I am going to now misinterpret David Sedaris.  I went to see him after his reading at his book signing and he gave me three pieces of advice, one I can't remember.  One of these pieces of advice was to "make something out of nothing."  His very kind replies to my questions scared me.  Implicit in them was that successful writing requires you to get your shit together yourself.  I remember my reaction to the two books of his I read.  He has a style of writing, conversational, concise like an essay, but with a light touch of the building up to a punchline of jokes.  He is a writer who most closely resembles a comedian, or someone who lightly sprinkles his narrative with the principles of comedy.  This makes him so effervescent and entertaining on the radio or as a tv guest.  When I read his books, I wondered about him, despite writing about his life, he seemed mysterious, or never revealed himself.  Each of his stories would flesh out a piece of his life with a sometimes absurd sense of humor.  In recalling an earlier time in his life, David Sedaris would have objective, somewhat omniscient distance as a narrator.  Early David Sedaris would be examined with a dismissive, self deprecating eye, someone who "tended to exhaust people" or unsuccessfully took up random pursuits like conceptual art or competitive swimming primarily to get attention, to the forgiveness and dismissal of his future self.  He was ostensibly vulnerable in recalling his past missteps, but not vulnerable enough and still mysterious to me as a character.  I didn't feel close to him or like he exposed himself in his stories.  I think maybe making something out of nothing requires creating an anecdote that takes a slice of one's life and makes a certain point to make room for other anecdotes.  The interesting thing about books of essays is that because the essays are about discrete times in someone's life, they may not have an obvious unified purpose to be collected in the same place.  Joan Didion's book of essays Slouching Towards Bethlehem was easy to cull some sort of large profundity, big steak, out of, because the stories were set during one period in her life, divided into encounters with people she met, and meant to be a slightly sloppy microcosm of the meaningful social moment captured at its time.  It was easy for me to see useful import and poignancy or a unifying theme in Joan Didion's writing for that reason, because they came from one time in her life and either reflected on American history such as counterculture in the 60s, motherhood, aging and other things it bothers me to talk about.  Perhaps the unifying theme in two of his books that I read are a similar tone shared in the essays.  Naked tends to be edgier, angrier, with longer sentences, longer, more autobiographical.  Me Talk Pretty One Day has taut, hilarious stories that frequently brought me to tears with their humorous commentary about the absurdities of languages and their rules.  There are glimmers of familial pathos and pain, the meandering path he took to get to a place as a very successful writer, and meaning and poignancy delivered with a lighter touch than his deft skill at telling an anecdote.  I guess I wonder if he is a "deep" writer, an "intimate" writer, if his skill in entertaining people while they're in the bathroom moves him up from the NY Times Bestseller list to that of a reliably great modern writer or even modern classic.  Maybe I'm missing a greater depth in his stories or unifying theme in each book. 

One thing I do know, is that what David Sedaris is presenting makes me want to get closer to him, to know the protagonist.  Personal essays expose one's life to a reader and offer them an opportunity to relate to the writer.. or not.  Observational humor causes the audience to relate to a comedian who is freshly exposing common elements in their lives. Observational humor, particularly narrative humor, forges a warm connection between audience and comedian because it illuminates elements in human lives and provides a window into the comedian's life/how he sees the world.  This is why I love to listen to the albums of Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Patton Oswalt, whether or not they narrate anecdotes about their lives, just being able to enter into their perspective, the way they see the world, is a warm rapport that doesn't leave me feeling like I don't know the comedian.  Even if they are creating a persona (like Anthony Jeselnik who I don't pay attention to) or editing their stories to only include what audience members respond to, their voice and the way they flesh out and finish their stories provides clues to whatever their point of view might be, even if they are miserable alcoholics or, like George Carlin, way nicer and quieter than their abrasive onscreen character.  There is an honesty in sharing one's observations.  Creating distance while exposing one's life and thoughts with charisma is an uncomfortable juxtaposition.  I only found myself missing Aziz Ansari, pacing my apartment after watching the good comedian, because of emotion or the strangeness of seeing such a real talent in its raw developing stages and possibly missing other parts.  

The promise of meeting David Sedaris after a reading and the possibility that he will talk a fan's ear off further brings the possibility of vulnerability and connection.  I hoped that if I stated my case strongly enough, or drew him out enough, the very tired writer would come over for salmon some time next week... or at least we'd have a good laugh.  Yet, his attempt to have a personal conversation with each fan who wanted him to sign the book was maybe an exercise in politeness and grace.  As well as quirk and observational ability.  I guess I wanted to overshoot and be friends.  Even though a creative talent and a fan that doesn't create anything aren't equals.  Creative talents are allowed to be distant, loony, cold, experiencing things and observing people in the service of their art.  I wanted to be friends with David Sedaris.  So does everyone else.  People's creative talent is obvious to the cold objectivity of an outside observer.  Especially a wise professor or talented writer.  However workaday it may be.  Meaning we aren't special, we are consumers of David Sedaris' gift, people whose only art is life and only production is children or things like raising revenue or supporting a companies' bottom line.  So there is always a power differential.  We aren't equals any more than Rembrandt was with Ferdinand Bol or Gerrit Dou.  Or with Hendrikje Stoefls.  Personal relationships don't come to be as valuable as the art produced and being good at pleasing or befriending an artist doesn't come to mean much.  You are a person in their painting.  I think Sondheim already tackled this in Sundays in the Park With George. 

I wanted to know what brought him to doing drugs, how he felt about his mother, the fact that they cursed in the house (slightly tougher parents than my family), growing up with all those sisters and which he was closest to, whether he could relate to his father, why he wanted to date Hugh so much, what makes them get along, whether he thinks he is now getting the attention he wanted, what he really thinks of his fans, when he started writing, when he got good at it, how he met his friend Alicia, things I wonder.  I always want to ask REALLY intrusive questions.  But, the fact that I feel like they're unanswered (whereas with Joan Didion I mostly wonder whether her daughter was easy, how and whether she learned to cook, the challenges of being a mother, whether she was actually a good one.)  These questions also remain unclear so's to create more books.  His love for and estrangement from his engineer father is obvious in his books. 

I am not a stranger to fear, fear of beginning, changing, and constructing an entire plan by myself.  Somehow for years I've avoided having to be a "self starter" (perhaps due to the slightly bite-sized and regular homework assignments, the loopholes in an ostensibly Dewey-based education system from truly "constructing my own education," and other ways I've slipped through the cracks or out of the system without letting it make me feel upset too much.)  I've been surprised and blindsided by the combination of having to develop the skill of being "the CEO of my future decisions (responsible for top down planning)," being forced at work to take drastic initiatives and also construct things from top down, as well as a differently flavored ability to self reflect that began in my early mid 20s.  (As I gain distance from my childhood that I've tried so hard to imprint with fidelity on my brain, my memory comes to new conclusions and falsifies facts.)  This may be because I am the type of person who continually checks in with myself on my status and how I'm feeling, the kind of person who curiously noticed veins popping out on her hands and had to reconcile to them.  Or maybe I am like a person whose muscle has atrophied to a breaking point and who notices how weak they are when they have to use them.  I am continuously shocked about new developments that I register before their crest both in the collective and in myself before I reconcile myself to its long term existence.  I am curious and overwhelmed that this is a muscle slightly different from the ones I've had to use.  One thing that seems to define being an adult is others taking a more or less hands off position to curating your activities.  You curate the course of your life with long range goals that I used to find super annoying and pointless on health class worksheets or soft skills segues in all the fact memorization of public school. 

I also considered long range goals the corporate self help harping of Type A people, but perhaps it is necessary for the survival of people who don't know how to dictate the course of their lives without imposing outside structure.  Hollywood has always pictured Type A women portrayed by Amanda Peet and Katherine Heigl as side-note effective, but annoying and in desperate need of a lifestyle change.  Their ability to streamline themselves and their team as an effective speeding bullet toward their bottom line is powerful and assertive in the business world, but definitely not a trait in someone I would want to "have a beer with" or talk to.  Chris Traeger's relentless, desperate positivity in the face of aging and loneliness is also seen as more of a trite crutch and less of a tool that maximizes success.  Taking the reins of my career life and redirecting it myself terrifies me and doesn't stir me from an inert state.  Perhaps giving shape to my ideas with the large exoskeleton of long term and short term goals emulates an imposed outside structure that I so long for. 

