linkedin is trying to freak me out, really, for realz
June 20, 2008
I resisted the pressure to join LinkedIn until last week, when a friend sat me down for a heart to heart about why it’s important to be part of this part professional, part social-networking site. I finally gave in and joined. And I was OK with it until I saw a staggering figure: 23,700. With just the few contacts that I’ve added, LinkedIn estimates that I am indirectly connected with 23,700 professionals. Seriously.
Seriously? That number is high enough to send an introvert like me heading for the Cascade Mountains. As someone who has spent most of my life trying to limit the number of people who have access to me, this figure is more than a little disconcerting. I mean, 23,700 is greater than the number of relatives in most polygamist families.
And what I’m attempting to convey by that is: That’s a whole helluva lot of indirect contacts. Imagine trying to feed and/or entertain and/or house a group that size. Not even the Las Vegas Convention Center could accommodate them all. (OK, maybe it can. Perhaps I am indulging in a little fuzzy math, but don’t we all from time to time? Fuzzy math gives us some wiggle room with the facts, allows us let loose and have fun in our meandering and meaningless blog posts, and apparently assists us with the weighty task of running countries into the ground.)
I can’t even imagine how many people my friend with 66 contacts on LinkedIn is indirectly connected to, let alone how he manages to fall asleep at night knowing that those indirect connections exist. I bet he counts connections when he can’t sleep: 40,057, 40,058, 40,059.
Or maybe it’s only me who’s disturbed by these connections. I am someone who, after nearly 37 years, can count on two hands the number of important, influential people in my life: those who have had a significant effect on me, who have fundamentally shaped who I was at any given point and who have influenced who I’ve become.
But before you go feeling sorry for me (I can hear you now with your “Oh poor Dana! She’s so lonely and alone in life. Boo-hoo for her” business), please know that this lack of connections is completely and totally by design: I have spent years avoiding people, pushing them away and being so selective in my relationships that I had very very (very) few during my lifetime. So few that there’s not even a carrying of the tens place involved.
Actually, since the list is so short, why don’t I break it down quickly (not in order of appearance): my father, my mother, my brother, my sister, my first flute teacher, my second flute teacher, my third flute teacher, my band instructor, my first writing instructor, my first poetry instructor, my rhetoric instructor, my women’s history instructor, my African-American literature instructor, my brilliant poet/feminist/women’s studies student/instructor/friend, my environmental science instructor …
*deep breath*
… my first boyfriend, my second boyfriend, my third boyfriend, my fourth boyfriend-turned-first-husband, my second (and so far last) husband who is also known as my current husband and is also known as LoveShack, my first boyfriend’s mother, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law (and yes, I mean that — I am not including the in-laws to be nice), and a Web architect guy I used to work with who is my current BFF. Yes, that’s about it.
OK, so I re-read that list, whilst counting on my fingers, and indeed the sum is more than 10. Seems I’ve been up to more fuzzy math. But the important take-away here is that the sum is not that much more than 10. It’s so close to 10 that I am sure you can see why a figure like 23,700 (albeit indirect) contacts would put the fear of God in me.
The fear of God that was strong enough to have me doing things like singing him Simon & Garfunkel tunes at night when I was a child. (In my defense, I didn’t know any proper religious songs to sing to him after my prayers).
The fear of God that was strong enough for me to believe his wrath would come down on me for watching the dirty movie Bolero when I was a teenager. (That wrath never did come down. I am still waiting. With bated breath. And BTW, I could have picked a much dirtier movie. Since I was up for sinning, why didn’t I sin big!)
The same fear of God that … OK, fine. I don’t have a third example. I basically got over the fear of God thing at about age 15, after committing about every sin listed in … what is that book again? … oh yes The Bible … that is until the 23,700 indirect contacts through LinkedIn entered my life. Now I am afraid, very afraid.
And to what can my people-aversion be attributed? My father’s premature death? Probably in part. My mother’s abuse? Yeah, I’d say that ranks up there for sure. But can’t a person be a loner these days without all the psychoanalysis? I am, after all, living in an individualistic society, so I don’t know what the BFD is about wanting to be alone.
That’s why LinkedIn at once fascinates and annoys me: It seems to be the Westernized, online version of the meishi ritual, a formal Japanese business introduction after which a person can call on his or her introducee anytime and has access to all that person’s contacts and connections.
The idea of LinkedIn is nice in theory, but does it work in practice? I for one would rather be UnLinkedIn — at home, alone, listening to Simon & Garfunkel or watching a few dirty movies.
