20-Minute Monday: Contrasts

Tonight I feel both powerful and fragile.  After work I crossed Copley  to the BPL to return 3 severely overdue books and, crossing back at the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth, strode straight through a minefield of skateboarders (doing their daily swings across the tempting marble slab) as if daring one of them to roll in front of me, then diagonal again across the 3 lanes of Dartmouth and daring the cars turning off St. James.  Then to yoga, successful with its one-legged Chaturanga Dandasanas and warriors 1, 2 & 3 and the 10 minutes of ab crunches while in a supported bridge and the resonant Ujjayi interspersed with Lion's Breath.  Followed by 500 calories burned on the elliptical machine.

Stepping back out of the gym into Copley, then, the day's earlier muggy warmth had dissipated, drizzle falling, the red lights of 3 ambulances and a fire truck on the same sidewalk that had entertained the skater bois hours before, the attendants working on someone, evidently, in a bad way on the benches there.  The energy so rare and different.

The damp seeps in here on the library steps, even as I sit on my coattail to keep my butt dry.  It's better to be out here, leaning against the pedestal of the lion statue, rather than back on the mugger's paradise of the main walls.  Lion's breath earlier, lion protection now. I think I don't necessarily crave protection, not really needing it here in the well-lit public square, and otherwise finding it difficult to accept that sometimes I'm fragile and need to accept help and advice.  MSF's visit reminded me how much I could learn about finding the comfort of that line between self-sufficiency and the relaxing of ego to someone else's care and concern.  He helped with that, sometimes chiding, sometimes letting me chide him.  Neither is a bad way to be....and on a night (and following a week) of the power/fragile struggle, I know it sometimes takes a surfeit of one to appreciate the other.

Monday, October 3, 9:25-9:45 p.m.

Boston Public Library

20-minute Monday: (Almost) 20 miles

The Man from San Francisco and I went to a party Saturday night where both hosts and many other folks were runners and, after a couple of home-brewed porters, we were all sharing the idiosyncracies of our Reach the Beach teams from last weekend and whatever it is we're training for now and how any run this weekend was bound to suck with the 180% humidity non-seasonal to Northeast Septembers, so I shared how earlier in the day I had powered through 18.5 of my 20.5 miles before first struggling through to 19 and then tanking and walking the last mile uphill into Southie while wringing out a tank top and shorts plastered like magnets to my stomach and thusly creating an honest-to-God trail of sweat puddles along West 3rd Street, and after I said this all the folks nodded sympathetically because, yeah, it did kinda suck to run on Saturday, but I had no sympathy for my lack of mental and physical stamina at 5 weeks to race time and am glad for a second shot at a 20 in 2 weeks when maybe October will be a little more distance-runner friendly, and also was not sorry for myself because I got to spend that last mile of walking knowing that the MSF was sleeping off his red-eye flight while waiting in my air conditioned apartment and that, once I returned and stretched and drank Powerade and showered and and found a dry shirt, we were going to vegetate in that AC in long-awaited companionship and, at least for me, a rare reward.

20-Minute Monday: Invincibility

Looking out over my right shoulder tonight, as we flew higher than the piled-up thunderheads, and struck yet again by the miracle of flight: our human ability to be up among this planet's highermost creations and how seemingly blithely we do this ... hopping to Minneapolis for the weekend, no big deal, just a chance to see cousins and nephews (getting older and changing every minute just like the rest of us). So easily done when there so many things in the world so difficult.

How is it that flying -- being higher than thunderstorms, God-like -- has become such a mundane, everyday thing?

Now we're making a wide-right turn past the east edge of greater Boston and out over the Atlantic, approaching as one always does at Logan, above (and in spite of) powerful ocean waves below. Spotlit ballfields in the dusk. Freeways filled with cars as big as ants, their perceived size completely belying the lives, anxieties, dramas and goodnesses within each one. Lights of the metro spreading out in a vastness all made possible by human invention, too.

