Tag: 100 Things

Mindfulness, Poetry, Things I Can

6. Things I Can Manage: This

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Even if he nudges at every edge,
carrying his dinner to the counter to eat
alone, back turned,
before coming over to wreck the card game you’ve set up
then filling up a squirt gun you didn’t even know he owned
just so he can get you in the face
and grinning
as he says he’d like to kill you
for real
so he could get all your money
to buy himself an Xbox

Even it’s 9:54 pm and the bed contains
sketch paper, markers, silly putty, pokemon cards, library books,
and a kid not anywhere close to sleep

Even if you know the student
you dismissed from university today
and the other one with the conduct hearing tomorrow
are having much worse nights than you

Even if the dog keeps knocking her bone
under the couch and digging
at a bamboo floor
that might be the sole selling point
of this, the lone asset in an estate
from which he’d be lucky
to wring an Xbox

Even if you know the bone
is just a surrogate for the play
or walk she really needs
and your back creaks and your stomach churns
and you haven’t finished the letter to your grandmother
you started last week or called
to thank your girlfriend,
lover, or any of the circle
of angels who’ve kept you
off the cliff
for a decade
or two

Even if you don’t have one ounce
of energy left

You draw
a drop
from somewhere

Even if
thin air

and write

This:

Tonight, the sickle cuts a cool, slender tear
in the bruised night.

Later,
the boy in the back seat says
“I can see the full moon.”

This is the first time
in months
you know
what the sky holds.
The first time
you’ve remembered
to look.

“Isn’t it a crescent?” You ask.

His face fogs the glass.
“I can see the whole dark thing.”

You tell him the earth
casts shadows. “A little sun gets past,” you say.

It always does.

Even if we imagine ourselves so big.
Even if we forget to look up.
 

Poetry, Things I Can

5. Things I Can Describe: Depression Confines

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The opposite of depression is not happiness.
It isn’t pleasure
or energy, balance or peace.
No, not even peace
although it is tempting to scurry
there to escape
the dull clang
inside that may as well be
everywhere.

Trapped
in an MRI machine,
some patients experience such panic
they choose the tumor
instead. Imagine a knowledge
of that loathsome confinement
so intimate
its hug
becomes a welcome touch.

Try this:
Rise with this contraption
riveted to your skin. Shamble
through the day wide
awake. See only what the pinhole
lets in, taste through shavings
of pennies and polyethylene.
Hear voices
distorted to poison and reach
through jointed alloy to grip
or work or gather or play, pushing
hard to feel
even a remote approxmiation
of anything
as it truly is.

The opposite of depression is not mindfulness
or presence. It is not kindness or waking
from a bad dream
although it must seem like the sun
could at any minute pierce
the seams
and let outside in
if only there was
a sun.

 

Friends, Home, Things I Can

4. Things I Can Organize: A Social Life on a Budget

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Staying connected to other humans is a necessity. This is especially so for a working single mom with a taste for the blues. Yet the rules of the Financial Fast forbid dining out and spending money on entertainment.

Catching up with folks for free is harder than it seems. After dispensing with restaurants, shows, coffee shops, bars, karaoke, ice rinks, shopping, and all the other cold-weather activities out there, what’s left?  Three weeks of January without seeing loved ones = emotional suicide (I tell myself). When schedules are tight and the nights are long, grabbing a bite out seems like the only option (I tell myself).

Is it any wonder so many Americans are looking up from the bottom of the financial pit, wondering how the hell to climb out? It’s sometimes the case that a person’s money struggles come on the heels of a single seismic life event. Most folks, however, work their way there one small seemingly inconsequential decision at a time. It’s possible to rationalize any expense, no matter how big, no matter how frivolous. Wants morph into needs, and the same old habits keep playing out.

The point of this fast is to figure out ways to stick to the rules, not ways to sneak around them. For those of us living close to the bone, the tradeoff between money and time is as near even as you can get. Make your own bread from scratch, and you’ll save about as much money as you could earn with the time spent elsewhere. Take on a little extra work, and the money ends up paying for the additional gas and childcare. It all comes out in the wash. How can a person really tend to these necessities on limited means — both financial and otherwise?

