked, and well after becoming well, the bendy straw remained ubiquitous in my drinking life. If it was 80ºF or under, I used a bendy straw to get it into my gullet. Even though I used the same straw for days weeks, okay, MONTHS, I was still aware that it was a foolish extravagance from an environmental standpoint.**

So effective immediately, I am forgoing my very favorite single-use plastic, the straw, at home, or out and about. Yesterday afternoon, I asked for my iced tea at Houston's without a straw, and as you can see, I've lived to tell the tale. I will bundle up the couple dozen remaining bendy straws and see if I can't donate them to some crafty type, maybe one of the people who make this stuff. Right now, I'm test-driving the reusable glass one that came packed in the swag bags, but should I find myself outside of sipping distance, I will not cave. As one of the speakers pointed out, there are people all over the world who are able to take a drink from a glass WITHOUT A STRAW when they find themselves thirsty.

My head is awash with thoughts about what to do next, and I have several ideas for projects around this that I might like to implement at some point. Fun projects that might help spread the word and make it easier for other slower-adopters like me make the change. "More soon!" as they say.

For now, though, I'll leave you with this short collection of places to start looking at the problem of plastic pollution in a way that will inform and aid without overwhelming. As people who've been down this road before said, the point is not to depress yourself; it's to arm yourself for action.

• Fake Plastic Fish's Plastic-Free Guide :: A really, really long list of mostly small changes you can make NOW to start reducing your plastic consumption. Some are really easy! Some are not, for now! Beth Terry's excellent site also contains lots of great resources on alternative products, plus inspiring stories and great info.
• Plastic Pollution Coalition :: Collaborative effort between scientists, businesses, social activists, educators and concerned individuals to protect Earth and her inhabitants by ending plastic pollution. Terrific, deep resources, well-designed and laid out.
• How to Avoid Bisphenol A :: I'm old, but if you're not, or in charge of young people, you ought to educate yourself about this immediately. As in, don't even worry about the straws and the sporks until you get this toxin out of your life.
• And of course, for the morbidly curious, more depressing statistics than you can shake a spork at, if that's what gets you moving.

If you have resources, stories or other inspiring bits of something to share, please please please do so in the comments, where other people can find them. THANK YOU.

xxx
c

*As was pointed out often over the course of the day, "away" is always somewhere, and much of the stuff we dump "away" ends up right back in our own backyard.

**I am not sure whether my eco-sponsor, Wayne, was more appalled by my use of plastic straws in general, or my highly unsanitary re-use of the same one over and over. What can I say? Even the compulsively tidy have their area of disgustingness.

Image by woodley wonderworks via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Poetry Thursday: Mister Rogers is my home screen

I have Fred Rogers
on my phone.

When I turn it on,
there he is,
in his red zip cardigan 
and gray flannel slacks.

When I get a call,
he answers,
in his black dress socks,
a work shoe in one hand
a faded blue deck shoe
with white laces
beside him,
ready for today's visit
to the Neighborhood
of Make-Believe.

People wonder
about that
when they see him.

Is he there
because I need 
a little magic in my life?

Because I need
to retreat
to a place that feels safe?

Because he brings
order
with his precision
and his pace
and his routine
and his place for everything
and everything
in its place?

Or do I think
that perhaps
he ups my irony cred
on the mean streets
of Hipsterville?

What is he doing there?

Yes, I say.
Yes and yes
and, alas,
yet again,
yes.

But mostly,
what he is doing there
is smiling.

xxx
c

Brief update from the front lines of change

Rather than write about change, which, apparently, is what I write about most of the time here, when I'm not plugging myself shamelessly (see above), I'm trying to actually change. You know, for a change. Haha.

It is HARD. And by "hard," I mean that song I wrote does not come within five-landing-strips-of-a-gigantic-barn close to describing the level of difficulty. As my teacher and many other teachers before me have said wisely and well, however much you dislike the things that are keeping you from going where you say you'd like to, they are the things that have kept you alive, and they are not going down without a fight. Plus they have much, much bigger muscles and much greater familiarity with the dank, dark alleyways of your soul than these fresh little hopes.

Nevertheless, I am making what looks like some small progress in this one small (but terrifying!) area of change. I will reserve my observations for some time in the future, when I'm further on the other side of this bastard, both because I need to conserve my energy right now and because I am in the thick of it, which doesn't give one much of a useful perspective when it comes to analysis. I will, however, float out a few scattered observations in the hope that they may help you or someone you love flail less during the grappling period.

