"By 60, I didn’t care nearly as much what people thought of me, mostly.... I have no idea of the process that released some of that clench and self-consciousness, except that by a certain age some people beloved to me had died. And then you seriously get real about how short and precious life is.... Some weeks, it feels as though there is a sniper in the trees, picking off people we have loved for years.... I do live in my heart more, which is hard in its own ways, but the blessing is that the yammer in my head is quieter, the endless questioning: What am I supposed to be doing? Is this the right thing? What do you think of that? What does he think of that?... I laugh gently more often at darling confused me’s spaced-outed ness, although I’m often glad no one was around to witness my lapses...."
My excerpt reflects my taste. Go to the link if you'd like more of an old woman's poking fun at her physical flaws and her son's joking about taking away her car keys. That did not appeal to me, but I can tell by the style of the writing that Lamott knows her readers.
Posts
50 comments:
I'd like to read that - but no way am I signing up and paying for WaPo.
"I have had it with these motherfucking monkeys in my motherfucking hair."
The best part of an Anne Lamott post is going back through the Althouse tag history.
Extremism moderated through evolution.
“Bird by bird” is our family motto.
Perfectionism is the braggart's foible of choice. When was the last time a perfectionist confessed to utter incompetence?
"The best part of an Anne Lamott post is going back through the Althouse tag history."
Ha ha. Thanks. I'd just gone back into the tag myself, so I know exactly what you're talking about.
BTW, I can see I'm not really an Anne Lamott fan.
I talked with a client on Tuesday of last week. He died on Friday. He was 82, but in good health. He had more on the ball than Joe Biden; that I can tell you.
"Some weeks, it feels as though there is a sniper in the trees, picking off people we have loved for years...."
Not me. My friends call, crying over the latest news, and are shocked that I have no emotion for these people. They've been dead to me for years. I felt more for Gahrie - who I've never met - and he was insulting. Matthew Perry starred in a terrible TV show that I will always remember for trying to convince people that Science is bullshit and Phoebe's mother was a cat. Meanwhile Bill Clinton is walking around freely while some guy's dragged out of a speaking engagement by Hillary, for reminding us Bill's a rapist - and the audience applauds. We all live under the lies surrounding the death of Harvey Milk, and nobody has any inclination to unravel them. The poor Palestinians can't find a friend. I literally can't think of a "good" person. Watching what they're getting away with doing to Trump? Fraud? Quackery? Misinformation? The destruction of the music industry? This is Hell.
And that sniper needs to get better at his work.
They say getting old isn't for wimps. They also say that getting old means getting happier. It makes me sad to read many comments here where people approaching their golden years seem so bitter, resentful and judgemental. It's a survival skill to embrace the suck.
"Blogger Quaestor said...
Perfectionism is the braggart's foible of choice. When was the last time a perfectionist confessed to utter incompetence?"
Every time you fall on your sword after misspelling a word thinking you have committed a capital offense.
Thanks for that fat underhanded softball right over the heart of the plate.
"Some weeks, it feels as though there is a sniper in the trees, picking off people we have loved for years...".
What a great line.
"I'd like to read that - but no way am I signing up and paying for WaPo."
Brave Browser. Block Scripts.
"I will always remember for trying to convince people that Science is bullshit and Phoebe's mother was a cat"
You are remembering your own beliefs about what was on the show, but you are incorrect. Fictional characters express beliefs, but those who write a work of art are not necessarily embracing and trying to sell the beliefs that the characters express. How would that even work? You have multiple characters and they need to have conflicts with each other. Phoebe believed something absurd. Do you disapprove of all works of art that have a character believing something absurd? Your assertion — that the writers of Friends were trying to convince people that Phoebe's mother was a cat — is absurd.
I wrote "your assertion" and because I don't really believe that you believe what you are asserting. And that is the definition of bullshit.
You don't want to watch the show. Others do. Why do you care?
I love the title, "Bird by Bird." The multiple metaphors twitter and flit about. Sometimes in your mind's eye. Sometimes in your mind's ear. Like the memory of your Dad saying, "focus on one thing at a time," and really more the memory of the sound of his voice when he said it. Or the flickering hologram of your Mom saying, "don't worry, dear, another one will come along," teaching you to accept the heartbreak sparrows flying off one by one.