I have been content to remain a child, a baby, that is what I'm told.  I have often surrendered to a sense of fidelity and hope.  There is a possibility that I will never achieve any personal goals or career.  Time is not going to steer me toward something or change me magically.  I have continued to be someone who is inert and doesn't move unless there's outside imposition.  This is a personal trait I could use to my advantage by lighting an artificial fire under my ass, whether igniting the historic shame I knew since childhood, the shame of when a spoiled and sheltered person feels when caught by an outside authority, at being outed for being spoiled, the fear of outside judgment that keeps us spoiled babies behaving disgustingly only in the shelter of a house with two acre zoning. 

I used to love to read a site that called on people to discuss and reflect on their lives with a Jungian and Freudian slant.  People would reflect on how their past got them to where they are and, while it also involved terms like "collective consciousness," "projection," and "shadow," it also involved a great deal of reflection on roots, or blaming things on the mother and family.  The people on that site frequently came from raucously bad childhoods and broken homes, unbelievable horror stories, and looked back with forgiveness and the understanding of the strength and positive qualities it developed in their lives.  They talked about how things currently unpopular are meaningful, such as one's roots and family tradition, the ego, the idea of male and female energies, one's values, boundaries, and what couples owe each other to make it work.  They forgave the sins of the mother and gained strength of character, denied a childhood, they gained resilience.  I wondered where my parents played into my problems because as far as I could see, though spoiled into a horrifically selfish paste, I was given a lot of love and support my whole life.  I really am a difficult, controlling, selfish, egotistical, headstrong person.  It can't be denied that as a child I sometimes felt like a "monster," over sensitive to itself, completely cold and callous to other people's emotions, and it took a while to deny the monster within while still taking selfish actions. 

Now I am beginning to see what choices my parents made that left my muscles atrophied after childhood.  And why they made them.  I was an oversensitive and easily depressed child.  I remember begging to see various R rated Oscar nominated movies, Dead Man Walking, The Green Mile, etc., saying I could take it, and coming home with my eyes bugged out and depressive thoughts in my brain.  I remember when I got my first watch at six years old, and how, being taken to a beach traditionally inhabited by old people and half empty, in my most Dixie cup color schemed windbreaker, on a windy fall day, when I sighed about how time flies, or saying at 10 years old how I felt like an 80 year old woman.  Thoughts like these are typical for the wondering mind of a 10 year old. 

With the rush of pubescent obsessions and later adult responsibilities, our brain gets slightly quieter about these things.  This is why I wasn't taken to depressing ceremonies.  Until a couple weeks ago.  Granted, my nuclear family is three people (plus me) who had to move for a job away from our Brooklyn distant relatives on one side who tended toward trashy Russian Brooklyn fashion and mores.  I dreaded having to go to extended family parties as a kid with the scarlet haired women with penciled on eyebrows and six course meals at tacky Russian restaurants with unspeakably bad 80s haired pop pumping in from all the tvs.  Or awkwardly hanging around when my parents visited friends and had no one to babysit.  As a glowering spoiled kid I was receptive of very few people, most of them being my brother.  I believed that "kids ruled" and didn't have a now-fashionable retro sense of how a Confucian style respect for elders or African style being part of a large community is what prevented millenial happiness after the Boomer evolution following America's nuclear family, two car garage 50s.  I'm oversimplifying, I really was an intense, literate, deep.... horrifically spoiled and sheltered, kid.  And kind of still am. 

I was curious how to universalize and theorize about my Russian Jewish roots, what could I say about the women of my family and the attitudes I inherited from them.  I felt more like a liberal arts student than anything else, and for a long time didn't care to dissect my cultural identity like this interesting website invited me to.  Especially because a certain war whittled away at elders who led completely different lives than their expatriate children, liberated by the Iron Curtain.  A friend of mine with a coven-like sensibility was interested in channeling my grandmother.  Hmmm.  How little my grandmother and I have in common and what a shame it is.  She lived in a village with several sisters which was probably cleaned of men in WWII.  She suffered through famine, migration to the city outside her village, had her husband, a tank commander, die of gunshot wounds in his prime, as well as her oldest son who I don't hear much about, and had to raise her two boys by herself.  She was inveterately kind and helpful to others, I hear, and, while using corporal punishment and things to keep the boys in line, sacrificed her personal happiness to raise them.  In other words, like at least one of her sisters, she was an indisputably good, strong, matriarchal woman who learned to provide, scrimp and save, as the poignant Zhvanetski skit says about the war generation.  The kind of women who save shoes, ship out cheaper items to relatives, work endlessly, recycle underwear to the embarrassment of their grandchildren, and demonstrate the strength and kindness tested by years of privation.  This goodness is a kind of power.  I'm a weak sauce, to be kind to myself, intellectual and we have nothing in common.

I had to attend a scary event and had to learn what my family was about.  Stories were passed around about the strength of my grandmother's sister.  The descendants of my grandmother's sister differ from mine in the way they kindly and evenhandedly accept and continue to socialize with people we disdain for their selfishness and wrongs toward us, specifically the offspring of my grandmother's slightly more evil sister.  And also they don't avoid my annoying uncle like I probably shouldn't do.  My grandmother's sister was not only a peerlessly strong and kind woman, but a first female medical graduate, a sought after heart surgeon, and one who did not disdain to help pretty much anyone, who remained positive and welcoming.  Matriarchal strength is an interesting virtue in a culture that still has patriarchal values, so many strong and good women in this war generation of my family. 

How did they relate to the generation of women who emigrated to the US?  Some of our relatives are certainly self sacrificing and welcoming, but the bleakness in their lives that they hide scares me, so it's not often that I visit the avenues at the end of the alphabet in Brooklyn.  Perhaps the coddled children, the ones sacrificed for, who finally profited from their parents labor for their comfort are the ones not tested for the strength of their kindness, and as a result, layabouts reclining and being fed grapes.  I find that Russian Jewish parents are slightly less cold, expectant, and demanding that their children succeed than Asian parents.  Or at least this is how I was allowed to loaf about in liberal arts school.  Unconditional love also doesn't balance accounts, so I was ignorant of structural responsibilities and what I "owe" other than it amounts to everything.  So I am neither strong nor good, but receiving beneficence and guilty.  

I spun out after this event, I weakly sought some help or someone to calm down my obsessive emotions.  (The obsession is a 2009 development that I used to fight the darkening uncertainty of my post-Clinton and post-Bush environment with serpentine ritual.  Everything had to be more okay than my closing doors four times and spending 20 minutes picking out mismatched socks for a "good day.")  This was maybe why I was sheltered by my parents from the disease and suffering as a child, maybe it's in my nature to be sensitive, emotional, and fall apart like a two year old.  In my family, it's well respected to either freak out only when there's reason or to maintain composure for the sake of others.  Perhaps selfishness is a cardinal sin in our self-sacrificing culture.  One that judges people on the strength of their goodness in crisis moments or their ability to nurture and protect others.  And, in Russian Jewish history, there are so many crisis moments. 

Maybe I was born sensitive, requiring shelter or else my nervous constitution make me lie on the floor and throw up.  Maybe I deserved a childhood devoid of the selfish, neglectful, addict parents that forced the people on the site to step up as children and act like adults.  Perhaps if I were required to clean blood off a wall or cook my brothers and sisters dinner as a child I would have fallen apart inside.  Part of being an adult is not being allowed to fall apart on the outside or obviously and pleadingly, overtly be unhappy and seek help. 

I can say that one thing at the root of Jewishness is the unconditional love and nurturance of the children.  And not necessarily pressuring them to fit a mold or withholding physical affection.  Some children are fed and fed, physically as well as emotionally, as the stereotype goes... bagels, potatoes, and tomatoes shoved in their mouths by worried grandmothers as they are trying to play on the beach.  So much of Judaism has been holding out for a better time, shoring up strength for the future, and taking care, because sacrificing for children is worth it simply because they are our children and we want them to be happy.  When the debt to parents is immeasurable, how is it going to be paid off?  Where do our responsibilities begin?  They seem to ask for nothing and give everything. 

