/knocks on side of head/ Nope! I got nuthin’!

I have been struggling all day to come up with something to write. I feel I owe it to the folks who come by here, daily or occasionally, as well as to myself, because after all: I have set myself up as a provider of the Daily Blogging!

But I can’t for the life of me think of anything I want to write about.

I think this is a combination of many factors, including (but not limited to): my earlier recorded angst/desire to deal well with said angst; my long-held hesitation to deal critically with Israel/Palestine during Jewish holidays (talk about your buzz kill!); and my sheer exhaustion over the troubles that face these United States/the world community/the planet. So… yeah. I may need to move on to puppehs and cute shoes.

I will try for something tomorrow, but in the meantime, I’ll point you to a handful of other people’s work that strikes me as worthwhile:

1. Rabbi Brant Rosen on the fact that an alarming number of Jerusalemites are being kicked out of their homes for the crime of not being Jewish.
2. Matt Yglesias on the nature of politics and why better-than-nothing is actually better than nothing.
3. One of my favorite xkcd comics in the history of EVAR!

If you guys out there, in your teeming millions, have any thoughts about what you’d like to see on this blog — or any other thoughts on what is clearly a case of writer’s block, because I mean, please: Look at yesterday’s post! — please feel free to leave your ideas, suggestions, rambling notions, etc in the comments!

Baby, it’s warm inside.

I mentioned recently that I’m cold.

It’s that time, that hunkering down and covering up time, that time when all the world seems still and sharp and withdrawn. Waiting.

That time when the people of the world eat.

I spent the vast majority of my day today at the kids’ school, making latkes. Making, and making, and making latkes, for 40 kids, and two teachers, in two separate classrooms, + extra, for whatever teachers might be drawn into the teachers’ lounge by the magnetic smell.

But I wasn’t the only one there.

There was the dad making pizza, his family’s entry in the bread unit (loosely defined) that the K-1-2 classes are doing right now. There were trays and trays of cookies and cakes and meringues and white chocolate-covered pretzels and more cookies and yet more, arranged around a note from the recently retired head of the lunchroom, telling the school’s staff how much she missed them all. There was the holiday luncheon (the only part of which I really registered was the pulled pork…. [which I can kinda still smell...]). There were the tamales prepared by the K-1-2 teachers themselves, another entry in the bread unit (loosely defined). The room and the entire school were fairly bursting with special, lovingly prepared food, each an expression of the very best of human interaction.

The days grow cold. We go inside, and feed one another.

It made me so happy to be there, warned of open oven doors and helped with things placed too high, chatting and looking for the dish soap, tasting and sharing and giving and getting, laughing about — nothing really. Just, you know: Laughter.

I felt held. I felt wrapped. I felt – warm.

At the end of my presentation in my daughter’s class, I asked if there were any questions. One little girl raised her hand: “Can I have hug?”

Yep – always. And maybe a bite to eat, too.

The babies’ mom.

I grew up middle class. We didn’t always have the money to match the label, but the values were solidly in the Great American Middle: Do your best, help others, dream dreams, believe in yourself. Work hard.

The oft stated, and always implied, corollary — at home, at school, in books, on the street, in casual conversation, everywhere, always — was never-wavering: If you apply yourself and plow ahead, You Can Be Anything You Want To Be.

And I have done that. I have done my best, always. I have helped others. I have dreamt dreams — though I will admit that they have been small. I have believed in myself, my skills, and my worth to the broader world. And I have worked damn hard.

But I am not anywhere near where I want to be — and I am (talk about the middle) 45 years old.

I rush to clarify: I speak only of my professional life. In my personal life, I hit the jackpot. Married to one of the best people I’ve ever met, mother to two of the others, living in a warm community and warmer home, both of which are marked by laughter and love and good conversation. I am so blessed, there are no words — at least none that are adequate to the task.

But, as a member of the highly educated, feminist-minded middle class, I came up not wanting just those things — those wonderous things — but also to work in a profession that meant something to me, and to which I had something to contribute. It was an unspoken assumption that while I might not get rich, I would surely be able to pay my bills with my natural talent and responsible work ethic.

LOL! As the kids say.

Here was my dream: To make a living by writing, with most of the work I produce going out under my own name.

