Revolutionizing the Resolution

I can't say that I began 2009 on the best foot. It was a barefoot, firstly, at a bar, secondly, and when I woke up at home a few hours later without a cellphone or wallet, I decided it was necessary that I make some New Years Resolutions. The only problem was that I don't really do resolutions. I mean, of course I try, but to some my vows may verge on impossible. Let's see if we arrive at a common conclusion at the bottom of my proposed "resolution list:"

1. Finish a completed working draft of my first book, to be titled BEEP, and to be in a form to send to agents.
2. Meet, date, and become engaged to someone.
3. Professionally pursue improv and stand-up comedy.

As of March 11th, 2009 here is my progress:
1a. Beep learned how to sit! And sit pretty! And we've gotten really good and snuggling and definitely playing fetch, because, like, now she knows when is playtime and when is not-playtime. Oh, is that not the same as writing a book?
2a. If you or anyone you know would be willing to go on a date with me, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post. There are nine months left in the year.
3a. At the end of this blog you can let me know if it's worth it.

So, let's ponder:
1b. Maybe instead of resolving to write a book ABOUT Beep I should resolve to actually train her.
2b. Rome wasn't built in a day. And I refuse to online date.
3b. A blog-post-a-month probably isn't going to get me agented.

The obvious problem here is aspiration. Ambition: good, yes, but too much of it can lead to not really doing anything. We all know people who fathom the kind of plans which make Obama's job seem simple. But how many of them actually follow through? I suspect that if more did, the "I can't believe you set your mind to something and did it" compliment wouldn't hold much significance. There's a reason why "babysteps" mean something. It's how people as a whole ever get anywhere. Sure, there are the revolutionaries who use ungodly persuasion to push masses in one direction, but for the rest of us, it might take years to truly get someplace. If too much changes too fast, the newness will never be normalized, and thus after a certain amount of time, "things" will go back to the old "normal," with whatever had changed categorized as a cultural or social "phase." I think we dub that a "trend."

I'm about to do something I rarely do, which is give credit to someone or something else. But as 2009 gets fully underway, I've decided to revise the resolution. Or at least my resolutions. Less big-picture thinking and more little, specific-picture thinking. And who knew - Horny Toad - you know that chic -meets-outdoorsy clothing line based in Santa Barbara, CA (Think fitted t-shirts with small-but-poignant images on the front) - has the answer:

'9 in 09' is their movement to ignite that sort of "babystep" change cataclysmic for revolutions. Basically, all you do is choose one thing (one tiny thing) that is green-based. Examples - eliminate a car ride a week, or plastic bags from grocery stores, or buy locally, or notably "hippier" acts like planting a tree or introducing someone to the outdoors by taking them on a hike. I can do this. Fine, living in New York makes it cheating if I resolve to "eliminate a car ride a week," but buying only local food is both feasible and not yet a habit.

I think, ultimately, Horny Toad is doing what more "green-oriented" organizations need to: encompass the babystep idea and making sure "green" isn't a trend, but a revolution. What's more, they're willing to bribe us avid-consumers. If you share your resolution with them (http://www.hornytoad.com/community/nine-in-09.html), you might win free stuff (namely gift certificates drawn bi-monthly on the 9th and 19th, and then a thousand buck certificate at the end). So, the resolution can be part of the revolution, versus part of the trend.

Another reason why I like the '9 in 09' campaign is that it doesn't encroach on my lifestyle or beliefs. They only ask that you start bringing your own bags to the market, not that you stop filling them with wine and beer and the kind of snacks you'd deny eating even if you were under oath.

A cynic may view this change of heart as the ultimate defeat. No, I'm not writing a book. Yes, I'm still sleeping alone. No, I'm not really as funny as those people on TV. But dammit I will jump in front of a bus before I go grocery shopping without a cloth bag again. So take that, 2009.

Love Story, by Taylor Swift

I'd venture a guess that anyone who hears this song - football players included - can't help but want a Romeo to come resuce them from hum-drum life. I hear Taylor belt out that little number and my skin melts into my clothes and suddenly freezes when I realize I'm not wearing a wedding dress. The good life. A girl can dream.

Many years ago my middle-school history teacher told me that she figures if you can drive down the road blasting a country song, you gotta be in a pretty good place. I would agree - you put on a little Rascal Flatts or Sugarland and I'm up on my couch with a hairbrush pretending I'm the next American Idol. But then what about that joke: What happens when you sing a country song backwards? You get your car back, your money back, your relationship back...

