#reverb10 - Day 11: a very messy set of answers

December 11 – 11 Things What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life? (Author: Sam Davidson)

You can see by now that I can be awfully lax about these prompts when I choose to be. I'm not sure I can write the answers that I want to this one, but I can start.

1. Crushing self-doubt: I'm increasingly conscious of the fact that part of me has given up on myself. At the same time, I'm aware that this view is distorted -- and I can think of instances, in the very recent past, that prove to me that it's wrong. But there are also times when I'm surprised at myself; at my mere ability to focus. Friday I worked all day long on an editing project, moving steadily through 70 pages of text; and at the end of the day, I was both delighted and surprised, because I realize that I'd concluded from the start that I was wholly incapable of that level of focus.

2. A deep-seated fear that the work I do doesn't contribute to the rest of the world, or rather, isn't the contribution that the world needs most. With everything I see happening, from the hunger of people on the streets, to an increasing inability to use analytical reasoning, or willingness to display compassion, why does the world need me to dig up perspectives on economic development in 18th and 19th century Britain? It sounds, I know, as though I've read too many of those "the humanities are worthless" articles in the mainstream media. It also sounds as though I'm beating myself up for not being capable of being Christ himself on the cross, right here and right now. Not really a valid thing to beat myself up about, honestly, or even a good one, because that bit of scripture in Matthew (25:40, I think) about "even what you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me") can be interpreted, I think, as being also applicable in that even the least good things are still important.

I need to keep on exploring this one. Part of it is clearly just depression, but part of it *is* about my own engagement with the question, "What do the humanities have to offer the world today?" and I do have an answer to that. I'm just terrified to explore it, or not sure I'm capable of doing so (see item #1 above).

3. Less clutter. I think that the Christmas present I give myself should be an entire day for sorting through old papers, and getting rid of stuff I don't need. I've gotten better about not acquiring more junk, but I need to get better at divesting myself of old junk that remains.

4. Too much work at the wrong time, or not enough of the right sort of social activities. This is a complex one, all tangled up with the first two parts of this list, but also with my own shyness, and the problem of not feeling especially at home in this city. I've felt out of place here for years. This doesn't mean that I don't appreciate the marvels of living in a town with good options for gluten-free groceries, farmers' markets almost every day of the week (if you know where to look), and a poetry bookstore. But I'm conscious, especially now that I'm back from a quick trip to London, of how much I miss not only the SEL, but also the city itself.

I have friends here, who I like spending time with. I am lucky to have them close by, and I should take advantage of that fact. Setting up social activities is not procrastination by default.

That's four things. Supposedly, I need seven more. I'm not sure that I'm quite self-aware enough to identify the other seven.

5. Too much internet at the wrong time (or, maybe one of the things I don't need is a SmartPhone). I first started using the internet as a wake-up tool during my senior year of undergrad, when I would wake up, and crawl from one end of the bed to the other, where my desktop computer was, and dial up the internet to read Slate first thing in the a.m. Now I check my email, a couple of blog listings, and a friendslist on LJ, and Facebook, and Twitter. I'm embarrassed to admit that there's a bit of voyeurism in this: I want, quietly, to see the world bustling about. But doing this tends to start off the day with distraction, with an attempt to escape myself. It might be better if I started off the day by allowing myself to read a chapter of a book in order to wake up. That's still a form of escapism, but it's escapism where I feel more present, and not less. I think that I should try doing that for a week, starting tomorrow.

6. Cripes. I have no idea. I think I'll stop here, because the five things above are things that I *can* begin to deal with; and I suspect that as I deal with them, other things will become more clear.

ETA:

7. New Kid's post for today mentions jettisoning distance from family. Like her, I don't have a magic way of just choosing to end the distance between Seattle and London and the SEL, so I don't know how to do this. But I'd like to find a way, so I'm putting it here, for the record.

#reverb10 - Day 8 - Beautifully Different; or, Capitalism is Everywhere - a lecture-rant

December 8 – Beautifully Different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful. (Author: Karen Walrond)

The students in the political theory class for which I teach a linked writing course were really excited about reading Emerson's "Self-Reliance," because it showed "how important it is to be yourself, and to be different."

They hear this message everywhere. I'm not blaming Emerson for it. On the contrary, "Self-Reliance" is a wonderful illustration of why the cliched fetishizing of being special is subtly insidious. It's the backbone of modern capitalism. I don't see this being discussed very often, so today, I'm adapting the lecture that I gave my students several weeks ago. All citations are taken from the Dover Thrift Edition of "Self-Reliance and Other Essays."

