I’ve been working steadily on writing a book. It is not a novel, which is what everyone assumes. It is a memoir. I’m trying to write about what it was like to be with my family and go over to Russia to teach English in a private school with a Christian curriculum in 1991-1993.

I started out, and in January, I had about 100 pages written. THen I realized that I had to stop TELLING the story and I had to start writing the experiences. What I had been doing with the first 100 pages was being my current self, the ironic cosmopolitan with PERSPECTIVE on what happened back then.

Absolutely NOT the way to tell a real story. If I distance myself from my own story, how can I expect to draw in a reader? But the fact is, I didn’t want to dive in. To call these memories painful would only be the tip of the iceberg. Nothing is just as simple as pain. Pain is such a flat word. I needed to dive right back in to THEN and write what it was like to live it.

It is not easy to do that. I’ve now re-written to the point of having 140 pages.

AND WE STILL HAVEN’T GOTTEN ON THE PLANE.

My mind panics when I think about (think about writing about) going to Russia. And that is exactly how I felt during the time I was getting ready to go. That is the time I am writing about, that getting-ready period.

Right now, I am filled with those feelings I had then. And I am missing those people I knew then. I am SO missing them.

I had to do a little cyber-stalking. God bless Google. What’s Dean up to? What about Alex? Tommy Piper?

They say you can never go home again. I say, you can never go anywhere again. Some things never change, but I am not some things. It’s very sad to me, to realize that I can’t ever recapture the closeness of a friendship. Or realize the closeness that I once wanted.

People change. I change. It makes me sad.

Not that I would have it any other way. You couldn’t pay me enough to stay the way I was back then.

Anyway, I am surprised at how real these people are to me. It is like they just walked out of the room. I’ve had to struggle to remember their personalities and their speech patterns. I have to try to create dialogue with them…I say create…But it is more like remembering…And I remember up scraps of things I’ve done and said with them…And there they are. Like I could reach out and touch them. Like I could give them one more hug goodbye.

And I wish I could.

Finally and completely, Chris has moved in. All of his things and all of my things are now in OUR condo.

He has a different moving philosophy than I do. I’m all about getting a truck and doing it all in one weekend. HE decided he wanted to move it over the course of a month. I practiced letting him have his way, and it actually wasn’t such a bad way to move.

It took a long time to get it all there, but we were able to put things away kind of slowly. On Saturday, when we took the very last things up, it was moderate chaos.

Now we just have to figure out how to make everything fit.

‘Living together’ is not something I ever thought I would do. But life is strange; the unforseen is always ahead.

After my divorce, which is also something I never thought would happen to me, I had to take it one day, or one hour at a time. Living in the moment had to be learned.

So, thinking about a long future with someone was nearly impossible. I sure didn’t think I would be with Chris this long. I didn’t think it when I met him. I didn’t think it a few months later, the first time he kissed me.

I wouldn’t have stuck around if I had thought we would have been together this long. I would have wanted my future to be determined by me. And a committed relationship, with future plans, sounded to me like I was signing my life away.

But…Chris is very good at giving me space and room for my dreams to grow. He has never gotten in my way.

Poor guy! Anytime he tried to talk about long-term togetherness, I would cry. That can’t be easy on the ego, to have your girlfriend cry when you tell her you want to be with her.

So, I finally yanked my head out of the sand and told myself I would HAVE to deal with this. Chris deserved better from me. So I tried. And I cried.

Finally, laughing and crying, I told him that it would be easier if we made up some OTHER people and talked about THEM. Maybe I would be able to distance myself enough to have a conversation.

He said, “Let’s give them the silliest names we can think of.”

He’s wonderful.

So Prudence and Sloan were invented to be our avatars. We didn’t always need them, but they were there when we did. When we’d be talking along about our lives and goals and what’s important, every once in a while I’d stop being able to breathe. I would inhale and not stop. BEFORE, I would start to cry at that point. But now, I could gasp out, “Prudence is a little concerned about that.”

You know, whatever it takes to get you through. The path to true love never runs smooth.

About a million years ago, I took a few martial arts classes. It was fun; I wouldn’t mind doing it again. I just have to find the time…

Anyway, one time, the teacher, while dismissing us, brought one new guy forward. Turns out he wasn’t new:

“Jeff…Come up here jeff! I need to take a moment. Everyone, you should congratulate Jeff. You used to be a lot bigger…How much weight have you lost?”

Jeff was a little shy. “About Sixty Pounds.” He was proud, though.

“THis is an accomplishment!” the Teacher praised him. “This is a big deal! I had to take some time and give you kudos.”

