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| Empty Kong |
Hi, Readers. I don’t know how it is in your neck of the
woods, but up here we’ve come to the end of the first full week back in school
after winter vacation. After lapsing into my preferred sleep schedule of
approximately 11:30 pm to 7:30 am for two weeks, shoehorning myself back into the necessity
of rising at 6 am has produced predictable results. I’m tired. I have insomnia.
And because I’m tired and have insomnia, I’m also worrying about whether I
have, say, a small arterial dissection that will cause me to collapse while
driving children to or from an event from a bleed into my brain. You know, that
kind of thing. Perks of being married to a neurologist…. I know just enough –
and not enough at all.
I just returned home from purchasing tickets to the middle
school musical. Advance ticket sales, don’t you know. The 6th grader
is in the chorus as a jungle animal. I’m supposed to do make-up for the show,
but naturlich we have schedule conflicts. The 10th grader has to go to
NYC for several auditions for summer ballet programs and of course they conflict with the middle school musical and its dress rehearsal. But not to worry. Perhaps that
arterial dissection will take care of everything.
Anyhoo, as I was saying, I just returned home. There I
discovered the dog licking peanut butter off of the side of a cabinet and from
a wide swath of kitchen floor. The 10th grader was supposed to give
him his Kong with said peanut butter before she left for dance. The question
is, how did it get from the Kong onto the cabinet? Did she hurl it? The Kong I
mean? These are mysteries awaiting clarification.
Otherwise, all my news comes from the media, and only a
little bit of it relates to success. Today is the 10th anniversary
of Spalding Gray’s disappearance that turned out to be his death by suicide. I
used to love Spalding Gray. He was so funny and original. I saw him in San
Francisco. I had a fever, but I went anyway. Sorry audience members on whom I
breathed. He was an inspiration to me. I thought perhaps I had a way to tell
something autobiographical, too. Perhaps on stage. I took some improv classes.
Then I decided it wasn’t such a good idea to become too worshipful of or
fascinated by people who are depressive and neurotic. On edge. Obsessive.
Narcissistic, perhaps. People who are involved in their own problems. Who are open
about them. Who turn pain into humor.
On a totally different subject, did anyone else read that
piece in the Style section of the New York
Times on Martha Stewart’s beauty regimen? That lady has been to jail and
back. She’s got some stunning self -confidence. Or something. Not sure what. Maybe
it’s another c-word. Shut up, I mean cahones,
Readers! No, I guess she doesn’t have those. But I think my sister-in-law may
be right, I ought to start getting facials. Martha’s been doing it for
forty-five years. I just use my tube of prescription retin-A cream. And
sunscreen. I don’t have to worry about putting a sunhat over my riding helmet, as
Martha does, since I don’t ride. Not since old Taffy, at sleepover camp. There’s a terrific picture of me with a glorious Morgan.
I’m in my glory, too: gold granny glasses, braids, braces, and a t-shirt with
bottle caps on it. The horse was a marvel. I never rode her. She was too
lively. I preferred Taffy. Aptly named. Or she grew to embody her name, as some
people do. She was twenty-eight and so slow she wouldn’t even take a step
unless you showed her the switch.
No, I’m no equestrian.
Are you still reading? Well here’s a little bit on success.
Yesterday I went to NIA class at the Y. After class I fell into conversation
with the instructor, who’s a friend. We were standing outside the locker room when
another friend came out of the locker room. So the three of us stood around for
a good while chatting. I felt happy and knitted in to a community when I left
the building and headed into the cold for my car.
On the radio someone was talking about research on
nostalgia. Apparently, research shows that nostalgia
creates feelings of connection to others and that connection to others promotes
self- esteem. How serendipitous. I was a living example. Yes, I thought,
connection to others does promote self-esteem. And self-esteem is key to
feeling successful. I'm distinguishing between feeling successful and appearing successful, which can be two different things. I’m not saying you’ll never achieve anything, self-esteem or no. Plenty of
people who are empty inside try to make themselves feel better by becoming
public achievers. However, if you don’t feel you have value as a being, then no
amount of achievement is going to penetrate and make you feel good.
There are a couple of distressing implications of this new report. For one - apparently - it suggests that if you have a sense of
connection to others, and therefore healthy self-esteem, then who needs
achievements? You can revise your novel for twenty years, or keep writing those
stories that you file away in a drawer and it doesn’t matter. ‘Cuz you have
fwends. Furthermore, if all you need to feel you have connection to others is to delve
into nostalgia, then who needs actual friends? You can just pull out those old
yearbooks and remember the people you used to know.
Dear me. I seem to have unraveled something positive.
Ahem.
But let me not shy away from Spalding Gray and my
fascination with miserable wretches. My love affair with the messed up and
depressed. Eventually I realized that hooking myself to these folks in pursuit
of a creative identity was a dead end. I grew wary. Much as I admire his honest
and humorous self expression, I don’t want to be like Spalding. A person who
couldn’t take comfort in his connections. He made me feel connected to him; but
he had trouble connecting to others. He was successful in art, but not in life.
That’s not a trade off I want to make.
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