Go Where You're Invited

At the Recovery Dharma meeting this past week, the opening meditation was the equanimity meditation, emphasizing that our own happiness and suffering is our responsibility, and the happiness and suffering of others is a result of their own actions, and out of our hands. This manifest truth is sometimes used by narcissists and other assorted fuckers as an excuse to be a dick (the kind of bad faith framework in which one might utter, or hear, "I am sorry if I hurt you.") But, even so, as difficult as it is for me to accept, it is manifestly true. 

In the midst of the 30 minute meditation, I got a little more clarity on bad boundaries, leaky intentions, yearning for a change in attitude or behavior from others, and several different precarious dynamics. The etymology of "precarious" has been on my mind lately: 

precarious (adj.)

1640s, a legal word, "held through the favor of another," from Latin precarius "obtained by asking or praying," from prex (genitive precis) "entreaty, prayer" (from PIE root *prek- "to ask, entreat"). Notion of "dependent on the will of another" led to extended sense "risky, dangerous, uncertain" (1680s). "No word is more unskillfully used than this with its derivatives. It is used for uncertain in all its senses; but it only means uncertain, as dependent on others ..." [Johnson]. Related: Precariously; precariousness.

Then, during the discussion, I stumbled on a very simple motto I can use as a kind of weather vane: "Go where you're invited." It helped clarify a lot of my agitated struggles, and made obvious to me that I get tangled when I invite myself, chase, or hang my hopes on an invitation that is absent. Or try to manipulate my way into an invitation. Instead, I am imagining an open space, a space welcoming me, a person eager to see me, arms wide. What if I completely shifted my energy so that I was moving in that way, only toward where I have been invited? Only toward where I am welcomed, into available situations? 

Of course, anxiety rises right away. Fear of abandonment, loneliness, of never being invited anywhere, by anyone. Ever. So, worst case scenario, I'm alone. But at least, alone, I am not hoping, striving, seeking approval, wishing, or worse, interposing myself into someone else's life or into an untenable work situation or whatever, where there really is only tolerance at best, for whatever reason, and definitely not an invitation. 

This framework also has me examining who I invite, and why. And why do I tolerate when I don't want to invite? Forcing a welcome when I am not interested. Or pretending to not be inviting when I am very interested. Which invitations do I turn down and why? All of these layers of armor and levels of self protection. What do they get me? 

In the one day between starting to reflect on the phrase "go where you're invited" and now, I've been invited to Santa Fe, dinner locally, a conversation with a former student about addiction, Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Oaxaca, a possible teaching job, and San Diego. These have all been as authentic an invitation as I can imagine. In one day. I guess these invitations have been happening all my life and I just wasn't thinking of them this way. 

There's a singularity sometimes that poses a challenge, where there's one person one wishes would offer an invitation, and does not, or simply cannot, and in contrast, all of the other invitations, as fascinating as they may be, are not that one invitation for which one ardently wishes. I can imagine intentionally moving past that through a slight exertion of will, or what sometimes feels like an extreme exertion of will. Either way, if invited, it's possible to be discriminating, to say no. If I am inviting myself, I instantly create a precarious situation, and have put myself outside of my circle of personal control or influence. 

The equanimity meditation also helped me re-center being heartbroken. I still resort to seeing that as a problem to be solved. Something I have to move beyond. Something I have to find a way to remedy. Instead, I am being invited to the experience. It is what it is. The other phrase that has been floating around is "living with heartbreak." Living with it. Maybe not friends, but allowing space for it, allowing at least co-existence. Nothing to be done, nothing to hurry along. No way to force it this way or that way. Living with it. The what if thinking kicks in there also—what if I always feel this way and never feel differently? It's so automatic for me, the negative what if. 

It is strange to note that if I simply make space, and say "all right, I guess I am just living with these feelings," their searing power is greatly reduced. Acceptance is a lot of things that I don't even begin to understand, but one aspect, for certain, is just living with how I feel. And it is often noticeable how my resistance inflames the pain. 

I am also reflecting on how to be ready for invitations. It seems cool that, if I am not inviting myself and putting myself in precarious jams, maybe I will be much more ready for invitations that are good for me. I think sometimes I even miss invitations, because I characterize them differently somehow. 

But for now, the experiment is, go where I'm invited. 

The Unforgivable

It is not the initial slight that makes me cut people right the fuck out of my life, but how they navigate the sequence of events afterward. For example, if they think that me calling them on hurting my feelings is fucked up, they can go fuck themselves. Or if they are totally unawares of the absolute need for a simple apology that is not conditional or otherwise an abdication of responsibility. Or if they think my hurt feelings are an overreaction, or if they think I am "too sensitive," or if they think it excuses their fucking bullshit to step back and say "I was only joking," etc. 

I go a long way toward forgiveness for people who have hurt me intentionally or unintentionally if there is respectful process afterward that has space, authenticity and a potential for seeing and honoring. I have precisely zero more time in my life for fuckers who are not capable of this process. And the emphasis in the 12 steps on forgiveness and tolerance is great, as far as it goes, but I have realized that I need only forgive and let go to the extent that I want my own healing process to be vital and enlivening and liberating. Beyond that, I am under absolutely zero fucking obligation to anyone. 

Kindness is all, but the first stage has to be kindness to myself, and the ruthless filtering that arises out of that. I am not able to tell someone else's story accurately, but I am able to honor my own intuition of how I feel after I interact with them, and adjust accordingly. As John Bradshaw put it, what is the necessary distance from someone for me to still be able to love them? That is, if my goal is to love them. I have mde so many excuses and compromised so often for people who either do not get me or are outright hostile to me when I show my vulnerability. Waking up to that causes a lot of both grief and anger. 

