Brace yourself

for news tomorrow.

(this is my attempt to build suspense.)

If you don't know what's on the horizon, come back tomorrow and see. If you do know then come back anyway!

To keep you company in the wait, here's a bit of poetry:

Happiness
by Jane Kenyon
There's just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away. And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone. No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door until he finds you asleep midafternoon as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair. It comes to the monk in his cell. It comes to the woman sweeping the street with a birch broom, to the child whose mother has passed out from drink. It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker, and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots in the night. It even comes to the boulder in the perpetual shade of pine barrens, to rain falling on the open sea, to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Driving in my car

And the value of public, private spaces.

I have lately had occasion to spend a lot of time in my car, driving back and forth to visit with ill friends, to stressful jobs and to other difficult places. There has been little opportunity to breath and ponder this convergence of events and even less time to check in with myself to see how I am.

My family and loving friends ask me how I’m doing, they’re justifiably concerned, but whenever they ask I smile automatically and say, “I’m okay. I’m holding up. I’m fine. There’s too much to do to worry about it right now.” While they may know this isn’t true they know better than to push. I would love to confide my worries and anxieties, but somehow opening that door seems like too much to do right now, as though once I were to start I just wouldn’t quite be able to stop. Frankly, I don’t feel as though I have the time for the release or the energy to worry about taking care of them taking care of me.

The people who know me best ask how I’m taking care of myself. I’m exercising. I’m writing (though you may not believe it). I’m taking a lot of baths. And I’m driving. It’s when I’m in the false privacy of my own car that I can really let go. I’m sure you know how it is: You turn the radio on far too loud and wail to some song or another, pretending the tears on your cheeks are for the lyrics or the memories they evoke. You know why you’re really crying, but right then you don’t have to explain it.

Other times I rant. I roll up the windows and yell at the universe, asking it why it does what it does. The people driving by either assume I’m on a hands-free call or a loon. It doesn’t really matter. I can rave and finally tell myself whatever it is I need most to hear.

I think these public, private spaces give us a freedom to express ourselves that we may not have with loved ones (we worry about what they may think of us afterwards or if they will be distressed by our pain) or with paid listeners (therapists sometimes think the therapy is more important than the listening and get in the way of letting us hear ourselves). When I’m in my car or writing in my journal in a café or part of an emotional crowd at a movie, I can let myself feel and process without worrying about anyone else.

Some people say cities create a devastating social isolation. This is certainly true sometimes, but I also think these kinds of conglomerations of people give us the opportunity to be alone in public, gives me a chance to sort things out in my own mind and heart without question or interruption but with the reminder that I am one of many. Nothing I feel is utterly unique. I take comfort in that sometimes.

Next time you’re out driving, look around. You might see me, singing my heart out to some Beatles song or another. Smile. And drive away.

(c) 2009 Laura S. Packer

Technology becomes art

OASIS (HD) - sand from yunsil heo on Vimeo.

And art creates a collective experience.

OASIS from yunsil heo on Vimeo.

Context

I'm heading back to my friend's mother's house soon, helping with more of the cleanout process. For those of you who may not know, I’m helping a friend sort throw his mom’s house (she moved out to LA to live with family when it became clear she could no longer live alone). As we’re doing this task it has become painfully clear that she’s a compulsive hoarder. For example, we’re finding piles of newspaper from 40 years ago with family letters from dead relatives stuck in the pages, all hidden in boxes full of grocery bags. It’s meticulous, exhausting work.

The last time we were there, as in previous visits, it was hard physical, mental and emotional work, lots of sorting and processing, lots and lots and lots of throwing away. We were deep in the middle of piles of 20 year old paper when he said, “I’m so afraid of doing something wrong here.” I asked him what he meant because, frankly, the only real failure would be not to throw out as much as we could.

“I’m afraid I’m going to throw out something important, something that matters. I mean, I understand the money stuff well enough, I can figure out which old bills I should probably keep and which I can probably throw away, but this stuff?” He gestured to a pile of birthday cards signed by people he’d never met, a pile of cards like hundreds of other piles we had found, shoved into bags and the bags then shoved onto shelves or into shoe boxes. “I don’t know what to do with that stuff.”