I get the metaphors about writing, but I'm really moved by the metaphors about life, like the excerpt you quoted. The serial loss of loved ones. Bird by bird.
'Perfectionism is the braggart's foible of choice. When was the last time a perfectionist confessed to utter incompetence?'
Perfectionism can be a significant sign of certain types of depression.
Judge not...
"Perfectionism is the braggart's foible of choice. When was the last time a perfectionist confessed to utter incompetence?"
Every time you fall on your sword after misspelling a word thinking you have committed a capital offense.
Is this the same Howard as before? Because I'm agreeing with him more often than not these days, which I find weird...
Perfectionism might be the interviewee's stock answer to "What is your greatest fault?," but an actual perfectionist can be paralyzed into inaction by the psychic (not that kind of psychic, Crack) costs of making a mistake, or doing a thing not-well-enough. And they often know, or at least suspect, how much they're missing out on.
I am only mildly afflicted, and even so, I've struggled all my life with taking that first step to do a thing, knowing that I will inevitably do it wrong. Luckily for me, I happened to marry a man who was and is more psychologically healthy by this measure, and recognizes that often good enough is good enough (but is also clear-minded enough to recognize when a greater or even herculean effort is appropriate). Because if it had been up to me to provide for our family, well, let's just say outcomes would have been a WHOLE lot different: for me, for most of my life, there's been no such thing as degrees of effort or accomplishment. It's either over the top or it's not done at all, which has made me terribly risk-averse.
I was just telling friends the story of the first big Thanksgiving dinner I made for my husband's extended family, more than twenty years ago. I enjoy cooking, so the fact that I made everything is not necessarily a sign of my (mild) pathology. But I made the napkins. Bought the fabric, cut out, ironed the doubled hems before hemming by hand.
To no end whatsoever. All I saw were the napkins that weren't perfectly square; all our guests saw were napkins. Thank goodness I've improved a bunch since then.
It's a survival skill to embrace the suck.
And a gift of grace to be able to find the humor in it, I think. I'm not quite on the verge of those golden years yet, more like on the street that leads to the onramp, but I'm trying to get ready, mentally and emotionally, by looking for the humor in the aches and pains and forgettings and curmudgeonly impulses I already have.
Everyone who reaches the ages past 50 probably goes through the same change- things that seemed important in your teens or twenties is suddenly put into a different perspective. I look back on the things I used to worry about with a kind of disbelief these days. The same applies to the things I didn't used to worry about when I was younger. We all eventually turn into cliches.
Three score and ten, that's what the Psalm says. I'm on borrowed time, but having the time of life. Just finished 2 hours of tough pickleball games. Play 4 days a week and at a decent level. Have 12 grandchildren and a loving spouse. In general good health except for an enlarged prostate, diabetes, small pancreatic lesion that has not expanded in 2 years, and a bladder issue. Press on!
It’s good to remember: We are all on borrowed time
It's easy to remember when you go in for chemo each week.
For anyone who cares, treatment is going well. I'm on my second line of treatment, which currently has me in remission. Who knows: maybe new treatments will come along in time and I'll live long enough to die of something else 😀
The rather astonishing fact is that we license just about anyone who wants to, to zoom around in a three-ton death machine, menacing all in their path and to either side of it. Given this fact, we have to realize that the least competent, say, one-third of drivers are probably within a hair of a serious accident several times a year. It's amazing the things only kill about 20,000 of us every year.
"I will always remember for trying to convince people that Science is bullshit and Phoebe's mother was a cat"
Phoebe: Okay, look. Before you even start, I'm not denying evolution. It's just one of the possibilities.
Ross: It's the only possibility, Phoebe.
It was, of course, Ross who was upset that Phoebe didn't conform to his beliefs.
"It's easy to remember when you go in for chemo each week."
As the caregiver of someone who went through a year-long chemo regimen, I wish you only the best!
Speaking of that sniper in the tree, it brings back a line from an Indian MD, “ GOD always wins. We all die”. Which illustrates that our enemy is God.
If only there was a way to live in peace with Him? Then maybe we could at least look forward to resurrection from the dead. But who could believe in a promise like that?
Ann Althouse said...
"You are remembering your own beliefs about what was on the show, but you are incorrect."
The episode is online.