I can also say that two generations into my family, there is a tradition of women unexpectedly becoming worried, overprotective mothers.  My mother, her sister, my cousin, worry and tend and circle their children like brood hens.  However, my maternal grandmother isn't described this way.  Gay and fun loving, she and my grandfather created an intellectual household and nurtured their girls, but their long work schedules allowed the children to run free.  Somehow my mother developed an internal sense of pride, independence, and also following the rules out of respect to herself.  She wasn't disciplined or coddled into it.  I don't know how she did it's part of her character.  Neither was my paternal grandmother this way, obviously, due to using the rod on her boys.  My brother and sister weren't even raised the way I am and this may be why I'm at a disconnect.  Or why I don't gain profit from blaming the past on why I am so weak muscled now in terms of coping skills and adult ability.  Perhaps I over coddled myself. 

I am not a strong person in terms of putting on "woman pants."  I understand the value of being a female "Marlboro man" during moments of crisis, shielding emotion from children and spouses, mostly to avoid tiring the man out with your emotions, to help and feel the adrenaline rush of basically being a strong type of woman until you somehow break down internally.  This sort of activity, helping and clutching up in crisis is a deep matriarchal tradition in my female line.

I don't do self abnegation and help that requires bottling up anything.  I tend to fill with negativity and emotions that goad me to crumpling at somebody's door as a neurotic bag.  I deposit my dirt and trash and fear at other people's doors hoping that they'll prop me back up.  Just as Woody Allen collapses in a neurotic thought pile up, each hobbling his mind and body worse than the other.  I don't have a mechanism to press on or be positive, I resent people who expect me to put on my dress and lipstick and not feel things.  The people with whom we can't share our feelings are part of a long list, men who we are afraid of boring or seeming like a fussbudget, coworkers who gravitate toward alpha positivity rather than Debbie Downer, friends who prefer to rely and dump their feelings on us, and others who spiral out and worry.  Silencing the negative cyclone of thoughts tends to make me feel weak.  I don't have an internal engine of building myself up.  This is not the mechanism of a grown woman who can control her feelings, stand on her feet, protect her children and nurture her surroundings.  The hearth must be kept and it must be warm and pleasant.

I know what must be done.  I know that really children buckle under feelings of fear and weakly deposit them on anyone willing to listen.  Or somehow dump their burden.  

Leslie Knope’s character on Parks and Recreation is an interesting one.  She is more likeable than any of the antiheros of Arrested Development, slightly more multidimensional than the characters of Girls, and less funny or original than anyone on 30 Rock.  The character is allowed to breathe and do uncharacteristic things, not entirely well defined.  Her notion of “caring,” working hard, and leadership, is a different one than I’m used to.  To bolster her leadership and cultivate solidarity in her team, she clings to Girl Power clichés like Hilary Clinton and the portraits of female leaders on her wall, women’s sleepover type celebrations (Galentine’s Day), girlish sugary food like candy necklaces, and one hit wonders like LEN.  Her trite tastes and uneasy mythology of female leadership like girl power and the love of sweets, her fallibility and mistakes in trying to lead her team, and other quirks make her ostensibly effective and hard working personality less intimidating and easier to relate to.  It is known that she works hard both because she cares about building up and making use of her team and buys into the patriotic mythology of her exhurban town of Pawnee.  The reasons for her effective leadership and work are those of care and service, but what she is serving is a variety of naïve clichés.  She directs her patriotism to a town with a clearly bloody and racist past depicted humorously in the murals and one that is a flyover that has little to offer but obesity.  The show focuses more on her fallibility and quirks displayed in how she navigates her friendships and romantic life.  To give us an idea of the challenges and daily tasks of a female leader, to show us just how hard she works would make the character less cute, less relatable, and less filled with the feminine skills of caring, negotiation, and compromise that make her seem not like a feminist bitch.  The show ironizes about her gauche, small town mythologies of female empowerment while demonstrating what an instrumental leadership role she takes.  Ordinarily, someone who relies on boring saccharine clichés of girl power would be too annoying for me to follow, but her character is allowed to breathe through her interactions with people, through her mistakes, and how she treats others.   It is a show with looser storylines and less comedic punch than 30 Rock, but with a more fluid and easier to follow dynamic between characters than Arrested Development.  

The town setting of Parks and Rec informs the belief system of the characters.  The low culture of a small city in an American flyover state combined with the threadbare rewards of bureaucratic office culture set the tone for the characters' values and actions.  The show satirizes the Midwestern town's stereotypical obesity problem,  bored teenagers, meth labs, mom n pop waffle diners (and trashing of salads), age old family emporiums vs. new conglomerates, cyclical town entertainment like festivals, and small time local entertainment radio and news of present day Pawnee.  (The townspeople are earnestly excited to debut Lil Sebastian, a small horse, at the festival.  Young boys toilet papering a statue becomes a big issue for Leslie and her team to deal with.)  Its murals also gain the best jokes gently satirizing a quintessentially American history of violent suppression and subjugation of minorities (Native Americans, women) for personal gain as well as Puritan-style mores.  Characters like Tom Haverford or Donna attempt to rise above a low culture inland surrounding and end up looking even more affected and bourgeois doing it.  Haverford looks outward toward some sort of urban PUA luxury of exclusivity.  It is a pale reflection of what actually goes on in Jay Z's NY.  Like Emma Bovary, he tries to rise above his milieu and looks more maudlin, affected, and bourgeois doing it.  Donna's love of luxury reflects itself in gaudy velour cheetah print monogrammed robes with fake fur pink trim and her love for the Benz.  A beautiful woman like Ann is a workaday nurse who wears LOFT style clothes to dates.  Ron Swanson is a humorous archetype of the American conservative states' rights man who is allowed to be awesome.  In moments of imperfection or compromise, his walrus-like old time masculinity becomes more loveable.

Leslie Knope disdains none of Pawnee's low culture traditions.  She celebrates the waffle diners as "salt of the earth" establishments and the dopes who attend the public forums as "good hearted small town people."  She joys in adding her own spin to Pawnee traditions like creating an all female scout troupe to rival Ron Swanson's.  She is also not afraid to embrace the more girlish aspects of girl power, unquestioningly idolizing women like Janet Reno and Nancy Pelosi with her overly earnest wall of powerful women frames.  Her saccharine ideas about girl power (Galentine's Day) reflect her love of childish sugar treats like candy necklaces and Sweetums bars.  The Parks and Rec department, must, in effect feel the most "town spirit" for the schmaltzy community based events they create.  Thus, Leslie as a proactive, service-oriented leader must be upset about a rich woman leveling a gazebo.

The characters also have "the spirit" for various planned work retreats, small corporate rewards, and the various town events they must plan and cheer for.  They seem like the type of people to be genuinely excited by the free frisbees handed out on a drive time radio show.  Free work sandwiches do taste better when you factor in the fact that you get time off work to consume them.  Donna may unironically put up a fireman calendar and Jerry or Andy may compliment a Kincaid, Tom may wear a pair of gaudy top siders or air force ones defunct on both coasts. 

Chris Traeger uses Ben Wyatt as the Jorkins in Spenlow and Jorkins.

Their value system and patriotism as citizens of a theoretically forgettable town in Indiana is a backdrop for moments of pathos in the comedy show.  Leslie is moving when she acts in sacrificial compromise out of earnest love for her underdog team or her underdog town.  Tom Haverford is for a moment palatable when he swallows his pride and reveals the human insecurity beneath the annoying bluster.  The characters' interplay as a team allows them to demonstrate their earnest cooperation, their vulnerability, and humanity.  The job description requires rooting for and beautifying the underdog, shabby even compared to the neighboring town of Eagleton. The characters move in gauche small town tastes and enjoyments and show how human they can be.  

