Hiding behind nuns

Years ago, I took a trip to Italy, starting with a few days visiting A, who was subletting a studio apartment in Rome during her first Fullbright year.  She loaned me a fabulous DK guidebook, gave me advice about gelato (make sure it's made AT THE SHOP), suggested places to visit, and met me for dinner at fabulous restaurants.  But the most important advice regarded Rome traffic:  drivers ignore the traffic lights and your only recourse is to catch their eyes, glare, and assert your pedestrian rights while continuing to maintain eye contact.

I never had the guts to do it, so I found groups of nuns or school kids and crossed with them.

I've thought of this a lot since moving to Albuquerque.  The drivers here are notorious for being drunk and/or distracted, ignoring pedestrians or actively running them down, and weaving in and out of traffic.  There is no such thing as checking the blind spot or leaving an escape route or gap.  There are two freeways that bisect the city east/west and north/south, and the speed limit is 65 mph, even in the heart of the city.  Lane changes are abrupt, and I've watched cars essentially drive diagonally across four lanes to get to the faster lane or the right exit.

I spend a lot of time driving the surface streets or the frontage road:  the drivers are just as crazy, but the speeds are better, as long as it's not 3 am.  (One of my student staff said an acquaintance died in an early-morning motorcycle crash.  I asked if he was wearing a helmet, but apparently he was going 100 mph down Montgomery - one of my main routes home -  so a helmet wouldn't have done much for him.) 

There are billboards everywhere saying DNTXT, and numerous commercials about people who died or became quadriplegic because they were texting while driving.  There's a big campaign to reduce distracted driving, but I don't see much evidence of success.

So, it's especially frustrating that D is totally refusing to stop talking on his cell while he drives. He says, "I've driven like this for years, I can do it, we're fine."  I grab the chicken bar as he swerves towards the next lane or bears down on the slowing driver ahead of us while he wrestles with the phone. 

There are no nuns to hide behind.

Schizoid Sunday

I woke up to the scents of coffee, bacon, and toasted bread product.  D had been up for hours:  he drove out to watch the sun rise, explored Juan Tabo,  and then sat in the parking lot outside Einstein's bagels, waiting for them to open.  He bought cinnamon raisin bagels and honey schmear.  He toasted them to perfection, spread the right amount of schmear, made coffee, fried up some pepper bacon to the level of crunch I prefer (just this side of dead, please), put it all on the tiled tray, and sashayed into the bedroom.

He did decline to bring me the paper, and when he leaned over to give me a kiss he spilled coffee over the quilt.  But these are small things.  It was a lovely way to wake up.

We had a semi-leisurely morning before getting ready for 9:30 church.  The ministers are apparently taking the summer off, as is the choir.  So the service is run by congregants, and the music is provided by various small groups.  Today's music was jazz standards, e.g., Irving Berlin, played by a clarinet and electric jazz guitar duo:  quite lovely but I wanted to be sitting in a dark club, sipping on a nice red and holding D's hand.  It seemed more than a little odd to be sitting in a pew, looking out past the altar area into the sunny nature garden, trying to create a reverent mood.

The homilies centered on the concept of "service as a spiritual practice."  I pondered:  I spend most of my days working in a service profession, and it has never felt spiritual to me.  In fact, quite the opposite:  after a day spent fielding other people's stresses, I feel drained and useless.  Yes, I mainly enjoy my interactions with public and staff, but there is so much that doesn't work, both inside and outside the library.  I want to fix it, but I can only attend to the problem directly in front of me, and I can only use the tools I've been provided.  It does keep me posted on the cultural and societal norms and it does connect me to my community.  But I don't think you can count, "Please God, don't let him come back," as a real prayer.

The other day, I watched as a new colleague reprogrammed a hot pink second-hand Nook for an octogenarian who had purchased it as a gift for his granddaughter.  My jaw dropped when he handed her the gift bag and tissue paper, and it hit the floor when she wrapped up the Nook, flourishing the paper with a professional swirl and saying, "Let's add another one to make it look more luscious."  And she didn't blink an eye when he gave her the leftover wrappings to bundle up for him.  This does not constitute service, IMHO, nor is it a spiritual act.  It was a stunning display of lack of boundaries, and a clear indicator of the dearth of connections and social services:  didn't he have any family to help him?

I thought about that.  I thought about the other colleague chasing after the young man who set off the security gates trying to steal a book.  Why steal a book?  There are no fines, he can keep it for months without repercussions.  What caused him to fall to that place where it seemed easier to walk off with free materials rather than fix the problem with his card or do whatever was necessary to participate appropriately in a community institution?  Why did my colleague feel the need to safeguard property at his own personal risk?  Was he at risk?  Was this service?  Wouldn't true service be to find the young man some assistance?  What do you do, when confronted with needs and boundary confusion that seem insoluble?  How do you serve appropriately?

I don't know the answers, but I did decide it's time to find an animal shelter and serve there.  It will be a true spiritual act to walk a dog and pet a cat, I think.  At any rate, it will feel good.