At the close of "Self-Reliance," Emerson rejects "the reliance on Property" as "the want of self-reliance," which might appear, on the surface, to be a very Marxist position. But as he clarifies, Emerson explains that what he hates is inactive property, which "merely lies there," while "that which a man does always by necessity acquire" and which "perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes" is not only acceptable, but ideal (37). Power, he wrote earlier, "ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state" (29).

This is Marx's definition of well-used capital; the bourgeoisie's constant revolutionizing of the instruments and means of production. Revolution doesn't mean only revolt, in this sense -- but also revolve -- the maintenance of a continual cycle.*

Emerson's very first example of the importance of being true to one's own individuality defines individuality in the terms of intellectual property: if we fail to take possession of our own ideas, then "to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another" (20).

The shame has nothing to do with being right or wrong in one's thought -- it's about someone else having claimed it as property, and taking control of how it's shared out. Self is the ultimate capital, the "plot of ground which is given to [man] to till" (20). One of the things that makes Emerson remarkable as a voice of capitalism is that his assertions so easily reinforce the positions of both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.** "Accept the place the divine providence has found for you" sounds like humility, but then he clarifies we "must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner .... but guides, redeemers and benefactors" (20).

Emerson's real ideal is to speak from a position of wealth and power: youths are not just to be accepted because they are self-sufficient, but capable of making their elders redundant (21). This is the humility of the capitalist system: the people who are to be revered are the ones who are capable of making you obsolete. The ideal man who does interact with society does so in the following way: he can "utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear" (21). In other words, making other people fearful is not only his prerogative, but his responsibility. The risk of entering society in more communally-oriented ways is that one might have to give up or reduce one's ability to be seen as superior to others. Dick Cheney would love this guy. Why haven't we heard yet about how Emerson is his ideal of American patriotism?

If the self is capital, then virtue is expenditure (22) -- monetary charity to another who "does not belong to me and to whom I do not belong" is a waste; to act virtuously is a penance, a payment. To ally yourself to dead capital, rather than focusing on the importance of renewing capital, is not just to make an unprofitable economic choice, but to obscure the self. This is what makes "Self-Reliance" insidious, and what makes it the embodiment of capitalism -- of personal worth and identity being commuted into exchange value. It gives lie to the earlier statement about aspiring to be a redeemer or benefactor.

Nor is Emerson merely expressing an emotional mood of capitalism that simply affects how one thinks about oneself and how one thinks about others. There are significant ethical ramifications as well. People love to quote Emerson's aphoristic statement that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" -- most often, I see it referenced in regards to piddly grammatical errors, matters of less and fewer. It's appropriate in that context, but Emerson is invoking it in regards to past words and acts; rejecting the judgment of the eyes of others. There's wisdom in that, to be sure, but Emerson's rejection of caring about whether you are wrong, or misunderstood, looks different if we think about it in conjunction with Marx's description of the cycle of commercial crises brought on by the bourgeoisie:

It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. [...] The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. (Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Emerson's rejection of foolish consistency is a rejection of responsibility, justified by the possibility that to be responsible for others would be a violation of one's self.

Is there social justice in "Self-Reliance"? Emerson says that "We want men and women who shall renovate life and or social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, [and] have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force" (32). In other words, they're ineffective at exerting power and managing their self-capital successfully. Naked self-interest becomes all in all, and greatness is to be able to claim that nugget of intellectual property and control how it's shared among others. "Every new mind is a new classification," writes Emerson, and a truly great mind is the one which "imposes its classification on other men" (33).

That's the social justice that results from making nonconformity the supreme virtue.

Like Marx, Emerson sees society as "undergoing continual changes" -- we have changed in vulnerability from the New Zealander (who has far less property), in technology (the coach, the watch), and therefore, the institutions that define how property is owned and protected (37) are equally ephemeral. A man is better than a town in that a town, by Emerson's definitions of the ways that people organize, cannot really bind together as equals to accomplish anything. Not only is his perspective of the importance of exerting power over others contra to Marx, but his view of the inability of others to organize effectively explains why he would have put little or no faith in Marx's proposed proletariat revolution. To assume "free development for each" and "free development for all" would require a conformity that is unacceptable.

I think I've gone on quite enough, and less stylishly than I'd like to, because this is a very hurried adaptation of lecture notes. But when I hear "what's different makes you beautiful," I can't help but think that it has opposing meanings, depending on whether it's taken in a private or public context. Everyone I love is beautifully different, and the privacy of the way that I perceive that difference in each of my friends is what keeps me going, especially when I'm stressed and freaked out over one thing or another. But in a public context, "what makes you different is what makes you beautiful" is, all too often, just another way that capitalism is all-pervasive.






