Total Perspective Vortex
What really happened to Trillian? Theories abound, but you can see what she's really been up to on this blog. If you're looking for white mice, depressed robots, or the occasional Pan Galactic Gargleblaster you might be better served here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/.
Don't just sit there angry and ranting, do something constructive.
In the words of Patti Smith (all hail Sister Patti): People have the power.
Contact your elected officials.
Don't be passive = get involved = make a difference.
Words are cool.
The English language is complex, stupid, illogical, confounding, brilliant, beautiful, and fascinating.
Every now and then a word presents itself that typifies all the maddeningly gorgeousness of language. They're the words that give you pause for thought. "Who came up with that word? That's an interesting string of letters." Their beauty doesn't lie in their definition (although that can play a role). It's also not in their onomatopoeia, though that, too, can play a role. Their beauty is in the way their letters combine - the visual poetry of words - and/or the way they sound when spoken. We talk a lot about music we like to hear and art we like to see, so let's all hail the unsung heroes of communication, poetry and life: Words.
Here are some I like. (Not because of their definition.)
Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Smart Girls
(A Trillian de-composition, to the tune of Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys)
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Smart girls ain’t easy to love and they’re above playing games
And they’d rather read a book than subvert themselves
Kafka, Beethoven and foreign movies
And each night alone with her cat
And they won’t understand her and she won’t die young
She’ll probably just wither away
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
A smart girl loves creaky old libraries and lively debates
Exploring the world and art and witty reparteé
Men who don’t know her won’t like her and those who do
Sometimes won’t know how to take her
She’s rarely wrong but in desperation will play dumb
Because men hate that she’s always right
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Life(?) of Trillian
Single/Zero
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
I'm getting a lot of support and "you go girl"s for letting go of what is presumably and unhealthy friendship. Words like snob and stupid and ridiculous have been bandied about and, while my friendship is certainly waning, I still feel compelled to defend my friend. I painted her in a bad light. A realistic light, but not full light.
She's not a bad person. Out of touch with the realities of life most people are facing right now? Yes. She is absolutely sheltered from thing like the economy, housing market, job market and crime stats. And yes, that is by her own choice. She moved to the suburbs and quit working by choice. No one forced her to leave her career and former life behind when she and her husband moved.
Yes, she leads a very cushy life thanks to her husband and his trust fund and his well-paying job. But it's not unrealistic. There are wealthy people "out there" and they date, marry and mate. It's not unrealistic to marry into money or choose a spouse with high earning potential. It's not unrealistic to be successful. It's not easy, but it's not unrealistic.
The rich are different. Period.
But that doesn't make them bad people.
Flawed, perhaps, but not bad.
The only reason I'm hurt by my friend's recent comments to me is that I knew her "when." We have a long history. Along with some other friends, we pooled money to buy cheap drinks and cheaper pizza back when we were all scraping by to pay rent on crappy apartments. We commiserated over immature men, unqualified bosses, sycophantic coworkers, weird mass transportation passengers and meager paychecks. We did our laundry together to conserve quarters, detergent and water. We shared expenses to take small vacations, wringing every penny out of our piggy banks to fund frugal getaways. We pushed up our sleeves, gritted our teeth and volunteered, hands on, for some emotionally draining front-lines charity projects. We pitied and mocked (mostly mocked) women we knew who got married straight out of college and moved to the suburbs, never working or using their college degrees, the women who never did anything with their own lives (other than college) before getting married and having kids and being fully financially dependent on their husbands with seemingly no desire to use their skills and knowledge for a career or contribute financially to their marriage/family.
This particular friend was one of the most adamant about that last aspect, and, so, her quick descent into the exact life that she bemoaned and mocked has been a long, confusing chain of events for me to witness. The first few years I regularly thought, "Who are you and what have you done to my friend?" I assumed that when her children started school she'd be itching to get back to the career she used to love.
But as time passed and she sunk deeper into life in her gated community it became clear she has no intention of ever, well, doing anything again. Instead of keeping up on the latest developments in her field, she never misses an update on the Details and WWD sites. She used to love to go Targetting on Wednesday nights because that's when they restocked, now she's glued to NetaPorter for the latest arrivals. Instead of helping feed and care for children in homeless shelters, she writes a check to the foundation du jour at one of her country clubs.
What's weird, for me, about all this is that it seems so out of character, the polar opposite of the woman who I hit it off with the minute we met.
