joy squared

Jinbao, our golden treasure, was enthralled by this toy we found at the park. The only thing better than joy is joy amplified by an unexpected treasure.

warmth

Warmth is a Dutch apple pancake fresh from the oven, smothered with Devonshire cream, whipped together by an older sister who used to tickle torture you and curl your hair for school dances and now feeds you pancake and crispy potatoes between glances at her nine-month-old baby on a rainy day that would otherwise chill your heart more than your bones.

now. i mean it.

I am currently reading - not Sartre, not Foucault - but Fiore. Who is Neil Fiore, Ph.D.? He is the man who will enable me to finish my dissertation by May. Therefore, he is more important to me than any French guy and/or philosopher could ever be.

Neil Fiore is the author of The Now Habit.

Katharine recommended this book as the most productive way to put off writing my dissertation. She was right. Fiore has special credentials when it comes to my seemingly intractable case. He was a counselor for groups of procrastinating doctoral candidates at, get this, UC Berkeley. Over time, he discovered an interesting difference between those who finished writing in a reasonable amount of time (two years or less) and those who didn't.

Fiore found that, surprisingly, "intelligence and emotional problems were not the characteristics that distinguished the two groups. The real difference seemed to be that those who took three to thirteen years to finish their dissertations suffered more" (p. 81). Long-term procrastinators, of which doctoral students are prime specimens, see themselves as working all the time, deprived, guilty, with their 'real' lives on hold.

When did Fiore implant a web cam in my brain?

I'm not usually tempted to apply pop psychology to my life, but I'm ready to implement his suggestions, including writing for a quality 25 or so hours per week and playing, cooking & exercising the rest of the time. Planned fun is mandatory.

Fiore also persuasively argues that procrastination does not stem from laziness, but from perfectionism. When I was triathlon training, I complained to a friend that I felt guilty about being lazy and not writing enough. She laughed - how could I call myself lazy when I was waking up at 5:30 a.m. for two-hour workouts? Her question gave me pause. Fiore points out that, strangely enough, procrastination is (short-sighted) rational behavior for perfectionists: we get the reward of putting off work on something that can't possibly be good enough and, when forced to do the project at the last minute, can tell ourselves that it isn't a true representation of our work.

I don't want to reveal all of the tricks up Fiore's sleeve and deprive him of whatever profit he makes from the $10.17 you pay, but here is a final nugget, the epigraphs from Chapter 5:

Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
- Reinhold Niebuhr

Stress Prayer: Grant me the stubbornness to struggle against things I cannot change; the inertia to avoid work on my own behaviors and attitudes which I can change; and the foolishness to ignore the differences between external events beyond my control and my own controllable reactions. But, most of all, grant me a contempt for my own human imperfection and the limits of human control.

Blogging, by the way, is not procrastination. It's warming up.

coffee & community

Today I was sipping a latte with Tyson at Coffee Bar in the Mission, feeling rebellious with my ThinkPad. Macs and fixed-gear bikes are de rigueur in this neighborhood and, as usual, I'm behind the times. But mandatory hipster factor aside, I was entranced by Coffee Bar's high ceilings, ample counter and table space and sleek silvery design. The good coffee and divine treats from Patisserie Philippe didn't hurt either.

I'm not sure what it's a commentary on, but I've done more participant observation in cafes than in China. I feel at home, even among strangers. I recognize the characters and my place among them. At any given cafe in these parts, there's the artist or writer with leather-bound Moleskine notebook, contemplating beauty and the foam art gracing her cappuccino. There's the hyper-connected techie moving seamlessly between texting, emailing, chatting and talking via iPhone and MacBook. There's the barista in black, patiently or not-so-patiently taking an order for a decaf double shot soy no-whip mocha. There's the procrastinating student, flipping through piles of books between clicking on her gmail window.

Then, there's the regular. I am too much of a wanderer to be the regular, but I look on enviously when I hear a customer greeted by name and, "The usual?" I crave the fine balance of making a connection over coffee while still being able to work without serious social distraction. I'm not alone. There is a move toward "the new localism" to recreate a sense of face-to-face community. My guess is that San Francisco scores pretty high, with its coffee shop culture and farmers markets and well-defined neighborhoods. In Noe Valley, we have Bernie, whose tag line is "a local girl's coffee shop."

According to the rumor page of the Noe Valley Voice, Bernie is as local as it gets:

So who's Bernie? She's "local girl" Bernadette Melvin, the new owner and chief percolator.

"People keep asking me; 'Is this going to a Peet's? Is this going to be corporate?'" Melvin laughs. "And I tell them this is going to be as local as you can get. I grew up in Noe Valley. My mom lives here, my uncle lives here, and my cousins all go to St. Philip's. I even went to James Lick!"

James Lick is the middle school right across the street from me. But here I am still traveling from cafe to cafe, yet to make my way into Noe's new localist coterie. Next year I'll be off again, to another state or another country. Is it nonetheless worth seeking regular status?

I think yes.

joy

Little Jamieson, my nephew, is almost nine months old! His solid little self loves melting into the air above.

all that is solid melts into air

While cruising the Mediterranean in October, I befriended a Brazilian crew member, Evandro, who told me that one of his favorite books is Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. I'm not sure I can adequately convey the craziness of this meeting.

The cruise ship was a Vegas hotel on water. It had nearly 3,000 guests and 1,200 employees, as well as an ice skating rink, climbing wall, casino, theater, bars, night club and so on. Marshall Berman is a professor of political science at City College of New York. Evandro, a former high school history teacher with a masters in social memory, was working at the ship's 24/7 cafe. I was being a dutiful and spoiled daughter.

We started talking because I was at the cafe reading a translation of the brilliant Brazilian novel, Dom Casmurro, by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. Evandro launched into a mini-lecture about how the lead female character represents the emerging modern woman in Brazil and how Machado reveals her contradictions and society's ambivalence. I almost dropped my cup of tea.

So we talked about books. And we talked about my despair in the face of gluttonous consumerism and his calm curiosity. He played the anthropologist and I the disillusioned laborer. (There was no shortage of irony on this oceanic adventure.) I apologized for America's hubris and he replied, "Hey, don't worry, I want to go to America."

Fast forward. I finally read Berman's masterpiece on modern experience and am beginning to understand Evandro's hope in the face of his particularly surreal environs. Berman urges us to embrace the dynamism and possibility of modernity: "If we think of modernism as a struggle to make ourselves at home in a constantly changing world, we will realize that no mode of modernism can ever be definitive....I have argued that modern life and art and thought have the capacity for perpetual self-critique and self-renewal."*

Berman argues that in the twentieth century, visions of modernity became flattened, constrained, closed off: Both/And gave way to Either/Or. Where, after all, was the dynamism in the hypnotizing lights and coma-inducing meals of the super-sized cruise ship? But Evandro still saw the possibilities. Not only in the higher salary and chance to see cities around the world, but also within the confines of the ship itself. Where I saw a Vegas hotel, he saw a miniature United Nations, just with tropical cocktails. The cruise both showcased inequality and excessive consumption and provided opportunity for self-transformation and Track II diplomacy. In our brief encounter, I realized that I'm often too heavy on critique, too light on renewal. (To paraphrase my friend Jody, "Welcome to graduate school!")

Yesterday, Evandro emailed me to say that he's back home. During the ship's week-long sail across the Atlantic, he concluded, "I liked this experience! But it's enough for me!"

*Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Penguin, 1988), pp. 6, 9.