What Now?

There are those periods in any lifetime, comprised of hours, days, weeks, or sometimes longer, that lead you to question much of what’s come before. Have you ever noticed that? … for WHAM!, there you are, minding your own business, and suddenly, unexpectedly, this or that happens. And it’s at that point you come to question: Is this my life? Really?

I have a love-hate relationship with these interludes, for as good as they typically turn out, when I’m in the midst of it all, feelings of loss, ambiguity, confusion and pain are frequent visitors. Happily, a sense of excitement and wonderment can be part of it as well. It can be tragic. As well as magic.

Here’s what’s going on right now.

I met a woman online a short time ago. When she sent me a brief note of introduction, and I went to read her profile, I thought: amazing. We met for coffee the first time, and afterwards I wrote her a follow-up email, using that word; when she wrote back she said, yes, our connection for a first meeting was amazing.

After having lunch together for a second date, she discovered this blog. She apparently read quite a few entries and her emailed comments to me included:

… you have shared your personal history, dreams, joys, challenges, disappointments and vulnerabilities. Your words can so resonate that one moment I find myself laughing out loud, the next deeply moved to tears … [and] this is beginning to create a heart connection that is both surprising and much welcomed.  As I tried to convey in my online profile, in addition to intellectual and physical compatibility, I’m looking for deep mutual closeness based on emotional intimacy, conscious communication, psychological awareness and spiritual alignment … 

All told, we got together five times in two weeks. During the last date, a hike along a local trail, we, for the first time, held hands. At the conclusion of our time outdoors, we went back to her place for a while, at which point she indicated that our relationship would not be going any further. “I cannot give my heart to a man whose heart is in Oregon,” she stated.

Holy crap, I said to myself. And here I thought things were going so well.

But, during those two weeks we spent together, I had taken a quick trip to Portland for a job interview. I had had phone and Skype interviews before she sent me that first note. When I was up there on campus, I know I performed well and that the selection committee liked me. The president of the college, an old friend of mine, called me after the formal process was over to express her support. It seemed I was on a trajectory for a job offer. Of course, I didn’t keep this a secret, as the possibility of my departure was a very big deal. Still, the relationship seemed to be progressing normally, especially as evidenced by the “heart-connection” email. You know, and the whole hand-holding thing that very morning.

However, even before the outcome of the job process was clear, she called it quits, severing the possibility of any romantic relationship, though leaving open the prospect of “friendship.” I passed on that option.

Then, as anticipated, the very next evening, I did receive the job offer (by email, minus any details such as salary). When, after three more days, the terms were clarified, it seemed apparent this was not the place for me. While they said they wanted me, their budget was apparently not flexible enough to back up that claim. And other issues seem to be forbidden topics of conversation as well (e.g., vacation days). All in all: it was very strange and uncomfortable.

You know, it wasn’t that long ago I believed I’d do anything for a ticket back to Oregon. Interestingly, that has turned out not to be the case. I respectfully declined their offer, with only modest hesitation.

And, the truth is, I feel great with this decision. I live in beautiful, sunny, scenic Marin County, California, just ten miles from the Golden Gate. My interview trip to Portland, while a professional success, entailed surviving 40-degree weather and constant rain. It was dismal.

I am coming to realize that I feel at home in the Bay Area. It now seems likely that while I wasn’t paying attention, I was becoming a Californian.

But I was rejected for being an Oregonian.

Apparently, both the person and the college wanted to be just friends. Without the benefit of actual benefits, however.

Dear Universe: honestly. You really kill me sometimes!

Soundtrack Suggestion

Now he lives in the islands, fishes the pilins
And drinks his green label each day
Writing his memoirs, losin’ his hearin’
But he don’t care what most people say.
Through eighty-six years of perpetual motion
If he likes you he’ll smile and he’ll say
“Jimmy, some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic
But I had a good life all the way.”

(“He Went to Paris” – Jimmy Buffett)

Henry, Mariette, and Me

I woke up yesterday, Saturday, in a state of utter exhaustion, feeling rejected and somewhat depressed. I emailed a friend who I had plans to see and said that I was on the brink of getting a migraine and was going to opt out of getting together.

Still, it turned out to be a very interesting day…which happens to be the reason I just love life: you get up in the morning and never have any idea, really, of what’s going to happen.