A former student of mine posted on FB that she was thinking of cutting a toxic parent out of her life, and I quoted that same thought- what distance would it take for you to still love this parent? There are people in our stories that we do want to continue to love, but then it becomes a question of what distance is necessary for that love to remain, untainted by blazing rage, resentment, annoyance, anger, judgment and fear. For some people in our lives, it is a very great distance indeed. For me, with my own parents, for example, physical distance of 2000 miles or more since 1990, and a few days visiting annually, which has really only become possible in the past 10 years or so. "Don't you love your parents?" some have wondered. Why yes, but from this distance. The very people who fucked me the most fundamentally, the tapes I hear that are the most toxic and belittling, the history of erasure and betrayal and abandonment? Arm's length, ten foot pole, an entire continent, sometimes have not been enough. Nor should they be. "They did their best!" well listen you fucking idiot, their best was not enough, okay? Their best included the central idea that I am an incompetent fool, a weakling, an idiotic child, an annoyance, a burden and a waste of time. Too sensitive. Foolishly emotional. A worthless dreamer. Lazy. Worthy of ridicule. That was their best. And since that time, their best at reaching healing and reconciliation has consisted of childish, unprocessed, weird indirect passive-loving gestures and a refusal to have any kind of actual conversation. I was never worth their time, whether they showed it through outright physical or emotional beatings, or indifference, or misplaced fake affection. When you soak these things up from the very atmosphere from a pre-verbal age, and then you start to acknowledge that they are real for you, and that you have tried to talk yourself out of these truths for decades, and that even your program of recovery encourages you to "get over it," it suddenly becomes amazing that you even continued to speak to them at all, in any way, ever. 

I used to shame myself for being a shitty son, and, looking back on that, it's utterly hilarious. Stockholm Syndrome anyone? Built right into the abuse, that reinforcement of the idea that a healthy, self compassionate and self protective, sane and sound response is immoral or hateful. Absurd but powerful. And when women started to fucking fuck me over the same ways? Abandoning, cheating, lying, ignoring, becoming emotionally distant, rejecting aspects of me that I value, complete with eyerolls and mockery? And then I sought some kind of self validation, admittedly via ineffective aqnd damaging ways sometimes, such as having an affair or looking for validation outside the relationship? I used to shame myself for being a shitty partner too, and looking back, that's just more Stockholm Syndrome fucking bullshit. I am no saint, and when I do seek to connect and get rebuffed, or when I get mocked, or when people refuse to get me or to even try, but they speak love out of their lying goddamned mouths, what do they expect? As Bessie Smith sang almost century ago, "If you don't, I know who will." 


Sometimes it seems to me the worst shit I have done to myself has involved staying with motherfuckers who just did not get me. I've written about it before, here, but it stills sticks in my craw as I work through relationship recovery. Is there any more abyssal moment in life than when one's supposedly most intimate partner doesn't even get a goddamned simple joke? I heard once from a married woman years ago that she was thinking of leaving her husband because he didn't know what a haiku was. Some might see that as extreme but, hot damn, I do not. But when those moments fell through the floor of a lot of the things I had gotten myself into, I would just suck it up, criticize myself, say I was being unreasonable, talk myself out of my crushing loneliness and abandonment, tell myself I had made my bed and had to lie in it. And then, often, create a secret life as a way of "getting my needs met," as a way of getting revenge, as a way of making my self abuse bearable, as a way of living and being alive in a daily grind where my closest intimate seemed to want to stab entire swaths of me to death—and then shame myself for creating that secret life. 

In general, having been raised along such lines, it's no wonder that I have had a re-enactment compulsion of running toward dumpster fires where people had absolutely nothing to give me. 

Farewell, Dear Friend

In 2004, when I was a teacher and administrator at a fancy, expensive, progressive school in Los Angeles, there was a mother who was a kind of bête noir, for sure. Very anxious, demanding, always wanting the very best for her daughter, skeptical of the progressive and supportive tendencies of the school, wanting her daughter to be "prepared for college," but in that pushy, traditional way that parents sometimes have, when it comes to daydreaming, creative, social and not very academically motivated children. I had this woman's daughter for two years, and this was a very expensive school, where we had three parent teacher conferences a year, each of which was about a half hour long. I came to dread the ones with this woman. 

On Saturday, February 21st, 2004, she was scheduled to be my last conference. Yes, we held many of these conferences on Saturdays. I was antsy, desperate for a drink, also in nicotine withdrawals, and incredibly played out, after two full days of conferences. How she ended up being scheduled last, I have no idea. Suffice it to say, the conference was rough. Her position was what it often was: "My daughter is just coasting. She's not being challenged. She's not learning how to write. She never does the required readings. Her math class is a joke." Etc. You get the picture. I did my level best to remain calm, perform the required emotional labor, make as many promises as were reasonable and hold the line as gently as possible on the progressive ideas the school held, where it was her daughter's inner motivation we were most interested in, and that we tried to balance the challenges of college prep with the natural inclinations of our students as young adults, etc. 

By the time the conference was over, I was seething with rage inside. I just had had enough of rich people wanting me to work fucking miracles for their goddamned spoiled children, wanting me to play bad cop to their god cop home life, wanting somehow to take a sensitive, poetic, dreamy and depressed kid who had been diagnosed bipolar and turn her into a fucking academician headed for Yale. 