At that time, I was in sore need of some weight loss myself. I was amazed at the big deal made over this guy. 60 pounds, that is an accomplishment.

How much time do we spend thinking about losing weight? here in america, I think it is always on our minds. The American Dream. Just to lose that 10..15…50…150 pounds we need to lose.

My older brother Mark has been on a diet. He’s inspiring. I don’t know how much weight he’s lost exactly, but he came down from looking sort of substantial to looking how I always remember him.

He’d always been fairly slim. I think it was because he had been a perpetual student for so long. One of his remarkable achievements was living off a 25 pound bag of dried pinto beans for a year.

He’d been given the bag from my oldest brother. Like a great number of people, Bryan had been attracted to foodstores. For emergencies…the end of the world that was supposed to happen on y2k, or some natural disaster or the tribulation that comes right before the second coming of Christ…You have to be prepared!

Except he also had to move. And all those food stores didn’t fit neatly into the Uhaul. Which is how Mark got the sack, and was able to afford the fulfillment of another american dream: a college education.

My brother Bryan is not alone in his gut need for self-sufficiency. All those bags of beans…where they really belong is in a cabin in the woods, you know?

Chris took me to see Hearst Castle this friday. As I was driving with Chris up the highway one, through all these lovely remote places, I was seized with a desire for a cabin in the woods.

“Chris, wouldn’t you like a little cabin somewhere? A getaway sort of place?”

“Like at Whitney Portal?”

He and I like hiking in mountainey places. So we dreamed a bit.

“Wouldn’t you like to build a log cabin? If we bought a piece of land without any building on it, it would be cheap!”

“What about electricity?”

“Psh! We dont’ need electricity! We can get a generator! Solar power!”

He kept driving. I thought about all the things we can get away without.

“Except we HAVE to have water. That’s important.” I knew someone who built a whole gorgeous house on a patch of land that didn’t have a well. Water is key. “Maybe we should get it on a lake, or a river or something.”

That’s another American Dream. Your own land. Self-suffieciently. The shotgun and the “NO TRESPASSING” sign.

Well, maybe not the sign. I would like a cozy place where people would not be easily able to find it. Needley trees cushioning the space around small walls.

Mark, newly skinny, was telling us more about his self-evaluations. He was working the Color your Parachute book. He was trying to find the right sort of career for his talents.

Another dream-the career dream. Chris is an entrepenuer. Just enough to make me freak out. Work for the man? Get a pension? Not for my man.

I am nervous to be self-sufficient in that way. But Chris makes it happen. God bless him. His American Dream is his own business.

Folks at work here are constantly making pools for Lotto. Buy 100 dollars worth of tickets and split it if any of them win.

I ask them, “What would you do if you won?”

They seldom get past the first month…A big party, a big trip.

But what then? Life is long…How do you fill the hours without a dream? And if you make your dream come true too soon, where are you?

Mostly, they say, “If I won, you wouldn’t see me around HERE anymore.”

I remember there were people who won the dot com lottery. 20 something millionaires. And they showed up to work. What else would they do with their time? They liked their jobs. Some of them, anyway…

Hmm…I wonder. I know for sure what I would do with a lottery windfall. Go back to school. But you know, that might only be the first few years. What would the dream be then?

William Hearst had the windfall. Well, theoretically, he worked very hard for it. He had a lot of businesses. But he had all the money anyone would want.

He spend his free time shopping. And throwing parties.

The American Dream. Is that what we’re about?

There’s a new movie coming out, Vanity Fair, based on the book. It inspired me to read the book, which I started long ago and didn’t quite finish.

One of the things that is so interesting about Victorian novels, and which makes them so enduring for today’s readers is the struggle for POSITION. These girls who are trying to marry a man with money, so blatantly struggling to bag a husband with 5 thousand a year, or 80 thousand a year, or with a hundred a year and a title, they are struggling so hard to attain status in their “society.”

The victorian era was all about the rise of the middle class. The Middle class, the newly rich capitalists, rich off trade and business rather than inherited estates were struggling in their world to be what they felt they had a right to be. They wanted into the higher eschelons of “society” and it was a constant struggle to fit in.

The Victorian prudery and extreme care for the chastity and reputation of the ladies was a huge part of that. The lower classes were the only ones that were supposed to engage in imorality. Or, I should say, the lower class WOMEN were the only ones supposed to engage in immorality.

A new standard for women had been introduced, that the unmarried women had to be pure as the driven snow or she could be rejected by that man of X thousand a year.

Why? Because women did not have earning power. They did not have economic rights to the same degree as men did, so their earning power was their marriageability, for the most part.

But that’s really a side note.

