Imperfect in Every Way
July 11, 2015
by AlixClyburn
1. Training
This week is so different from last week. However lazy and unscheduled last week was is as busy and punch-the-clock as this week. I’m commuting to Brooklyn for a freelance project at an ad agency so unbearably hip I feel like instead of a copyediting job, I’ve actually been cast in an online ad for artisanal wooden bow ties I’m hoping that wearing my hair in a sloppy topknot masks my shamefully tattoo-free body.
The commute is gigantic: A commuter train and a subway, under two rivers, across two states and two boroughs. NYC makes it all pretty easy, and I’m certainly not alone in this state of perpetual movement.
I love taking the train to New York, especially if I’m going to work. I realize it becomes a terrible hassle when you do it every day, but I rarely do. I like the anonymity. I like that for that 37–45 minutes, I am alone. I can read. I love people watching on the train. It starts on the platform. There’s the blonde guy who smokes a cigarette as he paces in the parking lot. He pinches the cigarette between his thumb and first finger, and cups it within his hand, like he’s hiding it, or he’s Gene Hackman in the French Connection.
There’s the dark-haired beauty whose fitful high-maintenance son played basketball with Julius for a couple years when they were young. She’s dressed in elegant designer fashion, her long dark hair is always straightened and shining. She carries a big leather bag with a conspicuous label. To ameliorate my envy at her elegance, I remember that her son threw more tantrums in basketball than my son.
Still on the platform, I do have to grapple with the people I know; the people who dare to intrude on my solitude. Sometimes I let them, but it’s rare. Turning people away with an apologetic shrug toward my laptop that silently says, “I wish, I have to work” might be the most powerful moment of my day. If I could beg off the rest of my social life the way I can duck nearly all comers on the train platform, I’d probably have three novels and a screenplay under my belt by now.
When I arrive at Penn it takes a lot of imagination to not want to the world to come to a fiery end right then and there. Aaak, the humanity. Some days are just a parade of junkies, stinky homeless lunatics, National Guardsmen, and desperately sad looking workaday stiffs shuffling the same well-worn path to their beige midtown office. Young women packed into polyester facsimiles of this season’s fashion, their hair keratin-ed smooth, their fingernails gelled and gleaming. And every third person is looking at their phone as they walk. Every fourth person is having a conversation with the thin air, but since they don’t smell like urine you know they are talking into a Bluetooth, not to the wild dogs in their peripheral imagination.
I shake off the urge to dwell on how disconnected and horrible life can be, especially for the crazy homeless people. I fall in step with the masses and keep on moving.
2. Do what Thao Does
How many times in the course of your adult life have you felt incapable of the job before you, yet certain you had no way to wriggle out of it? Freelancing routinely puts me in this position, but middle age in general seems to be about “have to” not “want to.” And so much of the “have to” seems too hard or scary. You feel like such a badass after you conquer those first few sleepless years of parenthood, only to realize that was the easy part.
Truly being a grown-up seems to be about owning the decision-making status even if you don’t feel a rightful claim to it. It can be something as simple as what the headline should be on the website of the latest credit card offering (my freelance work), or deciding the best way to shepherd my mother through the final stages of dementia (my life). Somewhere in the middle is everything else — bossing around my children, how to pay the bills, what we should tell the kids about police brutality against young black men. What the hell do I know, I say to the universe. I am not capable of all this. I can’t do it.
A young singer named Thao gave me the motivating lyric for times like these: “You gotta push all that doubt to the side of your mouth.”
It’s in a song called Swimming Pools and I don’t really know what exactly she’s singing about, but this lyric reached me. Sometimes, you have to just push that doubt to the side of your mouth and dive in. Another line in the song: “We brave bee stings and all, and we dont dive we cannonball.” Fuck yea!
As far as I can tell, a big part of motherhood and grownup-hood in general seems to be ‘faking it’ — exhibiting a sense of knowing authority so the people around you feel secure. Unless you’re a NASA scientist or a brain surgeon “faking it” is just the way it goes until you get good at it, I think. You just push that doubt to the side of your mouth where no one can see it.
I remember when we were moving to New Jersey and my boys were 4 and 2. I was in a near constant state of panic over selling the house, packing to go, uprooting the boy, leaving my friends, where we would land, etc. Dexter’s nursery school teacher gently told me, basically, to “Snap out of it!” (Cher, Moonstruck, best line ever.) Miss Karen didn’t slap me, but rather sweetly reminded me to exude calm even if I didn’t necessarily feel it, since — and here, she pointed at the boys with her chin, “You’re the captain of this ship.” Not that I wanted that title, but it’s true. I am the captain of their ship.
