Drinking Coffee & Going to Chicago

Dear Kim,

Yesterday, I wrote about a bunch of stuff: desperation, the use of the word victim, etc.

This morning, I have gone on our site and not yet found a drawing from you to which I might respond. So, knowing that it is Thanksgiving and I am not yet sure when I will be able to write again today, I thought I would describe my trip here.

My sister lives across from Lincoln Park, amazingly on the 13th floor, as I do, about 300 miles away, in Chicago. Most buildings do not have a 13th floor.

That is, they have 13 floors, maybe more, but they skip over the 13th and re label it 14. Very strange.

I like the idea that we both live on floors visibly marked 13, that we both can stand out on balconies, looking across the distance, maybe even to each other.

Yesterday was a funny day for traveling. I had planned to fly out Tuesday night but found after working with my staff and doing some of the usual life maintenance, plus individual AND couples therapy, I wasn't up for traveling.

Not knowing what holiday plans might hold with my girlfriend, I had purchased a full ticket fare. A little more expensive that way but sweetly providing much freedom.

I sometimes do that. Buy a full fare if it is something like Southwest where there is no change fee so I can fake myself out in my plans and change them several times if I want. Instead of making me feel stressed, it gives me the luxury or perhaps even an illusion of a certain kind of freedom.It is enormously comforting to me to do things that way. Maybe because my days are so often filled with meetings and places to be at very specific times.

I got back to the office around 4 on Tuesday, checked in with myself and realized that despite my planning, I was not up for literally turning around and heading to the airport. And that was OK. I needed to talk to my staff a little more, write, hang out with my birds, so I postponed my flight until later that evening.

That turned out to be too late for Laurel who is needing to go to bed early these days. So I rescheduled for the next morning, Wed.

Wed morning, I woke up, made some coffee, started my morning piece to you and realized that I probably wouldn't make the flight without rushing. Decided not to rush and take the next flight.

Took some phone calls, including an important one about a performance we are doing for the girl scouts in a few weeks, wrote some more and decided I was enjoying myself.

The enjoyment of nobody in the office but me, the pleasure of taking my time in all things I was doing. Drinking coffee. The internal conversation of words: thought and written, rather than spoken aloud. It was downright sensual. I didn't want to be anywhere else.

So, decided to take the next flight. Finally, the 3:15.

Caught the metro link and was at the airport in plenty of time.

Holidays mean different things to different people. For a lot of people, it is about cramming in as much as they can, people they want to see, people they may not want to see but to whom they may feel obligated, and lots sandlots of activities. The race against the clock.

Can the clock be raced?

(Kim: what else can we do in life but race the clock?)

I feel that my days are filled with activities, and like you in your position as dean, some of it I like and some is required. On holidays, I love to let things evolve as much as possible. Sleep if I feel like sleeping, write and write more if I want, visit or not.

So much about modern life is about time management.

What do you think of my use of the word management there?

(Kim: I'm becoming more and more aware of the things that eat up our time, so insidiously. Like TV.)

We only have so much time, Kim. And it is time we are not guaranteed.

How do we do the things we need to do, the things we want to do? How do we find as much of a relationship as possible between that which we need and want to do?

(Kim: I'm unclear what you mean by a relationship. It seems that sometimes we step outside of who we are to have this relationship that has nothing to do with our authentic beings.)

I am having dinner with several friends of my sister's tonight, one of whom is a photographer. After, we will stop by to see my dear friend Sabina Ott, an artist I met when she was living in St. Louis. She recently moved to Chicago to chair the art dept. at Columbia College.

I am so grateful to have good friends who are artists in my life. Grateful for the color and conversation and dissension they bring to my life. I will think of you.

XJoan

Thursday, Nov 24, 2005

11:21 A.M.

Dear Kim,

Catch up time . . .

I want very much to respond to your posting, to ask questions about things you state. I am paraphrasing and that is a dodgey proposition.

Have you always felt you could figure things out? Always? No recollections of moments that you felt you couldn't? (Even if you eventually did?)

(Kim: Actually I'm pretty stuck on what to do with college students who are so far from being ready for college. I must have been a goofy mood to have written that.)

Think childhood, and adolescence.

If someone is not self identifying as a victim, do you think it is for you or anyone else to identify them as such? You asked about literature on the subject of self definition. I am sure there must be some but that is not the basis on which I make that statement.

(Kim: My daughter gave me a lecture on "standpoint" which seems to be the feminist theory that shares your belief. She said it came from African-American woman not wanting white feminists to speak for them. One source I read said that it was both controversial and insightful. It is post-modern in the sense that we can't know another's reality. I guess it is my reality that I think of you as "whatever." So it has more to do with me than with you.")

Do you really think we are responsible for everything that happens? (Kim: Yes. Our potential is unlimited. See this definition of responsibility by Werner Erhard.)

Really?

(Kim: Yes. But that doesn't mean the other person is not 100% responsible as well. Remember, we are not talking about "blame.")

Later,

xJoan,

Thursday, 11/24/05

11:30 P.M.

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