Despite being just an hour’s train ride from New York City, I only head in a few times a year. My last visit was when my daughter and I joined hundreds of thousands of people to participate in the Women’s March.
It’s definitely been a very long (and surreal) seven weeks since then.
It’s been hard to know how to move forward in this strange new world. How much to ignore. How much to resist. How much to engage and try to find common ground. How much to do normal things.
Even with none of this being normal at all.
But life goes on.
Museum exhibits come and go.
So on a gorgeous almost spring day this week, I ventured in to check out “From the Collection: 1960-1969” at MoMa.
On my walk from Grand Central I was struck by the bold electronic New York Times ads scrolling on the bus shelters.
Subscriptions to The New York Times have surged since the election as people try to determine The Truth amidst a sea of alternate facts.
I then meandered around Rockefeller Center for a bit before wandering a few blocks over to MoMa where I immersed myself in the various galleries for the next several hours. As always I was stuck by how many different languages were being spoken by my fellow visitors.
For some strange reason, rather than making my way back to Grand Central, I found myself heading over see what things were like at “White House North”. It appears that immigrants are welcome across the street from the gilded tower.
And then I saw another one of those New York Times ads. This time with a special addition. Wow!
Apparently these were put up all around the city for National Women’s Day which had taken place just the day prior. It looks like someone tried unsuccessfully to remove the sticky poster.
Even this guy looked pretty shocked by it all!
Despite the huge blocks of concrete everywhere, things seemed relatively normal on the block. I asked one of the police officers stationed across from the entrance if the situation is much different when Trump is in town. He said that he hasn’t been back since the inauguration, so things haven’t been too crazy in the neighborhood.
Oh right, it’s been golf season in Florida.
It was getting dark, the spring-like weather was turning chilly, and the time had come to catch a train back home.
But something about this scene made me laugh. I kept wondering why the “Interior Demolition Specialists” were parked inside the barricades in front of the Trump Tower.
Who knows.
It is indeed a strange time in which we are living.
Maybe someday I will find more eloquent words to better express the wide range of emotions that I am feeling. But for now I continue to grapple with the non-normal nature of the situation.
And muddle through.
Trying to capture some of the strange times in which we are living.
The time leading up to an election is always super stressful. A gigantic cloud of suspense permeates the air causing everyone to feel uneasy. Presidential elections are their own special breed of agitation inducing tense fests. I often find myself forgetting to breathe.
Well, obviously I still inhale and exhale enough to do the business of surviving.
But they are not the deep breaths of truly living. They are the strained and shallow breaths of someone feeling a bit anxious about the future.
Just trying to “get through” this. As someone who tries to make the most of each moment, living the past several months in a state of suspended animation feels like a giant waste of precious time.
I have tried to the best of my ability to innoculate myself against all of the negativity of this campaign. With the exception of the debates that my daughter had to watch for her Government and Politics class, we have not had the TV on all season. (Each week we record our guilty pleasure show “Survivor” to watch at another time).
I could only stomach approximately an hour of the Republican convention before I decided I had to make plans with something other than my TV for the next few evenings. Checking out The Record Company was a much better use of my time. Luckily I was able to escape any temptation to watch the Democratic convention the following week as I was away from outside communication at a Quaker gathering up in Lake George.
I’ve also tried to limit my social media, but not as successfully as I would have liked. So I have read a ton of articles from various sources and watched more than my fair share of videos. While there have been a few funny pieces, they have been funny in a surreal kind of way. Like no one can believe that we are really in this situation. Is it all just a bad dream that we will wake up from?
In fact, I’ve recently had multiple dreams with Donald Trump in them.
That’s pretty scary, right?
In last night’s episode he was hovering around in a blimp-like thing that was shaped like a backpack/suitcase. It kept flying around in descending circles while picking up speed until it crashed into a tree right outside my window and exploded like a blown transformer. Bizarre.
