40 is definitely NOT the new 30.

And I should know, since I’m turning 37 in two weeks.

I’m not being ‘age-ist’ exactly, but I do think that people should stop deluding themselves that 4o is no longer middle age. (That is, unless you plan on living to be 100, but even then you cannot stretch the definition further than 50.) Or that 40 is “young”.

If you are 40, you are not “young”. You may be “young at heart”, “young-thinking”, or “youthful” for your age, but “young” you are not. Why keep kidding yourself?

Here’s the latest news, hot off the presses:

Mental powers start to dwindle at 27 after peaking at 22, marking the start of old age, US research suggests.

Professor Timothy Salthouse of Virginia University found reasoning, speed of thought and spatial visualisation all decline in our late 20s.

Therapies designed to stall or reverse the ageing process may need to start much earlier, he said.

His seven-year study of 2,000 healthy people aged 18-60 is published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

Now, before you freak out, there is ancillary evidence that not ALL mental powers fade after their peak at age 22. (Yes, your old eyes read that last sentence correctly. Fading begins at the ripe old age of 22.) But, have no fear. The old adage “with age comes experience” is still very much supported by the evidence. 

Things like memory stayed intact until the age of 37, on average, while abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until the age of 60.

So, as someone about to turn 37, I guess I’m going to have to accept that my memory is going to start fading, too. I should have known that my new fetish for brightly colored PostIt notes did not appear out of nowhere, people. Lately, I’ve been forgetting to do at least 10% of the things I said I would do. For me, that’s a marked increase. (Note: I don’t have kids, so I think that you can give yourself a break here if you have them and have already been forgetting things for several years.)

I am just not the same chick I was at 17 or 27. Hell, I’m not even the same hot mama I was a mere five years ago.

At 37, my ankles crack, my shoulder sometimes aches for no knowable reason, and I often find myself wondering what it is that I am doing after I have stopped one task to do something else (especially if I have to change rooms). My hair is graying at the temples and I have begun to question my own personal ban on Botox or other facial injections. My thighs and my butt – which were never robust – have begun to sag so low that I now completely understand the term “saddlebags”. (Side note: Again, no kids. I can’t imagine what I would look like naked if I had ever given birth. But, then again, at least there would be a valid excuse for the devastation.) 

So, I’m here to attest to the fact that 40 is not the new 30. That’s bullshit.

That being said, at 37 I feel more like myself than I ever did at 27. 

But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to go back sometimes, to 27.

I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t sometimes relish the fact that I’m long past all the nonsense that so often comes along with “youth”. 

Bette Davis once said that there are some days that the only thing that makes a woman feel better is a glass of champagne. I think we all know what I’ll be doing on my birthday this year. If I can still remember what day of the week that is. . . .

Why Twitter?

I deleted my Twitter account this morning. I just don’t get it.

Am I too old?

Too out of it?

Less narcisstic than I thought I was?

I simply don’t understand its functional use. But maybe it’s not about being functional at all. Maybe it’s about feeling connected in a disconnected way. Those tweets read like hopeful thoughts to me, like the people who write them are wishing for people to hear them in an ever-growing cacophony of voices. 

Monologuing. 

Somehow, being a part of Twitter made me feel like a machine, emitting meaningless radio broadcast signals into space and listening for a return. Trying to make contact, but without knowing why exactly. Is it just me?

I’m not exactly a technophobe. I love Facebook, and I don’t mind the status updates. Somehow, it feels more intimate – perhaps because in order to be connected, you actually have to know the other person. It’s less random. Or maybe it just feels like it.

I also like blogging – whenever I actually sit down to do it. 

It’s like journaling, only not for some future unknown reader. It’s for some present unknown reader, and I don’t have to wait until I die for someone to ‘discover’ me. Maybe that is the reason for Twitter – we all want someone to ‘discover’ us. Lost as we all are in the mulititude of humanity. It’s a way to feel important, special, heard. And since most of us don’t get that in ‘real’ life, I guess I understand the need for a ’second’ life.

Twitter, however, is just not for me.

Alcohol is not my friend.

During the past few months, I’ve been furiously writing and trying to get all the requirements for my PhD out of the way. In that time, I’ve probably imbibed about 10 gallons of wine – most of which was consumed a glass or two at a time. Lately, though, alcohol and I have been not getting along. Our friendship, I think, has just about run its natural course.