* See also Reinhart Koselleck, "HISTORICAL CRITERIA OF THE MODERN CONCEPT OF REVOLUTION."

** And yes, I'm aware of Emerson's seeming opposition to capitalism, in that he was opposed to Smith's division of labor. I stand by this argument.

#reverb10 - Day 6 - Making!

Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it? (Author: Gretchen Rubin)

Things I've made recently:

1. Cookies, for myself, and crackers, and pizza dough -- this is the first time I've really gotten into gluten-free baking, and I am dying, if only metaphorically, to try out this recipe from the Gluten-Free Girl for GF gingerbread.

2. A last-minute trip to London, to be part of the Blake Society's 25th Birthday Party at Tate Britain.

3. A surprise present for a friend, because I was picking up a book in London that I knew we'd both want, and that she was unlikely to have (she didn't). These sorts of surprise packages are one of my favorite things to make. They don't have to be expensive -- just something unexpected.

Things I'm in the middle of making:

1. A dissertation

2. A hollowed-out Loeb Classic wallet, for my friend Kate. This will be the second one I've made, and I'm improving some of my design choices from the first version. So far, so good -- but I need to finish it!

Things I want to make:

1. Dorie Greenspan's Hachis Parmentier

2. Braised Pork With Chiles and Cumin, by the Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef -- but doing so would require me to have a slow cooker, and I haven't got one. Bah.

3. A syllabus and course plan for my Political Theory juxtaposed with YA Lit course. Not saying anything more about that is the best thing here -- because it puts more pressure on me to actually write the whole thing, and get it out of my head.

#reverb10 - Day 5 - What I gave up.

Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why? (Author: Alice Bradley)

I'm a little bit behind, which I don't mind, but it's worth it to me to try and stay on the tail ends, rather than falling further.

This summer, I gave up what felt, at first, like part of my independence. Serious stuff for someone who self-identifies as feminist. I lived, for the first time, with my Splendid English Lover (SEL), across the pond, while working on a research grant. It was a very new thing for both of us, as we've always been long distance with short visits that for reasons I won't go into here. (no, nothing scandalous; just not my story), haven't actually included spending the night under the same roof. It was a very new thing for me, since I've never lived with anyone with whom I'm romantically involved, and haven't lived with family of any sort for more than ten years. I haven't even had roommates for the last four, excepting the kitty, who has yet to pay the rent.

I figured that I would buy groceries, buy a lot of my lunches out -- not add tremendously to the expenditure of the household (and by tremendously, I meant "as little as possible") -- so I was rather taken aback when the SEL proposed that I should raid the fridge for lunches, and let him know when I ran low on GF cereals, crackers, etc. It felt foreign to me to allow someone else to buy those things for me; moreover, it made me think of living as a teenager with a controlling family whose rule was "as long as you live in our house and we provide for you, you follow our rules."

I wrote a couple of days ago that not providing for myself and being completely independent made me feel like I ought to be shot or shoved off of a tube platform, or even that I ought to jump myself. Before you tell me to check myself into a mental hospital, stat -- no, I wasn't about to accede to the little voices in my head. Hearing them, acknowledging them, and dismissing them is what I've found to be the best strategy. Writing today, though, I can acknowledge that crumbs! -- that PTSD from a difficult adolescence is still with me.

And so I found it rather challenging to accept the SEL's caring for me. He made me gin & tonics when I came home from the archives, baked me gluten-free puddings; fried eggs for me some mornings (though he also taught me to fry my own*). Other mornings, if I seemed to be forgetting that I was allowed to have fresh fruit from the fruit bowl, he'd simply slice a plum, and offer it to me.

Does it sound bizarre to you that I would forget that I was allowed to have fresh fruit? I suppose it does, but I often did. I thought of it as the best food, and thus that I should not allow myself to partake of it. No one had suggested anything of the sort, of course, but my subconscious, it is mighty and twisted.

I even found it nervewracking that he would make us both dinner at the end of the day. What if I like this too much?, I thought. What if I find that I'm incapable of cooking for myself afterwards?

I didn't find that allowing someone else to make me dinner destroyed my own ability to cook, or reduced me to some former shadow of myself. That shouldn't be surprising, though it is to me, sometimes, when I contemplate it. It's an index of how thick some of my mind-forged manacles are; how difficult it is to finally allow them to slide off my wrists, even when they've been unlocked for years.

