I found my moment of Zen in her words:

I’m unhappy — I’m responsible. I close my eyes — I’m responsible. I forget that I’m responsible, but I am. I told you escape is a pipe dream. After all everything is beautiful. You only have to take an interest in things, see their beauty. After all, things are just what they are. A face is a face. Plates are plates.  Men are men. And life is life.

The Zen of French New Wave? Also, at what point can we just accept that it’s now French Old Wave? It’s black and white. They talk slow. They dance funny, and they all smoke.

The REMIX, an after-hours museum party for young professionals to scope each other out under the guise of “enjoying art,” is the said event. My behavior that night got me thinking, I’m not like other people—I need to understand deeply why I do unproductive things, so I don’t continue repeating them. I was invited to attend by a good friend looking out for my social life. I suspected that the boy I occasionally rub naked parts with might be there. Of course I wanted him to be there. I dolled myself up, so in case he was there, he’d want to spend the night with me, and maybe we’d even have a nice conversation over breakfast.

At the event, I saw some of his friends but not him, so I texted him. A few texts back and forth and he showed up. I did need a glass of wine to get the courage to text him.  Why did I need to have a mild buzz to do this? I had to turn off the shame I didn’t want to feel from my worry over the boy and my friends at the event perceiving the action as me being easy . From them thinking that I was setting up a situation where I’d be taken advantage of. Wait a second—I want this!

But I also know how it looks from the outside. In the past I myself judged this sort of behavior.  Of course having both groups of friends played into it. I was too worried that his  peeps would think I was easy since they might see him leave with me, and my friends would give me the usual reprimands like – Oh girl you deserve better, he’s not committing stay away, and such . The outcome: avoiding the potential shame/external disapproval in that instance proved more valuable than having the boy over, which is really what I wanted.

Millions of years of evolution make us social creatures, which is great for hunting and building planes but may not be so great if our desires conflict with social norms (which, as any student of history knows, are dynamic and changing). Read Paul Graham for more. The checks on  social behavior are shame and guilt. But, like fear, they can stop us from living a rich, maybe not an easy, but surely a more interesting life. As Bruce Springsteen would say: “You can’t start a fire worrying about your little world falling apart.” I’m not advocating irresponsible behavior, but I am suggesting we recognize the power of social norms in shaming women for trying to get what they want. Feminists have been making this argument since the 1960s, but it’s one thing to know this intellectually and another thing to realize that I’ve internalized social norms to the point that I censor my wants. Feminism, whether it applies to sexual norms or beyond, can serve as a reminder to women that it can be simple: do what you want and don’t do what you don’t want. We don’t have to be bound to other people’s desires and standards.

Observations of my own and observed behavior of other women in conjunction with conversations with someone well-versed in evolutionary biology, we were able to unearth four common norms that play into the struggle between our wants and our shoulds:

1) have to always be on the hunt for a serious relationship

2) setup checks to gauge a guy’s interest (this is often referred to “games”)

3) not be too enthusiastic about interests and other commitments, as it may hurt feelings

4) the person you are being intimate has to be the center of your attention

These social norms may get in the way of what we want because a) they pull us in different directions, the shoulds and the wants, b) while we may want to override them, we choose to abide them because judgment hurts, and c) we’re not aware of their significant power over our decisions and actions . The result we don’t get what we want, hurt people with the confusion and tangle ourselves up. Awareness is the key and also the challenges because social norms, assumptions, and prejudices are automatic if you allow them to be. Read the The Social Animal for more.

I suspect some of the reasons things didn’t work out for the boy I like with other ladies is that they operated under these norms. Things didn’t work out for me with guys for the same reasons—I played into the norms. But as evidenced by this email, I’m not like other girls, which I know can throw guys off as well.

I’m choosing to proceed with the “wants.” I’d rather channel my energy toward writing, having a genuinely good time, making meaningful connections, and increasing my experience than participating in bullshit, which, like many women, I’ve internalized. I am perhaps also a bit different because when a guy gets real serious real fast, I run.  A companion, a partner, someone to physically connect, for sure! But I don’t want to be someone’s everything. It seems dangerous. Religion has for a long time pointed to the dangers of making gods of humans and centering all devotion around them. Plagues and lightning rods ensue!

So to the next boy I rub naked parts with, I just want to see where it goes. I want to contact you whenever I feel like it and you say yes or no. It could even be just for an hour without any kind of expectations or judgments. It would still be meaningful.  Relationships and friendships arise in as many ways as a leaf can fall. It’s true that I may get attached and you may not and that’s a risk but overall I hope spending quality time with you is an overall value add in my life, and to push something away just because there’s that risk seems counterproductive. I might be a little sad if it ends because I really enjoyed your company, but I’d manage and hopefully find a suitable replacement.

Solution: The MIR work station.  No disrespect to Richard Wright, Roberto Bolano, Francis Fukuyama, or Milan Kundera intended.  Nanos gigantium humeris insidentes  – my efforts stand on the shoulder of giants, literally. Just not my favorite giants. I used books I’m not likely to reference to elevate my desk so I can stand and work. It’s a cheaper alternative to an adjustable Aeron-caliber chair and a change from the eight hours of sitting at my day job.