I first had a beer at age 18, at a keg party, and I hated the taste of it. In fact, I tried different kinds of alcoholic beverages and hated every single one of them. Like coffee, I think that it’s an acquired taste. The tastes of adulthood – or at least that was how I conceptualized it back then. At 18, it seemed important to ‘act’ like an ‘adult’ – whatever that meant. Now, I still feel like I’m acting like an adult most of the time, but I realize that a good performance has nothing to do with beverages. 

I think that, deep down, you probably know you have a small problem if you have a drink or two every night “to relax”. Moderate drinking is medically defined as one serving of alcohol per night for men. Any more than that and you would be a ‘heavy drinker’. Yikes. Light drinkers have one to two servings per week, just for comparison’s sake.

Last night was a friend’s birthday party. There was wine everywhere, and I knew that I probably shouldn’t drink anything, but when she offered, I immediately caved in to peer pressure. Apparently, peer pressure extends well beyond the cut-off of high school. I drank one glass, then poured myself another small glass. By the end, I think I had about four or five glasses of wine. 

I went home, managed to write from midnight until 2am, and then had a shitty night’s sleep. I always have a shitty night’s sleep when I drink more than a glass of anything alcoholic. And as I tossed and turned, at some point in the middle of the night, I thought to myself: “I’m an asshole.” I simply cannot drink anymore. My body does not like it, and I do not like it when my body revolts.

My dad was a functioning alcoholic. Kept a steady job, got promotions, paid his bills. But, also, drank every night (2, 3 or more whiskey on the rocks). And, occasionally (it was more than I would like to admit, anyway), kept me up until 3, 4, or 5am drinking and telling me stories. Or yelling. There was always a fair share of yelling.

My mom never drank. When she did, I hated it. She would only have a glass or two on holidays, but it always went straight to her head. She was a giggler, and it weirded me out. It just didn’t seem like my mom anymore, you know?

So, I have no idea why I ever thought it was a good idea to drink. Ever. 

Here are some statistics from Gallup to sober you up:

1. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines “excessive drinking” as an average of more than one drink per day for women, and an average of more than two drinks per day for men.” (at this rate, I am excessive)

2. “Nearly a third (32%) of Americans say that drinking has been a cause of trouble in their families. Interestingly, women (who are less likely than men to drink and to report drinking too much) are slightly more likely than men to report that drinking has been a problem in their families (35% compared with 29%).”

3. “There were nearly 20,000 alcohol-induced deaths in 2001, the last year for which data are available from the National Center for Health Statistics. And these numbers do not include deaths resulting from unintentional injuries or homicides, many of which may indirectly be related to alcohol use.”

4. “The 2006 poll showed 71% of American drinkers said they had an alcoholic drink in the last week, which is significantly higher than the 54% who said the same in 1996.”

5. “Also on the rise is the number of drinks Americans are drinking. The poll shows those who drink alcohol report drinking an average of 4.5 drinks per week, compared with 2.8 in 1996. “

Are we stressed out? Working too much? 

I’d love to see the numbers now, in the midst of the worst economic crisis to hit the U.S. in decades. I’m betting that the numbers for alcohol consumption are up (and, now that I think of it, I’m betting that gambling rates are up, too).

I’m cutting myself off. From now on, I’m going to try to be one of the 37% of Americans who completely abstain from drinking. I’m tired of being in the other camp.

I think modern, upper-middle-class American parents are crazy.

There. I said it.

A good friend of mine (who is a dad) posted a blog entry from the New York Times’ “Motherlode” column. It details the results of a survey of 1000 ‘normal’ women who are members of an online mothers’ community. Basically, women are mad at the fathers for not taking enough responsibility for parenting or for doing chores around the house. The writers – both at Parenting magazine and the blog – make it seem like this is an epidemic of anger, corroding the American family.

The writer details the problem thus:

We carry so much of this life-altering responsibility in our heads: the doctors’ appointments, the shoe sizes, the details about the kids’ friends. Many dads wouldn’t even think to buy valentines for the class, for example, or know when it’s time to sign kids up for the pre–camp physical, or that curriculum night is next Thursday at 7:30 and you need to hire a sitter and bring a nut-free vegetarian appetizer that can be eaten without a fork. Even moms who work full-time take it upon themselves to store all this data in our already overstuffed heads. We’re the walking, talking encyclopedias of family life, while dads tend to be more like brochures.

