Lost is on the Way

Originally published in the New York Mills Herald on December 12, 2007 and credited to my alternate identity, Elisa Korentayer.

I have just bought my first house ever. It’s six miles northeast of New York Mills, and it’s the first real estate I have ever owned. I bought it with the money that I started saving for this very purpose when I was in college, unaware and blissfully unconcerned with mortgages, electric bills, the cost of oil, and IRAs. Even through my adulthood until now, I couldn’t imagine caring about wall sconces or window treatments or how to most efficiently clean the carpet. Now, in doctor’s waiting rooms and airports, I find myself leafing through Good Housekeeping, Martha Stewart Living, and Midwest Home.

For my adult life until now, my decorating philosophy was: 1. travel, 2. get cool souvenirs, and 3. hang them on your wall in an eclectic but pleasing array. This method of decorating served me well for my young life lived either in dorm rooms or, for the last ten years, in my rented two-room, 250 square-foot, New York City apartment. There was not much space to cover, and any wall space available was generally used for utilitarian purposes, like holding up my guitar or as a backdrop for my stereo and CD collection. There was no room for an area rug. My lighting consisted of a halogen lamp. There was barely enough space for me to walk from one side of the apartment to another. In fact, I even had wheels on my desk and coffee table so that I could tuck them back against the wall when I needed to get from the living room area to the kitchen nook.

Cleaning such a small apartment, despite my protestations, never took too long. I had a broom and dustpan stuffed into the small coat closet and a sponge by the sink. In a few hours—always too long in light of the many things I’d rather be doing—the place would look pretty well put together. I never managed to get to the Elysian state of “spotless” as defined by my cleaning-savant mother—somehow the cleaning gene skipped me—but somehow I did pretty well.

Now I realize that it was the small size of a New York City apartment that worked in my favor. I didn’t have to worry about additional rooms or where to keep the extra linens. I only had enough room for what I needed. Or, more to the point, I could only need as much as I had room for. This made life simple. I couldn’t shop for furniture, because anything I managed to drag up the narrow staircase and into my small apartment would end up creating an obstacle course between me and the bathroom. I couldn’t buy myself new towels, because the only place for them would be on my bed—under my bed was already full of old keepsakes and photoalbums, not to mention several species of gigantic dust bunnies. I lived in a state of perfect consumer balance: anything that came into the apartment necessitated something else going out. There was no point in visiting home centers. Why tempt yourself with things you can’t even pretend to fit into your home?

My new life as the person in charge of decorating a full-size house has revealed to me a great truth that I would have preferred not to acknowledge: decorating scares me. I look at the perfect homes in the magazines and can’t figure out how to apply the expensive design choices to my home. The color of my new living room’s carpet does not exist in any of the magazines, and I can’t figure out what paint color would go with it. Each time I visit Home Depot and Menards I come back with piles of paint squares that end up littering the floors and taped to the walls. Each of which looks equally good and bad. Colors like Hint of Rose and Sea Breeze confound me. How does one even notice whether the shade of white is more blue or pink? My color sense is so poor that on a recent visit to my parents in Virginia I bought myself a fine turquoise throw blanket and matching cushions thinking they were the same color as the living room rug, only to return to see that the living room rug is actually green.

I try to console myself by remembering that the houses pictured in the magazines generally require an interior decorator and a large decorating budget to begin with and then a huge team of staging and cleaning experts to prepare it for the photo shoot. In other words—these are not pictures of how people actually live. I recently heard a story about a famous decorator who was invited to be on Oprah. She was in the middle of a divorce, but she asked her soon-to-be-ex-husband and her adult children to join her in the television-friendly family portrait. Her house—though probably far more beautifully arranged even in its messiest states than most of ours—was still not beautifully arranged enough for the photo shoot. She had to hire an entire team to come in and stage the house so that it looked good enough for TV. And the state of her real life was unthinkable for a woman who represented the ideal of living well. She had to convince her husband and daughters, who were distraught and upset about the imminent divorce, to put on fake smiles and create a happy family tableau. A few weeks later when she appeared on Oprah, the divorce proceedings well underway, she sang the praises of her family and spoke about how happy and close they all were. On Oprah, she was the matriarch of the perfect family and lived in the perfect house. At home when the cameramen left, the story was different. The image of her and her home was made up of smoke and mirrors. Or in this case, throw pillows, fake smiles, and mirrors.

