I have a flip-floppy relationship with cars. Growing up in the suburbs, yes, all car all the time. Mom chauffered us faithfully, in a series of Chevy station wagons (our family also has terrible luck with cars; due to thefts and accidents, we've gone through cars like most people go through shoes). But then, in the 9th grade, I was off to boarding school; so no car for me, no teenage joy rides or tailgate parties (in fact, although I grew up in the Washington, DC area, I know my way around about 5 other cities, including Paris and Joahnnesburg, better than DC, because I never lived there as a driving or adult being).
College and a few years extra in New York City. Again no car. Then, a move to Seattle, and I learned, at the ripe old age of 23, how to drive. I mean, I knew how to drive; but I really became a driving person, a person who finds her way around a place by car (and parallel parks in a stick-shift on steep inclines). And also learned about cars themselves, about repair costs and insurance, about all-wheel drive, and about gas prices and oil consumption.
Back to NYC. Back to the glorious bargain that is the NYC MTA unlimited metro pass, back to wonderful, dense, environmentally-friendly pedestrian life.
Then, the big life bust-up, i.e. city-country commuting. So now, me and my car, my '95 Saturn with manual everything and 177k miles on it, worth well-less than the insurance premium I pay and certainly much less than the repair work that's gone into it; we are like this.
Today, day two in the country, a quick overnighter, arrived yesterday about noon, heading back later this evening. I don't often do this - zip out for less than 48 hours - but my family trip displaced my normal stay, and it's hot and dry, and things need tending to out here. Plus, the truth is, the driving is not taxing, it is the opposite; long-distance driving is very restorative, it is peace time, it is quiet and thinking time, it is book-on-tape and music-fill-my-head (chasing out stressful and tangled thoughts and replacing them with rhythm and beat and movement) time. Weirdly - and I suppose this says something about me - I am never more at rest than when I am in transit.
And sometimes, like yesterday, the drive is particularly fruitful. I conducted some business by cell phone. I listened to the news to catch up on current events, and then to several chapters of a book I am enjoying. And then, because for whatever reason my mind felt open and rested and fertile, a feast - a veritable cornucopia of ideas related to the novel I am writing and another book which is germinating - came pouring forth. And now this is where the driving gets a little scary. These thoughts and words and gems needed to be jotted down. I am on the highway, I am reaching over to my bag and fishing for a piece of paper (WHY don't I carry a small notebook with me?), I fish and rummage and find a pen but no paper, I start writing cryptic acronyms on my hand, trusting that I will remember what they stand for; but my hand is kind of warm and sweaty, so this isn't really working. I reach over and fish around some more, I find a receipt which I flip over, to write on the back. I am also having to downshift, because now I am in a construction zone, and the lanes have narrowed, there are orange cones to one side of me and a concrete construction wall to the other, I am shifting and writing and breaking and this is really not such a good idea, but oh well... you do what you gotta do.
I am of course ambivalent about all this driving, all this fuel. But my Saturn gets 35 miles per gallon, which makes me quite happy; and a full tank costs me about $25 these days, gets me to the country and back just about twice. It could be worse. And, once I'm here, I'm here. The car pretty much sits, except for the occasional run to the General Store for sundries or the paper. At any rate, I drive now. And if my car were a person, I think it (she?) would be a pretty happy person, someone who feels stretched to her limits and fulfilling her purpose - responsibly, and with gusto.
Showing posts with label Suburban Excursion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Suburban Excursion. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
It's a Dirty Life
Today was cleaning/organization day in the Bronx. J. came home last night with a truck-full of Ikea storage units. The piles of clutter had gotten out of hand, to the point where the pile-areas were beginning to outnumber the actual functional areas (bed, table, couch), and the place was beginning to resemble the sorting warehouse for a Salvation Army Thrift Store. It was one of those days where once you get started, you just keep going: we washed windows, scrubbed countertops, wiped down bookshelves, rearranged the contents of cabinets, vacuumed...
It's funny, this sudden dose of Northern European orderliness, especially on the heels of my suburban excursion. I wouldn't say that I am a particularly clean person, or adept at housekeeping - I am not one of those a-place-for-everything type of people (and have been known to grow hot with envy when I enter the abode, work space, or automobile, of someone who is - how do they do it?). But as a result of my suburban upbringing, a certain immaculate newness is more familiar to me than not - new homes, brightly-lit supermarkets with strictly-organized aisles of perfect produce, clean streets and well-manicured lawns, shiny new cars. The suburban life is rooted in this culture of well-maintainedness, and people spend their time and money to uphold it; it's second nature, and a kind of communal contract.