Things that help when you're in the throes of change:

1. Unbroken blocks of time, scheduled in the calendar. They can be small, but they should be there. Whatever the thing you're working on changing requires your undivided attention, because if you let up for a minute, those gremlins sneak in and take the wheel.
2. Insane amounts of sleep. As much as you can grab. Gremlin-fighting is exhausting. Water is probably helpful, too. I should probably be drinking a lot more water.
3. Something relatively non-hazardous that lets you unplug. I sat in an Epsom-salt bath for two hours last night. I haven't done this since I was recovering from my Crohn's onset.
4. Knowing you can cancel extracurricular plans. You do not have to cancel, but reminding yourself you can cancel may be enough. I think this is something about feeling like you are The Boss of You.
5. 50/10 hours. That is, 50 minutes of whatever is hard, followed by 10 minutes of something that is easy. It can be easy and pleasant, or easy and boring, or even easy and yucky. But 50 of hard to 10 of easy has helped.
6. Writing things down. By this I mean both keeping a list of your intentions AND using something to slough off the crazy scribblings the gremlins get busy producing. Morning pages are excellent, but really, any timed blathering on a page will do.
7. Letting the rest of it temporarily go to hell in a handbasket. The gremlins, they're DYING for you to feel like you have to keep the house clean and keep up with your exercise regimen and and and. Of course, if your change-thing is staying tidy or starting to exercise, adjust to fit. What I'm saying is that perfectionism is a gremlin's best friend.
8. Calendaring in a light at the end of the tunnel. I have a break scheduled for later this week. During that time, I will not even think about change. It is a change from change. Not that I will use the time to go back to my bad habit, I'm removing myself from the environment, to ensure no backsliding. But it will be a truce. The gremlins and I will be on holiday, having a picnic.

It's interesting, looking at these, because I note that many of them are things my friend Brooks recommends for people who are doing a clutter bust: concentrate on one thing at a time, give yourself plenty of rest, drink lots of water. And it makes sense, because changing a really big, or really small, but entrenched, habit is like letting go of an especially charged piece of clutter: something you've had around for a long time, that you have a lot invested in, but that is no longer serving.

This is already longer than I'd intended. So much so that a part of me thought perhaps I should scrap it or even just file it away and write something much shorter. I was close, until I heard what sounded suspiciously like a chorus of gremlins rubbing their tiny hands together with glee.

I will write a shorter post another day, when I have time. Right now, it's time to change...

xxx
c

Poetry Thursday: My enemy, my Sherpa

Do not wish away time
or fat
or fear
or change
or any other
enemy.

If you face them,
those thieves
of what you thought
you wanted
will show you
to your heart's true love.

If you hide,
in the dark
in a bottle
in a bag of Doritos
in the glow of a screen
under cubicle light
behind walls of silence
beneath waterfalls
of meaningless chatter,
they will hunt you down
anyway.

They will show you.
They will show you.

If they have to wait
until your dying breath

they will show you.

How much better
to invite them in
for a cup of tea
and a moment's rest
and hear
what they have
to offer.

Hello, my enemy!
My teacher!

Let me sit at your feet
and work out the kinks
while you tell me how
to unbuckle my life...

xxx
c

Whom will you offend today?

I have been on an unsubscribing kick lately. And I'm not the only one.

People who track and parse the trends of social media (which is currently being transitioned into "the new media" and which will, soon enough, become just "media") have been saying this for a long time: attention is the new currency. In other words, if you've been paying any kind of attention, this is non-news.

But from the dismaying and ever-expanding swath of garbage I have to wade through every day to get to fresh, open waters, I'd say most people have yet to get the memo. And I say that having already deliberately and painstakingly filtered the firehose down to a relative trickle. I follow fewer than 100 people on Twitter. I have only a dozen or so "always" blogs in my Google Reader. I use delicious and FriendFeed to collect and collate, not chat nor find new material. I stay the hell away from YouTube entirely, just reading the comments there is often enough to lower one's IQ 50 points, not to mention plunge one into a black hole of depression. I will visit HuffPo only out of absolute necessity, and only long enough enough to hit the "Instapaper-izer" bookmarklet I installed on my browser to strip it and its ilk of their Downtown Vegas-like flashing carnival lightshow of crappery.

And yes, Facebook "friends", many of you who are redundant, dour, knee-jerk cheerful, or too talky, especially around the business offerings, just don't show up in my feed at all anymore.

I am not a highly-sensitive person like my friend, Havi, and I never saw that old '90s movie where Julianne Moore became allergic to everything, but as I let go of the clutter I've used both to insulate myself from and inure myself to sensation, I'm freaking out a little bit over how crowded and noisy everything has gotten in the past seven or so years. I mean, I'm as delighted as the next gal about the democratization of dissemination that owning the means of production has created, but does EVERYONE have to make EVERYTHING ALL the time? And with quite so many %#@$ modal windows?

A brief history of the Web 2.0 gold rush

It's not like any of this is news. When most normal people, i.e., non-ADD types and non-change addicts, first come to social media, they ask the same question: how do you deal with the noise?¹

To which the standard reply from a responsible social media tour guide is two-fold:

1. Reduce input to what is necessary
2. Filter the rest with tools and processes

In the beginning, we tended to err on the side of too much info and rely on tools and processes to manage it. Them was heady times, the land-grab days, and we didn't want to miss a minute of it. And yes, it sounds goofy, but there was a great big bunch of us who were writing about the same stuff we were reading about, the stuff we were always interested in, that we were now finally able to swap stories about (productivity pr0n was a big one) and the stuff that was brand spanking new that we were trying to wrap our heads around (i.e. social/"the new" media). I was as guilty as anyone, and guess what? I'm not even the least bit ashamed. This was well before social media hit pop-will-eat-itself levels. There were a handful of gossip bloggers. There were (blessedly) no mommybloggers.² Back then, it was such a relief to be able to have conversations and interactions instead of just consuming page after mind-numbing page of webular data, I loved it all, including the then-occasional "10 Best Whatever" post. I subscribed to blogs, to newsletters, I joined forums and Yahoo! groups. I did way too much, but I learned a lot, which I was then able to sift through, process, and synthesize in purportedly useful ways to people joining the party late.