I’m kidding about the dirty movies. I don’t watch them. The closest I come (no pun intended) is the HBO series “Cathouse.” That’s some pretty great television viewing.
No harm was done to polygamists during the writing of this post. Or to God. Or to LinkedIn, which will probably hold up no matter what I write about it.
three vignettes
May 6, 2008
Outside it’s the same bad luck, every two or three seconds a catastrophe happens to someone, goes unnoticed by someone else. When the helicopters flew over and the sirens started, I had no idea my neighbor’s house had caught fire. I went on weeding, another uneventful afternoon.
We walked by the house later, saw the caution tape and everything inside charred. Holes where windows had been. A black film over yellow wallpaper. Firefighters moving slowly between the house and the fire engine.
It would be dishonest of me to tell you I didn’t think of myself, and feel lucky.
*
Weeds in the backyard have doubled in length. Their roots hold the soil, misshapen pale hands. I drive in the shovel, remove each weed in its entirety, not so they won’t grow back but so I can see the delicate roots, how they taper then fray like old gauze. Nothing should be so white and vulnerable.
*
It’s like the feeling of being on a carnival ride, but in my feet, she tells me. She presses the toes of her right foot into the arch of her left foot, hard. This relieves the feeling to some extent, she says. She sits this way for some time. It also helps to lie on my stomach and hang my feet off the bed.
manifested
December 5, 2007
My windshield wipers have decided that they won’t shut off when I turn them to the OFF position. They keep wiping and wiping, then they stutter for a while and stop for maybe five seconds before starting to wipe wipe wipe again.
I was watching a program yesterday about a woman who thought she was being haunted but really she was projecting all her anxiety and frustration outward and, through her PK energy, had manifested a poltergeist. At least that’s what the experts in the program purported.
I started thinking about how my anxiety might look if it were turned into a poltergeist. It scared me to think about this. I assume it would be dark and smoky, that it would block all entrances and exits, that it would suffocate.*
But with my luck it’s only controlling my car’s windshield wipers. It would be just like my poltergeist to be an annoyance rather than anything impressive. If I am going to have a poltergeist, I at least want to be able to get on TV as a result. No medium is going to come out and sit on my car, waiting to make contact with whatever has taken up residence in the wiper arms while a bored camera crew looks on. That simply wouldn’t make for good television viewing.
I guess I’d better take things into my own hands and throw some holy water on the wipers then burn a bundle of cleansing sage on my car’s hood. Oh wait, that only works on ghosts, not manifestations of PK energy. Maybe I should just have the wiper motor replaced. That ought to do it.
* My anxiety in fact already does all these things, although it is only dark and smoky in a figurative sense. It has made no physical appearances. At least not yet.
things were going well today (until)
December 4, 2007
Yesterday there was so much flooding around my house that I couldn’t make it to work. All roads from here to there were impassable. So after more than an hour of trying, I gave up and made my way home.
Today was going better until I went for a walk and saw a dead animal lying in the street. I couldn’t even tell you what kind of animal it was for sure, since there was no head and it was very waterlogged.
At first I thought it was a rubber chicken, but then I saw a tail and tufts of matted hair clinging here and there to the body. Otherwise, the skin was smooth and hairless, about the color and texture of a latex glove. Its two back feet were also noteworthy. Both were puffed up so much they resembled cartoon drawings of feet. My guess is it was a possum. I felt bad for it, lying there in a pool of water along with leaves and debris.
Now I am back inside watching the sun come out. My neighbor’s tacky holiday decorations, which litter his yard, keep falling over. Santa and his reindeer are currently face-down in the dirt. This pleases me.
p.s.
November 4, 2007
Anxiety is still having its way with me. It’s getting to me at the same time every single night, and I am tired of it.
I don’t know if it has anything to do with my being on my computer so much, but I do happen to be at my computer at 8 p.m. every night (now 7 p.m., as of yesterday’s time change), which is when the anxiety party really gets crunk inside me. That’s why I’ve decided that I will not do anything computer-related in the evening for a while.
I have also decided to step away from e-mail and blogging for the next few days (with the exception of posting my American Sentences daily) — at least until I see my psychiatrist and my new cognitive-behavioral therapist — and I feel like I have the beginnings of a plan in place for managing this anxiousness. I think all my e-mailing and blog reading and other online activities are getting to me.
Right now, my chest feels like it’s got something cinched around it. I’m queasy, short of breath, my heart is racing, my hands and feet are tingling, and my neck feels thick and swollen. That’s right: I am teetering on the edge of a full-blown panic attack.