This whole thing is like a train (or blimp) wreck. I keep trying not to look, but I can’t help myself.
All of this election chaos is pervasive and it’s really hard to live a media-free life.
I finally figured “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” and found a somewhat productive way to tap into the election energy that is swirling around me.
I signed up for a 5-week seminar at Fairfield University called “Media and Democracy: The Press, Public Opinion and the 2016 Presidential Election”. It was billed as a series of talks that would go beyond the headlines and escape the echo chamber of punditry in order to understand how media impacts public opinion.
I really enjoyed the first few weeks learning some history of media as it relates to political coverage. The lectures were super engaging and the readings were really informative. An added bonus was getting a sneak peek at some cutting edge academic research taking place to better understand the influence of social media.
It felt really good to stretch my brain to take in a lot of new info.
I felt very optimistic.
As the course continued, it became clear to me that most of my classmates consume way more media than I do. They were obsessing over polling numbers and FBI investigations. They brought all of their frenetic energy to class last week and I just felt the stress ooze all around the lecture hall.
Everyone was interrupting and talking over each other spouting the latest breaking news and talking points. It felt like people were addicted to the very echo chamber of punditry that we were trying to escape. It was like being part of a CNN panel and it was almost too much for me to handle. I started getting agitated and unsettled.
I had to remind myself to breathe.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Repeat.
(actually a friend had to remind me about the repeat part).
We have our final post-mortem class on Thursday.
I guess it all depends on how tomorrow goes.
I think we will learn lots of lessons from this election.
Hopefully.
My favorite by far is still this lengthy one with Van Jones conversing with a group of Trump supporters who approach him as he walks down the sidewalk during the Republican convention. They proceed to have an open and honest discussion about a variety of topics and manage to find some common ground in the process.
“This is beautiful… This is what we’re supposed to do… We can argue back and forth. But if we’re going to get through this. The next president is going to have an ungovernable country. I don’t care who it is. Hillary won’t be able to govern and Trump won’t be able to govern. Becuase we have stopped listening to each other. There is a complete lack of empathy”.
What is so abundantly clear is the need to listen to each other and find the common ground. And that takes time. And patience. And an open mind.
It’s messy. It’s not neatly wrapped up in a 2 minute segment.
As someone who grew up with parents who cancelled each other’s votes nearly every election, I know that life goes on after the votes are tallied.
We survive our differences.
We suck it up.
We get through this.
Life goes on.
And as this beautiful song illustrates, we are in a temporary state. It’s all a big repeating cycle and we are only here for a short part of it. We need to embrace the time that we are here and not get too caught up in all of the drama.
Easier said than done for sure. But this should help a bit.
“There’s a darkness upon me that’s flooded in light In the fine print they tell me what’s wrong and what’s right And it comes in black and it comes in white And I’m frightened by those that don’t see it
When nothing is owed or deserved or expected And your life doesn’t change by the man* that’s elected If you’re loved by someone, you’re never rejected Decide what to be and go be it”
* or woman
And this is just an added bonus that I found. So cool.
And with that, I press “publish” and head up to bed – with 2 minutes to go before it’s finally Election Day.
It’s still a bit surreal that I am actually the parent of high school daughter. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was shuffling through the halls of my Catholic high school adorned in a sassy plaid skirt while hiding from the Dean of Discipline for wearing cool suede Minnetonka moccasins instead of my quite unfashionable (but regulation) maroon shoes?
In between worrying about getting caught for uniform violations and whether the cute guy in my Latin class liked me back, I managed to learn a few things. I learned about sine, cosine, tangent and all of that trigonometry stuff. I discovered that I didn’t really like Shakespeare much, but that I loved Statistics. (I know, pretty bizarre?)
I also learned who my friends were. The real friends who had my back.
When I started high school, I hung with a bunch of girls from my middle-school crowd. We were all from the same “poor sending district” and we kinda stuck together surrounded by the “rich kids from the fancy towns”. Until I found out that they were stealing money from my purse when I got up to get my lunch.