I listened to his frustration and confusion, then realized that the closest I had to an answer lay in my college years

My degree is in folklore. An important part of my training was that context is king. An artifact, a song or a story without context loses much of its meaning – it needs to exist in the context of its culture, you need to record its setting and the culture around it for that scrap of human creation to have independent meaning. Admittedly, we’ve stripped context away from much of our folklore – who really remembers the culture that surrounded Little Red Riding Hood anymore – but the folklorist’s job is to capture context as well as cultural artifacts and memes. So when my friend bemoaned the loss of the physical objects of his mother’s life, I asked him about their context.

“If you don’t know the context of these cards, then all they are is stuff. Things. Sure, they are some of the accumulated matter of her life, but they don’t have meaning. If she isn’t asking you to send them out then it isn’t your job to find out who they're from or if they once mattered. And most of these people signed their first and last names, there’s no personal touch here; the cards that were personal had at least a note. Otherwise there’s no context on which to base any assumptions about the relationships.”

I pointed to an old picture he found, probably 125 years old, two young women leaning against each other in a lovely posed portrait. “We don’t know who they are either, but we at least have the context of the approximate time when this picture was taken, that it meant enough that not only your mother but your grandmother saved it and saved it carefully, in an envelope in a drawer. There is more meaning in this one item than in the stacks of cards she saved in old ziplocks. Look! She even saved the cards from businesses she dealt with.

"What matters here is that she saved stuff. And now you have the job of saving the parts of her that will matter to you and your sister.”

He sighed and we went back to the hard work of cleaning out a life. I don’t think my comments were much comfort to him and frankly, I know I was being too black-and-white in my response. I’m sure it wasn’t the answer he was looking for. But I kept thinking about the need for context in our lives.

It isn’t just our belongings or traditions that need to exist in context. We need a context around us to feel understood. When our context is removed we can be, quite literally, lost.

It's sometimes good to be out of context. Travel does that. When we go to new places, have new experiences, we are forced to see ourselves out of context and so have an opportunity to learn something new about ourselves. But we need some kind of context to come back to, some setting within which we can hold our identity. Employee, lover, artist, citizen, prisoner, something.

We build context around us automatically to help us know who we are. We build it physically (our homes, the expression of who we are by how we decorate, how we dress, our tattoos, and the physical artifacts we chose to keep (like old cards)) and we build it internally by the stories we tell and the myths we internalize. It's our internal context that can support us most effectively throughout our lives. For now I want to think about the stories we tell about ourselves; the myths will have to wait for another time.

Those stories that most readily display our internal context are stories about identity.
"When I was a kid I wanted to be a..."
"I love that sports team. Do you remember the time they...? I was so happy!"
"Hi. I'm a Scorpio. What's your sign?"
All of these personal contexts tell the listener something about the speaker, their place in the world and the world they come from.

I suspect, however, that the stories that help us understand our own context most vitally are the stories we rarely tell, the stories that live inside us as glowing embers we can gaze upon to remember who we are. Our secret selves. The stories we whisper to our loves and the stories I won't write here. The stories that feed us when we are most in need. All of those stories have context, too, and set us in time and space with great moment. They are our own, personal versions of once upon a time and happily ever after. Within these stories we are our own heroes and villains, rescuers and distressed. And these stories are set in an age (childhood, college, old age) and locale (a secret fort, a dark alley, a room with a ticking clock) that is never anything but epic. Additionally, like an ancient ritual, these stories can only be told in a certain context - to a new lover when the world is being rebuilt in the context of that love. In an AA meeting. In a job interview, when we describe ourselves as we wish we really were and we hope they believe us. At high school or college reunions. All of those stories exist only in their own context and each kind of stories displays some aspect of our secret hearts.

My friend is afraid of making mistakes and throwing out the wrong thing, but really he can do no harm, because he continues to tell the stories of his mother, to keep her present in his own life (his own context) and the physical objects are simply accessories to the real work of once upon a time. Just as we must maintain the context of our own lives as we tell our stories, build ourselves anew, and leave our own card collections for our children to puzzle over.