And ta-daa! Here I am. Last September, after about 20 years of struggling in print media (with a three-year break for graduate school), I gave up on having my name on anything (the occasional signed book review that I still produce not being the result of any effort on my part, but rather the fruit of a relationship with an editor who is a truly peachy guy, and who, not incidentally, still has a budget).

And now, tonight, I am on the literal eve of my last day on retainer with a nonprofit for which I’ve worked since 2004. It’s a good-news story, really, in that small non-profit A is being absorbed by larger, more efficient nonprofit B, to the benefit of all — except me. Though I still do the occasional bit and/or bob of work for other organizations, I’m mostly just scrambling to find anyone who will hire me, at all.

These are first-world, luxury troubles of the first order. My husband is a software engineer — the metaphorical blacksmith of his day — and we are not ever going to go hungry. I have health insurance, and my children are whole and strong.

But there is something so painful, so essentially wrenching, to realizing that the one thing I wanted — the thing I was led to believe was not only possible but deserved — is not to be. (But I was led to believe…!)

There are things I could have done differently (probably many things). I could have come back to the US earlier. I could have skipped graduate school. I could have chosen not to work part-time and from home after my children were born. At any point, I could have gone for a salaried job rather than freelance. There are many, many outside forces that factor in my current predicament (just ask anyone recently laid off from a newspaper job), but I am not blameless in my failure to achieve what I want.

And the bottom line is just that: I have failed. I have failed to achieve what I worked for 20 years to achieve, and there’s really no point in pretending otherwise. And I am tapped out and broken. There is nothing left in me to try to find some new way, some new system, to make a go of it. I’m looking into teaching and museum work and writing for more nonprofits and PR firms and any number of other worthy directions, but Emily L. Hauser, wielder of pen and the truth? Short of a miracle of good will and good fortune falling in my lap, that’s apparently done.

And so (FINALLY) we come to my point:

How do I model this experience — this: I’m-middle-aged-and-not-getting-what-I-want, this: I-feel-sorry-for-myself-but-that-won’t-change-the-facts, this: no-one-told-me-that-working-hard-isn’t-always-enough — for my children?

I want to find a place of grace and acceptance (I want to not feel sorry for myself). I want to help them aspire, and yet prepare them for the possibility that they won’t succeed. I want to be hopeful but realistic, realistic but not fatalistic, loving and giving and not nearly as cheerless as I have been. So now, this is my struggle.

Something will happen. I have no idea what, but a cursory glance at human history and some basic math indicates that the sun will rise, the sun will set, and eventually, two + two will = a paycheck. I will figure something out.

But how I live my life between now and then, how mommy manages this transition, how I move forward, and the extent to which these changes do, or do not, affect my kids’ lives — that will be a lesson that they carry with them, as surely as I carried the assumption that hard work was all I needed.

I wasn’t able to get the career I wanted.

But meh — neither have a lot of people. What really matters is that I get the not-getting-it right.

Next time.

In my next life, I will be a singer/songwriter/pianist/guitarist who walks across the stage bare-footed, a small, warm smile of confidence and joy gracing my face as my voice fills the hall with aching sweetness, tangling close with others in harmony, my instrumental talent as easily worn as it is prodigious.

I will be Marketa Irglova.

Irglova is the Czech-born female half of The Swell Season, the duo made famous by the Irish movie Once (and talk about your aching sweetness…). The husband and I went to see them perform for the second time last night, fully expecting to be blown away — the previous show we attended was one of the best of either of our lives — but even so, we weren’t really prepared for the experience we had. It was gorgeous, and funny, and moving, and uplifting, and wounding, and chilling, and I have not so wanted to grow up to be someone for a very long time.

Sometime since the girl was born to me, six and a half years ago, I had the surprisingly crashing realization that actually, no: I will never get on stage with an electric guitar and my voice and fucking blow the crowd away. I will never be Chrissie Hynde or Bonnie Raitt, or even one of their lesser analogues.

One might think — and fairly — that I had figured this out already, but there was a shock of finality to the realization that I had, in fact, chosen my life, and its paths and tracks ran nowhere near electric guitars or the stage. And never would.

So, as one learns to do, I looked around me and went, “Well, ok.” I mean, all told, I kind of won the life lottery, and if it came without rock n’ roll dreams? Well, one makes one’s peace, doesn’t one?

Ah, but then last night rolled into town.