But.
Life happens. People change. Evolution.
That doesn't make her a bad person.
An strong argument can be made that I am the "bad" one because life is happening and I'm not evolving. My life is almost exactly (okay, worse) than it was back when we were scraping up change for laundry, pizza and weekend getaways.
So.
In defense of my friend, she's not a horrible person. She's just not the person she was when we met and became close friends. I miss that person. I've missed that person for a lot of years. I keep thinking, "She's in there somewhere..." But she's very happy with how she's evolved and doesn't want to be the person she was back then.
So.
It's just time to openly admit life has taken us in very different directions, we have almost nothing in common and, well, we're not friends anymore. Not in the real sense of the word. We know each other, but we're not friends.
Except.
We share a distinct history. We know stuff about each other.
I know she's been checking lottery numbers since she was in college but never buys lottery tickets. She has a set of numbers that she "would" play and she checks the lottery numbers a couple times a week to see if her numbers won. It's an experiment she's been mentally conducting for more years than she'd ever admit. Because her numbers have yet to win she's smugly satisfied that lotteries are rigged for suckers and losers (her words). Why bother checking the numbers, then? To continually prove to herself that she's right. And because she's weirdly obsessed with it.
She, on the other hand, knows that I love polka dots but never wear them and don't even own so much as a coffee mug adorned with polka dots. Because they look silly on me and as much as I enjoy the playful air polka dots evoke, only in rare instances do I feel they look "right." And, more to the point, they remind me of clowns which, as you know, freaks me out. Why, then, do I love polka dots? Don't know. And my friend knows this about me.
I know she was such a horrible driver that her license was suspended for a year and only reissued after she took driver's training for the third time.
She knows I had to have a math tutor. In college. And that I still struggle with my "times 9s."
I know she knowingly dated not one but two married men before she met her husband.
She knows I knowingly dated an illegal immigrant.
Do we sling this mud at each other? Well, I guess I kind of am, now, but generally no, we do not. I'm okay with the mud, she can sling it at me, that mud is life. I know my polka dot thing speaks to a certain psychology that starts out quirky but can easily slide to a level that warrants professional help. I know I suck at math. I knew that guy was illegal when I met him and I dated him anyway. I accept these things about myself. But she is not okay with some of the mud of her life and has not accepted or made peace with herself.
And sometimes I wonder if that's why she's made efforts to maintain some semblance of friendship. I know too much. She can't kill me so she tolerates me in small doses. I'm an embarrassment to her in her wealthy suburban tableau, but what I know about her is more embarrassing than my presence at her barbecue. I'm not sure that's true, but, her behavior indicates that is a real possibility.
The real crux of the issue, I think, is that we were friends and there was no judgment. I didn't love that she dated married men, but I didn't judge her about it. That decision was between her and her moral compass. She wasn't stupid, she knew all the angles and aspects, and she dated those married men anyway. She made that choice, and while I didn't applaud her choice, I didn't judge her on it. Not my job, not my role, not my thing. And she didn't judge me, either.
As she succumbed to the whole wealthy suburban thing I saw her doing and saying things that grated on me - and that would have previously grated on her, too - but I forced myself not to judge her. "Who knows?" I thought, "I might be just one husband away from being right behind her. She may be blazing the trail I will take." I kind of doubted it, but I've seen it enough to know that this happens to a lot of people, people you'd never suspect.
But now it's become obvious she's judging me, and, I admit, I've judged her, too.
And that makes me realize we still have something in common: We're both easy targets for judgment. I'm a poster child for failure, just one "special prescription" and 20 cats away from being a crazy sociopath cat lady. And she's just a couple hair extensions and winters in St. Barts away from being an elite, bimbo trophy wife. (though I'm a little to young to be a crazy old cat lady crone and she's a little too old to be a true trophy wife...)
The person my friend used to be would crack up over that, but now I know it would offend her.
Sad, that.
But judgment has no place in a friendship and I'm pretty sure once it wheedles its way in it's difficult to return to pre-judgment status. You can unjudge, rescind the judgment, but, the scar is always there.
She's not a bad person. Just very different from me. And we don't understand each others' lives, so we struggle to understand each other...it's not you it's me...we've been seeing other people...yadda yadda yadda..."it's just better this way."
So.
I've silently wished her well and sent her off on her continued evolution.
Accept. Forgive. Heal. Peace. Love. Duh. All that.
