Hi Lisa,
I just worked for an hour on a piece for this blog. I have my AIM shit on so that my students can reach me at “office hours”. AIM is very annoying. Participants have all kinds of sound effects they use to signal that they are now online and accessible. There is actually another faculty member who uses a siren sound when he arrives. I did not know this until a few minutes ago.
After laboring on this piece and finding it very much to my liking I was about to save it via the “yes” button on the dialog box. Suddenly my computer gave off a terrifying wail; I jumped, my finger hit “no” and an hour of work vanished. I wanted to kill.
Is it really so necessary to announce oneself in this unholy way? Should I start bringing an air horn with me when I enter rooms, buildings, etc.?
We have talked quite a bit recently about the emergence into the culture of a disheartening level of selfishness and an unsavory kind of self-awareness. This event made me think of our conversations.
I am certain that I am not so important as to require a sound effect to announce my comings and goings. Even some Britons feel that the amount of hoopla around the Queen’s forays is a bit much. The idea that we are all so important….yech, you know the drill.
What I was writing about was a lead-in to our discussion of Agatha Christie, and in particular, Miss Marple.
I want to continue our talk.
Having recently become even more grey I am thinking more about age and being older, or old. I am not sure when “old” is correct. Am I old when I am past 50? One would think so as my recent experience would testify: in the thrift store the young clerk looks at me, then at my hair, then back at my face and asks if I get the senior discount. I ask him, "How do I know?" and he replies, “Are you 55 or older?” to which I respond with a resounding “Yes!” I am a senior at Savers.
I am not a senior on the bus, or for federally subsidized health care; too bad, as that would really be helpful. Who decides where the line is? Certainly the young man didn’t know without asking (I suppose a blessing for me, although it doesn’t feel that way) and AARP says I am but then again the Feds disagree.
Miss Marple is old. At the time Christie was writing these novels 50 was OLD (I seem to remember) and since I read them when I was young I think this idea stuck.
Marple is a sturdy, independent, formidable old woman; she has all her marbles (a play on Marple?) and is not disinclined to offer her opinion with assuredness. I loved her immediately and wanted to be like her when I was old—all except for her fashion (blech) and the country cottage. Actually, the cottage sounded nice, but not as a steady diet, and St. Mary Mead sounded downright scary!
The idea of an old woman, a single old woman, a spinster, as being someone to look to as a model of a kind seems silly, or maybe worse, sad. (That’s a lot of commas) Yet, I think she is viable as a source of inspiration for women.
So, here’s your chance to chime in. This post is certainly not what I had hoped, and the jerk with the siren has my old lady curse upon him! WWMMD?
Showing posts with label It's My Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label It's My Life. Show all posts
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Fear of a Binary Planet
Lisa,
Since my son and his partner have had a child I have felt more and more that I need to find a family of my own. It is nothing that they have done, it is I imagine a passage many single women my age have discovered.
For the last 34 years I have had my son’s interests at the center of my life. That is not to say I have not been living my own life, but so much of my concern in this world has been about him and his life. The feeling of love and care has over the years transferred to his partner, and now to my granddaughter.
Still, this is now their family, and I am not excluded, but the central place is gone. This is natural, I assume, as I have no peers who are in this situation. Many of my friends have died, and most of the women I know chose not to have children, or are not in my age group.
Where do I belong now?
My son, his wife and baby moved a thousand miles away for his doctoral work. I would follow to live closer by, but the rental market is difficult there. I am suddenly confronted with my own life and no near connection to relatives.
Not that I ever felt connected to family much. My family was fractured by narcissistic parents who offered little education of familial love to their children. My brother and I do what we can to be warm towards one another, but the damage shows and it is sad.
Maybe I should have done what my friend Kathy did: plan for the future. She got married after 50. Her mother was aging; she knew that someday she would be alone. Many women of my generation have been married for decades. They can have their “empty nest” syndrome with partners, and friends.
My friends are decades younger than I, I have no partner, I did not prepare for my future. Now I am alone. My young friends are just that-- young, and busy feathering nests of career and future undertakings. The future is theirs.
My future seems mostly behind me today. I don’t feel like this on all days, but the thoughts come more often lately.
Where do I belong?
As a woman nearing sixty, it would seem that I don’t belong much of anywhere. I have heard the sixty is the new forty crap; that only makes me feel that I need to run out to find a new wardrobe, a dermatologist for Botox, etc., and a man before it is utterly too late. No one wants to walk that final stretch alone.