I watch Girls and wanted to defend it because I see some verisimilitude in the way the characters are portrayed.  I identify with it viscerally, basically.  The thing I mutter the most when watching it is like "Oh, Hannah don't do that shit.  Don't do it.  She did it."  Whether kissing the junkie who was following her, making a move on Patrick who she doesn't know, allowing herself to buy into Adam's humiliation thing when he goes to town on himself while she's in the bathroom, when he doesn't even want her to be in on it.  He rides the bike with her in front of it, she asks him to stop, and she face plants.  This sort of humiliation is a good barometer of their relationship and what she allows herself to go through.  So many breaches of her own boundaries, concessions to a dangerous situation to feed a bottomless hungry self esteem.  How Marnie sleeping with Elijah for a few moments years after they dated cracks a dent in her already fragile self esteem.  The baseness and embarrassment of her behavior and some of her situations is sometimes pushed for extra humiliation (even small details such as, many of us do grab snacks or cupcakes when we shouldn't, but few eat them in the shower... in fact it is hard for me to identify with/get into the show because of the depths of humiliation covered in episodes that describe their situations, sometimes it seems to want to pillory the characters' many ugly qualities and bad choices.)  All of this is meant to bring into view and exorcise the demons of people in their 20s who are figuring it out through making mistakes, specifically liberal arts hipster transplants.  But, I'm sure some of the unhealthy relationships or self esteem issues are relatable to people at varying levels of privilege.  Sometimes her actions are so ugly, as though she lives in a vacuum that there appears not to be a shred of her that is likeable and can be identified with.  I understand her overwhelming jones for validation when, after breaking up Marnie and Charlie and causing a huge scene, she asks "...but, if it weren't my journal, just as a piece of writing, would you think it was good?"  But, I find it selfish in a way that mostly ruins her status as a good friend when taking sides first with Charlie, then with Marnie and forcing both to stay during an awkward dinner party.  The desire is to punish her suffering friend with awkwardness, but asking Charlie to choose, then telling them to enjoy the dinner party when he leaves is taking it too far.  So many things she does are at a plausible extent of self humiliation and the prostration of one's personal pride.  Sure, we can picture ourselves sleeping with the junkie who is following us, but this does nothing for her other than breach her safety.  Her style is structured as a screenplay, but I recognize the relentlessly confessional nature of a free verse poem.  The desire to continually expose her ugliness and hurt to an audience, or the lowest points and humiliations of Hannah's character, and somehow communicate the state of her age group grandly, or absolve her own pains and pecuniary compromises of being a girl.  People rag on the characters for not being paragons of self esteem, "having it together," or making use of their privilege.  The characters are not meant to be role models.  They are somewhat full fledged, but also canvasses meant to expose some of the uglier conceits and shared experiences of one's 20s.  There is something I facilly call "lack of boundaries," the inability to assert one's own tastes or nature, but kowtowing to what the other person wants or likes just to keep them around.  Not being fully aware of your own motives and getting into a sleeping situation in a way that hurts you.  "Figuring out who you are," as in the career path that you take and how to remain stable and happy in a relationship requires this period of bouncing around and butting against mistakes that hurt and teach you what not to do.  That teach you not to engage with people just to receive a shot of validation, not to hypocritically not want them to move on, or that others don't fill some sort of void.  I guess so many things Hannah does make me cringe in the "baby girl, don't go there" way, don't do that, don't get involved in that, you're prostrating yourself or going to get hurt.  I've made similar mistakes in different situations, made myself look stupid, sought out the wrong type of people, wanted attention, ate for the pleasure of it and ate too much, felt fat, felt ugly, felt like no validation was enough.  I continue to make mistakes like this, but I look at her from above because she is in a different or more extreme situation.  Doesn't mean that I don't understand the compromise of my comfort for the ego validation of getting an article published on a website (in exchange for being forced to do Coke), getting it with a glamorous together/older dude (who is a total stranger and wasn't making a move on her), it seems like more of a 23 or 24 thing to do.  I've gone through a small crucible, a very small crucible of dearth and attempting to mold myself in the image of what other people like, to earn a corner of a very small inch of self esteem.  It doesn't mean that I don't now want to change the horrible, intractable things about myself that are unfeminine and hard to deal with, my messiness, my tendency to pick fights, my laziness, my lack of ability to get myself together... interesting that earning the opportunity to vulnerably face to face someone requires standing your ground on being who you are, and the vulnerability of union requires you to start to compromise. 

People who treat the word Girls as meaning that this is a portrayal of all girls and they must therefore be role models in power suits misunderstands the nature of this show.  Yes, they represent some girls (the universality being in the humiliations, foibles, and opposite gender experiences), but the fact is that they are just girls.  A show about a group of girls.. becoming women, without any additional descriptor attached like "career" girls or "family" girls.  The name of the show also explains the fact that there are so many unlikeable male characters.  The male characters are this way because they are what these women find, accept, and want, they are the reaction to the womens own self image, their foil, and general examples of the type of men girls meet on the way to becoming women.

I found the end extremely affecting.  Not only is Hannah often told she's selfish because she vents her emotional garbage and insecurity about her body and craft on people when they are dealing with their own problems, she has also had problems with anxiety and OCD in high school.  This flare up, I can understand, is due to trying to suppress a complex of unpleasant emotions, mostly fear.. and stress.  Bringing up the safety and anxiety of these measures.  Adam calling her triggers it, along with the pressured e-book deadline that has the empty stigma of being an e-book, but is still too tight and adult for her to make.  She feels unsafe because of Adam's stalking, compromised by the stress of doing something she's unable to do, assailed by the insecurities and doubts that trailed her during all the seasons, and now she has a chance to prove herself, hence the rising stress and fear crests and breaks.  Like hippie ideas of toxicity induced acne, something that the skin eructs after several years of toxic lifestyle, OCD surfaces after an undertow of ignored stresses and fears.  It is mostly about uncertainty, fear, and the lack of safety.  

Intercourse is a different thing for both sexes.  I thought of this because a man doodled a whale spewing sprm out of his phallic head.  For men, intercourse seems a thing of progressive abandon, of adventure, and irresponsibility.  Surrendering to a physical rush that ends in spewing all over the place.  To get to that point, haste, irresponsibility, persuasion are required.  After that we pick p the pieces.  But before hand, building focus on that member, which frenzies and wants more until it finishes by spewing everywhere.  After that we sleep or eat.  Feed the self.  A woman has to open and cautiously admit a foreign member, bring someone in with their threat of contagion, their threat of pregnancy, to envelop someone who is a foreign body and accept them, accept the consequences of their entry.  Rather than spewing everywhere, the woman's end is often one of somewhat tiredness, but a lack of their own dizzying end and the desire for communion, to reunite with the person they allowed to enter so the passport to entry was not a mistake.  To have allowed the irresponsible swelling and building and spewing wasn't a mistake.  Someone they enveloped, who momentarily became a piece of them to eat and pursue their own tryptophan forever, pointing at things.  When we allow someone into our domicile, our home, our vestibule, the clean up when thy leave it empty is on us.  Dealing with the fallout of their dropped dishes, their pacing boredom, their careless entry and release.  In movies, after momentarily letting someone in, we cut to the woman walking defeatedly in a parka down a street with trees and brownstones, weather appropriate to the season.  She is bowed with her parka and ipod, adolescent and pinched.  Scenes of people walking away, riding off backwards in trains to inspiring Beach House-like getaway music typically connotes freedom, "getting out of Dodge," a turn in the road which, due to the person's eye opening journey, would augur a bright and new future.  The post intercourse picture of a woman walking, to a clinic, from a clinic, out of an apartment, is the breaking of a promise of connection, intercourse being the symbol of connection and the heavy responsibility of meeting someone on the inside, to share one's life with them.  Intercourse is like playing house, containing some physical symbols of a spiritual communion, like buying a ring as a joke, or taking a trip to Red Hook IKEA as a joke.  Playing with the symbols of relationship or cohabitation, each scary burdens, but physical communion creates an implicit connection, though apparently for one person. 

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman"'-Simone de Beauvoir

I was reading Caitlyn Moran's book on How to be a Woman, just the beginning.  She talks about how at the age of 13 we begin to try to become women.  This isn't a natural transition, as Simone de Beauvoir's quote claims, to some extent we have to fit ourselves into the image of women.  The behavior of a "good woman," a "successful woman," a "wise" woman is learned and requires self supression.  I don't mean suppression of sideburns, ear gauges, pubic mustaches, and identifying as a "stud," I mean something else, maybe the suppression of the desire to fight, to sulk, to be vindictive, to complain and be sad.  The suppression of many things.

I'm a late comer in some ways to trying to be a woman, it is something that I find we reflect on intellectually, an unnatural shock to the system when we try to perform the art of being a good woman.   

I remember naturally and emotionally reacting to twirling in a romantic haze to "All the Way to Reno," or "Imitation of Life," I remember a blue darkness of lustful mystery when listening to Interpol's "Obstacle 1."  The realm of feminine fantasy, crushes, and the resentment of unrequited desire came to me easily as a teenager, in my "No Shirt No Shoes No Service" shirt mooning hazily with my Rio player that my brother gave me.  I performed a bare display of adulthood walking home on a local road with the slip of a barely existent sidewalk, as if distance from family and being my own transportation affected an imitation of being myself by myself.  I dreamed some abstract semblance of romance, some far facsimile of intercourse with the help of Interpol that didn't involve men or women, or crying to "Imitation of Life" imagining a 90s college rock high school or college experience set to a grunge bohemian autumn.  Rap was energizing.  The simple act of intercourse and the plastic dull imagining of prn was somewhat buzzkill to the red and blue scenes of Wong Kar Wai and the vague imaginings brought on by suggestive music and my ignorance of mechanics.  