These 21 days lean towards the Save Money/Spend Time side of the equation. This is why it’s important to consider a broader definition of “spending habits.” A few extra minutes making lunch for work is important, but where else might resourcefulness and creativity be useful? After all, we all have certain essential activities that keep us thrumming. It may be dancing or sports, learning or art, travel or food — whatever it is, chances are, doing it the familiar way is too expensive. The problem is that self-discipline smacks of self-denial. When limits become suffocating, either the old ways return or the person inside wilts.

There has to be a third way.

For our little family, I believe there is. Inside this labyrinthine universe of Us, maintaining relationships is as essential as exercise, work, and a good night’s sleep. That said, our schedules stretch us so thin, friends feel like another “thing to do,” which is exactly why we have to keep them in the front of our minds. Community feeds us. We have to feed it in turn.

This weekend, we let the Financial Fast force ingenuity and forethought. Instead of going out on Saturday night, we extended a dinner invitation to my folks and a few family friends. We spent the day cleaning and making our little condo fancy with the baubles on hand. The meal was bare bones — dull, in fact — but no one seemed to care. My mother contributed pie and appetizers, and another guest brought a salad. Bug was crazy proud to host. All day and evening, he pitched it. As guests arrived, he donned an apron and took drink orders. Our little group was a warm light in the dead of winter.

It was work and it was exhausting, but also, it was so very simple.

And we managed it all on the grocery budget.

If not for the fast, we probably would have just gone to a movie. Or I might have plopped Bug in front of a DVD while I focused on one of the countless unfinished projects from work. Instead, Bug and I worked together to welcome friends into our home. We planned a menu, decorated, baked and tidied, and shared time with the people we care about. Here we are the next morning with a beautifully organized space, feeling connected and happy.

Maybe the trick is to take the long view. We have to dare to imagine the composition — career, home, relationships, art, and overall well-being — we most want for ourselves and our families. The question then becomes: What can we cultivate here and now with what we have on hand?

For these weeks as in the year ahead, a Saturday night can be exercise in frugality, but it doesn’t have to just be that. It can also be an opportunity for creativity and celebration, and a chance to build towards a life both balanced and vibrant.

 

Things I Can, Writing

3. Things I Can Catch and Release: The Censor Speaks

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The Rules:

  1. Avoid “I”
  2. Stick with a person
  3. Rephrase any instance of “no” or “not”
  4. When it doubt, verb
  5. Who inverts the passive
  6. Actions float; feelings sink
  7. Dice
  8. Describe in detail
  9. Enough description — get on with it
  10. Develop a character
  11. Develop a plot
  12. Make a point
  13. Points are red herrings
  14. Get over yourself
  15. Cliches are dead weight
  16. Is that sentimentality? Seriously?
  17. Carry a theme
  18. Release your grip
  19. Use all the senses
  20. Get back to the action
  21. Look up
  22. Exploit conflict
  23. Contrived conflict fails
  24. Contrived anything fails
  25. Just make it up
  26. But make meaning
  27. And make it seem accidental
  28. Smile. This is fun.
  29. Keep your hand moving
  30. Generate volume
  31. Polish gems
  32. Murder your darlings
  33. Perfection is death (also, the reverse)
  34. Express what moves you
  35. You don’t matter
  36. Learn something
  37. Teach something
  38. Get a grip
  39. Walk away
  40. Stay
  41. Wrap it up in a pretty ribbon
  42. Everyone can see coming
Brain, Things I Can

2. Things I Can Remember: The Memory Palace

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Maybe someone out there is “naturally” good at remembering names. If you’re like me, you’re as terrible at recalling your new acquaintances as you are at holding onto phone numbers, the opening lines of a presentation, and the five things you need at Safeway. Thank god for speed dial, right? But honestly, it really isn’t helping the situation. With so many handy shortcuts on a device you can sneak out of your pocket, why bother learning to remember?

Once upon a time, this idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory was not nearly so alien as it would seem to us to be today.

On the TED Radio Hour, science writer Josh Foer speaks about feats of memory. After attending the U.S. Memory Championship (yes, there is such a thing) as a journalist, he began practicing the techniques for fun. He returned the following year as a contestant.

