Prof's Progress

The other day, as I was adjusting the settings for my spin bike at the gym, the instructor started up the music. Without thinking, I came in on the downbeat and sang along, noting rhythm, harmony, changes of pace and energy. Several bars in, I thought to myself, just when and how did I master “Don’t Stop the Music,” by Rihanna? I’ve been struggling to find the time to meditate, stopping and starting multiple times over the last couple of years. I’d just been reading a book about meditation on the subway, trying to get myself motivated to start practicing again—next week, next month once [insert work-related task here]—because meditating seems like such a massive, difficult, time-consuming project that I couldn’t possibly do something as rash as just start any old time. I can’t spare five or 10 minutes in my day to meditate, and yet somehow I’ve managed to carve out enough spare time to memorize and rehearse a catchy, but artistically banal, pop song. Hundreds of them, actually, from Abba to Def Lepard to U2. With harmony.

The road to enlightenment is a long and winding one… (and yeah, I know that one too).

What prompted me to finally try meditating in the first place was The Panic. I’ve always been anxious (really? you don’t say…sorry, no infamous confessions today): when I’m not fretting or worrying, I’m planning and scheduling, or occasionally engaged in imaginary conversations where I’m scolding other people for not fretting, worrying, planning, or scheduling enough. I’ve been like that for so long that I (thought I’d) become quite used to the hectic psychic environment (on a good day, like a well-run Dutch airport, on a bad day, like JFK during a baggage handlers’ strike). But for a variety of reasons, including just cumulative wear and tear, in the last couple of years that anxiety had evolved into the Panic. Every day, I’d wake up feeling more or less normal (by my anxious standards). By mid-morning, I’d find that, in the middle of a  conversation with a friend at work, or an email requiring some small degree of response, I’d start to feel a tightness in my stomach, and would start to feel short of breath, like I was hyperventilating and couldn’t breathe deeply enough—and the more aware I was of the symptoms, the more uncomfortable they become, increasing the awareness. I had moments where I felt like if I didn’t stay vigilantly focused on my breathing, I’d stop altogether, which, not surprisingly, only made the feeling of Panic worse.

I called across the hallway to a colleague, who happens to be a specialist in stress and illness—I described my symptoms to her and said, is that panic? and she offered her learned assessment: yup. But I didn’t understand where it was coming from—when The Panic started, I was finishing up the school year and looking forward to relaxing a bit in the peace and quiet of the summer. Things seemed reasonably under control. I looked about me: nope, nothing was on fire. No financial or professional crises were looming—at least, no more than usual. I was worried about this, anxious about that—but in a way that was habitual and normal to me, and nothing that had ever caused this kind of physiological response in the past. What was happening?

Several of my friends are enthusiasts of self-help books, so I took some of their recommendations and did a little reading (a lot actually, Jon Kabat-Zin’s Full Catastrophe Living is a comprehensive place to start). I learned that Panic—a fight or flight response to an imagined threat—can build up cumulatively, but that once the response is turned on, your body learns to continue to respond that way, to the point where the response comes to be a self-sustaining cause of panic, rather than a reaction to any real, specific threat. And then responding to panic by worrying more about everything else AND the panic just—so efficient!—keeps the panic going.

At first, The Panic was simply irritating—it’s uncomfortable and distracting. But then after days living like a penguin on a piece of ice surrounded by hungry seals All.The.Time —it started to become exhausting, wearing me down physically and emotionally. Or maybe I was worn down anyway, which made the Panic worse, thus wearing me down more. Nothing Panic loves more than a vicious cycle.

Feeling increasingly aggravated and fragile, I thought, I’m a competent, respected professional woman who keeps her s@&% together. I’ve got to do something about this.

So I figured I’d start meditating. There’s nothing but good news about meditation. Oprah and Deepak are doing it. Researchers continue to find proof of its efficacy: Monks, MRIs, monks in MRIs—all the data suggest that a simple meditation practice using mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques can improve physical, emotional, and cognitive well-being. It can’t solve all your problems, but, where a disproportionate response to even the smallest problem is the real problem, it can be very helpful in getting you to step back, out of the fray, to just compassionately and kindly accept yourself and be in the present moment.

Yes, I’d read a lot of books and articles about meditation—enough to know that you don’t meditate to solve your problems, but rather to see through, and hence dispel, all the drama we manufacture in response to our problems, and which makes us miserable. I understood that you’re not to expect any miraculous transformations in one session, that you don’t try to control your thoughts, you just let them pass by—all that matters is to just sit down, and breathe, and compassionately accept whatever comes up. That all sounds easy, right? I found a guided meditation class at a local yoga studio, and committed to going, to follow the teacher’s instructions to just sit, and breathe.

So, I sat, and breathed.