I didn't need self reflection or laborious thought to have romantic thoughts, then again, I didn't have to belabor thinking about being a more enticing woman of substance.  High school had a different iron clad checkerboard structure entirely, the social strata of the cafeteria grew organically and had a mostly inflexible structure, like it often does.  Of course girls had crushes, some girls had things and boyfriends and the exploration/dramatic gestures that come with it.  (I find that long term relationships in high school both tied people down and confused them about the future, or set them into doomed high school sweetheart scenarios, I'm a great proponent of dreaming in high school, but not running a gauntlet of codependent scenarios.)  The interplay of the romantic relationship was a far flung desirable alternative and likely without the dances and courtships of adulthood, also without the bitterness of being older in a patriarchal society.  The mechanical act of intercourse or even wacking off was still somewhat disapproved of, thus we fetishized, pursued, focused more on the physical-romantic stuff.  We didn't think we'd get to the dull "preserving a relationship part" and so didn't get the numerous dispiriting self help nonsense that takes up books. 

What makes a better woman?  A competitive woman?  A, um, non gross woman?  Some of my habits while in pursuit of important things like work, a passion, good restaurants, and fun in New York had to change to avoid killing each other.  I find that when separated, the sexes fantasize about each other at a distance and formulate a picture not always correlated to reality.  For example, thinking a woman is made of gauzy lingerie, sugar, spice and everything nice by observing the restaurant hostess or dating the bartender, both of whom have to take time to maintain themselves as an object of desire to keep up customers, might give one a rude awakening if they settle into more than intercourse with, say, me.  I must not be the only one who is still settling into a makeup routine.  Who dresses for work in a certain way and hasn't worked out a style yet, who has bodily functions.  My own separation from many women has caused me to speculate how they hide all that.  

My run in with understanding anything at all spoken of in B Jones was considerably delayed.  In high school, I had a dreamy image of men I had a crush on, in college, I had intimate conversations with men I was friends with.  I had as yet no need to discover dispiriting websites that detail women as pigs that must primp themselves on a "market" for selection of men, to be sweet and sassy, hadn't heard of the Mancession or of the rise of women, or the "why all the good men taken or gay" complaint.  I barely observed my family at a remove.  I had no need to make a case study of women "making it work."  I didn't resent younger women, thinner women, Asian women, more primped women, women with longer hair.... or see men as uncompromising sexists who wanted to milk dates for their sex quotient, double standard holders who go halfsies on a Nathan's hot dog, who are "sexually hypocritical" but seek a woman who in 30 seconds they can recognize as their hot, sweet, fun, quiet, challenging wife.  

It took me til my early 20s to formulate an image of men whose permutations were all negative and oppressive, the imperfect, hypocritical thing looking to level up indefinitely in exchange for his freedom, who lazily avoided giving me what I wanted, the take charge attitude in planning, the dating trial run (construed as a lazy notion of commitment, dating to see how it works), the somewhat romance, the effete hipster, the creepy undesirable, all looking to level up to the same Brooklyn Decker while claiming a host of unreliable traits in return for their ostensible "taking life as an oyster they'll eat raw" (challenging them, being strong, kind, and sweet, loving adventure, taking care of themselves), requesting none of the traits I had or was ever proud of.  I began to try to fit myself to their mold, smart from their dismissal, and grouse that the mold exists.  Despite the fact that I had a very specific type (Josh Radnor) whose own type was Kate Mara the thin, fabulous haired, damaged trendy bar hostess or Elizabeth Olsen the over young co-ed whose tight... ideas on life give them a new lease on life.  Trying to mold myself to another's preferences has always led hilarious results that make me slouchier, more childish, and with more darting glances at strangers.  Outside my romantic fantasy, trying to appeal to hipsters always yielded in disappointment partly due to the fact that I don't want to eat Humboldt Fog or sit around and don't look like a yoga or Zumba instructor.

Being unapologetically myself tends to work in the beginning, but my Diane Keaton-like predilection for black blazers, scarves, and boots starts to wear on men "biologically" disposed to dresses, heels, colors, and non insecure, young, long haired, skinny women.  At the middle juncture of the relationship, my lack of ability to be a woman in the boudoir or living room starts to be found out, my lack of cleanliness, sometimes clothes are not folded but thrown on the floor, sometimes I procrastinate, sometimes I stand around in my coat when I get home, contemplating what I want to do.  Sometimes spontaneous happenings happen before I can embark on a complicated primping routine.  So don't show up at my house while I'm still in the shower, then observe how bad my skin is.  The fact that I get bogged down in one style and one suite of clothes every year starts to wear and I'm not "dressing for the job."  And so I feel that I have to revise my old standard ways, my uncomplicated, unwieldy habits.  There are more bad habits than they know, and they want me to revise more than I can think of.  So I come to think of what it means to be a good woman.  A perfumed, comely woman.  The kind who doesn't get chided.  And the fact is, this transformation is good, it would do me good.  Even my mom who used to eat raw eggs on the counter for breakfast and slivers of raw onion with salt had to learn how to make pastries and presentation dishes.  How long can my refusal to bend be a point of strength?  Until I start to be criticized for my laundry?  For the fact that I never cook, but pay for food as pennance?  The skills I tried to amass and look at to cheer myself up were never interpersonal or other-oriented, I'm not a good mediator, I'm not even a good team player.  I'm not good at hosting people or making them feel comfortable, or at making men feel safe, which I'd like to do.  I am good at entertaining and making children feel somewhat loved, but this is not a skill men want to hear about.  I am a lot more naturally caring and flexible toward children because not being that way to them would violate my moral code.  My skimpy moral code.  Whose contents are: Nurture the minds and lives of children or get out of the way.  Do not harm or obstruct others to the best of your ability.  It didn't occur to me for years to emulate what men think women do, their intricate imaginings of what our upkeep must be, that we are such sweet, clean creatures who don't pee on the toilet seat.  Because my image of what men required me didn't exceed fantasy or maybe what my male friends told me was so harsh (even when I felt strong romantic feelings for them) fell on deaf ears because they were in the same breath as saying "go blow a goat."  And I had gained weight and became more sloppy and less feminine than I had in years.  So I basked in their friendship, their intelligence, their ebullience, and our articulate intimacy.  My adolescence was as beautiful, youthful, and spiritual as my imagination.  My image of men hazy.  

I landed into the world during a time where the "Mancession" and articles on women's rise/romantic dissatisfaction correlated with a lot of "Love the One Your With" sermonizing, rhapsodizing on commitment, establishing boundaries, saying "relationships are work," breakups that indicated a long standing relationship was crumbling, the engagements of people I knew marking them taking their relationship seriously and to the next level, a dull as toast time to enter the world of dating whose courtship was more codified than ever.  I rapidly caught up to the everywoman heroines of lady fiction and the readers of "Why Men Marry Bitches" by observing current courtship rituals (the first date, the third date, the 30 second first impression, the bone just about anyone and commit to the perfect woman dichotomy, the hook ups, the lack of communication, the dating several women simultaneously) and being filled with 2 years worth of bitterness at the fact that men seem to be getting what they want, which is hollow to women and far from what they want.  (These things meant nothing to me a couple years earlier, nor would I have set food on those the frisky-style advice blogs earlier for fear of being a stereotypical woman.  When did I become the type of person to actually consider what a "retread" meant?  Or internalizing and feeling irritated by the many "isolate and work on yourself before you go out into the market?"  We are all works in progress.)  Fighting to weigh down dating with heavier romantic significance seems to come with the price of reanimating some 50s rhetoric and expressions like "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free."  New Agers try to render this with a spiritual significance that I agree with, that sex aligns people and causes one to take a piece of the other such that you have the potential to harm yourself if you engage in such an alignment (of chakras) with another and just leave it to rest without meaning, to accumulate psychic baggage.  It was better than the oxytocin explanation that doesn't affect all women.  And it was not an entirely shame-based argument for "keeping it in your pants," it averred that sleeping with people and not forging a bond is "not good for the soul."  I came to date in a rather sobering Return to Commitment time when seeing relationships as a contract between two people where burden should be shared equally was experiencing a renaissance.  Where "work on yourself before you think you can complete another" took on particular resonance after the meaningless fumbling after the 60s revolution.  Some of the shame was taken out of intercourse, but women were coming up short on the meaning they craved and finding themselves tugging against men who wanted to sleep with them and keep their freedom.  Online dating was a fresh direct or craigslist ad like pitch in bullet points of what one is doing, what one is good at, and what they like.  It was easy to browse through their pictures and resume quickly, one becomes a ware, the other scans like an HR rep looking for bullet points like 2 years' experience in ETL processing or Java, C++, PHP in the list of competencies.  I tend to see myself as the ware more than the buyer.  This is where I went wrong, but in such a scenario, women's assets are on display and seeing the other people's response as a barometer of your own desireability is a tempting and honest mistake.  One is Fuji apples for sale at $3.99 a pound, but are they organic, are they local?  