I want to reach my hands out to the heavens, and pull down the kind of loveliness and truth that Irglova finds, and I want to know so thoroughly that I possess it that I can look as comfortable in my skin and my drindl skirt as she did last night. I have no idea — of course I have no idea — of the turbulence that must, at times, afflict Marketa Irglova’s soul — but when she is on stage, her radiant voice rising and covering and running through an audience that, for the time being at least, feels like her best friends, she is the very picture of At Home.

For now, I’ll make do with the seven-year-old discovery that my voice is really pretty good, for a writer, and the occasional chance I get to chant the haftara in synagogue services. It, too, is a gift, to be able to do that, and an unexpected one at that.

In my next life, though, I will be Marekta Irglova. Drindl skirt and all.

************

Bonus post

Here’s a handy test to discover if you’re married to the right person:

Watching Glen Hansard — Irglova’s co-star and band mate, the frontman for Irish band The Frames, and a long, cool drink of redheaded adorableness in his own right — slaughter song after song with his uncanny ability to sing emotion into being and guitar skills so fucking crazy that his hands are occasionally nothing but a blur, I finally turned to my husband last night and whispered “It’s ok that I’m a little bit in love with him, right?”

The husband: “With him? Yeah.”

Pause.

Me: “You’re a little in love with him, too, aren’t you.”

The husband: Shrugs a bit, “well… yeah.”

Pause.

The husband: “I’m a little bit in love with her, too.”

If you can have this exchange with the love of your life, you’re right where you need to be.

Idle.

I am rather lazy. Really.

When I share this information with people who love me, though, they poo-poo it. They see how busy I am, how involved I am with family and friends, and they protest. No! They say. It isn’t so!

But, in the spirit of either a word means a thing or it doesn’t, I must counter-protest: It actually is very much so.

If the definition of lazy is “resistant to work or exertion; disposed to idleness” (and it is), then we have hit the nail squarely on the head re: me. Given half a chance, my default mode is idleness (well: book reading. Or hanging out. I’m great at hanging out!), and virtually every one of my exertions is a result of my superego being just a squosh bigger than my id. Because my id would really rather not, thankyouverymuch.

And so we come to poetry. (Really!)

One might easily expect an egghead such as myself — one who loves language and words and the very letters that form the two so much that she collects the letter A — to be into poetry. Like, really into poetry! And I’m not. Why? Because I’m lazy.

Poetry requires involvement and engagement and real application of the heart and mind, and dude — I just want to be idle. So I am, at best, a very poor word geek indeed. I like Auden, I like Dickinson (no relation!), I like bits and bobs of this and that. But more often than not, I just don’t bother.

See? Lazy.

But I’m making an exception here (excuse me for a moment, I have to exert myself), because some things are worth it.

Like this particular poem, translated from Hebrew and brought to my attention by my rabbi and friend, Brant Rosen, from the new book With an Iron Pen: Twenty-five Years of Hebrew Protest Poetry:

Then We Didn’t Yet Know

Then we didn’t yet know
That the Occupation would be forever.
Even when it would be forcibly extracted like a tooth
and tossed behind electric fences
and magnetic crossings
while cement and petrol magnates
traveled from Ramallah to Gaza -
even then it would be remembered longingly -
how young it was, the Occupation,
composed only of Arab women bent over tomatoes
in Jewish fields, men with nylon bags
waiting for work at Ashkelon junction,
jumping into grey service Peugots,
and the Secret Service men who lived three to a villa in Afridar
actually changing their license plates to army license plates before
going off to work, so they wouldn’t be identified.
It was young. In the restaurants they peeled vegetables into large tins, then
fried them, built on scaffolds. There were many organizations.
And they were young:
volunteers with Chinese weapons, poets,
but the Occupation didn’t recognize them,
because it was busy arguing in the classroom whether to return territories or not
and Ofer P., whose father was wounded in the battle of Jenin,
and had shrapnel stuck in his back
said, “In any case, there’ll be another war.”
That’s what his father taught him.
That’s how young the Occupation was,
and look at it now.

Dahlia Falah (translated by Rachel Tzvia Back)

And if that’s not enough, there’s this piece*, performed by poet, educator, and NPR commentator Kevin Coval, an artist whose words have slayed me and flayed me on more than one occasion. Listen, please, because it’s the truth:

I may be lazy — but some words will quicken the dead.

**********************

* I should have noted: This poem is “Hero Israel,” from Kevin’s book Slingshots (A Hip-Hop Poetica).

