Forecast: Sunnier Days

More Sun and Less Clouds

Monday’s weather: Well it was supposed to be a day of sunshine – big orange ball with the little triangular flames and no clouds in the newspapers – but it is overcast and drizzly. Heading up to around 60. I don’t mind so much; Saturday was humid and hot, and Sunday was dry, warm, sunny. Enough sun for me to plant my Impatiens and get a good red on my back, enough water now to give all my plants a taste.

Monday’s drink: Bleah. Sunburns make me shy away from booze. Note to self.

Monday’s links: #1: Help Find Berdina!

#2: I have two new girlfriends: Alexis and Jennifer.

I do have sun. Sun on my face, my arms, my shoulders and back. Less on my chest and legs – those seem like places that get sun only if you’re not doing anything other than getting sun. When you’re working – planting, watering, digging – seems like you generally have your face, shoulders and back to the sky. So I guess I’m sportin’ a workman’s tan.

Not like it’s a ‘tan’ in any sense. And not like I go sportin’ sun often. Mostly I keep my white white skin shielded; both to keep from burning (which I do faster than garlic in a hot pan) and because I’ve often never really felt like the world wants to see my body. Meaning: I often haven’t wanted to see my body.

That’s different this year, as I’ve alluded earlier. I can work in front or back, even with friends over, in just a pair of shorts and not feel…frankly, grotesque. I don’t feel Gyllenhaal yet, but at least I don’t feel grotesque anymore.

So maybe it was the sun on my back, or the accomplishment of tasks, or the lack of gin, or all of that and something else, too, that led to a sunny mood last night. A welcome one, given how overcast I’ve been this year. It can’t have been easy living with a black cloud like I’ve been for so long.

Maybe it was the swimming. At the “J” this Saturday, it finally all came together. I was paddling back and forth, “…not yet having maximum fun,” I said to my coach. “OK, let me know when it is.” And then, somehow, everything made sense. Push off, head down, arms out, stroke, stroke, roll, breath, stroke. I could feel myself moving through the water like I was supposed to; this is what swimming must feel like, I thought. "Hey, I'm swimming!" I lapped the pool, got to the end, and my coach high-fived me. “Now I’m having fun,” I said. It was awesome, and I think I understand why people like swimming. (Well I say that not having to run 20 laps every morning.)

So that could have been it. Or maybe it was the ‘prom’ parties in DC this weekend. Both going to them, and then feeling stronger than any previous year how profoundly silly and self-inflated these things are. In this case a “…high-profile…” afternoon pre-White House Correspondents Association party.

Urp. We arrived around 1p to find gobs of sweaty, lonely people crowding under the tents like ants in seersucker. The number of people every year has gone up, and as that’s happened the party has become much less fun. You certainly can’t just strike up conversations with people you don’t know as easily. There’s really only a few things you can do: push your way to the booze table, squeeze your way to the food table, try and find the magic spot where there’s a tiny breeze and you’re out of the sun, and swivel your head round and round, looking for faces you recognize. And not stomp all over the plants.

By recognize, I mean ‘as seen on TV’. We both ran into a few people who knew us, but this is a crowd that loves seeing other TV faces recognize seeing them on TV. Which is not a judgment on any individual there – I don’t know them, don’t know their hearts, don’t know if they tend to be better than worse people. But if yours isn’t a TV face, they don’t have time for you.

Greta van Susteran, for example. Sure, she didn’t know us. Sure, she was busy squiring Todd Palin around. And no, you’re not supposed to talk business at these events, although everyone does. We spoke to her for about thirty seconds – long enough for two intros, two handshakes, a quick pitch, a few comments from Greta as her eyes darted past, and goodbye. Her entire body was turning away before even saying goodbye – which was really more of a “…I have to go over here and talk to anybody but you now.”

Fine. You want Chace Crawford and Matthew Modine to meet Mr. Palin, fine. That’s why you’re there. Increasingly I wonder ‘why am I here?’ It certainly isn’t to have fun in the traditional sense. I guess it’s really just become more tradition, and traditions are hard to break. Especially when you share them with your boyfriend.