When I was a kid and my mom was going through a hard time, my brother and I used to fight over who had to ride in the car with her up to Vermont. This had nothing to do with our mother, but she played this one god-awful song by Mary Chapin Carpenter on repeat. I'll never forget when she decided THIS song perfectly encapsulated how she felt. We were watching television and she comes into the room and goes to my Dad, "Michael, you have to listen to this song. It's just... it's perfect." So, Michael Jr. and I saunter into the living room behind them and Mom pushes play. The lyrics: "You can have it, I don't want it, when you got it, I'll be gone. It don't matter what you're saying, because the damage has all been done..." You get the drift. No, not because you're familiar with the song, but that's because the lyrics don't actually stray from these lines. It's a three minute jingle. After that evening, the "you can have it" song became the family anthem.

So during the carride to Vermont, Mom would try to attempt subtlty in playing it over and over. An unsuspecting Mary Chapin Carpenter song would ambush the stereo: "Oh I love this song! 'Shut Up and Kiss Me!' It's so fun," she'd say, pretending that she didn't realize that the song after 'Shut Up and Kiss Me' (which, might I add has some controversial messages for an eleven-year-old girl) was the "you can have it" one. Then that song came on and all bets were off. The volume would turn up and Mom would get a distant look in her eye, and I knew I wasn't supposed to talk for a few minutes while she listened. Afterwards the whole reel would start again. "Oh, I love this song! 'Shut Up and Kiss Me!'" and so it went. You can imagine why Michael and I held bets for who got to ride up with Dad. Although in retrospect, he was listening to a lot of Camelot and Phantom of the Opera back then, so who got the better deal might be debatable.

I deliberately never learned that song's actual name, perhaps because I felt that by knowing it I'd never escape from that very first time we sat down as a family and listened. When you declare a song as your own, regardless of its cultural status, in many ways you are irrevocably attached to that first time hearing it. The lyrics encapsulate some sort of meaning, be it euphoria-inducing or that dark place you hide in when the days stretch on for too long. Whenever I break up with someone I immediately stress out about all of that music I'm losing. I'll start listening to the major songs I shared with my ex in an avid attempt to uninstall the memories connected to them. Once I even made a playlist and called it "Muscle Memories" with all of the songs I could think of that at one time applied to an old relationship. That didn't do very much, other than make my Ipod house a siv for where I could listen and feel sorry for my reluctantly-single self.

There was one in particular, perhaps the most depressing song ever written called "About Today" by The National, that I listened to repeatedly. It's about someone's inability to speak up, and once they do, it's too late. That was totally me, I figured. I'd kept my true feelings inside and neglected to come up with the sort of direct communication mandatory in functional relationships. This was exactly what I needed to listen to in order to move forward. This guy was sad, I was sad, today was ending and we were both alone. So, I listened. And you know what? Didn't get less sad. In fact, as time endeared and I was still depressed, I'd listen to it in order to justify the feeling. "It's a depressing song, of course I feel sad now," I'd tell friends, completely unconvincingly. Music not only comforts, it justifies.

Thankfully, I eventually got my wits about me and banished "About Today" from any and all playlists, and my mother hasn't listened to that unnamed song in years. My father still listens to showtunes, but I suspect that just as I listen to Taylor Swift and dream about Romeo saving me, so does Dad, dreaming about being King of Camelot.

Reasoning

Therapists are funny people. Think about their purpose: you meet a patient with whatever issues, and while your "goal" is to "fix" them, really your goal is to "manage" them and thus ensure that they'll never leave you. It's like, a bastardized "one door closes and another window opens" syndrome in which the patient arrives devestated about a break-up and six months later realizes her brother suffers from acute anxiety disorder and her sister is abusively competitive and her parents avoid it all by drinking, and the relationship was always doomed because the patient never developed the ability to ask for what she wants because she never believed her parents would give it to her. What? No. You date someone and break-up, that sucks. Period. If we try to tie everything together we inevitably get stuck in the cobweb of "connections" -- and like the serpent in Eden, the therapist dares you to try the fruit just once, and bam - you're seeing them twice a week and prescribed multiple pills a day. And I don't even have a sister. What?

May we never fall victim to this.

But, you ask, what if I already have?

So, Pandora's Box is open. Your issues have been laid out on the table and analyzed until you're ready to talk about new ones. Unfortunately, therapists, while sneaky, are genuises. I fell victim years ago - I was having a bad day and this nice man named Dr. something stopped me in the hall and asked if I needed to talk. Before I knew it I was in his office howling about how my friends would never understand me.

The key is to know how to shop for the right person.

1. During sophomore year of college I had a "counselor" (assigned because I was caught drinking underage by Middlebury officials) who was convinced - and nearly convinced me - that the root of all of my problems was that my parents didn't love me, and they didn't love me because they drank.