The workstation adheres to ergonomic sensibilities. My elbows are at approximately 90 degrees and my eyes look straight keeping my chin level. I use my iPad as a second screen via AirDisplay.  I also spend more time on task because standing is more expensive than sitting for the body. When I get a bit stiff I pace around the room and return. Shifting weight from one leg to another and occasional swaying keeps me moving and alert.

The iPad is also useful when I’m on the go, especially when I ride my bike. I take advantage of the endorphins generated by biking and make pit stops at cafes or libraries on my path. The iPad and bluetooth keyboard are lightweight enough to carry around on rides and the endorphins override the usual distractions mentioned above.  The physical exploration on my bike opens my mind to new ideas and infuses a sense of possibility.

Observing the habits of artists, I’ve adopted carrying around a small notebook for jotting down observations, new words, and interesting read or overheard statements. I prefer spiral notebooks because I don’t have to put any effort in keeping them open as I write – efficiency gains are vital with analog tools. I alternate between cheap Staples and luxurious Clairefontaine varieties.

Pens of choice: Pilot Multiball (from Japan) can be found here, and Kaweco ALSport fountain pen (fits nicely into lady pockets)

I use Evernote for organizing reading notes, quotes, articles, lists, research ideas, and outlines. It has a search function, easy to use UI, and most importantly, I can access it on all of my devices including my day job computer. Dropbox is useful in the same way for sharing drafts and accessing files on any computer with an internet connection.

The most important tool of my work station is my guide through this whole process. Jake is a talented man and a great teacher who I can count on for valuable feedback and a stern kick in the ass. He’s enabling me to leapfrog faster over ineffective but common stages of novice writing.

On the left of my computer is a quote from Jake:

“Too much fiction is just about dumb people with dumb problems doing dumb things that the application of some minor amount of logic would solve. Bored with life because you’re a vaguely artistic hipster? Get a real job, or learn some science, or be a real artist, or do something meaningful. The world is full of unmet needs and probably always will be. But so many characters wander around protected by their own little bubles. Get out! The world is a big place.”

Finding the right tools and creating a working environment that limits distractions and promotes focus has been extremely helpful. I still face productivity challenges – Facebook, checking email, looking for my BFF Min Moon or a guy I really like to sign into chat – but having a set, physical space for my work is a  constant reminder of the sustained effort I can no longer avoid. I’ve avoided it too long.

You hand me plants;
I promise to provide a caring home.

Painfully familiar, too bare,
not knowing bareness is the loam.

And as I pull away,
your smell,
your cleanly shaven face-
it lingers on the drive.

Looking ahead, I peek behind and see
shadows of broken plans, unspoken words dance across the seats.

It is the people, smiles, glances,
the smells and cleanly shaven faces.
The homes we build of undetermined places.

I had been alone in the compartment until he boarded in Rennes. He gave a conciliatory nod and asked if he could take the window seat. A beige fixed-hinge tabletop separated our bottom halves. He took yesterday’s Le Monde and Wired out of his black backpack and stacked both neatly in his corner of the table. His heavy lids suggested he would read neither.

I was right. First the pinky would fall out of his mouth and join the rest of his fingers curled into a pale cheek. The head would tilt down as the lids closed. After a few gentle sways of his shoulders and a slight twitch of the knees, he would float away. He was an exceptionally neat and quiet sleeper. As he slept, we’d finally be in each other’s company, free from the compulsion to enforce separation with books and music players. He’d wake to gaze out the window for a few minutes and be back to sleep shortly. At times I’d join him.

Two hours after his arrival, the train came to a stop but not at a station. Instead we were in a field with two barns visible on our side. After twenty minutes at rest the doors opened. Passengers disembarked. Many put down jackets and sat on the grass. Children ran around, some played hide and seek, their parents begging them not to enter the barns. I sat instinctually a few feet outside our window, watching the young man, now more alert, pacing between the more accepting passengers pulling sandwiches and water bottles from their bags. The young man would eventually follow suit and sit down. His knees, unaccustomed to sitting on the ground, pierced the landscape.

After exchanging grumbles with those near me, now sitting in silence, I began to feel my shoulders curl into my chest. I put my head down into the crease of my elbow and intertwined forearms. I was now only half-hearing conversations, rustling bags, and feet crunching through weeds. I’d eventually disconnect. After what didn’t feel like much more than fifteen minutes, with my head still down, I heard pages turning. Peeking through my forearm, I saw the young man. I knew if I raised my head we’d have to speak.

“I’m sorry I should have asked your name earlier,” he said as soon as I looked up.
“It’s Amadeo.”
“Joseph. Nice to meet you.”
“You as well.”
“Where are you from?” He detected an accent in my French, as I did in his.
“Alsace, and you?”
“Canada”
“What brings you?”
“A new job. Well, the same job but at the office in Paris.”
“Same job, new office, new continent,” I pause and think of Mathilde. “I hope you find what you couldn’t at home.”
“I wasn’t exactly home where I was last.” He looks away.“ What do you do?”
“I’m a construction planner.”
“I hope we get going before five. I need to meet my new boss for supper and any longer I’d miss him.”
“I hope for your sake we do. First impressions, you know how they work.”

