Hamster No More?

I got a job. Yes-oh-yes: I got a job. I will be working for an online publishing company on the Upper East Side. I begin on February 15th.

It happened very quickly. It was the only job interview I had. My illness of the last couple of weeks was a fabulous gift, because it forced me to release my death grip on the illusion of control. And once I emerged from the funk, I was able to see more clearly and remember what it is that I truly want. The decisions we make are frequently rooted in fear, and we are usually only able to see the options that are right in front of us. When I relaxed my death grip and stopped being afraid, I was able to widen my vision. Expand my energy. I settled back into my body. I stopped worrying. I called one of the employment agencies I had interviewed with when I quit my last job; they are a small company and, unlike the bigger agencies, actually seemed to understand what it is that I want. At first they said they had nothing for me, but then one of them called me the next day. The way she initially pitched the job did not make it sound very appealing, but I told her to go ahead and send in my resume. The employer immediately responded and said he wanted to interview me. That was last Friday. I interviewed on Monday afternoon. I was offered the job early Tuesday morning.

I knew within the first five minutes of the interview that this was someone I wanted to work for. I could tell that he is smart, kind, savvy, and a good human being. When I walked out into the hallway after our 45-minute interview, my first thought was: “I want this job.” When I walked out of the interview for my last job (i.e. the one that I quit this summer), my first thought was: “I think I’m going to vomit.”

Not wanting to blow chunks after an interview is a good sign.

The hours are good (it’s a 9:30am start, so I will have a little more time to work out/write/chant/commute in the early mornings), and the salary is decent (especially considering the fact that it’s in publishing…an industry famous for making people work for shit pay); I will be far from rich, but I should eventually be able to do things like buy new underwear or occasionally go out to dinner with a friend…you know, things most people with jobs can do. I will be working for the two heads of the company — two men who have been in the publishing industry for decades. It is not necessarily a job I want to do (and they don’t publish text — they publish photobooks), but it is a job that may hold potential to help me get to a job that I want to do. And that is a first for me. For years, I have been throwing most of my energy into support jobs that I don’t like and that could never take me anywhere. I have been a hamster in a cage, running on a wheel and collecting a paycheck.

Take me off the wheel and release me from the cage and there’s no telling where I may go.

I have to be honest: all of this feels too good to be true. My brain keeps telling me that I shouldn’t get too excited. It keeps warning me that maybe there are aspects of the job that he forgot to tell me about in the interview…like maybe the first day I get there he’s going to take me down to the dungeon and make me bathe The Gimp.

Isn’t it interesting that I have trouble trusting this? That I find it so hard to believe that I could actually get what I’ve been asking the universe to send me?

One of my friends has made comments more than once about my “luck.” And I imagine that occasionally things happen in my life that could appear to an external eye as “luck.” But I find that way of thinking very limited. I have spent the last few years of my life working very hard on myself…emotionally, spiritually, energetically. This work has involved a complete revamping of my life…redirecting energy, cultivating awareness, facing a lot of very difficult things and working through them rather than trying to by-pass around them. I had to learn to trust that this kind of work would lead to good things without ever having any kind of guarantee or assurance that it would. So while it may seem as if I just sort of fell into this opportunity, in actuality I have been doing massive, hardcore work on myself for years. I have been opening myself. I have been learning to trust. I have been taking risks. I have been asking over and over and over again for help. Recently, I have been asking for an opportunity. I have been asking the universe to send me individuals who can help me on this next phase of my journey.

So I don’t see this as luck. And assuming there is no Gimp-bathing involved, I think I might actually like it. And I know I am going to learn new things, which is always cool. I am a knowledge junkie.

My temp job ends tomorrow and the new job doesn’t start until the 15th, so I have a week off. Granted I won’t be getting paid for a week, but I couldn’t think of a better gift to myself right now. I will sleep, I will write, I will read, and I will work out. All of these things are mostly free; I will wait until the paychecks from my new job kick in before I run out and buy underwear.

Best to pace oneself.

Worry Fairies

In some act of divine intervention, I was hit hard this past week by a nasty illness. It was the sickest I have been in years, and it came on me quite suddenly. No, it was not the Swine or Emu or Lemur Flu but rather an intense infection that took root in my sinuses and effectively shut down both my body and mind. ‘Twas a blessing indeed, for it completely rebooted my system and has gifted me the greatest clarity I’ve had in months.

What started innocently enough as a sore throat last Wednesday morning snowballed into a massive, full-body freak-out by Wednesday night. By Saturday morning I knew exactly what it was.

My sinus problems started when I was about 9 years old. I had my first sinus surgery when I was 11. I had my second sinus surgery in 2005. Two sets of holes have been drilled inside of my head to help my sinuses drain. The second surgery helped a lot and the problem is not chronic like it used to be, but it’s something that flares up at least once a year and, when it does, I have no choice but to deal with it.

A sinus infection feels like someone has balled their hands up into little fists, placed them inside my face, and then pressed as hard as possible in all directions. I feel them pressing down into the top layer of my teeth. I feel them pressing up against my eyes. I feel the fists pressing against the front of my face, as if they’re trying to break the skin and escape. This time the pain on the left side was so intense that my left eye kept watering up. My entire body revolts against these tiny fists in my face. I get eggplant-colored circles under my eyes. My eyes look like they sink into my head. I am pale…ashen. I look like a living corpse. I get abnormally, awkwardly sweaty.

So basically: quite sexy.

When I have a sinus attack, I can’t think. I can’t care. I do not have the emotional and energetic resources to give a fuck. And a lot of very young emotions resurface. I remember being in a lot of pain as a kid and doctors not believing me because they didn’t know what was wrong. I remember being on medication for months at a time. I remember feeling helpless. Sinus infections make me feel helpless. And the worst part is that I can’t focus. I can’t seem to use my brain. I don’t want to read, I don’t want to write, I don’t want to engage in conversation. I just want to die. But I’m in too much pain and have too little energy to do it myself, so I want someone to break into my apartment with a gun and shoot me in the head. I try summoning this person, but he never shows up. Asshole.