As we often did, the lot of us harder drinking teachers convened at the San Francisco Saloon along Pico in West LA. It was only about 4, but it was time to blow off some steam, shake off those parent conferences, bitch a little bit, get into the hilarity of the rest of the weekend. I was especially primed by the resentment toward this unbearably demanding and unrealistic woman! I raced home to my apartment a few miles away to let my dog out, and slammed a few beers and shots, and then headed back to the saloon. These drinking outings with my teaching colleagues started with a big crowd, and then some of us would migrate to a new place, and the number would go down, and then we'd migrate again, and dwindle, etc. This particular evening involved a caravan to the Baja Cantina, then to a sushi place in Venice, then to the dive bar The Townhouse, right on the Venice boardwalk. 

By the time we got to the Townhouse, I shudder to think how many drinks I had had. It was only about 11, but of course the few of us left had been drinking for seven hours. I dimly recall wandering out to the roiled surf of the Pacific and sitting on the sand in the pitch black and being about as sad and lonely as I had ever been in my life. Then wandering back to the bar, downing a beer, and corralling my buddy, so we could drive home. I often drove drunk during these later days of alcoholism. It was a habit of mine. 

This was the night I got arrested for DUI. Which led to being sentenced to 24 AA meetings over a 12 week period. Which led to attending the noon meetings at the Westside Alano Club, also on Pico, ironically pretty much right across the street from the San Francisco Saloon. 

One day, at the noon meeting, a woman started sharing. I thought she looked vaguely familiar. "I'm three days sober and I feel like shit," she said. I honestly did not recognize her at first. Of course, it was my bête noir, the mother of that student, sitting on the sofa right across the table from where I sat (chairing the meeting, having put together 30 days). She didn't recognize me either. It was that surreal thing, out of context, both of us in a completely different setting. When  I signed her court card, she finally knew who I was. 

That was a weird and wild moment. Every resentment between the two of us completely vanished. We hugged. We made a date to go to Norm's and talk. And, that's what we did. Probably 40 times over the next few months. She and I were crucial parts of our early sobriety in weird LA. After I cleared all of the legal stuff for the DUI, I moved back to Santa Fe, and she and I lost touch to some degree. We visited a few times, and kept up via Facebook. 

She messaged me a little over a year ago to say she had been diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. It wasn't looking good. She probably had about a year. We chatted a few times, but she was not well and had no energy for much conversation. 

She died September 2, in her sleep, in hospice care. 

I've been grieving in the background ever since. I keep thinking of reaching out to talk with her about AA, or to joke around about some bullshit, or to get some sense talked into me. I miss her. I'm glad the universe works the weird way it works. But I wish we had more time. 

Dismantling the patriarchy

I have been seeing patriarchal bullshit everywhere lately, perpetrated by both women and men. It's not as if these dynamics are new, not in the least. I just keep waking up to more of them, and then seeing the interactions everywhere. 

In general, the dynamic is around belittling, diminishing, detracting, sabotaging and gaslighting women. So many microaggressions have become apparent to me. The aggregate is a calculus of monumental power imbalance. Each transgression might seem quite minor, and of course, this also facilitates the "wow, you sure are sensitive and overreacting hurrrrr durrrrrr" response. 

Two aspects lately that I have seen. One involves how young mothers express an authentic despair over the loneliness, abandonment and emotional exhaustion of parenting toddlers, and some "mother woman" (stealing from Kate Chopin) often swoops in to talk about the joys of motherhood, and how the solution to the exhaustion is yet more motherhood, or whatever the fuck. Instead of simply saying, oh yes, this is a serious part of the experience, you need and deserve support and a break, maybe I can take your kids for a while? It's just guilting and gaslighting. 

Another one is the aggression of the male compliment, or any compliment that is entirely centered around the body of the female recipient. One friend had a woman tell her that her professional services must be in demand because of her body. Another had a man run up to her in a public space, and, even though she had headphones on, interpose himself into her life just to tell her how "cute" she was. It has become blindingly clear to me that these are not compliments at all. These are aggressive, resentful, belittling insults. Diminish and confuse. Flatter but in a way that removes power. 

Sick shit. 

I have had a few people tell me I should write about this stuff for a male audience, that men will listen to me, that I could be a "thought leader" or whatever on these issues, and, since I have zero respect for all these "thought leaders" it's kind of a nauseating idea. Hurrrrrr. durrrrrrr. However, I get so flaming angry about all of it, maybe I could direct that anger somehow. 

The goals would be:

1. desexualize public space
2. teach men to understand conditioning that is toxic
3. work through much deeper concepts of consent
4. illustrate that men have to give up power and money, not just change their behavior or attitudes
5. illustrate what domestic and parenting equity looks like, since power and money will only shift when women have time 
6. work to push through concepts like "the good man" or the "nice guy" to promote a true, consequential dismantling of the patriarchy. 
7. promote ways to practice respecting women's boundaries, accepting rejection, moving through anger and resentment without violence or blame

It's a tall order, but maybe it would mean something coming from a man. So far past the old Robert Bly bullshit of romanticizing manhood, and thereby reinforcing the binary. He had great ideas about welcoming male emotions home, acknowledging male suffering. But he was ultimately just another patriarchal asshole. This shit has got to change. Time is up. 

Have not heard the song. I just like the image.

