Matters of the heart

Today being Valentine’s Day, I know you’re awash with pressure to produce demonstrations of undying passion for your significant (or even your somewhat-interesting) other. Flowers (better have a damned good explanation for that bouquet not being a fistful of red roses, at five times the going rate for other times of the year), chocolates (possibly more leeway there) and/or jewelry.

You do know that every kiss begins with Kay, right?

Well, forget about all that. Because I have something so much better than industrially-extruded conspicuous consumption that has the same ephemeral effect on the economy that it does on your social life.

It’s a great story in the New York Times, about photographer Lauren Fleishman, who was inspired by love letters between her maternal grandparents to embark on a project to photograph couples who’ve been together for at least 50 years.

Her grandparents married in 1944, and were together for 59 years.

Fleishman spent six years discovering and photographing the couples; her resulting book The Lovers was published last month.

The Lovers presents the intimate ties, of course. But the couples talk also about the much more problematic issues of long relationships—getting through rough patches, and overcoming those times when s/he just pisses you off beyond belief, without storming out for good.

That’s one of the characteristics of love that lasts beyond passion. Anyone can be in love, especially when you’re in your 20s or 30s (ish). It’s like one extended adrenaline rush, so you just power through the little hitches because you’ve got the incentive of the next romp to entice you. Fleishman focuses her lens and her interviews on how these couples managed to transcend the rush and turn it into a bond that has lasted for decades.

 Eric Marcoux and Eugene Woodworth. Portland, Ore. 

Fred and Fran Futterman, Brooklyn

 Yevgeniy and Lyubov Kissin , Brooklyn

I love the comment by Karam Chand, married since 11 December 1925 to Kartari in an arranged marriage. “My trick is to make. Kartari laugh... Being funny is my way of being romantic. I have been told laughing makes you live longer—my wife is still alive, so it must have worked. I love her, and I want to spend another 80 years by her side.”

Well—if that ain’t romance then I’m Maria of Romania.

Romance goes to the dogs

Since Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and I’m on a bit of a dog roll, here’s something from those clever folks at Subaru. Or at least those clever folks at Subaru’s advertising agency.

It’s got just the right mixture of suburban ennui and wistfulness.

Although I’m thinking that that poodle is way too much car for our golden retriever.

Out of chaos

As follow-up to my post on de-cluttering, I’ve got a couple of things for you.

I realized that, while I find the chaos of clutter really, really disturbing (almost literally unsettling, as though I’m in a swamp with no solid ground), it occurred to me that clutter actually serves a purpose.

Because when something is all covered up by mess, and you literally can’t see it, then you don’t have to deal with it. I’m not saying that not “dealing with it” doesn’t have consequences, or that that hidden thing can’t reach out and strike like a snake just because you won’t lift the cover of a few (inches of) papers off it.

But once I have it in full view, I just can’t winkle it back into oblivion. I have to take action, because I can’t pretend it’s gone the way I can pretend it’s hidden.

So, while de-cluttering is really a good feeling, it’s not one long E-ticket ride, nothing but yippees, let me tell you.

I was telling my BFF about my clearing wheeze, especially getting my kitchen counter back; she sounded a little envious. “You’re lucky that you’re not living with a male. Because as soon as you clear a surface, he comes along and thinks, ‘Hey—countertop. Let me put these things right here!’”

I know what she means. But in the spirit of full disclosure I replied, “Yeah—but I can clutter for Cal. It’s in my genetic structure.” I do not like to think what this place would be like if I had to contend with that. But maybe the Santa Clara County Jail has good food? And whatever space you have while awaiting your manslaughter trial probably doesn’t include the opportunity to import stuff to leave lying about. So it’s not all downside.

But on another note, I got an excellent idea for motivating the ongoing de-clutter project from my friend Hanne, which I share with you for free, because it is elegant in its simplicity and ferocious in its effectiveness:

“Pouring a glass of your favorite spirits while you are going through piles, helps. When I tried to get my home office organized I bought a bottle of Grey Goose, and I was only allowed to have a drink out af that bottle is I put in an hour doing Office-organization LOL. It works.”

You’re welcome.

