Theodore Roosevelt Said That

A couple weeks ago I shared this fabulous quote that my friend Elizabeth had posted online.  Though she is brilliant and beautiful and charming, the person who famously said, "Comparison is the thief of joy," was Theodore Roosevelt.  Just wanted to give credit where credit is due.

That got me thinking about some other great quotes I've heard lately from people in my life. Before I get into this, let me say that I spent the weekend in Virginia, celebrating my Grandpa's 85th birthday. He is my only grandparent left, and I love him! My parents were there, and my sweet sister, and our cousins, aunts and uncles, his rakish friend Peter, and our favorite family friend, Lisa Mirabelli. (Some folks are SO fantastic and powerful that the first and last name must always be used.) Lisa, if you read this, we adore you, and wish we could cook you shrimp and grits and cake for dessert every night!

A note about my Grandpa- he loves handmade pottery, and Bill O'Reilly, and wildflowers, and had his first poem published a couple years ago in his college's alumni journal.  He loves driving but dislikes flying, and is a retired geologist. For the last handful of decades years he has gone swimming 3 days a week, and he is in damn good shape. And he loved my Grandma Alice, whom we called Nanny, for 55 years. We all love and miss her still.

Also, I got to see my sister's magical, imperfect life, complete with pocket pals, farm kitties, cool housemates and crazy thrift stores. And there was her budding new community, Whisper Hill Farm where she's found her people, and the little Charlottesville Farmer's Market, where she slings coffee and kale.  I tried to set her up on a date with a cute guy who worked in the liquor store with toothless Judy, where I went to buy bourbon for whiskey pie.  If you are a cute young farmhand in the Shenandoah Valley, I have a sister for you!

But I digress.

Actually, I would like to digress again.  The humor in me writing a post all about anxiety while on a family trip hit me like a load of Xanax once I got back to Austin. This is how it works- you love these people, and you let all your shit hang out, and then you write in your blog about it.  To the Noble's and Newman's- there aren't a lot of us, but we are high quality characters, I'll give us that.

So, on to the quotes.

There is an old saying of our Grandpa's, "If you're nervous, go to bed!" Seriously good advice.

Also, when as a small child we would yell at our parents, "I HATE YOU!" they would calmly say, "Well, that's your prerogative." That's what happens when you're raised by a social worker and a sensitive Jew.

Steven gave me bluebonnet seeds for valentine's day last year, and they bloomed again this year! Only one plant came back, but it's bursting with flowers. He looked at it thoughtfully and said, "you know Lindsey, it's not the number of bluebonnets you have, it's the size that counts."

He has also been known to say, "Every time you put ketchup on a hamburger, Texas cries a little."

I promised my sister that my dying words will be to grab a grandchild and yell, "Your great aunt shit in my yard!" (It's a long story.)

My Dad had a raging party with his best friend that's he known for 40 years, whose name is Doug McChesney. Apparently the two person party culminated with him saying to Doug, "Next year- Burning Man, Mark and Doug naked in the desert."

Totally something Theodore Roosevelt might have said.

Just to bring it back around to what we were talking about earlier, the morning I flew out my Grandpa and I were talking about coffee. He brews it extra strong when the Seattle relatives come to town.  He laughed as he was doing it and said to me, "You know sugar, for me coffee was never some big thing. Just warm water that makes you shit.  And that's fine by me."

Amen. Here's to you, Grandpa, and a life well lived.

The Art of Practice

Today I'd like to talk to you about anxiety.  I am pretty sure I have been concerned since the day I was born.  Not to say that I wasn't a delightful, happy, red-haired little lady, but I was worried a lot of the time, too.

 "Ginger Bangs"

I think one of my main goals in life is to not be so worried.  For me, that is more important, and more valuable, then a big time career or a fancy house or a truckload of money.  It will bring me more peace, and more acceptance, than anything else.

At its core, anxiety is the anticipation of something bad happening.  (My dog trainer told me that!) I think it has a lot to do with expectation, with fear of the unknown, with loss, and with imperfection, but I don't know how to put all this into words quite yet.

Something else important about anxiety: you cannot think your way out of it.

Let that sink in- I've been trying to THINK my way out of it for 30 years, and it has never worked.

