WHAT WAS I THINKING?
Twitter is full of grieving people giving testimony to their pets, whose life spans are shorter than humans in our time. We do not expect our “times,” our cultural eras, to be shorter than the number of year we live as individuals. Certainly I never expected my expectations to change so much. What was I thinking? Who was I trying to be when much of what a human “is” will be pressed on them by what is happening?
Two jobs over the years have provided survival: county animal control officer and clerk in the city Bureau of Buildings. Three jobs were deliberate, conscious choices: teacher, clergy, and writer. The jobs that paid and were dependable were linked to high population which is dependent on wealth and the jobs that protect and promote it. The jobs I was told I was suited and prepared for were “Class X” low pay, low population, high idealism, humanities-based jobs called “vocations” that ask for devotion. It was a mismatch.
This is not unusual. Even when I was a teenager, everyone knew that getting a Ph.D. as an “English” major was for the gifted few, though no one expected to be stuck in a low-prestige department of a mega-international university. So much was caused by the conditions of post-war — not the destruction, the deconstruction, but the rebuilding, the terms of the new. Hustlers saw the potential of intercepting some money. Idealists were stupid.
No one expected the category-shattering internet, enabled by satellites. We still hardly know what to do with it, nor how to keep enemies from shutting down our electrical grids. Lately we have left the Enlightenment devotion to logic, math and science as well as confidence in progress or distinction. Our terms are shifting back away from the individualism that was a relief after the forced conformity of wartime enlistment, combat, and rationing. Now we see that our communities must be maintained or soon the ruthless will be making more money and controlling more of our fates than any nation can withstand.
My role-models, the praised and valued people I tried to be like were emptied by time. They came to want money and achievement just like everyone else, leaving the principles of service that I had believed in. As for myself, I emptied as well. Life was now a matter of catching the bus on time and spending the evening on magazines full of glamour that I only slowly realized was an illusion. I’d tried taking classes but they didn’t work. The Japanese guy across the hall who had no furniture was peddling coke. So was the guy who was supposed to be babysitting in the apartment under me. Another couple was violent, screaming and pounding each other.
I escaped.
Now here I am in a place I love, sitting at a computer that lets me print and launch writing just as I always wanted to do. Twenty years of this and it hasn’t ended yet. But now this new problem: how to manage the Internet.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/the-internet-doesnt-have-to-be-awful/618079/
I’m beginning to see articles analyzing problems, causes, and remedies but mostly they’re all about problems. I see two problems: Facebook is so deeply entrenched in churches and families — very good cover — that the relatives and friends I urgently advise to get off just won’t do it. The other reason that I myself stay on Twitter is to get the lay of the land next door on the Blackfeet rez. There is a certain tribal group that gets themselves into an ideological twirl that defends their identity and reinforces itself through vulgarity. They have nothing to do with the people I knew — their own parents and grandparents — and assume are still typical. Those steady, informed, responsible people responded well to the pandemic, though it’s not over yet.
I’m also noting my long-form blog on medium.com — this one — mscriver.medium.com. There is a weak thread about books. I’m interested in the ones addressing the new “spiritual but not religious” stream of thought, though I don’t often agree with it. I didn’t expect so many thoughtful people to be writing about the ossification of Christianity even as the name is used by the greedy.
We bring to such a context all the places we were before, and that makes us different. Whatever else has happened, Twitter and blogging have established a notion in the public Montana mind of who I am and what I do. It’s a relief to escape from being “Scriver’s Old Lady,” though I enjoyed it for a long time. We divorced in 1970 — that’s a half-century ago. Now I’m “Prairie Mary,” and a little beyond that.
One disappointment I didn’t expect was the medical community. Several influences: a generation of post-WWII docs are gone; women came into the profession for the wrong reasons; in this state their income is disproportional, and discretionary money pushes aside the medical considerations; less-educated people (often nurses) come into the sub-MD roles like “practitioner”; culture-push to allow minorities becomes a way in for hustlers; self-policing ethics and incompetence are broken; Montana has weak medical laws and doesn’t report malpractice.
Some doctors are bored with the steady stream of older people who only want pills — it’s not like TV where every episode there’s a new crisis. Yet those in practice have no time to read, keeping up on the new developments. It affects me because I’m pre-diabetic, early-stage congestive heart failure, GI tract undependable, and have other systems-failure issues because of aging. My advantage is that I never smoked, drank, or took drugs. My disadvantage is that I sit all day.
In terms of moving, my biggest mistake is that I replaced the shallow rusted bathtub with a shower. Twenty years without a decent long soak. The plumbing is misbehaving. The sewer must be dug up in the yard. That’s already been done repeatedly. The next answer is reform in the town main sewer line. We must urge Biden et al to get that infrastructure law passed. I’m not so enthusiastic about the improvement of fiber-optic feeds for the computer. Usually there are many glitches and oversights.
Ministry, teaching, civil service and writing have all become problematic and must be rethought from structure to delivery. Is staying apart and thinking so much helpful or just part of the problem? Is my evidence relevance or interference? I’m keeping records, but they will be discarded at my death. It’s not far off, but in a short time everything can change anyway.