Paws de deux

Oh, the things you pick up on the Interwebs.

Apparently there’s freestyle dog dancing, and… Well, just watch Sandra Roth and her Australian shepherd, Lizzy, from their performance at the Open European Championships in Heelwork to Music and Freestyle 2014, last November.

Yes, one of those early moves is an arabesque.

Frankly, I wonder about Roth’s hairstyle (or is that some sort of hat-like object?), but there’s no getting around how much you find yourself grinning at the two of them together.

Better than Fred and Ginger.

Foot in mouth

If you live anywhere there is any type of media, you’ll no doubt have heard of the NBC News anchor Brian Williams, whose career has crashed and burned through self-inflicted RPG fire.

In case you haven’t heard, Williams claimed he was in a helicopter that was shot down by RPG fire while covering the war in Iraq in 2003. As it turns out, this was completely a figment of his imagination—the chopper he was flying in during that incident may or may not have taken small arms fire, but it was not shot down. He might in fact have arrived on the scene up to an hour after a chopper was taken out by an RPG; it’s hard to know at this point.

It’s not clear to me when Williams started telling this particular story, but he’s repeated it over the course of years, and it seems like in every telling the danger to his person magnifies. It’s mildly interesting to me that a man who makes his living by reporting news, and who ought to be aware of how easily such fabrications can burn and crash once a spark ignites the surface (think Hindenburg here) would walk on this particular wild side. But Williams told the porky, and because he got away with it, he kept on telling it.

The story broke last week, and as of this writing, Williams has apologized and, when that didn’t stem the tide, he announced he’s taking a “hiatus” from his anchor duties. He may be trying to find a cave somewhere that has no Internet connectivity and no cell reception.

But that’s not why I’m here today. No, I’m here because the Twitterverse just went to town on Williams, just as it did on Nicolas Sarkosy horning in on the A-list participants in the unity march against Islamist terrorists in Paris, and on that Fox News self-proclaimed “terror expert” who assured us that no non-Muslim dares to enter the UK’s second-largest city, Birmingham. The hashtags #BrianWilliamsMemories and #BrianWilliamsMisremembers were trending like the Left Shark at Superbowl.

Viz:

Everyone with Photoshop gave Williams just that little bit more of a hold on immortality. 

Helping OJ:

Hanging with JC:

Advising Macarthur:

Or just:

And, in fact, his combat experience predates even WWII:

But you didn't need graphics software to get in on the fun:

But then there were the corrections:

And these are only representative of the Twitter tsunami that has swept the planet several times since late last week.

This is one of the things I really love about social media: while pols and pundits flap their hands about and bemoan this and that, the Twitterati just get stuck in, skewering the perps. It—alongside Death—is truly the Great Leveler.

As for Williams, he gives new meaning to the expression "shooting yourself in the foot".

Gratitude Monday: Addressing chaos

Today I am grateful for space. As in, uncluttered space. Meaning, space that I have made a conscious and concerted effort to de-clutter. Space that is now clean and beautifully empty, waiting for me to do anything (or even nothing) with it.

My problem is that I have a tendency to just dump things. Well, by “have a tendency”, I mean “always”. Yet I hate clutter; it not only gets on my nerves, it makes me feel constricted and out of control at the same time. I spend way more time looking for things than is rational, which makes me feel like I can never quite get to doing whatever needs doing.

Well, a few weeks ago, a woman named Kathleen Ronald was the guest speaker at one of my meetups. Her topic was “De-clutter Your Way to a New Job!” To be honest, that sounded just the teensiest bit of a stretch to me, but she had me at “de-clutter”, so I went.

There was indeed some woo-woo involved (“Each mess is a lock on the gate that keeps abundance away.”) But this one resonated: “Open up space and something new can come in.”

Ronald spoke of getting out of the “just-in-case” mindset. You know, the “well, I might need this for some unspecified activity at some unknown time in the future so I’d better hang onto it” line of thought. Which is also the road to clutter.

She had us list all the areas in our physical environment that could use a good clear-out: closets, garage, office, bedroom, kitchen. And then she suggested some ones we hadn’t thought of—like the car; that alone would take me half a day.

