yes, i went straight back to everything upon returning from Yosemite.

Of course I did.

What I didn’t do was get a good night’s sleep.

So, the fog of tired drug me down. I was trying for the excitement, and instead I got the draggy-paws. Even the super sensitivity.

I come home from work (WoRK!) and Chris tells me:

“Just because it’s raining today doesn’t mean it will rain tomorrow.”

true. Just let the morning come

It’s coming anyway

Dickens, Orwell and Downton Abbey

On my Kindle, George Orwell’s essays have been waiting for me since Christmas. My husband takes the holiday very seriously and demands a list of presents I would enjoy. That’s a lot of pressure, and I am sometimes forced into hurried requests. I had a thought that I’d like to see how he stood up in changing times.

Animal Farm and 1984 are spectacular, but it wasn’t until I read Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in London and Paris that I really got to know this man.  He was a real person with his own adventures not merely a crafter of stories from the sidelines.

I figured his essays would bring me more of that guy.

These particular essays included one he titles: “Charles Dickens.”

oooh!

An author talking about another author? Yes, I want to read that one. Yes.

He begins his essay to address that other people have called Dickens Marxist. Orwell loves talking Dickens and political ideology, and delightfully examines Dickens’ characters for embryonic political leanings. He talks about the servants and how Dickens treats them:

“It was an age of enormous families, pretentious meals and inconvenient houses, when the slavey drudging fourteen hours a day in the basement kitchen was something too normal to be noticed.”

I cannot help but think of Downton Abbey. Isn’t the relationship between the servants and The Family at Downton such a perfect example of this? An army of servants is required to give the titled family the glorious lifestyle we admire and cannot stop watching.

Downton Abbey is a TV show. And it makes us think think think about what it was like at that time. The cook and her several helpers do slave away all day.

Orwell goes on to say:

“Without a high level of mechanical development, human equality is not practically possible.”

For Dickens, it was inevitable that there were cooks and footmen and butlers. In Downton Abbey, that life is coming into question 50 years later. The family clutches its pearls about the changes.

The servants are the ones who encounter the mechanical development.  The ladies’ maids get a sewing machine to help with the mending, and the cook is comically afraid of the electric toaster.

Think about this for a minute. The system of dependency that Dickens, and later Downton Abbey rely on means that toast means something else entirely than what we understand it.

If the food preparers were at the bottom of the basement, would a Dickens’ character even get a piece of hot toast? Probably never in his life!

I can have a piece of delicious hot toast anytime I want, and enjoy the lovely smell. That never happened in a world of separated servants. Some things must be done by oneself to really work.

So I think, what if the Family at Downton had the toaster up in their dining room? Maybe it would pop up right there, and they could enjoy it.

Different world. Here’s the problem with that:

How did they run electricity into the house at all? For a family estate, from god-knows-how-long-ago, I am pretty sure the walls are not the regularly placed two-by-four frames on a raised foundation.

I had to re-do the electricity on my 1950s house. It was incredibly easy, and now I can run the microwave and the air conditioner at the same time. Neither of those inventions was in houses when my house was built. But the ticky-tacky houses in my neighborhood allowed for the integration of things they couldn’t imagine. You know what else? I live in an area of greater human equality.

Back in the 1300s or whenever Downton Abbey was fictionally created, they didn’t look that far ahead. Their land and titles were part of the feudal system, which had supported them for a very long time.

In Dickens’ stories, like so many Victorian stories, social mobility is at the center. People are trying to better themselves. Money and virtue is key.

The Granthams were already at the top, and they found themselves on a melting iceberg. Other Victorian novels show up how the titled nobility have to marry moneyed nouveau riche to get the resources to keep their burdensome estates going.

The Granthams are all about that. “What are we to do?” The symbols of their status are the albatross around their necks. The transition is not easy.

Earlier in the essay Orwell says: “Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow, and invariably disappointing.”

Have you noticed something? I see it. We are in the middle of a slow and disappointing progression right now. Call it the information age. Call it the fall of the commercial exploitation empire. Call it Catch 22.

Preservation is not what it used to be. Which institution needs to be abandoned for which idea to be preserved?

I am not certain that the idea has been born yet. Or, which idea of the many downy chicklings will grow into the one that takes flight with our collective hopes.  Orwell thought a lot about political ideas. They are seductive to be sure. I think a lot about electricity, roads and data flows. I had better feed all the chicks though.

They are sleeping. I am the morning person in the family

We haven’t been to a national park in 5 years. More than five years.

Going to get pizza at camp curry for dinner last night, I felt part of tradition. My mother and father came here as young people. Yosemite was recognized as a special park by Lincoln

This is a place of MY people. Campfires and hikes and admiring the beauty is what my people have done here.

Veronica said she wanted to see more waterfalls and big rocks when she woke up.

