Of Networking and the Dutchess County Poorhouse

[mallorys_camera]

After it stopped raining yesterday, I drove here.

Well, not here exactly since this shot was taken in the year 2000.

But there: Dutchess County’s old potters’ field, the graveyard associated with the 19th century poorhouse, which I think is still standing, one of the incredibly dilapidated buildings on a long-abandoned property just outside Millbrook.

Pretty in its way

###

This outing was part of my ongoing parade stand review, my periodic attempts to achieve perspective on the consumer culture I mostly live and breathe. Dude! John Donne would have been my BFF if only they’d had Twitter back in the 17th century.

I took it all in from a safe distance because I don’t want to contract Lyme’s Disease. The area is incredibly overgrown. Tic paradise in other words.

Several weeks ago, after depositing RTT at JFK for his flight to Israel, I woke up the next morning in the Hudson Valley, idly scratched what I thought was a bug bite on my shoulder, only to discover it was a ginormous tic. Ewwww!!

Had a helluva time disembedding said tic.

And what was most bizarre was that I had to have picked it up in Manhattan somewhere. Maybe in the little park outside the Museum of Natural History? Who knows.

Anyway, since then I’ve been super cautious on my outside jaunts.

###

The Millbrook site was eerie. Very silent. The sun, which had been skittering in and out of clouds all day throughout the rest of the Hudson Valley, beat down relentlessly on this one spot. As recently as a decade ago, according to reports, you could wander here and find grave markers, but I don’t think you could do that now. It’s too overgrown. But what was odd was that it was blazing hot there, like 90 degrees. And in the low 70s everywhere else.

###

Over the past few months, I’ve gotten into the habit of spending ten days in back-to-back sociability followed by a week more-or-less alone. Probably not a good habit. I’m pretty sociable. When I spend so much time alone – and both my work and my living situations are weirdly solitary despite the physical presence of others – I get lonely. My self-esteem plummets. I think, Gee, I must be a really repulsive person; otherwise I’d have more friends.

Actually, I have a fair number of friends. I'm good at connecting with other people.

What I don't have is the requisite tribe of congenial acquaintances. Because I suck at networking.

Never had a clue how to pull that networking stuff off. Never! Have always had a talent for connection, but hey! most of the interactions one has with one’s fellow humans are not connections but parallel play.

Never could see the point of superficial social interactions on an ongoing basis. I mean – I’m actually quite good at talking to random strangers, people I meet in stores, or standing in line, or at a party. I was a terrific interviewer when I worked as a journalist. I’m genuinely interested in other people’s stories. But after I extract their stories, I'm done. I’m ready never to talk to them again. Because I’m not at all interested in other people’s opinions and it seems to me that that’s what the majority of superficial human interactions consist of, the exchange of opinions.

Why should I give a shit about your opinions? Mine are better.

###

When I was married, of course, it didn’t matter that I didn’t like to network.

Well. I think I probably would have been much more successful professionally if I’d learned to network, but that’s another issue entirely.

When I was married, of course, loneliness was never a consequence of my aversion to networking. Because I always had someone to hang out with.

But I'm often lonely now, so I think I gotta bite the bullet and learn the dreaded networking skill, even at my advanced age. Because otherwise, I'm gonna be moping around sniveling to myself about how lonely I feel when actually I've cleared the deck to get important work done. I've programmed solitary time. It's something I want.

I think maybe I need to start going to that yoga class. Find a couple of other congregational activities that I can do for an hour or so throughout the week.

###

Starting tonight, everything gets very busy again for 10 days.

Tonight I’m going to Ellen D’s wake for Lucius at the KGB, which should be… sad.

I can’t help wondering where Lucius's mind would have skittered with ISIS – yeah, yeah, yeah, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, but also the Egyptian goddess of slaves and sinners who brought the very first Christ prototype back to life when she resurrected her brother/husband Osiris. Imagine a revolutionary political movement based on that.

