Breton Kvetching

I have now been thinking about Oprah more after viewing  this blog from a link in the NY Times.

I have been thinking about the blog’s project…that is, to really live O’s advice for a year and see if her life is better. As far as I can tell, sometimes this requires cutting out magazine pictures and making a collage, or giving one’s self Shiatsu massages.

And I think…is this really the way to Live Your Best Life, as Ms O herself puts it?

Because – y’know just thinking off the top of my head here…wouldn’t one do better to like maybe kind of send out more resumés, or in general dealing directly with the world and one’s personal issues…

And..on the other hand, I completely get it, and have a lot of respect for what Oprah has to offer. Scoff if you will (and sometimes, I do) I really get a lot out of the magazine that I have shipped out here to France.
For me it all comes down to the comfort factor.

At this point in my life I know myself pretty well. I make a lot of noise, yes, I seem confident, even (gasp!) somewhat aggressive (God forbid) at times…but the inner Kvetcher is really a girl with a marshmallow heart and the sensitivety and sweetness of a gummy worm (eeewww…enough already…).

Meaning, I find a lot of comfort in what Oprah offers. The world is NOT AN EASY PLACE FOR WOMEN. No, I will never be able to afford the luxurious insanely expensive (and absolutely essential, apparently) skin-care regimes and sumptuous shoes and widgets priced (oh be still my heart!) UNDER 500 dollars…

But anyone can give herself some Shiatsu. Or cut up a magazine, like when we were 3.

I can take the world only just so much before I want to go crawling home with my tail between my legs and watch hours and hours of pirated Grey’s Anatomy over the internet. I can take just so much of the expectations and demands of work and family…the feeling that there is never time enough for whatever feels absolutely essential to me and completely insipid and extraneous to anyone else. The Oprah magazine kind of makes this dichotomy (Active! Effective! Modern! vs….my inner Gummy Worm) more tolerable. I can get into the cozy mush of cozy female homey warm-fuzzy fussiness, all the while learning that I am still an Active! Effective! highly toned and well-groomed and low cholesterol …

It still seems to me that femaleness has to be attenuated in this society in order to go out and push it around. I think, for myself, I can only stand that up to a point. I still need comfort wherever I can get it. Oprah helps. So there. More to come on this, I am sure.

What do the above have in common…

Well, the Dalai Lama is an example of powerful silent protest that brings about change, profound change, without – most of the time – violence. He is a silent kvetcher. If you will.

Understand that I am also tired and not as coherent as I’d like to be.

The D.L. is in Nantes, not too far from here. A lot of people are sitting around silently, along with him. They are creating quiet space in their minds simply to experience existence peacefully.

Yours truly has tried that route (meditation) and is not good at it. But who is, really…and I find that when I can get quiet, I can tolerate whatever mildly (or even not mildly) painful feelings are coming up.

Now – jumping ahead – why is it so hard to eat mindfully? What is so exquisitely painful about stopping with the food still there, and just being there? I have done that too, quite a bit (stopping I mean) and honestly it isn’t that bad. I am there, the food is there, and I am okay.

So why does it get picked back up again…?

It is hard to put things down and let them go, and feel the emptiness that comes with that. I think what might be hard with eating is to feel that bit of emptiness when I realize I’ve had enough (that’s it??) and now need to find another activity as soothing and fulfilling as eating.

Shopping fills me up too. But I will not substitute one fill-me-up addiction for another.

I realize that as painful and even (for some reason) slightly scarey as it is…I *want* to feel the essential complaint that lies in the heart of that emptiness. I want to know what it really needs. I want to know what might really feed it.

So these days I am decluttering the house yet again, and thinking about emptiness, and complaint.

Meditation was invented as a response to suffering – the essential human condition. So essentially our condition IS to complain. Can that complaint, once again, be productive and enriching, rather than frightening? Can one sit with it, listen to it, hold it, as one would a small child who doesn’t necessarily want an answer, merely comfort?

Maybe if there is comfort, there is strength to actually change effectively. So maybe, with all of the yellow robes and ceremony, all of meditation is about containing fear by contacting it directly (sitting in emptiness) in order to obtain some sort of comfort.

Or maybe I’m totally off-base. But I know that I personally want to push myself to better tolerate empty spaces, and oftentimes I’m aware of them most at mealtimes.

I loved loved loved this article in Oprah magazine’s September issue by Ellen Tien (of the New York Times). Can’t get the exact link up because Madame Oprah’s issue is too current to give out stuff for FREE…so, you must go out and purchase the magazine. If anything, do it for Ms Tien’s writing. She had me breathless…

So…wanty…I live in a town where I am OTHER. My hair belies legions of foreign genes, and let’s not get into my accent. Just let’s say that I don’t “pass” for another Breton broad. When I walk down the street I get noticed. I am different round these parts, and feel the weight being watched for abherent behavior (OK yeah a bit paranoid too…) I am from the EVIL EMPIRE. (say that “eeeveel ehmpeer” in an accent doused liberally with hot garlic breath that leans in waaaaaay too close).

Have you noticed that when you are different, you are supposed to lower your eyes, speak in sweet hushed tones of deference and generally kind of shut up? Well this has been my experience. I am not supposed to state with authority what I want, why I’m here, and why I won’t just go home and iron.