And immediately burst into tears. Proceeded to cry for the whole session. And did that the next day and the next. What the hell? All I was doing was just sitting and breathing—what on earth was happening?

As I sat, and breathed, and allowed myself to observe my thoughts and feelings with compassion, I realized several things right away, and powerfully:

1. The instructor reminded us to relax our bodies and our faces. I realized that I’d been deliberately working at smiling whenever I was in public—not because I was always happy, or necessarily feeling friendly, but because I was trying to look approachable, and—seriously—I was trying to prevent frown lines. That is, I had been putting a considerable amount of effort into disguising myself, and pretending I was someone else, out of fear of many things, and that was exhausting and painful. When the instructor reminded us to relax our expression, i felt like that was the first time I’d been myself in weeks.
2. One central technique to help focus your attention involves noticing when you’re starting to think, when your mind is starting to wander through work and worry—and labeling what’s happening “thinking” without getting involved in the thoughts themselves. I noticed that I had to apply the “thinking” label constantly—no sooner had I noticed some “thinking” over here, then more “thinking” would bubble up over there—it was like digging a hole in the sand too close to the water’s edge—the thoughts would just flood in faster than I could calmly notice and label them. And what were all these thoughts? Mostly, planning and scheduling—“I should do this. Did I remember to do that? I have to remember to do the other thing. I need to check with X to make sure she took care of Y.” Then I’d start those imaginary conversations with X about why we should do Y and the thoughts would cascade out of control from there. When I was younger I used to spend a lot of free mental time imagining—roaming around the neighborhoods conjured up by books and movies, or thinking about what it would be like to be a rock star, a dancer, a jewel thief, an assassin, a journalist. And then somehow, a lot of that imaginative play got pushed to the side, by concerns about school, and work, and money, and health; constant planning to stave off disaster; constant imaginary arguments to put imaginary foes in their place, when I was powerless to do anything about them in real life but still desperately needed to feel like I was right and doing something about it. That’s a lot of “thinking” that just runs all the time in my mind like a bunch of computer sub-routines, taking up space and memory, and preventing the machine from doing anything but overheat. No wonder it was so hard to find the time to meditate, not to mention focus on anything creative or fun anywhere else in my personal or professional life.
3. And what really made me cry was the experience of compassion itself. Giving myself the time and space to sit, and then the permission to just kindly accept what was happening in my poor worn out brain—I realized how badly I had needed that compassion. All of 1 and 2, above, were all fueled by a desire to behave well—motivated by a fear of behaving badly and provoking rejection from others. And that’s really, really hard work, trying to make people do what you want, including people you don’t even know or haven’t even met, especially when they can have no idea that that’s what you’re doing.

Just sitting in one spot for 20 minutes made me realize that I had slowly and relentlessly developed several habits meant to protect myself and hold onto people—and most of those habits were doing nothing more than wearing me down and cluttering up my sense of myself so much that I could barely even find myself amidst it all. The Panic now made perfect sense.

Wow, I thought. Amongst many other things, I need to do more meditating.

After those initial intense experiences, though, I started to run into other challenges. All that clutter, and the Panic it creates, made it hard to keep sitting down day after day. In the same way that having so many papers on the desk that you can’t find a single pencil makes it hard to work, having so much panicky chaos in my mind made it hard to sit—there was always something else that needed doing more pressingly. If i did sit, I’d feel guilty about not doing some other seemingly-vital thing. I’ve finally figured out (and somewhere, cognitive-behavioral therapists are doing a little “by jove, I think she’s got it!” dance) that while the many things I panic about might be problems, the real problem is the panic itself. But that panic has accumulated over years, and the mental habits that feed it are very deeply ingrained, so intellectually understanding what’s happening and being able to take 10 minutes to just step outside of it on a daily basis are two very different things. All the more reason to sit.

And yet, there was a simple pragmatic problem of where to sit—I have a small, very urban apartment and no room for a special meditation corner, like Oprah undoubtedly has (I think she has her own island…?)  Wherever I’d sit I’d find myself looking at something disorderly, or that reminded me to do some other task—a basket of laundry I should be folding, a bike to ride, a pile of papers to grade. I could try to tidy things up enough to create some tranquility—but then my meditation time really would be used up and I’d have to go to work, or a social engagement, or the gym, or wherever I felt obligated to go. Once the warmer months came, I thought I’d finally be free—I can sit on my deck, I thought, or go to a park. Then I discovered that I live in a city. My quietest parts of the park are full of people who are also in search of tranquility, often with friends or children in tow. Someone, anywhere, will be talking or yelling or laughing—living their lives. Or a siren will sound as some emergency vehicle rushes past. Or a dog will bark. Or the city will decide to undertake a major construction project across the street. Or I found that the artists at the local metalworking studio like to work outside in the nice weather too—grinding and polishing metal for hours at a stretch. Maybe someone who’s already found some peace and calm could meditate in the midst of all of that. For someone who’s scattered and cluttered and beset by constant panic, it was all but impossible.

