I think I'll go off somewhere and bow my head in shame.
7:49:12 PM    please comment []

[Update: Ask and it shall be granted; knock and the door shall be opened. My wonderful church will be subsidizing me for this journey. I am very grateful.]
4:12:46 PM    please comment []

...In another domain, research on resilience, both physical and mental, reveals that rich authentic connection is one of the most salient factors in continued good health, outweighting such decisive forces as nutrition, exercise, even the absence of smoking. We enter life whole and connected and we operate best when richly attached. Intimacy is our natural state as a species, our birthright. And yet, while the push away from genuine closeness occurs at different points in their development, and in critically different ways, neither boys nor girls are allowed to maintain healthy relatedness for very long. ... Instead of cultivating intimacy, turning nascent aptitudes into mature skills, we teach boys and girls, in complimentary ways, to bury their deepest selves, to stop speaking, or attending to, the truth, to hold in mistrust, or even in disdain, the state of closeness we all, by our natures, most crave... We live in an antirelational, vulnerability-despising culture, one that not only fails to nurture the skills of connection but actively fears them.

This comes from Terance Real's How Can I Get Through to You: Reconnecting Men and Women. I don't know the book, so I can't say more about it, but this observation seems right on point to me.
4:09:22 PM    please comment []

Last night I went to a housewarming party for one of my many friends who have recently become homeowners. A's new home is a cute little bungalow in Takoma Park, which she has now decorated in her very own inimitable and charming style. Each room is a different color: topaz in the living room, lavender in the bedroom, maroon in the library, and so on. She collects ancient "o-matic" appliances and books on etiquette and sex. She writes an advice column which is published in a major overseas newspaper, and holds down a substantial full-time job in the library world.

When I arrived at her place, the back deck was filled with people I'd never met before (it turns out that they are recent colleagues). My feeling of displacement began there. Gradually more of our shared acquaintances started showing up. These are lovely people, some of them good true friends of mine. Talented, intelligent, kind, accomplished folk with plenty to say for themselves and lots to offer.

I was in one of my rare glib moods, where bantering and witticism flow without effort. There was good-natured humor galore and everyone was laughing. My friend K- had brought a new person with him, whom I hadn't met before, a fellow named E-. All my invisible antennae went on full alert; I could practically feel them swivel around and train themselves on this new arrival. I refrained from peppering him with nosy questions, but just barely. (In DC it takes an heroic effort of will to get through an entire social evening without asking someone what he does for a living.)

Despite all the camaraderie and conversation, I felt divided ~ part of me sitting quietly in a corner, observing, and feeling very unlike everyone else in the room. I'm sure that I gave no outward indication of this disconnect, but it dominated my interior landscape.

This sensation reached its acme with the arrival of B-. Beautifully dressed and groomed, as always, late like the social butterfly he is. He settled in with the group of us in the living room. Listening to his cocoa voice, looking around the room at my good friends, I felt the gap widening. None of them had any idea that he and I had shared anything other than a casual social connection. If they don't know this about me, I asked myself, what don't I know about them?

I was also surprised, even (strangely) a bit disappointed, to discover that my emotional separation from B- is now effectively complete. I still like him, and find him interesting, and I suppose attractive in an abstract way, but the glow is gone. I'm no longer making allowances, and irritating traits I'd have shrugged off before are now more salient. I feel an odd mild mixture of compassion and contempt for him (not that I'm in any position to pass judgment, mind you), because I feel he's driving his life by appearances and the illusion of control, and that he's going to come to grief over it before long. But this is not my problem to fix, and I have plenty of my own I ought to be focusing on.

And all the while, my other self hanging about in the back part of my brain is wondering: at this rate, how will anyone ever really know me?
3:17:21 PM    please comment []

I come from a family of name-changers. Both my parents chose to be known by names other than the ones they were given at birth.

And all my life I've wanted to change my name, because it didn't feel like me. I can't explain why, but I imagine it's analogous to the way transsexuals feel they are trapped in the wrong body. I've searched for a new name for a long time, trying on one after another mentally without success. My friends have had varied reactions to this discontent.

But Michael Barrish would understand why I choose to be Pascale Soleil.
1:38:57 AM    please comment []

But I've listened to it several times since, and I've completely revised my opinion. In some ways the album has more of a jazz than a pop sensibility, and there's a slighly retro feel to it that goes back further than Taylor's folk pop roots. Many of the arrangements are lush with strings.

This is music for adults of a certain age (and whether I care to dwell on it or not, that would be me): songs of experience, lessons mostly learned the hard way, joy in its wider and more difficult context.

An article in the NY Times describes how Taylor has put unusual effort into the marketing of this album, which somewhat to the surprise and definitely to the delight of his label has sold half a million CDs since its release. But despite the effort to create a cross-generational audience for this music, I have no doubt that the people it strikes the strongest chord with will be people like me.
1:16:48 AM    please comment []