And he won.

Is it a gift? He argues it’s not. It’s a skill — a rather simple one, in fact — and it can be learned.

The legend of the Memory Palace begins with Greek poet Simonides of Ceos. He attended banquet and left after his speech. When he walked out, the banquet hall crashed down behind him and killed everyone inside. The collapse crushed the bodies of the attendees beyond recognition. Calling up a visual map of the hall, Simonides was able to identify where everyone had been. He guided family members to their loved ones so the remains could receive a proper burial.

This rather grisly tale is the creation myth of the The Method of Loci , which uses space and the paths through it as a way to recall information. It’s a mnemomic device that Roman and Greek orators found useful before Evernote was a viable option.

Josh Foer clearly has more time on his hands than the rest of us. Even so, it’s striking that he managed to master these techniques in a year. “Build” and “palace” do not seem like the makings of a simple endeavor, but maybe it’s worth suspending disbelief and taking a shot.

Hell, if it’s good enough for Cicero, it’s good enough for me.

Tonight, I sit on the living room carpet and shuffle a deck of cards. I choose ten. This forces me to push my cart past the seven-item-or-fewer line at the short-term memory supermarket.

My memory palace is my parents’ house. I begin at the bottom of the driveway and end at the kitchen door. Ten cards, ten images. After I’ve drawn each one and placed it in the palace, I lay the cards face down before me.

Before I describe the process of “walking” through my parents’ house with playing cards, let me pause here to explain what happens after. I am still sitting on the same carpet. Barely three minutes have passed since I pulled the deck from the sleeve. I want to test myself to make sure I don’t cheat. On a scrap of paper, I jot down what I think the row of 10 faceless cards to be. Before I even begin, I realize that noting the cards is a silly exercise.

Without a scrap of doubt, I know I’ve got all ten memorized.

I type this now over an hour later, I haven’t so much as glanced at the cards in the interim. Even so, I recall them in order with perfect clarity:

  1. Nine of spades
  2. Ten of hearts
  3. King of clubs
  4. Four of diamonds
  5. Two of spades
  6. Queen of diamonds
  7. Nine of diamonds
  8. Eight of diamonds
  9. Two of diamonds
  10. Seven of hearts

Atta girl.

Foer’s right. This takes no special talent, and it’s no parlor game. It’s a skill. And it’s here for the taking.

Here’s how I strolled (forgive the mixed tenses here: I pulled the cards earlier, but I’m still walking through the palace now as I recall):

Again, I began at the bottom of my parents’ driveway.  I drew the first card. There leaning against the mailbox is a shovel with a big hoop off the handle (1). Then I drew the second card as I mosey up the driveway: on the big white pine tree, ten bleeding hearts drip like melting candy (2). I move over towards the garage. Standing by the door, Burger King is grinning like a fool as he juggles clubs (3). Just inside the garage, four gaudy rhinestones bejewel the handle of the deep freeze (4). To get through the back door and into the kitchen, I have to step over two muddy hand trowels (5). A woman in glittering robes is chilling at my parents’ kitchen table (6) with her handy sequined scepter on the chair next to her (7). For some reason, a rhinestone-beaded pillsbury doughboy is giggling and bouncing around on the butcher block island (8). Giant plastic diamonds are glued to the fridge and freezer door (9), and someone has strung a strand of valentine hearts across the top and crossing through the center of the doorway out to the hall (10).

Welcome to my memory palace. Now it’s just a matter of deciding which room will house the names of all my future acquaintances.

Want to build a palace of your own? Check out this WikiHow.

Have fun exploring!

Choices

1. Things I Can Save: The Financial Fast

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Beginning on Sunday, January 11, Michelle Singletary, a Washington Post columnist, charges her readers to commit to three weeks of scrupulous frugality.

The 2015 21-day Financial Fast is one simple Thing I Can.

The rules are easy (to list, if not to live): Spend only on essentials and do so in cash. In last weekend’s column, Singletary writes,

Here’s a list of what you can spend on during the fast: food (bought at the grocery store), medicine, essential personal hygiene products, items that may be required for your job, your regular household bills such as rent or a mortgage, car payments, utilities, gas and even your credit-card payments. This isn’t an all-inclusive list. The point is you continue to pay for the things you need and the bills you already have.