And then, all of a sudden, a little bit at a time, I realized: I was done.

Done with ubiquity. Done with ravenous, voracious intake. I am back to reading judiciously about process, and intensely in new areas of interest. So I unsubscribed, and unfollowed, and deactivated, and generally went elsewhere. There are plenty of people who have a deep and enduring interest in exploring and sharing the stuff I once did, and some of them are even doing it responsibly, thank goodness, meaning they are not just yakking about social effing media, but talking about it from some sort of useful context. If you're climbing aboard now, you should find one of these people. They're fairly easy to spot, if you like the tenor of my blog.

Walking my own (not-)talk

In February of this year, I did something fairly radical for me: I told people to unsubscribe.

The engagement levels of my newsletter had been dropping for a few months, and I was despondent. Not that I don't spend a great deal of time on this blog, I do!, but I spend even more time on my newsletter, proportionately, plus it costs me money to send out every month. This is one thing when you're working, and when your newsletter is bringing you clients; it's quite another when you're purposely on self-imposed sabbatical and essentially paying for other people to read your work and they're not.

The solution suddenly seemed simple: tell the people who were disinterested that it was fine for them to go. So I did. My unsubscribe rates are now just about dead even with my subscribe rates, so the cost is holding steady. But the range of feelings I was suddenly exposed to was far more valuable than the few bucks that went back into my pocket.

I would be offended and/or surprised at who left, and almost immediately after, I would be joyous. I was letting go! They were letting go! We were all free to go wherever we pleased! I got a taste of what it feels like to be filtered out, along with a kind of permission to filter more honestly. Walking the talk! What a concept!

The remains of the day

What's left is a profound gratitude for who's left, because they're really choosing to be fully present with me, plus a kind of focus I never felt before. I am paying more and more attention to what it is that interests me, and trusting that everyone else is grownup enough to do the same. I'm enjoying the hell out of the time I do spend in social media, and what I read and share there. Out of the nothing, a something emerges, and I realize that this is all one process, and that it doesn't end until we do: we take in, we interact, we synthesize, we release. The landscape of our lives is always changing, just like life is always changing. It's so obvious, it's ridiculous, but there it is.

I look at what is left of all I've learned from so much time spent absorbing these various modalities of communication, at what has stayed with me, and I start to get a sense of how I might be useful to people when I emerge from self-imposed sabbatical. I've been playing with it a bit here and there, quietly test-driving it with a few longtime clients who are, for whatever reasons, also happy to play in this space, to cop a coach-y term. I'm hopeful that by February, when the odometer on my year rolls over, I'll have some clear and useful offering to extend more widely.

In the meantime, though, I hope that if you are here, you will be really here with me. And that if you are not, you will feel free to let go. And that if there are impediments to your finding utility here, a lack of organization in some critical area, or a missing delivery system, you'll let me know, either via a comment or an email. Comments and emails remain a constant, I do not see giving them up anytime soon.

You are my great love, giver of useful feedback, engager in meaningful conversation. I will give up much to share in this way...

xxx
c

¹In fairness, the first question many people ask is, "What the hell is the point of this crap?", but these folk are unlikely to use social media for any purposes, good or ill.)

²There were plenty of mothers who happened to blog, and some outstanding blogs from them. They just weren't the ad-splattered, Proctor-and-Gamblized, black holes of mediocrity you find in such woeful numbers today.

Image by woodley wonderworks via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Something for nothing

I spent the weekend with friends, away from home. A short trip this time, both because circumstances dictated it could not be longer and because I have finally started to get a sense of what I need, how much of it, and when.

This, alone, is a miracle of sorts. Not that I haven't actively been working for years and years (and again, I say, YEARS) at getting a handle on things; it's more that because I've been working at it so long, I'm shocked when start to feel like there's actually been some kind of improvement. (It's also shocking to feel creeping realizations because I've grown accustomed to epiphany-esque indicators, but that's a discussion for another day.)

Nominally, I went up for an evening of poetry, and brother, did I get it. Akka B. raised the metaphorical roof, there is none actually at Bart's to be raised, but if there were, she'd have raised it, too. Instead, she brought us together and howled at the (full) moon, and it was pretty great. You should probably go subscribe to her blog immediately¹, so you can participate in the next one, remote participation actively encouraged, and 3D, in-person visitors welcome.

But as is the way with these kinds of things, you go in for a little pecan pie and come out with a new set of radial tires, or something like that. While Ojai is a mighty small place, and while I know enough folks up there to qualify as an honorary citizen, I still manage to meet new ones on every trip north. This trip was no exception, and between a whole slew of new people at our monthly Jerry's mixers (see here) and a mini-slew this weekend, I had to trot out my long-and-boring story of Self-Imposed Sabbatical so many times, it even started to sound weird and lame to me.