"Fictional characters express beliefs, but those who write a work of art are not necessarily embracing and trying to sell the beliefs that the characters express."
"Not necessarily" doesn't exclude anything in the NewAge, when cults act with impunity. You don't think this shit ends up in scripts? How could you? Y'all thought Obama campaigning with Oprah was a GOOD thing - AFTER she was selling quackery full-time. How can you tell me, now, you're astute enough to judge what's going on with NewAge when you facilitate it?
"How would that even work?"
How did Twitter get full of NewAge activists? How did Apple? It killed Steve Jobs. How is Whole Foods a Temple to Pseudoscience that had another Friend-Of-Bill rapist as their spiritual advisor and you still give them money? Ann, it's going on all around you, with your - and everyone else's - help and blessing.
"You have multiple characters and they need to have conflicts with each other."
And they could have conflicts about anything. But they don't. Instead, there's a feminist message, wrapped in some mystical bullshit, culminating in a defeat for the man of Science who represents logic. And this is being put out over the airwaves during the NewAge, in a culture drenched in New Age, to a people more familiar with the workings of astrology than their government.
"Phoebe believed something absurd."
No, Phoebe believed something specific. Something many women believe. Something many people in this country and the world believe. It's the fastest growing religion and promoted everywhere. And they won't let it go. They're going to strangle us with it.
"Do you disapprove of all works of art that have a character believing something absurd?"
No, I'm very specific, too. You don't understand. I understood what was going on with Donald Trump when most people were clueless. It's what I do.
"Your assertion — that the writers of Friends were trying to convince people that Phoebe's mother was a cat — is absurd."
I say the writers of Friends are NewAgers validating NewAge for NewAgers.
"I wrote "your assertion" and because I don't really believe that you believe what you are asserting. And that is the definition of bullshit."
I have my copy of On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt right here next to me, so I think I'm familiar with the terrain.
"You don't want to watch the show. Others do. Why do you care?"
First, you need to re-familiarize yourself with Carl Sagan's warnings. Second - apologies - but demanding to know why someone cares is one of the now-traditional, knee-jerk tactics NewAgers use nowadays, usually defending trans bullshit. (As common as talking about a "Soulmate.") I care because I'm a thinking human being, and NewAge's acceptance and growth are corrosive (we're arguing about it now) frustrating (we're arguing about it now) and important (we're arguing about it now). That's why.
Why you guys won't accept the NewAge as Hell, I don't know, but the NewAge is Hell.
Kevin said...
"It was, of course, Ross who was upset that Phoebe didn't conform to his beliefs."
Evolution is a belief as much as male pattern baldness is a hairstyle.
Ignorance Is Bliss, best wishes for your continued remission!
I'm just trying to be somewhat less confrontational.
Yes, Quaestor is imperfect. (Just kidding, Nomad.) And I have recently perfected the perfect self-flagellation machine to administer the matchless corrective lashing.
For a sitcom, Friends was pretty good, and Phoebe was clearly the archetype of space cadet, tolerated because she was kind and amusing. Nobody took her notions seriously IIRC.
And everything I know about Lamott, I've learned from posts here.
Am I an outlier, in that I am almost never very tempted to follow the links that the Prof and commenters provide?
Speaking of snipers, my wife's oldest (half)brother had his 80th BD recently. His father, my late MIL's first husband, was killed by a Japanese sniper in the Philippines in late 1944, and my late Jewish colleague's only son was killed by a sniper in Iraq in '06.
How soon before Lamott's conceit becomes reality--when decolonizers start sniping from tall buildings wherever tall buildings can be found?
Got a call from a good friend a couple days ago. Couldn’t talk. He tried back several times. I was worried about who else had died, by the time we talked. Lost 3 perfectly healthy friends/fraternity brothers from heart attacks over the last year or two (likely from the vaccines), and another from suicide. He was an MD, so still wonder if he had something that he didn’t want to face. And a couple with mental issues. Turns out that no one had died, and those two were a bit better. He did mention a couple of guys with early Parkinson’s. But mostly, it was to tell me of his good time visiting another good friend in Tucson, at his belated wedding reception.