So I stopped sitting.

And The Panic continued, and ebbed and flowed. In calmer moments, I worked on making my space more calm as well—a white noise generator, some reorganizing and a bit of new furniture to try to find a comfortable space to sit with a view out the window instead of the laundry basket. And If I couldn’t meditate, I kept doing other things that help clear the clutter—hiking and walking, being with friends, helping friends when they need it, dancing, reading, writing. Memorizing Rihanna lyrics and singing. And when I can sit, I do that too.

I asked one meditation teacher how to tell if I’m doing it right, and he repeated what another teacher had told him—as long as you do it, as long as you get your behind onto your mat and sit there, you’re doing it right. I can’t guarantee what I’ll do tomorrow or the next day, but as soon as I’ve posted this little meditation, I’m going to do what I try to do every day—commit to myself, and take a few minutes to just sit, and breathe.

When my sabbatical leave started, and I was giddily enlisting myself in travel, tai-chi, French class, salsa—you name it, I was signing up for it like Marsha Brady—I’d find myself talking to civilians (non-academics) who would, at first, express interested surprise: how come I had so much free time? I’m on a sabbatical leave, I’d reply. The other person would do a bit of a double-take, and then, ask, hesitantly and delicately, …is everything, um, all right…? Since months of time off from one’s work is a phenomenon nearly unheard of in North America outside of academia, they all thought a sabbatical must be some kind of forced psychiatric leave, but didn’t want to question me too closely for fear of setting off whatever problem had got me on the leave in the first place.

Thinking of sabbatical as a psychiatric leave isn’t really inaccurate—whatever your employer’s expected outcome, one crucial function of taking any kind of leave has got to be R+R. Throw in a few more Rs: rest, recreation, restoration, recuperation (and more to come). The opportunity to cleanly and decisively separate yourself from your regular work for a few months, to extract yourself from office life, and the identity that goes with it—is a gift. You can be the most introspective, fiercely self-examining and self-defining person—and still become very easily swept away by the demands of the structures in which you work. All one’s energy goes into just keeping up with the current, to the point that the current is all that one knows. There’s a significant risk of drowning. Sabbatical is a chance to swim to the shore, climb out of the torrent, lie panting on a rock, and look around to see what else there is.

People doubtless have some ancient connection, in the collective unconscious, to a working rhythm based on changing seasons and communal needs, which included periods of intense effort, alternated with intense rest, often accompanied by feasts and rituals. In western, Judeo-Christian culture, this rhythm is encoded in the concept of the sabbath, from which the word sabbatical derives. From God’s rest after six days of creating the heaven and earth, it became part of religious observance for the devout to rest every seventh day as well. Though the sabbath—a time to rest, or cease—is meant to be a time away from worldly obligations, it’s not exactly meant as leisure. While one might rest the body, one also rests the spirit. It’s a time of renewal, to prepare oneself for further service.

In the secular academic world, sabbatical retains those principles of rest and renewal, but the line between spiritual and worldly restoration is blurred. Sabbatical has always been a privilege, but academics are expected to make good use of that time…somehow, perhaps by doing research, or a teaching exchange, or field work, or writing. Traditionally, what the person on sabbatical really did during that time was not scrutinized too closely, being measured more by what they did when they got back. But just as higher education in general has become increasingly influenced by corporate culture’s desire for deliverables, outcomes measures, and assessment, so has sabbatical. From the administrative standpoint, sabbatical—its itineraries and details loosely defined, its practitioners free from oversight—seems to have boondoggle written all over it.

If it were really the case that sabbatical leave was a glorified spring break—months spent in debauchery on beaches, or lying insensate in opium dens—then certainly, the practice should be re-examined. But professors are like other humans—if they’re the types to get themselves into significant trouble, they will, no matter what, more likely on the job than off of it. This bears some formal study, but I’m willing to bet that most people on sabbatical actually succumb to vice and weakness less, not more, when given some respite from the office and classroom.

But sabbatical doesn’t offer the pure (idealized) relaxation of a vacation—instead, it provides a space for more intense kinds of work. With time to rest, and nourish yourself, you have more energy, not less. Free to let your mind wander, the ensuing creativity drives you to new kinds of work, new kinds of productivity—things you didn’t even know you had in you, long buried questions or interests or talents or needs, work their way to the surface. If you come back from sabbatical with a book chapter, but without also feeling like you’ve met some new, healthier, more lively version of yourself, you’ve been doing it wrong. You might spend a day washing your bathroom walls, or doing research in the library, or starting your memoir, or writing a grant, or volunteering in an animal shelter. Some of those activities result in direct, bottom-line product; some may instead, or also, result in a rejuvenated capacity to do, to give, to be, to make/think/feel/care—the most essential pre-conditions for productivity, however its outcomes and deliverables have to be defined.