I’m on antibiotics now and my body is slowly recovering, but I’m still at only about 70%. It feels like I’m rebuilding. Rebooting. Rewiring.

And it couldn’t have come at a better time.

There’s something about being so goddamn exhausted and sick and delirious that gifts you a new way of seeing. It’s like a stripping away of everything superfluous that has been eating up your energy; when you don’t have much energy to give, you must direct the little you have left in only the most vital directions. You see what falls away and you realize that you don’t need it. Obsessive worrying about stupid shit that was eating up 80% of your energy a mere 24 hours before suddenly seems absurd. You now need that energy to heal. So when you are forced to redirect that energy, you discover that nothing in your life has changed because you ceased to worry about it. You learn that all of your normal obsessive worrying does not birth little magical Worry Fairies that then go out into the world and do your bidding. Indeed, all of that worrying has been for naught. There are no magical fairies.

Sad. Yes, I know.

The job I have been working since the end of September is about to end. It ends next week, actually. I do not have another job yet. I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck, so after the paychecks stop coming I won’t have any money.

For those of you relatively new to Theblevinsblog, let me catch you up: I took a leap of faith this summer and left an employment situation that made me miserable. Ever since, I have been depending on the benevolent Goddess Manhattan to provide.

And provide she did, but only temporarily. Right now I’m kind of like Scott Bakula in the show Quantum Leap; I don’t know where I’m going to leap to next, and Al and Ziggy never tell me shit.

So suddenly I’m looking for a support job again. Of course it’s not another support job I want. Of course what I want to do is to stay as far away from an office as possible and spend my time writing and reading and creating beautiful things. But, of course, I need money. And all of these people in New York City who employ me keep expecting me to hang out with them in their offices all day long. Madness.

As you can probably imagine, prior to the ass-kicking illness I was obsessively worrying about this situation. But then I rebooted. I shed all of the shit I’ve been carrying around for months because I simply couldn’t carry it anymore. I called in sick on Tuesday, went to see a new doctor, caught a 1:30 showing of Avatar in Union Square, went home. When I came into work on Wednesday morning (exactly one week after getting sick), I looked around me and thought: “Where the hell have I been for four months?!” I reminded myself that I’ve gone through this before so I can certainly do it again, and the Goddess may be much more benevolent this time around. Who knows.

What really sealed this newfound clarity for me was taking a long look at myself in this picture:

I recently posted it as my Facebook profile picture, and yesterday I pulled it up and stared at it while I sat at my desk at work. I think I’m about 3 or 4 years old in this picture. That’s my brother, Ray, next to me. It was my birthday.

I sat at my desk, staring at that picture, and I really saw that little girl. I told her I loved her and that I would take care of her, no matter what happens. Then I tried to see her through the eyes of the people who love her the most.

When you can see yourself through the eyes of the people who love you, even for just a moment, everything shifts. Some sort of internal reorganization occurs. It’s like you suddenly cleaned out your closet and put up new shelves and for the first time in years you can actually see everything you have.

I don’t know how I’m going to come through on those promises I’ve made to this little girl. But isn’t that what parents do for their children? Promise to care for them even when they have no idea how they’re going to make good on that promise?

Yes. That’s what we do for the people we love.

Emu Flu

I am sick. I decided to forego a day of pay and stay home to rest/recover, and I am currently writing this blog in a Nyquil/Dayquil haze. So I absolve myself of any obligation to write you a decent blog. Thankfully I’ve had both my regular flu shot and my swine flu shot, so I know this isn’t the flu…unless I have contracted the rhinoceros flu or the emu flu. Then I’m screwed.

It’s almost the end of January. Just thought I’d point that out.

I had crazy, sick dreams last night. They all centered on a particular person/relationship in my life, but each dream was very different. The first one is the only one I remember vividly. One of the characters (i.e. this particular person’s spouse) was wearing a royal blue, full body spandex unitard with a kitchen wall clock sewn into the front of it (very 1980s, Flavor Flav-esque).

Obama was inaugurated a year ago yesterday. Just thought I’d point that out.

Sometimes I have to sit back and look at Time. Like we’re sitting across each other in a bar, checking each other out. I keep ordering drink after drink while Time nurses the same beer all night. I wish he would stop looking at me like that. I wish he would talk to me. I wish he didn’t make me feel so alone.

My brain feels like it’s full of goo. I wish I had someone to take care of me today. Chester, my 20-lb feline ward, is trying to care for me but he lacks opposable thumbs. And the power of speech. And every time I ask him to go to the drug store for me he acts like he has no clue what I’m talking about. But he is showering me with fat kitty love, and fat kitty love is the best kind of love. So I guess I’ll be alright.

So rather than post some piece-of-shit generic blog about how much it sucks to be sick, I’m going to bid you adieu. I might hit you with a make-up blog this weekend. Or I might die on my futon and be eaten by my 20-lb feline ward.

Ah, the suspense….

This World In Itself Is Not Reasonable

I can’t stop thinking about Haiti. I have never been to Haiti, as far as I know I am not friends with any Haitians, and all I really knew about Haiti prior to this disaster was that Haiti is unbelievably poor. But I suddenly find myself obsessively thinking about Haiti in the aftermath of its worst earthquake in 200 years.

Yesterday at work I was ashamed of the absurd and dramatic vacillations in my thought process. One moment I would be on the verge of tears while surfing pictures of Haiti on the New York Times website, and then the next moment I would be obsessing over how much weight I’ve gained since I started this job and how much I dislike the current state of my hair. One moment I would google “Haitian relief effort,” and the next I would google “best hairstyles for a heart-shaped face.” Early in the day I texted a pledge for a donation to the Red Cross, and the rest of the day I was plagued with guilt about how easy that was for me and how I had sacrificed very little for a group of people who had just lost everything. I went to Whole Foods on my lunch break and was deeply disturbed by the beauty and abundance residing in every aisle. I have cried during more than one trip to Whole Foods while reflecting on the brutal truth that most of the world’s population will never know what it feels like to walk into a Whole Foods and buy such well-manicured fruit. As I waited in the line full of stressed New Yorkers to pay for my lunch, I thought about the Haitians. And I felt like a bit of a shit. But I was a hungry shit, so I paid for my lunch and then I sat down and ate it.