What to do about it?

I proffer an unpopular solution: Moms and Dads both need to stop making their kids the absolute center of their lives. 

Seriously. No one should have to worry about self-making “a nut-free vegetarian appetizer that can be eaten without a fork” and bring it to a school function. Or obsess about their children’s schedules or the details of their children’s lives and friendships.

Really, middle-class and upper-middle-class moms? No, really, really? 

How did we get here? 

When I was growing up, my mom knew who my best friends were (count three names here, maybe), whether or not I did my homework, if I needed new socks and underwear, and if I seemed healthy and happy – and that was it.  She had absolutely no interest in elementary or middle  school drama, or PTA meetings, or baking me a 19-tier cupcake tree for my birthday party (a tradition which, by the way, didn’t even begin until I was old enough to remember them).  

My mom had a life.

Admittedly, sometimes I wish she had been less dramatic and crazy, but I actually appreciate the fact that I did not grow up with an endless litany of “activities” and “playdates” and “extra-curricular classes”. No, I don’t know how to play the piano. But I did learn how to play the clarinet in school band.  No, I didn’t take soccer. But somehow I remain thinner and in better shape than some my friends who did, so go figure. 

Years ago, I visited Newport, Rhode Island, and took a tour of several of the old Vanderbilt and Astor mansions. You know, the ridiculously luxe “summer” homes of the fabulously wealthy during the late 1900s and early 20th century. In the Vanderbilt home, I learned that Mrs. Vanderbilt obsessed over her children’s education and up-bringing. They were, after all, the future of the Vanderbilt name. In particular, she erased the line between herself and her oldest daughter. Her daughter’s life was the property of Mrs. Vanderbilt herself, and she managed it with military precision. To the point that the girl grew up in a gilded cage of her mother’s fashioning. In the end, she married a man with a “title” that she didn’t even like, all because her mother planned it. 

Was this poor, little rich girl priveleged? Yes. 

Did she have everything that money could buy her, including the best education? Yes.

Was she any happier? No. By all accounts, she was one seriously depressed young girl.

I’m glad that my mom and dad didn’t pore over my life looking for ways to make it “better” or to give me a “head start”. Somehow, and without a single extra class or tutoring session, I made it into the top medical anthropology program in the country. I think it’s because my parents did something great for me – they made it very, very clear that I needed to take responsibility for myself. 

In the end, I learned to craft my own life.

I learned how not to be bored, how to entertain myself, how to self-soothe.

Maybe the reason modern mothers are so angry is that they are giving too much to their children in the first place. Maybe they are angry because secretly they want to be the dads for once, to take it all less seriously. Maybe they are angry because they can’t give themselves permission to be less-than perfect as mothers.

Scale it back, I say. Don’t do some of the “stuff” you are doing – the “stuff” that you think is absolutely integral to your child’s future happiness or intellectual capacity. It isn’t, and that I can promise you. 

This is from an article in the London Times:

In her book No Two Alike, Judith Rich Harris, an American psychologist, writes that children just want to fit into the popular culture in which they are being raised, which might not be quite what their parents have in mind.

“In the long run, it is what happens to them outside the parental home that makes them turn out the way they do,” she says. And while most parents know this instinctively, we carry on resignedly making arbitrary rules, labelling things “good” or “bad” with a randomness that reflects our prejudices but baffles our children.

And I’ll leave you with this, an old article from the Boston Globe, to ponder:

Leave those kids alone

The idea that adults should be playing with their kids is a modern invention — and not necessarily a good one

(Illustration/ Aaron Meshon)

By Christopher Shea  |  July 15, 2007

WHAT COULD BE more natural than a mother down on the rec-room floor, playing with her 3-year-old amid puzzles, finger-puppets, and Thomas the Tank Engine trains? Look — now she’s conducting a conversation between a stuffed shark and Nemo, the Pixar clown fish! Giggles all around. Not to mention that the tot is learning the joys of stories and narrative, setting him on a triumphal path toward school.