We’ve all seen the studies which migrate through the media on a regular basis about the benefits to morale, productivity, attendance etc etc which come from people 1) feeling they have control over what they do; and 2) getting adequate rest—not just sleep, but breaks in, and from, the workday. We know—history, social sciences, medicine, philosophy—there’s nothing obscure about this—we know that our 21st century work lives are new phenomena in human culture, artificial, not nearly as well-controlled as we would like, and very, very hard on the minds and bodies of the people who have to live them. Many writers and thinkers before me have tried to make sense of our culture’s deep-rooted suspicion of excess fallow time, without changing our mania for productivity one bit. And, as I’m trying to wrap up this piece, I’m aware that I have no particularly compelling call to action to leave you with (other than: let’s overhaul everything about our how our society does business) and no power to make any of it happen anyway. But: everyone should get sabbaticals, plural, period. It’s the very opposite of laziness, shirking, uselessness, or boondoggle for workers to take both vacations and sabbaticals—being able to rest, retreat, and cultivate renewal should be considered part of one’s schedule, not a departure from it.

On a recent visit with my parents, as I was sitting in the guest bed with coffee and my laptop, working on a blog post, I glanced over at the dresser at a familiar photo (my parents’ house is full of photos, in equal proportions, of me and sainted dogs). I remember exactly what I was doing in that picture. It was fall, my last semester as an undergraduate, and I’d come home for a visit. I was taking a course on the literary essay, and had to write a piece for the coming week. I took my paper and pens out onto the front lawn, and sat cross-legged in the bright sun—warm enough to be outside, but cool enough for a sweater and leggings (the first go-round for that look), and got to work. Which means that for a certain span of time, captured by my dad’s camera, I was absorbed in my cuticles while my mind wandered.

I don’t remember every detail of what I was thinking that day—I’m pretty confident that at least part of the time I was wondering what was going to become of me once I graduated, which wasn’t unrelated to my homework, because at that point, my hope (I didn’t have the confidence to actually be ambitious in those days) was that I’d find work as a journalist, maybe writing for a local paper as the day job, then writing longer, more clever pieces free-lance. At that point in my life, I had little thought of grad school—journalism school maybe, or one of the new programs in publishing, as credentials to make me more marketable, but academia wasn’t in the plan at all.

I’ve kept the pieces I wrote for that course, and for the college paper, and while I won’t claim brilliance, they’re really not bad—good enough for my very reasonable, though too-tentative goals at the time. My reviews were breezy, saucy but smart. Pieces on everything from recycling to pointe shoes were well-researched, well-developed, well-described. The essay I think I was writing that weekend, after the photo was taken and I got down to work, was a little more experimental, about no more exciting event than a walk across a meadow, but it contains some nicely meditative, lyrical moments. There was real potential in my writing, meaning there was enough potential. If I’d had the wherewithal, the nous—the practical sense, as well as the disposition to push and hustle—I had the skills to make it as a writer.*

But I was pretty nous-less in those days. My writing skills might have been pretty solid, but my life skills, not so much. I was easily waylaid by discouragement and doubt. And I couldn’t bear the insecurity of being un- or under-employed, relying on my family for support. The need to be self-sufficient (comfortable) trumped art. And one move in the name of self-sufficiency (comfortable) led to another, from office jobs, to grad school, to teaching, to grad school, to teaching, to a full-time job. I almost forgot that for a few short years, I thought of myself as a writer.

And now I’m still beset by doubt. I’ve spent my adult life writing, but in a professional style that’s always seemed foreign, cold, and downright inhospitable to those reading and writing in it. All those words, painfully crafted—extracted, dredged, wrung—and none of them ever made me feel like a writer. I’ve also spent my adult life reading. A lot. I can say, pretty authoritatively, that I’ve read the absolute worst possible—horrible things, some created by accident by novices, others made deliberately by people who should know better—and I’ve also read the best. Delightful, lively, perceptive, transporting fiction; generous, careful, caring non-fiction. And, what was not the case when I was sitting on the lawn in the sunshine in another phase of my life—the world is full, saturated with every kind of writing in-between. Who am I to make any claim at all to add a few useful little bits to a limitlessly vast hoard of words?