Those closest to me are healthy, so far. Except sometimes my partner. One (real) brother may need to give up skiing, or at least ski racing. Balance issues. May be the result of a concussion when he was in Jr Hi. Partner’s mother is declining, but we aren’t surprised - she is in her 90s, and had a significant brain bleed a quarter century ago. It’s the next circle out who seem to be dropping like flies this last couple years (as we all entered our 70s). It isn’t the ones you expect, but the healthy ones. One fell over dead in a bike race over Loveland Pass. Etc.
Blogger Jupiter said...
The rather astonishing fact is that we license just about anyone who wants to, to zoom around in a three-ton death machine, menacing all in their path and to either side of it. Given this fact, we have to realize that the least competent, say, one-third of drivers are probably within a hair of a serious accident several times a year. It's amazing the things only kill about 20,000 of us every year.
Absolutely right. Murphy's Law is 180-degrees from the true. In fact, we humans teeter on the brink of destruction all the time, yet just one broken link on the accident chain will prevent disaster. The more links you can break, the better. That is the essence of personal risk assessment.
That’s not true… if we were on borrowed time rich people would live for as long as the US deficit.
No?
"Thanks for that fat underhanded softball right over the heart of the plate."
Too bad it was Strike Three.
I remind Mr. Crack that all the time you spend tryin’ to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it.
h/t Cormac McCarthy
Not a huge Anne Lamott fan, but this excerpt resonates. Having turned 60 now, my thinking has changed too. I look back on past decisions and roads not taken. I realize my opinions on things don't matter. Mainly I am content with myself, grateful for gifts received.
Narr,
Don't you remember John Malvo and John Muhammad (2002)? They didn't express it quite that way, but that's definitely what they were thinking (according to me). Not to mention the Marathon Bomber. I'm sure five minutes work would pop up half a dozen more.
The new vocabulary doesn't really change the reality.
We--every one of us--bears the heavy responsibility of, and guilt for our failure to make sure that Crack does not have to be confronted with the spectacle of people he doesn't like becoming popular, rich and famous.
We should have acted long ago. Now it's too late.
The horror of Oprah. Whole Foods! Gwyneth Paltrow! Friends! Taylor Swift! Why, Oh why haven't these things been eliminated? What is wrong with you people?
I don't like them either Crack, but I think blaming it all on Althouse is a little harsh.
And I don't think they are going away. You are just going to have to tough it out.
I have a perfectionist streak, but my youngest brother is almost pathologically perfectionist.
If our mother's last decades hadn't sapped his energy and attention, he could have cleared 100k a year with his remodeling skills.
You'ld think that might mean he has everything squared away, but instead his house could be featured on Hoarders--he can't get started now, so it's a perfect mess.
The bane of my early career, was "Perfectionist" bosses. These morons never understood the concept of materiality, or that the "Perfect is the enemy of the good". That was in the "Bad old days", and one had to put up with their micro-managing and obsession with this or that piece of trivia.
They were the type satired by Wouk, in the Caine Mutiney. I always wondered whether it was due to their military backgrounds. As I told one, "There is important, and there is non-important, concentrate on the important." But to them rules were rules. And costing the business 10,000 dollars was no more important then coming to work at 0800, and not 0805. or claiming 10 dollars on your travel voucher vs. $10.06!
And wear that tie, and tuck in that shirt, mister.
Once in 80s, I forgot to wear my tie. I was late for work and just forgot. I was then summoned to my bosses office, and asked "Why aren't you wearing a tie?". I told him, and got a lecture on how important it was to wear a tie.
Yeah, thanks.
Then after lunch, my bosses boss, called the whole office together. Gosh, i thought, this is unusual. Are we all being laid off? Are we all getting promotions? Because he never did that. And guess what the Big Chief talked about? You guessed it, how important it was to wear a tie. Y'see our counterparts in office X had to wear ties, because the clients in Office X wore ties. So, we had to wear ties because blah, blah blah.
I laughed at the movie "Office Space" because so much of it is true.
The Beltway Snipers, yes! I also recall how the FBI profilers were certain it was a white loner shooting random people from concealed positions.
The Narrative was strong, even then.
instead his house could be featured on Hoarders--he can't get started now, so it's a perfect mess.
I think she's still around - FlyLady, a blogger who helps people - she encourage them to call themselves Messies - to address the mess in their homes and lives. I discovered her when our third was born and I was feeling overwhelmed - luckily long before actual hoarding, but when I despaired of having a clean bathroom.
