I return to this city, I have never thought much of as an adult.
Only the passing: I live here
or, I will never live here
or, It makes me miserable even to visit.
and here I am, worrying for my feet in their hemp slippers as I walk again on concrete.
Sitting on the subway, for hours, like everyone else.
Reading new books from the book store I stumbled in to, eating the plastic-wrapped sandwich from the nice bakery when I don't make time to pack lunch.
With gentleness, I try to shrug off the compromises of transition.
Settling takes a long time, or maybe all the time I have.
Perhaps I do not know that things will ever feel out of limbo,
but I do know I am definitely still in it until I find an apartment.
the process has been and continues to be messy.
Four of us debating, fighting, frustrating, falling apart at one another.
Where should four young white kids live? And for how much money? And in how much space? And with what sense of urgency? And under what terms?
And in what literal space?
Shut up with the discussion, lets stand in a place and say yes or no.
When shit gets messy, we all talk about it and then I feel really good.
And then it gets bad again.
How much togetherness? How much patience? How much compromise? How much self-interest?
Stretching my infinite gullies of empathy, or artificially narrowing my options?
There are definitely no experts up there to tell me how to do this.
And so, there is no reason to navel-gaze.
Rachel, You have already made this decision.
The willingness- from my gut and not my brain- feels really good, and correct.
Trusting that I only have partial control over this situation.
Entering in to our second month of hunting, I feel much more calm.
There are many more decisions left to make.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
An anecdote of hesitancy for our growing esteem for convenience
A few months ago, my parents got iphones. Equal parts pleased and horrified, I watched them integrate this new technology; fumbling with the tiny keyboards, googling things that excite them in the car, downloading music identification programs and dumb gimmicks and laughing riotously at the sound bites included in their new ifart application. seriously.
Since we switched our family cellphone carrier so that they could upgrade to these smart phones, William and were invited along- he said yes, and unsurprisingly, I said no. Insisted that my old phone was fine and refused to switch plans myself....until the universe intervenes and my phone of course broke that week. of course. Practicality won out over what-might-have-been-morality-or-maybe-just-greenwashed-naivete, and I chose not to switch to a mediocre "green" cell phone carrier, but to get a new phone on our new family plan. I painted her with the junky nail polish I hoard exactly for this purpose, and programmed her name, Patience, in to the top screen, an unintentionally centering reminder every time I look nervously at my phone.
This weekend my family of four piled in to the car with our three smart phones and one dumb phone for a weekend on the beach. Honestly, I can't remember the last time we got along so well on vacation- not that everything went perfectly, but none of us got arbitrarily worked up in the unique ways my brother and I have inherited from our parent's dispositions.
Were we really all so much more mature than before? Everything just seemed to go so smoothly. When we got lost, someone would query our location on satellite and look up directions. When we didn't know where to eat, someone would google a good place go to. When we wandered off from each other, we'd just text each other to figure out where to meet up again. When conversation got stale or tense, Will or Dad would call up the Youtube video that I'm embarrassingly obsessed with right now (no seriously, its deeply wonderful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms2klX-puUU), and we'd sing along.
So this is great, right? This little device just smoothed out all the ripples, took care of the mechanics, the logistics, the dumb stuff that gets in the way of appreciating that we are a family of smart and healthy people, who might differ and argue, but who ultimately are blessed for our circumstances and for loving each other and getting along.
But I find this so disturbing, that we are trusting this technology to intervene frequently in our family, and trusting it to assume so many of the little responsibilities that stem from the circumstances of every day life. I worry society is loosing these skills- to navigate, to make plans, to trust other people to take responsibility for their own whereabouts and safety, to think ahead about objects or knowledge we'll need later on, to ask other people for help or recommendations, to be content with not always knowing what the best option is, to let some things be mysteries, to negotiate daily tensions with the people who are most important to us.
This is the change that is happening in the world around me. I have no control over our decision to embrace an expanding variety of mobile technology. I go on this tirade a lot, lately, and I've been forcing myself to find some lightness in the situation. I shrug and smile and say: I don't know, I guess I'm just a late adapter. I didn't get a cell phone until it felt like everyone I knew had one and payphones started disappearing. I'm sure I'll come around. This casualness puts whoever I'm with at ease.
This change in technology makes me feel angry and scared. Indignant, like why the fuck do people want to do this to their lives, and how come I don't get a say, and why does everyone find it so rude when I want to talk about it?