As my Mom says, anxiety manifests as energy, and it has to go somewhere.  So it sits inside and festers and grows, or you find a way to get it out.

In college I acted in a lot of plays, and sometimes that worked.  In the past I have tried to think about it really hard, and talk about it a lot, but the energy still sits in there and grows.  I like to cry, too, but I've promised Steven I am working on not crying about things I don't need to cry about (like haircuts, ans going to the vet.)

Here's a picture for you- dealing with anxiety is like wandering around the mountains in a giant orange life jacket, even though you're 1,000 miles away from the ocean. Instead of picking wildflowers you're looking for sharks.

This is immensely frustrating to me! How do I take off the life jacket? Where do I put it?

It has been humbling to realize that I may always have to live with the life jacket.  That said, I might take it off every day, or forget I'm wearing it and just smell the mountain air and gather armloads of wild sunflowers.

This is the truth, my friends.  I've realized recently that the real work is not to pretend that anxiety does not exist, but find a way to accept my nature, manage it, and find ways to get that energy out. It's been daunting to realize that I can't just go running once, or eat salad a couple days a week, and feel great.  I gotta run a few times a week, I gotta sleep well and eat well, consistently.  My therapist prescribed MEDS: Meditation, exercise, diet, and sleep.  (The other kind of meds can be a useful tool, too.)

To keep with the mountain metaphors- self care is like a really great tent.  You don't go to Walmart- you buy one at REI with a lifetime warranty.  That said, the tent needs to be taken care of for it to protect you from the elements.  The more you neglect it, the harder it will be to patch it up.  But REI makes great tents, and they'll let you start over if you burn too big a hole in yours.

This is the art of practice.  Of putting in the daily effort to manage the stress and energy of the big demons. It gets easier.  And it helps to have compassion for yourself, a mountain field to walk in, and solid tent.

The Thief of Joy

Last week I turned 31.  There were thunderstorms, and a trip to San Antonio with Steven, and fish and chips and hamburgers on the River Walk.  There were phone calls from my parents, and a letter from my Grandpa, and a delicious dinner cooked by my good friend, that ended with all of us stuffed to the gills with steak, pesto, and strawberry shortcake.

There was also the usual taking stock of how things have shaped up in the past year, and some reflection on what this next year might hold. I have done a lot of wrestling with the demons this year- a good old fashioned rattlesnake roundup of anxiety and sadness and fear of all the big unknowns.  This is not good or bad, just what it is.  I think this next year there will be far less rattlesnakes, for which I am grateful.

In thinking about my propensity towards worry and stress, I was reminded of a quote I saw on my friend Elizabeth's Facebook page. Also, for you Seattle folk, Elizabeth happens to be one of the smartest, funniest, most talented puppet makers and performers I have met.  What she posted was this:

Comparison is the thief of joy.

That got its own sentence so you could see it really clearly.  The humor in posting that on Facebook is not lost on me, and in fact it might be the perfect place to savor such wise words.  Now, this is familiar territory for me.  Comparison is to the anxious mind what peanut butter is to jelly- they just go so perfectly together.  Add a little perfectionism in there, and you've got a goddamn picnic.  

Let's look at some examples.  Sometimes I look at Facebook when my resolve and resiliency are not feeling too hot, and things like this happen- "Look at that picture of that wedding.  They are happy and beautiful and perfect. My life should be like that."  "Look at that new baby- those parents are happy and perfect and their baby never cries." Or, this is my favorite, "Look at my friends new puppy.  Their puppy is perfect and their lives are perfect, and my dog is shy and nervous and has trouble making friends."  

There is danger is mythologizing other people and experiences from the outside looking in.  The truth is that  by assigning a narrative to a photo we see on the internet, we put ourselves in the perfect position to do some very profound and unhelpful comparisons.  It basically runs us into a brick wall of SHOULDS.  

My dog should be perfect.  My body should look like hers.  My wedding should look like that.  The list goes on and on. 

I miss the old days, when you would meet the baby of a girl you went to high school with because you ran into her at the grocery store, not because you logged on to your "friendship" account online. When you would get news of an announcement from a friend through a letter instead of a online post.  

Now, I don't think everyone is as sensitive or susceptible to the thief of joy as I am, but I also think more people then you realize feel sad and depressed after going on Facebook, though they can't exactly say why.  