To ease his nerves, I suggest we walk around to stretch our legs. On his way up to his feet, he rips off a limb from a hearty weed. He peels the young bark revealing the limb’s moist flesh. He rubs it between his fingers as we walk. His nerves make him talk. He tells me he worked in America the last eight years. He becomes playful once he lets go of impressing me with lists of job duties and layouts of offices he’d worked in. I couldn’t really grasp what he did. His parents were divorced. The mother remarried a younger man. The father, long due for retirement, still worked in a law firm.

I asked if he’d left anyone behind. He was confused and asked what I meant. What else: I meant a woman. He said no, and I sensed I was getting closer to the motive for the move. Presumptuously I warned him the les femmes d’ici, though better dressed, were no easier to melt. As he stumbled through reasons of why he couldn’t find himself in America, I grew envious of his hope. I saw Mathilde’s green eyes and red hair.

We heard a whistle in the distance and uniforms waving us back toward the train. The young man thanked me. We returned to our compartment and our gazing-dozing pattern for the remainder of the trip. As I left in Le Mans and he continued on to Paris, I wished him luck and hope that he’d find what he was looking for, and her. I pulled out a folded note from my wallet and handed it to him.

I overcorrected in the quest of melting you.
I wished for the drop that would start it all anew.
I did not callous your hands,
Or push you to rip up your heels on cobbled roads.
I did not have the strength to stretch your heart to hold the blood for two.
See the flesh tones spilling out of the lines.
Find your tribe and call it our own.

Mathilde, 1990

Profile I wrote for Department of Environmental and Occupational Health: Researcher from Italy studies damaging neurotoxins: Gennaro Giordano

A story I published in Seattle’s Hoarse Literary Journal was mentioned on the Richard Hugo House Blog:
Tradition and Magic: Hoarse #3
Apparently my genre is flash fiction. Think fast!

“Elena Reitman’s flash fiction maintains a conflicted tension and release through the identity, absorption and questioning of the Jewish culture.”

4-prong metal arm slowly mixing cream into cheese.

Churn: The metal arm agitating the mixture is a necessary step to creating a solid. We use the word churn to describe working through things in our internal life. We twist and turn, letting the bits of what will lead to insight mix and mingle with the the right degree of inertia. We brush up against ideas and make connections among curds of information until we come up with something solid.

Off the top of my head, a range of works including Pixar’s UP, Saul Bellow’s Herzog, Alfred Stieglitz’s photographs, and Georgia O’Keefe’s flowers seem no less potent than works by Botticelli, Beethoven, Kundera, or Calvino. If the question is really about “high art” whatever that may mean to you, it likely doesn’t change the proportion of people who seek out art for entertainment and escape from apathy or a malaise.

In 2009 National Public Radio reported that the attendance for every major-league baseball, basketball, football and hockey game in the US was approximately 140 million. The number of people who visited America’s museums was about 850 million!

But, why no Minister of Culture and such a confusing web of federal arts commissions and appointees? This may give off signals that as a civilization we don’t value culture and the arts. Defining culture in the US melting pot within its rhetoric of freedom of expression may be at odds with an institutional body, especially a federal one. This oversight may imply “official” definition of culture, a slippery slope to censorship.

Historically, it has proven to be a political dead end.

In 1859, President James Buchanan appointed a National Arts Commission, but it disbanded after two years. Teddy Roosevelt made a similar attempt 50 years later, and in 1937, during a fit of New Deal-fueled government expansion, a New York congressman introduced legislation to create a Department of Science, Art, and Literature, but the proposal never got beyond committee. Subsequent efforts to create a centralized cultural agency were hampered at least in part by negative associations with Nazi propaganda and “cultural planning” in the USSR.” (Christopher Beam, Slate)

The official line may read something like: American culture is freedom from the need for an official definition of culture.

A Ministry of Arts may not have emerged in the United States because artists are and have been largely privately funded and less dependent on state support. This does mean the arts are subject to market fluctuations. While a great deal of European art was funded by centralized churches and royal courts, private patronage from merchants from Italian and Flemish city-states funded many historically significant works. Examples include van Dyke’s portrait commissions and the Palazzo di Rucellai and the Scrovegni Chapel in Italy. Economic growth and an emergence of a middle class tied art closer to private funds.

I decided to explore this topic after listening to a TED talk by a Shrin Neshat: Art in exile. Neshat is an Iranian photographer and filmmaker living in exile. Her work explores cultural, religious and political topics as they relate to identities of Muslim women. She concludes the talk with concerns over the West’s focus of art and culture as entertainment. Her conclusion made me think about what causes the “lack of culture” critique of the US, and how it may now extend broadly to the West.

Seeking something higher is part of us. We do it through religion, history, family roots, ideals, and beauty. Neshat may be warning us that we are not making the higher a priority.

Objectively, I am fortunate enough to live in a city with a regular stream of artistic production. It may not always fit my taste or temperament, but it’s not lacking. Perhaps what is really at issue is taste and purpose, not presence of American culture and art.