"I am here, and you are where you are..."

Still mourning the old life while trying to start the new one often doesn't feel like living at all. I have flareups of regret. What happened I guess was inevitable, but still feels like I could have done something different. Maybe it's karma. But I'm going to try as hard as I can to make a life....

So many books....

I have about four books going right now, and was happy that the library allowed me to renew all of them because otherwise I'll never finish. Red Comet: The Short Life and Amazing Art of Sylvia Plath--about 500 pages in...just over halfway since the main content of the book is just over 900 pages. I neither like nor dislike Plath, though I'm interested in reading her again. I've found that I often enjoy biographies of artists and writers when I'm not particularly connected to their work, if they're interesting enough or if the writing is compelling. This is both.

Also reading a book about the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey which I'm struggling to put down, and which is part of the reason why I'm so behind on all the others.

Reading the new Louise Erdrich and that one is a little tougher going, but I'm glad at least it's about Natives in the 20th century. Not bad, I just don't have as strong a drive to read it.

I have a complicated relationship with my Native heritage. I look white and have white privilege. My Nativeness is a citizenship status and not an ethnicity. It's the biggest cliche there is, but I don't fit in either world. I used to somewhat disavow my Nativeness because it seemed like a more rebellious thing to do that. Indian stuff was like church, school, and family duties--something you were supposed to do and care about. Then I went through a period where I embraced it more, but it just seemed silly to me. So many people from my tribe in particular try to overcompensate for not "looking Indian" by driving around with a hundred dream catchers or attending every pow wow there is. The most ridiculous thing I ever saw was a bunch of my fellow "white Natives" trying to do a stomp dance in a conference center classroom. It reminded me of the hobbyist pow wows you have in Europe, where everyone is "playing Indian." I also got tired of all the political infighting on social media to where I unfollowed almost all of the different Native media figures and stopped participating. I vote in tribal elections and follow the news, but am not really interested in getting any more involved in that. I'm proud of where I came from, but I feel like parading around all the photos of ancestors and everything is like I'm trying to show some kind of status symbol. "See, I'm not really a lame white person....look at my great grandfather!" At the same time, I'm interested in learning the language, just to try to help preserve it even if it's doubtful I would ever use it organicially. But I've never really felt welcome among my fellow Natives--lots of gatekeeping and judging. So I continue to remain outside of it for the most part.

A disturbing what if....

What if we come out of the pandemic, things get back to normal, and it turns out that I hate living here? That I liked the way things were in 2020?

Doing some traveling over these next few months. One thing I keep noticing is that I am happy to get out of here for a while. Some of that may just be that I find my apartment and my neighborhood tiresome, and no longer get much from the other places I frequent. It's a conundrum.

I notice it's hard to read now. One of my friends has said reading is like the canary in the coalmine for them, that when they can't get into reading they know something is really wrong. I wonder if that's the same for me, or if it's just that I'm on my phone too damn much.

One year

One year ago today, I left the life I knew to come here. I won't lie, it's been hard. It helps though that there is no old life to go back to. This is all that there is. The house I lived in has been rented to someone else. I'm divorced from the person to whom I was married. I have a completely different job and live in a different city. I don't even look the same as I did, to where I don't know if the ID photo I had at the time would even be usable at an airport.

Whether it's been worth it or not remains to be seen. I'm happier in some ways, though I know I have developed unhealthy habits. I've decided to isolate myself from in-person contact for a time. I have things to do, things to write, etc. I don't have the bandwith for in-person contact, with its many demands.

I miss my old life, but it's like missing a bygone era that no longer exists. The creative life, that's the only thing that means anything to me these days.

The Solo Act

This past weekend I went on a vacation alone for the first time in nearly 20 years, to the coast here. I enjoy traveling alone--I like setting my own schedule and doing whatever I care to do. Dining alone is something that doesn't really bother me, though I will say when you're going out with someone else it feels a bit more normalizing as far as fitting in with other people. You also don't have to worry about someone grabbing your table/seat while you're gone, something that has happened to me before.

I spent most of my time walking around, looking at the ocean, and drinking beer. Went to a more touristy area later and didn't like it as much, though I had fun playing this odd skeeball/bingo hybrid called Fascination. I still feel sad sometimes, but it's more of a baseline of sadness that doesn't draw attention to itself. Sadness as an ongoing condition, like eye color or the shape of one's nose.

My father-in-law, about whom I wrote in the early days of this blog, passed away ten years ago today. We did not often get along, but I was glad that I was able to make things right with him in his final days. He had flaws, but was a good soul, and was a better man than I could ever hope of being.

Larry McMurtry, (1936-2021)

Even when you know it's coming, it's always tough to cope with the death of an artist you cared about. As I wrote about previously, I started reading Larry McMurtry in high school, and he's one of the few authors from back then that I continue to read as I head into late middle age. I used to idenfity with his younger characters, and then his somewhat older ones...often the same characters in different books. Although he is better known for Lonesome Dove and the other Westerns, I seldom read those. I've written about the Thalia cycle, and another of my favorites is All of My Friends Are Going to be Strangers. His three book memoir about book dealing, screenwriting, and novel writing are gems. I am sad that he is gone, though I'd had difficult with his later work. But it is sad when you know that a body of work has come to an end, that there is a limit to the number of works out there.

Reading MOVING ON, which is like his contemporary version of LONESOME DOVE in that it's a very long book. In his preface he writes about how he couldn't come up with a title and initally named it after its main character, Patsy Carpenter, but the publisher wouldn't go for it. I am looking forward to revisiting it in the coming days, it's one that I haven't read since college, and might appreciate it more now that I've been married/divorced.

"I'm transforming, I'm vibrating...."

I am not the same person I was a year ago, and not just in the obvious ways [being married, living in a different city, with a different job...] I do miss my old life, my old home, the ease of my marriage even if it ultimately didn't work out.

Life is better in many ways. I don't have as many worries, and feel good about the future regardless of some of the things I'm dealing with at the moment. I think I'm through the miserable winter, and am hopeful next time will be better.

But as so often has been the case, I often feel my happiness is a delicate balance and the slightest setback could send me into despondency yet again. Hopefully I am learning and adapting. Several online acquaintances have gone through divorce fairly recently and my only advice is to eventually try to view it as an opportunity for growth and transformation. Early on, this will likely be impossible, but once an equilibrium is found---do something you've wanted to do but didn't think you could. Try something you haven't before. Run with a different crowd, or maybe no crowd at all. Become a stranger to yourself.