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The Most Powerful Defense Mechanism of All
Feb. 1st, 2022 09:41 am‘Nother ridiculously cold morning, but we are in for a treat later this week when temperatures are predicted to rise into the (gasp) 40°s.
Remunerative Project not completed yesterday. I was conscientious about plugging away, but the subject matter, an analysis of liability issues associated with infected wounds in hospitals and long-term care facilities, is exceedingly dull to me—partly a defense mechanism, I know, I know, to keep me from imagining myself in a long-term care facility, riddled with bedsores, tended by underpaid aides who don’t speak my language or give two shits about me.
###
I had a boyfriend once named Jean-Luc who should have been interesting—incredibly brilliant, reasonably attractive, son of Holocaust survivors, fluent in three languages, well-read, and a doctor.
But Jean-Luc was the most boring person on the planet.
I mean, literally—you’d look at him and start falling asleep.
Of course, Jean-Luc was in therapy!
I mean—weren’t we all in therapy back then?
And one day, while he was droning on and on about something, he caught his therapist stifling a yawn.
Of course, he called his therapist out on this. And his therapist apologized. But added, “You know, being boring is the most powerful defense mechanism of all.”
###
I think the only human being with whom I exchanged enough words yesterday to register as an actual conversation was Loraine, consort to Buff Ken.
I like Loraine. She’s one of those still-waters-run-deep kinda people.
Somehow, the conversation evolved into one of those conversations about—ugh—aging.
“Well, there’s one great advantage,” said Loraine. “I no longer particularly care what people think of me. Like I always have these people coming up to me and asking, ‘Why don’t you dye your hair?’ And I just look at them now and say, ‘Because I don’t want to dye my hair.’”
“I don’t think I’ve ever cared what people thought of me,” I said. “I mean—unless they were part of some work-related chain of command where I knew my bread and butter depended upon delivering tongue massages to my superior’s heinie on a routine basis. And actually, I care so little these days that I’m in real danger of turning into one of those really scary, eccentric old ladies. The kind that you’d rather stand than sit next to on a subway.”
###
This morning, I was sitting at my desk, sipping coffee and wondering why the quality of the light was reminding me of Berkeley—not Berkeley as it is now, but Berkeley as it was in my imaginary “back then,” an enchanted place filled with enchanted things and enchanted people—when I suddenly had this Chapter 6 Eureka moment:
The novel’s huge narrative problem is that it isn’t, in fact, an A-to-Z rendition of June’s life. It’s more of a… memoir. And the writers of memoirs are always unreliable narrators. The June who is relating the story of Henry Miller is not the 21-year-old hustler living in New York but the 70-something social worker transplanted to Arizona.
There are hints of this throughout the book, but I think it needs to be made explicit; there needs to be a section near the beginning of Part 2 where the reader sees June as she huddles in a little pool of sunlight near a window, an old woman hoping if her memories are vivid enough, the past will actually materialize.
A most excellent hit, this!
It actually made me excited to begin writing it!
But first, I must finish the incredibly boring Remunerative Project.
Remunerative Project not completed yesterday. I was conscientious about plugging away, but the subject matter, an analysis of liability issues associated with infected wounds in hospitals and long-term care facilities, is exceedingly dull to me—partly a defense mechanism, I know, I know, to keep me from imagining myself in a long-term care facility, riddled with bedsores, tended by underpaid aides who don’t speak my language or give two shits about me.
###
I had a boyfriend once named Jean-Luc who should have been interesting—incredibly brilliant, reasonably attractive, son of Holocaust survivors, fluent in three languages, well-read, and a doctor.
But Jean-Luc was the most boring person on the planet.
I mean, literally—you’d look at him and start falling asleep.
Of course, Jean-Luc was in therapy!
I mean—weren’t we all in therapy back then?
And one day, while he was droning on and on about something, he caught his therapist stifling a yawn.
Of course, he called his therapist out on this. And his therapist apologized. But added, “You know, being boring is the most powerful defense mechanism of all.”
###
I think the only human being with whom I exchanged enough words yesterday to register as an actual conversation was Loraine, consort to Buff Ken.
I like Loraine. She’s one of those still-waters-run-deep kinda people.
Somehow, the conversation evolved into one of those conversations about—ugh—aging.
“Well, there’s one great advantage,” said Loraine. “I no longer particularly care what people think of me. Like I always have these people coming up to me and asking, ‘Why don’t you dye your hair?’ And I just look at them now and say, ‘Because I don’t want to dye my hair.’”
“I don’t think I’ve ever cared what people thought of me,” I said. “I mean—unless they were part of some work-related chain of command where I knew my bread and butter depended upon delivering tongue massages to my superior’s heinie on a routine basis. And actually, I care so little these days that I’m in real danger of turning into one of those really scary, eccentric old ladies. The kind that you’d rather stand than sit next to on a subway.”
###
This morning, I was sitting at my desk, sipping coffee and wondering why the quality of the light was reminding me of Berkeley—not Berkeley as it is now, but Berkeley as it was in my imaginary “back then,” an enchanted place filled with enchanted things and enchanted people—when I suddenly had this Chapter 6 Eureka moment:
The novel’s huge narrative problem is that it isn’t, in fact, an A-to-Z rendition of June’s life. It’s more of a… memoir. And the writers of memoirs are always unreliable narrators. The June who is relating the story of Henry Miller is not the 21-year-old hustler living in New York but the 70-something social worker transplanted to Arizona.
There are hints of this throughout the book, but I think it needs to be made explicit; there needs to be a section near the beginning of Part 2 where the reader sees June as she huddles in a little pool of sunlight near a window, an old woman hoping if her memories are vivid enough, the past will actually materialize.
A most excellent hit, this!
It actually made me excited to begin writing it!
But first, I must finish the incredibly boring Remunerative Project.
