Thanksgiving is coming.

That means all kinds of traditions, a lot of them very very local and intimate to one’s own family.

My family has a tradition of grated carrots in green Jell-O. Another family I know has a tradition of special potato salad. It’s part of how we’ve learned to celebrate.

My town has a unique thanksgiving festival. A retirement community founded by the church which traces it’s beginning to the Pilgrims –called Pilgrim Place–had a big festival every year.

It’s become our tradition to go, and locally it is a very big event. It’s the sort of big event that no one else knows about, except the people who go.

The pilgrims of Claremont–retired missionaries, pastors, and professors–they prepare a party for the whole community based on their traditions. Their memories and culture are passed on. The pilgrims are definitely influenced by the sixties, and pass on the hippie culture to us all.

For the kids, they have a thing called the “glue-in”. Like a sit-in or a love-in from those days of flowers in your hair, these pilgrim grandparenty people set aside all kinds of bottles and lids and random debris. They wash it, and keep it for this special day.

They cut cardboard rectangles and put out small pots of glue. The children are invited to sit at tables outside and make something–whatever they like! –with the glue and objects.

My husband remembers making these as a child. I have taken Veronica to do this every year of her life.

One day she will not want to do it anymore. I know this.

But this year, that was all she talked about as we drove to the pilgrims.

“Do you want to make a glue-in, Mommy?”

I’d never made one. I’d always assisted. Veronica’s glue-ins were always trying to be as tall as she could make them, and there were some laws of construction that she didn’t really have down.

But who knows? This might be the last glue in.

“Yes, I will make one with you!”

I got my pot, and the pilgrim was happy for me to make one too. We flipped through the piles of building material for our work of art. There were a lot of clear empty prescription bottles.

We set about seeing what could be done with these objects. She was very serious, and I was curious about what I might be able to do with these.

She had come to a pause, trying to decide how to realize her vision. I had just about realized mine.

“What do you think of mine?”

She looked up, squinted her eyes at my structure.

She’s a tough critic. I didn’t know what she would have to say. She was the one with all the experience after all.

Her unpronounced judgment hung in the air.

“I really like it.” she declared.

I did not expect to be so pleased. It felt really really good that she approved.

I hope that is how she feels when I say the same to her.

These are our traditions, for however long they last.

it’s one of the joys of life

To attempt to do something that is hard at first

and then after awhile

To discover that it is less hard

We went to see a girls basketball game at the high school.

I wanted Veronica to see what a sports game is like. I’d heard that girls and boys do a lot better when they play sports.

But boys play more sports than girls.

So we went to see.

Claremont Lady Woflpack (WHY DO THEY CALL IT LADY WOLFPACK?!?!) is doing well this season. We won 51 to 24

The girls ran and dribbled and shot and passed.

They missed and they fouled and they did some amazing moves

One girl made an amazing save of the ball to get it back from out of bounds, passing it back in to the court.

But then it was caught by someone from the other team.

My jobby job had quite a few similar moments this week. I would make amazing efforts of attention and executiv decisions, to have it all go awry by forces out of my control.

Oh

That is exactly what sports are supposed to teach you.

That you can always be better, but there is a lot of things you can’t control.

And that girl SHOULD be proud of that save, even thought it went to the wrong team.

And the other team played hard too, even though they were very outmatched. THey were much shorter, and the wolfpack outscored them embarrassingly.

But they played hard,

And that is worth emulating. And going to remind ourselves to give our best in life.

Lately I’ve been enjoying reading business books, especially ones that focus on women. I found The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman. They’ve been telling me about how women can gain more confidence.

All of these books bring up the sad fact that there are woefully few women in the executive leadership positions of business. What is going on with that? Why is that the case?

And they said, “The past is prologue.”

That stuck home.

Prologue tells you what is going to happen. Prologue sets the stage for the story you are about to experience.

There is very little that is new. We have seen these stories before and we know what part we are to play in it.

They were talking about how the past forms our expectations of what we see in the present, and what we can expect in the future.

So if there is nobody like me in that place, then I will assume that there will continue to be nobody like me–certainly not ME myself–in those corner offices.

So I won’t even try. I’ll look elsewhere.

What has happened in the past sets our expectations.

My expectations won’t even need to be adjusted; because they never thought anything more was possible.