"But my parents and I are pretty close," I ventured during one of our earlier sessions. (While we had originally been assigned three sessions together, she quickly decided that I was a classic case of oldest-child-of-alcoholics and strongly recommended that we meet through the semester. I was brainwashed. I agreed.)
"You're close because you drink."
"But sometimes we don't drink. Like during the day. They both have pretty good jobs."
"That's because they are functional alcoholics."
"Oh."

This dialogue ensued over a couple months. By the end I not only blamed my propensity toward substances on them, I owed my emerging sexuality to their wino-tendencies. I was not gay, I was repressed from developing the emotional capacity to tell my family that I loved them. Nevermind that my parents both said "I love you" whenever we spoke, or that their friends had a basic blow-by-blow of my major happenings. Clearly, they didn't love me. And, they didn't love me because they drank.

2. My next therapist was so nice I felt like I'd truly been born evil. We all know those people - they smile genuinely, empathy is a way of life, they want you to know that they would never judge you. I don't like them because very few comprehend sarcasm, and they all judge. Secretly. They see those who don't find true beauty in a bikeride as lesser; those who think that a scarlet sunset would be enhanced with a joint as unable to appreciate the land for what it is. They do things like watch the nature channel while spinning. They don't wear heels. They bought organic before it was trendy. They've never blacked out. They've never even greyed-out. Hell, they've never felt bloated from drinking too much. Some haven't even consumed an entire beer before.

This woman empitomized the empathizer. I was in here to deal with depression, or "symptoms matching or alluding to depression," and every session was about finding my chi, and practicing my breathing, and choosing tea over wine.
"But you don't understand," I said more than once, "this isn't just stretching. I'm really not feeling myself."
"Would you like to go over the breathing techniques again?"
"But I'm not anxious."
"Let's work on regaining your core of emotions."
"Like I said, I'm having trouble getting out of bed."
"Are you stretching?"
"And I might fail one of my classes."
"What is your diet like?"
"I can't fall asleep unless I've had a drink or a pill or something."
"Yes, I think we have our problem."
"That I'm marginally suicidal?"
"You're dependent on things outside yourself."

This is why I believe those not limited by religious beliefs or diet should finish at least one beer in their lifetime, and try to improve a mood by means of indulgance. They'll see that while it doesn't truly "work," and deviates from an organic way of life, there's a reason why many of us do it: because it's worth the hour of feeling better. Even if it's just an hour.

3. I found a therapist in New York who I must commend on her ability to pinpoint me. But she's also setting herself up to win. On the first day she asked me if we "love or hate the parents." When I mentioned that previous therapists had questioned my drinking habits, she said "Vermont is not really a fair comparison to New York City. People there can do things that don't involve food or drink. We're not as inventive." In the middle of telling a superflouous and rather nonsenical story (which I do during most sessions), she cut in, "Liz you realize you're paying me, right? Laughing doesn't get you a discount." I like this woman.

**

The moral of the story: A therapist is only good if at no point is their goal to change you. And true genuises don't ever plant ideas in your mind. They convince you that these problems have been here all along. Dormant, waiting for the right inciting incident to emerge and declare themselve insurmountable without professional help. And medication.

You Sure You Missed This?

The best part about having a dog is that you don't get bored. Or in my case, I always have something to talk about. This is marginally ironic, considering most people I know would say that speechlessness has never been a problem. In fact, my stories verge on such a length that I can't remember the last time I told one without first apologizing for the length, then apologizing again once I've realized that I've relayed an irrelevant tangent, and then apologizing one last time, when I finally reach the climax and forget what I was talking about?

Oh yea, about how with a dog you never get bored.

Welcome Back, Americans

Just one more politically-minded post, and I promise to get back to the stuff that matters. You know, falling down stairs, going to a strip club for "feminist research," figuring out to ask out my extremely alluring hairdresser.

But.

Last night was an extremely elating experience (especially in New York, where circa four million of the six million votes went to Obama) - as if we - as a country, a people, and a democracy clawing to remain above water - delivered on a collective dream. What this election did more than anything was reignite the fire in Americanism. While 9/11 surged a wave of "patriotism" through the streets, it was a patriotism rooted in a fear, and consequently led to intensified racism, an unjust war, and an economic crisis I truly believe birthed out of panic. Obama's campaign roused an energy that touched even the staunchest of conservatives in that their perceived threat prompted a reaction. And isn't this the point of democracy? To place views and policies on the table and for people to dissect, disagree, challenge them?

