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Politeness Rules. The Brusqueness of Etiquette Enforcers.

November 16, 2009

We’ve all heard it—a misunderstood or misheard “excuse me” transmuting into an indignant “you’re welcome.”  What this kind of “you’re welcome” usually means is that the you, who, in fact, is not welcome, has somehow dropped the ball. You failed to thank, take the requested step to the side, or most importantly, prostrate yourself at the foot of your self-excuser.  And that same self-excuser has now turned into a you-accuser,  while you have shifted from person who’s owed civility to person who deserves rebuff; a person, in other words, who’s on the absolute wrong end of the politeness stick.

How dare you, you?

Maybe I should say ‘how dare I?’  Because I worry that I run into this sort of treatment more than most.  Perhaps I go about the street in a fog.  (Since I sometimes write this blog while I walk, I suspect this may be so.)  Despite my general will towards politeness, my great propensity towards the words “sir” and “ma’am” and “please” and “thank you,” I probably do miss verbal cues.

The whole experience, which always results from some completely inadvertent error on my part, makes me feel terrible–the “excuse ME,” the “thank YOU,” the “YOU’RE welcome” truly distress me.  (Somehow, people who are trying to force politeness seem to emphasize pronouns.)

Aside from my personal discomfort, I also feel upset on behalf of society. (I’m getting my own back now!)  Because the sudden brusqueness of the oh-so-polite really does seem to lower, rather than raise, the level of civility in the culture:  two rudes simply don’t make a polite, as the etiquette experts, including George Washington, conclude in Douglas Quenqua’s November 13 New York Times article “As the Rudes Get Ruder, the Scolds Get Scoldier.”

My point is that if you believe in politeness, then be truly, consistently, polite.  Don’t take turns at it, meting it out, retracting it, converting it into an opportunity for aggression.   Be like the proverbial queen, almost any true queen (this is a true pea-beneath-the-mattress-test), who, when entertaining a guest who drinks from the fingerbowl, promptly gulps hers down as well.

You do that, and I’ll watch my step while I blog.

Categories: Blogging, Stress, Uncategorized
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Crazy Day Nights, Bed Tea

November 12, 2009

Crazy days, no nights.  Yes, the sun sets.  Quite early, in fact.  But you know those weeks when, even after darkness falls (which, okay, never completely happens in the City), and all the lights are off in your apartment (except for the little green and red ones in the various cable boxes), and the down blanket is tucked softly around your shoulder (unless it suddenly feels too hot), and your sleeping socks are comfortably on feet that would otherwise be too cold or too dry to relax (yes, it would be better if one was not a footie while the other a knee sock)– but you know what I mean–those hours when you should sleep but your mind still churns through numbers, conversations, projected conversations, or worse, if you do drift off briefly, images of the back of a computer, torn open so that wires and tubes protrude, the same wires and tubes that hold the only copies of your most dear and precious files.

My husband dreams of things like flying; Mao Tse Tung floating down the Yangtze in an inner tube; himself, naked, except for a pickaxe slung across his back, scaling the wall of a garden party where all other males are strapped into spats and morning coats.  As a result, perhaps, he is always promoting the virtue of many hours of sleep, or, at least, the prescribed eight.

He doesn’t understand that this prescription is not appealing to those who dream, if at all, about the backs of their laptops torn open.

I, on the other hand, am a great believer in sitting in bed for long periods,  propped up by pillows, awake, but feeling both mindless and blissfully guilt-free because (a) it’s either too early or too late for the overdrive to control; (b) I really am pretty tired after all the nights of torn-open computer backs; and (c) that mindless part I mentioned earlier in this sentence.   All the while drinking bed tea, which, for these purposes, I will define as virtually any steaming hot beverage, preferably with a bit of milk in it; and happily reading, re-reading, re-re-reading, or, in the last few months, blogging (haha!),  writing to anyone else out there who also craves some slightly mindless rest.

I wish I could pour you a cuppa….

Ah….