The moments I think of how to revise my ingrained habits of being a bit sloppy are when people whose judgment I care about will see and judge.  I am a lot like an exposed scallop, easily cut to sensitivity by anyone's poke.  Or perhaps an oyster.  Theoretically, when you throw sand in the oyster, it begins to defensively coat it in layers of saliva so it doesn't scratch, until the grain of sand becomes a cultured pearl.  I tend to set to work defensively coating the sand or grit of critical input, especially the variety that is not malicious, with my own saliva and others' reassurance until the sand is completely dissolved and the entire thing becomes a gobbet of saliva.  And I continue to be an oyster without a pearl.  Blunt criticism tends not to change me and I tend to go on with my cycle of mistakes.  At rare times it does change me and I acquire a new cycle of mistakes.  I don't know how anyone can effectively get me to culture a pearl.  Nor anyone who would have the patience to coax one out of me.  The fact is, the prospect of living with someone neater than me would mean changing those habits forever.  My mom learned to clean when she had to, also to cook and to manage time when she had to work around a girl.  I think children bend your inflexible will and habits to their schedule because you don't want to starve them and you want them to live and thrive.  Children may bend your ugly inner traits too.  Is the shaming stare of a man looking at a strategically arranged pile in your empty living room enough?  He may not easily understand that you arranged the box, the router, and the coats strategically to make the living room less empty because it's without furniture.

I examine the multiple parts of how to become a better, more comely woman.  Because they are the categorical components of another woman, hence I self reflect and reflect on the concept of a woman intellectually, rather than slowly becoming a better version of myself.  I examine them now, I don't know how I slid by before, dressing like Juno, wearing sometimes the same clothes if I had an essay due, procrastinating on laundry, painting my own nails and that rarely, not always folding my clothes, not having a flattering haircut, wearing glasses, having crushes, resenting people.  Men seem to have a mythical idea of a woman's preparations and ablutions, we sprinkle ourselves with fairy mist and salt, we shower three times a day and douche our armpits.  We get our hair did every other week and are so much cleaner than men.  I always believed that beautifully maintained women are high maintenance women, much of whose time and wherewithal goes into maintaining themselves and researching ways to preserve themselves.  Women who listen, women who steer away from or steer around certain topics that cause unnecessary fights, that provide the food and necessaries when their men are grumpy or sick or rendered childish and sullen by some problem.  Women who work to keep relationships going by staying fresh and avoiding pratfalls expertly, suggesting ideas that men take as their own, being light, fun, quiet, and never nagging.  I'm not good at woman stuff, neither the self maintenance of makeup, hair, having a style, nor the being fun and agreeable, the cooking, the cleaning, the making a nurturing and agreeable home.  I'm barely good at the personal abilities of being articulate, succeeding at a job, advancing my own life, making professors notice, interacting with children.  My virtues are personal, not bullet poitns that make me a "ware" on a men's "market." 

The truth is that my early 20s were dedicated to the first three dates, perceiving dating as a "market," picking those three outfits, moving from trying to form myself to them or please them to refusing to be molded and taking a stand.  I resented perceiving myself as a "ware," I saw the preferences of the opposite sex with the clarity of bitter stereotype that exists for a reason, the opposite sex spoke in concise take downs that aren't wrong (as they tend to do), that maybe "off the market" 40 year olds who disdained them in their 20s would beg for the "nice guy" later.  

Being inflexible only takes me so far.  Time together, longer time, requires molding, change, variety, "keeping it fresh," which requires violating or stepping across my things that I don't like, wearing uncomfortable clothing, doing stuff I find silly and some degrading... but requesting stuff of men they might not like.  The fact that I can't cook or clean or dress becomes a wear on them, the fact that I'm jealous, verbose, negative, judgmental, fond of risque jokes based on stereotypes.  Not good at the molding and morphing that requires two people to flow through obstacles, but the clinging to the present that makes being fun and light and quiet in a way that only takes the moment into account impossible.  Just what am I skating across?

The strong pull of outside validation.  Of outside rejection.  The very seeking of which is something that men ridicule as the sign of women with "issues," "sluts," "damaged goods," "the fat women who sit on the sidelines," etc.  As if they don't seek a more outward looking version of the same thing. 

Having the same ways of a "child" or someone who hasn't stepped into the routine performance of a "woman."  Finding what works, what doesn't, but for sure having a daintier and more fastidious routine than our more and more feminine men.  I haven't gone through the rituals of adulthood that women have done, when did playing with makeup become a varied spackling routine?  Not that I ever played with it, but my routine is still not perfected.  

The women, the perfectly beautiful, dewy, gracious, youthful women who deflect lots of unwanted attention gracefully are vulnerable and targets.  Of masculine ego and hatred and spittle when their lust isn't fulfilled, they're vulnerable and fragile and out there with their come hither, quiet beauty with no one to protect them.  Who wants to invite unwanted attention? 

I allowed myself to watch another movie about New York's once gritty party life, Last Days of Disco.  I don't know why I torture myself with the past reflection of something gritty, real, when New York's ancient architecture was filled with something meaningful.  Luc Sante refuses to live here now.  The bygone exclusive, artistic, dangerous party era means little to most of my friends, they romanticize other things and understand but don't relate.  Actual New Yorkers say, "Yes it's gone, I miss it, you missed it, it ain't coming back... New York is always changing."  And I say, "Very well, when will my movement come?"  These movies are typically not set in New York, but in Vancouver or blurred.  Fashion continues a certain creative edge and apparently women like Cat still have enough connections to smoke angel dust on some Union Square roof.  I used to more be in the right place at the right time, catch different parties, be part of a mock version of a quickening current, the feeling of a new time beginning.  The stagnant hipster pool of 2006 to 2008 felt never ending, New York becoming more gentrified, sanitized, appearing not to the adventurous life, but the adventurous palette, I thought it would never end.  A slow decay as what is happening now, when the edgiest goings on are the weather and the economy, I wait for artistic talents and circles to emerge and find a way to be part of what I skipped for most generations.  We were raised in a cushioned world, a decent economic era and find ourselves both without a real scene and unable to deal.  The real things I want now seem to preclude nightlife, a real career, a real job, a real relationship, etc.  And men tend not to romanticize night music.  The real things I want seem to preclude catching and flowing with the electrified current, which depends on looks, finding the right friends, and power in numbers.  The Wackness is a movie most people hate, but it is a crossroads between the sanitizing and gentrifying New York and the emerging golden age of hip hop which would beautifully memorialize the real danger and sexuality of parts of New York still too gritty for people with small children like me at the time to visit.

I drank my dose of that music, as a child I saw mesmerized by it, I was too little to seek the scene of the mysterious dark music, but I loved to follow the rap and alternative going on.  I am resentful of going through a place whose buildings both are the memory of innumerable recent changes and have nothing now going on, slowly scaling a cliff until the penury and difficulty will force us to band together, form a community, and become more creative, or maybe I'm snoozing on movements already going on. 

I am narrow minded in my thinking.  Debate tends not to work on me because I cling defensively to my opinions.   I fight for my generalizations, and defend.  I sideways attack because somehow i feel "gaslit."  Part of the reason I draw lines or make judgments is that I see things, a recurring pattern and I don't want to sugar coat it by saying that "no two people are the same."  When people retract what they told me and tell me I'm generalizing about them, I feel gaslit because they're lying to me.