I had started the week out on Monday by interviewing for a job in Portland…a position that had great appeal for me. I was supposed to find out on Friday if I had made it to the finalist stage. I didn’t hear a thing, so I suspected I was due for a rejection letter or phone call sometime soon. Having lived in a state of limbo and sleeplessness for the week, as the weekend arrived, I was very tired. And, now, I was trying to cope with my rejection issues.

Somehow, I thought, I’ll be able to recover and move on…though it may take awhile.

But the day, yesterday, as I have suggested, was not all negative.

Henry Aaron hitting home run No. 715 on April 8, 1974.

When NPR Weekend Edition was on, I listened to Scott Simon interview Howard Bryant (of ESPN.com, and Weekend Edition sports commentator) about his latest book The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron. Having grown up in Wisconsin in the 50s and 60s listening to, and a fan of, Milwaukee Braves baseball (and Hank Aaron in particular), I was excited to learn of this new book. I knew I had to have it, and have it now.

Therefore, I was moved to show up at the nearest Borders store in the afternoon at around 1:30. As I walked into the store, I noticed a couple of posters announcing that actress Mariette Hartley was scheduled to appear at 2:00 p.m. for a “conversation and signing” of her book Breaking the Silence. (The newly-self-published, recycled version of her 1990 best-seller.)

Hmmmmm, I thought. Mariette Hartley. I wonder what she looks like these days.

Well, moving on, I proceeded to find the Aaron biography, and carried it around while I browsed the fiction section; I also selected an Anita Shreve novel to take home, and then proceeded to navigate the long line at the checkout counter.

It was just turning 2:00 when I exited the store. As I was passing by the big front windows, I spied Mariette Hartley sitting at a table facing a part of the room where about 20 or so chairs were set up…and totally empty. No one wants to see Mariette Hartley?, I thought. Incredible.

I took my purchases to the car and then went back into the store. There were now two women sitting in the front row, chatting a bit with Hartley, but that was the sum total of the audience. Hesitantly, I approached and took a seat in the second row.

Hartley looked at me and smiled as I sat. It was a couple of minutes after 2:00, and she asked a store employee how to proceed, and was informed that “it’s your show.”

“Well, let me just start out by reading a little bit and then we can go from there,” she said to the three of us.

So, read she did: perhaps a couple of pages. She then talked a little bit more about her grandfather, her parents (her father’s suicide and her mother’s alcoholism), and her own mental illness (bipolar disorder). First one, then the other, of the two women in the front row asked some questions. She ultimately turned to me and asked, “what’s your name?”

“Jim,” I said. “And I do have a question. You mentioned a minute ago that your mother ‘swore you to secrecy.’ I guess you were talking about your father’s suicide? How long did you keep that information locked inside?”

With a deep intake of breath she hesitated, and then said, “oh, my..I think you’re going to make me cry.”

And, really, it didn’t seem like she was acting.

We continued talking a little bit longer, during which time more of her story emerged. I then said, “you know, I’m pretty amazed at how this day is turning out. I came into the store this afternoon because I was in search of the new Henry Aaron biography, which I heard about on NPR this morning, and I end up talking to Mariette Hartley about the intimate details of her life. How great is this? It looks like I’ll be taking home a biography and an autobiography this afternoon.”

She was very pleased that I was going to buy the book, and then signed it for me.

On the dedication page which says,

To my beloved family –
past present, and future

she wrote,

To dear Jim!
Bless you and your beloved family –
Lovingly
Mariette Hartley

Then she stood up and gave me a big (and genuine) hug…something, on this day, I really needed…and appreciated.

(Oh, by the way, at age 69, she still looks totally great.)

Today, again, I’m smiling.

Living Authentically

I don’t talk much about my dating life here. But I do have one. This mostly-unmentioned part of my existence involves an embarrassingly large number of approximately-one-hour, one-time meetings with women I’ve met online.

Lamentably, I still have hopes of finding “the one.”

When I do talk about “dating” (oooooh, how I hate that word), I often comment on the high percentage of women who engage in some sort of deception. Mostly, their dishonesty takes the form of lying about age and/or posting photographs, on their online profiles, that are very dated. But there are other topics that are exaggerated or misleading, as well. For example, I’ve met women who claim to do this or that for a living, but it turns out they don’t do this or that at all.

I was recently provided with yet another example of this kind of behavior.

Last week, I received am email from a woman who said:

Hi,

We seem to share many common interests -- reading, writing, photography, personal/spiritual growth, qualities we think are important in a relationship partner...and more. I'm curious to know more about you. 
If you resonate, please drop me a line.