Here’s what you are not allowed to do during the fast: go to the movies, shop for clothes, buy lunch or coffee at work, pay for any restaurant or fast-food meals, spend on entertainment. The goal is to shut down all conspicuous consumption. You will temporarily stop spending on things you can do without.

I live pretty close to the bone as it is. It’s a breeze to walk away the metro parking fee, and schlepping a stack of provisions in Pyrex frees me up to run other errands on my lunch hour. Even so, I waste a few bucks a week on takeout meals, 7-11 coffee, and apps for my kid’s tablet. It seems like nothing when I’m just clicking an icon or dropping loose change on a counter. Of course, it doesn’t take advanced algebra to add up those nickels. From the back of the envelope here. . .

  • $1.50 for coffee @ 3 times a week = $4.50
  • $1.50 for bagel @ 2 times a week = $3.00
  • $10 lunch out @ 1 day a week = $10
  • $3.50 random snacks or apps @ 3 times a week = $10.50
  • $20 movie ticket, burger, or mini golf with kiddo @ 1 time a week = $20
  • $15 meal/drinks out with friends @ 1 time a week = $15

That’s upwards of $60 dropped on stuff Bug and I don’t need and isn’t good for us anyway. Maybe we’re not talking Monaco money, but it ain’t chump change. If we pack the snacks and go to the park, we’ve squirreled away $3000 a year. Compound the interest even at a modest 3% rate over the next decade, and we creep towards — get this — $40,000.

Can you imagine?

Switching to home-brewed coffee could cover a year of Bug’s tuition. It could increase the value of our home by paying for energy-efficient doors and windows. Or it could send me to a weekend writer’s conference while Bug attends a summer adventure camp.

Minor adjustments now contribute to smoother performance down the line. The Financial Fast doesn’t require going it alone. Singletary sends daily guidance and provides tools along the way. Committing to the fast is just step one. For me, step two is building an actual working budget.

Despite knowing better, I have failed to follow through on what should be a rudimentary household activity. I left my last comprehensive budget behind when I left New York and my marriage in 2010. My reasons are for avoiding the exercise are as coherent as they are bogus. As the daily tug-of-war between chocolate cake and running shoes proves, the drive to dodge wise choices is more powerful than anyone likes to admit. The truth is, I know better. Out of necessity, I built that first financial spreadsheet sometime in 2006. Living on $30,000 as a YMCA camp family with a new baby inspired rather creative approaches to austerity.

I learned then that making a budget and tracking spending can lift the fog of financial anxiety that hangs over anyone trying to support a family on limited means. The obfuscation of my actual circumstances, while presumably a defense mechanism against facing uncomfortable truths, exchanges short-term relief for long-term stress. This is about as poor a deal as most of my spending habits. I don’t need it anymore — the anxiety or the avoidance. As one Thing I Can do, this fast is a chance to shed unhelpful habits and claim a bright future for my family.

Interested? Go to the Washington Post’s Financial Fast site and take the plunge!

Growing Up, Learning

The Things I Can

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Follow the The Things I Can Adventure

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I was at a Dead show the first time I heard it. 16 years old. A circle formed at the edge of the stadium’s corridor during the drums-and-space jam. Undeterred by the revved-up traffic and whirling skirts, that circle was a solid, swaying knot. All twenty or so human links weaved in and around each other. I heard the voices in unison and asked a woman dancing nearby what they were saying. “Serenity Prayer,” she said. She repeated it for me.

Was it an invocation? Some kind of magic spell? It must have been if it managed to help a bunch of folks in recovery navigate the rainbow pharmacopeia that trailed the band in its transcontinental wanderings. Somewhere along the way, I memorized that prayer without intending to. It is now such a part of my cultural vocabulary that it’s as firmly planted as the opening of the Gettysburg Address and the entirety of Frost’s “Two Roads Diverged.” In fact, it barely registers anymore.

How deep do these lines run? Do they stay safely entombed or do they erode? It has to be a matter of practice.

Sometimes, it’s a matter of the right trigger.  Continue reading “The Things I Can” →