City life and country life, on the other hand, are both pretty dirty. In the Bronx especially, but also in Manhattan and Brooklyn where I've lived in the past, visitors from other places notice it immediately: the air is dirty, your hands are always dirty (the other reason I feel bad about my hands: I probably wash them four or five times/day), the subway stations, the streets, your apartment windowsill and pretty much every exposed surface. At some point, you relent, you accept the dirt, your relationship with it becomes more about health than appearance, i.e. you clean because you don't want to get sick, not because you want your wine glasses to sparkle.
In the country of course, dirt is where you are. We're in red shale land where I am, and the dust is everywhere. In warmer weather, you're in and out of the house constantly, tending to the yard or walking the dog, so dirt tracks in and out with you (I have become a dirt-under-your-fingernails kind of gal, and I've just sort of given in). And of course, there are the spiderwebs and insect carcasses. My pup came down out of the woods once with a deer hoof in his jaws.
Wow, you should see the place: we are orderly, we rock! The clutter is out of sight, things are folded and placed neatly on shelves. We can see the surface of the dining table! Who knew it was such nice wood. It's like something out of Real Simple, a before and after story.
Speaking of which, a friend of mine bought me a gift subscription last year. It's regular bathroom reading in the country (J. even reads it, cover to cover). I'd say it's one of those guilty pleasures, but in fact it's more like a guilty torture: it occurred to me one day that all those "helpful hints" and "problem solvers" are really more like reminders of things that I guess I am supposed to be worried about but that I would never think of in the first place. Oh my God, is that how you get stains out of the sink? Oh my God, am I supposed to be getting all the stains out of my sink?
Cleaning has always felt to me like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill. The minute you clean it, it's dirty again. Life is always unraveling, and we're always working to reorder it. Dirt accrues. Entropy. Glorious nature. I try to remember that dust is really my own skin. But cleaning is also in nature, I guess - cats, birds, etc. I wonder what the "standard" for cleanliness really should be, if there is a should? What would the cats and the birds tell us if they could? I sometimes think we should just do the best we can do with a broom, a dustpan, a rag, and a bucket of sudsy water - and leave it at that. If it's good enough for the farm wife or the pioneer woman, it's good enough for me (dysentery and cholera notwithstanding).
In the end, it's really about vantage point, isn't it? Up close vs. far away? From where I'm sitting, this place looks pretty clean; but if I get up into the nooks and crevices with my magnifying glass...
I am reminded now of a particularly affecting story of Mary Gordon's called "City Life," about a woman living in filth in her NYC apartment, a kind of exploration of the existential state of dirty-ness. Well worth the read.
It's funny, this sudden dose of Northern European orderliness, especially on the heels of my suburban excursion. I wouldn't say that I am a particularly clean person, or adept at housekeeping - I am not one of those a-place-for-everything type of people (and have been known to grow hot with envy when I enter the abode, work space, or automobile, of someone who is - how do they do it?). But as a result of my suburban upbringing, a certain immaculate newness is more familiar to me than not - new homes, brightly-lit supermarkets with strictly-organized aisles of perfect produce, clean streets and well-manicured lawns, shiny new cars. The suburban life is rooted in this culture of well-maintainedness, and people spend their time and money to uphold it; it's second nature, and a kind of communal contract.
City life and country life, on the other hand, are both pretty dirty. In the Bronx especially, but also in Manhattan and Brooklyn where I've lived in the past, visitors from other places notice it immediately: the air is dirty, your hands are always dirty (the other reason I feel bad about my hands: I probably wash them four or five times/day), the subway stations, the streets, your apartment windowsill and pretty much every exposed surface. At some point, you relent, you accept the dirt, your relationship with it becomes more about health than appearance, i.e. you clean because you don't want to get sick, not because you want your wine glasses to sparkle.
In the country of course, dirt is where you are. We're in red shale land where I am, and the dust is everywhere. In warmer weather, you're in and out of the house constantly, tending to the yard or walking the dog, so dirt tracks in and out with you (I have become a dirt-under-your-fingernails kind of gal, and I've just sort of given in). And of course, there are the spiderwebs and insect carcasses. My pup came down out of the woods once with a deer hoof in his jaws.
Wow, you should see the place: we are orderly, we rock! The clutter is out of sight, things are folded and placed neatly on shelves. We can see the surface of the dining table! Who knew it was such nice wood. It's like something out of Real Simple, a before and after story.