Slog Monster

Buproprion was starting to have some side effects that were bothering me, so my shrink's PA told me to phase it out for a month or so and see how I felt. I've been off of it for the past week now and there's definitely some discontinuation syndrome. Not very intense, but definitely there. I am better overall, at least in regard to the hyperactive, angry and irritable side effects the buproprion was causing. But the past two days I really just went way under the water. Two days ago, I went to bed at about 10 in the morning and pretty much stayed there until about 8 at night, at which point I forced myself to go out and treat myself to sushi and gelato. I collapsed as soon as I got home. Yesterday, I only managed to get about two hours of work done over a ten hour period, and I was just out of it. 

It does feel like things are balancing out today, which is great. Little things still feel like Herculean tasks though, sometimes. My committee chair commented that he thought a long paragraph listing a series of studies in the Cactaceae would be better as a table, and, while formatting a table, copying and pasting the text into table rows and columns, etc. should be easy peasy, it took me two hours yesterday and I could barely get it done. 

It's sometimes one day at a time, for real, and I am practicing being kind to myself and letting each day be as much as each day was able to be. Once I get back to a baseline after the wellbutrin discontinuation effects dissipate, I figure I'll sleep better, feel more clear, and get back into a rhythm. I'll try to go without any meds for a while, and maybe get started with a counselor again. The shrink gave me a referral list but it was right before I left for six weeks. Frankly, the thought of trying to counselor shop and start up with the whole story again is very daunting, especially not know when I will be leaving AZ. 

Working out helps, stretching, using the foam roller, meditating again, eating fewer carbs. Mood will have its way with me no matter what, but these gestures toward self care introduce at least a bit of ground under my feet, when possible. I woke in mild panic at 4 a.m. this morning and almost just got up, but instead I tried deep breathing, self soothing and creating space to fall asleep again, and I was able to sleep until 7:30. I had a crazy dream about being on a lake in a canoe, some kind of field work for school, getting sunburned and inadvertently stealing a music player that was actually some kind of technical equipment. 

I woke in the middle of the night a few nights ago absolutely astonished by the plain fact that I turn 58 this week. The years have been immolated behind me, each one the same objective length, but like a piece of onion paper set alight. I thought back on 12 years on Facebook and then thought ahead to 12 more years: at which time I will be 70 years old. I just can't really imagine it. It's a crushing weight sometimes, where it seems like, in one second, my life will be over. At times, it lights a fire under my ass and motivates me to make the most of each day. But most often, around my birthday especially, it feels like a tidal wave of incomprehensible loss, 100 stories high, barreling at me at 100 mph. The birthdays while being alone have this fatal feeling in particular. Sometimes lately I have felt so angry at the universe that the weird idea of suicide as an act of spite, as a way of flipping a bird at the universe by saying, your torment of me is over motherfucker, I've decided I've had enough, crosses my mind. These are just flashes of despair, with anger following. But searing flashes nonetheless. 

I am resolved to do something kind and supportive for myself on my birthday. Not sure what yet. 

It's also been more possible for me lately to relax, enjoy being alone, savor the solitude and take care of myself in it. I've even had moments where I've imagined the time between now and whatever my demise will be, single, unattached, living alone, traveling alone, and felt acceptance about it. In the present, where I try to take refuge, this is what life is. And there is a lot of luxury in it, in its own way. 

I do interact with women and think to myself, hmmm, what would this person be like, as a partner? It's a bad game though, lately. It's never appealing. And I don't think I am being too picky, or too discriminating. I was sort of flirting with someone and she misspelled a couple of words and then didn't get a pun I made and that was that. Game over. Another person I was wondering about revealed weird Boomer prejudices about feminism, with a mild kind of bootlicking deference to men, and of course I was all like oh fuck no. I think as I get more accepting of reality, I am less willing to overlook things that really are important to me. I had a friend of mine say I ought to let go of the small stuff, if I really want company, and it made me wonder. Is it small stuff? Yeah, no. It's not. 

Back to work. Or back to bed. Right on the fence about that on this cloudy Monday. 

It Figures

One of the weirder dynamics of trying to finish a PhD dissertation in Hades is the cycle of sending out a draft, waiting for comments, sometimes for several months, then getting the chapter back after one has already moved on to many other things. I chose to do a PhD in four different quantitative and statistical method domains, which means that, for example, getting the chapter on population viability of my study species back after a couple months means cranking up all the rusty machinery related to that analysis. Fortunately, the R code in which I have done the entire PhD is saved in three different places and is fairly easy to run after refreshing my memory. 

Yesterday was involved with learning how to make a particular, very complex figure for an entirely different chapter, the one on the historical biogeoraphy of the genera I studied. This kind of study uses a phylogeny (in my case, a molecular one) to make hindcasting predictions of where the most likely ancestral ranges of current taxa were. It helps a lot of one has a few geospatially located fossils, but the Cactaceae does not cooperate in that regard, I did have some well-supported time calibrations from a paper by Arakaki et al. (2011), and calibrated a Bayesian analysis in a program called BEAST (Bayesian Evolutionary Analysis Sampling Trees; a companion program that prepares the input files is called BEAUTi. Get it? So droll). Anyway, this is some incredibly complex shit. It takes like a whole day to even format the input file with the proper parameters for one's data. Even so, there are a great many options to customize the analysis, and then the recommended number of iterations of the algorithm is 20 million, so each analysis takes two to three days on a laptop. I ran 16 analyses in all, just changing this or that each time, such as the nucleotide substitution rate, or the prior distribution of the rate of substitution on ancestral nodes, etc. Yikes. 

