Strike!!

This sucks.

The Rural Retreat

So much optimism goes into preparing for the rural retreat. You pack old issues of the New Yorker -- you will finally read that Nicholas Lemann article on Afghanistan! You take writing materials because surely in all that quiet and natural beauty, you'll be super-creative. Of course you take the book you're currently reading, and you also take another paperback you've been meaning to read because you'll probably finish your current book, lying peacefully in your pastoral-retreat motel room.

But naturally, even rural motel rooms are equipped now with cable TV and so you never open a book or magazine -- and as for getting into the disciplined mindset needed to write, forget it! Who needs discipline? You're on vacation!

Me and my companion were able to see the Colbert Report for the first time! That excitement can't be matched. Not by any mountain view or waterfall. Stephen Colbert/rural splendor: you choose. I bet you'd choose as we did. (We don't have cable in the city, lest we sound like insensitive, nature-immune boobs.)

We also had perfect wireless reception so we took turns at the computer, compulsively checking our email and surfing the web the same way we do all day at work. This was weird but constant. There was scarcely a moment that one of us wasn't at the computer.

Oh, I don't mean that's all we did. We did partake of rural splendor and we did relax in happy comfort in our snappy little "contemporary lodging" motel room. But we didn't pick up our books till we got back to New York. I guess a bare-bones, tight-budget existence in NYC is in some ways more peaceful than a full-amenities motel room in a mountain idyll.

You Are a Fighter

Do you believe in cognitive behavioral therapy? It's where you chant self-affirming things to yourself that are meant to drown out your negative voices. I used to think it was ridiculous. The affirmations were so goopy, for one thing. "I am whole and complete as I am." "The light of the universe shines through me." "I am perfect in every way and everyone loves me and everyone should." Not quite that bad but almost.

I used to think I'd rather bottom out completely than compromise my thought processes and, in essence, hypnotize myself with New Age-y slogans. I told a therapist this and she said, "But you've got yourself under a different kind of hypnosis -- all you say to yourself are negative things." Well, so what? If that's the way my mind works. I admit it doesn't help you to say "you suck" to yourself in a hundred different ways every day, but how would it help me to pretend I think things I don't?

One time, though, I had a demonstration of the power of language. Most mornings I play a favorite cd before I go to work -- try to start the day off right. I had on 'Supper' by Bill Callahan (who plays under the name Smog). The cd starts with a lovely song about being at odds with yourself. Callahan finds inventive ways to talk about this ancient conflict, with lines like "It's Roe versus Roe" and "It's Ali versus Clay." I find those lines near-genius in their conveying of self-defeating struggle through clever metaphor -- he's a great songwriter. Anyway, the song has a chorus-y part that goes "But you are a fighter, you are a fighter." That line stuck in my head all day, and I have to say, the day went better than usual. I felt calmer and steadier, literally reminded of my stronger side by the words in my head. It didn't hurt that they're from a song I love rather than a paperback I disdain. The principle's the same, I think.

I hope everyone is self-examining in this holiday season. Don't buy presents -- look inward.

Look. A picture. La Misma is not gifted with things cyberspatial, so she thanks C.L.-C. for the help.

I didn't drink last night. Instead, I sat on my couch and sewed a quilt of mine that's losing its innards. I felt positively Amish! Not a highball in sight.

Highballs. Who drinks them anymore? Wouldn't it be nice to hoist a few?

'Tis the season, after all.

Vacillating, Faithless

According to Darwin via Alain de Botton, the weaker members of society naturally fall by the wayside. Those with just enough strength to remain alive, but not enough to live with any intelligence or grace, manage to survive but it would be better if they did not (that last part is my opinion).

I'm reading Status Anxiety by de Botton. While I hold it, a well-designed and reasonably current paperback, in my hands I feel my own status is elevated. The book is one of those less-is-more affairs that uses a lot of pictures and full-page chapter headings to disguise the slim content. It flatters the reader by making her feel she sees into the heart of issues like snobbery, natural selection and Marxist determinism while not being consumed by them at the exact moment she reads the book. It's like chatting with a charming conversationalist who deftly tucks assurances of your superiority into his/her every utterance.

But who can gainsay that in this season of dire cheer? The book is like a bauble of semi-precious tissue paper fashioned into a scented rose. Or sommat.

I know the above makes no sense at all. I composed it on a vile hangover -- the kind that interferes with cognitive functioning. Last night, for instance, while trying to sleep I kept thinking that I needed to keep bananas in the house to eat if I get hungry in the night, but I kept calling them "yogas" in my mind. Bananas. Yogas. This is why I feel good propping Status Anxiety in front of me on the subway. I can't make heads or tails of it, but it looks like I have the capacity to read printed text.

Sate Me, Sate Me

What can you do if you're insatiable? La Misma feels it's just another area of life to explore. Some day you might want to write about the helpless, sick, shamefaced feeling of succumbing to your addiction once again. So do it and feel it. Martin Amis wrote about it -- so can you.

La Misma has a new addiction. It is to Ricky Gervais. La Misma does not feel happy unless she is viewing a dvd with Ricky Gervais in it. There's something odd about this, as she lives in one of the greatest cities in the world and has oodles of culture at her doorstep, should she ever exit her domicile. But she's not exiting, she's inside watching Ricky Gervais in Extras, or, several months ago, The Office.

La Misma's frantically unhappy nature is soothed by Ricky Gervais's intelligent comedy. The shows are about losers. A loser like La Misma could only find them irresistible. On Extras, Ricky plays a struggling actor named Andy Millman, who longs to get just one line in a film. He has wildly embarrassing conversations with celebrity actors, asking them to use their influence to get him a line. His friend Maggie has less ambition but an even greater tendency to put her foot in her mouth. La Misma can't get enough of their fruitless bumbling. It makes her feel better about her own gaucheries and failures.

The only problem is, life is unendurable the minute she stops viewing the comedy. Life is becoming so much better on television that it is really scaring La Misma. She calms her fears by drinking. Life is also unendurable when she is not drinking. Then she smokes. The Martin Amis comparisons come fast and furious. La Misma's teeth are even deteriorating, the way his did. The only difference is, he's a smashingly successful novelist and La Misma is a blocked, unsuccessful, frustrated one.

Edward Albee said everyone is allotted a certain amount to drink in their life, but writers seem to go through their amount faster than other people. La Misma is adhering to this tradition. She may toil her whole life with the vices of a successful writer yet without any success. If only she could live in a Ricky Gervais dvd -- then she would be happy. Is it really so much to ask?