(c) 2009 Laura S. Packer

Overheard: not only was it a lie, it was deceitful.

No matter how fast we run...

...we can't escape the past. Let me explain.

My partner, Kevin Brooks, tells wonderful personal stories. He recounts adventures from his childhood and from the lives of his family members. These stories are funny, poignant and more-or-less true. He urges me to tell the more-or-less true stories from my own life, but I resist. I tell him it's because I prefer the fiction and lies, myths and folktales I surround myself with on stage, but honestly? it's in part because the memories are hazy or seem just like little anecdotes and moreso because who I am now is rarely interested in looking back with nostalgia. But. But.

Who I used to be sneaks up on me and says, "Surprise! You thought I was gone, but here I am, I'm still part of you and I'm not going away! Aren't you glad?" Sometimes I cringe. ohgodithoughti'dgottenoverthat ther times I find myself welcoming in my OnceUponATime with open arms. Then I find myself telling stories.

This has happened recently in several different ways.

Social networking and the internet in general have forced me to allow the past in. Old friends, people I haven't seen or thought of in hundreds of years (so it seems) are now part of my regular life. This is a trite observation of course, I'm sure the same has happened to you. Some of these new-old relationships have become unexpected treasures that I never would have been given if I'd kept running forward. In these relationships we start out reminiscing but then find the present to be much more interesting.

While I'm enjoying the now-old relationships, what I find more striking is the gift of myself. It's as though I've recently become willing to let my old self back in, as though I've friended my own OnceUponATime. Two incidents in particular are bright examples.

A song came on the radio recently, you don't need to know what it was, and suddenly I remembered the boy I was madly in love with in seventh grade, the boy who didn't know I was alive. He was an older man; he was in eighth grade. My memory of him tells me he had dark hair and eyes and far too many pimples, but my 12-year -old self tells me he was sweet and quiet and had a voice that sent shivers down my spine. It doesn't matter that the lyrics now sound as corny as anything rejected by Hallmark; then it was the soundtrack to the school year and drifted down the halls whenever he walked by. I remember that 12 year old feeling with every molecule. That feeling still informs how I love, the deep physicality of the emotion, the way music shapes my heart. And I know that when I'm 80 I'll smile at the music I now think of as romantic.

My old self also came barreling home when I saw the movie Star Trek. Once upon a time I was a devoted sci-fi geek. Once upon a time I took in more sci-fi media that I now could name. Once upon a time I... well, I try not to think about those times too much these days. That kind of nostalgia might rot your teeth. But when I saw Star Trek every geeky molecule of my being came rushing to the surface at Warp 10 and I was incredibly happy. I leaned over to whisper in my friend's ear, "We're such nerds," and was relieved to see tears glistening in her eyes too. I saw that film not only with my friends but with generations of my own self. We had a wonderful time. When we left the theater I remembered and retained some of my young imagination and hope and determination that I could reach the stars. I'd forgotten some of it. It felt good to remember who I was, to realize I am almost who I wanted to be. So I'm nerd. So what.

Maybe Kevin is right and I should work some of these anecdotes into stories. For right now, though, I think it's enough that I'm walking side-by-side with my past selves, remembering who I used to be and letting them get used to who I have become.

(c) 2009 Laura S. Packer

Mapping my life

Through various moments of synchronicity I find myself thinking about maps a lot these days. I've been reading a number of books that use maps as metaphors; I've been traveling and relying upon maps; I've been noting the landmarks in my life, both literal and symbolic.

To start with, I love paper maps. I love this conceptualization of data, the attempt to capture the lay-of-the-land in its infinite variety and texture with ink and flat paper. I marvel at historical maps and consider it nothing short of magic that maps have any accuracy at all. How do we know what that coastline really looks like, if we can't see it from above?

I remember as a child when I was taught to read a map in school and then practiced those skills with my parents as we drove across country, I imagined that if you looked closely enough, if you had a good enough magnifying glass, you could see everything in the free map we got from tripleA. The blue line there? Don't put your finger on it, you might accidentally crush us as we drove down the highway. Right here? There's a field with a cow and if you can't see it, I'll draw it for you. I destroyed countless maps by amending them with detailed illustrations of the things we passed as we crossed from Pennsylvania to Vermont to Alabama to Nevada and back home again. Or maybe they weren't destroyed, but improved.