Anyway, as has been typical with a lot of this PhD, the two committee members who reviewed the biogeography chapter both agreed that the ancestral range reconstruction needed more than just a color coded phylogenetic tree, but also a color coded map. As of about 7:00 a.m. yesterday I had no idea how to create a map with the ecoregions I had used for ancestral ranges, and then fill each of those ecoregions with a color identical to the color represented on the nodes of the tree I had. I emailed a Mexican botanist friend of mine who had done a nice figure in a paper that just came out, and he gave me a few tips. He had created his in Corel Draw, but I downloaded a trial version of that and it seemed horrifying, so I found a way to do it in ArcGIS, the high-octane, user-baffling proprietary GIS software from ESRI. Also horrifying, but I am familiar with it. I have a free student license for this, which is great, because a home license is $1200. 

I must have excellent intuition on ecoregions, because, without knowing it, the nine regions I chose as ancestral ranges for my group of cacti are actual ecoregions, specified by the World Wildlife Fund and others. Well, three of the ecoregions required making a composite of several smaller regions, but they all fit together into the actual regions I had used. That's lucky, because it meant that they are available as map layers (crazy-ass files called "shapefiles") that can be added to a map project in ArcGIS. The color values can be read directly from the tree I generated in a program called RASP (Reconstructing Ancestral States from Phylogeny) and then, in ArcGIS, the fill color can be set to be identical. But this whole process took me several hours, since I didn't know how to do any of it. Here's the resulting map, with its garishly contrasting colors, which, alas, for scientific figures, is recommended. 

It seems like it would be a simple task, to create a color coded map like this. Well, come to think of it, now that I have done it, it would be the second time. Until I forget how to do it. In other words, by the time I get the next round of comments. I am still trying to figure out how to make a clear, high resolution legend for the map, and trying to fit this map and the phylogenetic tree (which has 88 taxa) on a single 8.5 X 11 page with 1 inch margins is a weird proposition. Actually, I know how to make a great legend for the map, but it involves redoing the entire map with the shapefiles renamed according to my ecoregions, and I lack the gumption today. 

Things are moving, however slowly. The species distribution modeling and climate change chapter is on its way to PeerJ, I think; still waiting on my committee member co-author for the green light to prep that one for submission. The molecular phylogeny paper is supposedly going to be submitted to Taxon, the super heavyweight systematics journal, published by the International Society of Plant Taxonomy. After the molecular phylogeny paper is accepted, the biogeography paper will probably be submitted to New Phytologist or the Journal of Biogeography, not sure. I am simultaneously preparing manuscripts for journal submission while finishing the PhD dissertation revisions. Unfortunately, dissertation chapters have to be significantly edited to be submitted to particular journals, a non-trivial amount of work. 

A lot of the rest of my life remains on hold. Waiting to hear back from two post doc apps. Putting together teaching apps. Intending to pre-qualify for a car loan but never actually filling out the applications. Intending to meditate and not meditating. Intending to work out and not working out (much). Part of the Hanged Man quality of life right now is the unrelenting heat, still in the triple digits. I am eager for it to cool off. I'm entirely ready to leave here, to leave Hades. But pushing does nothing at all. It is moving at the rate that it is moving. I can only show up and do my best. 

The Great Betrayal

Reflecting more on the abusive environment of my childhood, I got down to another crux aspect of the dynamic shortly after flat out owning in my knotted stomach that family dinners were a fraught and traumatic emotional landscape. I started wondering why family dinners were required, every night, even in the face of the discomfort, claustrophobia, ambush, arguing, power struggles and shame around food, and general emotional upset, even for the parents. The simplest answer is just that family dinners were required every night because that is what families did. 

And this gets to the great tragedy of my parents' lives, from my perspective. I realize that all of these perspectives of mine are my own judgments, stemming from my own values. But, nonetheless, I always thought my parents lost themselves in what was expected of them, and lived truncated, foreclosed and small lives as a result. Noble, martyred, dutiful and conformist, with a lot of approval from the dominant culture, and a lot of their own sense of setting something right that had never been right for them—except they could never set it right the way they tried, which, more about below. I have had the opposite problem of not being able to fit myself into roles very well, and having a repeated pattern, both drunk and sober, of burning my life down when it got too tightly contained by what was expected. 

But here's the thing: my father, if he could be flat out honest about it for a blinding second, would admit: he never wanted to have kids. At least, he never really wanted four kids and then all of the burden that he placed on himself afterward. In fact, after we all got older than about five, it always felt to me that the absolute last thing he ever wanted to do was spend any time with any of us. His idea of fathering was to show contempt for his children in the hopes they would improve somehow. Every moment with family seemed like an exasperating burden to him. After dinner, he would retreat to the darkened basement of our stupid fucking tiny house and watch television for five hours, alone, then go to bed. His favorite shows were police dramas where the good guy was tough, unfettered, and always got the bad guy, and justice was always served. 

I know, in my heart, that my mother would confess to the same thing. She has said as much, in a moment of tipsy candor over cocktails with my sister. My mother's coping strategy in the face of my father's boiling frustration and resentment was to be pathologically cheerful. Chirping, happy, exhausted, smiling up a storm, chatting at my father as he sat grumpily at the table and just wanted to read the paper, be disgusted by the death of the world, and be left alone. The two of them had a vision of what life was supposed to be, and what it would be like, and they made a lot of choices based on that vision, and then, holy hell, were they surprised by reality. I can safely say that, although outward appearances contradict me, they were two of the unhappiest people I have ever known, for decades. Now, when people celebrated their 66 years together this past summer, for example, I am impressed, of course, but I mostly just feel sad. I know, in my bones, what price they paid for those 66 years. By my estimation, a much, much higher price than they would have paid if they had chosen for themselves what made them happy, and the look good be damned.  

