Hear What They See

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

sick day in hotel life

I went to day 2 of my week-long seminar and came back to hotel life by 11:24A. Headache and nails in the stomach. No signs of any kind of flu based on bodily functions, just intense pain in the head and belly. GAWD. I watched the boob tube for awhile. Schlocky HBO movies. Then I fell asleep and kept waking up because: housekeeping was vacuuming upstairs, a man paced back and forth in front of my window talking on a cell phone, a car peeled around the parking lot, a woman talked to another woman in the hall. Disjointed sleep, it's strange and kind of creepy. Twilit with a lack of memory and confusion about reality. My head hurt the entire time, even in sleep. I bought Advil at the front desk. The hotel life Advil comes in convenient pouches, 2 pills per pouch. And something I've never seen before: a drinking cup. Only it's not a drinking cup. It's a miniature envelope, the size of the ones your extra buttons come in when you buy a new blouse or skirt. But someone is making money, now, selling miniature envelopes as drinking cups. The text on it reads:

DRINKING CUP
ANOTHER
INNOVATIVE IDEA
FOR THE
"PEOPLE ON THE GO"

Mechanical
Servants, Inc.
Melrose Park, IL 60160

Mechanical Servants? Something Bladerunnery about that.

I used all the Advil and went to buy more, but I didn't use the INNOVATIVE IDEA drinking cup. My bottled water worked just fine. Interesting stuff, huh?

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I watched the State of the Union Address tonight. I don't have any commentary on it. I was neither impressed nor disgusted by what the president said. This book I'm reading by a former White House speechwriter shed some light on the whole process for me. So that's why I watched it. I wanted to hear a speech of today, wanted to hear what the speechwriters for Bush, what his aides, his staff, his administration, have to say. How they'd couch it, what they'd use. It'll piss off a bunch of people and it will have others rah-rahing in the streets. As it should be. That's what we're all about. Our bi-partisan mentalities, the splits between us. Human Nature. We will NEVER change that, and I find that immensely intriguing. What keeps us going? What keeps us in the spirit of our devotion, our idealism, our beliefs? It isn't what Bush says. It's what he either maintains or negates about those things we already hold dear. What he says in his State of the Union Address isn't really going to change anyone's mind. People will rally for Bush or Dean or Clark. They tear up as they watch the reruns of Gephardt announcing his withdrawal from the Democratic race. I looked at the faces of his daughters behind him, listening to their father choke up in front of colleagues, cameras, America, and when you look at people like that, the people upon whom the cameras are not focused, it gives you another view. It opens the curtains to window into a place you never could see before. I find that purer than words.

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I was reading Michael tonight. He wrote me an email that I read last night, which reminded me to go check up on him again. He was MIA for awhile. He's a blogger I still read. There's another too. She's less definable, less willing to be described and I'm not always certain what she's saying because she veils her words. But I still read them, the two of them. Michael wrote recently about words versus action, about how actions make a person more substantial, not in quite those words, but that was how I saw it.

But it got me to thinking. Because you know, I see a lot of people doing all kinds of actions. And they do them because they think they should or they've been required too or if they don't, there'll be hell to pay. All of those reasons pretty much boil down to the same thing: they HAVE to. If I want to be considered chic and hip, I have to look like Sarah Jessica Parker's character in Sex in the City (I've never seen Sex in the City, but I see the tabloid headlines in the queue at Safeway). If I want to be seen as successful, I must use a Montblanc pen. (sidebar: I was sitting in my meeting yesterday and I dropped my pen. It's Montblanc. It's nice, I bought it for myself a few years ago when I had a gift certificate for frivolous luxuries. I heard that a writer I admire used Mont Blancs to write - I thought it might rub off on me. Anyway, it's a resin base with a silver & gold cap and a platinum nib. I like the feel of a fountain pen when you have good ink. It dropped on the floor and this executive picks it up and says, "Nice pen." Checks it out, pulls out his own. His is a ballpoint Montblanc. "But yours has the silver cap." He jokingly made like he was putting it in his front shirt pocket. I know I rose in his estimation because I had a Montblanc friggin' pen. The thing is, I was relieved. And that bothers me. It also bothers me because I happen to like my pen and now I'm noticing that ALL the execs in my company are running around with ballpoint Montblancs. And now I feel like I'm sucking up to them. Which I guess I am. Because I'm not going to get rid of the pen. If I was a true champion of idealism, I'd chuck the pen and go buy a Bic. My only consolation is I use a fountain pen and that's much too fussy for an exec. Plus I know it cost a whole lot more. Mleah. end sidebar). Maybe my sidebar story actually illustrates what I'm trying to say here.