That story helps me to remember that normal life is messy. Houses that look clean and artfully arranged are made that way by hours of often unappreciated effort. Beautifully decorated houses generally require the help of a design professional. So, I’m turning in the towel and acknowledging that I need some decorating help. And, by the way, if you’re planning to come over and would like to visit a clean house, please give me some warning. I can virtually guarantee you that the house won’t be clean if you make a surprise visit.

Originally published in the New York Mills Herald on November 14, 2007 and credited to my alternate identity, Elisa Korentayer.

I just returned from a ten-day excursion to Scotland to visit an old college friend. Amber is a professor of philosophy at St. Andrews University, and I had been threatening to visit her for years. It was only when she told me she was about to move that I finally cashed in my frequent flyer miles and started researching the Scottish highlands.

During my visit, we drove to the Isle of Skye and saw most of the regions of Scotland on the way there and back. The trip was full of visual indulgences: yawning inlets interrupting towering cliffs, landscapes more cloud than mountain, glimmering black lakes reflecting orange slopes of autumn-hued heather.

Despite the dramatic setting, what lingers most from my journey was the perspective it gave me on my life in Minnesota and the importance of taking care of my own needs. By giving myself the gift of a trip I’ve wanted to take for years, I was able to come to terms with my new life.

The benefit of meeting my own needs was difficult for me to acknowledge. While I was deciding to go on my trip, and even while I was in Scotland, I couldn’t shake a lingering feeling of guilt. Who am I to deserve a trip to Scotland? Surprisingly, it wasn’t the beautiful Scottish countryside that gave me peace from the badgering of my own mind; it was the air travel.

My time in Scotland was bracketed by two 24-hour transit-periods. Twenty-four hours of six flights and four layovers was what it took to for me to get from Minnesota to Scotland and back on Northwest airlines. On each of the six flights, I tried to tune out the flight attendants’ safety briefing, having heard it all before. But each time the same phrase struck me: “In the case of a change in cabin pressure, please put on your own oxygen mask first.”

Taking care of yourself before helping someone else runs counter to almost everything we are taught about how to behave in society. It seems to be an affront to etiquette, notions of generosity, and the Golden Rule. In places where graciousness and “help your neighbor” sentiment run as true as they do in Minnesotan small towns, I think that the act of looking after oneself first can be seen as selfishness. Here, where once pioneers survived by the grace of their neighbors, selfishness is a sin. From experience, I’ve learned that it’s important to acknowledge the distinction between “selfish” and “self-respecting.”

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary online, the word ‘selfish’ is defined as:

-concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself: seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others;
arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others

-From these definitions, it’s clear that selfishness is characterized by a deliberate lack of consideration for others. In fact, the key to selfishness is in this blatant disregard for others.

On the other hand, self-respect is characterized by a compassionate concern with one’s own humanity. Merriam-Webster defines self-respect as “a proper respect for oneself as a human being.” To me, self-respect means that I must honor myself by meeting my own needs. Only by giving myself what I need am I able to be the best person I can be. And making myself the best person I can be makes me best able to meet the needs of others.

When I haven’t taken care of myself, I’m of no use in the world. When I haven’t had enough sleep or nutritious food, all I can do is think about getting what I want, no matter whose toes I step on. Without self-respect, I can’t be a decent or caring person to anyone else. I am also no fun to be around. I am demanding and anxious. I am frustrated and frustrating. I am the last person I would want to spend time with, and I certainly wouldn’t want to inflict this version of me on others. So, the best thing I can do for the world is to start by taking care of myself. And sometimes this means doing things for myself that may appear selfish to others.

In retrospect, taking time to go far away and reconnect with an old friend was what I needed to do to help me see my life in Minnesota more clearly. Going to Scotland allowed me to appreciate that I am building friendships, establishing roots, and creating a life in this new place. The trip was an extravagance, but it was also a way of respecting my own needs. And now that I have, I can stop stressing about finding my place in this new community and start contributing to it.

I had to hear the flight attendants’ speech six times to understand this. It took the context of instructions in case of flight emergency to make the message starkly clear: We all need to take care of ourselves first.

So, from my inner flight attendant to yours, let me remind you to please put on your own oxygen mask first.