I bet that their commitment, even to the degree of the death of their souls, to this outward appearance of what people were supposed to do, stemmed from their own abusive and terrifying childhoods. My father's father was a raging, violent drunk who regularly beat his wife and children. They grew up in grinding, awful poverty, cabbage soup for days, a couple of saltines with margarine for lunch. They grew up in a tiny town where everyone knew all of the violent, awful, pitiful and shameful secrets of the family, where well-meaning but insulting church people would drop off food on the porch and my father's father would take it and throw it in the trash, get drunk and leave for days; and my father's mother would go out and retrieve it from the trash. My father worked three jobs his senior year of high school and his father ridiculed him for it, beat him up and stole his money to buy whiskey, more than once. There was no look good at all for the Hades family, just rumors, shame, bruises, hunger, anxiety and sadness. 

My mother's family was from the other side of the tracks. Sportscars, vacations at the shore, trips to Manhattan, a big ranch house with a pond and a couple of pet swans. But my mother's father was an alcoholic, a party guy, prone to affairs, disappearing from home, horrible fights when drunk with his wife. My mother's mother was also an alcoholic and a rage addict, "disciplining" my mother by holding her hand over a lit stove burner, beating her with a hairbrush, starving her for days, etc. My mother's family had *all* the look good, but my mother's life was actually in danger a lot of the time, because her mother would start drinking at 8 in the morning and expect my mother to stay home from school and take care of her, at age 8. My mother's mother nearly burned the house down several times. No one in their small town knew anything about any of this. My mother told some people when she was about 14 and was disbelieved, accused of being crazy, and severely "disciplined" at home. 

So of course, my parents set out to create a happy family in spite of the way they were raised, and I imagine that 90% of their life was lived in reaction to the negative example of their own childhoods. This is vastly better than the unconscious recreation of the horrifyingly violent families they grew up in. Yet, whether understandable or not, of course, the abusive atmosphere of my own childhood was real. Whether "better" than what they had or not. To a three year old, it's rather irrelevant whether or not one has it better than one's father did, when one is on the beating end of a hairbrush and one's mother is screaming that she would kill you if it were legal, that she wished you were dead, and that you ruined her life. 

Endless Cycle


The bias of the father runs on through the son
And leaves him bothered and bewildered
The drugs in his veins only cause him to spit
At the face staring back in the mirror
How can he tell a good act from the bad
He can't even remember his name
How can he do what needs to be done
When he's a follower not a leader
The sickness of the mother runs on through the girl
Leaving her small and helpless
Liquor flies through her brain with the force of a gun
Leaving her running in circles
How can she tell a good act from the bad
When she's flat on her back in her room
How can she do what needs to be done
When she's a coward and a bleeder
The man if he marries will batter his child
And have endless excuses
The woman sadly will do much the same
Thinking that it's right and it's proper
Better than their mommy or their daddy did
Better than the childhood they suffered
The truth is they're happier when they're in pain
In fact, that's why they got married- Lou Reed



I'm sure this is fairly common. It has played out in my life many times, an inherited pattern. I recall many situations now that I imagined first, then entered into, then was bewildered by, hurt by, disappointed by, and rebelled against, often passive aggressively because there was no way to express my bewildered disappointment directly. On top of this pattern of imagining in a rosy way some relationship or domestic situation, and then being gradually disappointed, and then being bewildered and feeling out of control and eventually destroying my life by sabotage, always, always causing myself terrible harm, more harm than anyone else, although at least escaping that feeling that I was going to die, there is also the repetition compulsion of trying the same thing, again and again. 

For example, several years after the emergence of emotionally tense, unpleasant and quarrelsome dynamics on our yearly summer trips to the Jersey shore, exacerbated by increasing alienation of the siblings, cranky babies, partners brought into the mix who did not square with my father's idea of how to act, etc., we tried those trips, summer after summer, year after year. Leading up to those trips, everyone seemed to feel excited, hopeful, ready to rent that beach house and have some fun! And yet, literally within minutes of arrival, the sourness, irascibility, tension, disappointment would set in, once we all arrived. I ended up spending the latter ones of these trips drunk off my ass, walking the beach, just to get the hell out of the pressure cooker of barely contained rage and disappointment that marked "the family vacation." For some years after I gave up on attending these trips, the beach and the ocean held a terrible, aching sadness for me, and I couldn't figure out why for a long time. 

I brought my girlfriend at the time (about 1988) on one of these trips and she was utterly bewildered. "Why is everyone drinking so much? Why does your dad seem so angry all the time? What is UP with how tense that Scrabble game was?" This was a woman who was from a family where, even though her mother and father had divorced years before, they would get together for family vacations and actually have fun. Like, they enjoyed each other's company, told each other what was happening in their lives and were enthused, welcomed the partners and children of siblings, and actually had a good time. Yeah—she and I broke up. We almost got married. But I got drunk and left her for an abusive, unavailable, dishonest and manipulative woman who dumped me a month after we got together. And, since the woman I broke up with had healthy boundaries, being from a healthy family, and having self-esteem, when I wanted to get back together with her, she laughed in my face and said "You are sick. I hope you get the help you need. Have a nice life."