A “natural” scene? Actually, parent-child play of this sort has been virtually unheard of throughout human history, according to the anthropologist David Lancy. And three-fourths of the world’s current population would still find that mother’s behavior kind of dotty.

American-style parent-child play is a distinct feature of wealthy developed countries — a recent byproduct of the pressure to get kids ready for the information-age economy, Lancy argues in a recent article in American Anthropologist, the field’s flagship journal in the United States.

“Adults think it is silly to play with children” in most cultures, says Lancy, who teaches at Utah State University. Play is a cultural universal, he concedes, “but adults aren’t part of the picture.” Yet middle-class and upper-middle-class Americans — abetted, he says, by psychologists — are increasingly proclaiming the parents-on-all-fours style the One True Way to raise a smart, well-adjusted child.

There is now a concerted effort to spread adult-child play beyond its stronghold in the upper- and middle-classes of wealthy countries. To this end, many cities and states support programs of some sort. Massachusetts will give the Parent-Child Home Program, which has 33 sites in the state, $3 million this year (up from $2 million last year). Through the program, staff members visit the homes of low-income residents and offer tips not just on good books for toddlers but also on “play activities” for parents and kids. Likewise, the eminent Yale psychologist Jerome Singer has partnered with a media company to devise imaginative parent-child games (examples: “My Magic Story Car” and “Puppets: Counting”) that librarians and social workers can teach to low-income parents.

Lancy is concerned that specialists behind the movement — psychologists, social workers, preschool teachers — are too aggressively promoting this intense, interventionist parenting style to low-income parents, and that they are are too quick to claim that adult-child play is crucial for human development. He doesn’t quite rule out that some interventions may improve literacy — though the data are murkier than the psychologists admit, he insists. But the programs, with their premise (as he sees it) that a whole class of people is simply parenting badly, leave their advocates “open to charges of racism or cultural imperialism.”

. . .

One inspiration for the article, Lancy says, was that he kept coming across accounts of parents who felt guilty that they did not enjoy playing with their children. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman and the economist Alan Krueger, both at Princeton, have found that parents routinely claim that playing with their kids is among their favorite activities, but when you ask them to record their state of mind, hour by hour, they rate time spent with their children as being about as much fun as housework.

In his article, Lancy draws on decades of ethnographic work to show how rare parent-child play has been in the world. The Harvard anthropologist Robert LeVine, for example, observed in a 2004 paper that among the Gusii people of Kenya, “mothers rarely looked at or spoke to their infants and toddlers, even when they were holding and breast-feeding them.” (So much for the universality of peek-a-boo.) On Ifaluk Island, in the South Pacific, tribespeople believe that babies are “essentially brainless” before age 2, so there is no point in talking to them.

The goal of the Yucatec Maya is to keep babies in a “kind of benign coma,” through bathing and swaddling, so that parents can leave them and get work done. As recently as 1914, the US Department of Labor’s Child Bureau advised parents not to play with babies, for fear of overstimulating their little nervous systems.

I’m supposed to be writing a memoir.

What am I writing? A memoir or a pathography? A kind of autobiographical story about my own illness, or about the effect of my parents’ coterminous sicknesses of addiction, depression, malaise, heart disease? Is scholar David Morris correct when he tells us that illness defines us, or “tells us who we are”? In part, I think that he is. It is not when we are healthy and happy that all of us come to know who we truly are or what we can become. Rather, it is in the depths of illness or suffering that some of us discover ourselves as if for the first time.

 

Illness has a kind of taboo around it. When was the last time you heard anyone mention their cancer or HIV status or a bladder infection in public – at lunch with their coworkers, at a 40^th birthday party for a friend, at Christmas over a cup of eggnog? There is something unseemly about being sick, something shameful about being overtly unhealthy or ‘abnormal’. Many of us seem pathologically convinced that though we ourselves are not normal, a perfectly ‘normal’ and happy existence is out there somewhere. Only it remains  – for some inexplicable reason sent forth from the gods or fate or our less-than-perfect childhoods – inaccessible to us. We spend enormous amounts of time trying to be healthier and happier, but with mixed results. But what if we could move past a world entirely divided into twos, where one side was good and the other bad? What if we could live in the messy middle of things?