What struck me in this novel was again, as I have seen so many times in other novels, was the the focus on CREDIT. Apparently, a young man of nice clothes could ring up bills and bills and bills and no one thought anything of it.

This is so completely contemporary that it makes me wonder.

We’ve got all kinds of new formality in place, that allows a much more egalitarian debt system. You don’t have to “cut a fine figure” as those novelists say. You just have to fill out a mean form.

Bill collectors coming after you? Like they did to Captain Crawley and Rebecca (the Heros of my novel)? Rebecca was praised for her ability to persuade them away.

The 21st century way of dealing with it was to consolidate the debt, transfer some funds and get back on the road.

Here’s the next snapshot in my train of thought:

I saw another ad for a different movie. This one is called “The Corporation”

It’s a documentary. I really want to see it.

I’ve previously complained about my life in elevators. That’s one way I describe the life of a corporate corpse. But I also admit that it can be exciting to work in a large structure.

I get to point at my corporate logo, and the corporate logo on the many tall buildings and in the marble lobbies with the huge expensive flower arrangments and say, “I am a part of this. This is the glory I contribute to.”

And I get to build a little home from the blue paychecks.

Do you remember the story of Babel? The tower of babel? They wanted to build a tower to the heavens. They said, ‘We don’t need God anymore! We will climb to heaven ourselves!”

And God looked down from heaven to the people he had created and said, ‘oh shit! They can do it, too!” okay, he actually said, “”If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”

Then he made all the humans who were working together on this tower speak different languages from one another. Suddenly, they couldn’t work together any more. The tower faltered, and was abandoned.

What’s happened since then? A couple more towers have sprung up. A few more very tall buildings have come into existence. Is this a deferred dream we are realizing or a nightmare once averted and now awakened?

The documentary about Corporations seems to be showing how corporations are bad, and how insidious they are to our culture. Granted, take everything I say with a grain of salt because I haven’t seen the movie.

BUT, i’ve seen some other things. I’ve heard the cries for “back to the land!”

You know that commercial where the alternative-hippie-looking kids are hitchiking and talking about majoring in ceramics? But they they see a cool SUV and decide to minor in ceramics so they can afford this shiny car?

THAT”S what I’m talking about. Yes, we know about our desire to be close to the land and the rhythms of the earth. To have our hands in up to the elbows in the act of creation and the practicing of our art.

And we..the american culture…still want the SUV. Which is it?

I wonder. Which half of that equation is the most hypocritical? The pat answer is the side that wants the SUV. I’m not so sure.

I am not in love with corporations. But let us assess.

Did you know that during the victorian period, that marvelous rising of the middle class, there was a huge “back to the earth” movement too? Back to nature?

Only then it was THEIR version of nostalgia. It was for peasant hood (Carlyle is who I am thinking of). ‘Go back to being a peasant! You wil wake with the sun and grow your own food, and live life in the ebb of the earth’s seasonal pageantry! Give up this pursuit of life in the city and …

CAPITALISM

oh yeah…capitalism…That famous economic tome”Das Kapital” by Karl Marx is from the Victorian age. The Communist manifesto came out of that time too. Remember?

…Communism vs. Capitalism…

The words are still used today. Even though communism is widely described as dead, and capitalism has changed so much that Marx’s theories no longer apply.

What are we up to? We want all the good things, we want all we can get. Then as now. Vanity Fair was the description of London society. Couldn’t it just as well be a description of New York society? Or Beverly Hills?

We have built some pretty big towers. And if we didn’t want them, why did we bother?

What it all a big misunderstanding? Did we really want to live close to the ground, but the architect looked at the plans sideways? Did we have a meeting and someone scrawled the minutes so they build a 105 stories instead of 105 foot garden?

Maybe we don’t recognize this world because after the vision came the revisions.

Did we all get caught in the close at hand and forget the future results? Did our parents and grandparents look only at that weekly paycheck and not know what would happen when all their toil piled up into accomplishments?

I can’t believe that we didn’t know. I think many many of us learned to put aside our different ways of talking and worked together very very hard to get the world that we live in now.

But this final version, this present version of life2004 (brought to you by Microsoft~!) or Reality or however you want to see it contains ALL.
The conversions, reversions, subversions and perversions are all a part of the final version.

This version keeps all that. no pebble turns without reshaping the universe.

Maybe we are amazed at our small selves affecting so much change.

The monuments we’ve constructed changed the warp of gravity. We’ve altered the universe slightly and our environment mightily. We are what we have worked diligently to become.

And that bring it all back to Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy…”Are you sure you asked the right question?”

Are we sure we worked toward the right goal?