The poignant thing is that my parents tried. They tried hard, in fact, even to the point of selling their very souls to the idea they had of what life was supposed to be like. They got played. They bought what America was selling. America was selling the happy family. The happy family looked a certain way, did certain activities, created a certain carefully curated impression. The even darker promise was, if one simply manufactured the look, the reality would follow. The great betrayal, of course, is that, no, the reality does not follow. The reality has nothing to do with the look. My parents did not have the tools to discover this and radically change their lives. They were blind to the fact that relationships with one's children, for example,. are irreplaceable and definitely not the same as the appearance of a relationship with one's children. 

What I wanted, what I ached for, was to be worth my father's time. For him to be interested in me. I would trade all the family dinners and vacations in the world for times like that, where he taught me things, helped me fail and learn without ridicule, spent time involved with what interested me, without being irritated, without acting like it was a terrible imposition, without acting like I was a silly, exasperating fool. Appreciated my interests without the mild ridicule and judgment of frivolity and stress about "unnecessary expense" that he always brought to it. (A new drum kit for me, who had shown dedication after nine years from age 5 to 14 of practicing on the same piece of shit drum kit, "frivolous." But kids watch and learn—around the same time, he bought himself a very expensive set of brand new, championship level golf clubs. I always thought that was funny because he fucking hated golf. It drove him insane. He once hurled one of his expensive clubs into a water hazard on a bad day. Then he realized what he had done and had to roll up his pants and wade in there and retrieve it. But anything his children enjoyed was "a waste of time and money."). 

I learned the lesson many times over, slowly and painfully, that the look good does not create the desired happiness. It took years for me to stop trying, though. And in the manner of repetition compulsions, I would always hope, then be bewildered, then disappointed, then destroy myself. "I'm never doing that again," I would vow, and would promptly set to work doing it again. I find it coming up around the PhD now. I am sometimes tempted to apply for post docs or jobs that I have utterly zero interest in. "That sure would impress people," I think to myself. But now at least I know enough to put that aside. Stop thinking about expending effort just to get that look good. Seek happiness, ask for happiness, create opportunities to be good to myself. Take myself more seriously than the fantasy of what life is supposed to be like and just live the life I want to live. I sometimes get sad that it took me several decades to become more aware of this, but at least it's more real for me now.  

The great betrayal? I don't buy it anymore. 

Happy Life

Had a big moment yesterday realizing that I grew up in an abusive family and was abused as a child. It's so weird how simple these things are, and yet, even after years of therapy and recovery work, how the flat out statement of fact takes a long time to get into one's guts. I have said I had an abusive childhood many times, and I have known it with my mind, but it hit me much more gut-level yesterday. 

The ideal

closer to the reality

The occasion was in reflecting back on family dinners, which we had every night when I was between zero years old and about 18. I don't feel like reciting the details here, but suffice it to say that my memories caused a nauseated feeling, and a knot in my chest, and a great sadness and aversion to show up for me. And I was looking over a website for The Family Dinner Project, and feeling like a total outsider. You know, like the Frankenstein monster.

And then it hit me that this was the source of a lot of those times when I have just wanted to have a normal goddamned life. Like, a loving, calm, supportive family to spend time with. People who genuinely listen to each other and care about what is going on in each other's lives, and support and cheerlead and show compassion and so on. Like a human connection. And how so much of my life I have simply felt completely alienated from same. Homeless and ungrounded, not connected to the human family. 

And I had never really put two and two together until yesterday: the intense wounds from having grown up in an abusive family are directly connected to my never having experienced a loving family of my own. This may seem as clear as fresh water to some people, but I never made the direct connection before. I have heard countless self help, recovery people and therapists say this, but I never got it in my gut.  

And this explains very well why certain experiences in my life set off my anxiety. Family dinners with A and her son, for example. I always felt on edge, even when I learned to settle in more and just enjoy them. They were almost always calm, pleasant, supportive, fun, relaxed. But I still felt antsy and like I was looking for the exit. Now I know why. 

Or when I have been out with friends who have children and their children are behaving like children and I get super anxious and start to feel like there is going to be yelling and violence. And I take a few deep breaths and notice my friends do not enact that kind of behavior on their children, not even in public. 

And I see friends of mine who did not have a happy life as children working pretty hard to create a happy life for their own children, and it's very moving. I have known for about a decade now that I outright avoided having children because I was terrified I would inflict misery on them. It's odd and a little poignant now that I feel like I'd be a great dad but am past my prime and the odds of me being a father, even an adoptive one, seem low. I even have baby fever for the first time in my life. I used to hate babies, really. That sounds harsh but it's true. But now, I see a pic of a friend of mine with a baby and I melt. Wtf. 

More power to all who seek to make home safe, supportive, encouraging, calm, productive and kind. I'll have to do so for myself, as I have been doing for the past couple of years, and take that sense of being homeless, unwanted, unloved, rejected and worthless out of the equation. The atmosphere is so primal, from pre-verbal days of my life, probably. Cellular. 

Becoming aware of the hurt inflicted on that little boy I was hurts now, as if it's being inflicted now, in a truly surreal and surprising way. I keep saying, this too shall pass. Hang in there. Be kind to yourself and make your home a safe space for you. It's good to be making a lot of these connections but it hurts like hell. 