Now I use all different kinds of mapping tools - paper maps, googlemaps, gps and more. Each has their own beauty and utility, but I think the kind of map I use the most often is deep and personal, hidden in my own history. Using that map, I would give directions like this:

• Drive for awhile until you come to the place where I used to always see the old man walking his dog. He was kind to me. Turn left. What happened to them anyway?
• When you think you're lost look behind you and you'll see me when I was a little girl wearing my favorite pink panda shirt. Wave to assure her she'll make it through her childhood even if it's hard.
• Swerve quickly so you don't hit the tree I used to love to climb. It's gone now. Termites? Development?
  
• Slow down as you drive past my old school. God, I hated that place.
• And now turn around, retrace your path and you'll find yourself right here, right now, in this moment in my life.

The problem, of course, is that anyone who followed those directions would be hopelessly lost. Even I feel a bit lost at the moment and those directions use my own highly personal landmarks.

A more realistic kind of personal map would be one that traces the places I cover, a pheromone map where the worn routes I take regularly are more defined than the unknown paths in new colors, those that lead to the possible, the frightening, the new. Maybe that would serve only to depress me, displaying in black and white just how constrained I have become.

The kind of map I long for, of course, is the map to the future, but I can't seem to find that one. If I found it would I even know how to read the legend? Or would it just be a mostly blank sheet of paper with an "X" stating, "You are here. Now go."

(c) 2009 Laura S. Packer

Fiction: Items found in a foreclosed apartment complex

A cracked hookah repaired with duct tape, lying on its side in a closet.

A packet of photographs, held together with a rubber band that snaps as soon as it’s stretched. The photos are of a woman asleep on a beach blanket. Even though the pictures are faded, her skin becomes increasingly red with each photo.

A lease with the words, “Fuck You” written across it in magic marker.

A green upholstered chair with a faded brown stain. The stain could be coffee or hot chocolate. It is, in fact, the stain left from a cat who gave birth on the cushion. Of the six kittens, one died while the others were falsely sold as purebred.

A pair of hand-made pink mittens with strings attached.

A medicine chest full of expired drugs, the labels peeling off the brown bottles.

Four hard core S&M magazines, shoved under a floor board. Handwritten notes line the connections sections. When the building is eventually torn down these magazines will be ripped apart and the pages will be caught by the wind, fluttering high above the city like shiny, leathery wings.

A white board with a grocery list. Milk. Eggs. Oranges, Aspirin.

A letter to the tooth fairy asking for more money, promising more teeth soon.

A plastic Big Wheel trike, the wheels scuffed and the seat covered in NASCAR stickers. The name Mike is scratched out, Sarah is written in black magic marker in its stead.

A wedding ring, caught in a sink trap.

Four dusty shoeboxes, each hold a pair of worn out red bowling shoes wrapped in tissue paper.

A small teddy bear with one arm missing. The wound is stitched up with green thread. The bear was originally bought new for a girlfriend who soon left. It was tossed into a corner and forgotten, only to be discovered by a new puppy, owned by a new girlfriend who called it, “So cute!” and stitched it back together when the puppy started ripping it apart. The puppy, now grown, has moved onto more challenging objects and the girlfriend, now pregnant, worries about living with her parents forever. The baby, yet to be born, will soon have his own teddy bear that he will one day bring to college with him and give to his first real girlfriend who will leave him for a musician and eventually return with the bear and contrition.

A looseleaf binder with hearts and initials drawn on it.

A spice rack with the remains of curry powder encrusted on it.

A shoebox with postcards. One is from Niagara Falls and is written in block printing. It reads, “Alice says she’s never seen anything like this place. She says to tell you we’re having a great time. I don’t know why she didn’t just write to you herself. Love, John.” At the bottom of the shoebox is a cluster of dried petals.

A large jar with over four hundred dollars in pennies. It weighs – pounds.

A paper bag with several clumps of hair, each tied with a ribbon. Each clump is a different color and length.