 I chase my own tale tail and defend my half baked opinions because I'm mad, but also they have more than a sizable grain kernel of truth.  I think I'm fighting through a fog and ultimately fighting

myself.  The term gaslighting came up. I feel like the idea that "everyone is different, no two people are the same" can frequently be gaslighting for someone observing and remarking on a pattern in human life. It diffuses any attempt to draw parallels between people.  To categorize, describe, synthesize, and cut apart, to explain what we see in people.  

I tend to hold on to these opinions until they're wrested from me because I never get to the point where I deepen or test them.  I simply keep describing and defining them without a structure.  The introductory paragraph without the middle that moves the story along.  Deconstruction is what I'll blame for this because the half baked way deconstruction was imported in my school was that terms are rehashed but not defined in  their beginning continuously, and never accepted to a point where they can be used and a story moved along.  I.e. That neighborhood was sketchy.  What does that mean?  What is sketchy?  How is that bound up in our institutionalized dialogue?  What is a neighborhood?  Have you read bell hooks?  You don't have the right to use that word.  On and on.  The argument stalls in its beginning stages.  This is a crime.  No one's mind gets past square one.   

Whenever I state an opinion I'm angry in advance.  No matter what.  Because the first sentence will be challenged.  The beginning principles, the fact that I made a generalization or a definition challenges people who do not immediately and facilly start a story with undefined terms immediately, but hash over the beginning because their terms don’t deserve to be taken at face value.  This is our education.  To consider all things that are PC.  

I fight in a deluded way, swiping with my eyes closed.  I refuse to let the alpha dog get to my mind.  In my mind I can rewrite the story right?  But this in itself is lying about history which is EXECRABLE TO ME.  The only way to fight to grow ones ideas is to develop them in writing, then have them critiqued and force them to move past square one.  To listen and slowly ingest the criticism.  Then decide if it's correct when not drunk on defensive emotions.  

And it's hard to pull me out of my narrow mindset.  It may be making me stupid or deluded. 

I'm mad all the time.  I think that a professor would get me for my half baked arguments and ideas but no one's here to check me.  To expand my mind.  Who wants to go through life believing in a falsity?  To be glib and sophomoric?  Without knowing that they are?  The big fish in the small town, the "'realll nice writah," says one's aunt while doing needlepoint.  

Fighting through a fog of one's own ideas is pitiable.  Without having emerged with a goal, without having emerged with insight or truth.  It's possible to never bring an idea to fruition and reach truth.  This means bringing it through a middle paragraph and end crisis.  To test the idea against itself and others.  One can live perpetually deluded, in a pink fog.  I can and do.  The minute I start elaborating an idea I'm in my comfortable place.  It is never challenged in a way I can't foresee.  One can spend life unenlightened.  Untested by wise critics.  Sitting in one's own juices without anyone alerting them to the state of things.  This is the way with talent that doesn't get tested.  Who in the small town is going to tell their only writer he is glib and has to know to develop?  

I don't think truth comes from debate.  Not when either person clings to their opinions.  Truth can arise from discussion.  Debate is an argument, a verbal fight.  The winner can leave feeling like their appendage got really hard.  Or call me an "emotional" girl.  I'm a sore loser.  In hand to hand combat.  A fight dirty.  One who is accustomed to feeling emasculated by fighting in honorable combat and losing.  Women can feel emasculated.  As two dogs in the park, puffing out their chests to see which is dominant.  The A dog wins and the B dog honorably removes himself but with humans it's more chaotic.  The B dog can delude himself or covertly undermine the A dog or simmer and wait for revenge and never get over it.  The A dog can boil over.  Denial powerfully copes against stark defeat, denial, isolation, and reworking the story.  Becoming drunk on reliving and repositioning events.  Epiphanies are cheap, they are tacked on to the ends of 20 minute episodes like SATC where every break up ends in an epiphany.  Relationships are broken less than a character learns something that will later be proven useless to him.  Jack Donaghy thinks he provides a solution in every other 30 R episode, epiphanies appear longer than lasting relationships, thus insight is cheap on television, the one solution, the magic bullet is repeatedly revised.  Relationships are entered into rapturously, like the "happy ending" of star crossed lovers in Golden Age 1940s movie, both kissing ferociously with their mouths closed and necks wrinkling.  Yet, the raison d'etre of the relationship, what each liked about the other, what keeps it moving, this is not allowed to be developed.  A couple is not allowed to stay together and grow.  But, damned if a character isn't moved to learn a disparate thing every episode!  What brought the two together, what were their separate worlds like and what brought the two to meet?  How do they survive on a daily basis and their union still stands?  These questions aren't answered as much as a character making a conclusion about their life direction based on the events of the day.  I don't think this is realistic, other than someone driven to find stereotypical "self help" and "purpose" in their life, I meet few people who have an epiphany a day.  The epiphany is true and precious.  It is approached with the integrity of wanting to find the truth and being willing to discard an idea if it is false.  This is mental integrity and philosophical integrity. 

The idea that we may be fighting ourselves through the fog is a fascinating one.  The topic must move, it must move toward resolution, insight the petit enlightenment.  Critics may hold value because they jolt us out of our own perspective, of our own movie that we set up about our work, our own narrative.  Having only one's own opinions to go by has a potentially drunk effect.  I remember that when I would be stuck in a string of thoughts, soundtracked by a song in my head, a movie with a different storyline had a potentially sobering effect.  Perhaps generalizations would tell me that women don't act this way or that men who are estranged from their families must be avoided.  Little jokes like those on Mindy's show.  Jokes that reference deeply held generalizations.  Like the episode in which she tries to sleep with someone she has diametrically different ideas from and doesn't respect so she doesn't get attached.  Or Meg's scene at Katz's.  Sometimes I'm shocked that televised rules of behavior are so far from what I've known.

How to combat narrow mindedness?  How to get to the correct, the true idea and not be deluded for the rest of one's life?  Intuition?  Maybe being deluded, but alive (which is true) isn't so bad?  The truth may be more shocking than we know.  Maybe the arrogant wrongheadedness of a college sophomore isn't so bad.  Battling for my opinions against people who know more than me.  Maybe we have to be more gentle with ourselves as the truth is unconcealed.  The people that know view our divided ideas with a kind pity.  A compassion and love and wrongheadedness.  When we get it we'll shit bricks right?

The key takeaway today from my friend is that I need to structure my writing.  My friend says find which thoughts and sentences work well together, and in what order they are at their most riveting

My tea has roses in it.  The truth may be more shocking than what we know. 

Treating Happiness As A Goal Does Not Work

I was watching the last episode of 30 Rock, my favorite show, which I don't even know I want to talk about.  But Jack's goal oriented, strategic approach to gaining his own happiness made me think.  In art as well as business, the process is streamlining a plan toward a goal, removing the extraneous, and making the path easier to achieve that goal, analyzing, refining, and moving in a targeted way to add to a check box.  I understand this in terms of segmentation.  For instance, a campaign for a particular product is one goal in a series of goals to boost profit margin.  The analytics team's complex task is to review the past strategy and its success against predictors, examine the current market of customers and refine the attributes of possible responders, refine the attributes of a new campaign or who gets offered what, test a campaign for those responders with a control, send it out, and then check the lift of their segmentation.  If this customer segmentation is successful, there is a higher profit margin for the particular campaign and product.  However, the product still has to be refined.  There have to be strategies to stay on top and diversify.  In other words, analyze, strategize, and succeed only checks off one success in the continued success of one or the other brand in its competition against others.  One has to A.S.S. again.  The creating, strategizing, and overcoming of goals is satisfying during the process and at the resolution, particularly in a high pressure workplace, but happiness peaks once the goal is achieved and another has to be set.  In this sense, one who thrives on overcoming diverse challenges in a strategic way thrives in the workplace due to testing their capability and continually proving themselves able.  The artist similarly refines whatever product they are producing, there is the planning of a new project, the process, the result, and further refining.  The drive to create and perfect is torturous because it continues despite achievement and the creation of even a perfect product.  The goal is to refine one's art until one achieves what is wanted, but the artist is defined by their continuous process of creation, therefore the refining never ends and the artist is not happy in simply achieving their goal.