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Speaking Out on the Number 4 Train – Greed, Girls, Yankees

October 29, 2009

Writing a daily blog can do strange things to you.  One of the more dangerous is that it strengthens the propensity (already outsized in most bloggers) to openly speak your mind.

This was brought to my attention last night when I  was jammed on the Number 4 train heading for Game 1 of the World Series.  The guy squeezed next to me had a slightly pudgy face that was decorated by half-there facial hair (some form of beard or goatee, probably intended to better define his face shape.)

He noticed, in the mass of people clumped around the  subway pole, a tall pale guy, whom he recognized.  The tall guy held the hand, knotted around the pole, of a young woman who looked up at him with eyes thick with make-up, shiny with adoration. (It turned out these two had only been married for a month.)  But I digress.

The pudgy guy, clearly hoping to impress the tall guy, told him about that big things had been happening in his life.  He’d gotten married the previous year; his business, four years old, was doing great; he was employing his brother; his wife was expecting.

After asking the tall guy where he lived, he revealed that he’d “closed” on a place in mid-town Manhattan last week.

Finding out that the couple had just married, he asked the tall guy where they’d honeymooned.  “Nice,” he said appraisingly.

They talked of a mutual friend who was also doing great, the pudgy guy said.  This friend had had a student loan business which he sold for $150 million dollars last year, then, “two weeks later,” the pudgy guy went on, “the government changed the regulations for, you know, student loans, and the place literally closed its doors.  Busted.”  He grinned widely.

(For government “changing regulations”, the blogger in me thinks “cracked down on corrupt business practices.”)

“Beautiful,” a third guy said.  I don’t know if this third guy, young, short, bristly, was a stranger or friend.  It’s hard when everyone is cheek by jowl, arm by guy, to know who’s with whom.

Who was going to the Yankees’ game and who was just headed up to the Bronx was a bit clearer.  For example, a very slight Hispanic girl, just opposite me, who had worried eyes, a  worried complexion, a small stud below her lower lip, and a large rumpled SAT prep book under one arm, looked like she was probably not going to the game.  (In fact, she got off in the Bronx, but before the stadium.)

“Well, you must be doing okay,” the pudgy guy said to the tall guy, “if you can buy Yankees tickets.”  He rubbed middle finger to thumb, moola-style.  (He had season tickets himself.)

(I should note here–yes, to make myself look virtuous–that my ticket, the most expensive single ticket, other than for a flight, that I’ve ever held in my hand, was given to me.)

Trying, I think, to change the subject, the tall guy at the pole asked the pudgy guy when his baby was due.  The pudgy guy pulled out a cell phone and directed it to an image of the baby’s sonogram, which he pressed across multiple limbs to his friend’s face.

This might have been a touching gesture.  But he kept saying, “you can see he’s a boy, right?  I mean you can’t miss it, right?”

The tall guy tried to say something about how amazing it was that the pudgy guy had a sonogram on his cell, but the pudgy guy wouldn’t let go of the fetus’s penis. “Look at the size of that.  You know what that is right?  I mean, how can you not see it?”

The tall guy said that he knew what it was.   “You’re happy then, with the baby coming?”

“Oh yeah, sure.  I’m just so glad it’s not a girl.  I’d just hate to have a girl.”

The blogger in me could suddenly no longer control myself.  “I think you’re horrible for not wanting a girl,” I said loudly.  “And I think your friend who made the 150 million for selling his worthless company was horrible too.”

As silence descended over the car, I was glad I had not added anything about the guy’s obsessing over the size of his son-to-be”s genitalia.

No one looked at me, except the third guy, who sneered.  “No, it wasn’t horrible.  I don’t want girls either.  And what that guy did was great.  That’s what capitalism is all about.  That’s what the Yankees are all about too, that’s why we’re all here.  To beat these guys from the start.”

I, thought about the incident repeatedly during the game.  It was a game in which one had a lot of time to think about things (such as, will anyone ever hit one of Cliff Lee’s pitches?)

