Well, it IS the best medicine

I feel so much more relaxed since I listened to a few seconds of several different “guided meditations” that I found on you-tube when I searched for “meditation for sleep.”

Not because they put me into a peaceful, trance-like state, but because they made me laugh. Probably you had to be there (and maybe there is something deeply wrong with me, or at least deeply unfit for the world of guided meditation). So much is about the effect of voices, and I’m sure each individual will respond very differently. IME Brits are tart, not syrupy, so when I hear a syrupy voice with a British accent, I’m already primed to find this very strange, and when he says “Tonight we’ll do a guided meditation to help you sleep,” my response is “No, we won’t.” (Speaking of oppositional, N&M!) The sl-o-o-ow speech on the ones I started trying to listen to makes me think “Duuuuuude, are you on ‘luuuuuuudes? And wouldn’t it be more effective to take something than to fall about laughing while listening to guided meditations?”

I think I’ll stick to rain noise to help me sleep. But hey! Like I said, I’m a lot more relaxed for the laugh, so I can’t say I got nothing out of it! Maybe I should spend some time before bed on the Comedy Channel. Only my sense of humor is so skewed that might not help.

Happiness vs. familiarity

Familiarity breeds, as they say.

But seriously, that feeling of recognition and comfort is not necessarily a good thing. I had to head to the Internet Archive to get this post (via a link from someone’s half-decade-old blog post):

https://web.archive.org/web/20160712082102/http://thephilosophersmail.com/relationships/how-we-end-up-marrying-the-wrong-people/

but I’m glad I read it, not because I married the wrong person but because of all the things we worked through on the way to being the right people for each other, and another reason that will appear below. I’m going to quote the third reason why “we end up marrying the wrong people”:

“Three: We aren’t used to being happy

“We believe we seek happiness in love, but it’s not quite as simple. What at times it seems we actually seek is familiarity – which may well complicate any plans we might have for happiness.

“We recreate in adult relationships some of the feelings we knew in childhood. It was as children that we first came to know and understand what love meant. But unfortunately, the lessons we picked up may not have been straightforward. The love we knew as children may have come entwined with other, less pleasant dynamics: being controlled, feeling humiliated, being abandoned, never communicating, in short: suffering.

“As adults, we may then reject certain healthy candidates whom we encounter, not because they are wrong, but precisely because they are too well-balanced (too mature, too understanding, too reliable), and this rightness feels unfamiliar and alien, almost oppressive. We head instead to candidates whom our unconscious is drawn to, not because they will please us, but because they will frustrate us in familiar ways.

“We marry the wrong people because the right ones feel wrong – undeserved; because we have no experience of health, because we don’t ultimately associate being loved with feeling satisfied.”

This familiarity is also a significant reason why we live in a house we want to sell. When I walked into it, it felt like home. Not too much so; if it had been more recognizably just like the house I grew up in, I would have run right back out. But enough like that original house to feel familiar and sort of right. I conveniently forgot what very conflicted feelings I have around the whole concept of home in general and about houses of that vintage and style in particular. It took time living here to realize how very heimlich, in a bad way (that is, frustrating in familiar ways), this house actually is. For me. It would be a wonderful house for someone else, with different baggage (or no baggage!). It’s true that I have found it rather therapeutic to correct this house’s problems and to re-make it in the image of a functional relationship rather than the heavily dysfunctional one my parents had. But it would have been a lot cheaper to resume talk therapy!

Next time, I’m going to look for what my adult self actually wants, and not listen to feelings about familiar.

The Very Local News; or, How I Spent a Summery Saturday Morning

• I woke up at 7:00, Glendower at my feet, thinking that I needed to go outside as soon as possible. A few minutes’ thought allowed me to recall that I needed to release the feral cat who was recovering in the garage (TN done yesterday, R today).
• After feeding the indoor cats, I woke Sir John for the ceremonial Release of Cat, since it was his concern for this cat that led to the TNR operation. Feral cat, a ringer for Glendower, has been hanging out for a month or two. I thought he might be a neighbor’s pet, but inquiries led nowhere, and his behavior at the vet certainly indicated feral status. We put some food in his usual hang-out corner of the garden, and hoped he’d have a bite before dashing off, but as soon as I got the trap open he leapt the fence and was gone.
• Sir John went back to bed, where he remains (he seems to be on Hawaii time lately).
• I read three essays in The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe.
• The urge to go out kept nagging me until I remembered that I had planned to go to the Farmers’ Market. I walked, taking the long way so as to go by the ATM, admiring other people’s gardens (and noting a few that have that vile beast, creeping bellflower, invading their lawns), and greeting dog-walkers, joggers, and religious proselytizers.
• I bought two pounds of rhubarb, two potted herbs, and two heirloom tomatoes (I think a Cherokee Purple and a Lucky Cross).
• At home, the first course of lunch was two half-tomatoes sliced with salt and pepper.
• I drank mint-ginger iced tea with a splash of lime seltzer. A couple of weeks ago, I found ginger-lemon seltzer at TJ’s, but I like this homemade blend better.
• Dessert was a brownie from this recipe. These are lethal! Their impact is probably more intense because, my 8×13″ pan being packed away, I baked them in an 8×8″ pan for 50 minutes. They separated: the bottom layer is lighter, gooey, rather caramel-like, then comes a thick fudgy layer, and on top there’s a thin crunchy crust. I think I might capitalize on this tendency by baking them over a pie crust next time.
• After lunch I made rhubarb compote. Two pounds rhubarb chopped into roughly 3/4 inch pieces, one cup sugar, half-teaspoon salt, hefty dash cinnamon, and a knob of ginger peeled and cut into three thick slices. Put it all into a pot on very low heat until eventually it boils and the rhubarb gets as soft as you like it. Fish out the ginger slices. Put them in a glass and pour more seltzer over them.