Comments

[anais-pf.livejournal.com]

Those BIG ticks (dog ticks) won't give you Lyme Disease. It's the little ones (deer ticks) you have to worry about. It's still awful to have a tick attach itself though!

[sulphuroxide.livejournal.com]

opinions are boring often. but maybe if you saw them as the effects of who they think they are in their story it would be more interesting?


most stories about God or some big Other require a sacrifice on someones part, either to make the God worthy of being a God or to guarantee that this Godhood be universally exclaimed, embedded in the sky. The sacrifice is the symbolic regime's way of recording the transaction... the same way that ww2 was recording the truth of ww1 -- that the time for military colonization qua aggressive resource hoarding (as started in 1500s) was over, lest we want some kind of mutual destruction... that we had to approach hoarding resources in a new way... that we had to ground this world order in the universal appeal to the development of international laws, with a process... why the US joined the UN. the recognization was only made through the sacrifice of so many millions in war, the holocaust and, against the background of nagasaki and hiroshima.

if so many millions hadn't died, they might not have got the message that it was time to be more mature in how nations deal with one another.


of course the US still hasn't gotten the message that our time in the sun is over. we all know it is, but we haven't recognized it yet, with some kind of catastrophe... just like we haven't reocgnized that our lifestyle isn't compatible with our future given the environment. we haven't recognized that yet either.

Isis

[bb-lurks.livejournal.com]

Am I the only one to note that "ISIS" spelled backward is "SISI"? Egyptian deities indeed!

The pessimist in me says that people in the ME have the choice of crazy zealots or military dictators. The optimist isn't talking.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that. Thanks! I guess this was a dog tick because it was huge. Glad I can stop monitoring myself now for incipient signs of disease! :-)

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Well, empires rise and fall. And what usually brings them down, as any student of history can attest, is hubris.

It will be interesting to see how the latest events in Iraq play out.

I mean, it should be obvious to anyone with a brain that if the Iraqi army outnumbered ISIS forty to one (fact), and ISIS still prevailed, that the majority of the population supports the insurgents -- a fact I have seen reported no where in the press. Foregone conclusion, then, that the US will go back into Iraq -- where we never should have been in the first place. Kind of like the Vietnam War, except when Coppola makes a movie about it, they'll play the theme from Lawrence of Arabia instead of The Flight of the Valkyries.

Re: Isis

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Military dictators at least stabilize the area. That's why Russia and Israel back Assad in Syria.

Re: Isis

[bb-lurks.livejournal.com]

Nothing more stable than a few thousand dead regime opponents. Right now the SISI and ISIS body counts are about equal. The difference, such as it is, was the form of legality in the Egyptian death sentences, if not the less public death squads.

Re: Isis

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Really? They have ISIS body counts?

I would say, the real difference is displacement. The UN is estimating that 800,000 refugees are fleeing from ISIS. Not good.

Re: Isis

[bb-lurks.livejournal.com]

Where to flee to? Defacto Kurdistan? Turkey, whom Kurdistan is probably making quite nervous, although they're probably dependent on the Peshmerga to fight their battle v. ISIS in N. Iraq? Iran?

Nowhere to hide for just plain folks. sad.

[sulphuroxide.livejournal.com]

well, what i was basically saying is exactly that-- we've lost. if we don't realize it then we'll go back and keep making things worse until it's registered that we lost a while ago... which i guess is hubris... which amounts to paying attention to one aspect and ignoring everything else, as if that one aspect would reify everything else like some magic key.

i guess in a way, this is like not registering that we shouldn't rely on oil so much...which is pretty much tied to living beyond our means and thinking that the rest of the world wants the fruits of capitalism more than they care about being exploited. which yes, that is hubris on our part...

Re: Isis

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Defacto Kurdistan does indeed seem to be the destination they're fleeing toward, but since the Kurds are highly selective about the people they let past the border, I imagine most of the refugees will end up in camps along the border under quasi-UN protection.