The wisdom of the Newt (or: Bleak hauser, ctd.)

We sometimes have to put aside the mantel of reason, logic, and passion for humanity, and simply be ourselves, lest we forget what we are really striving for. It is too easy to become disconnected from the very humanity and world we are attempting to save, when we put our heads down and plow ahead, into the fray. – Nefarious Newt, commenting on “Bleak hauser.”

He’s a wise man, the Newt is.

http://nefariousnewt.blogspot.com/

Bleak hauser.

I have never been particularly ill-informed.

Even in high school, I think I followed the news (and struggled to make sense of it) more closely than the average bear — I remember writing in my journal about the Sandinistas, and the re-election of Ronald Reagan. During my only year at an American college (St. Olaf – um ya ya!), I was instrumental in the organization of fundraiser for Project Hunger, and I travelled to D.C. to protest this country’s involvement in Central America. Lord knows that while living in Israel I was up on current events — and I challenge you to attend graduate school at the University of Chicago and fall behind on the news. After graduate school, what did I do? Write and edit for a woman who dealt heavily in issues of social justice, and then began to write my own newspaper commentary. Honestly, I’ve been keeping track!

And yet.

About a year and a half ago I began to develop a habit of reading certain politics-heavy websites and blogs on a regular, and then daily, basis, particularly in the lead-up to and successful conclusion of the ‘08 elections.

I’m online, quite legitimately, all day anyway — such connectivity is, in this the 21st century, a fairly basic requirement if one is a writer dealing with current events and contemporary history and (more than the writer likes to admit) new topics about which one may initially know little — and, you know: There’s all this cool stuff on the web! You know what they say: Good writing is 3% talent and 97% ignoring the internet. C’est vrai, baby!

But the habit of searching out and reading the news, and/or reactions to the news, in one form or another, has grown deeper, particularly as I began blogging myself, and as a result, I think that I now know much more, in much greater detail, about what goes into making the sausage that we call Democracy, as well as the one we call Modern American Society, than I ever did before.

And it ain’t pretty.

And, I’m not sure that, in this case, more knowledge is a good thing. Indeed, I think that knowing more has made me more pessimistic, less cheery, more prone to melancholy.

Which, you know, don’t misunderstand: This is a matter of degree. I have always been prone to a certain pessimism, lack of cheeriness, and melancholy (of course, with my grin and friendly demeanour, this is not how I typically present, so it often comes as something of a surprise to new friends. Whee, who doesn’t like a surprise!) — but frankly, I don’t need the help.

I don’t think the answer is, as I was once counseled, to turn off the news. To ignore reality. Reality, not infrequently, sucks, and it is our job to deal with that suckage and work to set it right. My not-knowing won’t make anything better, and might, in a tiny, infinitesimal way, make things worse.

But this weekend, when I was away with friends, I didn’t know a god damn thing. We went for long walks under cerulean skies, watched lady bugs take flight off our jeans, and skipped (or sunk) stones in the waves of Lake Michigan. We ate gorgeous food, drank too much, and talked of nothing and a very great deal.

And it struck me, as I came back to my habit of toggling between Talking Points Memo and the New York Times, Balloon Juice and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Wonkette and Gawker, that re-filling my head with sorrow and worry was a rather head-desking way to re-enter reality. And that perhaps my personal reality is more shaped by those sites and their analogs than might, strictly speaking, be healthy.

That maybe a new balance might be in order: more LOLcats, and less TPMCafe, perhaps.

Perhaps.

I’m not sayin’. I’m just, you know… sayin’.

We are all individuals.

So there I am, late last night, reading the New York Times, and lo: Here’s a little piece by the Frugal Traveler, about the search for truly personal souvenirs (accompanied by a delightful picture of a rubber tree seed [bigger than you might think!] in, one can only assume, the Frugal Traveler’s own hand).

Matt Gross, the Traveler, tells the tale of the on-going search, in the course of his journeys, for something that really means something to him — nothing mass produced, nothing kitschy, nothing that Everyone Else Has — something that will “fulfill the French root of the word ’souvenir’ and help you to remember your adventure.”

Of course, he also always has an eye on the “frugal” side of things, which reminded me of Elizabeth Peters, a contemporary of my grandparents who I also considered a friend, who would save her limited cash until she had enough to travel — and then collect squares of toilet paper, for she could afford nothing else. (And as anyone who has ever traveled outside of their own country knows, “toilet paper” is a very changeable item!)