I really do like the Yankees.  Despite their ridiculous pay scale.  But when you go to the new stadium, when you sit in a large crowd many of whom have paid hundreds of dollars for this ticket (and have a season of them) , beneath the bright lights, in the freezing cold,  surrounded by $10 special hot chocolate cups,  $8 beers, and small private suites which have crowded full bars, big TVs and a real Las Vegas feel, you become conscious of a few things which are both obvious and, to me, unpleasant;  (i) sports is a big, greedy,  business; (ii) the players are highly-paid, highly-skilled entertainers, and (iii) many fans, particularly now that the prices have gotten so high, are demanding consumers, some of whom look to the highly-paid, highly-skilled players to act out their own (slightly impotent) macho instincts.

You can’t blame the players for the business aspect, and you really can’t blame them for taking advantage of the big bucks.  Many of them grew up in poor or working class families and have worked incredibly hard to hone their skills.  (Mariano Rivera apparently practiced pitching rocks as a child.)   In fact, it’s amazing to me that so many players are so genuinely devoted to the game, so genuinely excited by their victories, so seemingly tolerant of their team members.

You can’t blame the fans (or at least some of them) for acting like consumers, getting irritated not just when their team is losing, but because the show is not up to the high admission price.

But because the amounts of money involved are so large, something  has gotten very out of whack.  And strangely enough, it almost makes the TV experience feel like the truer sport experience, simply because the audience there hasn’t paid hundreds of dollars for its seat and doesn’t have to look at signs that say things like “Make Noise,” and “Win It For the Boss” (meaning George Steinbrenner.)

The game can also be watched on TV even by those folks getting off in the Bronx, before the stadium is reached.

Categories: Baseball, Blogging, Uncategorized, Yankees
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How To Do Ashtanga Yoga In One Short Breath

October 20, 2009

I am a longtime and very proud devotee of Ashtanga Yoga. This is a form of yoga pioneered by Shri T. Krishnamacharya and the much beloved Shri K. Patabhi Jois. It involves six fairly long series of poses (though most practitioners stick to the first “Primary” series), which are intended to energize the body, clarify the mind, and purify just about everything.   Ashtanga is supposed to be practiced six days a week, preferably in the morning.  (An empty stomach is recommended; a non-empty stomach is regretted.)

It is a great form of yoga, especially for people, like me, who have a hectic schedule, as it is designed for self-practice.  Not only does Ashtanga provide a  series of pre-set poses, it includes certain transitional movements between each pose. This takes decision-making out of home practice, an immense benefit for those who already have too many other things to think about.

Breathing in Ashtanga, as in all yoga, is super important: each transitional movement corresponds to a specific inhalation or exhalation, and each pose is ideally held for eight steady breaths.  This means that Primary series, if done right, should take between an hour and an hour and a half, to complete.

Some of us, however, have managed to shorten the required time span to approximately fifteen minutes.

Here’s how:

1. First, practice for years. It’s important to know the poses in your bones so that when you whiz through them you don’t need to spend a single extra second thinking about what comes next.

2. Second, be Manic.

3. And slightly depressed.

4. Start a daily blog.

5. But keep your day job.

6. Most importantly, fuel the flames of family and personal drama with long drawn-out conversations or email each morning, so that you really don’t have more than fifteen minutes to do yoga. (Ignore possible effects of yoga’s calming influence, if done correctly.)

7. Don’t mind if you wrench your knee or shoulder throwing yourself into convoluted positions. (Alignment always felt kind of boring anyway.)

8.  Who said you had to do the complete pose?   At least, your bending that wrenched knee.

10. Try not to mind that a practice that is supposed cultivate deep breathing and energetic stillness is whipping by in panting exhaustion

11. Congratulate yourself on the fact that you are practicing yoga at all.

12. (If you can call that practicing . Or Yoga.)