Random aside – I can still remember in great detail the little moments spent purchasing my favorite lunchtime treats. First I would get french fries with ketchup from the ladies in the lunch line, then hit the row of vending machines for either a 10-pack of Caramel Creams or an ice cream sandwich from the 3-door freezer. (Sometimes the machine would be loaded wrong and you’d end up with the strawberry eclair bar instead. Ick).
All of this yummy goodness would be washed down with a cup of Sprite from the machine that first spit out a clear plastic cup, then the crushed ice (no ice if you wanted more soda), followed by syrup from one side and seltzer from the other. As this video demonstrates, you always had to make sure the cup landed squarely in the proper place or you would stand there helplessly watching your 35 cents go to waste.
Make sure your cup is in the right place!
It’s kinda blowing my mind how retro these vending machines look. I know it’s been over thirty years since I plunked my change into them, but these look like something out of the 50’s (although I’m sure my typography nerds will inform me exactly what era these fonts date back to). Who knows, my school always looked (and acted) a bit stuck in the post-war decade of its founding, so maybe these things were original to the cafeteria…
But I digress. A trip down memory lane can do that to me.
Back to friends.
After the lunch money stealing discovery, I relocated to a new lunch table and became part of a different friend group. I’m not really sure how we all connected in the first place but we ebbed and flowed as a group for our remaining three years together. Activities, boys and other influences tested our bonds, but we somehow managed to survive the turbulent high school years as a fairly cohesive bunch.
Although we did have a a few break-ups in the group. And they were definitely not pretty.
But sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in and let the collateral damage fall around you as it will.
Like the time when I finally got fed up with a friend who would not pick me up on the way to Great Adventure* even though it required driving right by my house. It was so frustrating to constantly find a way to get to her house 15 minutes in the opposite direction from mine, only for us to then drive right past my house. Her reason – “my parents say that I can’t drive to your town because it is not safe”. Was that code for “there are black people who live there”? I’m still not entirely sure, but I have my suspicions. All I know is that I had finally had enough of the crap. Unfortunately all of the years of fun times we shared together (and we definitely shared a lot of them!) just fizzled out. Potential fun times were not worth putting up with coded racial undertones any longer.
So yeah. A big part of the journey is determining who your friends truly are as you navigate the daily grind; pushing through to the other side where college and brighter futures beckon.
But an even bigger part is figuring out who you are and what kind of person you’re going to be when you grow up. Not what you’re going to “be” based on your occupation or what kind of car you drive. No – this part goes much, much deeper. And not everyone is willing to look into their mirror and ask themselves these tough questions.
Who are you going to be when it comes to things like integrity? What are the things on the inside that make you who you are? What things are you going to stand up for? What parts of yourself are you not willing to compromise in the name of “friendship”?
Whether it’s lunch-money stealing or racist behavior, it’s important to take a stand for things you believe in. Even if it means losing friends.
Because as Joan Jett sang back in my high school days –
“Ya got nothin’ to lose Ya don’t lose when you lose fake friends”
Truer words have never been spoken.
High School can definitely suck at times. You’re all growing up and finding your way through this thing called life. And in my case, while wearing a daily dose of maroon and grey – colors that I still can’t bring myself to wear today.
That’s me at the end of freshman year with some of my friends. I’m the one in the dorky glasses.
* Yes, that’s what it’s called in Jersey. If you’re from somewhere else you probably (incorrectly) refer to it as Six Flags.
With all the recent talk about Bob Dylan and his Nobel Prize in literature, you might think this post would be about him and that. Well it’s not. It’s about something that is also timely – but more of a regular occurrence rather than a groundbreaking phenomenon.
I’m talking about leaf blowing!
Argh. The sounds of suburbia.
When one neighbor’s landscaping crew finishes their autumnal symphony, a new crew a few houses away takes up the chorus.