I could write much more about this** -- but I mustn't -- there's too much to do. What I did find, though, quickly:

1. the SEL is a wonderful cook, and not coincidentally, wonderful at plating. Apropos of this, gooseberries are the best summer fruit ever.

2. Power and equality in a relationship are far more complex than I had previously thought; there is no calculus that will simply measure equality based on who is cooking dinner and who is chopping vegetables. It is wonderfully relaxing, by the way, to end the day by chopping vegetables, without having to worry about what is going to happen to them or when they have to go into the pot. It is lovely to make dinner with someone else; lovelier still to be a test case for things like whipped cream spiked with single malt whiskey. Beauty is someone who will allow you, every once in a while, to fry him an egg in the morning.

3. I am defined by much more than my own ability to be traditionally domestic. This is a very good thing for me to learn, because honestly, when consumed by research and dissertating? I'm not a great domestic. Dishes sit around unwashed; and I eat raw veg, cheese, and fruit, and crisps, because they're quick. There's nothing wrong with this -- as a diet, I could do a lot worse -- but I know that part of my consternation this summer was feeling that I wasn't meeting standards of femininity; and feeling that I ought to be able to excel simultaneously in both areas (careerism and domesticity) at once, even though I resent mainstream patriarchal culture when it suggests that I am failing by not being able to do this.

In short, what I gave up wasn't my independence at all, but instead some lingering stale gender traditionalism that benefited neither me, nor the SEL. His abilities and instincts for caring and cooking ought not be marginalized merely because of his gender. I gave up, too, some old nightmarish mind games from my past -- preconceptions that were only hurting me, when I didn't even realize that they were still so much a part of my everyday existence. I fear they're not wholly gone -- when I am my own enemy, I am at my most tenacious -- but I am more free of them than I have ever been before; and that is something that I want to remember.




*Yes, as appalling as it will sound to those of you who know how much I love to cook, I had never learned to fry an egg, and always been rather terrified of getting it wrong. A study in contradictions: that would be me.

** I should certainly, by some logic, explain how I was fitting into the household, since I had my own domestic work to do -- but that is another story for another time.

#reverb10 - Day 2

December 2 – Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it? (Author: Leo Babauta)

It's a measure of how stressed I am of late that when I got this prompt, I wanted to throw up my hands and say "I have no idea. Everything." It's taken all day to come to something like an answer with more perspective, and even that perspective is uncertain, because I feel like I don't know the answer for certain. I can block out the internet with apps like Leechblock, Chrome Nanny, Freedom, and Self-Control; or I can let it in, because I find that I feel that I'm writing less in a vacuum when I can periodically chatter a bit on Facebook or Twitter.

Neither one helps, really: I still feel like I have to work harder, and harder, while feeling at the same time that I don't know how to work any harder than I already am. The result is that sometimes I have days like today, where I'm so tired I can't focus at all. I should take breaks before I reach that point of exhaustion, but it never feels like I've worked hard enough to earn them, and the result is that each time I take one, I despise myself a little bit more.

This really doesn't work well.

I have a friend who is ruled at times by jealousy. I was ruled by jealousy once, several years ago, and found the process dismaying enough that I swore up and down I'd never be again. But if I've let myself feel a tinge of pride at the fact that I've succeeded there so far, then I need a bit of a comeuppance, because I'm easily ruled by self-doubt, more, perhaps, than the friend ruled occasionally ruled by jealousy.

The result is that I feel that I have to check everything, over and over; that if I step away from my work for a day, I feel as though I've forgotten my place entirely, and have to start over again from the beginning. This is because I tell myself that I know nothing; I am entirely unwilling to countenance the thought that I might learn. In my head, I am incapable of learning, of change. And yet I know this isn't true; I can point to areas of my life where I have grown and changed in the last five years, where I feel more human, and less isolated than I have for most of my life.

What can I do about this problem? I love my subject, but it is difficult to transform that love from contemplation to action, when my concept of my own activity is soaked with self-loathing. And I'm skeptical that I can just slough it off the way I beat jealousy, if only because this is a problem that has been with me for far longer; which has shaped who I am. In moments of clarity, it occurs to me that much of the hardest work I have done has emerged less from love than fear.

That last point is hard to face. I don't like evaluating the balance of my life using it, because I know how much lands on the side of the scale marked fear.