I know that it would be easier to have someone who has agreed to go the distance with you toward the unknown, but if that is not possible, if it would not work even if it was possible, is one (am I) doomed to live in some kind of netherworld until I die?
The answer seems to be find pleasure, sustenance, and support in my work. Well, as a person who was never career-driven the actual work I do to stay afloat will not float my soul’s survival. The work I do for pleasure and sustenance is what you see here, and writing is a lonely business.
So, to avoid more loneliness?
Ach, I can hear the chorus already: volunteer, reach out, join join join!
I was listening to a speech over the weekend in which the speaker used the Noah’s Ark story to support social change. Nice idea, but all I hear in my head is the damned two by two. I see Cinderella’s little people happily heigh-hoing two by two.
I am one. Singular. Maybe a sensation? Okay, so if you don’t know Broadway hits you don’t get it, but the upshot is the hag with her Tarot cards, black cat (my cat is actually black) and warts (I think I see them!). For all the world, I want to find a new path in my life that is meaningful, fun, and vibrant.
Is this too much to ask?
Since my son and his partner have had a child I have felt more and more that I need to find a family of my own. It is nothing that they have done, it is I imagine a passage many single women my age have discovered.
For the last 34 years I have had my son’s interests at the center of my life. That is not to say I have not been living my own life, but so much of my concern in this world has been about him and his life. The feeling of love and care has over the years transferred to his partner, and now to my granddaughter.
Still, this is now their family, and I am not excluded, but the central place is gone. This is natural, I assume, as I have no peers who are in this situation. Many of my friends have died, and most of the women I know chose not to have children, or are not in my age group.
Where do I belong now?
My son, his wife and baby moved a thousand miles away for his doctoral work. I would follow to live closer by, but the rental market is difficult there. I am suddenly confronted with my own life and no near connection to relatives.
Not that I ever felt connected to family much. My family was fractured by narcissistic parents who offered little education of familial love to their children. My brother and I do what we can to be warm towards one another, but the damage shows and it is sad.
Maybe I should have done what my friend Kathy did: plan for the future. She got married after 50. Her mother was aging; she knew that someday she would be alone. Many women of my generation have been married for decades. They can have their “empty nest” syndrome with partners, and friends.
My friends are decades younger than I, I have no partner, I did not prepare for my future. Now I am alone. My young friends are just that-- young, and busy feathering nests of career and future undertakings. The future is theirs.
My future seems mostly behind me today. I don’t feel like this on all days, but the thoughts come more often lately.
Where do I belong?
As a woman nearing sixty, it would seem that I don’t belong much of anywhere. I have heard the sixty is the new forty crap; that only makes me feel that I need to run out to find a new wardrobe, a dermatologist for Botox, etc., and a man before it is utterly too late. No one wants to walk that final stretch alone.
I know that it would be easier to have someone who has agreed to go the distance with you toward the unknown, but if that is not possible, if it would not work even if it was possible, is one (am I) doomed to live in some kind of netherworld until I die?
The answer seems to be find pleasure, sustenance, and support in my work. Well, as a person who was never career-driven the actual work I do to stay afloat will not float my soul’s survival. The work I do for pleasure and sustenance is what you see here, and writing is a lonely business.
So, to avoid more loneliness?
Ach, I can hear the chorus already: volunteer, reach out, join join join!
I was listening to a speech over the weekend in which the speaker used the Noah’s Ark story to support social change. Nice idea, but all I hear in my head is the damned two by two. I see Cinderella’s little people happily heigh-hoing two by two.
I am one. Singular. Maybe a sensation? Okay, so if you don’t know Broadway hits you don’t get it, but the upshot is the hag with her Tarot cards, black cat (my cat is actually black) and warts (I think I see them!). For all the world, I want to find a new path in my life that is meaningful, fun, and vibrant.
Is this too much to ask?
Saturday, December 12, 2009
No Country for Bold Women
I’ve been trying to figure out a thing or two about my life. This is hard work, this life thing. Harder still when you want your own life, not the life proscribed by the society we inhabit. I’m back, as ever, to my father and the hard way. Why don’t you want to settle down, have children, buy a house, raise a family? Why must you do everything the hard way? Because I must, that’s why. There is no other way.