It's a day in this country that, out of necessity, overflows with introspection and demands to evaluate the present and its shaping by the past and how we, as humans, live with and hurt each other not only in the most henious ways but the most ordinary, in grievance and in compassion, in selfishness and in altruism. 

Touching down now ... ripped suddenly from lofty vantage. Introspection seems more difficult when dealing with mundane issues of luggage collection, bus rides, the making of mental notes for a new Monday and the week ahead with its attendant complexities and uncertainities both tactile and vague. Despite being idealistic and financially unreasonable, it would seem easier, somehow, to just ride the air currents non-stop in the unimaginable insularity (and relative safety?) of an airplane, figuring it all out from a remove.

 
Sunday, September 11, 2011 (7:32-7:52 pm)

Aboard Sun Country 257 (MSP to BOS)

20-minute Monday: Gluttony

Walking down Elm Street tonight, into the center of Davis Square, I was trying to imagine how I would reflect back on a night like this. One of my best friends is at the hospital with his wife, preparing for their daughter to be born. Earlier, I both cleaned out my clothes closet for the first time in a year and still found time for yoga in Thomas Park in a gusty wind, with storm clouds threatening.


Made veggie curry in the crockpot, too. Go figure.

Now, I've got the Times sports section in front of me -- Nadal at the Open! -- and a fragrant bourbon, mint and ginger concoction to my left here at the bar. I just ate some Jonah crab claws and a BBQ chicken sandwich with apple coleslaw and fries. (Kind of but not really saving room for when Student Driver and I meet for ice cream later.) As I've been eating and drinking, the Man from San Francisco and I are texting images back and forth as if we were dining together: he's seen my cocktail and claws; I've seen his crusty sourdough, cheese spread, TCHO citrus dark chocolate and Big Daddy IPA, as clear as if it were in front of me and not 3100 miles to the west. We're calling these messages "food porn." I seem to have forgotten the potential sensuality of this medium, until now.

Everything about this day just seems right. The luxury in the good joy of friends, in the occasional gluttony, in girlfriends to talk shit with and boys to talk food with, in thunderstorms threatened but not materializing, and in (what I think I've deduced now as) relief at the forecast of a rewarding September, making short work of whatever past gloom has pervaded this so-called last day of summer.

Monday, September 5 (9:16-9:36 p.m.)
Davis Square, Somerville

20-Minute Monday: Unprepared

Tonight I was all set to go to yoga at 7:00 .... until, at 6:42, standing in the locker room, stripped down to change, finding that what I thought was a pair of red shorts was actually a red tank top. And since it isn't exactly practical or in any good taste to do a standing split (or nearly any other pose) while wearing a knee-lenth Ann Taylor professional-line skirt, my plans rightly had to change. So instead I just rode for 60 minutes on the elliptical machine ... wearing the red tank top, my blue Asics and the green-flowered Ann Taylor professional-line (and now sweat-soaked) skirt.

Oh, to ever feel properly prepared. To have pulled together my yoga clothes last night instead of just before running out the door this morning. To have, maybe, even unfolded the red tank top enough to notice it wasn't something with a waistband. Or, to keep tank tops and shorts not in the same drawer so the odds of mixing them up might decrease.

What if. Perhaps if I were prepared I wouldn't be sitting here in the bucolic Boston Public Library courtyard, with its arched columns and lighted fountain resembling that of an ancient Greek tycoon's weekend home,

Here I sit.
(Copyright Tom Christiansen, 2001)

wearing the blue Asics, the green-flowered skirt, and the red, sweaty tank top covered with plum cardigan, college backpack at my feet, looking for all the world (particularly to the woman walking by right now in a, yes, Ann Taylor skirt with a blouse and heels) like a vagabond camp-out, rather than who I really am, which is an unprepared yogi with procrastination issues and only a minor sense of style but, perhaps, also enough chutzpah to not care about either presentation.