I guess the question to ask is, who are all those others who do make that claim? Some of them are truly skilled, proficient artisans—people who have long dedicated themselves to perfecting their craft, for the satisfaction of the world, and for themselves (because one has to have a certain amount of necessary egotism to make one’s voice heard). A lot of the rest are just hacks, and yet at any given moment, they give the world something it…needs? wants? enjoys? can’t resist? whatever—as vast as the hoard of words is, there seems to be room for more. It seems that in addition to craft, and ego, the main difference between those who write and those who don’t is that the latter group simply can’t be bothered. And no matter all the things that have held me back in my life, one thing that always keeps me going is that I get bothered, a lot, and can bother, pretty energetically. If I’m somewhere in between artisan and hack, then why not me too? Because, after years of writing for other purposes, other demands, if I just feel like trying to write again, even if no-one reads a single damn word of it, why not? I am, and can continue to be, bothered to do it.

What struck me the other day, when I noticed that photo—one that’s been there every time I’ve stayed in the guest room over the years—was that, despite the intervening years, and experiences, and choices, aside from the addition of a laptop, I was sitting in almost exactly the same position now as then. I may not have become all that much more daringly ambitious in the interim, and I’m not sure my nous has improved all that much either, though my posture certainly has; I’ve definitely covered a lot of personal and professional ground, and am not quite the same person I was then. And yet, there’s something in me—body, if not brain—that has never forgotten how it is to sit cross-legged, surrounded by one’s tools, spending a certain span of time contemplating one’s cuticles, letting one’s mind wander, and then settling down to the business of writing.

*writer: (n) a person who uses words to enhance the quality of life of others, or, at least, to divert them in a way that doesn’t appreciably detract from that quality of life.

(Thoughts Recollected in Tranquility Amidst the Chaos of a Trans-Continental Airplane Journey at Christmas)

In an early episode of Happy Days—seen, apparently, by no-one ever but me—it’s Christmas. The Cunninghams excitedly immerse themselves in celebrating the romantic myth of post-war American prosperity, stability, morality, and community. Fonzie gives gifts to everyone at Al’s, making it known that he loves Christmas; when asked his plans, he talks proudly about going to his cousin’s place, where they’ll have a big tree, presents, lights, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, the whole Norman Rockwell/Charles Dickens extravaganza—with the most important detail being that Fonzie has family, that somewhere he’s welcome and included.

But after Richie and his dad stop in to Fonzie’s shop to fix a spark plug, Richie, unobserved, sees Fonzie heating up a can of soup on his hotplate in the garage. Dad, says Richie, I don’t think Fonzie has anywhere to go for Christmas. We learn that there are no cousins, no family that Fonzie is a part of; it’s just Fonzie alone with his soup and a tiny little tree, but he’s too proud to let anyone know, to have anyone feel sorry for him. 

Of course, Richie can’t let his friend be alone, and we viewers can’t bear the thought either. Mr. Cunningham is reluctant to share his vision of cozy nuclear-familial cheer with the always-suspect Fonzie—but Mrs. C and the kids get a little misty-eyed and wobbly-lipped, and the family conspires to get Fonzie to stay while letting him save face about having nowhere else to go. Under the pretext of needing his help with the Christmas lights, Fonzie is drawn into the family circle, and we all bask in a vision of community and generosity.

The story is told in a pretty simple, unsophisticated fashion (ah, nostalgia for tv from the 70s that was nostalgic for life in the 50s!), but I was marked for life by that particular episode. I can’t be sure of the full extent to which my developing psyche was influenced by childhood tv-viewing, but I know that my sentimentality about Christmas was strongly influenced by all the specials broadcast at the time. Of course, there’s A Christmas Carol, It’s A Wonderful Life, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and Merry Christmas Charlie Brown—all narratives that very transparently and didactically celebrate the integration of the individual into the community. (I suppose someone could do a conference paper on how Dickens’ personal trauma, shaped by a combination of culturally-specific forces in the 19th century, came to dominate our collective understanding of a mystical religious celebration—but we can save that for another day.) For me, those narratives became far more powerfully influential than any Sunday-school lessons—I know that lurking not very far beneath the surface of my urbane, sophisticated, persona—just like Fonzie—I take “Christmas spirit” very, very seriously. And—as with Fonzie (somewhere my poor devout Nana is apologizing to an angel for how tv became my reference point instead of the teachings of the good Reverend Faraday)—it’s not all the chestnuts or eggnog, the roasted bird and puddings that really matter. Rather, what no amount of critical inquiry, of cynical, arch, erudition can dispel, is that there is something terribly, existentially, basically wrong about being alone at Christmas—and (as Dickens reminds us throughout most of his work)—about being alone in general.