But as much as the noise from all of the dueling jetpacks annoys me, the greater affront is the seeming lack of concern for where the blown stuff actually goes.
It’s like somehow the act of blowing the leaves, clippings and other detritus makes them disintegrate like something out of a cartoon. Poof! Gone.
In the last 24 hours I watched 2 different landscaping crews perform similar rounds of hit-and-run landscaping. They did their mowing and weed-wacking, blew the debris around a bit and then hopped in their trucks and drove off – leaving a trail of yard waste on the perimeter of the property they had just cleaned. And a whole bunch of it just wafting in the air. Eventually settling back down into the lawn where it will await its next interaction with the leaf blower. And the process repeats.
It’s like “as long as it’s not on my property it doesn’t matter to me!”
So frustrating. And don’t even get me started on aerosol sunscreen! Although it looks like someone has beaten me to the punch on this pet-peeve of mine.
Yeah, so that every day thing didn’t really work out for me.
I’m not sure what I was thinking when I set a goal of daily posting. Possibly the only thing I do daily is brush my teeth. At this point I’ll be lucky if I can handle sharing something weekly with my mythical audience.
Part of the problem is my lack of discipline and structure; I am just not really good at routine. I can barely get up each morning to make sure my high schooler gets to the bus on time (in my defense, the bus comes friggin’ early!), let alone figure out how I’m going to eat breakfast, go for a walk, take care of the things on my to-do list. And I’m lucky enough to not have a full-time gig that eats up my time.
Although I do have a teenager who still requires a decent amount of care and maintenance. Primarily of the “ubering” sort. Until the driver’s license comes (but that’s a topic for another day).
Another big issue is my inability to focus. I’m quite easily distracted. So many thoughts bop around in my giant head, but actually sitting down and putting them into writing is painful. It’s easier to just let them swirl around out in the ether and… “Wait, what day do those Lumineers tickets go on sale?” “What’s the admissions rate for Georgetown?” “Is it going to rain today, because I really should mow the lawn?” All of those answers are just a Google search away. Hence my love/hate relationship with my electronics.
A different matter all together is my lack of confidence in my writing for public consumption. I was a statistics major not an English major for crying out loud. I think I took one formal writing class in college – way back in freshman year. All I remember from high school English is diagramming sentences and reading Beowolf. My grown-up writing has been limited to some powerpoint presentations back in the 90’s, and more recently some persuasive emails and a few successful grant requests. I’m sure I’m really mangling all sorts of proper elements of writing and that makes me a bit nervous.
Oh yeah, and that whole perfectionist version of procrastination fits in there somewhere. Overthinking, internal criticism, the sudden urge to clean out the refrigerator. You know the deal.
Plus, I’m not really sure what I’m doing. I’ve never really done this before. I’m still figuring out the technology piece. For all of the power of digital, I still tend to be a bit analog.
So if I were to run a regression analysis on why you are not seeing much output from me, those variables would probably soak up a good amount of the variation.
“And I’m giving you a longing look… Everyday I write the book. Don’t tell me you don’t know the difference Between a lover and a fighter. With my pen and my electric typewriter Even in a perfect world where everyone was equal I’d still own the film rights and be working on the sequel“
p.s. Happy Anniversary to my husband of a quarter century!!!
A friend recently posted this cartoon on their Facebook wall. It’s absolutely brilliant – and perfectly describes the way I view the world.
I often see things from multiple perspectives. Decision making is difficult for me because I believe that everyone holds a piece of the “truth” and that things are not as “black and white” (for lack of a better analogy) as people might like them to be. I’ve often joked that I could never be a judge or an elected official because I would have to make decisions – in public. The combination of those things petrifies me.
My daughter identified at a young age that “making decisions” makes her feel trapped. I had never thought about that before, but it absolutely describes how I feel. My daughter is so much wiser than me.