The last person I shared it with, though, had the reply that made every other painful telling worthwhile. Hell, she may have just made the entire sabbatical worthwhile. Because when I gave her my usual answer ("Nothing!") to the eternal question of "What do you do?", without missing a beat, she said, "Well, you know what Akka B. would say: 'If you do nothing long enough, you're bound to find something.'"

People who have a direction, a focus, think this sort of process is bananas. I know, because I used to think this sort of process was bananas, that there had to be something to do to make the next thing happen. Now I know better. Now, some three years after this maddening, horrifying stretch of nothing, I can feel something coming into view. The metaphor is purposely mixed, because while I still see nothing, I am starting to feel plenty. My head feels clearer. My feet feel like they make firmer contact with the ground. (I know, incredibly weird, but I'm telling you, that's what it feels like.) I'm not advanced enough at any of this chi stuff to assess it with complete confidence, but I feel like the circuitry has been somehow rewired, and that the energy is flowing a little more regularly, a little more evenly, and a lot more reliably. I notice that things around me are starting to take shape: I like doing this. I feel good sharing this. I want to wake up here. What I say "no" to is comes more quickly, which seems to make what to say "yes" to more obvious. Or maybe it's the other way around.

A big part of me is still flying on faith, a bigger part that I'd ordinarily be comfortable with. Yet. Slowly but surely, though something is starting to emerge from the nothing. And the work I've done so far has made me more comfortable with the messy, dangling, unfinished parts of the work left to do.

Glory, hallelujah.

May your own nothing unfold in its own perfect way to reveal exactly the something waiting just beyond, and may we all hold each other's hand and stop for an occasional, poetic howl at the moon in the meantime...

xxx
c

¹And friend her fan page, or whatever the hell it is you do on the Facebook these days, while you're at it. It's easy, and she's lovely.

Photo © Nathalie Raijmakers Photography.

Poetry Thursday: 50,002 miles

I waited

for weeks
for that odometer to roll
over:
the first 50,000 miles
I'd put on a car
ever.

First EVER.

Not the extra fifty
I helped put
on the family car
or the twenty/ten/five
that got me to fifty
on all of those  
other cars,

50,000 miles,
from zero to five-oh
(save the few it took
to get it from factory
to me),
all by my lonesome.

For months
I guessed at
the rollover date:
in L.A.,
on the 101,
running mundane errands
or my own crazy ass
over the hill and back
for to get my head shrunk?

In the valley of Ojai,
at night, climbing
the hill toward the stars?

On the road in between,
windows down,
singing to the oldies?

As it happened,
I was somewhere on the outskirts
of Sacto,
negotiating my way
through a surprising number
of Sunday drivers
on their way to salvation,
two miles before I had a moment
to look down
and notice.

Fifty-thousand
and two.

I thought about it
all the way
to Bakersfield.

And then,
somewhere on the outskirts
of L.A. County
I realized:
I would remember
Fifty-thousand
and two
far, far longer
than I could have dreamed
I'd remember
five-zero-zero-zero-zero.

xxx
c

Image by Glenn Gutierrez via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Trixercising, "video is hard" and Tuesday, deconstructed

I've been a bit wobbly, finding my land legs again.

Or maybe my regular-usual legs are my sea legs. Maybe I'm usually adrift, out voyaging in an inward fashion, and the concrete trips here and there, the actual vagabonding, are my trips ashore, where I land hard, and, finding the land hard, can hardly walk.

Either way, it has been an interesting process this past week or so, getting back into the groove I'd just begun to establish before I hit the road.

We discussed grooves today in my now-Tuesday morning writing group: what are habits and rituals and patterns? And what does it mean if you make having no habits/rituals/patterns your habit/ritual/pattern? Is that even possible, or do we just not have our radar tuned in properly to pick up on them? Does it take a major happening, or maybe a series of minor ones, plus one to tip us, to make us see them well enough to consider changing them?

Not all rituals are bad, of course. Most aren't, or at least, not until they've outlived their usefulness in our lives. If you had to think through every process you've learned since you started learning things, just driving to the 7-11 for a Big Gulp would be an odyssey of epic proportions. (I know; it was a joke, see?)

The reason I take classes and seek out accountability partners and hire professionals to help me untangle my brain and redirect my chi and see my stuff clearly enough to decide what should stay and what should go is because I can't see it all by myself. Not all at once. Not when it matters. And I'm someone who sees a fair amount. What I could not see about Monday's post, though, is what my colleagues pointed out in Tuesday's workshop: that I'd left some things hanging, that I'd missed some opportunities. I mean, I knew these things; I know I'm missing opportunities and dropping threads of ideas all over the place. These are not polished essays I write, but blog posts. For the most part, I write them in one shot, straight through, with very little editing. The true miracle is when one works.

I would like to write a whole post about trixercise, because I think that this idea of true discovery coming from these three things, a cordoning off, a distancing, and a mindful attention throughout the process, might be a big and a useful enough idea to warrant deeper and more thoughtful explanation. Just not today. Because I write this at the end of a day where I'd thought I'd be posting a breezy instructional video, not wrassling for three hours with firmware upgrades, bad light and goddamn .AVI files.