Some of the best medicine is to see the story in your head played out in reality.  I had convinced myself that my dog was a fuck up, and I was a fuck up, because I saw a picture of my friend's new puppy and decided he was perfect.  I met this puppy when I went home to Seattle, and found out that he is as cute as the pictures, but definitely not perfect.  He kept them up all night crying, he chewed pants while they were still on legs, he was willful.  My friend and I talked and I found out we had some of the same anxieties, that raising our own dogs was much different then we thought it would be, and a lot harder. 

This is key! Many of the good things in our life turn out much different then we thought they would be, but different does not mean bad. 

So, I don't have a life that fits my narrative of other people's pictures.  But I have thunderstorms in San Antonio, and Guthrie is snoring with his head on my pillow, and the trees are blooming in Texas.  I am going to do my best to enjoy my own magical, imperfect life.  And that is as good a goal as any for the next year.

Fear of Missing Out

Lets talk about FOMO for a moment.  It's a real thing, a thing that happens when there is a party to go to and you are tired, but you go anyway.  My old roommate Kyle Hunter says that FOMO stands for "Fear of Missing Out."  Used in a sentence it would sound like this- "I wanted to read Neil Young's biography and drink hot chocolate with my dog, but I had a wicked case of FOMO so I went out to the bar instead."

We are talking about this fear of missing out because the entire city of Austin has had a wretched case of FOMO for the past ten days, as South by Southwest again arrived, raging and sweeping everything in its path, providing enough magic and despair to last us through till next year.

Let me try to paint a quick picture- the festival is boundless- there are literally people all over the damn place downtown, in the South Congress area of town, and on the Eastside of the city. All bars have loud live music, for days and nights on end.  It is absolutely overwhelming and frenetic.  There are a few hundred pedicab drivers out, my boyfriend included, sweating and working 12 hours days.  The daytime can be fun- traffic is a snarl but if you are on  bike or on foot, you can navigate your way to free shows, a beer or two,  maybe a sausage snack.  At a certain point in the late evening, things take a turn for the worst, and suddenly everyone is DRUNK.  Not just normal drunk, but DRUNK.  This is when the city starts looking like an episode of the Walking Dead, with slack jawed bleary eyed young people lurching down the streets.  It's a little funny and a little more crazy.  There's puke on the buses and puke on the sidewalks and lots of garbage.  And some cops, and the homeless folks, and a couple cowboys on horses.

I worked downtown last year, and to be working  a service industry job that is smack in the middle of the mania is to be sentenced to a certain hell.  It was truly relentless, just the sheer amount of people who walked through the door.  At the end of it, our boss very graciously cooked us a splendid seafood and crawfish dinner, with free beer, and the Shins happened to show up and eat with us.  That was a little magical, but not enough to make up for stocking the cooler until 3 am for several nights that week.  There is no way around it if you work downtown- you just gird your loins and get through it. 

I guess what SXSW exemplifies is the perfect marriage of expectation and disappointment. In such a hip city, there is pressure to feel like you SHOULD have an awesome, out of this world experience during South by Southwest.  You want to be able to be like, "dude, I totally ran into Mila Kunis at a gay bar and took body shots with her," or, "I just ate BBQ with Justin Timberlake," or, "I got into this exclusive party on a boat, and the Flaming Lips were there, and they gave me free cucumber vodka and a free JanSport bacpack!" Apparently Steven did see Shaquille O'Neill get out of a range rover with his girlfriend and bodyguards- he tipped his head at Steven and said, "stay cool."

Indeed.

Anytime you have an instance where expectation is so high, where you know cool shit is happening but not necessarily how to access it, disappointment follows.  It is more common to wait in a long, hot line for a thirty minute show by one of your favorite acts, only to have the sound go out or have it be in a noisy bar.  It was still worth it though, at least you are pretty sure it was.

The longer I live here, I think the easier it will be to navigate this behemoth week and find the spots that play that music that feels like home.  I went to a free show with Texas country bands, and had a Shiner beer and hung around with all the old rock and roll fans, my parents age.  I checked out a bar where two of my favorite singer songwriters played (also, congrats Carry Elkin and Danny Schmidt on getting engaged- my Mom says Mazeltov!) and when I got there it was me, some middle-aged lesbians, and some guys who looked my grandpa.  These are my people.