In addition to the ubiquitous heavy hitters of the holiday-special line-up, there were several others that seem to have been unique to my generation’s Canadian childhood, including The Happy Prince, and the Selfish Giant (both by Oscar Wilde—check them out on YouTube if you need a cathartic experience). These weren’t especially Christmas-themed, but someone at the CBC saw that they had something in common with the more canonical Christmas narratives; and in fact, since all the trappings of the Christmas celebration weren’t present, the didactic element was all the more forceful. What the stories of lonely Princes, Giants, and greaser mechanics all had in common was a central character who is full of kindness, generosity, and fellow-feeling—and yet is somehow isolated from his community—an outsider, a non-conformist, even, to some, a menace or a monster—and is consequently profoundly alone. Long before the denouement of each story, when the character’s true, loving nature is discovered and he receives love in return (but sometimes too late!) I start getting misty-eyed, and wobbly-lipped, and watch the whole thing with tears in my eyes. It started with Christmas specials, but the effect really did extend far beyond them. I never got over these stories—I have the same reaction with Wall-E, or when we learn of Huck’s backstory on the ridiculous Scandal. What gets me, what I find heartbreakingly painful, is how misunderstanding and difference create isolation and loneliness. The figure who is full of love, and has to endure a life where no-one loves him or her back—touches me like almost nothing else.

It’s unfashionable to be earnest and sentimental, especially in secular circles, as though strong feelings are symptoms of excess credulousness. We intellectual types can critique the hegemonic forces that use mass-media narratives to create conformist docility in the individual, blah blah blah. Yeah, we all live in the panopticon, whatever. The point here is this: I come from a small, not-particularly-extroverted family, with far-flung and rarely-seen uncles and aunts and cousins. In recent years, I’ve become one of the far-flung, living thousands of miles from the nearest relatives. I’m single, I don’t have kids of my own. And, never able to forget the Tragedy of the Solitary Fonzie (or prince, or robot, or Scrooge), there is something in me that hates to see another person drift to the margins of society, because of misunderstanding or difference; and it’s one of my greatest fears, that that could happen to me too—because it can so easily happen to any of us. In our culture, that puts so much emphasis on self-absorbed achievement and self-gratification, it’s too easy to let the connections slide. Like Mr. Cunningham, if we have family, we turn inwards towards them and tend to leave the more difficult work of hospitality, generosity, and inclusion to others.

For several years now, my secret project has been to very deliberately build my family outwards, to make connections with friends of varying degrees of closeness, which I hope will be very long-lasting. I suppose that those who come from large, tightly-knit families may not need to join the project, though they’re welcome to—but partly from self-preservation and partly from plain old sentimental fellowship, I want as many people in my life as will fit. Is that a fond and foolish thing to confess in a blog post? Sorry—the damage of popular culture has long been done—those instructive tales of Christmas spirit lasting all the year through did their work. My family, which as far as I’m concerned includes those related to me by a shared interest in dumplings and dance classes as well as by blood, includes some prickly members, many of whom aren’t easy to get to know (I might be one of them, depending on the day); we aren’t always noble and good; we might be inconsistently affable. But taken as a whole, we all share the same needs, for generosity, and community; and we can all give the same gift, over and over again, of welcoming one another in, so that each of us has somewhere to go, and people to be with.

It is only a novel… or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

I’ve had some extra free time lately, and I’ve been making the make the most of it by doing one of my favorite things, reading novels, from 19th century favorites to contemporary fiction that’s been getting a lot of positive critical attention: “a must-read for 2013”; a “stunning debut novel”*; “a masterful portrait of…whatever current cultural phenomenon/collective neurosis.” I try, I really do—I’m supposedly a literary person, and being well-read presumably means reading outside of a couple of genres (or centuries). I’ve read some current fiction that’s been really enjoyable, admirable, and rewarding.** But too often, making my way through the self-consciously artful prose of this or that contemporary literary star ends up feeling like a chore, throughout the performance of which my attention is always feeble because I’m wishing I were reading something else.

A couple of examples:

Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs—at first, I was impressed. Wow, I thought, Messud’s hitting uncomfortably close to home, in capturing the situation of a single Boston woman, professional, good at her job, self-sufficient, with friends and interests—who’s very intractably alone. But then the first-person narration starts to get more and more fraught, and bitter, and then, simply, overwrought. Without revealing too much of the plot, our narrator gives too much of herself to people she loves, and who she believes love her, and suffers profoundly when they abandon her—after first betraying her in a very cruel and public way. At the end of the novel, the narrator is still alone, and angry, in a way that the whole plot has made both justifiable, and pitiable. Perhaps we’re meant to find the narrative a gripping and insightful portrayal that elicits profound empathy? Oops, nope, that’s just condescending and voyeuristic schadenfreude.

I finished the book feeling resentful of the author’s manipulation of both character and reader: Messud created a character to whom I had to relate (the trick of the first-person point of view), to whom I could relate, because of the similarities in our lives—single, professional, Boston, not living on the ground floor—and for whom I ended up feeling not just pity (not an ennobling emotion), but impatience. What really irritated me was that the author felt that her protagonist was good material to use in controlling the reader’s interest, to defy our expectations of, or preference for, a character who works her way towards contentment, as though such expectations are naive, or facile (and they may be, but we like them that way).