Speaking of which, a friend of mine bought me a gift subscription last year. It's regular bathroom reading in the country (J. even reads it, cover to cover). I'd say it's one of those guilty pleasures, but in fact it's more like a guilty torture: it occurred to me one day that all those "helpful hints" and "problem solvers" are really more like reminders of things that I guess I am supposed to be worried about but that I would never think of in the first place. Oh my God, is that how you get stains out of the sink? Oh my God, am I supposed to be getting all the stains out of my sink?
Cleaning has always felt to me like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill. The minute you clean it, it's dirty again. Life is always unraveling, and we're always working to reorder it. Dirt accrues. Entropy. Glorious nature. I try to remember that dust is really my own skin. But cleaning is also in nature, I guess - cats, birds, etc. I wonder what the "standard" for cleanliness really should be, if there is a should? What would the cats and the birds tell us if they could? I sometimes think we should just do the best we can do with a broom, a dustpan, a rag, and a bucket of sudsy water - and leave it at that. If it's good enough for the farm wife or the pioneer woman, it's good enough for me (dysentery and cholera notwithstanding).
In the end, it's really about vantage point, isn't it? Up close vs. far away? From where I'm sitting, this place looks pretty clean; but if I get up into the nooks and crevices with my magnifying glass...
I am reminded now of a particularly affecting story of Mary Gordon's called "City Life," about a woman living in filth in her NYC apartment, a kind of exploration of the existential state of dirty-ness. Well worth the read.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
The Suburbs & I Make Peace
Now that's an orchid. My mother has a knack for them, it seems.
We go on a mission to Target, to pick up a trunk-full of diapers for my sister. Most all the commerical areas nearby are different, but the same, from what I remember. "Did this used to be Wheaton Plaza?" I ask my mother. The answer is yes, now it goes by some other name, a corporate conglomerate that has bought and renamed most of the shopping malls in the area. The Target is new - newish. I guess it's all old now, I haven't lived here for over 20 years.
My mother tells me that this shopping mall is now a little "scary." Asian and Latino gangs, apparently. I am reminded about the other side of suburban communities: the immigrants, the poor. My mother has just told me that "anywhere there are still rental apartments" (everything has turned condo), you have new immigrants and the poor - and a prevalence of violence and crime. At least the sort of crime you hear about on the evening news. She lists off a few isolated neighborhoods here and there to illustrate, and a few recent incidents. I ask my mother why these groups settle in the area, especially given the increasing unavailability of affordable housing. "Jobs," she says. Right. There are so many amenities here for the wealthy, someone has to fill out the service sector: housekeepers and nannies, grocery stockers and baggers, landscapers, waiters and busboys and dishwashers. They come for the jobs, but there's nowhere for them to live.
My father is a physician. He came, too, as an immigrant, having pulled himself up by some pretty tattered bootstraps (in fact, as a child, his family sometimes did not have money for shoes), but he came with professional skills, at a time when doctors were in great need, so it was easy to get the necessary work visa. Because of some psychological and social skill issues, my father could never work well with others, so he set up a private practice (managed by mom, who has super-duper social skills). These same issues, along with an inherent racism (stronger back then than now) towards a foreign doctor with a thick accent, landed him practicing in one of these poor, apartment-full areas, almost exlusively African American (the immigrants came in waves later).
I share all this mostly to remind myself that the suburbs are a complicated environment, despite the neat-and-tidy surfaces, the sheen of perfection that sometimes suffocates me when I visit. The time I spend with my family - every few months, a few days at a time - is usually tense, fraught with the discomfort of my having made life decisions so far outside their scope of understanding, their world. To them, suburban life - the neatness, the put-togetherness, the stability and path-of-least-resistanceness - are everything a solid adult person should strive for. Why would anyone pursue - or claim to thrive in - difficulty, or messiness, of any kind? It troubles them. More and more, as I get older, and as my life evolves in a less and less conventional way. My father, I think, is even a little afraid of me. They are not sure how to speak to me, what to talk about, who this strange woman is who once was their comprehensible (if a bit moody) daughter; and I am not very good anymore at keeping smooth surfaces intact, at smiling pretty for the sake of it.
But something occurs to me as I am driving back to New York. The drive back is usually a time of decompression for me, a great relief, easier breathing, a kind of deep and wide happiness unfolding. I am returning now to my life. It's not that I dislike my family; on the contrary, I love them, and ultimately respect them, deeply. Still, there are people you love better from a distance, and for now, this is the case with me and my family. What I think about is how easy it would be to assume that what they want from me is capitulation and conformity; that they want me to be neat and tidy, stable and "normal," just for the sake of appearances. It would be easy to underestimate them in this way, and to grow defensive and angry.