But what really grabbed my attention was the drive for the personal meaning. I know this drive, for it drives me, too, whenever I’m someplace new. I don’t want what everyone else from far away has. I want something truly rooted in the place, something that means that I, Emily, was there, something that no one else (or at least few someone elses) will carry home in their bag.

Because I’m not like everyone else. I’m not a “tourist.” I’m An Individual.

And that’s where my brain finally rested, last night: The drive among a certain kind of traveler/American/member of Western society to always and forever be An Individual.

I sense that this is something new-ish in human society. After all, society draws us together — ultimately, for reasons of safety. There is safety, as we know, in numbers. Not in striking out on one’s own.

But America highly prizes the individual, the pioneer, the iconoclast. Indeed, this drive to be a non-conformist is so American as to be fully exploited by that most American of industries: advertisers. As Brian first told us: We Are All Individuals!

But those of us who consider ourselves among the country’s intellectual (if not economic) elite in particular guard our differences, often more zealously than we guard our commonalities. I may look like I’m here with all this hoi-polloi, but really: I’m here by myself. I just ran into them on the way.

Of course, I say “in particular,” but that’s probably not the case. I don’t really know the hearts and minds of the middle-to-low brow, or the lower middle class, the working poor, or the flat-out poor. I often think I do, but I really don’t. I think it’s a safe bet that they, like me, don’t want to be considered an unindividuated member of whatever group they are identified with.

But I find this drive curious, because honestly: Who cares? Who cares if I buy a postcard bought by a million other tourists (and yes, when I visit a foreign land, or even Springfield, IL, I am – shudder – a tourist). Why does this matter to me so much? Why do things — objects, experiences — seem less authentic to me if they are broadly shared?

I struggle with this (honestly: struggle) with regard to my passion for U2. They are the single biggest rock band on earth, but I want to believe that they say something really, really special to me. And people like me. Who are, of course, few in number. And special!

I think I wish that I were more comfortable with the common search for individuality — with the fact that no matter what we do or how we do it, where we travel, and what we bring home from the journey, even if it looks identical on the surface, each person’s experience will be different. Individual.

And I really kind of wish I had the rubber tree seed. It’s beautiful!

A dream dies.

Ah, the life of a contract writer! In two weeks, my big, regular gig — the one that has kept me in regular checks for more than five years — will be going away, and I’ve been too busy working to look for work. Maybe a new career all together…?

And then, just like that, “hot, sultry salsa dancer” fell off the list of possibilities….

(Make sure to visit Agnes at her online home!)

(Oh, and if you have a job? I’m open!)

Circulation.

I am cold.

I’m cold, I’m cold, I’m cold.

I am wearing: Socks. Shoes. Thick wool ankle-warmers that I crafted last year by cutting off the foot portion of a pair of thick wool socks. Jeans. Long-sleeved t-shirt (“Hope Won”). Hoody. Another hoody. Micro-waved hot compress, tucked into the back of my jeans (my lower back is often the coldest part on my body). And I’m considering a scarf. Because I’m still cold.

Only rarely is all of me is cold, all at once. Usually it’s just bits and pieces — by the end of the day, these bits are likely to include my feet, hands, and nose, but currently, it’s the back of my neck, my thighs, and my ankles (yes, really. Even with three layers, one of them wool). It’s a seasonal thing.

I love fall, actually. I think it might be my favorite time of year. There is something so cozy about it, this sense that you’re supposed to turn inwards and quietly care for your own, gather your food into the cellar, smoke a side of beef or something. When I lived in Israel, I really missed watching the leaves turn, and now that I have a maple out my front door, I often just stand and look at it, as it reaches, passes through, and sheds its yellow glory. That’s all over for the year now, but I don’t begrudge the tree the brevity of its color. It’s in the nature of things.

As is, apparently, the fact that I get cold in October, and warm up in April. I wish I had someone to come in every morning to make me my oatmeal, and then make me soup, whenever I need it. Broth steaming, filling the kitchen and the stairwell and my wee little office with an air of onion and celery and barley. I would shake salt across a golden surface, dip in my spoon, and feel warmth spread from tongue to toes. Pull down a zipper, unwind the scarf, and take another sip.