We often do things because we're motivated by forces outside of ourselves, forces that give credence to our actions without us ever questioning if those forces even know what they're talking about. There are always these moral dilemmas, but when I look at actions, look at how actions give any credence to a person, any authority whatsoever, I find myself again and again wanting to advocate those people who act regardless of reciprocity. They act knowing they may be recognized in some way for what they've done, but they may not. They act without benefit of knowing if their "selfish" desires will be fulfilled, and even if they know they will not, they still opt to act. This relates somewhat to what I wrote before about "honest selfishness." As far as my pen is concerned, my reasons for using it now are, in the buzzphraseology of our times, "conflicted."

But getting back to Michael, he wrote, Since I have less and less interaction with people, my words mean less and less. The less I do, the less what I say has any meaning. I don't know that interaction with people necessarily makes a person who writes about those interactions an expert of human nature. I might actually say that some people who do more introspection of their own natures - because they're reclusive, because they've got a phobia, because they're scared of men with beards - sometimes those people have more insight on human nature than those people that flit here and there, write about their various social interactions, wearing Manolo Blahnik slides while signing their Platinum Visa receipt with their Montblancs. OK, so I'm being snide. These people don't bother with blogs anyway, I'm guessing. My point, the interaction may detract from the insight. And for me, the insight is often more interesting than the interaction.

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My nose is now running and stuffed up at the same time.
My head is a socket wrench.
My eyes are teary & bleary.
It may be official that I have some flu.
...
I'm blaming the bedspread.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 10:37 PM

...

I shy away, more and more, from reading other bloggers.
I don't know if this matters.
I don't care what it means.
It's air.
It's not even air.
Air has volume.
This is less than air.

< O

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 12:26 AM

hotel life

Wouldn't that make a good name for a music album? I'm imagining some kind of 80's throwback band with bubblegum grooves and Flock of Seagulls' hair where the lead singer sings with an Austrian accent even though he's from Des Moines. Ich liebe dich, hot girl fraulein.

So hotel life is my life this week. It is one minute to midnight as I type this sentence and I am in some mediocre hotel that calls itself an Inn even though it has 131 rooms. Mary, Jesus & Joseph should have come to this inn if they'd wanted a place to stay. Anyway, it's trying very hard, as far as inns go, to be businessperson friendly. You know, high-speed internet pyramids, desks with wide-bottomed ergonomic executive chairs, brass desk lamps, arm chair with ottoman and side table, fake maplewood furniture with brass fixtures, coffee maker, mini-microwave & fridge, hairdryer, and HBO. But it's trying just a little too hard. You know, the colors of the paint and finishes just a little too high-gloss, upholstery queued up with stripes and florals. I turned the heater on tonight because it's been foggy and damp. It smelled like a cat had peed in the vents. Barf. Ever since I saw some 20/20 or 60 Minutes expose or other about the crap that's on bedspreads in hotels, I just about die when I have to sleep in the beds. I suppose I'm not meant to travel on business, not in places that cater to businesspersons. Give me the Eagle House Inn where the mildewed Victorian hotel moans like a practiced widow in the creaky winds off the bay.

I'm seemingly the only person awake in my wing. The man on one side of me has stopped trying to clear loogeys from his throat. The kid upstairs has stopped running back and forth across the floor. The people down the hall have stopped opening and closing their door with their dishes for room service. Room service, delivered in a paper, handled bag. I have flip charts hung from my walls, notes from the meeting I will be in all week.
Re-creating the wheel.
Didn't someone do this last year, the year before?
Yes, yes, I think so...
So why are you trying to figure out how to do it all over again?
Blank looks.
Umm.
We were told to do it, so we're doing it.
But didn't someone do this last year, the year before?
Yes, yes they did.
And why are you re-creating the wheel?
Embarrassed looks, downcast eyes, wondering too.
We were told-
Oh, forget it.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 12:19 AM

Thursday, January 15, 2004

recant

I was thinking yesterday that I don't yearn for any of the things that I no longer have time to do because I work too many hours now. And I even wrote about it on here, but then I deleted that part because after I wrote it I didn't care about it anymore. But I wrote that I don't yearn for things that I don't do any longer, like reading or writing. Last night I got home and I started reading my new book that I got for Christmas. I couldn't sleep. And pretty soon 2 hours had passed and I didn't want to put my book down but I knew I had to because if I didn't I'd be back to less than 6 hours of sleep per night, like last week. Which sucked. So I put the book down. But I kept just wanting to pick it back up again. Must have been a good 20 minutes before I could stop thinking about it long enough to think about maybe falling asleep instead.

Today I kept thinking about going home and reading. So here it is, not even 7:00 and I think I'm going to head home. So I can read. So much for not yearning.

Pshaw.