Monday, August 29, 2011 (8:31-8:51 p.m.)

Boston Public Library

20-Minute Monday: (Cor)related

It's my Mom's 66th birthday today. I just tried phoning to wish her the best, but she's not home.

So I can't know for certain, but my guess is she has made note of turning 66 on the 22nd, will be able to find the number 3 somewhere in her day, and will have gleaned an extra layer of meaning out of the correlation.  Like a triple Golden Birthday.  Or, she might, at some point today, happen to be driving down a 66th Street or County Road 33. Or the hymn she'll be practicing for next Sunday's church service will be #822 or #845, or she'll notice the composer of the tune was born in 1945, too, or the lyricist was known to be born in Denver....like she was.

This is just how Mom rolls. She always finds these things, God bless her. Thrives on finding the small details of others' lives and their correlating meaning in the details of hers. 



3 generations
Post-first-marathon -- St. Paul MN, October 2002


She might, for example, just believe that the reason I am the most physically similar to her (5-foot-3, chest prominent, potato nose and button chin) of the 3 daughters is because I, too, was born on the 22nd of a month. (And the 2nd child, too!) Could be how we share the same mad piano skills and the same desire to tell any story, written or verbal, with every rich detail and self-deprecating foible it deserves. Enjoying the relative embarrassment, as if we want to make people laugh with us before laughing at us so we can be in on the joke first ... without really trying to be. Could be how we're both iron-certain of our musical opinions and not afraid to share. Sensitive to criticism but eventually brought around to see the truth. And both often told we are leaving our own relative well-beings behind in our quests to plan other people's happiness....as we would see it.

But of course it is only conjecture. She knows she's her own woman, I'm my own woman. Besides, my sisters, more than me by a long stretch, share Mom's desire to shower generosity and love on others when they sense others need it the most, for no other reason than because they have it to give. It's a fine quality, and numeric relativism has nothing to do with it.

Monday, August 22, 2011 (3:47-4:07 p.m.)

Copley Square

20-Minute Monday: Coffee dream

Yesterday afternoon it was drizzling and muggy outside and I was on Newbury Street and inside L'Aroma Cafe, ordering an iced red eye and looking at the help wanted sign.  At that moment I really, really wanted to just say, "I'll do it.  I'll pull espressos and dish quiche for 9 bucks an hour alongside a bevy of open-faced college kids, all completely hipper than thou (and me)."

The place is cozy and bustling.  The manual labor once again -- says she of the years of table-waiting provenance -- seemed like it might be cathartic and relaxing all at once.  My feet would probably blister over from standing long shifts like that again ... my back too.  (Student Driver, who works in hospitality and would love to get out, confirms this job doesn't get better with age.)

But I've always envisioned working as a barista, especially in a pseudo-European stop-off like L'Aroma, as a great romantic ideal:  tossing a decent (and decent-paying) job for cheap living and the adrenaline and good company of a coffee shop.  Kind of like in the movie In Her Shoes ... when Toni Collette's dowdy, uptight corporate lawyer quits the firm and hurls into life as a dog walker.   A move that puts apples in her cheeks, loses her 20 pounds, and gives her courage to relax and persuade her (extremely) hot male friend to date and marry her.

Yeah. It's a chick flick: idealized, unrealistic in its happy ending.  I still kind of want it, though.  Even if could physically walk 5 dogs at once.  Even I could afford to do it.

This afternoon I took a break at Starbucks for a hang with Claudia ... and, otherwise lacking a notebook, thought it would be cute to steal recyclable beverage napkins to write this post on. Then Claudia and I got (predictably) chatty and I had to get back to the office without doing so. Now I'm sitting here after the closing bell, in my office's 28th floor lobby, its windows covered in water, the Charles obscured by the mist rising from the downpour coming down for hours already.  Starbucks naps are not only proving impractical (lots of ballpoint drag), but now feel precious and not worth the effort.  So I'm writing my wanna-be-barista post on a corporate-themed notepad, in a leather armchair, dry, mentally preparing for yoga, enjoying the comfortable view, and realizing I'm also kind of OK where I'm at.