And yet, I can remember clearly the end of my sophomore year in college, staying up most of the night to write an essay on Euripides' Medea, without relying on caffeine, because I loved it enough that I didn't feel I needed it. (Also because I was young enough that I didn't need it.) And that same love has characterized my research of the last few years. If I had been wholly ruled by fear, I wouldn't have been able to stay as calm as I have throughout, I think. I think.

So, what can I do? If it's not possible to simply regain freedom from self-doubt in one fell swoop, then can I establish a few guidelines for better combatting it? I think I can. So, how do I set up concrete steps to act from love, rather than fear?

1: I need to go to the internet because I want to, not because I'm feeling inadequate. Doing this may involve setting Self-Control the night before, so that I'm blocked in the morning, in order to avoid being overwhelmed.

2: I need to acknowledge that a balance between work and leisure is healthy; that it serves a purpose of allowing me to examine ideas freshly.

3: I need to believe and know that mistakes, when I make them, can serve a purpose. Right now it just feels like they slow me down, and that's bad.

I'm going to stop this here for now, with the resolution that I'll come back to this post and keep exploring.

Unfamiliarity and Perspective

This year, I'm taking a crack at doing #reverb10. Care to join me? Details here.

December 1: One Word:

Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?

I think the best word for the previous 11 months is unfamiliarity. For the first time, I've lived with a major food allergy, one that has meant being the person with special needs, the one whose health requirements have a potentially major effect on others. I finished a dissertation chapter (and hope to finish 1 or 2 more before this year ends). I undertook my first major unsupervised archival research project. I lived with someone with whom I'm romantically involved. I lived in London, which, even for only 2.5 months, is much different than being there for 2.5 weeks (my longest stay previously). I let someone make dinner for me each night, which is certainly unfamiliar in the context of my adult life.

Some of the associated unfamiliarity I've dealt with well; and it has unquestionably been good for me to learn what it feels like to be the one who has to ask others to adjust their choices. I don't enjoy doing that; and sometimes I've felt downright angry when my gluten allergy makes me into an inconvenience -- but I have an inkling of what other people with more challenging disabilities feel in similar situations. I hope this allows me to be more empathetic with them.

Other aspects of it, not so much. Being taken care of at all made me acutely aware of my own self-negativity: I thought, at various times, that someone ought to shove me off a tube platform, or simply take me out and shoot me. Yes, I know that this is disturbing. I've internalized the view that George Bernard Shaw presents in this video extraordinarily intensely. This is partly the product of my upbringing in a conservative Christian family, and perhaps also more broadly an aspect of American socialization: I think of dependence as fatal, and fear it.

The unfamiliarity of dissertating is also a challenge. Writing arguments? That I've done. But blending literary, historical, and economic perspectives presents a greater challenge than I've faced in the past. Or maybe that's not quite it: what's unfamiliar is the sense of the potential importance of the work, combined with the sense that it's simply a hurdle I have to climb over to finish.

I need to finish this up if I'm to have it done on schedule.

For next year, I hope the word that resonates throughout it perspective. I need it desperately, as I did this summer. I found it this summer, but I found it in desperation, as I struggled to learn to read documents written in Chancery hand, realizing that my research grant would be the start of something that might last years, rather than being completable in three months. What I need is to allow myself to have perspective from the beginning, as I make decisions about balancing work and leisure; as I evaluate the way I spend each day, determining what I have accomplished. I need to remember that not every day will be characterized by breakthroughs, and that the lack of constant breakthroughs does not mean that I am a failure.

And I am seeking perspective, too, as I think about the worth of the work that I'm doing, the reasons that I'm pursuing a series of arguments about the imagination in economics, and in literature that's more than a century old. It doesn't always feel like digging through old poetry is the best way to develop insights that will serve a purpose in today's chaotic economic situation, though I very much want to produce something that will be of interest to more than just members of the literary academy. And yet my primary responsibility is to those texts -- not to creating something that's immediately and remarkably relevant today. Perhaps in being faithful to them, rather than trying to be both a lit scholar and an observer of contemporary economics at the same time, I can find the way forward.

“Perspective,” he would mutter, going to bed.

“Oh che dolce cosa e questa

Prospettiva.” Uccello. Bird.



And I am as greedy of her, that the black

Horse of the literal world might come

Directly on me. Perspective. A place



To stand. To receive. A place to go

Into from. The earth by language.



Who can imagine antelope silent

Under the night rain, the Gulf

At Biloxi at night else? I remember



In Mexico a man and a boy painting

An adobe house magenta and crimson

Who thought they were painting it red. Or pretty.



So neither saw the brown mountains

Move to manage that great house.



The horse wades in the city of grammar.

--Jack Gilbert