She gave us some guidelines: get rid of things you don’t use or love, things that are untidy or disorganized, too many things in too small a space, anything unfinished. (Think about that last one for a minute; how much could you chuck using that criterion?) And then the usual advice: divide it, like all Gaul, into three parts: one to ditch, one to keep, one to give away.

But the true game changer for me was: “Every thing has an address. Your hairbrush has an address—probably in the bathroom, maybe on the counter or in a drawer. Give everything an address so you know where it lives.”

Well, let me tell you I found this inspiring, energizing and liberating. In my first 15-minute spurt I cleared off two dining chairs of papers, holiday detritus and miscellanea. Then it was the basket next to my armchair. I’m not going to tell you what was there. But this was just the perimeter of de-cluttering.

Because the ninth circle of clutter hell is the loft. And it’s not even just “bunch-of-stuff”, it’s all papers (and books and some stuff), but mostly papers. The magnitude of this problem—because for three years I basically just heaved stuff up there and then ran back down the stairs as fast as possible—was beyond daunting. And even though I only see it when I run up to heave some more papers there, it’s like the Sword of Damocles—I always know it’s hanging there, waiting to cleave my head wide open.

So, I developed a plan:

First round of de-cluttering: go through the loft and put everything into stacks. Don’t try sorting papers, putting away books, finding the “addresses” of things; don’t do any thinking beyond papers-books-things. Just a stack of papers, a stack of books that need to be shelved, a box of things that don’t fit into those two categories.

The next round was sorting through the papers, filing things that already have addresses and putting everything that didn’t have a known place into a “TBD” box. Then shelving the books. Then sorting through the miscellaneous things.

And you know what? First thing that happened was I discovered my clips (my writing samples), which I literally have been trying to find for more than two years. (Thinking I'd lost my clips was like thinking I'd lost photos of my children; it was a cataclysmic loss.) They weren’t in the filing cabinet (which was their rightful address), but in a stack about four feet away, where I wouldn’t have ever thought to look. 

This alone was worth the effort.

After three or four passes, I had both printers on the printer stand, a big bag of paper to go to recycling, all the stray books back on the shelves and a whole lot of crap in their proper files. Papers that I need to refer to currently, and those I know I want to take action on (story ideas, reference materials, etc.), are in a file box I can access quickly. I still have to do some major sorting of that TBD stack—what things I should let go of and the keepers I really do love or will use. And in the latter cases, they need to get addresses and put away.

Meanwhile—that god-awful sword has become considerably smaller and not quite as sharp.

Then, I got so annoyed by the pile of papers, mail, coupons and whatnot on my kitchen counter that I hauled out a carton and just swept everything off the counter into it. No sorting, no putting away, just off the counter.

All that stuff still needs to be addressed, but in the meantime it’s no more poorly “organized” than it was on the counter, I pretty much know (generally) where it all is and I’ve got that beautiful, clear expanse of space in the kitchen. I see that space first thing when I enter my flat, and I can’t tell you how lovely it is to see it empty and waiting for whatever I might like to cook or bake.

Now, one thing I have to work on as an ongoing project is that tendency to just dump. I’m too lazy to put things away when I bring them in or when I’m done using them, so I just leave them in situ. (E.g., knives. I leave washed knives next to the kitchen sink. And for why?—the knife block is right there!) It’s amazing how quickly that “I’ll put it away later” or “I’ll figure out where it goes at some point” stuff metastasizes. I started doing it with that counter space, so I’ve developed a solution: I created a “To Be Addressed (TBA) Depot”, a basket where I put things that don’t have a current address. Everything else has to go to its rightful place. Right away.

Even when “right away” means I have to go back and deal with it in 30 minutes when I realize I just dumped it.

This part is going to be ongoing, but it’s totally necessary if I don’t want the chaos to encroach on my exquisite empty spaces.

I have plenty of work to do on this, of course. But if I take it in 15-minute chunks, it’s totally doable. And the thing about de-cluttering is that—even in little bits—you see results immediately, which motivates you to keep at it.

There’s also work to be done on non-environmental clutter, but that’s another story. And today I’m just so grateful that Kathleen Ronald was speaking right at the time I was ready to clear the clutter.