Fortunately, I have a shit ton of PhD work in which I can lose myself. It's a welcome distraction a lot of the time. 

House of Temporary Return

 Heading out of the botany conference with some good connections, a few job leads, and renewed encouragement about my professional situation, with a replacement bumper sticker from the California Botanical Society. I've decided to save it until I get a new car, which I hope to do soon. Good old Isabel continues to do her best, at nearly a quarter of a million miles, but she needs brakes, cooling repair, and probably a head gasket, and that sounds like the end of our relationship. I can sell her for about $800 and get a later model used something or other. With air conditioning!

 Since I couldn't move in to my new place until August 15th, and the conference ended August 2, I decided to go to Santa Fe, via the strange little town of Truth or Consequences. The Pelican Spa is where I stayed in T or C, funky little place. Nice though. 

 I intentionally went to Santa Fe for grieving and reclaiming purposes. Even though I had lived there for nearly 30 years, there were many associations that I wanted to clear. It was a rough visit in some ways, and a great renewal in others. I always go to Ohori's, Sage Bakehouse, Kakawa Chocolate House, Horseman's Haven, Who's Donuts, and a fancy restaurant or two, and this visit was similarly food centered, the expense of which I offset by camping up in the National Forest for many of the nights I was there. It's a great setup if you can grab a campsite up there. About seven miles from town, a little crowded, but only $10 a night this time (they had no electricity due to the power line failing. I think it's usually $20 a night). Beautiful and peaceful once the traffic stops on the ski basin road. 

 My first night there, a friend of mine had an extra ticket to the opera, to see Jenůfa, an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček that I had never heard of. It was an incredible performance. I love the Santa Fe Opera and miss it. 

 I did stay at a couple hotels, the funniest being a huge discount on a last minute cancellation of the honeymoon suite at The Guadalupe Inn. I wonder about that story. But anyway, here's their idea of breakfast:

IMMEDIATE CREMATION, PET CREMATION, BEEF JERKY

 One of the great things about many nights of camping was how rainy it was. I realize that may sound like a drawback, but I loved every minute of it. 

 I splurged on a ridiculously expensive dinner at the Coyote Cafe, where I have not been since maybe 1990. Tempura squash blossoms stuffed with lobster and cheese, seared black peppercorn diver scallops with raspberry coulis, key lime pie. Almost $100 for one person, with one of those condescending waiters who acts like you're a clueless fool. It was worth it though. 

 After many visits with friends, including meeting some previously FB only people, and some powerful re-connection, it was time to go. I was so reluctant to get back to Tempe that I stopped for two nights in Silver City, a weird old west mining town. So many motel rooms since June 28. So much sadness, loneliness, grief; but also, loosening, letting go, relief and freedom. 

 The red coffee pot I bought in Alamos, Sonora, back in March. 

 Silver City sunset over the CVS. 

 Downtown so deserted on a summer Sunday night, one could stand in the middle of the main street for minutes at a time. 

 My landlady, a very kind French woman with a sense of hospitality
perhaps especially because my place was an Airbnb for a long time, left me a lovely welcome. I'm sure you think my photoshop skills in the direction of maintaining anonymity are impressive. 

In many ways, I am still processing this epic trip. As soon as I got back, I plunged directly into dissertation work. I am now occupied with simultaneously finishing the diss and preparing two chapters for submission for publication. I have been haunted, sad, lonely, frustrated, continuing with grief. But I've also been all of the lighter and more sanguine energies that became available over the course of my travels. I still just do not understand what the fuck is going on, really. I mean, I do, and I do not. Superficially do, to a degree; deeper, absolutely do not. But I have had a couple weeks of teaching already, lots of writing and revising, lots of actual movement on the PhD process which has been great. 

Obviously, one does not have to know what one is doing in order to take a shot at doing it, and one does not have to understand what is going on in order to keep showing up. 

These are mysteries. 

A turn to the south

 A beautiful morning in Dixie National Forest, packing up and heading out. I decided to prolong the trip a couple more days, since I was a few days away from having to return the rental car, so I headed down to Flagstaff. 

 I camped at Sunset Crater National Monument, a bit pricey but the National Forest was closed due to a huge fire. 

 The Museum Fire, which burned about 2000 acres north of Flagstaff. 

 The campsites at Sunset Crater ridiculously large, really more designed for big rig RV's and families. It was pleasant though. 

 A big thunderstorm came through and I hung out in my tent reading Melody Beattie. 

 The next day, I stayed at an unremarkable motel called the Pinecrest, then I headed back to Tempe the day after that. 110 outside when I got back. 

 I had to scramble, return the rental car, clean out my own car, go to my landlord's house to pick up my security deposit which I got back in full. I had one day in Tempe before heading to Tucson for the Botanical Society of America annual meeting. 

My landlord and I were talking about my situation, he mentioned his ex sister in law having a place to rent, I went over and met and voila,m it was all arranged. More about the place later. The next day I headed down to Tucson.

 The conference was at the very nice and expensive JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort. Weird. 

 Some of the posters in the poster session. I look at these and I'm still fascinated, but I imagine a lot of non plant people would think they were pretty funny or esoteric. 

Maybe the fifth rainbow of the trip. It was July 28th, a month after I had left Tempe in the rental car. The trip was definitely not over, it just shifted. I was thrilled to be at the conference and to see many friends, tal with other botanists, go to incredible sessions. 

 Feeling okay, enjoying great food in Tucson, getting some good encouragement, basking in the high summer desert beauty of Tucson.