As the day went on, I started thinking about the absurd phenomenon that is the media. If this was 1910 instead of 2010, we probably wouldn’t hear about this disaster for a week. Even 20 years ago we wouldn’t have had such unbelievable, up-to-the-minute coverage of the pain and heartache these people are experiencing. But thanks to the magic of the media, we can almost taste the tears rolling down these people’s faces. We can hear the screams coming from inside the remnants of buildings where people are still trapped, and see the streets where innocent little children lay dying.

Never before have we had such up-to-the-minute coverage about shit we can do very little about. Of course we can do some things – donate money, donate time, donate expertise. If you are one of those people who drop everything and find a way to get down to Haiti to help pass out bottled water or pull people from the rubble, you are amazing and I commend you. But the reality is this: most of us won’t be one of those people. Some people won’t do anything at all, many will donate some money, and a few will find a way to volunteer. But we will all be watching as the inhabitants of this incredibly impoverished country come to terms with the fact that they just lost what little they had.

At one point yesterday when I visited the NY Times website, the story about Haiti was positioned right above a story about the CEOs of the bailed-out banks. The corresponding picture showed a group of well-dressed white men sitting in a row in front of microphones, attempting to answer for their greed; the image for the story above them showed corpses in Haiti and a woman crying.

Absurd, absurd, absurd. This world in which we live is absolutely absurd. And, thanks to the ever-evolving advances in technology, it grows more absurd every day.

Recently I’ve been rereading Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus for the first time since my freshman year of college. [Side note: college freshmen should not take philosophy. Actually, college students shouldn’t take philosophy; they should be required to go back to their college after they turn 30 years old and then take philosophy.] As I sat at my desk yesterday and scrolled through pictures of Haitians in agony and despair, office workers milled around me and discussed email distribution lists and budgets and photocopiers. I have to shut down parts of myself to play the role of office minion, but those parts I shut down are the most precious parts and they are what make me an artist. So I let my heart open up to the Haitians, even though it caused me to drop my office minion mask. In doing so, I thought about this section from Camus’ Sisyphus:

“What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.”

In a world before the media and before technology, if someone was in peril you knew about it because you were there. Or because you heard about it after it happened. Now we can program our handheld digital devices to send us updates about the people who are dying in an impoverished country hundreds of miles away while we sit in office meetings or paddle around a lake in a canoe. It’s unprecedented and it’s absurd. Bless the power of the media to spread the word about people in need. However, how do we reconcile our hearts with this new reality? We are already slightly numb to mass destruction and death thanks to years of disaster movies like 2012, and when you reduce news about real mass destruction and death to Twitter updates accessed on your iPhone it becomes even harder to feel its reality. You know that poor people are dying, but what the hell can you do about it? And how can you feel it? And should you put that sushi roll back in the refrigerated display case and walk right out of Whole Foods and prostrate yourself on the ground in the middle of Columbus Circle and make an impromptu offering to the gods?

It’s a relatively new conundrum we face, and it only serves to highlight the inherent absurdity of life. I love that technology and the power of the media can help us organize efforts to help people in need, but it seems like there is a bizarre emotional trade-off we must make for this societal advancement. We live in a world where it is becoming harder and harder to feel.

I’m not even going to try to dive into the complexities of Camus’ writings about the absurd in this blog, but I find this passage helpful right now:

“I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together. It binds them one to the other as only hatred can weld two creatures together.”

I will pray for Haiti. I will send them some money. I will take time to try to feel their heartache. I will eat my sushi. And life will continue to be absurd.

DEUS EX MACHINA

The deus ex machina is my favorite dramatic device. Originally employed by Greek tragedians, the “deus ex machina” (which translates to “god from the machine”) refers to the point at the end of the play where the writer just pretty much said “fuck it.” After getting his characters tangled up in a nasty web of circumstance and unable to see a logical way out, the playwright would bring God in on a crane to sort out what he could not. Aristotle criticized the deus ex machina, basically calling it lazy writing. Since the days of the Greeks, the deus ex machina has been used as a device in plays, novels, and films, but it is still generally considered to be contrived and unrealistic…an example of lazy “fuck it” plot construction.

I adore the deus ex machina. I think it’s kind of charming, and maybe even a little bit brilliant.

Aristotle believed that all great plots have a sense of inevitability. He argued that tragedy is the highest form of drama, and the climax of the best tragic plots both surprise you and feel completely inevitable. For instance, take Sophocles’ Oedipus the King – by the time ol’ Oedipus is gouging his eyes out after killing his father and marrying his mother, you’re like “Holy shit! I should have seen that coming!” But you didn’t see it coming. And that, Aristotle argued, is brilliance.

Last night when I got home, I was so exhausted I could barely see straight. The combination of my current schedule, my chronic insomnia, and the weight of the seemingly indifferent universe has left me so tired I’ve been walking around as if in a depressing dream…so wrapped up in my own sadness and exhaustion that it’s almost impossible to gain any semblance of perspective. I haven’t been writing anything these days, and when I arrived home last night I knew I had a blog to write today and I didn’t have a clue what I was going to write about.

So I laid down on my apartment’s hardwood floor (a tactic I use when I’m exhausted and unfocused but don’t want to lie on my futon out of fear I’ll fall asleep). I let my mind wander. I asked myself what I wanted right now in my life. Clear as day, the words “DEUS EX MACHINA” formed in front of my mind’s eye and started floating towards me in crazy animated font, as if in a Power Point presentation.

I started thinking about my life as a story…as a sequence of events that create a plot. And then I remembered a quote from Virginia Woolf’s diary: “I can make up situations, but I cannot make up plots.”