I think today I will override daddy’s rules and allow more off the path adventuring

two days. We are awake in our hotel stop on the way to yosemite.

She was super drowsy at first. THEN she wanted to have all our attention. She admired the orchards and teh horses and cows.

“I love farms!”

and she wished we were at Yosemite.

“Look at the train Veronica!’

Big train, carrying probably what the farms produced or needed.

“Maybe a train could take us to Yosemite…” she said slowly.

Good thinking.

No, we are not there yet.

It was an omnipresent part of Silicon Valley in the last half of the nineties: the logo shirt for a company that didn’t exist anymore. Techs could point to their drawers for a history of their employment and trade show attendance.

My last job of that heyday was for a hard-drive company: Quantum. I went to consult for them as they merged and spun off and otherwise writhed in agony with another hard drive company Maxtor.

When I told my nerd friends I was helping Quantum get bought they all said “What? Quantum is getting bought by Maxtor? Maxtor’s hard drives suck!” They were very disappointed that the good hardware company was losing to the bad one. The good die young. Quantum hard drives are gone.

Then 5 years later Maxtor got swallowed up into their bigger competitor Seagate. Another logo shirt of the no-more.

Except–Quantum isn’t gone. They did the hard thing at the right time, selling off what wouldn’t take them into the future and focusing on what would.

How did Quantum know? They dismantled muscle and bone of the company they’d built. I walked through soul viscera of the employees that year to do my job.  They’d had built it too, not just the executive suite. They wanted to keep on doing what they had done so well and were proud of.

Quantum stuck to their plan. They made it through. They still exist, producing different things.

I like to think that the integrity that led them build quality hard drives led them to make the tough decision to stop making them when the time was right. They had a firm grasp of the available choices and made them while they still had them.

Big picture. Look over the horizon and pack light.

It is easy to give in to curmudgeonitis: “Back in the day…” That glorious day! And if the best is yet to come we have to go build it. What got us here is yesterday’s weather.  Every day is a new day.

I don’t work for Quantum anymore. They got rid of me like they did most everybody. Maxtor wanted me to stay and be part of their thing.  Kind of begged me, really.

I walked. I got them through their merger and left. I wanted my time more than the job. I went to finish college. Me and Quantum made our choices.

Only years later did I see Quantum’s choice to shrink as visionary. They stuck to their convictions. That makes me think of these lines from Yeats:

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

are full of passionate intensity.

His post-modern cynicism passed judgment on passion.  One must consider all sides. ‘But what about…? and have you considered..?’

I wasn’t born yesterday. I am born today and every day. It’s not that my experience is worthless, it’s that I have to hold it looser. The order might need to be rearranged.

The more some things change the more they stay the same. My best convictions are the ones that fill me with passionate intensity.

She threw sand at someone at school today. She’d been spoken to, and had all day to process it

During bedtime, she said many things. “Mommy, sometimes when I’m upset, I’m not a kid anymore. I turn into a feeling mask. Then after a while, when I’m not upset I turn back into me.”

No kidding. “I feel that way sometimes too.”

As the hero of my own story–and aren’t we all?–I gloss over the failures. In fact, maybe I never acknowledge failures at all.

I certainly never failed! I was foiled. All my sincere and perfectly honorable efforts were foiled by bad guys. I hadn’t failed. I just hadn’t succeeded yet.

Chris bought me this book by a favorite columnist of his:

The Up side of Down: Why failing well is the Key to Success

Mcardle posits the idea that we need failure to get better. It’s impossible to argue. How else do we learn? Shouldn’t we start at one level of ability and get better?

In my senior year of college, I was entranced by a new professor. He had just come on staff, full of nervousness and tenure ambitions. He proudly said that he had a 4.0.

Imagine! A professor bragging to his students about his grades. I looked at him and thought…If you already knew everything you were learning–knew it so well you aced every single class–what the hell is learning about? His progress was a flat line.

He was proud of it. Of course he was! That’s the way the world works.

Well. That’s the way people work. The world has another way of working too.

If I try to lift something heavy, I won’t succeed. I will fail the first time. If I start with something lighter, and keep at it, I will succeed at the heavy thing. It takes failure

It takes trying.

My daughter is watching The Incredibles. A family of super heroes! They have powers! And they have failings.

The marriage, the kids, the relationships, and trying to make their way in the world.

AND THE EVIL ROBOT MONSTER!

Do you remember how Mr. Incredible fights the robot monster? He throws himself against it.

And it throws him back down.

Fail.

But Mr. Incredible is Super! He gets back up.

He gets back up. Oh God, Yes, he gets back up!

He keeps trying. He fails far more often than he succeeds. And his family does too. All of them fail and fail and fail and fail.

We know. They know. We all know that they will succeed in the end.

Because they are super.

I am not so super. I do not have the super suit to guarantee my ultimate success.