In the meantime, I will settle for a wrap-up of discoveries from the day:

1. Your writing needs to be done first, or you're done for.
2. You can make a dent in your gnarliest issue if you chip away at it for a half-hour per day.
3. Just because pain is dormant doesn't mean it's over.
4. Knowing there is a little chopped liver left in the fridge is a great comfort.
5. Setting yourself a hard in and hard out may be the self-employed's greatest self-gift.

May we both continue to uncover many wonderful things moving forward...

xxx
c

Image by IntangibleArts via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Boxing yourself off for a while

There's a clutter-reducing trick many people advocate for dealing with the really stubborn, clingy stuff.

You take a box, fill it with the Questionable Clutter, and mark it with a date. Then, over the next weeks or months, if you find yourself truly in need of one of the items, you go back to the box, retrieve it for use, and find a permanent place for it among other like items, kitchen gadgets, the coat closet, what-have-you.

Some versions of the trick have you seal up the box, noting only D-day; some others have you additionally remove it to some hard-to-reach place, like an attic or basement.

The variations matter far less than the act itself: of bringing your attention to something, of cordoning it off and creating distance from it without recklessly, mindlessly tossing it. Because the real lesson in the trick, the exercise, let's call it, is not whether you need this particular hand-juicer or that particular argyle sweater vest: it's to bring your attention to something to create meaning and lasting change. It's to transform yourself through a timed examination of your relationship to objects. And so each of the components of the trick is necessary for the trixercize to work: the cordoning, the distance, and the mindful attention.

This is what sabbaticals are for, I am finally realizing, or at least, what this particular one has been for me. I remove myself from my way of being, set a span of time in which to observe what's needed and what can go, and throughout, do my best to bring my mindful attention to it. How do I feel, not working with clients? Not marketing myself constantly? Or, and much, much more on this to come, marketing myself completely differently? Un-marketing myself.

This is also why, over the course of this sabbatical, I've found it very useful not only to travel a great deal more in general, but to take a couple of extended trips away from Los Angeles, specifically. I was in Ojai for most of August and then, after a two-week turn at home, off to Ojai and the PacNW for a month in September and October. Somewhere in the middle, I felt an insanely strong pull to call it all off, to just stay in L.A. and start working on the various ideas that had begun brewing during my long, daily walks in Ojai. I'd committed to a few things in Portland, though, and am trying to get better about following through on my commitments, so I didn't. And I'm glad I didn't, because the extra four weeks and 2,000 miles of driving distance back and forth from that giant, marked box that is my life here in Los Angeles helped me to see much, much more clearly what I have use for and what can go.

I love my apartment, for example. This surprised me, how much I missed my incredibly modest and even slightly dingy rent-controlled slice of paradise here in an undisclosed sector of Los Angeles. I missed my things a bit, after all, pretty much only the stuff I really love is left. But I missed using those things more: sleeping in my own bed, cooking in my own kitchen, working at my own table, with my own rig set up just as I like it.

I'd go so far as to say that I could dispense with Los Angeles as a location and just have my stuff wherever, but for now, I realized I'd also really miss the incredible light we have here, that for now, I really depend on it. It was far more difficult to stay buoyant in Portland, where, paradoxically (if I'm using that correctly), they were enjoying the sunniest time they've had so far this year. Kill me now.

I realize this is an incredible luxury, being able to take this much time off and away in one chunk. I have definitely relied on the kindness of fine and amazing facilitators to make this happen; I'm blessed with dear and interesting and incredibly generous friends who also happen to jetset it up enough to require housesitting services. Not to mention the staggeringly long list of people who have offered up their spare bedrooms and couches for those in-between times. I'm also in the highly unusual position of having sufficient funds, via savings, investments and dumb luck, to deliberately take time off from pursuing paying work (although sadly, there are a whole lot of people these days with more time off than they'd anticipated having, paying-work-wise.)

Is there a way to do this when one is encumbered by responsibilities? Families, mortgages, debt, local obligations? I think there must be. Not for as long, maybe, and not so dramatic a separation. But I've managed to maneuver myself through other massive transitions, other gigantic lettings-go, by doing it more incrementally. Julia Cameron's tools, the Artist's Date and Morning Pages, are both good for this, as are walks of any length beyond your car to the mall entrance. Walks by water are my main thing, but I'll take a good, long walk anywhere, city streets included, over nothing. In fact, I have been drumming up ways of incorporating more massively long walks into my daily life, like my ingenius friend, Havi, has done.

Maybe the simplest way is this: to set a goal of looking, and some objects or practices to look at, and an end date for the looking. When that date rolls around, you must take some sort of action: a letting-go, a deliberate decision to keep (and an attendant resting time/place for the thing) or, if neither of those are possible, some ideas for concrete help making one of those two things happen.

Something to think about.

xxx
c

Image by Elise Esq via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Selling My Crap on eBay, Day 21: Moving on

This is Day 21 of a 21-day series. More scoop on the who/what/why, here. I grew up to the drone of an endless series of angel/devil discussions, my paternal grandfather lecturing me on the value of this item or that, supporting his claims with the odd magazine or newspaper or even catalogue clipping on how much this rare book or that Indian artifact or those other old advertising mementos were now worth, while his wife, my sweet, quiet Gram, hissed into my ear, sotto voce, "Sell it!"