C’mon, Aristotle….who doesn’t want God to swoop in on a crane and fix their lives?! It’s the most natural impulse. It’s so very human. The deus ex machina, more than any other dramatic device, illustrates our fragility. The writer of an Aristotelian plot exercises god-like power over her characters and the course of their lives, while the writer of a deus ex machina-resolved plot creates a situation and then admits: “Shit, I have no idea how to fix this. Life is hard. Fuck it.”

Isn’t that what we all secretly want? God to pop up from a manhole in the middle of 6th Avenue or fly in on Falkor at the exact moment we need Him/Her? When life feels so jumbled up and complex that we can see absolutely no way of fixing it? Of course we do. And even if you don’t believe in God, you probably at least believe in Falkor.

But reality meets us somewhere in the middle. Somewhere between the perfect Aristotelian plot and the lazy deus ex machina plot sits life. And yes, that’s incredibly frustrating. Occasionally we can see elements of each type of plot at work in our lives, but most of the time life does not feel like a plot; it feels like a situation.

“I can make up situations, but I cannot make up plots.”

I hear you, Virginia….me, too.

I think it is worth reiterating that Aristotle considered tragedy to be the highest form of drama. The impact of watching an otherwise good, noble protagonist fall into sorrow and misfortune through either a series of poor choices or events occurring outside of his control is far greater, Aristotle argued, than watching good things happen to that same character.

So…that sucks.

On New Year’s Eve I sat down with my journal and did a little exercise. I wrote a very dry, concise synopsis of the last decade of my life. I left out all emotional complexities and shades of gray…listing only pure, hard facts. Actions, events, choices.

Sadly, a deus ex machina appeared nowhere in my synopsis. There were certainly some surprises, though. Things that happened or people who entered my life and subsequently changed my life in some way. But there was no crane, no Falkor.

I think I like the use of the deus ex machina in fiction so much because fiction is the realm in which we can create the reality we want. Or the reality we can’t possibly have. So while I agree with Aristotle about the impact of inevitability, my heart wants a deus ex machina.

In this next decade, I hope I at least get one.

Misc.

I will be brief.

First, I hope you all had a good Christ-kwanz-ikkah and that all of your magical holiday dreams came true.

Next: As aforementioned, I traveled to my home state of North Carolina for Christmas to see my family. I spent Christmas evening doing a “ride along” with my little brother, Officer Ray Blevins of the Boone police department. Boone is not exactly riddled with crime (especially over the holiday break when all of the Appalachian State students are gone), so Ray warned me ahead of time that the night would probably be pretty slow. I didn’t care. I just wanted to spend some time with my little Bo-ski and see what he does in his capacity as Officer Blevins.

Much of North Carolina received a blast of nasty-ass rain and ice on Christmas morning, and Boone was hit fairly hard. Boone PD was inundated with calls about fallen power lines and trees, and many people were without electricity.

We started the night by pulling over a woman driving with her lights off. Yes, driving without her lights on at night in a winter storm. Here is my little brother laying down the law:

When Ray got back in the squad car and I asked him what reason the woman offered for driving without her lights on, Ray replied: “HUA – Head up ass.” He gave her a verbal warning and we drove off into the icy night.

Next up: fallen tree limb in the road, blocking traffic. Officer Ray and Deputy Jennifer report to the scene. At first I sat in the warm, dry patrol car as my brother went out into the street and tried to move the tree by himself. I watched as cars recklessly sped by, inches away from my little brother, and I wanted to climb into each of those cars and strangle those drivers and say: “Look here, asshole, that’s my little brother right there and he’s trying to help you out so slow the fuck down!”

Instead, I got out asked if I could help. Ray couldn’t move the limb because it was still partially attached to a tree, so he had to block it off with caution tape and flares until the public works department showed up with a chainsaw. Here’s Deputy Jennifer lighting a flare:

Other Boone PD stopped as they passed by to offer their help. Eventually the chainsaw arrived and the road was cleared.

Next up: time for a coffee break. We shared our coffee break with another officer (Officer Jeff) in a classy, 24-hour gas station/food pantry establishment. We feasted on sugar-laden English Toffee cappuccino.

As our father likes to say: You can’t hide class.

After we were sufficiently pumped full of caffeine and sugar, we went on a “welfare check.” A woman from another county called the Boone PD because she was concerned about her father; they were supposed to speak on the phone earlier that day, but she never heard from him. The man’s name: Mr. Green. So Officer Ray and Deputy Jennifer headed out to check on Mr. Green.

Mr. Green lived on the top of a hill, so it was a good thing we took one of the patrol cars with 4-wheel drive. When we got up to his house, all of the lights were out. Ray pulled out his flashlight, and I asked if I could join him.

As we approached the door, an elderly man opened it. Mr. Green looked to be in his 70s or 80s, and he had clearly spent Christmas Day all by himself. He said that a tree had fallen that morning, blocking his car in the driveway and taking out his phone lines and electricity. His daughter had not heard from him because he could not call her or leave his home. Ray whipped out his cell phone. “Mr. Green, do you have your daughter’s phone number?” Ray asked. Mr. Green went back into the dark house to get it.

Ray called Mr. Green’s daughter and handed him the cell phone. After their conversation was complete, we wished Mr. Green a Merry Christmas and got back in the patrol car.

It was at that moment when I thought: my brother is going to do a lot of good in this world.

Next up: a burglar alarm at a mint factory (as in: the little red and white mints wrapped in plastic you get at restaurants). As we approached the site, Ray turned all of our lights off. Another patrol car was already waiting in the parking lot; his lights were off, too. Ray consulted with the other officer and then proceeded to walk around the perimeter of the building with his flashlight. I sat in the dark patrol car and prayed: please don’t ever let anyone hurt my little brother. And then I started to play with my imagination: I saw a crazy burglar dressed in a silly black burglar outfit running out of the front door of the mint factory, lugging barrels and bags full of peppermints, screaming: “Mine! Mine! They’re all mine! All of the mints are MINE!” and then watching my brother shoot him in the kneecaps. As the burglar fell to the ground, the mints would scatter across the pavement and the burglar would cry: “And I would have gotten away with it, too….if it weren’t for you meddling Blevins kids!”