On family vacation, though, what I mostly felt was sad. Every smart phone intervention made me want to make some snarky comment. When I did, my brother and parents laughed and rolled their eyes at me in that loving way they often do. When I kept my mouth shut, I'd spend the time articulating some more forceful anti-technology rant that I sometimes couldn't hold back from espousing a day or an hour later. Either way, I know I'm enhancing my family's view of me as an anachronistic curmudgeon who takes herself and the world too seriously.
And this makes me feel so distant, just like I did when I was 10, but didn't have any beliefs to back it up back then, and so I wonder whether its just my contrarian disposition that makes me feel this way about smart phones- or about anything else, or whether I was a crazy intuitive child who had none of the words to describe why the world made me upset. There is no way of knowing, ever, whether my beliefs determine my disposition or the other way around.
And so here I am writing against technology on my blog, on the internet, not claiming to be a purist but wondering if some day will come when I will want to be and will be brave or sad enough to try.
Since we switched our family cellphone carrier so that they could upgrade to these smart phones, William and were invited along- he said yes, and unsurprisingly, I said no. Insisted that my old phone was fine and refused to switch plans myself....until the universe intervenes and my phone of course broke that week. of course. Practicality won out over what-might-have-been-morality-or-maybe-just-greenwashed-naivete, and I chose not to switch to a mediocre "green" cell phone carrier, but to get a new phone on our new family plan. I painted her with the junky nail polish I hoard exactly for this purpose, and programmed her name, Patience, in to the top screen, an unintentionally centering reminder every time I look nervously at my phone.
This weekend my family of four piled in to the car with our three smart phones and one dumb phone for a weekend on the beach. Honestly, I can't remember the last time we got along so well on vacation- not that everything went perfectly, but none of us got arbitrarily worked up in the unique ways my brother and I have inherited from our parent's dispositions.
Were we really all so much more mature than before? Everything just seemed to go so smoothly. When we got lost, someone would query our location on satellite and look up directions. When we didn't know where to eat, someone would google a good place go to. When we wandered off from each other, we'd just text each other to figure out where to meet up again. When conversation got stale or tense, Will or Dad would call up the Youtube video that I'm embarrassingly obsessed with right now (no seriously, its deeply wonderful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms2klX-puUU), and we'd sing along.
So this is great, right? This little device just smoothed out all the ripples, took care of the mechanics, the logistics, the dumb stuff that gets in the way of appreciating that we are a family of smart and healthy people, who might differ and argue, but who ultimately are blessed for our circumstances and for loving each other and getting along.
But I find this so disturbing, that we are trusting this technology to intervene frequently in our family, and trusting it to assume so many of the little responsibilities that stem from the circumstances of every day life. I worry society is loosing these skills- to navigate, to make plans, to trust other people to take responsibility for their own whereabouts and safety, to think ahead about objects or knowledge we'll need later on, to ask other people for help or recommendations, to be content with not always knowing what the best option is, to let some things be mysteries, to negotiate daily tensions with the people who are most important to us.
This is the change that is happening in the world around me. I have no control over our decision to embrace an expanding variety of mobile technology. I go on this tirade a lot, lately, and I've been forcing myself to find some lightness in the situation. I shrug and smile and say: I don't know, I guess I'm just a late adapter. I didn't get a cell phone until it felt like everyone I knew had one and payphones started disappearing. I'm sure I'll come around. This casualness puts whoever I'm with at ease.
This change in technology makes me feel angry and scared. Indignant, like why the fuck do people want to do this to their lives, and how come I don't get a say, and why does everyone find it so rude when I want to talk about it?
On family vacation, though, what I mostly felt was sad. Every smart phone intervention made me want to make some snarky comment. When I did, my brother and parents laughed and rolled their eyes at me in that loving way they often do. When I kept my mouth shut, I'd spend the time articulating some more forceful anti-technology rant that I sometimes couldn't hold back from espousing a day or an hour later. Either way, I know I'm enhancing my family's view of me as an anachronistic curmudgeon who takes herself and the world too seriously.
And this makes me feel so distant, just like I did when I was 10, but didn't have any beliefs to back it up back then, and so I wonder whether its just my contrarian disposition that makes me feel this way about smart phones- or about anything else, or whether I was a crazy intuitive child who had none of the words to describe why the world made me upset. There is no way of knowing, ever, whether my beliefs determine my disposition or the other way around.
And so here I am writing against technology on my blog, on the internet, not claiming to be a purist but wondering if some day will come when I will want to be and will be brave or sad enough to try.
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