All I’ve got is little old me. I don’t want to fail. I am not at all sure that the fail will lead to something better.

This one life? That’s all I’ve got. What if I fail at it?

California Adventure amusement park, right next to Disneyland, has a ride called Soaring over California. I love the ride.  A huge screen shows arial views of beautiful California scenes. I first loved to watch the orchards and the mountains of Yosemite.

This! This beautiful state is where I live! From Humboldt to San Bernardino counties, I know this land. Near the very end, some jet planes zoom out over the folded desert.

If my feet could touch the ground, that is the moment when I would leap to my feet and punch the air with a cheer. YES! YES THAT! I WANT THAT!! It never fails to make me cry.

why? why am I crying? do I want to fly a plane?

no.

What then? What is the visceral push and joy? Joy tears. What?

I want that kinetic freedom. Those jets are soaring. They are not holding back. All out, no holding back!

Sometimes I see a chance for something. It seems impossible. What do I think is really going to happen if I try for that?

It won’t work. My efforts will fail.

Why am I crying?

McCardle says failure is not a reason to hold back. It can be as rewarding–even more rewarding!–than success.

At the start of anything, I can’t know how it will turn out. And this is the only life I’ve got. I don’t want to hold back for fear of the result. I am beginning to see that if I have a chance to go all out and not hold back, if I take that chance, I’ve already succeeded. Failure is only a by-product.

She’s five.

When she was freshly born, Chris said that having a kid was a countdown until they are five and could go to school. We were panicking at the onslaught of parenthood–the unrelenting nature of another demanding human being.

At five now, she loves books. She has for her entire life. She’d discovered the Reading Rainbow app, and now Levar Burton and his cast of actors read books to her. It’s my job to  cuddle her while the book is being read though.

Happy to delegate the actual reading of the words to the iPad, I listen to Udemy on my iPhone and to to learn my next skill. Cozy,

So the toileting, teeth brushing and bath went forward that night. The towelling and donning of the jammies. The crossing off the day on the whiteboard calendar we’ve given her to track the passage of time was complete.

And the iPad would not boot up.

No problem, right? We’ve got a huge pile of real books.

Veronica was sobbing. She’s tired. “It’s okay, we will read your princess book.” Once I started to read the adventures of Ariel and the shark, she stopped sobbing.

And Daddy came to safe the day, the device was restored and we finished the night with a few stories from Burton’s library.

Somehow, though, things had gotten off track. This small (to my mind) disturbance in the force changed the tone of everything. It’s hard enough for her to fall into the arms of Morpheus on an average night.

As I was flossing Chris came out and said she was sobbing and wouldn’t stop and he’d had it. I took over.

Sitting up in her bed, in her beloved pink bathrobe, her face controted. “Veronica, do you want to be sad?”

Violent head shake. No.

“Would you like to try to be happy?”

Assent.

“Ok, bunny, lay down. Put your head on the pillow.”

A child cries so openly. She caught and held her breath, trying to control the sobs. I remember doing that, fighting for control.

“Breathe” I tell her. We take long breaths together. I can see her visibly relax.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I was supposed to get a story from Reading Rainbow. And then the game wouldn’t come on. That’s not how you are supposed to treat your daughter.”

Well. How unfair is that? It’s broken and we fixed it anyway. She missed ONE STORY of her allotted three.

But according to her, that’s no way to treat your daughter.

Unrealistic expectations abound. Sometimes things break. But for her, that’s no excuse and no comfort.

She’s five. She’ll get over it.

I wonder. Other people push unrealistic expectations on me. Maybe the biggest difference is that she will cry and tell me what her unrealistic expectation is.

A lot of other people will have the expectation, and keep their disappointment tight to their chest. It could be unfair and it could be unavoidable. And still.

The injury remains.

“I’m sorry Veronica. You really wanted Reading Rainbow.”

That’s the thing about parenting. The humanness of it. It’s not fair.

Life isn’t fair.

Hello, Life. I name you Veronica. And you named me Mommy.

Breathe. That’s right. And another one…

That feels better.

While being tucked in to sleep, Veronica told Chris that she couldn’t sleep. Because she had one Featherbone and all the other bones didn’t like it. But the feather bone tickled her so she couldn’t sleep

I used to blog a lot more. I used to get a regular trickle of readers.

Now i have my mailing list, and I get a lot more appreciation from that than my blog got.

Funny how things work out.

And yet, I blog less frequently. I think the quality might be higher, though the output is less

I find myself coming up with ideas for the next weekly wonder throughout the week. and then forgetting almost all of the ideas. Sometimes I remember them, but discard them because they don’t hold my interest.

I wonder if I made it a goal to blog every day if I would.

I wonder.

Would I like my life better if I wrote every day?

that’s the real question, isn’t it?

Would my life be improved?