I exaggerate but just a little. I am told that I’m an Agressive American. That what I want will pass in Manhattan but hey, calmez-vous, not out here where tout va très bien, madame.

When different people get angry and say what they want, so-called “regular” people get uncomfortable. Why do people get so upset at Gay Pride parades? Why do we feel (ok I speak for myself) just a bit guilty when disabled people demand ramps, access, equal treatment and equal opportunities?

In Ellen Tien’s article she takes the example of a woman running for an office at her children’s school. She makes the mistake of actually informing people unequivocally of her competence and her desire for the position. She is punished for this. She lowers her eyes and shuts back up.

This is how Ms Tien defines “wanty”…the way we have to kind of sort of not exactly say what we really want because God forbid someone might actually feel uncomfortable or put-upon and it’s just not polite and certainly not lady-like to express some ambition or frustration with the status-quo or (oh my goodness) anger.

You see that wanty is just not effective kvetching. A good effective kvetch gets other people’s goats up. They get a bit unnerved. They may even subtely attack you (or not so subltely). When that happens now – I take it as a Very Good Sign. I have woken someone up. They may try to shut out my voice, but I have gotten in there.

Can’t help but be reminded of Hillary, in all of this.

Think about this a minute. Pressure, stress, and friction…and the blowing around of hot air. All of these words carry such negative connotations. And yet.

Consider this. Nothing in this universe would exist if it weren’t for the above. Not only that,  I would argue that the basis of all creativity, even of life itself, comes from the above. Think of it in down and dirty sexual terms if you must…pressure, then, exquisite relief! And…life results.

Or in a more lofty context…music. What would a piano be without the release of pressure to create the “complaint”, if you will, the NOTE…
Or the violin without the friction that makes it sing (or “whine” if my son is playing, but everyone starts somewhere)

So my point is that the complaint is the ORIGIN OF CREATIVITY…and perhaps, hey, of ALL OF CREATION. Just think of Darwin’s adaptive biology. A lot of poor creatures *couldn’t* complain…that is to say, adapt, make noise, or react well to pressure. So they were wiped out of existence!

So when I tell all of you (my dear non-readers) that the goal of my blog is to whine, please understand the principles of pro-active, creative, heart-felt kvetching that gets results.

I say, if you are going to gripe, MEAN IT, make it SIGNIFICANT, and for flip’s sake, DO SOMETHING.

Or at least think about it….   ; )

So I’m swimming ’round the internet at the other blogs-like-mine, and so it seems that to actually get a blog off the ground in the masses of blogs blogging around (that rhymes) may take much time, very much time, my dear non-readers.

ça ira. It’s kind of tranquil to be typing away for one’s own little self.

Here are the questions that bug me, for future reflexion.

1. Why is it a permanent obsession to always be five pounds thinner, although I know better and am too old for this bullshit and all is well?

2. Why is it so hard to make friends? Why do I just prefer to stay at home and rearrange my shelves (again) instead of picking up the phone? Why is it such a delicate balance to be in need of company while at the same time, be completely annoyed by their presence (and NOT be able to complain about it, which doesn’t help yours truly).

3. Why is it so hard to eat mindfully? What makes one want to go blank and just dive in to food? I just had dinner and am too full, again (though I eat a lot of vegetables which has something to do with that). Why is it so hard to be in the moment in front of a plate full of food?
Aside comment. When I tried this for awhile (eating slowly and mindfully) it brought back memories of being a kid and having just SO MUCH lousy food to finish before I could go. Maybe there’s something there?

4. In the same vein as question 1, why is it so hard to feel okay in one’s body as it is – to turn off all the media obsessionality and live well in one’s skin?

5. How does a good marriage really work, and do I have one of my own? I’ve been married 20 years, and sometimes I still don’t know. How does a good mother mother… in that, I *still* have my daydreams of ESCAPE. Here’s one of them…
I take the children to a leftover hippie commune near Berkeley. One of those kibbutz-like places where everyone’s kids belong to everyone so I don’t really have to be the only responsible one. I get to live in the States again and grow organic food, raise feminist sons, and stop shaving altogether. Amen, hallelujah.

Oh another escape fantasy…being a nun. Probably I’d miss sex though. Probably. Would have to bring the vibrator.

This is the hard part, just starting. Complaining whining and kvetching are delicious passions of mine. Nothing is as good as a good long whiney monologue on the unfairness and vagaries of life. As a good friend of mine said once, “whining makes things REAL”. Why pretend everything is okay, when there are so many lovely things to kvetch about?

I am an American expat living in Brittany, and have been in France over ten years. Have the husband, the family, the whole catastrophe. Even have a career, which I won’t divulge here in the interest of privacy (there aren’t a lot of American Expats ’round my parts!)

I am an angry feminist, a conservative liberal, a girly-girl tomboy, a mom who wants to escape, a homebody…in other words a bag of contradictions. Which makes for more great complaining fodder!

I am also a frugal spendthrift, love shabby chic, nailpolish and those women who are brave enough to not shave! I have an odd admiration for nuns of all kinds. People brave enough to forego accoutrement in the name of some sort of essential truth, however they may define it. I would love to be like that. And keep the nailpolish.

Does this make sense???

Good.