He was a teller of stories, an acquirer of things and experiences, a desirer of fame and glory; she was a lover, of people, especially babies, and of love itself. Not that Les Weinrott didn't love; he did. He loved his father, his son, his friends. He loved us, his grandchildren, robustly and effusively and wide-openly. He loved his adoptive city, Chicago, and his country, the United States of America, in the way that probably only first-generation countrymen can, especially those who spring from centuries of persecution and diaspora.

But he also loved things: pretty things, rich things, delightful things, sentimental things. He loved ideas, too, but he anchored himself with things, as if those things proved, for a time, anyway, until they didn't, his value. This breaks my heart, because of all the things he and Gram gave me, the thing I value most of all is what I think all of us do, the way they made me feel, smart, important, delightful and most of all, loved. When things were difficult between me and my mother, or me and my father, or me and any stupid boy who was too dumb to see how smart, important, delightful and lovable I was, it was the love of my grandparents that steered me through the rocks back to safety. And it was especially the love of my grandmother, whose love was absolutely unconditional, for which I am grateful. I have learned many, many great lessons from many, many great teachers, but without that base of unconditional love, I doubt very much whether I'd have been able to stay alive and buoyant enough to weave together anything really meaningful and useful out of them. Which, you know, I'm just getting started doing now.

* * *

This is a ring that was Gram's. It is what they call a "cocktail ring", designed to be dazzling, and to be worn on a non-usual ring finger, in this case, the pinky (although I wore it on my ring finger, as my pinkies are a bit scrawny).

The 'tater has been dealing with a vast quantity of personal stuff, so she has not had a chance yet to photograph the ring for this series. It is gold, 14 or 18K, I think, although she can fill you in, set with baguette stones of a reddish-pink hue, and some diamonds. The center stone is a star sapphire, and was apparently a replacement for a diamond they inexplicably had taken out. I say "inexplicably" because they could not come up with a satisfactory explanation for me, someone who never, ever got the appeal of star sapphires, especially as compared to diamonds, but oh, well. Perhaps it matches more this way; perhaps it is more dazzling, in the cocktail-ring tradition.

It almost matched the hideous cap-and-gown combo I graduated from high school in. (Vile, vile school colors.) I wore it because it was the first Really Valuable Thing my grandparents had given it to me, and thus that I owned. It made me feel rich, and it made me feel like things were possible, which is how one should feel upon graduating from high school.

There is a downside to having valuable things, though, and that is that they can be taken from you. Perhaps I made the right call, leaving this valuable ring with someone back home while I went off to school, considering that the ring was awfully portable and I had the misfortune of sharing a dorm with a soon-to-be-notorious kleptomaniac. But in my absence, the caretaker of the ring saw fit to wear it as she pleased, and in doing so, lost one of the baguettes, which she flatly refused to replace, saying, if memory serves, that this is the condition in which she received it. So, in other words, I employed a liar to protect my "valuable" possession from a kleptomaniac. Brilliant.

Neither the kleptomaniac nor the liar ever came clean. I lost track of the klepto, who was never a really close friend, but I gather she outgrew or outran her kleptomania enough to live a reasonably happy and settled life. The liar, sadly, just went on to tell bigger and more damaging lies, both to herself and to those around her, about herself and about me and finally, untenably, about someone I love. There are things up with which I will not put, and trashing the people I truly love is one of them.

Thus, the liar and I parted ways, and violently. I steadfastly maintain that there is, to quote my ex, The Youngster, "always room for sorry." However, "sorry" must truly be so, and openly so, with attendant and appropriate reparations, penance and submission, and I ain't holding my breath where the liar is concerned. There is just too, too much at stake for the liar to come around, I fear. Thus, I have understanding, and even some compassion, but no more room for the liar.

It is a beautiful ring, and I would love for someone else slip it on her own finger and start a new chapter in the ring's life. I would like for the ring to carry forth more stories, and more learning, and more sparkle, and more joy. If this is not to be, then the 'tater and I will pull out all of the stones, sell it for scrap, and someone else would truly change the life of this ring.

I am a believer in redemption, though, and our ability to change. I am a believer in building on the knowledge and experience we have, and of fusing those lessons and pain and experiences into something freshly wonderful, but rich with history.

Are you a part of this ring's story? Email the 'tater: miz.tater AT gmail DOT com.

xxx c

Selling My Crap on eBay, Day 20: It's all in the wrist

This is Day 20 of a 21-day series. More scoop on the who/what/why, here.

My grandmother was a great beauty and awfully stylish when she was in the mood, but like many people who grow up with money and all the fine things it can buy, in and and especially toward the end she didn't give much of a hoot for anything beyond comfort and shmoopies with her grandbabies. (Or anyone else's grandbabies, really, Gramma was a great fan of all things baby.)

Gramps, on the other hand, came from very humble beginnings and was scrupulously careful about the image he projected. He  was one of the most dapper men I've met to date, outside of perhaps one or two gents whose existence only serves to prove the rule.