The napkins will do fine with tomorrow's oatmeal.

-- Monday, August 15 (5:20 - 5:37 p.m.)

the 28th Floor

20-Minute Monday: Trust

Had to stay late at the gym tonight -- extra yoga, extra cardio -- because work today ran late, because it became one of those days that makes me not want to go in tomorrow.

FYI - needed the extra exercise to forcibly chill out.

I think about how I have these new found powers of relaxation ... calm ... the power to control my own actions and thoughts in a positive way.  And then comes yet another market crash of a day, on top of an already bad market week. To compound: my portfolio-manager boss is mid-vacation, and though he's dialing in non-stop from the Cape (in what I see as a noble, with young daughters and the beach in August), I'm still on the front line to field calls from the people -- our shared clients -- in panic over an irrational panic.

So here I sit, again in Copley, this time on the steps of the library, trying to stay focused on controlling what I can control ... and I can't control another human's choice to panic.

This afternoon at 3:30, as the market kept ticking downward and I kept ticking down every minute to the closing bell, I kept thinking ..... oh, for another bad day to just be over.  To hand a deep breath and a pleasant, self-serving memory to every investor dumping a portfolio at the worst possible moment over things he, too, can't control.  To send those investors into 5 minutes of the Relaxation Response!  To make every cable news anchor close her eyes and envision climbing to the top of a mountain to find wisdom ... instead of provoking her listeners to go up there with her and jump off the cliff.

But of course, right, I can only control myself and my own calm.

Can only force myself to get up tomorrow morning, go in to my desk with strong coffee, deep breathe, and not let the bile rise at every phone ring. Make my clients feel as watched-over as my manager and I can manage.  I mean, if we've been trusted by them for, say, the last 5 years, why not make them keep trusting us now?  For 5 years I've worked hard to build this trust .... an investment I myself should learn to trust.

-- Monday, August 8 (9:42-10:02 p.m.)

Boston Public Library, Copley Square

20-Minute Monday: Pay-off

It was set to be a good weekend anyway.  Beach weather.  Brunch in Ball Square on Saturday.  Reunion (has it been 2 years?) with the CFO on his turf on Sunday.  These things all happened and were good. 

But, too, on Thursday night I answered a (yes, true) OKC message from a man from San Francisco who had traveled to Boston for a week, whose original travel companion couldn't make the trip after all, who was weary of playing solo tourist, who wanted at the very least a one-night drink special with someone new.

The cliché pickup of the century, no doubt.

So ask me this afternoon how I feel about having said to self, "Self:  why the hell not?"

Could I have anticipated the rejuvenation resulting from our 3 evenings together? A casual encounter that instead became a gelling of tastes, wants, compassions? Of walking the greenway at 2 a.m..... of the beers and sunset at Thomas Park?   Of the Mt. Auburn Cemetery (Longfellow's grave!) and foie gras at the gastropub and the free tickets to The Donkey Show and being able to do it all with someone, and then the breakfast over bittersweet goodbyes? The kissing? The laying-next-to? His skill at knowing I'd feel good about being called sexy and even better, sans sleaze factor, about being treated as if I were? Knowing that had we not gone in that direction that companionship, as fleeting as it would (and necessarily has to) be, would still have been worth it? The sex serving as not the ends but as the the proverbial frosting on this cake, and that it would be the truth?

I just took the elevator down from the office to sit at the Copley Square fountain.   In the reflection of the Hancock tower doors, I definitely look like I had a weekend of being loved. Maybe my own knowledge of what I enjoyed makes me see myself as satisfied. But then, the man who passed me in the doorway as I exited smiled right at me for no reason, as if he knew something too. It has be the calm on my face transmitting my discovery that, occasionally, the risk of temporary pleasure is worth taking.