But really, what they want, what I know in my heart they want, is for me to be truly, deeply well, in every way (and what I want for them, too, by the way). And because I want this too, because I know in my gut that I am pursuing deep wellness in the way that makes the most sense for me, for the way I'm wired; I take comfort. The tension may always be there, and the sense of dissonance may only increase when we spend time together. But in the end, we all really do recognize and desire health and beauty: we want the orchid to live, to bloom, to flourish.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
That Thing We Don't Talk About
That would be money.
I am thinking about money more than ever these days; mostly because I have less of it than I've ever had. This is not a complaint, as my financial status is mostly a choice: I work freelance, and I work less than full-time, so that I can write and live part-time in the country and grow vegetables and be the mistress of my own hours. I consider thoroughly the distinction between need and want on an almost hourly basis, every time an urge or desire (which involves financial expense) arises. On a tight budget, the process by which an appetite or inclination churns through the need-or-want litmus test machinery becomes thorough, layered, and verging on existential. Why do I want this thing, and what is really essential to wellness, health, and goodness in this life?
[Case in point: I am here in the tidy, affluent suburbs visiting my sister (who has just had a baby). I am making coffee using her deluxe multi-function sleek black gold filter coffeemaker. I am thinking, This is cool, wow, this is a fun gadget. And then, I am thinking, Would I spend money on this? Would this make my life better than a $12 bare bones automatic? And the answer comes back clear and swift: nah.]
This may give the impression of an austere and white-knuckling existence of deprivation. Quite the contrary. In fact, I'd venture to say that while this is the least financially-bountiful time of my life, it is also the richest time of my life - in pleasure, challenge, and experience.
The draw to the city and the country for me I think are related to this - a particular relationship to material things, to the material world, which is different from the suburbs of my upbringing. Of course materialism is a global phenomonenon, not limited to any particular cultural environment these days. But in the city and the country, one is called upon to flex resourcefulness muscles in particularly intense ways: the farmer is the original DIY guy; and on a small income in a city like New York, you become a genius of creative survival and DIY pleasures.
In the country, we grow food from seed, we chop wood, we cut grass with used equipment, we do as much of our own house projects as possible (although as I've written, I am only slowly growing into all this), we walk, we swim, we browse yard sales, I bake, he grills, we hunt mushrooms, we sit on the porch and read or talk, I write, he thinks, we shovel snow and jog in the rain, we breathe into the backs of our lungs. Sometimes, we smoke a good cigar. We delve deeply into pleasure - a joy which comes from a certain measure of exertion - and minimally call upon entertainment, the sort of pleasure-like experience which is primarily passive (don't get me wrong, though; we do enjoy a good movie on DVD.) And we do it mostly without opening our wallets.
In the city, bargain-hunting and minimal living is truly life-as-art. Dumpster-diving (or "curbside recycling") is no joke, it is extreme interior design for the most ambitious beauty-lovers. Chinatown and the farmers' markets are complementary subsistence staples. Eating out on a regular basis is the middle-class NYer's financial Achilles Heel; we commit to the life of home-cooking, become intimate with the contents of the fridge (timely "repurposers" of that which is about to go south), and make serious use of the freezer (an $8 Puerto Rican breakfast out, thus, becomes an event, and a savored one). For the daily commuter, the unlimited 30-day metro pass is the World's Best Urban Bargain, and eco-friendly to boot.
I can't remember the last time I bought an article of clothing. And I can't remember the last time I missed it.
The rewards of the light footprint on the planet are indeed deep and wide; with less to spend, there is much to be gained. I realize that all this can smack of yuppie-crunchy hobby-tourism; with any luck, it's more than that, it's a real evolving life.
Yesterday, just before leaving the city for this visit to the suburbs, I found myself power-browsing the $1 book carts outside The Strand - that mecca of discount literature - on a somewhat strange mission. My sister had requested I bring a book or two, "something light" - literally, something she could hold in one hand while breastfeeding. The $1 book carts (throughout the city, not just Strand - let me recommend Housing Works Bookstore as well) are a beautiful, glorious thing. Some of my deepest, most lasting pleasures have been found on these carts - EL Doctorow's Ragtime, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth (Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses is a recent purchase awaiting me), and I left there with two promising, less-than-one-inch-wide paperbacks (Amy Bloom and Laurie Colwin), a $2.16 investment. The pleasure is in the exertion (if you are familiar with the claustrophobic chaos which is the Strand, you know my meaning) and in the discovery.