13. But keep practicing anyway. (As that great sage Scarlett O’Hara said, tomorrow is another day.)

Categories: Blogging, Stress, yoga
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Monday Morning – Not Ready For It

September 28, 2009
Monday Morning - Not Ready For It

Monday Morning - Not Ready For It

The above image is from 1 Mississippi.   (Copyright Karin Gustafson) Check it out at link or on Amazon.

If you’d rather think about poetry than Monday, check out poetry blogs; if you’re having a hard time writing, check out writers’ block blogs; if you’d rather just laugh (at me), check out Robert Pattinson blogs.

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Morning Subway Blog

September 23, 2009

Man opposite me on the train this morning wears denim overalls which half-cover a chartreuse t-shirt.  He is a powerful looking man, despite the fact that his bull-like chest is now both chartreuse and bibbed. Thick arms, both right and left, both inner and outer, are covered with tattoos.  One features a large, grinning, skull that wears a Valkyrie-type helmet.

As I look at these arms, I understand, for the first time, the value of tattoos:  anyone with so many of them can wear bib overalls in New York City with complete impunity.

He is not a crazy man, meaning that his eyes don’t catch mine, not even once.  (See e.g. my post re Mondays and the strange attraction that mentally disturbed subwayriders seem to feel for my gaze.)

Drummers now set up a performance space between the subway poles.  They do block out the screeches of a child down the way, but only at the expense of a throbbing ache in the ear on their side.    Even so,  I contemplate putting change in the hat that’s passed—that child can reach an extraordinarily high pitch—only they move the hat too fast, quick to realize that no one in this car is much interested in paying for loud morning drumming.

As the train moves on, I catch my face in the opposite window of the car, and remember the comment of a friend yesterday who’d not seen me for some time.  I’d put on a little weight, she said, that showed especially in my face.

Oh yes, she also said it looked good.

Oh yes…

Cringing, I look quickly for anything other than the mirror-like blackness of that window.  Surely there’s someone nutty whose eyes I can work on avoiding.  This is the IRT.

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Robert Pattinson’s Hair – This Blog

September 22, 2009

This blog was found by some unknown person today through the search term “how to do my hair like Robert Pattinson.”

I view this as a significant achievement.  (Not doing one’s hair like Robert Pattinson—that’s not just significant; that’s amazing.)  No, what I’m talking about is the fact that my blog would show up as the possible provider of an answer to a question of this kind.

My own hair-manipulating experience is pretty much limited to braids.  (So far, not Pattinson’s style.)

I’ve hardly even had my own hair “done”.  The only times I can remember are as a pre-teen (a member of the other age group so fascinated by RPatz.)  Hair was “done” back then for Junior High School dances.

The Junior High School “dos” were the coiffure equivalents of the corsages our pre-teen dates bought us for these events.  These were typically carnations (baby roses, if the guy was willing to shell out), which were wired together into a bunched but spacious array, gaps filled in with tangles of baby’s breath and leaf.  Green paper wrapped the stems in back; very sharp pins (with pearl tips) were used to keep the whole thing affixed to budding chests.

Even so my long blonde hair was curled, teased, smoothed, and sprayed, shaped and volumized, until it ended up a combination of beehive and Marie Antoinette’s wig.  (Now that I think about it, it also looked something like Pattinson’s hair in the Prom scene at the end of Twilight. Only mine also had ringlets.)

Those days are long long gone.  (And there were only a couple of them to begin with  – the Valentine’s Day Dance, and later the Spring Dance.  Eighth Grade.)

Which makes it hard for me to believe that I could be allowed some small measure of authority on this subject:  the way to Robert Pattinson’s hair.

The magic of the Internet never ceases to amaze….

Check out  1 Mississippi on Amazon or at link above.

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More on Minding

September 17, 2009

At a certain turn in the blogging cycle or maybe it’s the Manic-D cycle, you get to the point where you are willing to be way too honest.  (Perhaps it’s the urge for more views.)  This is not the kind of honesty that writes about obsessions with Robert Pattinson.

It is a particularly dangerous turning point if you have already started telling family and friends your blog address.