She specifically pointed to the connection between perfectionism and extreme messiness - even hoarding. Exactly as you say, feeling unable to start, because the problem is just so overwhelming.
I would encourage anyone who just wants to reclaim the playroom or establish an actual sane cleaning routine to look her up. Even her "5-minute room rescue" concept can make a house with little kids feel homey and in control again.
Narr said...
"For a sitcom, Friends was pretty good, and Phoebe was clearly the archetype of space cadet, tolerated because she was kind and amusing. Nobody took her notions seriously IIRC."
San Francisco has a city full of people who take this shit very, very, very seriously and you guys still say this shit. There are worldwide industries buildup around this, worth billions of dollars, and you guys are like "nobody believes it."
Are you sure you're adults?
Iman said...
"I remind Mr. Crack that all the time you spend tryin’ to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it."
I don't know what " tryin’ to get back what's been took from you" means. I was introduced to something I hate. I'm going to continue to hate it. Hating it works for me. I'm not upset when people die. I'm not upset when bad things happen to people who believe this shit, which is almost everybody. I'm upset they keep doing it.
If I'm trying to get anything back, it's some sanity in society.
boatbuilder said...
"We should have acted long ago. Now it's too late.
The horror of Oprah."
She gave America "entertainment" like this all through the 80s and 90s. Three people dead after she peddled The Secret. Several girls raped at her lesbian-led school in Africa. She turned the quack Doctor Oz into "America's Doctor". She campaigned with Obama. She made a Netflix special attacking white people as racist, unfair, and dishonest to get the Central Park Five rapists released; smeared Trump with it, and now one of them holds public office while Trump may go to prison at the hands of her party. She helped the Con Man John of God rape 600 women. All of her "spiritual advisors" run for office and even the vice president used to date her top competitor, Montel Williams, who hosted a show about talking to the dead.
That's just one of these people, and a shorted, conservative list of her offenses. Like the Israelis killing thousands of children right now, as I type this, you guys make light of very, very serious things. That's why Bill Clinton can rape three women and still be treated like a celebrity in the Hamptons. Because you guys let it happen this way. That's why Hillary could bring slavery back to Libya and still walk around here like she's our champion of politics. Because you guys let it happen this way. You can't blame me. I complain about all of it, every day, as often as I possibly can, and in every venue I possibly can. You do nothing. You make excuses. You make light of things that shouldn't be made light of. You look for fences in other people and not yourselves. How many times can people tell you the baby boomers destroyed everything and you do not think they're talking about you?
You're goddamn right I blame you: I'm your little brother and saw the whole thing.
Spain's Catholic Bishops Apologise After Report Of 200,000 Abused
boatbuilder said...
"You are just going to have to tough it out."
Believe me, I already have. I'm trying to make it so other people don't. But you guys keep on making light. You've ALREADY turned life, literally, into Hell. If I had a child, and someone abused them, I would kill them. You guys will let 200,000 kids be abused - just in Spain - and you do nothing about the Catholic Church existing to facilitate it further. THEY APOLOGIZED. That's enough for you to go back to deciding which Starbuck's you like best.
Baby Boomers - honestly - are pathetic adults.
Ann Althouse said...
"You have multiple characters and they need to have conflicts with each other. Phoebe believed something absurd."
It is so odd that someone as intelligent as you can't see that the "conflict" could've been that Phoebe has absurd thoughts and needs help. I've told you that I've lived the experience of my wife, thinking she can walk through walls, and all of our friends comforting her with that thought, and how maddening it was. I mean, I was the one who had to live with the crazy lady. Why couldn't that be the "conflict"? Guiding Phoebe to logic? Why does Science and the enlightenment always have to lose?
You ask "Do you disapprove of all works of art that have a character believing something absurd?" to which I'll rep[ly "Must they all? Must Idiocracy be the only thing out there showing a normal person having to deal with a world full of idiots? And do you approve? Is this what you want for us? The lowest common denominator, everywhere, held up as the best we have to offer? Make the scientist apologize to the cat so we can see how powerful women are?
If mass shootings weren't on the rise, after a lifetime of this shit, I would definitely be expecting them.
Get help, Crack.
Narr said...
"Get help, Crack."
My doctor says I have the best attitude he's ever seen for someone severely depressed.
Post a Comment