But it is possible the past in a different way. A way that would allow us to see the present and future in a different way.

As the investors like to say “Past performance is not an indicator of future results.”

One thing that is constant is change, so it is possible, even likely that the way things have been could change to something different.

That phrase was actually a phrase Shakespeare put it into the Tempest.
“what’s past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.”

Which fits. The past is the story that came before, but what’s to come is in our control. We get to discharge it.

Our pasts are the events that came before, but we can make whatever we want out of the future.

He went. I couldn’t bear to go.

It was all about almost dying. And the end of that story seems to always end without the almost that last time.

Dying does come for us all.

Chris wanted to see the movie Free Solo, about Alex Honnold who is set on climbing Yosemite’s El Capitan without a rope. No safety equipment and all alone.

He was compelled to do this thing, this thing that if he made a single mistake would cost him his life.

This life, this only life we’ve got–he decided to gamble it for the goal is conquering this cliff of rock.

Homer’s Iliad tells us of Achilles, the son of the immortal Thetis and Peleus, the very mortal king.

Achilles’ fate was mortal. He was a giant among heroes, with fantastic strength and skill at fighting, and he knew he would die.

The story of the Iliad is his struggle with his mortality. He was unsure how to spend his one life.

He calls his immortal mother to ask her what can be done. She cant’ help him; it’s his fate.

But the immortals of Greek mythology are not so very admirable. They are known for causing mischief and holding grudges for a ridiculously long time. There is nothing noble for them in their eternity.

But for Achilles? This is what Homer writes:
“Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”

So if this moment is the lovliest thing we have, what shall we do with it? Alex Honnold threw his whole self into mastering the sheer rock.

I’m not willing to do that.

But I understand his compulsion. If this is our life, we must make redeem the gift by stretching ourselves against some challenge.

Homer says it again: Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing

That’s part of why Free Solo is so unbearably compelling. We all feel that. The drive to see what we are capable of. He’s the hero we’d all like to be.

Happy Halloween!

This is the day when what’s wrong is right.

This is the day we get to be what we’re not supposed to be, and do what we are not supposed to be.

Candy is good. Staying out late and talking to strangers. Evil is celebrated.

It’s an international opposite day.

There’s a hoity-toity name for that:

Inversion holiday

An inversion holiday celebrates turning things inside out.

I worked at a place that really went all out for Halloween. The CEO of this organization loves Halloween and had the whole company throw a huge Halloween contest and potluck that lasted all day.

He himself dressed as a woman every year.

It was important to him, and everyone played along.

People need a way to let off steam.

It’s a Halloween tradition for kids to dare each other to walk up to the creepy house, the haunted house on their block, and knock on the door.

C’mon, I dare you. Go up to it. Face the scary.

Touch it.

Find out that it’s not so bad as you thought.

Or maybe it is exactly as bad as you thought, but you still survive it.

Life is scary, but we are stronger than the boogieman.

And it’s safe to try things. There’s enough room to find out what it would be like to be totally different than you’ve always been.

You might like yourself better afterwards.
Or you could trick yourself and decide to stay that way.

I remember when I was trying to find myself after I divorced my first husband. I had too many and not enough words to come to grips with what my life had become.

I had very little, but I did have my piano.

And I played that piano. There may not have been words, but there was music.

With the music, I could reach the feelings that I couldn’t express. After time passed I could move into my life again.

Yesterday, I was talking with a friend about a writing project I want to start

Except I really don’t want to start it.

It’s a tough one. It will require a lot from me. I will have to grind up my soul again.

I have a lot of reasons not to do it.

And the one reason that counts.

It’s calling me.

But I don’t want to answer.

I’m tired. I have done this before. What do I really need to prove?

Maybe it’s enough.

So as I was telling her all about it, and all the reasons why I don’t want to go there, and all the reasons it’s pointless

I said, “Maybe I need to make some time to play my keyboard.”

They are adjacent, even if they don’t overlap. Music and words occupy different regions of the imagination.

Music can be there for me before words are ready.

And when I can find my way to one that could be the lookout point which shows me where to go the rest of the way.

It’s a 21st century word:

Binge-watching

Technology–TiVo, then DVDs then streaming–changed the way we consume movies and TV shows. Which then changed the way that movies and TV shows were created. TV shows like Lost, The Wire, Breaking Bad and Downton Abbey became something we could get lost in.