This type of brink is a reason why many writers really would rather write fiction and poetry than a daily blog.  Fiction and poetry are both more intimate and more removed;  they are “fiction”, “poetry”;  they are classified as “art” (or at least an attempt at art), rather than “reportage”, something made rather than experienced.

I was brought to this brink by thinking about the New York Times article by Alfie Kohn  (“Mind: When I Love You Means Do What I Say”) discussed in yesterday’s post;  the article talks about the inner compulsiveness that sometimes arises from positive and negative conditioning in children; i.e. blankets of praise and/or punishment.  The neediness seems, according to the studies,  to be particularly strong in the case of so-called positive conditioning, that is, praise (praise applied with an overly thick brush).

Achievers are apparently produced by this praise, but they are compulsive achievers.

Symptoms of this type of internal compulsion seem to me to include the craving many achievers have throughout their lives for continuing pats on the head, even artificial pats.  This craving can in turn lead to a kind of self-deception that feels somehow like success, but is known not to be , or at least probably not to be.  (A good example is the willingness to believe, or to try to believe, in weight loss after an adjustment down of the bathroom scale.)   Ironically, this same willingness to accept what is known to be a dubious milestone is often combined with an absolute skepticism over any genuine achievement, particularly if the acknowledgement of such achievement comes from a loved one.    It’s as if, to the achiever, the opinion of someone loving and beloved has little worth;  only the opinions of one’s enemies, detractors, or ignorers have any validity.

Strange, huh?

Then, in the midst of trying to figure out how to write about this, my mind turned instead to John Keats, about whom there is a new film by Jane Campion.  I decided that as trivial as sonnets may seem in the modern world, I would really rather write about them, and write them, than about neediness.   Although Keats admittedly does seem a bit on the needy side, he was not a blogger.

So, stepping back from any brink, but oddly satisfied to have sketched out a glimpse of it,  I’m starting a new series on the making of a sonnet.   As a separate post.

Categories: Blogging, parenting, Uncategorized

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Ten Reasons Not To Blog

September 6, 2009

Six weeks ago when I first started “ManicDDaily”, I wrote (as my third post) “Five Good Reasons To Blog.”

I still admit to neophyte status as a blogger.  (I have yet to fully investigate the varieties of graphics and the word “widgets” just brings up strange math word problems.)

Even so, I now have enough experience under my belt to understand a bunch of good reasons not to blog.   I list ten of these below:

1.  If the word “daily” is in your title, your blog will cloud your brain for a significant portion of every single day.  On a very lucky day, it’s the cloud of a brain storm.  On a frustrating day, it’s just a plain old storm cloud (without the brain part), in which you thunder at anyone (a child or husband) who threatens to disturb your computer time.  On a normal day, it’s more like a heavy fog, thick and unnavigable.

2.   The blog (which comes with “Stats” as to the number of views per day) provides a whole new way in which you can feel rejected.  A bad day can go right on the failed marriage, questionable career, dwindling stock portfolio heap.  It can bring to mind, with really uncanny vividness, particular manuscript rejection letters,  poetry contests lost, that boyfriend in law school who (unbeknownst to you) had a real girlfriend, and even all those 4th of July swimming pool beauty contests that your mom made you enter from age 6-10 despite your increasingly poor track record.

3.  A good day (lots of views) brings a certain zing to the old step, but it also raises the question of whether the credit is truly owed to Robert Pattinson.  (See e.g. numerous posts on same.)

4.  You suddenly notice that you never have any time to do your “real writing”.

5.  And what happened to all those cute little paintings you used to make?

6.  Your family would really really like you to make dinner before 10, at least 11.

7.  Your boss would really really like you to get in before 10, at least 11.

8.  Your body would really like you to have a bit more energy for the gym.  (The stationary bike was not actually meant to be a notebook and pen bike.)

9.  Your personal yoga practice could really use a bit more focus.  Breaking off mid-pose, repeatedly, to check on early morning “Stats” rarely leads to Nirvana.  (See e.g. Reason No. 2 – a whole new way to feel rejected.)