Originally published in the New York Mills Herald on November 14, 2007 and credited to my alternate identity, Elisa Korentayer.

I started to notice it when I first got to New York Mills last spring. Murmurings about hunting. Detailed conversations on preparing for the November deer season. The oft-repeated question: “Did you get your deer this year?” I heard more on deer in six months than I ever have before. As the months approached November, more and more conversation revolved around hunting. I heard about hunting equipment, traffic patterns around meat lockers on Monday mornings, deer meat, hide retrieval, shooting, and other topics that were once foreign to me. Comments about last year’s deer. Expectations about next year’s deer. Deer for hunting. Deer for skinning. Hides. Hides in exchange for gloves or money. Food. Sausage. Venison. Canned deer meat. I learned that venison tastes less strong when canned. A good buck. A good doe. The look in their eyes as they die. The long walk to the deer stand. The long wait for a deer. The cold. The meat locker. So-called ‘hunting widows’ filling up the hotels in Detroit Lakes and Fargo as they entertain themselves while their husbands are out in the woods.

I particularly loved the concise message gracing the sign at Designs by Tes, “Flowers. Happy Wives, Happy Hunting.”

In the sports stores, I learned about products I’d never heard of before. Metal tree-climbing steps. Deer stands. Reversible hunting suits: one side in forest camouflage and the other in vibrant Day-Glo orange. The reversible hunting suit seems to me a great metaphor for life in the woods during the days of the deer season: you’re either a hunter or the human being trying to get through the woods without getting shot. Anyone can be either, just choose your role and don the right set of colors. It’s a curious way of life to one who is unfamiliar with it. A way of life that seems closer to the way it used to be: there’s less in between a man and his meat.

Deer season is so normal in Minnesota, such a part of the fabric of life, that it seems that people plan their their years around it like the rest of the country plans around Christmas. Stores tell you that service will be delayed because of the staff going away for deer hunting. I didn’t know what to expect as I experienced this event I had heard about for over a year. On Saturday, as the sky began to show signs of imminent sunrise, the first pops of bullets sounded through my window. Though it had been recommended to me before, it became abundantly clear that unless I was actually planning to clad myself in appropriate hunting attire, claim a rifle, and wait for deer, I ought to remain far away from the woods.

As someone who grew up in the suburbs, guns were always something dangerous and bad: those contraptions that were illegally gained for malicious use. As someone who lived in a big city, the sound of gunshots was cause for dropping down out of range of the window. Guns didn’t have anything to do with food, and I didn’t know that they could be a tool to help humans survive the elements. I used to read about pioneers from long ago who used their rifles to protect against threatening wolves or bears, but, in the hermetically-sealed human-ruled world of my suburban childhood, nature was relegated to charmingly cultured hedges and flower patches that served as visual relief from the repetitive development housing. Similarly, in the city, nature is a small square of fiercely protected dirt that is home to a weary, pollution-blackened tree, sometimes surrounded by knee-high fencing and a sign that reads “Curb your dog.” It’s amazing how precious a small patch of land is when vast tracts of the surrounding land are covered in concrete. In New York City neighborhoods, apartment blocks full of people clamor for a small patch of dirt the size of a bathroom in a community garden that exists because citizens spent years lobbying not to develop an abandoned, and furiously fought over, lot. Here in Minnesota, though most of the land has a human stamp on it, humans live more in collaboration with the land than in competition with it. Farms make use of the land to encourage nature to grow products humans can use. Most Minnesotans hunt and fish. And everyone seems more aware of their natural surroundings. I recently heard a statistic that per capita Minnesotans spend more time outside than citizens of any other state in the U.S.—and this in the state that boasts some of the coldest temperatures in the country.

So far, my only experience with deer is worrying about them rushing out in front of my car as I speed down Highway 10. I’ve learned to keep an eye on the edges of the road past the shoulder. But I think that next year, I’d like to go out and experience deer hunting. I’d like to don my own reversible hunting suit and see what all this fuss is about. Now, if I could only find the local adult education course that teaches city girls about gun safety.

Originally published in the New York Mills Herald on October 31, 2007 and credited to my alternate identity, Elisa Korentayer.