Even years after they finish.

It’s become a thing to consume a whole series in a short time, maybe taking a weekend to do nothing but watch that show.

And when I reach the end I get a feeling of satisfaction, like it was an accomplishment.

What is that?

Is it really real?

In a book, whose name I have forgotten, an Indian woman has separated from her husband. She’d been married to him for years, an arrangement made by their parents in a traditional match.

But she had grown tired of tradition and separated from him, tired of his rigidity.

When they had to meet, to finalize some parts of the separation, she saw they he had dyed his hair. His black hair had been turning gray, and he had colored it black again.

She wondered if he was trying to spruce up for a new woman. Could that be an indication that he was losing his rigidity?

After talking with him more, though, she realized that he was not less rigid at all. The color was not a change, it was a conservative preservation of the color it had always been.

He was not reaching out, he was centering more on himself.

I am not sure what their fictional marriage needed, but the idea of something that is self-centered is exactly what is happening when I achieve the dubious accomplishment of finishing a TV show.

I don’t know that finishing Downton Abbey was on my bucket list, but life has a great number of experiences I want to have.

I would like to see Wagner’s Ring Cycle. I actually do think it might change something about who I am.

Some shows–some books, movies or TV series– really do have that affect. They show parts of the world that would be obscured.

It’s okay to put stuff in your life that is only for yourself. We are all we really have, in the end.

The rigid husband was doing what he could for himself. And while I’m waiting to find the right time and place to get my Ring tickets, it is still worth doing to watch the shows that are more easily in reach.

Binging may or may not be required.

I wanted to learn to play the guitar.

It seemed so cool! Guitars had cases, and they had a strap so you could play it standing up. You could move around, dance while playing.

I could picture myself, with a cool guitar strap and a pair of killer boots standing in front of a mic stand, shredding the guitar while hitting the high notes.

Thing was, I had already learned to play the piano. The piano had been a joy to learn, with the keys laid out like a grid and the keys as clear as a math equation. I’d learned the way the scales and chords hung together, and made music happen.

It was so intoxicating to understand music theory, I thought I wanted to step up from the bench, come out from behind the dominated wall of the upright piano and be a guitar player!

When I played on Sunday, and the bass and guitar players sat in their chairs behind me, I saw how they were so mobile I wanted to be like them.

I asked Bill the bass player what it was like to play the guitar.

He said “If I were you, I’d stick with the piano. You could use your time to improve your playing on the instrument you already know, rather than trying to learn a new instrument.”

Bill was so cool.

But the desire for novelty doesn’t go away that easily.

The new and unexplored seems to have delights far superior to the known and well-trodden path.

Even now I think, maybe I should write something different. Observational essays are something I’ve done for a long time.

I think of launching into a new vector that will be full of glory.

But a lot of the time, it’s only that I don’t want to buckle down and get better at the task at hand.

Excellence has to be earned. And most of the time I am better at the thing I’ve already learned, as contemptuously familiar as it is.

So, I buckle down and craft my talent.

I’ll do the new thing later, when it’s not an excuse.

I stumbled across a book:

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

I found it as an audiobook at the library, but I think it would be best as a corner office bookshelf book. It’s the sort of thing you could pick up and open anywhere to read anecdotes supporting any of the 48 laws Greene outlines. It’s a fun read because of all the stories from history. Napoleon, P.T. Barnum, Kissinger, and animals in Chinese or African folk tales illustrate his laws.

There are a lot of laws and so far, some of them are contradictory.

But that’s how power works.

As he tells the stories of how people have used power, I realize power is very prepositional.

Power to…

Power for…

Power by…

Power in…

Power from…

Power against…

Power over…

Power is in motion, and power has an object.

Which makes it intrinsically unstable. It’s always in flux, and it does not sustain itself.

One of the folk tales, I don’t even know where it originates, is the story of the strong tree, which mocks the weak reed.

The tree stays fast, but the reed bends with every wind.

Until

The strong storm comes. And the wind is too terrible for the mighty tree, which topples.

The reed remains.

The power of the reed?

Resiliency.

And resilience is self-sustaining. Resiliency can be perfectly still. And it does not need any object.

It’s reflexive, keeping to its own.

To survive power, the powerful must remember themselves through it all. With humility and as much humor as possible.

Power is fleeting. But we will always have our selves.