10.  Your dog would really really like your laptop, charger, electrical cord, and notebook, to stop hogging the bed.

    Poor dog.

    Write you tomorrow.

    Categories: Blogging, writing
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    Subway Blog – Autopilot

    August 27, 2009

    Late late late.  In this case for someone who has come to a meeting at my office forty minutes early and called me at home wondering where I am.  Not entirely my fault.  Still bad feelings coat stomach.  Pace platform.

    Where I find that the expensive purse which I bought in a trance last night in a shop in Grand Central really is too big, too heavy, to be truly comfortable.    Yes, the price was slashed by 70%.  (The store has been closing for weeks, and was down to the wire.)  Even reduced, it is the most expensive purse I’ve ever bought, and I’m not even someone who cares about nice leather.  I’m vegetarian for God’s sake!

    When finally on train, I sit across from a pale, but slightly red-faced, man who wears round tortoise shell glasses, a pin-stripe shirt, a careful, if curly comb-over, and thick suede hiking boots.  He  seems to be talking occasionally, gesticulating, not wildly, but in the mild considered way of someone wearing a headset, only we are on a moving train and his ears are clear.

    I can’t stop myself from meeting his eyes repeatedly, though they have a slightly fishy blankness (mixed with intensity) which tells me I shouldn’t.

    Late late late.  Why did I wash hair that was washed last night?   And then I had to rinse it repeatedly because I was hurrying so much I first started drying strands still sticky with shampoo.

    Ate swiss muesli too (something which should never be eaten fast) with guzzling speed.

    I regret that speedy muesli now as the train chugs along and I catch the eye again of the round-glassed, slightly muttering man who suddenly looks genuinely sad.  His expression makes me feel somehow sick again, beyond the lateness sickness and the muesli sickness;  I wonder what has happened to him.

    Or maybe, I think suddenly, in my wishful vegetarian blogger way, he’s just reciting poetry to himself.  What with the round tortoise shell glasses.  He has an umbrella too, on his lap, one with a wooden handle which means it was probably not bought on the street in a storm.  It could be the umbrella of someone who recites poetry to themselves.

    But his mutters do not have the consistency of line for poems.  And, in addition, to the flickers of sadness, there is a strong cast of resentment around his mouth.  The only poet I can think of at that moment who is resentful is Bob Dylan, and the guy across from me is definitely not singing.    Though he does flick his fingers repeatedly.  Still, no.

    Oh-oh.  I think he just said “swine”.  Twice.

    I try to look away.

    But the autopilot mania of my lateness, my prospective workday, my morning fatigue, and the rushed muesli, makes it really hard.

    I force my eyes to the hand resting on the round purple tummy of the girl right next to me, pregnant, ruffly-bloused, whose long-lashed eyes are closed.  I strive for a bit of her calm.

    But striving and calm don’t mix all that well, and the guy across from me says something a bit louder now, over the sound of the train tracks.  I look up;  this time he stares right at me.

    Oh the New York City subway system.

    Now we stop.  Train traffic ahead.

    Right next to my guy sits a blonde woman writing hurriedly on a pad with lots of pastel pages.  She seems happy, animated;  her ears do wear earphones, she sometimes twitches with rhythm, energy.  I wonder immediately if she’s writing a blog and imagine it to be a funny one. .

    Then my guy, the one I’m trying not to look at it, suddenly punches the air, each elbow at a sharp right angle, as he hits the space before him.

    No one else seems to notice.  And I force myself to look away.  Punching’s a bit much.  Stare instead at the black-bordered screen of the guy beside me.  He watches it intently, his thumbs on dials.  It looks like there is a animated woman in a noose on the screen.

    When I get off, I walk fast.

    (The above post is part of a continuing series about stress.  See e.g. “From Rat Race to Rat Rut” and any post mentioning Robert Pattinson.)

    If you want something unstressful to read to kids on subway, check out 1 Mississippi, (Karin Gustafson) at link above, or on Amazon.

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