I read articles on lifehacker that provide a streamlined approach to achieving happiness, ticking off check boxes, "thinking outside the box" or repositioning one's thinking.  An article volunteers removing distraction, adding organization, removing work one's unhappy about, thinking about one's life in a different way, taking hold of riskier projects, tweaking, rotating, kerning.  I don't know if a targeted, goal oriented approach is the way to achieve happiness because if one views life in a goal oriented way, in taking certain actions to achieve happiness, the satisfaction after achieving a goal fades rather quickly.  A Type A approach to happiness is similar to a hyper regimented approach to eating, trying to "win at life" structures it into a series of initiatives with strategy, self status meetings, next steps, onboarding, and whatever else, it can be as execrable as a personal brand.  I strongly believe that regimenting one's eating, something that involves pleasure, society, and adventure, into a series of numbers, quotas, or something based one having one's body look a certain way warps eating to a form of control that may lead to an eating disorder.  As an activity that is bound up not just with family, friendship, and culture, but emotion, sensual pleasure, and broadening one's horizons, eating merits a certain degree of disorder, spontaneity, abundance, and enjoyment.  When one structures one's "happiness" to literally, it is placed on a grid or pie chart as the case may be.  The life conforms to a structured outline and is subsumed by a graph.  I think that spontaneity, mess, idleness, failure, and creativity is required, a breather from the structure of constantly winning and snapping at happiness is required in order for life not to become a drawn out campaign initiative.  Minimalism is a targeted process of removing the extraneous from one's life to achieve happiness, it's currently popular and may be overdone.  Recreational assumption of any of a suite of philosophies native to India such as yoga and Buddhist philosophy does not fully respect the deep cultural context this comes from and is tantamount to cherry picking.  As I understand, Buddhism takes into account the acceptance and understanding of the full reality of the present moment and the pain of desiring and the various ways the ego expects it to be something else.  Such a path toward happiness is not easy, nor is happiness necessarily the goal. 

I think that happiness is a byproduct of achieving other goals.  Subsuming one's other duties in favor of achieving a temporary emotional state is not the way to achieve happiness.  All the acquisitive, creative, process or goal related things that are supposed to give us happiness or even statistically make us happy, may not, the right job, love, marriage, children, and I think children make life complicated, but in the process of sacrificing, of making the children the goal rather than the achievement of happiness, a segment of us is happy, that was the segment that lived for ourselves, that subsumed none of our desires for others, or the segment that provided service to a well oiled corporate machine, service that was not necessarily constructed, but built in an efficient way to bolster the bottom line at the least.  I think humans recognize a discomfort as they violate certain basic choices in favor of other responsibilities, especially during their non on the clock time, whether those are sleep, dinner, using their free time the way they want, or not reading emails at 6 in the morning to prepare to put out any fires the next day.  If this is in service of their update of a presentation or the big pitch to a potential client to help them convince the American populace to buy their unhealthy grub, it may be less of a meaningful service than the care and maintenance of their child, whose link to oneself due to love is intrinsically motivating, more than a significant other who we build a relationship with out of compatibility, compromise, and chemistry.  Ideally, the goals and work we achieve should be satisfying, to be satisfying, they have to be externally oriented, other oriented, service oriented, to be specific.


Any achieved goal that is particularly satisfying and meaningful is done in service.  We are driven to other-oriented action, we are shored up by it, and it gives us a more lasting kick of satisfaction when we achieve an other-oriented goal.  Whether we are driven to love our significant other or immediate family, to create art, to communicate, to extend our spiritual reach and broadcast knowledge, to make the world habitable for others, to advise and shore up (had a little help from a little certain wheel there), I know that people are driven by different things.  I also do not think that the answer to happiness is to maximize our other-oriented action in a quantifiable way.  I think the answer is to be slapshod about happiness, to let go of the idea of moving toward a faraway goal of happiness and focusing on other achievements, just as we are not goal oriented about friendship or family.  The friendship between Liz and Jack Donaghy progresses naturally and in a free form way as they play around with the sources of their happiness, the sources of their dissatisfaction, and their countless epiphanies of possible solutions of how those are shot down.  The communication of friendship and the bond requires no rote series of hoops like dating, it requires little impression other than growing to tolerate and support each other, it is very goalless unless we find that we are no longer making friends as easily, then friend dating gets awkward.  Friendship is oddly goalless in this example, two people simply going through life changes together and trying to support.  Happiness can be outside the realm of goals, too. 


At the same time, I know that living without challenging oneself, without creating and producing with the desire to fulfill a goal will not make you happy.  It will put you in a stagnant place.  I am not happy when idle.  While idleness apparently breeds creativity, an excess of idleness feels purposeless and leads to depression.  Each person is an instrument for the possible larger benefit of other beings.  This benefit can be oblique.  Working toward this benefit is satisfying.  The corporation that is large and successful is a machine with varied cogs and an inner structure with little excess or a program to trim the excess that is not related to achieving its goals.

All these tips people give about rising in the office, achieving their "personal brand," and growing up and not being so entitled are simply about becoming more of a honed, sharp instrument for another's goals.  For instance, we are meant to be both detail and big picture oriented in the job, to succeed and be promoted we must be leaders, take on more responsibility to be indispensable, think like an entrepreneur (act like we own the company, which we don't, and have personal investment in it and think of more ideals to drive them forward).  This is in service of taking up as many possible functions, to be small and big picture oriented, to be the ideal leader and the ideal follower, to work well under pressure and to also structure one's time planning forward during lulls, to be an entrepreneur and a team player in someone else's company, to thirst to learn but require no resources to do it, to be a one man band and require nothing, but give everything.  This is a worker who succeeds.  One who is instrumental, who is all instruments to the point of being a one man band.  If one is to perfect the craft of being instrumental, to know their businesses needs and fulfill as many as possible, one needs to be satisfied with the machine that they are a tool in.  One must be throwing oneself into working toward the correct goal.  If the purpose of putting in all this energy to be indispensable is to put food on the table and make money, then the dislike of the end goal will bring cognitive dissonance and discomfort.  You are moving in concert with others toward a goal, you must want to go where you are moving with such great energy.  Vague dissatisfaction is common when you are not liking the goal you're working toward, if you don't like being a criminal lawyer or tax assessor or in my case an analyst who tries to get a fast food restaurant chain more money. 

I think the personal brand is the saddest attempt toward full instrumentality.  Off the clock, our private life is our own, and as disorganized as we want it, in service of divergent goals, whether the sensual like going out to eat or drink, or directly instrumental like being with our kids.  The personal brand regiments the hobbies, internet presence, and side projects of one person outside the work place to fully sell their work persona, with no fat like drinking photos, etc.  One does not have the freedom of one's private life because one's off the clock time becomes a tool for personal advancement, whether to hone the personality as a jewelry designing, cartoonist, web designing, life coach renaissance man whose personalities are united on one's blog, or to be a super Consultant, day and night.  Each word and descriptor is chosen carefully.  I understand that one's internet life is not fully private, but when did it come to this?  To subordinate one's personal life to the advancement of one's career goals?

My advice for happiness is to neither be slapshod nor goal oriented in the pursuit of happiness.  Riches, fame, ham, artistic talent, entrepreneurial risk taking, most of this success thrives on the unhappiness of constantly going toward the next thing.  In the situation of the great talent, there has to be deep resignation for the being unhappy for the rest of your life.  Monomania may breed greatness, but unhappiness as well.  Perfect organization or treating one's life as something you can hack with tips becomes an obsession, an overfocusing on the day to day, a way to consume one's life without taking the time to produce an external product in service.  This is why I think life coaches are often crazy.  People who went through pain to pitch a style of life, to turn a lens on their life and make it something to be analyzed and theorized about.  To not let the frayed ends stay.  To not allow for vague malaise or moments of happiness.  There is not a perfect life, I don't think, my idea of a good life is one where there is room for dreams and imagination, one where the next turn around the bend is mysterious because I don't yet have the yacht and the bitches.  I think the guy with the yacht and bitches, Jay Z, is extremely hard working, risk taking, and goal oriented, to the point of not ever being on that yacht, and Beyonce apparently catalogues every appearance she's ever been in.  This level of success requires constant, dogged professionalism, which makes moments of happiness and leisure as we hoi polloi see them or our image of their lives as a great Cristal and love fest be far from the countless hours in the studio, them asking and demanding to stay the longest to get a hook right.  Treating the ideal life as something to be won with pig headed pursuit means that when we get it, we are a person whose character is one of constant pursuit.  Thus the build of the process and the high of the goal has to just keep on going, with the goal becoming larger and more momentous, until we reach our final goal and find that we still aren't happy.  The marriage of A.S.S. in one's work life and the amorphous bond of friendship in one's personal life.  This is when we realize that we love business, we love to strategize, and we love Liz Lemon.