Last night was the final evening of SXSW- I met my roommate on the Eastside to celebrate her birthday for a quick drink.  It was wild, there were people roaming the streets and crammed into every bar available, and as I walked back to my bike I happened upon a truly excellent bluegrass show.  This was a little magical- I tapped my feet on the sidewalk in my new thrift store skirt, the air still warm late into the night, and I really enjoyed myself.  Then, blessedly, I hopped back on my bike and rode into the darkness, thankful for the quiet roads in my neighborhood.

I was trying to think of an apt metaphor for the festival, and the best I can come up with is that it is like a giant pimple.  You are pretty sure you should leave it alone, but it's intriguing.  You touch it a couple times, and it just gets bigger.  You try to leave it alone, but something compels you to mess with it, until finally it pops. It's Sunday, SXSW is over, and no we can officially start the healing process, and hose down the streets.

I think next year I might offer a class on emotionally coping with SXSW FOMO.  We will probably spend a few days biking around to select events, trying not to get our hopes up too high, and spend at least one night at home with the dog, reading Neil Young's biography and drinking hot chocolate.

"Shifting the Sun"

Reading through "Good Poems," an anthology selected and compiled by Garrison Keillor, I came across this poem a couple years ago.  It is about fathers.  I have several friends whose fathers left this world well before their time, and it always make me think of them.  Of course no father is perfect, but there are those special men who seem to grow into legend due to their warmth, humor, and ability to love. This goes out to Mark Kagi, Bill Robertson, Bill Ford, and Barnett Newman, and to all those fathers whose spirit continues to light the way for their sons and daughters.

Shifting the Sun

by Diana Der-Hovanessian

When your father dies, say the Irish,

you lose your umbrella against bad weather.

May his sun be your light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Welsh,

you sink a foot deeper into the earth.

May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Canadians,

your run out of excuses. May you inherit

his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the French,

you become your own father.

May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Indians,

he comes back as the thunder.

May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians,

he takes your childhood with him.

May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the English,

you join his club you vowed you wouldn't.

May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,

you sun shifts forever.

And you walk in his light.

Mapping Out Time

The first time I ever partook of the green grass glory that my illustrious father is so fond of, I ended up asleep on a friends floor, a half eaten cheese sandwich in my hand.  Needless to say, my foray into Cheech and Chong recreation was pretty short lived, since my usual response was pretty similar to the one with the sandwich. Either that, or I'd just get increasingly worried that the car we were parked in would roll down a hill, or some nonsense like that.  Whiskey suits me much better as a drug of choice.  I'd rather have whiskey then weed in my pie, any day.  This is legal for me to write about because I'm from Washington, right?

I was home in Seattle for a week in January, it was predictably rainy and absolutely wonderful to see old friends, drink coffee in my parents kitchen, eat mussels with crusty bread and watch aerial shows at a cozy studio on Phinney Ridge.  I saw a few of the friends who were there for the night of the cheese sandwich, and it struck me just how beautifully and differently we are all growing up.

I was blessed as a teenager to cast a wide net over a tightly knit friend group- we functioned as a big humorous circus of highly capable students and potheads, drama and band nerds, independent kids who went on big camping trips and forays to the Gorge Amphitheater to see our favorite groups play every summer before school started again.

There always seemed to be someone whose parents were gone every weekend, too.  It was never my parents, mind you.  Looking back, the parties we threw were always pretty benign.  There were illicit substances, gravity bongs and some guy trying to learn Led Zepplin for 3 hours at a stretch, and we ALWAYS let the family dog out by accident, but that was pretty much it.

The camping trips were even better. Who can forget the campfires in Leavenworth, or throwing ourselves down sand dunes on the Oregon coast, or the week long trip I took with some guy friends to the East Coast one mid-winter break, in which we wandered around Manhattan and Pennsylvania and finally found ourselves on a snow covered hillside in Woodstock drinking White Russians and laughing.

It was glorious.  And at times it was hard, and now it feels a little bit like Bob Dylan's Dream.  (Great song, look up the lyrics.)