Adelle Waldman’s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. This novel is a very painstaking, detailed exploration of the mind of a shallow and self-absorbed Brooklyn writer as he moves from one relationship to another. Waldman is very careful and accurate—seemingly—in capturing Nate’s clueless selfishness. Good for her for being able to put herself in the psyche of this particular type of the male writer. She seems to be attempting a bit of literary and social justice, by setting Nate up as a target—women everywhere can feel like they’re getting even somehow by watching this representative man suffer (though really, only a little bit) as his blunders make the women in his life suffer. But then she also allows him to get away with it and—so realistic!—carry on with his extremely privileged life. And as a reader, I have to put up with an insufferable nitwit of a protagonist who learns little about being a better human being. I’ve dated that guy, frequently, and don’t need to spend any more time with him.

My taste in all things is, I maintain, discriminating (what my Nana would call fussy), and I don’t need my readers to think the way I do (who am I to set the public taste? those two authors have far, far more influence than my nascent little blog). And—yes, I did reader response theory in grad school—I’m quite well aware of the varied baggage I bring to my readings. But—if you’re interested—do you know what I find lamentably absent in 21st century fiction, and so likable about their 19th century antecedents?

1) The immersion in a real story. None of this naturalism jazzed up as post-modernism, where we’re trying to capture the essence of a moment, an experience; where the coherence of narrative is a vain illusion because real life is just a series of arbitrary causal reactions, etc etc. Whatever. Because life sometimes seems arbitrary and frustratingly incoherent, I want my literary escapes to be just that—escapes into an alternate reality where things happen for reasons, where actions have consequences and meaning, where justice is done and questions are answered. No apologies for wanting that.

2) At least some of the characters are admirable, good people; or rather, they become admirable and good through the process of the narrative. Characters learn that self-respect is inseparable from respect for one’s community. Consideration matters. Selfishness and heedlessness are, depending on degree, either definitively punished, or, at the very least, not rewarded. Author and readers are united in the belief that there’s nothing wrong with combining entertainment and moral uplift—that it’s all right to use art to inspire and challenge (and not “challenge,” in our cynical, aggressive post-modern way, where authors deliberately frustrate readers’ desire for narrative coherence and meaning as a way of interrogating our attachment to these simple, and arguably conservative constructs, as though taking it for granted that the world is cold and meaningless is a more enlightened position. Ugh). Again, I know the world isn’t like that—you can be sure that Austen and Bronte and Dickens were perfectly well aware that their world wasn’t like that either—but the reason their readers have always been grateful for their work is precisely because in those fictional worlds we get a rest from incoherence and cynicism and whatever-the-hell “edginess” is supposed be.***

The contemporary authors I like best, whose work actually makes me feel content and soothed, are not trite or vapid at all—they’re educated, thoughtful, cultured, technically skilled—and above all, kind in their writing—kind to their characters, to the world they create, and to their readers. I want more of that, not less, in my literature, as in my life. When I read a recent novel with some angst-y, self-absorbed protagonist who neither does, nor learns much in the course of some artistically-fragmentary, non-linear narrative—I might feel some aesthetic or intellectual gratification for having read the thing, but I don’t feel better. And by better I mean it all: diverted, happier, more empathetic and compassionate, more connected to my own values and sense of self, as well as to society. We might have a hard time maintaining these kinds of high standards in ourselves, but all the more reason to ask so much of our literature.

(*why are all first books marketed like this? publicists need to be good writers too…)
(**The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life, Leaving the Atocha Station, Alexander McCall Smith’s latest. Why aren’t there any women writers in there?? Recommendations please!)
(***of course, you can charge that these writers also often endorse repressive social structures—the problems that these novels pose are also part of their appeal, because they prompt curiosity about the historical context that made such inequality seem normal.)

I’ve been talking about writing my memoir—followed by the script for the lifetime movie, complete with musical numbers—for a few years, ever since I felt like I was generating good narrative material (that is, ever since my personal life went from unremarkable to high melodrama). Now that I’ve got this blog going, that’s meant to be a first little step towards the larger project. But right away an important quandary presents itself: who am I, in this process of confession/narration/analysis/retrospection/wishful thinking? If I have something to offer readers, it would be, frankly, me—that is, unlike Dickens, I’ve got no knack for externalizing my inner drama by creating multiple fictional characters, each of whom represents some facet of myself and my experiences without actually laying too much of myself out for interpretive inspection all at once. I’ve just got my immediate experience of my life—thoughts, opinions, emotions, colorful language. If I don’t write honestly and fully, I don’t actually have a lot of material to share.

And yet.