Memoria

Memoria, in Latin, is feminine. It declines as follows:

Singular nominative (subject case): memoria                    plural: memoriae

Singular genitive (possessive): memoriae                           plural: memoriarum

Singular dative (indirect object): memoriae                       plural: memoriis

Singular accusative (direct object): memoriam                  plural: memorias

Singular ablative (object of prepositions such as with, by, from): memoriā          plural: memoriis

Thus, in the well-known phrase in memoriam, you need an a, not a u. There is no such word as *memorius in Latin. If you can’t get your genders and cases right, stick to plain English: in memory of, or just in memory if you aren’t going to add a person’s name, is clear and elegant.

In memoriAm.

Diary of an academic lady trying to sell her house (1)

Since Undine said she’d enjoy it . . .

In March, order tickets for all-day event in Our Quaint Village. In April, Real Estate Agent decides to take advantage of traffic to Our Quaint Village for all-day event and schedule Open House for that day. Raise eyebrows but Sir John decides we can Make It Work, so agree, and make Plans accordingly.

In May, Plans come unraveled due to being poorly following misguided polite acceptance of dish containing onions while at luncheon with a friend (friend seems sceptical re low-FODMAP diet, in general; mem. consider whether this means one must affirm Courage of Convictions before eating with this friend, or if one should rather avoid any occasion involving food and plan Healthy Walks or similar instead). Am not in condition to prepare house before the day of the Event and Open House; husband, being Vampire, is neither up early On The Day nor did he prep the night before (probably due to consideration of poorly self trying to sleep, as is very Considerate vampire).

Thus find ourselves and House finally ready two hours after Event starts, and one hour before Open House. Query: shut up cats early? Go check in for Event, then return at once to incarcerate cats? After quarter-hour discussion, decide to trap cats, since now have only one half hour before we would have to do so anyway. Venture forth to check in and begin our Day Out. Long Lines ensue. After two portions of Event, once again we have not enough time to begin another, nor is it quite time to return home to release cats. Telephone Agent. Return home, consult briefly with Agent (eight groups visited Open House, more than ever before; question is whether they are Looky-Lous or truly Interested), send Sir John out for the breakfast he did not have time for earlier, restore litter boxes and release cats. Thunderstorm begins.

Sir John returns home, decides he is not up for any more Event. Having spent whackload on tickets, I return to Event. Thanks to storm, lines now much shorter. Determinedly complete my Day Out. Drive home, exhausted and damp, and put feet up to watch last stage of Tour of California. Sir John says if ever have similar conflict in future, refuse to schedule Open House. Own view: if ever eat something I ought not two days before Open House, cancel same.

Stevie Smith, 1937

From a letter to Naomi Mitchison:

“I think at the present moment you are in a state of mind that hungers for the disaster it fears. If there are these forces of evil you see you are siding with them in allowing your thought to panic. Your mind is your own province—the only thing that is. Yes, this brings up another point. There is a sort of hubris in this unreal worrying. For if you have achieved peace in your own mind when the worse happens (if it does) you will have reserves of strength to meet it. And if you have not achieved peace in your own mind how can you expect the world to do any better. You are the world and so am I. And at the moment the world is a great deal too articulate! (You will agree!!) and worries too much and so on.”

Quoted in Mitchison’s memoir, You May Well Ask (London: Gollancz, 1979). p. 155.

 

The new front

Garlic mustard.

I have mentioned before that I think the previous owners’ notion of gardening was to plant a batch of invasive or aggressive spreaders and let them battle it out. I’ve got the bellflower mostly licked, though eternal vigilance is the price of freedom and I have spotted a few patches where I need to dig or apply super-nasty weedkiller. The bishop’s weed, similarly, is beaten back, although, again, I have to be vigilant about keeping it contained. Last fall I ripped out as much as I could of the oregano that was taking over the front yard. Of course some of it is now coming back . . . and what are all these little heart-shaped leaves? OMG. Another invasive species! FML.

Sir John said, “You don’t seem to find gardening very satisfying.”

See, I have visions of just, you know, planting stuff, pruning bushes, doing some weeding, attracting pollinators and butterflies, and enjoying being outside admiring all the pretty things. Instead I have this non-native toxic dump of a garden in which I have to keep digging out stuff that doesn’t belong here, some of which will actively poison the native pollinators etc that I would like to attract. I really want to have a tantrum and wail that it’s not fair. The garden is another reason I wish we’d never seen this house.

(Do I? If I leave it better than I found it? If I hadn’t spent years digging out all this crap, it would be able to spread all over the neighborhood—even more than it does now, that is—so I suppose I’m doing all my neighbors a favor by busting my butt on this stuff. Attacking invasive species may be my version of someone is wrong on the internet.)

It feels a lot like the Harry Dresden books: take out one predator and you just get something else nasty moving into that spot. I also have ivy, lemon balm, Rose of Sharon, and creeping Charlie. I’m keeping an eye on the ivy, which is doing much better than when it was choked by the bishop’s weed and bellflower; the shoots of lemon balm are so far quite small (I know, I know) and at least it smells nice; and if creeping Charlie, with its pretty purple flowers, were my only problem I’d be thrilled to bits.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, and fill up the garbage with our invasive dead.