Over the last decade or more, much has changed.  Many of us are lawyers.  Just as many of us are bartenders, and baristas, and beekeepers. All of us are still walking our own path, and I like to think we are all doing well for ourselves, whether we are parents or single or homeowners or renters, struggling to find work we love or struggling to find love that work for us, whether we feel we have arrived or we are still seeking, we are all doing well.  Different combinations of us have stayed in touch- some of us went to the same colleges, some got houses together in San Francisco, and sometimes we get together at a dive bar in Kenmore on Christmas night and find our old common ground.

And sometimes we think back to the cheese sandwich night, to remembering our tall lanky blond friend, high on mushrooms, staring into space with a deep look of furrowed concentration.  When we asked what he was doing, he put up his hand and whispered, "shhhhh! I'm trying to map out time."

Wow. I wonder if he succeeded. I wonder what memories will stay with us so many decades later, like the lines of that one Gary Snyder poem. How will we remember who we used to be? More importantly, how will we honor the people we have become?  I may need to make a plate of cheese sandwiches and think about this for awhile longer.

Glad to be back with you, and I'll write again soon.

yours very truly,
Red

Texas in Late December

"They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love."

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

A few weeks ago, before the fervor of the holidays, I set out on a day trip to Enchanted Rock, in a car with 4 guys and a dog.  They were going rock climbing, and I was armed with 2 sandwiches, an apple, a cookie, trail mix, some raisins, and a book.  We headed out of Austin early in the morning, drinking coffee out of a thermos, listening to the radio as we drove through Bee Caves, towards Llano, down hill country roads until we reached our destination. Enchanted Rock is a Texas State Park, the main feature of which is a granite dome that rises 425 feet into the air.  There is a smaller dome, too, between which are boulders to scramble over, scrub trees, desert cactus and flowers, a creek and lovely green trees.  There is ample rock climbing at the park, a cave to go spelunking in, and trails to stretch your legs on.

  

It is the most beautiful and sacred place in the Hill Country that I have seen.  I first visited in the late summer when the heat was brutal on top of the dome, and we were most concerned with keeping the dog hydrated, while we explored the rock for an afternoon.  This trip was calmer, my dog was at home asleep, our companion dog a veteran rock climber, who patiently waited for the boys to throw sticks in between routes.

It was sunny and warm, there was a breeze, and everything around us whispered in sunlight and dust. In the grocery store I had seen headlines and front page stories detailing other people’s grief, and I did my best to pass them up, trying to keep from sensationalizing their loss.  Being here, on the closest thing to a mountain you can find in Central Texas, was akin to breathing a great sigh of relief.  Once the boys were situated, I scooted back down the trail to an outhouse and reveled in the simple pleasure of evacuating outside. I also found time to take an artsy picture of some toilet paper. Enjoy.

After I dropped anchor I went and found an old oak tree that was creaking in the wind, and wrote in my journal, glad that no one knew where I was for a few minutes.  I walked along the creek, past fields of grass, trained my camera on desert plants bathed in sunlight that filtered through the trees, and climbed back up the trail to the rock, where I promptly fell asleep on my pile of sweatshirts and jackets.  I woke and ate a sandwich, read my book, and just stared out into the landscape. From higher up, we could see the contours of the land, the hills off in the distance, the clouds moving softly through the afternoon. 

I felt the same kind of reverent peace that I have felt before in the mountains, or on a pile of driftwood logs by the ocean, or walking into a clearing in the forest.  There is room for everything- for our grief, our uncertainty, our sweet sadness and our silence. I thought back to other backpacking and day trips I've taken that I still remember- singing songs to darkened hills, boxed wine shared with friends, thunderstorms and card games in a tent, a sky heavy and ripe with stars.  This is the joy of the wilderness.

I missed the mountains of my home, towering Cascades with alpine lakes and fields of wildflowers, shedding their raincoats in late summer for folks to walk through their foothills and up their beautiful ridges.  But also, I loved Texas in that moment.

Inevitably, the sun began to sink, and we trekked back across the boulders, ready to hunt down a dinner of hamburgers and milkshakes when we got back to town.  Some days are laced with magic, other days never make it out of pajamas, and sometimes we get lucky- a sunny day spent on enchanted rocks, Texas in late December.