One day, soon after I first started in my current position, there was a fundraising carnival, where certain of my colleagues volunteered to go in the dunk tank, or have pies thrown at them. My mentor at the time, a wise, cautious woman, absolutely nixed the idea: it was no way to create gravitas, to cultivate an air of authority and respectability. My mentor is (unfairly) known for being overly-serious, but in this case I think she was right. It would be easy, and foolhardy, to underestimate the conservatism of my workplace. I won’t give in to temptation to offer critique as an aside: I work where I work and I have to respect that.

But much more importantly, I do care how the people I mentor, especially the younger women, see me—they need good role models, people who can behave ethically and with some sensibility—so they may neither want, nor need, to know about some of the less role-modelly things I’ve done, sometimes as mistakes, sometimes as deliberate experiments (I was talking about salsa class, obviously–what did you think I meant…?). Doesn’t that make it sound like I’ve been up to all kinds of mischief? Hardly—I’ve been in just enough mischief to know how tame my “exploits” have been—but still, there are some tales that, once told, could be enough to jeopardize my job, and my reputation.

As though my reputation isn’t mine to do with as I please…

Though now that I think of it, that belief might be a self-absorbed, 21st century delusion. Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte would dismiss such conceits with impatience. Of course one’s reputation is not really one’s own—it’s a product of social relationships, not something that exists outside of them. At the same time, both of those luminaries would also remind me that what is my own is my self-respect. How much of a spectacle can I make of my life–because there is an element of spectacle to memoir, to turning one’s life into other people’s entertainment–while still maintaining my dignity? And by dignity I don’t mean some kind of narrative conceit, or some kind of sanctimonious costume/disguise, or an excuse to avoid living fully; being mindful of one’s dignity doesn’t mean being above reproach, removed from the fray, boringly, unhumorously correct. Rather dignity, for me, means enacting the value I have for myself and for others, and sharing that with the intention partly of entertaining, but also substantially to let my readers know that none of us is alone—no matter how uniquely isolated we may feel in the midst of many little indignities, we’re all deserving of respect, from one another and from ourselves.

Right, that’s very noble, but still doesn’t solve the quandary—how circumspect can I be, and still be honest? how much of myself can I open up to the world and still maintain my dignity and self-respect? How much do you all need to know about me? What is the right course to set that navigates between frankness and dull, evasive reticence?

The answer today, in what’s only the second-ever post here, will be that I’m just not sure yet. Let me figure out who “you” are as an audience–who I need you to be as readers, as well as what you need from me as the writer–and we’ll see what happens. (I’ll warn you–that’s not all some attempt at elaborate teasing. My next few posts might be very earnest and high-minded–bear with me as I work some of that stuff out and settle down).

“Stopping” might not seem like the most obvious theme for a first post, but starting this blog is, in a sense, very much about bringing other things to a stop. I was dealing with a case of hysterical paralysis of the brain (what laypeople call writer’s block)–I was writing and writing, and yet getting absolutely nowhere. Writing the same ideas over and over again. Writing myself into paths and directions I didn’t want to go. Writing and writing and yet not feeling any sense of satisfaction at how I was spending my time or energy.

This was starting to feel a little familiar. In recent months, I helped a friend extricate herself from an unhealthy situation. She was having trouble crossing the threshold (the literal threshold–the big step was walking through a door, and closing it behind her), and I said, “when a situation is taking up massive amounts of time and energy, wearing you down, and making you miserable, that’s the moment to break up with it.” I heard myself as I said that and thought, “huh, that’s going to be useful advice in more than situation…”

So, more recently, besieged by the writer’s block, tearing at my hair, ranting to the empty apartment, supplicating the heavens, I asked–as we do in moments of desperation–“what am I supposed to do??” And the answer came to me: if it’s taking up massive amounts of time and energy, wearing you down, and making your miserable, that’s the moment to break up with it. But, I replied (like you’ve never talked to yourselves)–that would be Quitting and I don’t Quit. So I quoted Dr. Phil to myself (quite a dialogue, someone else should have been there): And how’s that whole Not Quitting thing working out for you right now? Exactly.

Quitting’s not good, but Stopping when you’ve simply had enough and have nothing left, in this moment, to give, is not so bad. Stopping, if it means ceasing one futile thing to try something new, that you actually want to do, might be the only way to Start.

So I Stopped. Put the other project away. Had an idea, and sat down, and started to write about it. No hysterical paralysis of the brain. I don’t know if what I’ve been writing is brilliant or world-changing; I’m not quite sure yet what my writerly voice will be, if I’m going to stick to a theme, or meander through varied subjects, if I’m going to settle on a style, or let my topic and mood guide my register. I don’t know if there will be any other reader but me, but that’s no worse than where I was even 30 minutes ago. I’m calling that a Start.