_________________________________________

My commenting feature is kaput, apparently.
Who cares, really.
I like words that end in -ly, supposedly.
_________________________________________

Hours and hours and hours doing a job that is almost everything I want in a job. But I want to pick the people I work with. So I'm going to work like mad to make sure I get where I can be with people who inspire me to be all of the BEST of me that I am. At the moment I am having to sustain myself without that inspiration. People...people are very, very limited. They see a wall and they do not question if it is an illusion or if, even, it is just painted cardboard that can be knocked over. They believe the limits are set and no one thinks to question the smallness of being bounded. I like the possibilities of living beyond other people's expectations (which really become their excuses). I'm learning that living above and beyond is the exception to every rule man has ever made for himself. I'm going up into the ether in spite of the people around me. They can all sit and chew on my toenail clippings, instead, when I'm gone.

There's a decided lack of bigness in the world. Controlled, tiny, small pieces of minds that bump into each other at the supermarket, in the aisle at Blockbuster between Harry Potter and Terminator 3. Controlled splinters of people who forgot (if they ever knew) what it's like to live in large spaces. I hate that in myself when it crops up. Which just makes me doubly hate it in other people when I see it.

I always assumed there were big, real people all over the place. All over the world. But there aren't. There really, truly aren't many at all. Oh, there are some, but not many. Where are they all? And why aren't there more? Where do you get that kind of training? Where do you acquire the taste for living in places that caroom with dirt and light and buzz? Things are so antiseptic. People live in Listerineland. And no one questions any of it. Where are the big, real people? Where did they all go?

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 7:10 PM

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Wear Your Nikes for the Human Race

So, you hit almost-34 and you have this sort of late & dumb epiphany that you've essentially wasted a lot of time. You realize that you've been "indoctrinated" to think a certain way but that the "indoctrination" did little to prepare you for how to be sensible. You look at how brimful you've been with optimistic idealism and wind up asking yourself, "What the hell does this do for me?" You start wondering why no one ever taught you that occassionally you have to be a bastard and bask in the bright heat of selfishness, if for no other reason than to be able to relate to the rest of the MTVed world. You look at all the self-help lingo that's plastered on your pysche about loving thine own nature and being open to the bounty of the universe and widening your horizons to include diversity through commonality, whatever that means. Does anyone ever mention to you that all those words really mean are, "Hey! Be egoistic! Go for it! No one will notice!"? All those words are instead smoothed over with a patina of righteousness that is never referred to under its true name: SELFISH. Why the underhandedness? Why not just come clean and tell it like it is? Why not just admit that you gotta do it, so why dontcha?

There's this skewed notion that if we don't talk about self-love in acceptable terms, no one will hear the message. But the let's be real; the term "self-love" just means, "Hey, I'm a fat/ugly/zitty/harelipped/chin-haired/anorexic/maladjusted person and I deserve to be loved as I am, dammit!" Ya, OK, fine. Go ahead and love yourself all you want; it doesn't mean you're going to change anyone else's mind. Join the human race; we're all a bunch of screw-ups in some capacity or other. Get over it already. If you're fat, lose weight, if you're ugly, get plastic surgery, if you're zitty, go to the aesthetician, if you're harelipped, do what the ugly person did, if you're chin-haired go where the zitty person went, if you're anorexic, start eating, if you're maladjusted, get a therapist or go to confession. If you don't want to do those things, then just accept whatever it is for what it is and get on with it already. No one who dislikes what you are is going to change their mind anytime soon, so why expect it to happen anytime soon? This is what I've started telling myself. "You're fat. Deal with it or do something about it. Those are your two choices." Oh. Ok. Thanks.

I love these really weird looking people (it's always about looks, isn't it?) - you know, warty nose, greasy lips, thick-nailed fingers - who exude this confident air of narcissism. It seems appalling, at first, but there's something intriguing about it as well. They're never mistaken for being anything than what they are and they could give a hoot what anyone else thinks. They never go about proving themselves, their value, their worth. There's no reason to.

There's honest selfishness and dishonest selfishness. Honest selfishness is the kind where people tell you what they want and that the reason they want it is because they're selfish. Dishonest selfishness is the kind where people tell you what they want and the reason they want it is because the reason the other guy said is BAD! I've decided I like the honest kind of selfishness. A lot. I know what I'm dealing with and where the motivations are. The dishonest kind never tells you a reason. Their reason is contingent on the other reason, which just means it can't stand up on its own. And where's the reason in that?

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:56 PM

Saturday, January 03, 2004

Time redux

My 34th birthday is in 23 days.
I cannot believe it.
Measures & definitions.

I thought for sure, just once, in 34 years I would be able to dress up for Halloween like Princess Lea in Return of the Jedi. That wacked out pseudo-belly dancing costime she wore. I have used that as the measure of success in weight loss since I was 13 years old. I promised myself when I got thin enough, that would be my Halloween costume. 20 years later, it's the image I still hold in my head that I've never been able to attain. I think my fantasy may need a makeover.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 5:29 PM

BUY NOW! And don't pay a dime til 2005.