So while the party didn’t do it, leaving it behind me – both in real time and in the larger events-of-the-year sense – might have also helped improve my mood. Maybe putting up the shelf in the kitchen on Sunday. Maybe having mostly clean clothes for work and the gym week. Maybe the last slice of home-made smoked mozzarella lasagna for dinner last night. Maybe some unspoken barrier I’ve crossed regarding my entanglements of earlier this year.

And maybe I don’t really need to know. At the moment it seems enough to see that I was in a sunny mood last night, and I was able to share that with my boyfriend.

Busting Concrete
Removing the hidden and buried to open up the fertile earth

Monday’s weather: Day two of a steady soaking rain; cool and damp and dark. Everything green outside is flourishing, including the herbs, enjoying the constant mist. The Siberian Iris have just bloomed today, and soon I shall plant the Impatiens.
Monday’s drink: A Heineken (we have 18 left over from the Derby party) and perhaps the last of the juleps.
Monday’s quote: This one from Walt Whitman:

“Character and personal force are the only investments that are worth anything.”

I’m not sure I understand it fully, but it seems worth a little thought.

The backyard is two steps closer to being something other than a muddy garage, although it’s still mostly just that. Good thing this year’s Derby party wasn’t a packed house, as people would have ended up standing around outside in a gooey, jumbled dirt farm that doesn’t look like anything sensible. Of course when I look out back I can see what it will be but isn’t yet. But I’m not everyone else.

As a side note – and one of an unusually self-accomplished tone from me – I was genuinely pleased how many people commented on how fit and trim I look. And younger. People felt compelled to reach out and touch me, almost to check if the change was real or not. After years of wearing clothes too large to cover my body too large, it was a victory of sorts, and I enjoyed my lap.

That said, my real victory this last month has been the backyard. Specifically, the concrete.

Several weeks back I took some time off, telling C I wanted to build garden beds in the back. While a few days seemed a rather ambitious time line, I launched into it Friday after spending an idle Thursday moping and fussing over my personal dramas. I filled the car with dirt and ferns and Impatiens and other greenery, and started digging. Not that I got very far.

Quickly I saw that the old concrete walkway – years forgotten – was right where I wanted to build the bed. I started test shovels, poking here and there, trying to figure out just how much was buried and where it ended. Turns out: it was all still there. The walkway to the alley, the concrete pad the old porch and stairs used to rest on…it was all still there, covered by years of dirt and disuse, sealing off my garden bed. So much for the time line.

Saturday morning I went out to show C just how much was there, convinced the only solution was to call someone to dig it up and remove it. He had a different idea. “I bet this will just bust up…” he said, grabbing a shovel. We started digging; finding the edges, digging underneath, prying it up. Shovel by shovel, it started to break up, but that was just the easy stuff.

Hours later, armed with neighbor D’s sledgehammer, we were whacking and digging and hauling slabs of concrete anywhere from 1 to 6 inches thick. That afternoon a “we haul your dirt” guy showed up, chucking the slabs into his truck. Somewhere between ‘we’ll never be able to do this’ and ‘this should be easy’, C and I finished the job. The hidden concrete was gone, and the ground was open for the first time in decades.

Talk about self-accomplishment. Not only did we surprise ourselves, we worked together seamlessly as a team. And it was genuinely a pleasure to do it. Damn hard work, but at the end…well, I’m still impressed with ourselves.

The earth is still open there. I’ve got some plants in the ground, but haven’t yet built up (or even found) the wood to build the borders; that’s to come. But this was something that just had to happen. Sooner or later, someone was going to have to face the slog of digging that shit up and getting rid of it, and now it’s done.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Even discussed it with CV, my therapist. For me, at the surface level, this felt like a way for C and I to do some healing after a long, difficult, at times painful start to this new year. For CV…well, of course he wanted to dig deeper.

“Think about that, Doug. Something old and formerly useful now forgotten, blocking growth, hidden by years of work to forget about it. If anything was to grow there, it had to come up. And the only thing for it was for you to dig, lift, break, toss…over and over again. Hard work.”

Like the work I’ve done in therapy. The analogy just works…and keeps working. Old, useless, blocking, buried, forgotten, digging up, sweat (and even a little blood), breaking up, carting away. Even the point of it all works: I’m building a new bed for C and I. Uh-huh. Even I get that.

So the work will continue through the Spring, but a lot of difficult and necessary stuff is done and over. And now I’m ready to use my strong body to build and grow new life in the back yard.