Were you to show up unannounced at their home, Gramps would still be better-dressed than you, at the very least wearing a woven (not knit) shirt and a vest, knit or woven (which he refused to call by anything other than its proper name, "waistcoat," and with the old-timey English pronunciation). With any advance notice whatsoever, there was a jacket involved, and usually a tie (he'd switch between regular and bow versions). But he'd sooner answer the door in the altogether than without something about the neck, a cravat or a kerchief, depending on his mood and ensemble.

In warmer weather, he might sport a short-sleeved shirt, hemmed to a straight edge (no tails, please!), but he also kept a couple of casual long-sleeved shirts, a red and white check, a la Studs Terkel, or a chambray he liked to wear with a turquoise bolo tie he and Gram bought on one of their trips to Santa Fe, way, way before it was a trendy destination. (Or rather, one of the very first times it was a trendy destination.)

Year-round, he'd take a daily constitutional, to Potash Brothers, the local family-run grocery store, or to the post office, or later, to the video store I bought them a subscription to so they could watch their old favorite movies at home (they never had cable TV). If he had no errands to run, he'd just take a stroll up and down a boulevard: Michigan Avenue, for most of his life, then a northerly stretch of Sheridan Road towards the end, when Dad moved them into an assisted-care building. But wherever he walked, Gramps carried a walking stick, just for show, early on, then utility, toward the end, but always, always, beautiful.

Most of his shirts fastened with buttons, but even toward the end, he had a goodly number that required cufflinks. Besides, as Jesse points out, cufflinks are the most fun form of Universally-Acceptable Male Jewelry (although Gramps, who never wore a wedding band, was known to sport a tasteful man's pinky ring, in the fashion of the day.)

Over the years, many of my significant others have been the beneficiaries of Gramps' compulsive collecting of cufflinks, and a few were turned into stud earrings for the ladies, so we're down to the last few pairs extant. The 'tater and I decided to sell them all together as a lot, and to throw in a jaunty tie clip, as well. (It's quite small, and best for narrower ties.) The knots are brass, the ovals are gold with some kind of chip stone inset, and the round ones are sterling. At least, I think they are, the 'tater has them all in her possession, and can answer any questions you might have.

Interested? Make an offer: miz.tater AT gmail DOT com

xxx c

Selling My Crap on eBay, Day 19: Art of Chicago

This is Day 19 of a 21-day series. More scoop on the who/what/why, here.

My grandparents changed apartments over the years, but from home to sweet home, one constant was the art.

The pieces they'd collected over the years followed them from place to place, and many of them would end up in a configuration my grandfather called a "picture wall," something which came into style in the 1950s. Here's a stunning shot of their first and best picture wall, which crept up a story and a half in my favorite of their apartments. The colors have shifted in the 50 or so years since the photo was taken, but the feel still comes through loud and strong.

They collected many pieces from local artists, and were champion supporters of a select few. John Averill, an art director (I think) at one of the agencies my gramps worked at, and Victor Ing, who worked beautifully both in oils and watercolor. (You can spot an Ing on the wall above my desk, the monkey hanging from a branch, as well as an Averill linoleum block print of a cat and butterfly.)

I never became the devotée I'm sure Gramps wished I'd become when he passed along his copy of Art of Today: Chicago, 1933, a book filled with plates of paintings by artists whom he knew and collected. I probably wasn't even suitably impressed that he owned the originals of one or two pieces from the book. I've only ever really been moved by what I've been moved by, and that dark oil of the two ladies top row, center, sisters, I think, mostly freaked me out.

But maybe you are from Chicago, and collect the art of mid-Century Chicago artists. Or maybe you know someone who does. In either case, this would be a lovely book for you, I'm sure, and one we'll let go of for a song. The right song, and postage.

Email the 'tater: miz.tater AT gmail DOT com.

xxx
c

Selling My Crap on eBay, Day 18: From the library

This is Day 18 of a 21-day series. More scoop on the who/what/why here.

You don't have to look far to find the source of my booklust.

The photos of it are buried in a pile of other photos, to be rescued and scanned, finally, Sally, upon my return to Los Angeles, but my Grandfather Weinrott, a.k.a. "Gramps," a.k.a. Les, had the library full of them I was sure I'd have when I grew up.

There were always books everywhere at Gramma & Grampa's: bestsellers (including a few written by friends) on reading tables next to rocking chairs, and under a good light; sci-fi and thrillers in nightstands and nearby overflow cases; a mixed-bag of titles piled up next to every toilet in the house; glossy coffee-table books tucked neatly in a sturdy low bookcase near another reading chair. (I

The crème de la crème made it into Gramps' study, to become part of his real library, what he called a "working" library, a thing he insisted every writer worth her salt had to maintain. A working library included reference books, of course, but also seminal works one would want at one's disposal while writing various books, articles or lessons of note. Your Plato, your Shakespeare, your myths and and your history (European, North American and Balkan, for sure); the Greek plays, the German philosophers, the "important" modern writers of fiction and nonfiction (and "modern" went back to Wilde for a man born in 1907.)