A garbage bag full of brassieres.

(c) 2009 Laura S. Packer

Psychic Hairdresser, part 1 (fiction)

I have a big date tonight and want to look hot. He's, like, rich and cute. Do your thing.
Listen baby, I know you think this is the start of something special but he's not who you think he is. He'll make you pay for the drinks, will glare when you order the filet and when he kisses you it will bear an uncanny resemblance to kissing a fish. Trust me, I know. Let me give you a trim instead. Stand him up and take the extra money to go out with the girls. You'll never regret it and you just might meet someone better.

Do blondes have more fun?
Depends on the blonde. In your case, no.

Make me look like her. I loved her latest movie and I just know I could carry off that hair. Besides, my boyfriend thinks she's cute.
Gladly. This haircut will make you feel good like a woman should. I know it will. In fact, the next time your "boyfriend" goes out drinking, you'll throw all his crap out the window and have the locks changed by the time he gets back. The breakup will be fast and loud. It'll be worth the expense and embarrassment. You won't see him for a few years, then you'll bump into him at a gallery opening, where he never would go with you now. Your hair, by the way, will be gorgeous, you'll have dyed it that deep red you've always admired. The meet will be cute and you'll enjoy introducing him to your husband who adores you the way he never did.

I don't want much done today, just a wash and trim.
Oh, honey, trust me, today is the day to do it all. Go for the dye job. I know you've been avoiding it, but you know what they say, make the curtains match the drapes and you never know what's going to happen. You are wearing clean underwear, just in case, right? Do you really want me to tell you the rest of it?

I heard you can do amazing things. Make me into who I always wanted to be.
I can do almost anything I set my mind to, but I can't do that. No, really, I can't do anything with that hair. If I did it would be a disaster, I can see it now. Ask at the next chair.

Send your questions to the Psychic Hairdresser by emailing or posting comments below! Free answers with a wash and style! The Psychic Hairdresser knows all!

(c) 2009 Laura S. Packer

When did I become the grownup?

I wonder if I'm handling my 40s well. I always imagined that by the time I hit 40 I'd be married (nope) with kids (none that I can see, unless you count various adults in my life) a homeowner (renting and currently relieved to do so) and with a career (wait, how did I miss that one?). Here I am, living in sin with my sweetie, parenting any number of people though none are biological, in the same financial mess as most of my peers (retirement? wait, let me stop laughing) and still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. I'm not the grown up.

Except sometimes I am.

For example, a couple of weeks ago I was at an event where an older friend took ill. Only a few of us were around when this happened, but I found myself in the position of making the decisions. Should we call the EMTs? Should we send our friend to the hospital, even though they didn't want to go? What do we do next? I was the youngest person in the room, but I was the one calling the shots. Maybe it's because I'm bossy. Maybe it's because someone needed to be decisive and the others were having more difficulty putting their emotions aside, while I could. I don't know why, but I do know that I was the decisive one because someone needed to be.

Afterwards I found myself thinking, "When did I become the grownup?" I asked my sweetie and he told me that I'd been the grownup for years, the one people could rely on, the one who remained calm. Hell. Does being the grownup mean I have to be boring now?

I hope not. There are good things about being a grownup. I can get a new tattoo if I want. I can eat what I want when I want. It's easier to not care about what other people think. I can make my own decisions. I can choose what part of adulthood I want to embrace.

When I was a kid I marveled at how grownups seemed so self-assured and knew the right thing to do all the time. As I grow older, each birthday I wonder, "Is now when I start feeling like a grownup?" I suspect I'll ask that question until I die and, depending on if there's an afterlife, may continue to ask. I think part of the secret of being a grownup is that you learn to fake confidence more effectively. You've learned that it's better to move forward than to stay in stunned indecision.

Some days I'm fine with my 40s, thinking that I'm just not living a conventional life. Other days I grieve. But I do know that I'm trying my best and trying to treat those I meet with compassion and dignity along the way. What else can I do? We make the best decisions we can in any given moment.

My friend was fine, by the way. I'm glad I was able to help them and maybe that's enough of a reason to be a grownup from time to time.

(c) 2009 Laura S. Packer