Humility
Lessons Learned Over Again

Tuesday's weather: continued mild, as it has been since Friday, although not as warm. Upper 50's probably, slight haze in the sky and low sun. Still, bulbs are well on their way to coming up, and I must get the garden ready.
Tuesday's drink: later tonight, at our block meeting with the developers trying to build a monstrosity on 13th and U, no doubt some crummy white wine. When everyone goes home, perhaps a beer. Pretty pedestrian stuff.
Tuesday's link: to the newly re-launched team blog that's been taking some of my time: www.whomurderedrobertwone.com. Much, most, credit goes to my co-editors.

I've missed you all. December 21st was the last post...six long weeks back. Without looking at a calendar I can tell you the day: a Sunday. I can tell you it was cold, hardly surprising for the end of December, and there was a brittle sun. I knew Christmas was just a few days away, then New Year's, then an inaugural. Even still I had no idea the size of the events and emotions that were ahead of me.

There's a brief coda, perhaps, to this memory of Scout. Just the other day I opened the mail to find a bill from the vet's office, detailing the charges for her euthanasia. "Euthanasia, $151.00; Catheterization IV, no charge; Ketamine, no charge; Beuthanasia-D 100ml and Mass Cremation; no charge. House call, $80." This in the category of bills you just never think about. Bills you can't imagine paying until they come, and then...well, you can't quite bring yourself to writing out the check. Just not yet.

"Not yet." If there is a more impotent, futile expression in English, I hope someone will share it with me.

"Life's quirky," my friend M told me today, as we sat on my couch and traded stories one to the other. He was being both truthful and kind, as my quirks have, of late, all been in the same direction. A bad run of cards. Although, as when I'm sitting at a Vegas blackjack table, I forget that I'm lucky just to be at the table, rather than focusing on the loss, the loss, the close loss, the push...and the always hoped for next hand sure thing hot cards coming my way.

Work, for instance. In three months time I've gone from boy wonder to wondering if I have a future there. See, while I bet most of you know what I do, few if any understand how controversial it is in-house. I know: hard to believe, looking at it, for such an innocuous thing. But because what I do is different, hasn't been done there before, and is such a personal creation (rather than the result of the giant grey collective blanding machine), it draws arrows. It, and I, am a target.

Now while my advocates and allies were in positions to help, I took the arrows in stride; they helping me up along the way. However very rapidly my allies have left or been moved aside, my adversaries have filled the space, and now I am just a target for arrows, nothing more. The bleeding has left me near dry and sapped my spirit. "Personally I think you've gotten a bum rap," is how a new boss put it to me...my eyes hopefully not popping while I tried not to choke on my tongue. A bum rap. That's how I'm seen? A bum?

Clearly I have taken a major fall. Several, actually. At work, and at home. The grief of Scout's loss did not approach me until very recently, and I can now see neither I nor C are through it yet. Far from it. (And why, it strikes me now, should it be otherwise?) The fall of position and power at work doesn't near the fall of favor and grace I imagine we both are feeling at her passing.

This should be enough. For a sensible man, it would be. But you know me better than that. So yes, I have taken one more fall. A very large one, a very painful one, and one solely of my own making.

A fall of pride, perhaps, and maybe of self-importance. Of selfishness, too, and fantasy at some end. And to be charitable, also of hope, longing, and affection. A fall that has re-educated me on lessons I learned long ago and yet, for some reason, continue to need schooling in. To be as clear as I can without making things worse: I don't regret what I've done (to do so now simply because of heartache would be shallow - and at least I know that's something I'm not) but I am sorry for the hurt it's caused.

As I told C Sunday night, this is not a hurt I will quickly get over. This isn't just a tumble and fall and spring back up. This is a lesson in humility. In being truly humbled - not being falsely modest or hiding one's virtues. Humbled: holding in my hands all my good and bad and recognizing that I am but one of everyone else in being responsible - alone - for all that I am and I do. Seeing once more that we all possess shades and potentials and cruelties and...and love. Love, most, above all else.

And it is love - love that lasts, love that grows, love that endures and renews - that has brought me, humbled, back into my life. And back to this blog. Somehow, I will take these last two or three months of turmoil and create with it something even better. I don't know how or when, but I do know why.

Because I know I continue to love, and always will, and that seems to me the ultimate triumph of living.