 

Scientists have recently discovered that good and bad are not easily distinguished at the microscopic level, even with the aid of the best science available to mankind. Viruses are everywhere, more numerous and more unique on a genetic level than anyone had ever previously imagined. Remnants of viruses exist in the uncanniest and most unwelcoming of places – in frozen tundra, at heat vents buried deep in the sea, and in our own human genetic makeup. Some scientists think that ‘junk DNA’ like viral remnants might actually be the sole foundation for our own human immune system. In other words, we are currently using old viruses to fight off new viruses. In a sense, then, humans are a collection of walking viruses with hats, shoes and cell phones. We exist now as part of the larger virosphere, one in which every location on our planet shows vestiges of viruses, and viruses are perhaps the oldest ‘living’ things on the planet. A virus is almost certainly our collective ancient ancestor.

 

This is less shocking to me; I have always felt a kinship to viruses. They feel like part of my skin, like I myself might be a virus in disguise. I was sick a lot as a child, and – in my family at least – I was often invisible. Growing up, I had the distinct impression – at times horrifically validated – that no one wanted me. But somehow I was resilient enough to change along with my environments. I was vulnerable, but tough. I survived my past. I learned from it. Just like a virus.

 

In the next few weeks, I’ll be dusting off my pens and getting down to the daily grind of writing 500 words per day. Last semester, I was inundated with teaching and writing academic articles and going through the bureaucratic hoops of my PhD program – so I never wrote anything that mattered to me on a personal level. Also, I was terrified of writing the narrative of my life.

 

We are, as human beings, supposed to be inherently drawn to telling stories about ourselves and about the world. We are ‘narrative’ producers and consumers. A memoir is a story that is somehow supposed to combine history and memory. But as anyone can tell you, history and memory are both less than perfect forms of ‘non-fiction’ (to say nothing of James Frey and Stephen Ambrose – just to name two famous people who either fibbed or plagarized in the crafting of their ‘narratives’).  Our memories are at least 50% fictional, even if we never realize it ourselves. And history? We all know that adage by heart. 

 

I have no idea how to structure the story of my childhood. It makes no sense, on some level, even to me. Even now. Even in the bliss of so-called ‘emotional distance’ from the events. 

 

I also love my parents. And I hate them. And that feels both true and wrong all at the same time. I want to both protect them and to reclaim my rights as their only daughter.  I still struggle with the silence of having been an invisible particle in my parents’ turbulent lives, of finding my own voice through their – and my own – past.  Since both of my parents are dead, I have the last word – quite literally. However, I also am a keeper of their memory. Upon a parent’s death, a child comes to slowly but inexorably embody that parent. They live inside me – quite literally on a genetic level, and metaphorically on the level of memory. My parents infected me early. Anatole Broyard – the literary critic for the New York Times who died from prostate cancer in 1990 – once wrote that telling the story of his sickness had ‘detoxified’ him. It was a way to reclaim the narrative of his life away from his disease, a refusal of Broyard’s to become cancer. Perhaps by doing the impossible task of writing my life, I, too, can reclaim it from my parents. I am more, in the end, than the product of their diseases.

I got married, finished my first semester of teaching, and now I don’t know what to do.

OK, I realize that I haven’t written anything in the past two months. But at least I have good excuses. If marriage can’t get you out of a few responsibilities, then what is it good for?

In the next month or so, I plan to fill in some of the blanks. Starting with this:

Our wedding ceremony

As a China watcher, I’m cautiously worried about the new administration.

I just spent the past 12 months of my life reading EVERY mention of China in Congress. If it was a bill, I read it. If it was a resolution, I read it. If it was a rambling, nonsensical harangue about China’s ‘human rights’ record or ‘unfair’ business practices, I read it. If it was a measured account of our economic relationship with the growing powerhouse, I read that, too (though I didn’t get the chance to read anything ‘measured’ on China that often).

What I found: Democrats are overwhelmingly the Congress members most worried about China’s rise to power.

But not in an entirely ‘healthy’ way.  

They don’t know much about China – or only what they have been told; most of them have never actually been anywhere inside China. They’re angry about job loss in their states; some of the most irate China bashers are from states with a heavy industrial or manufacturing base. They like to blame China for most of our economic problems, pointing to our debt and trade deficit to China; that’s like blaming the bookie for your gambling problem.