Alas, the burglar alarm was simply an electrical malfunction. Alas.

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful…riding through the icy streets, looking for stupid drivers and fallen tree branches. I started dozing off in my seat around 1am; Ray nudged me and said, “Maybe you should head on to the house.” I drove the 40 minutes to our family’s house in Lansing and passed out in bed while Ray continued to work until 6am. We got to see each other briefly the following afternoon, and then I headed back to our parents’ house in Burlington while Ray headed back to Boone for his next shift.

I am very proud of my little brother. If you’re ever in the Boone area and are in need of assistance, I hope it’s my little brother who answers the call. He is resourceful, compassionate, innovative, witty, intelligent, strong, patient, and really damn cool.

Yes, ladies – he’s single. And he’s fabulous.

And now, I shall end with our impending beginning. Tonight we begin a new year and a new decade. Time Magazine has named this last decade the “Decade From Hell.” I agree. “The first 10 years of this century will very likely go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post–World War II era.” Yes. Yes. Yes. But you know what’s cool? It’s about to end.

Not only is tonight New Year’s Eve, but it’s also a blue moon. And it’s also a lunar eclipse. Astrologically-speaking, it’s the perfect opportunity to close the door on the Decade From Hell and begin anew. I said I would be brief, so I will end with this:

As I sit on the 39th floor of an office building in midtown Manhattan and watch beautiful, fat snow flakes blanket my favorite city in pure white, I am thinking about the gift of a new year. The gift of a new decade. The gift of wisdom we have acquired from surviving the Decade From Hell. I don’t really like setting resolutions, so instead each year I set an intention. My intention in 2008 was to listen – to myself and to the world around me. 2009’s intention was to continue to listen and to take action based on that listening. 2010: to be gentle and to love. Myself, others. Yes.

I am happiest when I think magically – when I am able to see the world as an expansive, magical place that can surprise and delight me, rather than as a rigid box where my fate is already sealed. So, Happy New Year to you. In this new decade, let’s think magically, be gentle, and love.

See you next year.

An Ode To Survival

There are times when the greatest accomplishment of an entire year of your life is the mere fact that you survived it. Twelve months of survival. Three hundred and sixty five days of waking up in the morning, tending to your body’s basic needs, leaving the house, not throwing yourself in front of a moving vehicle during the course of the day, coming back to the house at night. A birthday, a Christmas, a dental cleaning, a Flag Day. Some people enter your life, others exit it. Maybe you drop a habit or pick up a new one. Hopefully you fit into the same size pants you did a year ago. Hopefully you haven’t done any major damage in any area of your life over the last twelve months. And maybe some years survival is enough. Even more than enough…a significant accomplishment.

Because sometimes you’re trapped in mud and any forward movement is exhausting. And wasting energy pretending like it’s all ok seems absurd; hell, you need that energy to contend with the mud. But because other people can’t see your mud they make judgments about your lackluster performance in life or your inability to smile on cue or your failure to give a fuck.

But you keep going, because that’s what you’ve been conditioned to do. But you must find reasons to keep going.

Sometimes you keep going just so that you can hit all of the great Easter candy in Walgreen’s come springtime. Shit, if Peeps and Cadbury Eggs aren’t reason enough to endure the pain of living then I don’t know what is. Throw some Starburst jelly beans and a Russell Stover Coconut Nest in there and I just might make it to June.

Sometimes you keep going because you’re waiting for a new season of a television show or a movie sequel or the film adaptation of your favorite book. When I sat next to my father in a movie theatre awaiting the start of the first Lord of the Rings movie in 2001, he turned to me and said: “I’ve been waiting forty years for this.” For me, the Harry Potter books kept me going; J.K. Rowling was my crack cocaine dealer, and I plunged into severe depression/withdrawal when I finished reading the seventh book.

Sometimes you keep going for a person. A child. A parent. A spouse. A friend. You build your life around this person (or group of people) and place the responsibility of your survival and happiness in their unwitting hands. You may not realize you are doing this; they may not realize you are doing this. But you are doing this. And it is a really bad idea. Because the other person feels the weight of that responsibility, and they will eventually resent it.

Sometimes you keep going because you don’t let yourself think about it too much. You keep yourself so insanely busy and preoccupied that emotions are a luxury. An indulgence. You take the world in half hour increments and you’re so deep in the Monet painting of your life that it’s just a series of necessary and random strokes rather than a cohesive and overwhelming whole. This way of coping can work for a while, but it cannot sustain a life. Eventually you step back and see the painting. The end of the final entry from the journal I kept my senior year of high school reads: “The scariest thing in my life is that I don’t know what I want that will make me happy….I feel very empty about life in general right now. If I just keep busy, I’ll forget about it. I always do.” (9/16/95). I was sixteen years old. Fifteen years later I can speak from experience when I say: it does not work.

Yet we keep going. Plowing ahead through the mud, eating our Peeps, probably drinking more than we want to, and maybe becoming curiously obsessed with things like knitting or Star Trek or fine cheeses (for me: exercise, books, alcohol, cats). December bleeds into January which bleeds into February which bleeds into eternity and you keep getting up every morning, not throwing yourself in front of a moving vehicle during the course of the day, and going to bed at night.

Any one of these external things upon which you’ve built your tenuous existence could collapse at any moment. Any of them. All of them. You know this. But the very fabric of our society seems to be based on this principle: seek things outside of yourself that will make you happy. So while we know it’s nothing more than a quick fix, a duct-taping of our sad, sad hearts, we participate out of desperation. “If this [fill in the blank] gets me through the next ten hours” we think, “then I’ll make it home without throwing myself in front of a moving vehicle and it will all be ok.” I understand cigarette smoking, drug abuse, morbid obesity, alcoholism; they are desperation personified.