-- Monday, August 1 (3:31-3:51 p.m.)

Copley Square Fountain

20-Minute Monday: Emptiness

At my BHI class last week one of my fellow attendees claimed that he, after 4 weeks of trying, has been unable to turn his brain off enough to meditate.

While I remember what that feels like, it occurred to me that just not thinking so hard about things has started to come more readily and more naturally to me.

Today, I zoned out at Singing Beach for several hours ... as in: I lay down on my towel, right shoulder to the ocean, left to the setting sun and the bluffs before it, skin damp with the heat below and cooled by the breeze on my back, and I turned my head to watch the waves and, I tell you now as I ride the train back to Boston in the murky dusk, that I do not remember what I thought, not one bit. I dozed off, yes, but not long enough to count, and the empty-brainedness disturbed me enough that I forced myself to sit up and face the ocean head on, as if really paying attention to the waves as they rolled noisily towards me would make me want to contemplate mortality or the lazy passing of yet another midsummer Sunday or guilt for simply doing nothing but finishing the BPL paperback and eating peppermints and Pringles at a time when I should be making bigger plans or, at the very least, staying home and buying fly paper to deal with the bevy of small pests I came upon this morning, left over from a Saturday of cutting fresh fruit when the patio door was ajar.

But I felt none of these things. The vastness, the endlessness, the possible overwhelmedness, didn't register. I began to wonder if it's possible to make one's mind so blank that inertia supersedes franticness and if for, at least a day, that's OK rather than a cop-out?

And I'd be lying if I didn't note that there are not one but 2 infants in this train car who seem to be up past their bedtimes, and I'm trying to figure out how a rocking train can't soothe a crying child more readily, and am mildly annoyed that the pink and grey sky out my window is being compromised by my annoyance, but also happy that my brain isn't as devoid of feeling or thought as I originally perceived. And occasionally I can find it in a happy medium.

-- Sunday, July 17 (8:20-8:40 p.m.),
on the Rockport inbound train

20-Minute Monday

One of the homework assignments for the BHI class this week was to spend a flat 20 minutes per day, 4 days straight, doing focussed, uninterrupted writing about situations of feeling "wronged." 

The purpose is to get on paper those circular thoughts pinging around in my head, distracting with their negativity. It's thought that if released and articulated, they do less harm and leave room in the head for something cleaner. Perhaps even a sense of resolution.

On Saturday, from my perch at Thomas Park, I went on a tear about how C-2 took our friendship to a new level, and then away, and then kinda-sorta-back and then away, and why I can't let go of him even when recognizing all this. 

On Sunday, I sat on the grass behind Castle Island, jets from Logan taking off overhead, and parsed out my resentment at yet another guy friend I once dated -- whose criticisms about my personality flaws wounded me when he made them and, months later, they still linger.

This deliberate stream-of-consciousness writing -- by hand and pen, for author's eyes only -- was a frequent exercise in writing classes of yore. The time limit cuts down on constant self-censoring. The quick-edit function of typing is banished.  Limiting the audience means limiting the thoughts of how the writing will be perceived.

My hand hurt when I finished, and I can't say I necessarily felt better griping on paper rather than just to my own consciousness. But it was true: seeing circular, persistent thoughts in word form does remove some of the abstract hopelessness they can carry.  Doing this the last 2 days, despite my resentment of the subjects, indeed did bring some sense of joy.

Cool.

So, starting next Monday and continuing on subsequent Mondays until I lose steam, I will do just that for this blog - take 20 minutes and handwrite some aspect of the weekend -- positive or negative, depending -- then transcribe it for the screen.

Unedited, I promise.

(I'm also toying with the idea of asking if readers want to join me in this exercise and perhaps contribute for publication in this space. Let me know if this sounds plausible, feasible, or crazy.)