Sustaining the Jing

I suppose another reason for discontinuing the blog for so long is that when you’re unemployed, and on the job search, there’s not much to report. Not that when you’re employed, all there is to talk about is work, but being on the job hunt, it tends to become the primary focus of thought and not of much interest to others.

A psychological hurdle I did get past during this several month job hunt was to get past my attachment to every job I applied for. I came to see it as this steep and time-collapsed manic-depressive wave – get SUPER excited and apply for a job-that-is-everything-I-could-ever-want; either don’t hear back from them, or hear back and find out, in fact, it is not everything-I-could-ever-want, and plunge into the depths of despair.

Not pleasant to report from there, and not pleasant to experience day in and out. Finally, after really recognizing that as I hadn’t heard from one company within a day and watched my mood plummet as though it were a Looney Tunes anvil, I found myself tearing on the phone to a friend that I just couldn’t go through this emotional roller coaster all the time, or any more.

She suggested that I try to hold the search with more curiosity rather than attachment. "Hmm, this sounds like an interesting position, I’ll be interested to see what happens."

This, has helped immensely. But, it’s also taken a lot of the drama out of daily living! To the positive and negative ends of that. Lack of drama can equal less exhaustion, but the ho-hum answer to “So what have you been up to?” as, “Just applying for jobs, interviews, and whatnot,” not the fodder for the great American blog.

That said, back to what I said a few days ago, about trying to inject a little levity into the daily slog, I have been managing to have a bit of fun and adventure.

I was able to finally use the VIP ticket my former employer gave me to go see the Gaultier exhibit at the DeYoung on a weekday when it was less but still crowded. However, getting through two of the five jaw-dropping rooms at my minutiae-examining pace meant that after an hour and a half, I had to leave to eat something or risk fainting on the motorized runway of mannequins. An extensive and gawk/awe-inspiring exhibit, I highly recommend to those of you in the Bay to see it this closing week.

Today, also, I will finally be able to use my ticket to the Legion of Honor my friend Corinne left to me when she moved back to Chicago last month. So situated that it’s hard to get to without a car, I’m cat-sitting for a friend of mine today through Thursday, and will therefore have her car… and access to the Man Ray exhibit. I love him, and all those Surrealist and Dadaist weirdos.  

I remember taking early American experimental film in college, walking in late usually, and reeking mightily of pot, and taking my seat to watch a Bunuel or Maya Deren, or Dali and his awful cloud cutting across the moon like an eyeball whereupon he substituted a goat’s eye and really sliced it, pouring out the guts of it. – Very good stuff to watch stoned. ...

In any case, I’m excited to see this exhibit today, plus the Legion of Honor is one of my favorite museums in the Bay Area, with their Spanish Moor ceilinged room and the French Baroque one, its ornately inlaid everything.

I also went to karaoke this weekend. I was reminded feverishly of the time I was at a karaoke room in Korea and I became such an enthusiastic (and drunk) tambouriner, that I awoke the next morning with a wicked 6 inch bruise all up the side of my thigh from where I'd banged it repeatedly – I was a very good tambouriner. I got to demonstrate my skills again this weekend. A friend of mine was celebrating her birthday, and being the only one besides her husband who really gets into that kind of thing, we all play along well because we love her and it is a laugh. The company is really what makes it though.

Still on the docket, before it runs out in September, is my flight lesson. I bought one of those LivingSocial deals last year for a two-hour flight lesson. But the airfield is down in Hayward and hard to get to without a car – and as it occurs to me now, I will have one for the next few days. I will call them today. I have loved flying in planes since the first time I was on one. There’s a feeling of the suspended nature of everything. Any thing I might have been worried about even minutes before is now literally hundreds of miles away. There isn’t any thing that I have to do at that moment besides enjoy the ride – I can’t control anything when I’m a passenger in a plane. There’s nothing I should try to control. It’s the most tangible manifestation of surrender of perceived control that I know. And I love it.

Sure, your tuchus will get sore or tired after long enough, but the sense of anticipation for wherever it is I’m going. I could be landing in Cleveland, and I’d still get the butterflies of anticipation. I love flying. I feel like I've been up in the kind of plane I’ll be learning on once or twice when I was young, perhaps on a family trip to Cape Cod, but I asked my dad, and he doesn’t seem to remember that. So, maybe I made it up, just salivating with the dream and thought of it.

Lastly, despite the failure of the caffeine-reduction experiment, I’m getting all this new information from a friend of mine who is way into herbalist nutrition, having given me a shake comprised of the contents of a compost bin. Not really, but really, one of the herbs translates as “Mr. Ho’s Hair Turned Black,” as the herb is purported to reverse signs of aging. More importantly to me, however, is that she’s helping me to moderate the signs of adrenal fatigue, which is this lovely thing I’ve been diagnosed with which says “Sorry Lady, you blew your store of adrenaline too early in life, now we’re creeping along on fumes,” and means that lately I’ve been getting dizzy when I stand up, among other things. So, unless I restore my adrenal levels – and as my herbalist friend tells me, my Jing levels – I’ll be crap out of luck in maintaining energy throughout the days.

So, I suppose there is enough going on without work to consider. I’ll be certainly glad to not have that gnawing impending doom feeling once I have steady work again, but I also do know that it’s not what makes or keeps me happy. It’s all these other ways that I’m supporting myself with culture, adventure, and forays into the mystic realms of herbs I can’t pronounce.