And then we hit a severe recession. And grandmothers start hanging themselves in basements because the homes their dead husbands built with their hands are being foreclosed. And fathers start murdering their families before killing themselves because they have no money, no job, no hope. And even the most basic external things that people used to build their happiness upon are no longer attainable/affordable. And we, as a nation, all end up in the same place: celebrating the fact that the one thing we managed to do this year was to survive.

Well, now that you’re here: welcome. I happen to have some experience in this realm. If you’ve never been here before, let me show you around.

First: congratulations. Don’t let anyone tell you that what you just accomplished wasn’t a major fucking miracle. Second: you’ve probably guessed by now that you are just setting yourself up for catastrophe by seeking things outside of yourself as reasons to live. (More on this later.) Third: cry. Cry a lot. Let yourself wail. Let yourself feel it. Let it live. Because as long as you’re crying, as long as you’re feeling, you are alive and you are accomplishing a great feat.

But you may soon learn that if you drop the façade, let others see the truth and the pain you are going through, they may try to fix you. They may try to “help.” A few may actually do or say something that truly helps, but most will just utter some sage bit of wisdom they stole from someone else, like “it’s the journey, not the destination.” Then they may send you a link to some website with quotes about positivity or information about anti-depressants. And they’ll let you cry and wail, but they’ll be waiting for the moment when you stop so that they can begin to assail you with all of the ways you could be “living the life you want – right now!” and trying to tell you exactly how to fix the problem of this overwhelming sadness pervading your life. They will assume they know the inner landscape of your heart because they think they know their own, and so they will chart out a plan for you to follow to fix your problem of sadness. They very well may be doing it out of love.

But there always comes that moment when they see it isn’t working and they get frustrated. Angry. Fed up. I can feel it in a friend’s voice over the phone. I can see it in their wrinkled brow when sitting across from each other in a restaurant. They expect to solve decades of sadness and depression with a 5-point plan of attack.

They set themselves up for disappointment. And they don’t seem to understand that what they are feeling in that very moment is what you are feeling most of the time you are awake. It is a disability that no one else can see. It is mud, and you are wading through it. And you’re tired of trying to explain what the mud looks like to everyone else. So I frequently just play along now. I nod, or thank them for the suggestions.

So now the great question: if you are not going to depend on external things/other people as reason to live, how do you keep going? Excellent question, and one I’ve been pondering since I was about ten years old. I do not have an answer, but I keep working on it. I am a voracious spiritual seeker, and I find that helps. For me, right now it’s Buddhism and Meher Baba; for you, it might be something else. But even that sometimes can feel like a crock of shit – an opiate to numb desperation.

In recent years I have found a few people who seem to be a few paces ahead of me on this journey, and they are the most helpful. I have had glimpses of the happiness of a life led not for others or external things but for the divine light that resides within, and I am hopeful that the more I work on it the more time I can spend in that place. Because that stuff spreads; when you find a way to live from that place, you pass it on to others.

So as 2009 comes to a close and you begin to reflect, please be kind to yourself. It has been a tough year on all of us, and if you didn’t find a cure for cancer or lose those ten pounds or accomplish a single damn thing on your goal list, I absolve you. You are reading this blog, which means you survived. I am impressed by us all.

A week from today I fly down to North Carolina to see my family. I have not seen them in a year. I can’t wait to step on that plane, because I need to be someplace surrounded by people I love and who love me. This holiday season, I wish that for all of you. My friends, you are beautiful. You are strong. You have a beautiful light inside of you and it doesn’t need anything outside of you in order to shine. I’m going to take next week off for Christmas, and I’ll be back on Thursday, December 31st. I wish you a happy holiday. I wish you love and good food and copious amounts of alcohol. And I am so very glad that you have survived.

love, jennifer

Alchemy

The month of December brings me to the end of my beloved Frida Kahlo wall calendar. The final image is The Little Deer (1946), so the head of Frida on a deer’s dying body has been staring at me since December 1st. The word “Carma” appears in the lower left hand corner; painted after an unsuccessful surgery on her spine, some have argued that this painting epitomizes Frida’s view of herself – a woman incapable of changing her own bleak destiny. Actually, many of Frida’s paintings convey this same theme: I am doomed.

Lately I have been thinking about the dead.

This week I wrote a piece for Lit Drift about the current Vladimir Nabokov controversy (i.e. Nabokov’s final, unfinished novel was recently published against his explicit final instructions), and it got me to thinking about dead people and the stuff they leave behind.

I actually think about dead people at least twice a day. I chant every morning and every evening as part of my Buddhist practice. At the end of the chanting session, there are four silent prayers; one of those is a prayer for the dead. It is an opportunity to pray for dead relatives and any other dead person I care to throw in. This silent prayer for the dead has become one of my favorite parts of the practice. Twice a day I get to say hi to my grandparents, uncles, various other ancestors, my childhood cat Sheena, etc. It feels as if they are somehow less dead now because I spend time with them each day. I always add some non-relatives to the list….dead people whose life work has positively influenced me. I like to let them know how grateful I am for what they did while they were here.

One dead person who always makes the list: Virginia Woolf.

Frida Kahlo and Virginia Woolf…Yup, I have a habit of surrounding myself with dead, sad, brilliant, creative women.

The older and wiser I get the more willing I become to listen to old people and dead people. I do not equate age with wisdom; many old/dead people are complete idiots. But a few really know their shit, and I count Virginia Woolf among them.

I first read Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own in my “Women & Literature” class my sophomore year of college. I was eighteen years old. I reread it last year at age thirty, mostly while sitting on sidewalk benches in SoHo during breaks from my miserable, soul-sucking day job.

The first time I reread Woolf’s famous thesis line (“a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”), I burst into big, fat tears and sobbed uncontrollably on a green wooden bench on Spring Street. At age eighteen Woolf’s thesis was an abstract concept; at age thirty it had become a painful reality.

Thanks to her many brilliant novels and essays and the posthumous publication of her diaries, I have access to Woolf’s gorgeous mind and unique wit. Never before have I ever felt so connected to the inner workings of another human being; sometimes I am scared by how similarly we view and feel the world. But not to fret – I make sure to steer clear of large bodies of water whenever I fill my pockets with rocks.