I know from an insider source that Hillary Clinton’s former China policy person during the primaries summarily quit after her campaign turned too protectionist for the person’s comfort. Apparently, no one wanted to listen to the China scholar’s opinions or advice, they just wanted to make their constituency happy. And a lot of people loathe the image of China. 

As a China watcher, I’ve often found myself in the role of ‘defender’ or ‘explainer’ of China or Chinese culture. Someone has to do it. The Chinese – or Asians, in general – are one of the last groups (along with Latinas, truth be told) that people still feel it’s okay to make fun of, complain about, and bascially berate. Misunderstandings and/or a lack of knowledge breeds not only ignorance about an entire culture, but a dangerous sense that we already ’know’ about them. 

In the past, Obama has made comments on both sides of the divide. I think that he’s smart enough to recognize that with China as one of the largest holders of American debt, we literally can’t afford to antagonize them on issues that have nothing to do with the economy – like the one-child policy or labor rights. Like it or not, the Chinese and American fates are locked together. This isn’t a zero-sum game – both nations would be losers in a direct confrontation (military or otherwise).

So, my advice to the new president? 

1. Hire some good China people. You’re gonna need them.

2. Be ballsy enough to listen to their advice, even if it isn’t ‘popular’ with people ridiculous enough to use terms like “Communist” and “Red” in front of China. This isn’t – and shouldn’t be – 1958 all over again.

3. Learn some Chinese, even if it’s just a few polite phrases. It’ll go over well on your official visits.

Can you feel the change yet? How about now?

Or now?

No?

I’m glad this seemingly forever-long election is finally over, Obama is president, and we can all go back to normal.

Or can we? Can change and hope be regulated? Can I be forced to be happier by the government?

If history is currently being made, are we all required to remark and remember where we were at this moment for our grandchildren’s sake?

For the record, I was eating leftover Halloween candy in my sweatpants at 8:02 pm when the presidential election was ‘called’.

And I voted for Michael Bloomberg – for reals. I wrote it in.

Partially because I refuse to be swayed by rhetoric – no matter how pretty and hopeful it is. And partially so I could feel like I put my vote where my mouth is – in the camp that wants a true political change loosely described as ‘more than two party choices’. And partly so I could retain my right to say “I told you so” when people are – inevitably – disappointed.

What about now?

Are we there yet?

Suicide, fear and loneliness – a night with Hemingway

On October 27, ironically my mother’s birthday, I went to see the Nick Adams Stories with an all-star cast at the SF Symphony’s Davies Hall: Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks, Casey Affleck, Bruce Willis, Danny Glover, Sean Penn, Robin Wright Penn, Rita Wilson (maybe that’s half a star), Joachim Phoenix, Danny Devito, Billy Crystal and Jack Nicholson playing old Papa himself. All were performing in a play written by a friend of Hemingway’s – A.E. Hotchner, for a benefit for Paul Newman’s charity. The money raised went to support the Painted Turtle – the West coast version of the Hole in the Wall Gang in Connecticut; both provide support and a place to find friendship for children living with diseases and life-long disabilities.

In the wake of Paul Newman’s death, the performances seemed to carry an additional weight. The actors read from script books, but occasionally didn’t need them at all. The symphony sometimes drowned out their voices, which was a shame, and generally detracted from the performances instead of adding the emotional depth I think that they were meant to offer. Overall, a good night with some stellar performances and some so-so acting.

I also wasn’t sure that I left with the charitable feelings that the night meant to protract from me. As I sat in the dark, watching the children led onto the stage at the end of the play, listening to Bonnie Raitt singing “Put a Little Love in Your Heart”, I felt manipulated. And I wondered if pity was really the motivator of all charity, when it should be something else. I thought about Leslie Butt’s critique of the “suffering stranger” as a rhetorical device and humanitarianism as culturally constructed. Yet, I still paid my $40 and felt good about it, even if it only pays for one week out of 52 and doesn’t fix any of the structural reasons that these children need help in the first place.