It’s funny, because my tortured decision-making process is probably the biggest source of contention in my quarter-century marriage. As a borderline ENFP/INFP married to a ISTJ, my need to evaluate myriad possibilities in order to make a “perfect” decision inherently clashes with my husband’s desire to complete tasks in a methodical and timely fashion. You don’t want to know how long it took to select the “right” tile for our kitchen backsplash last year.
It’s so hard when there are so many alternatives to contemplate! And that’s just for choosing an inanimate object. Throw in actual other people with thoughts, feelings, biases. The whole thing gets complicated pretty quickly.
American philosopher Ken Wilbur states eloquently –
“I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody – including me – has some important pieces of the truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious and compassionate embrace”.
Over the years I have shed my involvement with people and organizations that possess rigid thinking in favor of those with more expansive and experiential approaches. Among other reasons, my adopted religion of Quakerism appeals to me for this one –
“As we each possess a different perspective, the insights of community members help illuminate additional new approaches to the truth. Friends, therefore, bring our personal revelations to our communities for “clearness” in discerning the truth. The variety of insights within our communities also helps us achieve wholeness and balance.
We come to know truth experientially. The search for truth is more important to us than the maintenance of beliefs, and so we try to remain open to new approaches to the truth.
Our search for truth has further confirmed that ‘way opens’, situations change or circumstances develop, enabling us to find the direction in which to proceed. As we move in that direction, specific steps forward, which were not previously known to us, become apparent”.
This helps me a great deal.
Sometimes all it takes is getting out of our own heads and being open to new information – or seeing old information in a new way. The world would be a much better place if we could embrace (or at least not reject outright) those pieces of truth that differ from our own.
During walks around the perimeter of my town’s beach, I try to clear my head and take in the beauty of the world around me. Sometimes my thoughts are interrupted by the words of other people and I get a bit agitated.
Then I remember the importance of shifting perspective to see things in a different way.
Did you know that in addition to signifying extreme excitement, “woop woop” is also disparaging Australian slang that means “an imaginary remote town or district symbolizing isolation and backwardness”?
It’s all about perspective.
Speaking of which, I am also trying to re-frame my “sucky decision making” ability in the much more positive light of being open-minded and creative.
Ok, it’s been a while. Like a long while. But sometimes that’s how it goes. I figure getting back together with this site is kinda like when you call an old friend out of the blue because you’re going to be in their city and you’d like to get together with them for drinks or dinner.
Although do you even call your friends anymore? You probably text them or Facebook them. And if you’re younger than me, you probably do some other form of social media to let them know you’re in their area…
And now you can see how I have a hard time getting things done. I get sucked into these random musings in my own head.
That was the million dollar question my darling daughter asked when I told her that I was thinking about creating a blog. Of course she asked exactly the same question that I had been asking myself when I came up with this totally random and out of left field idea this afternoon. She is absolutely right. I am really struggling with getting things done lately. My to-do list is enormous. My energy is zero. I blame it on this ridiculously long winter from which we can’t seem to escape. Polar Vortex? Another 8-12 inches of snow? Shoot me now.
Plus I am a major procrastinator – of the perfectionist type. I obsess more about doing things than actually doing them. I overthink everything.
I am in the middle of so many half completed projects and the last thing that I need is another distraction. Or maybe it’s exactly what I need.
It’s just that I have so many thoughts bubbling around in my head and I have no idea what else to do with them. I can write for hours in my various journals and that seems to help. A bit. For a while. But it feels like I am just talking to myself about the same things over and over again. Writing helps me work through whatever issues I am dealing with. I discover new ways of thinking about things when I give myself the time and space to write.
But I don’t call myself a writer. I don’t call myself an artist – even though everyone tells me that I’m so creative. I don’t know what to call myself. No one word defines me.
I struggle with my inability to just put myself out there. I surround myself with people who are more interesting than me so that I don’t have to take center stage.
I have no idea why I am even doing this. I can’t imagine that anyone would even be interested in anything I have to say.
You can take the girl out of Jersey 