My sister and her husband are stressed about money. Between the two of them, they make what seems to me a goodly income. Sis and I do a pretty good job of letting one another live and let live, without judgment; although I suspect we each consider at times the impossibility of the other's true happiness. I can only say that this is my life now, waist-deep in the worlds of difficult pleasures, city and country, and thanks to any of you who take the time to read about it.
I am thinking about money more than ever these days; mostly because I have less of it than I've ever had. This is not a complaint, as my financial status is mostly a choice: I work freelance, and I work less than full-time, so that I can write and live part-time in the country and grow vegetables and be the mistress of my own hours. I consider thoroughly the distinction between need and want on an almost hourly basis, every time an urge or desire (which involves financial expense) arises. On a tight budget, the process by which an appetite or inclination churns through the need-or-want litmus test machinery becomes thorough, layered, and verging on existential. Why do I want this thing, and what is really essential to wellness, health, and goodness in this life?
[Case in point: I am here in the tidy, affluent suburbs visiting my sister (who has just had a baby). I am making coffee using her deluxe multi-function sleek black gold filter coffeemaker. I am thinking, This is cool, wow, this is a fun gadget. And then, I am thinking, Would I spend money on this? Would this make my life better than a $12 bare bones automatic? And the answer comes back clear and swift: nah.]
This may give the impression of an austere and white-knuckling existence of deprivation. Quite the contrary. In fact, I'd venture to say that while this is the least financially-bountiful time of my life, it is also the richest time of my life - in pleasure, challenge, and experience.
The draw to the city and the country for me I think are related to this - a particular relationship to material things, to the material world, which is different from the suburbs of my upbringing. Of course materialism is a global phenomonenon, not limited to any particular cultural environment these days. But in the city and the country, one is called upon to flex resourcefulness muscles in particularly intense ways: the farmer is the original DIY guy; and on a small income in a city like New York, you become a genius of creative survival and DIY pleasures.
In the country, we grow food from seed, we chop wood, we cut grass with used equipment, we do as much of our own house projects as possible (although as I've written, I am only slowly growing into all this), we walk, we swim, we browse yard sales, I bake, he grills, we hunt mushrooms, we sit on the porch and read or talk, I write, he thinks, we shovel snow and jog in the rain, we breathe into the backs of our lungs. Sometimes, we smoke a good cigar. We delve deeply into pleasure - a joy which comes from a certain measure of exertion - and minimally call upon entertainment, the sort of pleasure-like experience which is primarily passive (don't get me wrong, though; we do enjoy a good movie on DVD.) And we do it mostly without opening our wallets.
In the city, bargain-hunting and minimal living is truly life-as-art. Dumpster-diving (or "curbside recycling") is no joke, it is extreme interior design for the most ambitious beauty-lovers. Chinatown and the farmers' markets are complementary subsistence staples. Eating out on a regular basis is the middle-class NYer's financial Achilles Heel; we commit to the life of home-cooking, become intimate with the contents of the fridge (timely "repurposers" of that which is about to go south), and make serious use of the freezer (an $8 Puerto Rican breakfast out, thus, becomes an event, and a savored one). For the daily commuter, the unlimited 30-day metro pass is the World's Best Urban Bargain, and eco-friendly to boot.
I can't remember the last time I bought an article of clothing. And I can't remember the last time I missed it.
The rewards of the light footprint on the planet are indeed deep and wide; with less to spend, there is much to be gained. I realize that all this can smack of yuppie-crunchy hobby-tourism; with any luck, it's more than that, it's a real evolving life.
Yesterday, just before leaving the city for this visit to the suburbs, I found myself power-browsing the $1 book carts outside The Strand - that mecca of discount literature - on a somewhat strange mission. My sister had requested I bring a book or two, "something light" - literally, something she could hold in one hand while breastfeeding. The $1 book carts (throughout the city, not just Strand - let me recommend Housing Works Bookstore as well) are a beautiful, glorious thing. Some of my deepest, most lasting pleasures have been found on these carts - EL Doctorow's Ragtime, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth (Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses is a recent purchase awaiting me), and I left there with two promising, less-than-one-inch-wide paperbacks (Amy Bloom and Laurie Colwin), a $2.16 investment. The pleasure is in the exertion (if you are familiar with the claustrophobic chaos which is the Strand, you know my meaning) and in the discovery.
My sister and her husband are stressed about money. Between the two of them, they make what seems to me a goodly income. Sis and I do a pretty good job of letting one another live and let live, without judgment; although I suspect we each consider at times the impossibility of the other's true happiness. I can only say that this is my life now, waist-deep in the worlds of difficult pleasures, city and country, and thanks to any of you who take the time to read about it.
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