What was loveliest to me about this working library was not the content of the books, most of which, for better or for worse (probably worse) never really appealed, but the books themselves. Gramps came up in a time where books were rare and precious things, like all things, because things were still expensive to produce, ergo good things, like the Great Works, were worth making well. His books were as beautifully made as most everything he collected, partly because he liked nice things, and partly because things were nicer. Many of the books had "plates," not to be confused with bookplates, which my Gramps was also partial to, and which are affixed to many of his books, and many more had illustrations, a word Gramps always pronounced in the archaic fashion, with the stress on the second syllable. (He also used that sexy, old-timer hard-g for "Los Angeles," not out of affectation, but because that's how people pronounced it when he lived there, back in the early 1930s.)

The 'tater can give you any particular info you might want on this edition of Voltaire's classic Candide. It was published by Three Sirens Press, and features ilLUStrations by Mahlon Blaine, who seems to have been rather something in his heyday. I'm guessing this was originally given to me after either some conversation about the text, which I read in high school, or Aubrey Beardsley, whom I was obsessed with in high school. The ilLUStration featured here, for instance, had that kind of lush decadence that thrilled me in Beardsley's raciest stuff, like his own iLUStrations for Wilde's Salomé.

As you can see, the poor book has taken a beating over the years; you're not getting some mint-condition prize to haul off to Antiques Roadshow and make a killing on. But if you like old books printed on fine paper, or are a Pangloss-head, or wanna get your Mahlon Blaine on*, or just feel like owning something that was passed on from Lester to Colleen to you, well, you would probably like owning this.

Email the 'tater: miz.tater AT gmail DOT com.

xxx
c

*Someone has also created a whole lot of Mahlon Blaine merch for CaféPress, so you can REALLY get your Mahlon on if you want to!

Selling My Crap on eBay, Day 17: More (g)loves

This is Day 17 of a 21-day series. More scoop on the who/what/why, here.

I knew it was bound to happen, 17 days in, the 'tater is starting to show signs of battle fatigue. So weak, she can barely pick up a camera, much less hold it steady.

This is hard work, people, getting all of this stuff up on the eBay, out to the postal scales, into the mail to you! Not to mention all the emails back and forth.

So. These are the last of the last of the Great Glove Collection of Betty Weinrott (save the few that are still in my collection, getting daily use in cooler weather). When these are gone, that's it. That other pair? Snapped up faster than you can say jack rabbit goes to town in top hat and tails.

These are truly beauties. The caramel-brown body is doeskin-soft suede, like buttah; the thumbs are a contrasting very, very dark brown. Or black. Really, hard to tell, and hardly matters. I think Gram bought them a half-size too small, because they looked brand new when I got them, and I've only worn them to try them on. If I had to guess, I'd say size 7, since I'm a 7 1/2. They're so nice, you almost just want to put them in a nice shadow box, hang them on the wall, and call it a day. Either way, lovely gloves, of a quality just not seen anymore.

Email the 'tater with an offer. No effin' around, people, I need her for another week!

xxx
c

Selling My Crap on eBay, Day 16: Fabulous Palm Springs

This is Day 16 of a 21-day series. More scoop on the who/what/why, here.

There is a part of me that wants to live in 1957.

Or rather, that longs for a completely phony 1957, a mid-Century that Madison Avenue and Hollywood colluded to provide us with, in glorious Technicolor and tufted leatherette. A grownup, made-up 1957 that always existed just outside my reach as a real child born in 1961. I would only ever get to enjoy the ladies-in-gloves/men-in-ties styling, the swank "Continental" and exotic Polynesian dining, the cigarettes proffered on every coffee table from one step removed.

Of all the storied places from my aspirational youth, the one that intrigued me the most was Palm Springs, the spot where my parents madly, all-too-quickly fell in love, at Jack Webb's house, no less. According to my grandfather (who was known to embellish the yarns he spun, so, you know, caveat, etc.), Jack Webb was a man who enjoyed the company of young people so much that on occasion, he had a batch of them imported to his place in Bel Air and/or his fabulous Palm Springs getaway. My parents, according to legend, met at the former and, three days later, announced their engagement via telephone at the latter.

I wish I could tell you they all lived happily ever after, but they did not, neither severally nor together. The various twists and turns of fate that helped drive them apart I'll save for another time; for now, suffice to say that one should be wary of falling in love with gloss, or at least that one should reserve gloss-lust for objets, not people.

This here magazine is some of that acceptable gloss. This particular issue of The Villager, "the magazine of fine desert living," is from November of 1957, and sports a Spanish-y theme. ¡Olé! The articles are, well, pretty much what you'd expect: innocuous, non-noteworthy advertorial-type filler. But oh, my, the photos and advertisements! If you are a fan of mid-Century typefaces, you will be in hog heaven: it's all Futura and swooshy, handmade serifs inside.

There is even a hint of mildewy-old scent, to conjure up images of kidney-shaped pools wrapped by Case Study houses in that indoor-outdoor California style of yore. (No actual mildew, just a bit of funk to keep it real.)

Would this item complete your homage-to-mid-Century-eclectic sunken living room? Email the 'tater and make us an offer: miz.tater AT gmail DOT com.

xxx
c