I was raised more in a single-parent household than in a dual-parent household, and that single parent worked a lot (belated thanks for basically everything, Ma). So I was a latchkey kid from about third grade until forever. There wasn’t much discipline at home, not that I needed it, as I was a fairly meek kid (externally at least; internally I was and still am a fairly rotten jerk). Most of my youth was a vacuum of authority, and this was great and freeing in a lot of ways. All that time was my time; I was in charge of me; my mind got to be alone, to grow alone.
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But and crap I also didn’t build up a tolerance for authority.
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Whenever I encountered – and still when I encounter – someone in a position of “power” and that someone is exercising that “power” through an act of discipline or decision-making-by-fiat or etc it seems so totally bizarre to me. Zany. Nutso.
Wait . . . we’re doing what you’ve decided just because YOU say so?
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And I don’t mean parenting, I don’t mean cops or the military. I mean within the context of the mundane. Rational adults in American society.
Because it happens: there are situations in life when someone actually says, This is how it’s going to be, I don’t care what you have to say about it, I’m in charge.
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What’s the point of discipline? Of authority?
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Is it efficiency? Is it, at its core, capitalism?
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That winsome freedom of my youth was so privileged. I can hardly touch it anymore.
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Also, I’m a really fucking competitive person. Somehow I manage to get along with most people, but it’s worth pointing out that most people I interact with on a daily basis are 18-22 year olds, and my position in relation to them is one of authority: grading, employment, administrator, role model, mentor, whatever. (I really try to deemphasize my authority. Admission: being able to deemphasize is a privileged position, one that I can *not* deemphasize when I want. Conveniently.)
My competitiveness doesn’t come out with students. Nor with friends or family.
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Problem being, there are other people in life who aren’t friends or family or students.
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Committee meetings . . . job interviews . . . traffic . . . the grocery store . . . my mind’s version of the writing world . . . those fucking committee meetings again . . . .
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The problem, I think, is my facial expressions.
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My body language doesn’t help much, either.
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I can’t control my genetics – it’s their fault. Not mine. That I get impatient and annoyed.
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I sigh a lot. And cringe. And frown.
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People can pretty easily tell when I don’t like them.
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But people! It’s not you! It’s you wasting my time and using your authority!
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(Shout my brain and genes and face and body.)
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Probably I should meditate.
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AWP is so terrible. In that it’s so contrary to literature.
Literature is silent, impactful, personal, complex.
AWP is marketing. It’s loud. It’s fast. It’s shallow. Fluorescent lights. Bad acoustics.
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Did your ears buzz, too, at the end of each day?
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Writers should not be allowed to talk very much.
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plus drunknessness, stupidity, self-promotion, envy, weariness, Legionnaires disease, Taylor Swift, EVERYONE AT THE CONFERENCE SAYING HOW STUPID THE CONFERENCE IS SINCE EVERYONE IS AN INTROVERT AND SAYING THIS OVER AND OVER AND OVER PROVING THAT NONE OF THESE PEOPLE ARE REALLY INTROVERTS and oh my god is this the annual apex of writing?
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Talking about writing?
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On Friday night, April Fools’ Day, my wife and I took an Uber to Echo Park. I’d been invited to be on a panel, off-site, at a tiny bookstore (Stories). The inviter was Edie Meidav, who’d picked my collection as winner of a story collection contest. So my wife and I are stuck in LA Friday rush-hour traffic going away from AWP because (in my narrow grouchy mind) I’m obligated to someone in a position of authority. Who is taking ‘my’ time away from me.
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Also I’m going to have to talk to her and other writers I don’t know who are more successful than me in front of people I don’t know about, apparently, how a fear of earthquakes impacts my writing.
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(it does not)
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The ride features some sighs and arm flumps. It’s true.
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An hour later we’re in an Uber back to AWP.
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But it’s great, is the thing! The earthquake panel. Wonderful! Ebullient. Silly. Smart.
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(The lesson, as it too frequently is – even if your narrow-minded selfishness, your habituation of quiet solitude, your sounding of defensive and irritated alarms when all your solitude, choice, and self-authority are even only slightly threatened – even then . . . or anyway, at least some of the times . . . the lesson is, simply: Get over yourself.)
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You, of course, being me.
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I think there should be a way of putting one’s self aside. Some sort of mentally conscious exercise where you stop thinking about yourself. Stop thinking through yourself. You stop being driven by your habits. By your stupid flawed genes. By your impulses. By your desires, your anxieties, where you stop, essentially, being you.
Not for a long time – but for some time.
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You unbutton your head, pull back the top. You reach in – wash your hands first – and gently pull out your warm mind. Set it somewhere safe for a couple hours.
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If only there were some way to do this. Some wonderful way.