A new year. These timeframes that define, they seem totally superficial and I guess they are. But they kick us in the ass and make us wake up. 2004. Not a very exciting sounding year, but that might not be such a bad thing. Dates and clocks and calendars. We use the numbers and all they entail to make sure we're where we're supposed to be when we're supposed to be there. Even when we think we don't do that, we really do. Even when we're late or forget something, we're still cognizant of late and forget because of how we refer to time. Here's little test you can do on yourself now or on your friends at your next shindig. Without thinking, just letting the first thing that pops into your head be there, what do you think about when you think of TIME?
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I've always thought time was a very telling and amazing thing. When I've asked people that question, answers are invariably one of two categories. Either conceptual or concrete. Not that one or the other is better, but however a person answers that questions is a very telling window into their inner workings. The first thing that pops into mind is might be conceptual (eternity, future, vast, outlook, immeasurable, now...etc.) or concrete (clock, watch, due date, calendar, dinner-time...etc.). USUALLY those who go with the mostly conceptual stuff are people who tend to communicate abstractly with abstract language, like metaphors or ideologies. USUALLY those who go with the mostly concrete stuff are people who tend to communicate in such a manner, using their 5 senses. It's interesting. I, of course, get off on that stuff which means I like the abstract stuff. Blah blah blah.

So time, ya. I worked the day after Christmas, which was the ultimate in suckiness. I forgot to meet up with friends who were going to be in town for the holidays, completely blanked it out even though we'd all emailed each other about it for 2 weeks. Totally gone from my head. That is how life has been of late. I'm blaming it on the job. Which I've now had for 3 months to the day. I have a 50 minute commute each morning and evening. Actually, if I leave by 6:45A, it only takes about 42 minutes in the morning. But evenings are always a bear. I grind my teeth the entire way, swearing and thinking up creative and horrible ways of torturing people who cut me off on the freeway. I try to avoid the freeway at 5:00P. So I leave at 7:30, 8:00 and put in 12 hour days and thus avoid teeth grinding and Charles Mansonesque thoughts. But the whole thing is stupid. Because my 24-hour day gets chopped in less than half. 12 hours at work, 1.5 hours driving to/from work, and 1 hour getting ready in the morning. That's approximately 14.5 hours of a 24 hour day devoted to work, with about 6.5 - 7 hours devoted to sleeping, which leaves me with approximately 2.5 - 3 hours per day to spend with Dave, shop, relax, read, answer email, cook, watch TV, talk on the phone, brush my teeth, wash my face, take out my contacts, feed the cat, open my mail, pay bills, write thank you letters, have sex, go to the bathroom, get my feet rubbed, eat dinner, talk to my family, get gasoline for the car, get my hair cut, blog, take pictures, research piffle on-line, write in my journal, make movies, go to the movies, make cookies, etc. You get the point. Basically, in my 2.5 - 3 hours/day I can't get anything done, so instead I get stressed out and spend my weekends feeling like I never had any time off because I'm doing all the stuff that really needed to get done during the week, but couldn't get done because there was no time.

Dave's lucky if he gets laid once a week and even if I like having sex, sleep is much more appealing when I'm only averaging about 6.75 hours per night as it is, usually less as the week wears on (Dave calls me a sexual camel...despite the fact I thought that was hilarious, it still stung because of course the implicit meaning is that I'm either asexual, don't care about sex, don't like sex, don't need sex, don't want sex, or don't like my husband, none of which are true...well, sometimes I don't like my husband, but that's because he can be an asshead but that's nothing new - it's called human nature).

At any rate, this is where the brain has been hanging out in thought lately. Because I'm going about it all wrong. My boss could give a rat's hindend if I'm working 12 hours per day or what my commute is like or how many hours I work outside of work. All he cares about is if I get there by 8:00 and do what he tells me. Actually, if I got there at 7:00, I would win major points. Leaving after 5:00 is my own perogative and has nothing to do with him. My immediate manager is less old school, but he's ultimately not my boss. And that's the part I'm finally figuring out. That my boss is my boss and he's the one who's going to make sure I get what I ultimately want, but only if he's in my court. Which he's not. He's right outside the chainlink fence watching the game, but so far my game has been mediocre according to the scorecard he uses. I finally got a peak at his scorecard from a little bird who's looking our for me and now I am going about figuring out how to change my swing. It all downright sucks, but I can't complain. I wanted this job and I got it. I didn't expect it to change the way it's going to play out in 2004, but that part was never guaranteed anyway. For now we stick it out in Sonoma. My boss is retiring at the end of this year. I get him in my court and stop missing the score and I'll probably be able to go anywhere I want with the company. We're mobile. I'll do what I need to at this point to get a house, a place of our own. I can't hack the way things are now, living on borrowed space, so it's time to settle it in and slam the mother home.

New Year's Resolution?

You just heard it all, baby.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 4:47 PM