Thao is a Virginia girl from a Cambodian family and her music is infectious and simultaneously punky rough and dancey pop. It’s filled with Taylor Swifty lines of empowerment, but with more off-kilter honesty and less glossy roundness.
For an extra dose of her charm, watch her tiny desk concert .
3. Fuck Saul Bellow
I’m on page 245, only about 85 pages to go but I’m not going to finish Henderson the Rain King. It’s bugging me. Saul Bellow writes too much. I googled a review and found an excerpt of the original NYtimes review from 1959. That guy didn’t love it either and said the book was “prolix.” It is. (Look it up.) I find myself saying, “Ok, ok, ok, I get it,” waiting for Henderson, and Bellow, to get to the point. The characters keep launching into these hyper verbose speeches about flowers in the desert, or if our bodies reflect our mental states or lions or I don’t know what. I’m sick of it. I’m done. I dutifully followed Jeff’s 100-page rule, got some good stuff out of it, and now I’m done.
In the cage match between Saul Bellow and Phillip Roth, I now know who I root for. I am a Roth girl.
4. Weeds Are to Gardens as Screens Are to _________
Did you say your child’s intellectual growth and social development? Right answer! Fucking screens. The effort to keep my kids book- or real life- centered is fitful at best. They are reading but it’s mostly graphic novels and comic books. The ‘No Screens Until’ system is in effect, but if I’m on an 8 am train into NYC it’s hard to enforce. Thankfully I have a great sitter who will keep them off screens but last night as soon as she left, they beseeched me like dehydrated men who’ve just crawled across the desert. Instead of water, it was the XBox they begged for.
I’m now trying page counts, like “You need to be on page 175 of your book by Friday.” I don’t really care if I sound like an antiquated scold and I know I’m not a Luddite. This default lapse to Minecraft is just destructive and addictive. This week the NYTimes ran a story about a study on screen addiction and it gave me strength to keep on fighting for the kids to shut. Off. The. Screens.
In my opinion, the act of reading a novel is an excellent way to cultivate your ability to sustain your concentration. Our digital age is destroying this capacity in all of us, and I really think it’s vital. If you look at any of the revolutionary disruptors in our culture — lately I guess all of them are somehow digital or technological — every last one was created by a person who I’m certain spent a lot of time concentrating on one thing.
5. Pushing the doubt, party style
I used to daydream about being the kind of girl who hosted lots of friends for dinner parties and cocktails. I never did it, just daydreamed about it. I never pulled the trigger for countless reasons like the house wasn’t clean, or good enough, or I don’t know what I’d make, who to invite, how it would ‘work’… I’d put off inviting friends over who’d invited me to their house that I then got swept into this weird notion that now I owed them a BIG event because the invitation was so long overdue, like lobster dinner and Courvoisier.
I don’t know what ultimately changed my mind — Maybe Hurricane Sandy. So much of our town lost power for over a week, but we didn’t. So we started hosting people to charge their devices, work on our wifi, warm up, and eat. Every day I’d make huge meals — lasagna, ribs, roast chicken — to ensure that however many people showed up at our door, we’d have food. We all drank too much wine and had a surprising amount of fun, considering.
I loved feeling like we were a home base for people and I wanted to make hosting people more of a regular thing, but was stymied by this insecurity I had. So I just started just saying out loud to other humans, “I want you to come over for dinner.” Panicked cleaning and planning immediately ensued but it happened. My friends had a great time, without lobster or Courvoisier, and I began one of my favorite habits/hobbies.
Hosting friends at my house gets easier every time I do it. The key is downgrading all the perfectionism shit. I realized that nothing makes people feel more welcome than a hostess just being glad they’re there. So what if the house is messy, or the wine is meh, or the bread is a little stale.
Friends of mine marvel at my hosting, but it’s really about what Thao said. I pushed the doubts to the side of my mouth and set a date. It’ll never be perfect, and I want to do it, so I just do it.
In my first blog I posted a recipe for Chicken Provencal. It was excerpted from a cookbook I now own: Confessions of a Serial Entertainer by Steven Stolman. In it, he has a great little essay about this very topic, and he says this:
“I think that much of the dread to entertain comes from an inability to be spontaneous, from thinking that one’s home isn’t up to snuff and, simply, from not having the basics on hand to people in at a moment’s notice.”
Yep, that sounds like me.
The bottom line is that you’re not a restaurant or a home décor magazine layout. People came over to see you and hang out. We all love being a guest at someone else’s house. What a giant relief it is to have someone else cook for you, even if they overcook the pasta or dry out the pork. One more drink and no one cares about the food anyway.