Best wishes.

[no signature]

The vital statistics she listed about herself, height, body-type, age, etc., seemed consistent with her photograph. She was attractive and had produced a very appealing profile narrative. Her listed age was five years younger than me.

I wrote back and we agreed to meet for a short hike (weather permitting) on (Super) Sunday (before the game). During the week, when we were making these plans, I offered her my cell-phone number. On Friday, she finally emailed me her number when I reminded her that I didn’t have it…just in case we had to change plans if the weather wasn’t cooperating.

She also indicated she didn’t have a cell phone. And that she didn’t check emails during the weekend. [Totally not my lifestyle, but what the heck (I thought to myself).] She also didn’t furnish a last name, but I Googled her phone number and was rather surprised at what I found. So, Friday night I wrote back:

Hey Gaylene (not her real name),

I know you said you wouldn't be at the computer this weekend, but thought I run something by you just in case...

There seems to be weird information out there on the internet. Your phone number yields a Gaylene Luvall, but also leads to other Gaylene’s with last names of Anderson, Drake, Damasch, Swelton, and Wexler. And an age ten years older than your profile.

Good ol' Google must be confused??

-jim

As it turns out, Google was not confused.

Google hardly ever is.

When we met (yes, I showed up…I was curious), and asked her about these issues, she expressed surprise that so much information was “out there.” She never did tell me exactly what her age was or how she got all those “aliases” (which is what the web page I found called them). She said that she really hadn’t been married THAT many times. And proffered the argument that age is a state of mind. I countered that chronological age is a precisely a matter of biology and arithmetic.

Gaylene (again, all these names are made up…I don’t have the intent to “out” her) is a therapist and life coach (presumably). She said that in her practice she helps people “live authentically” and she, herself, places a high value on honesty.

All I can is: wow. Be careful out there.

This is Life

So, I’ve decided: my life is not stranger than fiction. My life is precisely like a real life, filled with joy, sadness, large and small risks, successful experiments, failed ventures, good people, weird and bad people, health, illness, disappointments, met and unmet expectations, and lots and lots of loss.

The differences I spoke of in my last entry turned out to be, as I had thought, irrefutably irreconcilable. There was simply going to be no way for the two of us to pursue a life path together with the clash in values that had emerged.

In an incredibly brief meeting yesterday, we parted ways peacefully and amicably. It took less than ten minutes at a local coffee shop to exchange keys and trade a few personal items from car to car.

While there are residual feelings of sadness and loss, feelings that I imagine will hang around for some time, at this point those negative emotions are offset by a profound sense of relief.

I tried. She tried. In the end, it simply didn’t work.

What Do I Know?

In the movie Stranger than Fiction, IRS auditor Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is asked by university professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) what his favorite word is.

“Integer,” is the reply.

Now, that isn’t a bad choice for an accountant.

I’ve often thought about how I might answer that question; I believe what I’d say is “epistemology.” It is a word with such lyrical quality and, additionally, has great meaning to me as an academic. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, asking such questions, “what does it mean to know?”

Of course, one does not have to be an academic, scientist, or philosopher to love that word or be concerned with epistemological issues. How it is we know, how we come to know, and what we count as knowledge, are concepts everyone deals with in everyday life, in our ordinary and not-so-ordinary interactions with others.

Naturally, what we know, or think we do, bumps up against the elusive, oft-debated, and intellectually-and-emotionally-charged notions of “truth” and “reality.” What is true? What is real? … are questions we do not typically spend a lot of time thinking about, mostly because we tend to take a lot of things for granted. But our differing beliefs about what we know as true and real, as individuals, groups, organizations and nations, are the source of immense miscommunication, angst and conflict in the world. Perhaps we could and should spend a little more time paying attention to how it is we know what we know.

As I write this, I am in the midst of a gigantic inner struggle about the nature of reality: about what I think I know. Over the course of the last couple of weeks or so, a significant person in my life has expressed a worldview about our shared experience that is hugely at odds with my own. In fact, where once there was some sense of shared understanding, and a mission of mutual purpose, it all seems now to have been replaced with confusion, defensiveness, anger and distance.

Our versions of reality are, to me, incomprehensibly disparate. They are, perhaps, totally irreconcilable.

So, here I sit with my thoughts: about the nature of reality. And relationship.

Breathing in and out, in and out. Alone. Confused. Finding myself, once again, in the middle of a life that’s stranger than fiction.