I realize that all of the dead people I thank twice a day as part of that silent prayer have one thing in common: each did something while they were alive that has consequently affected my life. I have benefitted from some act or choice they made before they died. In the case of the non-ancestors on my Dead People Gratitude List, they are almost all people who turned pain into something beautiful and the results of their efforts have trickled down to me. Case in point: Frida Kahlo and Virginia Woolf. If these two women had just sat around and stewed in their pain rather than work to transform it into something beautiful, they would not be a part of my life and they would not be on my list.

So the key here is action. Making a choice. Turning shit into art.

I have been emotionally overwhelmed this week by the beauty, strength and courage of one of my friends, Gregg Mozgala. Last Friday night I went to see Gregg perform in a dance piece, “Diagnosis of a Faun,” at La Mama. Gregg has been developing this show for the last year, and it is wonderful. But I am not emotionally overwhelmed because the show was wonderful; I am overwhelmed by what Gregg has done.

Gregg has cerebral palsy, and in the course of one year’s time he has managed to transform himself into an amazing dancer. In the ultimate act of alchemy, he has transcended his physical limitations; the result is art. Mind-blowing, awe-inspiring, kicking-life-in-the-ass art. Click here to read the New York Times article and click here to view his appearance on the CBS Morning Show.

[This success and attention could not be happening to a nicer human being, by the way.]

Gregg’s show stirred up a lot in me emotionally, and I have been thinking about the act of alchemy. I have to believe that in life we are handed what we are supposed to transcend; otherwise I cannot explain the pain of being alive.

Winter is upon us. As we enter this season of dying and as I say goodbye to twelve months of Frida’s pain on my wall, I am thinking about alchemy. I am thinking about individuals, alive and dead, whose wisdom and courage inspire me. And I am thinking about the dead person I one day aspire to be.

Big Straight Jennifer’s Big Gay Blog

When I found out yesterday that the New York State Senate voted down the gay marriage bill, I was surprised and perplexed. I mean, this is NEW YORK. We’re supposed to be the progressive, liberal state that serves as a catalyst for the cultural and social change that later ripples throughout the rest of the nation. I thought, “How could MY New York be such a dillweed?!” But apparently there are enough New Yorkers who still oppose equal marital rights for homosexuals to vote down a bill and effectively kill this issue in the Senate for at least another year.

Call me naïve, but I find it hard to believe that so many people are still threatened by gay people. I mean, didn’t everybody take Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride back in 1997?

Christians and Republicans and Nazis -- Oh my!

But even with all of the impressive political and social strides that gay people have made, all of the innocuous openly gay public figures (like Ellen DeGeneres) out there doing cool things in the world, all of the movies and t.v. shows and books and widespread dialogue about homosexuality, there are still plenty of American citizens who would rather strap themselves to a nuclear missile than let my gay friends share the same legal marital rights that heterosexuals have.

And I JUST DON’T GET IT.

My first exposure to homosexuality was in high school. One of my first (and best) friends when my family moved to Columbia, South Carolina my 8th grade year was a gay man. A few years later I joined the apprentice company of Trustus Theatre. Located in the middle of downtown, conservative Columbia, Trustus was this sort of utopian theatrical wonderland; amazing theatre was being done on a regular basis and everyone was accepted for whatever-the-hell they were. Being a part of the Trustus community influenced me profoundly as an artist and as a person, and I will be forever grateful for being invited to join their fold. It was a diverse and talented group, and many of the company members and apprentice company members were openly gay. Honestly, I spent more time around gay people when I was in high school than I did around straight people. The first wedding I attended was a commitment ceremony between two female Trustus company members in January 1996. It was a beautiful, moving event that sparked a good deal of controversy in Columbia….as one would expect.

The very first friend I made my very first week at Wake Forest University was a gay man; we are still friends. One of my two best friends is a gay woman; we have been best friends for almost a decade. My current social circle in NYC is probably at least 50% homosexual. So, in essence, what I am saying is this: I may be straight, but I know the gays.

I know them in part because I have never felt threatened by them. Because I have never felt threatened by them, they have felt comfortable inviting me into their lives. Actually, I feel threatened by very little in this world. I am not threatened by alternative lifestyles, conservative Republicans, religious cults, people of different colors and/or ethnicities. Pretty much the only people I find threatening are those who commit (or intend to commit) acts of violence and/or harm others. I have spent over half of my life intimately involved with the homosexual community and I have never once seen a gay person commit any act of violence that has harmed anyone else. I’ve been to some really kickin’ parties, seen some really awesome drag shows, received expert fashion and grooming advice, and been educated about the fineries of show tunes and folk music, but my relationships with gay people have never once thrown me in the path of violence. Actually, gay people are some of the coolest and most loving people I know.

But what that vote yesterday told me was that there are still plenty of people (even in New York) who are still threatened by gay people. Religious groups cite the Bible and assert that God believes homosexuality is wrong, some conservatives argue that it could lead to legalized polygamy, others moan and wail that it’s “bad for children” to be raised by gay parents, douchebag idiots threaten that it could lead to acceptance of bestiality or pedophilia….

To me, it’s all a crock of shit. Every reason offered up as to why gay people should not be granted equal legal marital rights reeks of feces. And that shit smell is attempting to mask the real issue: fear. People fear what they don’t understand. Don’t give me this bullshit about the “sanctity of marriage” when infidelity is rampant and about half of the marriages in this country end in divorce. The Bible also says that divorce is a sin; what a convenient interpretation religious conservatives choose to take of this sacred text. No, this all smells like fear mingled with poo.

But I want to take a moment to open my heart up to those people who live in constant fear of my folk-music-loving, well-dressed friends. To those people who oppose gay marriage, I have a sincere question for you: Why? What about gay people scares you? Why are you so threatened? I have my own theory, but I would also like to hear it directly from you. So while I assume that the majority of people who read Theblevinsblog are liberal, pro-gay marriage folk, if you are not I would really love for you to explain why. Leave it as a comment or contact me directly and I promise I will not mock you or tell you that you smell like poo (and I ask all of my liberal, pro-gay readers to do the same).