What I did leave the event with, however, were some overall thoughts on Hemingway, writing and death. Basically, I rediscovered what it means to be human. I had forgotten how powerful Hemingway’s simple prose could be. No fancy tricks, no turning books upside down, no footnotes, no clever use of punctuation – just the bare bones human experience to turn around in your fingers like a dollar-coin, pondering what you can do with it.

Hemingway’s character, Nick Adams, is the complete symbol of America. He’s selfish, ego-centric, searching, and alone. He claims near the beginning of the play that he doesn’t love anyone at all. Sometimes, he seems incapable of feeling anything at all. He’s the center spoke in the wheel of activity around him; he records, observes, participates in an off-handed way, but never seems quite fully present. He’s young and brash and naive and foolish and brave all at once.

Nick Adams, for all purposes, is Hemingway – not entirely a fictional character. I’m writing a memoir right now, and I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time wondering how to ’structure’ my own life inot discreet, narrateable tales. The Nick Adams Stories gave me a clue.

The play – and the stories – are all about the same things: fear, loneliness and death.

Hemingway seemed almost obsessed with the truth versus social lies, masculinity in the form of violence or aggression (note all the war and bull-fighting stories), femininity and the ways in which women ruin or poison men’s lives (Hemingway hated his controlling mother, whom he blamed for his father’s suicide), and what it meant to be brave or a coward in the face of life – and by extension, death itself.

Hemingway’s stories reveal a man that desires to ‘be somebody’. That desire drives him out of his home in small-town Illinois and around the world, until he finds himself smack in the middle of WWI as an ambulance driver in Italy. Once he’s on the road, however, he discovers that loneliness and fear follow him wherever he travels. Nick Adams tells us that once loneliness and fear start, they never stop.

In the end, Hemingway discovers that he was always running AWAY from something, but never TOWARD anything. What he was running from was his ambivalent relationship to his father, whom Hemingway thought was a coward for killing himself with a shotgun. Hemingway, throughout his life and his stories, tries to face death head on, to be unafraid in the face of it.

I wonder if, just before he pulled the trigger of the shotgun, Hemingway had his last revelation about suicide and death. It’s not exactly cowardice to pull that trigger, and the false bravado that Hemingway tried to master his entire life was not exactly bravery or courage. In the end, Hemingway ran toward death – like his father before him – and who among us can judge him? 

The last line in the play sums everything up for me:

“You cannot carry the wind, the wind carries you.”

As I write my path through my past, I’ll try to keep the wind at my back, instead of bracing myself against it.

Technology might be making us more rude.

Or socially inept. 

Which might amount to the same thing.

It used to be that people actually called each other, sent letters and cards (the actual ones – not the e-ones), and hugged in person. Now, people hug me on Facebook and write on my ‘wall’ to exchange information. It’s gotten to the point where people aren’t even emailing each other real notes anymore. Outside of the confines of texting and messaging and instant updates – do we really know one another anymore?

The intimacy of the internet – and all forms of electronic exchange of information and data bits and bytes – has made us feel more connected. And yet, I don’t see many of my friends anymore. 

We don’t have dinner that much. We chat online.

I don’t meet them for drinks. I keep track of their comings and goings and innermost thoughts on blog posts and status comments. 

Sometimes, I manage to have coffee with someone.

Occasionally, someone actually hugs me.

But, it’s rare.

Recently, I’ve been ill. Or not feeling well. And although I have 124 Facebook friends (I had 125 until recently, when my lone quasi-famous friend dropped me the other day, which was a e-slap in the face), I feel isolated. 

My advisor is from Beijing, and when I told him I might have to have surgery, he lamented:

“In the past, the whole village would surround you, stop by your house, check in on you. But with modern life? No. We are all alone, isolated.”

Then, he offered to drink with me anytime I needed to – and it made me feel a little better.

The truth is, I don’t have 125 124 friends. I have about 20 – a handful of which are true gems. And for them, I feel grateful.

As life gets busier, and we e-connect more often with more people we barely know, I feel lucky to have at least a few friends that I can count on to know the old-timey social mores. Like back in the day, when people actually visited each other, talked on the phone for more than 5 minutes, and really knew the contents of each others’ hearts and minds.

When people actually responded to wedding invitations. When wedding invitations were on paper. (Damn you environmental consciousness and Evite!!!)

I miss those days.

And I don’t care if it makes me sound like an old lady to say so.