But, still. If I don’t want all of that business, all the things my father wishes I would want, what do I want? I’m reminded again of the feminist re-rendering of Freud’s rather problematic question: “What? Do women want?!?” Because I want. I may not know precisely what I want, but I sure as hell know that I want.
And perhaps this is where, as women, we begin. It’s hard to want. Harder still to admit to it—that wanting. I too want my own life. I want the struggle and the pain of figuring out precisely what that means. I want no labels, nothing holding me back. Virginia Woolf famously wrote: “As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world!” This, I think, is a wonderful statement. The vagaries of gender have given us this particular gift from the universe, the ability to be a subject of the world. Men can accomplish this as well, but I’ll wager it’s a bit harder. We paid our ticket for world-travel. Most of them have yet to do so.
I wouldn’t trade this purchase on world-subjecthood for all the privilege that comes with being male. Sure, it’s harder to know precisely who I am. I’m stuck taking the hard way. But I get to take that less-traveled path, I get to stumble and struggle and find out who I am. I get to participate in the enormous mystery of this thing we call life.
I agree that if anonymous was, for much of our history, a woman, that’s because there’s some profound power in anonymity. My preferred definition of the term is: a person whose name is not given. Given that I want to coin my own name, not have it determined for me, this anonymity is precisely the thing I need for becoming. I want no country. I want no name. I simply want to live my desire. Is that too much to ask?
In my high-school Spanish class, when we had to choose our Spanish names, I chose Alise, a name incredibly similar to my own. I chose it because, by that time, I came to realize that I had named myself. The Spanish version of the name references nobility, the English version of my name references a promise. These things I choose. I choose them because I desire. Say my name.
We must never forget that these are choices. Surely, they may be choices made in some form of negotiation with a world which doesn’t want women to choose. But if we know ourselves, if we own our names, perhaps we can choose to be subjects of the world. And, then, we can make the world our subject.
But, still. If I don’t want all of that business, all the things my father wishes I would want, what do I want? I’m reminded again of the feminist re-rendering of Freud’s rather problematic question: “What? Do women want?!?” Because I want. I may not know precisely what I want, but I sure as hell know that I want.
And perhaps this is where, as women, we begin. It’s hard to want. Harder still to admit to it—that wanting. I too want my own life. I want the struggle and the pain of figuring out precisely what that means. I want no labels, nothing holding me back. Virginia Woolf famously wrote: “As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world!” This, I think, is a wonderful statement. The vagaries of gender have given us this particular gift from the universe, the ability to be a subject of the world. Men can accomplish this as well, but I’ll wager it’s a bit harder. We paid our ticket for world-travel. Most of them have yet to do so.
I wouldn’t trade this purchase on world-subjecthood for all the privilege that comes with being male. Sure, it’s harder to know precisely who I am. I’m stuck taking the hard way. But I get to take that less-traveled path, I get to stumble and struggle and find out who I am. I get to participate in the enormous mystery of this thing we call life.
I agree that if anonymous was, for much of our history, a woman, that’s because there’s some profound power in anonymity. My preferred definition of the term is: a person whose name is not given. Given that I want to coin my own name, not have it determined for me, this anonymity is precisely the thing I need for becoming. I want no country. I want no name. I simply want to live my desire. Is that too much to ask?
In my high-school Spanish class, when we had to choose our Spanish names, I chose Alise, a name incredibly similar to my own. I chose it because, by that time, I came to realize that I had named myself. The Spanish version of the name references nobility, the English version of my name references a promise. These things I choose. I choose them because I desire. Say my name.
We must never forget that these are choices. Surely, they may be choices made in some form of negotiation with a world which doesn’t want women to choose. But if we know ourselves, if we own our names, perhaps we can choose to be subjects of the world. And, then, we can make the world our subject.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
It's My Life -- and I'll Do What I Want?
I have been thinking about anonymity. Not as in twelve step recovery, but as the political idea it was when Virginia Wolff made the point about women’s silence. She saw anonymity as the power women had to relinquish to be able to traverse this world safely. In some cases, anonymity was the only way we could participate.
We don’t need to protect ourselves as much as then. Or do we? As we struggle, you and I LJ, to find our way as writers, as women, to be free to stand on our own and live openly, as we please, we are still aware that we do need to be careful of revealing ourselves, of being naked. Sometimes our thoughts about revelation are for the sake of other’s feelings, but even in considering this, the concern for others, we find ourselves hamstrung; not free.