So stock your pantry for guests. Add olives, crackers, and manchego cheese to your weekly shopping list so you always have something on hand. Always have some kind of booze at the ready — a bottle of prosecco in the fridge, some vodka in the freezer. Enlist the kids to help clear their crap off the first floor and just invite some people over.
Here’s Stolman’s recipe for Pimento Cheese from the serial entertainer. I made this for July 4th, and it’s dangerously delicious and kind of retro kitsch.
Into your food processor toss 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese, 1 4. Oz. jar of diced pimentos (drained), ½ cup of mayo, and ½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Add salt, chill it, and then serve it with Ritz crackers. So yummy.
Here’s a few more tips:
* If you have berries in the fridge, rinse them and put them in a pretty bowl.
* As a matter of fact, have your favorite serving plates and bowls accessible. Don’t tuck them away into a far top shelf. Have them ready to go. Deciding on what goes into what serving dish is my favorite part.
* Maybe there’s something pretty growing in your yard? Go cut a piece or two of it and stick in a small vase.
* Buy the salt and pepper pistachios at Trader Joe’s. They’re amazing.
6. Practicing Imperfectionism
I can’t believe I’ve written this many blog posts without singing the praises ofBrainpickings.org.
Brainpickings is one of my favorite things online. Maria Popova, the woman who created it, is truly the most curious and voracious reader on planet Earth. Brainpickings is like the idea of the Internet at its finest. In this vast universe of information, she has cherry-picked the good stuff. She posts snippets of something cool, or synthesizes a few things to create a nice little gem about creativity, or friendship, or the best children’s books. It’s really the Cadillac version of this Pinto. Just go check it out.
Today she profiled the daily rituals of the Dalai Lama and posted an excerpt from an Anne LaMott book about haters and perfectionism. Here’s a choice quote she plucked from Anne LaMott:
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.”
LaMott’s talking about writing, but perfectionism was and is the main obstacle between me and so many things. Hosting friends for dinner, for instance, or wearing bathing suits in public, or achieving a level of contentment and acceptance with life, and of course writing.
Perfectionism is what kept me from writing for years. Hell, I know this writing I’m doing now isn’t perfect but at least I’m doing it. I know perfect is far from where I am, more than a few rivers and trains from where I am, after all.
7. For Instance.
Today I nearly experienced a miracle. I put my contact lenses in and my vision got blurry. Usually I can just blink the contact into the right position and all’s well. This time the blinky blinky wasn’t working. By the time I realized my contacts were not working my fingers were coated with tinted moisturizer. So instead of taking my contact out, I just kept blinking. Still blurry. hmmm. Weird, I thought. I got dressed, then realized I couldn’t read anything. Everything was blurry. I needed to deal with this. I went back upstairs and took out my contacts. This is when things got really strange.
My vision IMPROVED. Now nothing was blurry. I looked outside, and could make out leaf detail, not just one big green patch. My contacts were out and I could SEE.
I was elated. I think I’ve heard of this happening. People aging and their vision improving. For once in my life, I’m the lucky duck. I’ve been cured of myopia. I’ve got the golden ticket!
It really was remarkable. Miraculous. Alas, no. I then poked myself in the eye in the way that only a contact user can do, and realized there were contacts IN MY EYES. Jesus. I don’t know which emotion is greater, disappointment or embarrassment. I’m alone in my bathroom yet somehow embarrassed at my own dopiness.
Not that it’s out of character. I have a strain of absent-mindedness that can make life feel like an I Love Lucy episode. I have to put daily medication in one of those old lady daily pill dispensers because I not only forget TO take a pill, I’ll forget that I just DID take a pill and take it again. When I got my first paycheck, as a teenager, I deposited the pay stub and threw away the check.
Two summers ago we kept the big Thule storage carrier atop the minivan for a few weeks. I forgot it was there — I mean, who wouldn’t? It’s not like you can see it up there while you’re driving. You can hear it though, when it scrapes the concrete roof of a parking garage. I did that once in the garage next to Bloomingdale’s.
Here’s the thing that makes me an amateur Lucille Ball. I did it AGAIN. The next day. The stream of expletives that flew out of my mouth will stay with my children for years. The second time, I couldn’t scrape the car out. I was stuck in the middle of a university parking garage during camp drop-off and my car was completely jammed, blocking everyone. Jeff had to come to where I was and unwedge the van from the parking garage structure. He rarely gets mad at me, but I think he was a little mad at me that day. “I just don’t understand how you can do this twice,” he said. He would never put two pairs of contacts in.
One of my best friends once walked all the way to work with the back of her skirt tucked into her underwear. I think this is why I love her. She was so rightfully angry at the entire city of Washington, DC, because no one on her subway commute ever saw fit to tell her.
I mean, c’mon. Nobody’s perfect.
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