People fear what they don’t understand, yes. But I think that the issue is not a lack of knowledge/understanding about homosexuality (thank you for the very informative boat ride, Big Gay Al) but rather confusion surrounding something much deeper. I was born and raised in the South, so while I consider myself a New Yorker I also have years and years of firsthand experience with the kind of bigotry and ignorance that fuels the other side of the gay marriage debate. So here is my theory:

Many people are terrified of individuals bold enough to live fully in their truth. Anytime someone fully embraces their essence and is brave enough to share that with the world, others who are not embracing their own essence may feel threatened by it. That bold act implies that it actually IS possible to live inside your truth, even in the midst of ignorance and hatred and prejudice. Most people don’t want to believe that such a thing is even possible. They can’t even wrap their minds around it. It challenges every bit of repression and pain that they grew up with, and they have come to define themselves through that repression and pain. Homosexuality is just a tangible representation of this other way of living that they have convinced themselves is an impossibility. I think it has very little to do with sex and more to do with audacity. Living in one’s truth. Letting your light shine in the world and not apologizing for it.

It actually reminds me of a dream I had two weeks ago that I cannot stop thinking about:

I was depressed and dejected and walking down a city street at night. I rounded a corner and saw a NYC bus parked by the side of the street. I saw a green gas truck with the word “Approved” written on its side barreling towards the back of the bus. As the truck approached the back of the bus it started speeding up rather than slowing down, and suddenly it plowed into the back of the bus. The force of the collision sent the bus flying in the air…right in my direction.

As soon as I saw that the gas truck was going to hit the bus, I froze. I knew what was going to happen and it felt like I was watching it in slow motion. I did not have any time to run away. And it’s a good thing I didn’t: the bus whizzed by me, so close that I could feel its heat…literally inches away from me. If I had been a few paces ahead or behind of where I was I would have been hit by the airborne bus; because I did not move, I was safe. The bus made contact with the ground right behind me and burst into flames. I could feel the heat of the explosion, but I wasn’t harmed by it. Again, if I had not been exactly in the spot in which I was standing I would have been killed. I was inches away from this violent, dramatic incident; I got to witness it in great detail yet wasn’t harmed by it. The immediate conclusion I drew from the dream was enough to snap me awake: I am constantly protected in ways I cannot see. I lay awake, my heart pounding.

But as I have processed the dream over the last couple of weeks, I have been struck by something else: because I did not move, I was safe. I beat myself up a lot about not moving forward in my life….feeling frozen…etc. But maybe sometimes the wisest thing to do is remain still and let shit blow up around you and wait for the right moment to proceed.

That green gas truck with the word “Approved” written on it was the final vehicle to drive through the Brooklyn Gay Pride Parade that I attended this past summer. I liked it so much that I took a picture of it:

I felt like the gas truck was saying: “Hey there, gay people – we approve you!” So to all of my big gay friends I say this:

You are beautiful. I love you. I can’t wait to be invited to your big gay engagement parties and big gay wedding parties and big gay divorce parties. I think right now all you have to do is just stand still and let shit explode around you. You are protected (and loved) in ways you cannot see. And Jennifer Blevins approves you.

A Very Special Holiday Blog

I am very thankful for you. You keep coming back week after week to Theblevinsblog, and you occasionally even share the blog with others. Some of you reach out to me and tell me that you read it/like it, but I know that many of you simply read in silence and then go about your merry way, carrying my words around in your head. Regardless of which category you are in, I feel your love and I appreciate you. So today I am taking a break from my usual format and offering you a gift.

Today I offer you a photo essay.

There are two New York Cities: one is for the tourists and one is for the New Yorkers. If you are a tourist, you do things like go to Times Square and the Statue of Liberty and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. If you are a New Yorker, you avoid Times Square like the plague and enjoy the Statue of Liberty from afar as you ride over the bridge in a subway train on your way back to Brooklyn. As far as Thanksgiving is concerned, you wouldn’t be caught dead at the parade; instead, you go to the balloon inflation the day before.

I got out of work early yesterday and Jen Katz (i.e. one of my two best friends in the entire universe) met me at my office building in Columbus Circle. It was a drizzly, overcast afternoon….beautiful in its own drizzly, overcast way. We walked up to 79th Street together. I was utterly exhausted, having stayed out until very late the night before with an old friend who was in town (wonderful to see you, Bello). I was not into this whole “let’s go watch people pump helium into balloons” thing, but Katz wanted to go and I love Jen Katz. So I went. And I am oh so glad I did.

We started to see signs directing the masses to the balloon inflation. Suddenly we happened upon a free cookie stand. Yes! You read that correctly: free cookies!!

Free cookies AND balloons?! 'Tis the land of milk and honey indeed!

We followed the flow of people snaking around the Museum of Natural History. Ahoy! A pirate:

Next came SpongeBob.

SpongeBob preparing to eat his balloon handlers.

Katz with SpongeBob's foot.

The “finger up the ass” series began with the wiener dog:

Me with my finger up a wiener dog's poopchute.

The Energizer Bunny:

My finger up the Energizer Bunny’s poopchute:

The highlight for me was Kermit. Kermit was my hero growing up. I had at least three Kermit-themed birthday parties when I was a kid, and I was kind of in love with him. The Kermit balloon is always one of my favorite balloons in the parade.

So of course I had to stick my finger in his mouth:

And his poopchute:

The ass of the great Kermit.

Spiderman was awesome.

So I stuck my finger up his ass:

Snoopy:

Buzz Lightyear:

My finger up Buzz Lightyear’s ass:

Finger in the poopchute!

Picking Dora the Explorer’s nose:

Picking Hello Kitty’s nose:

Picking a smurf’s nose:

The smurf squishing my head:

Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for reading. I am thankful for you.