To have a life of one’s own is what we desire. What is it to be free to live one’s own life? For me, it is to be without that partnership that so many women feel absolutely needed to feel complete.
In my day, “a woman without a man was like a fish without a bicycle.” But even then, most women were not interested in the irony of the bicycles, but were interested in having a man. It seems no different now. Despite using partner rather than husband or wife, regardless of keeping one’s name, regardless of marrying just for the legalities that make living together easier and affordable, they clamor for the actual marriage. Weddings are again in style; they are again a rite of passage.
I know of women older than me, in their sixties, who lament that there aren’t enough eligible men, or who have learned to be way more technologically savvy than I am so that they can negotiate internet social networking. They mention online dating and chatting sites I have never heard of. But then I am not looking, or wishing or hoping.
It is fine with me; everyone can do what they want. I want to live free to live alone, never to commit, never to compromise. It does sound awfully self-indulgent, I fear. I fear the judgment, but I go on. Some will say that I have made my choice by default; I am a woman not chosen. But I don’t think I have to be alone if I don’t want to. I do want to. I want to live my life my way; so far it has been so wonderful.
I do get lonely. I got lonely when in a relationship. Perhaps I am a natural nostalgic, maybe I am melancholic. Many people have had that feeling, even in happy, growing relationships. Loneliness is not a sin, nor does it last forever. I love my life, and often hate living. It is my human condition. I feel most alive when writing, when sharing thoughts with intelligent, interesting, courageous people.
I fear that if I give my name to this blog, if I am accessible on the web, I will lose my freedom. I don’t want to share my life in that way, but I want to share my written thoughts and ideas.
We have talked about using our faces, putting video of our conversations here. I think in the end we must decide not to. I think this anonymity has given us a type power, a kind of strength in our writing that should be fully investigated, explored and experienced, before we jettison it. It may be that anonymous is not just a woman, but the seat of her power to choose freedom, and the key to a life of one’s own.
We don’t need to protect ourselves as much as then. Or do we? As we struggle, you and I LJ, to find our way as writers, as women, to be free to stand on our own and live openly, as we please, we are still aware that we do need to be careful of revealing ourselves, of being naked. Sometimes our thoughts about revelation are for the sake of other’s feelings, but even in considering this, the concern for others, we find ourselves hamstrung; not free.
To have a life of one’s own is what we desire. What is it to be free to live one’s own life? For me, it is to be without that partnership that so many women feel absolutely needed to feel complete.
In my day, “a woman without a man was like a fish without a bicycle.” But even then, most women were not interested in the irony of the bicycles, but were interested in having a man. It seems no different now. Despite using partner rather than husband or wife, regardless of keeping one’s name, regardless of marrying just for the legalities that make living together easier and affordable, they clamor for the actual marriage. Weddings are again in style; they are again a rite of passage.
I know of women older than me, in their sixties, who lament that there aren’t enough eligible men, or who have learned to be way more technologically savvy than I am so that they can negotiate internet social networking. They mention online dating and chatting sites I have never heard of. But then I am not looking, or wishing or hoping.
It is fine with me; everyone can do what they want. I want to live free to live alone, never to commit, never to compromise. It does sound awfully self-indulgent, I fear. I fear the judgment, but I go on. Some will say that I have made my choice by default; I am a woman not chosen. But I don’t think I have to be alone if I don’t want to. I do want to. I want to live my life my way; so far it has been so wonderful.
I do get lonely. I got lonely when in a relationship. Perhaps I am a natural nostalgic, maybe I am melancholic. Many people have had that feeling, even in happy, growing relationships. Loneliness is not a sin, nor does it last forever. I love my life, and often hate living. It is my human condition. I feel most alive when writing, when sharing thoughts with intelligent, interesting, courageous people.
I fear that if I give my name to this blog, if I am accessible on the web, I will lose my freedom. I don’t want to share my life in that way, but I want to share my written thoughts and ideas.
We have talked about using our faces, putting video of our conversations here. I think in the end we must decide not to. I think this anonymity has given us a type power, a kind of strength in our writing that should be fully investigated, explored and experienced, before we jettison it. It may be that anonymous is not just a woman, but the seat of her power to choose freedom, and the key to a life of one’s own.
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