Let us deal with what is here and now. You cannot begin your journey in a different place than the one you are in.

That’s what the guy in the shuttle to the airport asked me. It was sort of stunning. He OBVIOUSLY worked outside the home, because he was there in his briefcase, starched white shirt and tie.

And I was there in my corporate casual, with my laptop bag embroidered with the corporate logo.

When he asked me that question, a big ol’ whiff of Promise Keepers came out of his mouth. Now, I realize that SOME women, those that do work inside the home with children and things, might find it consoling to hear that question. They would appreciate that he did not assume that the only work that counts is the kind that you have to drive to.

But to me, it sounded a lot like “You should be at home, but you’re not. So why are you here? Account for yourself.”

In support of this impression, as soon as I told him I managed the conferencing services for a global company he lost interest in talking to me and began to call people on his cell phone.

Now, since his expectations of females seemed to be the barefoot-and-pregnant variety, he may have found a reason not to talk to this inferior human (me!) anyway.

But the other guys in the shuttle were quite interesting and talkative.

I still feel the slight from Mr. “Traditional Roles”

I personally have learned not to assume that people work outside the home. But it has nothing to do with gender. Most of the people I know who work at home do so because they have found a way of generating income in their own home. I SO wish I could do that too.

At the same time, I have respect for mothers (and fathers) who work on family and home things without generating income. They have found a way to team with their partners and keep their lives in balance with what they think is most important.

But I don’t ask that condescending 80’s question. I say, “What do you do with your time?”

A radio host, from the show “What do you know?’ asks “what do you do in life?” That’s a good one too.

Come on now, dude! Try not to let your stereotypes spill out all ugly like that.

I’ve been home rather seldom for the last two months. I went to New York and DC at the beginning of April. THen I came back for a week and then went on vacation to Seattle and Canada. I came back, and four days later flew to New York AGAIN.

I got to be home for almost two weeks before I flew to Denver. I was in Denver for Four days and then I came back. BACK.

I have no plans on the calendar for travel. Thank God. I was forgetting what it was like to be home.

Because I’ve been needing to complete all these projects. I started to re-caulk my bathtub. My other sink needs a washer replaced because it leaks. I have half painted my office. I have mostly scraped my office ceiling.

And I’ve started re-finishing the cupboards in the kitchen.

Walking around often feels like a construction zone. I want to COMPLETE some of these tasks.

finally, I was able to recaulk the bathtub this weekend. THat seemed most critical since a lot can be ruined by improperly sealing a bathtub. Now I just have to wait until monday before I can use it.

THEN I bought a lovely lightest blue green to paint the office. The goal was to find a cactus green…The kind of blue-silver-green that cactuses can be. I fear, however, that as time goes by I will instead think of it as toothpaste.

ButI painted the whole office! Ugh! It was tiring and I was EXHAUSTED afterwards. I took three naps and I think I may take another one.

It’s hard to paint a room thoroughly. I missed a couple spots where the paint is not quite thick enough. I’m going to wait until it’s dark so i can see the contrast better, then I’ll mark all the places that need a little touch up. I’ll finish in the morning. I have BARELY enough paint (I hope) to finish.

As I was painting I listed to an old nostalgic (for me) CD. It is from when I was 18, and it makes me remember how frustrated and hopeful all of us were right then. Remember Nirvana? Dude had to off himself; I guess he was more frustrated than hopeful.

This one was P.M. Dawn’s debut album. It was full of abstract spiritualism and philosophical musings. It made me think a lot about what I’m doing. I hope a lot. I am frustrated a lot because of my hopefulness.

Every day I come up with a hundred and one ideas of how to make the world better. Then I come up with one hundred and two ideas of why it won’t work because people won’t let it.

Except I managed to caulk my tub and paint my bedroom. My grand visions are frustrated by the smallness of those world improvements. And yet they are quite real and true.

Those two things I did by myself. It seems to me that larger improvements take cooperation from other people. And I have so much trouble getting cooperation.

I admire the large buildings that I work in and the people who have created these monuments. And yet…I work in those monuments. I work ON those monuments, in the capacity of assisting communications.

I love that I assist communications all over the world. I am proud, because communication is a true tool for making the world a better place. But for the very reason that I assist with communications, i know how poorly it is done.

It’s sad and frustrating…I remember how hopeful and stupid I was when I was 18. I know a little bit more now, but I also realize that the amount of my knowing in the face of what needs to be known is about as pitiful as the impact of my painting and caulking in the face of all the things that need fixing in the world.

Yes, it is good that I have learned things. It is good that I caulked my bathtub. I guess it’s the little things that add up. That’s what I have to tell myself.