After church, we had planned to get some sun by the pool, and then drive up to Las Golondrinas for the Santa Fe wine festival.  Sadly, things didn't work out that way.  The derailment began when I checked D's i-Phone for the address of Rebel Doughnuts:  more grease and fat and carbs were needed before we could even think of the next step.  En route to the map app, I found a text to D from K and an e-mail to me from B, and learned that all hell was breaking loose back in my PDX house.  This put me into a deep funk, which I shared with D.   Although we did get the doughnuts, I was unable to enjoy the weird ones (Rebel Doughnuts is Albuquerque's version of Voodoo Donuts.)

Clearly the first order of business was to try to attend to the situation, long distance. While I wrestled with e-mail, D began planting the tomatoes and basil and peppers he had purchased on Saturday. He discovered he did not have enough soil or pots for the job, and was on his way to Smith's. Ever the budget-minded person, I suggested we try the thrift stores on Menaul. While we did find Re:Tail to be a pleasant thrift store, no one seems to donate planters or gardening equipment. I found some much-need curtains for $4, and served my furry friends in that way, but after 2 fruitless hours of exploration, we ended up back at Smith's. It was frustrating: D loves to shop, but I don't, and neither of us wanted to be roaming the strip malls on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Planting completed and the house put in order, it was time to move northwards.  The drive up was beautiful, but marred by disharmony between partners, the second time in the day.  Or was it the third?  However, the wine festival was fun:  booths of wines, crafts, and foods, plus a stage of very loud hip hop, fortunately far enough away from most of our activities to provide festive, not intrusive, background music.  We were there in the last 2 hours of the festival, and you could tell the vendors just wanted to be gone, but they were gracious enough.  For $13 apiece, we got a tasting glass and free tastes at all the wine booths.  We discovered some nice wineries near Albuquerque and plan to visit the tasting rooms in the near future.  Most of the vineyards are in the Deming area, down by the southern border, so some day we may take a overnighter to the area:  check out Trinity site and then drown our sorrows.

Dinner at Maria's in Santa Fe, and then a silent drive home:  we can't seem to go more than 2 hours before a bone of contention arises.  And instead of burying that bone, we worry at it.  Stupid:  it doesn't do anything but hurt our teeth, metaphorically speaking.

Once home, I found another e-mail from PDX.  My home has been designated a pest hole, myself "white trash."  Or at least my yard, which has always been a jungle and still has stashes of junk left over from the March remodel and J's painting work.  It also appears that none of the leases and agreements that I have in place are holding up, and that will mean loss of vital income.  But I don't want to fight it.  Some of the unhappy renters are friends, and it costs money to defend against suits from those who are not. I am so weary of trying to keep on top of everything with limited budget, skills and time.  I understand for the first time how people can leave cars up on blocks for months at a time.  It seems that for every step forward, I get pushed back two.  I have been trying so hard to take care of business, but my efforts are clearly inadequate to the task.  It seems I haven't hit rock bottom yet:  I need to lose my house and the rest of my friends in addition to my job and my savings and my self-respect.

Maybe I just need to embrace my white trash self.

I tried to read and meditate and get back some of the good times of the day, but it was all too overwhelming and schizoid.  I bounced back and forth between joys and sorrows, and it took several hours to finally reach the middle ground of sleep.

And now I'm trying to figure out how best to spend the rest of my weekend.  I have a lot of business to attend to, but am not sure there is any point to it.  I posted this to FB:

Since there is no way

I can get ev'rything done,

Shall I do nothing?

Lisa says "yup."  I think I'll follow her advice.

A perfect autumn day

After several days of horizontal rain, Black Friday produced blue skies, fluffy clouds, and cool autumnal sunshine.  We started the day with a dog walk around the block. The fallen leaves glowed in the early morning light, dotted with jewel-like drops.  It was clearly going to be a gorgeous day, and we had wine waiting for us at Torii Mor and David Hill wineries.  It took awhile to get our show on the road, but by 2 pm we were Yamhill County-bound to pick up our wine.

We decided to take the route via Champoeg, and we missed our turnoff.  So, we found ourselves in Salem, looking for 221 northbound.  Fortunately, it was still a lovely drive, with an empty winding road, pumpkin-filled fields, hazy multicolored hillsides, and reflective waters.

Torii Mor was having a Thanksgiving Weekend party, and they had erected a large tent behind the tasting room, complete with space heaters, music, tables, and cheese and crackers.  The wines were the usual high quality, and I had a fun conversation with the field enologist, a retired French military man in his late 40s.  He was born in the western Languedoc area, so we spent a lot of time comparing our impressions of French wines.  The wine-maker was also French, but they were very different.  He was short and grey, with male pattern baldness, while the enologist was taller than D, with a thick head of hair and a gift of gab.  But the wine-maker talked D into buying a discounted case of wine, so we have spent our food budget for next month.

Fortunately, we have plenty of food in the freezer.