In 2004, I remember an utter lack of caring. I can't count how many people I knew who "actively abstained" because they could not fathom supporting either candidate. When politicians evoke paralysis of opinion, we know there is a problem. Despite the accumulating holes in McCain's campaign and policy agenda (and his recent falterings really were too bad. Ahem, Sarah.), he was successful in stirring his own pot, and taking an active role in invigorating the American voters. I think we, as Americans, have been extremely lucky over the past year as these candidates have emerged as leaders and worked to steer America in a new, modernized direction. I don't think McCain was by any means the villain in this election; I think he was a crucial element to Obama's success because he embodied everything Obama was challenging. Obama has pledged the importance of true social reform, McCain dug his heels deeper into current social policy. Obama has made critical the point that Main Street must survive if Wall Street is to prosper, and McCain alleged Obama to be a modern-day Robin Hood. With Bush and Kerry, both men were so pathetically flaccid, when debates occurred, I felt like I was watching two spoiled, ivy league frat boys compete over whiskey shots. There is absolutely nothing wrong with said frat boys in said competition, just organize a campus-wide beer pong tournament like everybody else. I don't want to see my President as a beer-guzzling party animal. I have enough of those in my life. I want to revere the President; perceive him as a little different from others. The kind of different that at least fools me into believing their are capable of steering an entire country off the road to whatever those right-wing Christian fundamentalists thinks will happen to the gays.

All in, I don't think republicans should curse the results - regardless of the off-putting liberal fiscal policies, I think it is in the (I can't say our, I mean honestly.) children's best interest that for the first time, an African American man was elected as President. This is the first time in many years that social change is coming from the top down, and I think this revised model will be incalculably beneficial in the long run. It is impossible to teach children about social liberties if only a small percentage of them can fathom owning their own opportunities.

I think this is an exciting day - teeming with anticipation and possibility of what is to come.

Compromise

November 4th will only deliver good news. Either we get Barack Obama, or we get four years of Tina Fey impersonating Palin. Laugh through the tears, right?

Actually, I laugh through the tears at the red suit the GOP spent $75K on for Sarah. A genuine Saks Fifth Avenue purchase! Oh my! Who woulda thunk a hockey mom from Alaska would don a gen-u-ine outfit from Saks - all the way from New York! Joe Sixpack, look out - Sarah's on the prowl, and she's lookin' for you.

**

What concerns me the most is that I not only prefer Tina Fey's impersonation to the actual woman, I forget that somewhere outside the elite media's radar, she's actually contributing to the Republican campaign. I forget she's real, and thus a threat to most civil liberties I've spent my little idealistic, anti-American-residing-in-new-England-life enjoying. It's interesting, though, to think about the bullheadd ways in which she's standing behind her beliefs. She does not believe in abortion; she does not believe in sex education. Consequently, her daughter, seventeen and pregnant, will wed her boyfriend, a fun-loving hockey player who, I bet, did not see this coming one year ago. Is this kind of loyalty to one's convictions admirable, when beliefs override someone else's best interest? At what point does it change from loyalty to stubbornness? Flexibility and willingness to adopt other viewpoints, especially in the best interest of a loved one, are pinnacle to one's character. With versatility we don't stand a chance in upholding relationships, because everytime we hit disagreement, the only choice is to walk away. Same with political character. Politicians cannot simply "walk away" when someone (or, another country) does or decides on something they disagree with. I'm not comfortable with someone in office - someone "in charge of the senate" - who so stands by her beliefs that she was willing to publicly end her daughter's childhood.

Teenagers are morons. We all know this, we were all teenagers once. Hell on most days I still feel like a teenager. But the best part about teenagers is that they're transient. Adults will, however long it takes, ultimately emerge. Thus, how crucial it is to cushion some of their fall - no, I'm not saying kids that should be blindly forgiven and given a free pass whenever they mess-up. But, what parents have that children don't is perspective. My parents were careful to express their perspectives - versus their beliefs - in such a way that motivated me to to craft my own, and consequently, I always felt sure that my emerging identity (or, adulthood) was safe. While the President and the VP are not meant to be our parents, they are meant to present the sort of perspective that presents the possibility of change. The Republican social agenda, as it stands, emits a sense of social suffocation and paralysis. When a President is not willing to generate change, there is little left for us to do but sit and wait for the next election year. We're one of the freest nations on the planet. This kind of outlook is devastating. Further, if there's someone in office who would rather see her daughter married than revise her opinion regarding sex ed in high schools, I can't imagine where she'll stand in the name of a billion strangers.

Forget Palin going against feminist beliefs (and then ironically becoming iconicly feminist), or misspeaking as if Alaska employs a different language. What scares me the most is that she agreed to be co-pilot when she has no idea how to fly.

In the Meantime...

Watch this. These are my friends:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR9V_aOCga0

[Sorry, I haven't learned how to enter in hyperlinks yet]

And watch this, not because you haven't seen it before, but because you know you're desperate to see it again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFL58Jduryg