There’s a common notion—in practice, if not in theory—that one of the best ways to solve a major problem is the geographical cure. The geographical cure is considered the magical remedy for maladies as diverse as alcoholism and broken hearts. This “new location” cure suggests that, in order to solve your problems, you only need to move away from your present location to another where circumstances are sure to be different. For those unwilling to move too far away, there are also a variety of variations on the theme of the new location cure. I call all the cures of this ilk the “New Cures”: the new job cure, the new house cure, the new haircut cure, the new body cure (AKA the diet cure), and the new [insert item here] cure, i.e. washing machine, lawn mower, car, designer outfit, etc.

It’s only after we arrive in our new town, or wash a few loads of laundry in our new washing machine, or drive a few hundred miles in our new car, that we realize—too late—that the New Cure is a chimera, a fantasy. In other words, it doesn’t really work. The New Cure may appear to work for as long as it takes for the new place or thing or state of being to lose its factory shine, for that blissful time with a new toy that lasts until we can see past the novelty to the shoddy workmanship.

With the number of new cures that I’ve already attempted, it’s amazing that it took me so long to become aware of the real problem with these cures. Yes, it’s true that they don’t work. But the real problem is that the cures have nothing to do with the cause of our maladies, because the cause of our maladies is us. Our fixed, obsessive desire to change one thing on the outside of our lives serves to hide our need to fix something that feels broken inside us. Here’s the difficulty: no matter where you go, there you are. No matter what new thing you buy, find, get, or build, it’s still you who relates to it. In other words, you always take yourself with you.

The New Cures are insidious in their ability to blind us to their failures. By their nature, they fold in upon themselves to distract us from the fact that the root of the problem is us. They provide us a bevy of excuses to help us avoid doubting their effectiveness. First, there’s the honeymoon period, during which we have the opportunity to appreciate all the things that our new situation has that our old situation didn’t: a more flattering fit, a shorter wash cycle, better gas mileage, nicer weather, better heating, more attractive potential dates, or whatever. Then, there’s the transitional period—an especially twisted condition which allows us to feel bad about the new thing in our lives while still believing that the new thing was the right cure for our problems. During the transitional period, we feel frustrated with the change we have just made, but we blame the extent of our frustration on the difficulty of change itself. “Don’t worry,” we tell ourselves, “You’re just not used to it yet. As soon as you get through this transitional period, you’ll see it was the right decision.”

At some point, however, the glitter of the new fades under the wear of the everyday. The diamond dulls under the dishwater. The silk DKNY dress is snagged by the dog’s claws. The Mazda 6 breaks down. And we can no longer blame the nature of the transition for our renewed frustration with our lives. As our old fantasy becomes our new reality—it brings with it all the shades of gray associated with everyday life. Soon enough, we’re looking for the next new thing. But this is when we have to nip our New Cure fixation in the bud and realize that the problem is us.

For example, as a person with tendencies towards depression, I will continue to tend towards depression no matter how many tall fruity blended drinks with paper umbrellas get handed to me on white sandy beaches in the Caribbean. No matter how many shiny new dishwashers I get, or little vanity items I accumulate. No matter what, it’s still me here. I can cover up my skin problems with expensive make-up. I can clothe myself in fine fabrics. I can doll up my abode by remodeling the bathroom. But, at the end of the day, it’s still me underneath it all.

So, this begs the question, what should we do about our general sense that our lives aren’t working? My answer, discovered after years of trying different New Cures, is that I must plod day-by-day, one step at a time, with occasional backsliding, towards loving myself warts and all. Happy with myself, I am okay with the rain, okay with the fact that my old washing machine makes these funny belching sounds, okay with the hours each day that I am forced to spend washing dishes by hand. Happy with myself, three weeks of Minnesota monsoon can’t touch me. Unhappy with myself, nothing helps. And here’s the kicker: loving ourselves takes time and energy. Way too much time and energy, in my impatient opinion. But there’s no rushing it. I sure haven’t been able to, and trust me, I’ve tried. The only thing all of us can do is gently, courageously, and lovingly treat ourselves with the care and nurture we need. If you are always going to take yourself with you, then the best thing you can do is to accept yourself as you are, where you are. Of course, I don’t mean to say that we don’t all need a little change sometimes. But I do mean to say that we need to start that change from the inside.

That said, I figure, if I am going to be starting the long process of changing myself from the inside, there’s no reason that I can’t have a new dishwasher to do the dishes while I’m waiting.