This is no way to be. I’ve got to kick anxiety’s ass to the curb, the little fucker. I might even kick it into a ditch if I can find one.
i’m on claritin and it’s time to get the poetry party crunk!
October 31, 2007
First things first: My allergies are bad. Real bad. I’m not just talking about my allergic dermatitis, which is only barely starting to act like it’s on the mend. I am also talking about allergy allergies — the kind that leave you sneezing, watery-eyed and make your head feel as if it’s two or three sizes too small.*
I’ve taken drastic measures and by that I mean I am now on Claritin. It’s sure to make me fuzzy-headed, but I am already fuzzy-headed because of the allergies themselves. And right now, I can’t seem to go more than five — count ’em, five — minutes without having to blow my nose or sneeze or cough an oh so dainty and feminine Victorian-era cough to mask the heavy-duty emphysemic** construction worker cough I want to cough so that I might clear all the polleny moldy pine-scented garbage out of my throat and lungs but that I will not allow myself to cough because I don’t like it when all my co-workers scatter to the Cascades in fear of my being the contagion I am not.
(Think SARS. Think pandemic flu. Nobody can have good old-fashioned allergies these days without everyone, and I mean everyone, getting all up in arms about it.)
I’m actually hoping the Claritin will dull my senses enough so that my feelings of anxiety are at least blunted if not eliminated. Anxiety has been chewing my ass like a skinny rabid dog ever since my kidney diagnosis, and it’s not letting up even now that my kidneys are better.
I’ve had bouts of anxiety since childhood but nothing as intense and persistent as this. My co-workers were talking the other day about anxiety, saying it can be brought on by abuse and neglect during childhood. I figure I’m pretty much fucked defenseless against it then, although I’ve decided to get cognitive-behavioral therapy, since it’s supposed to be beneficial.
Still, I hope the Claritin soothes me a little as well. (Or at least makes me dizzy. Dizzy is good, unless I have to drive or interact with anyone or accomplish anything that requires any degree of physical or mental coordination. I can even write while dizzy. In fact, I prefer writing while dizzy because my words look way better when they are blurry than when they are clear. It makes proofreading kind of a bitch though.)
So about that poetry! Tomorrow NaBloPoMo starts, and that means 30 days of posting! w00t! I don’t think I am going to write a poem every day, seeing as how NaPoWriMo wiped me out writing-wise for more than a month after it was over. But I do think I will try to write something poetry-related every day. What the heck. It’s better than talking about my dermatitis, allergies and anxiety, right?
* I realize this list does not have parallel construction. Do not expect great feats of grammar from me today.
** I know this is not a real word.
angelina’s head *
October 5, 2007
is taxied to a meadow
staked up by jawbone and hair
earrings the size of craters
sex doll inflatable crotch lips
the pocked city’s
miasma floats toward her
like the underside
of a cuttlefish
when she inhales
there goes our moon
there go
our good times
* * *
* loosely inspired by this painting
dream sequence 2
September 10, 2007
1
The birds come to me in my sleep. They hover, are covered in sand, and are more or less dead than when I saw them on the beach.
They splay their wings like angels. Some of them have no bodies, only delicate neck bones, skulls and mandibles.
One looks at me midair, mid-wind, crooks its neck.
2
All the men in the cult have beards. The women are soft-spoken lesbians who only refer obliquely to their sexuality, as if they were hosts of daytime TV shows.
Everyone here is brilliant. I am only in it for the conversation — and the food, which is brought in twice a month. Delicious.
The men get drunk before we meet for service. Before each meeting, the leader rises from the table. He goes outside, gets in his car, does a few doughnuts in lawns before driving up and over someone else’s vehicle, crushing it.
He returns to the meeting. Nobody understands what point he’s trying to make with his Monster Truck stunts, but he seems convinced he’s made one.
He laughs. We laugh.
The women handle all propaganda mailings, brochures to the homeless with accompanying business cards and letters addressed “Dear Homlsss.”
They need a proofreader. I wonder where we will mail pieces for the homlsss. The women do not seem concerned about this detail when I bring it to their attention.
One woman shows me how to work the bulk-mail machine. It must be 20 years old, rusted with parts missing. I cannot hear her instructions and do all the work by hand.
Another woman throws feed at chickens. A third announces to the group what items came in the last food delivery, noting her disappointment that no jellies were included. She winks at me as she pushes a jar of jelly behind her back.
She tells the group I have potential. I believe her.
irrational fears
September 8, 2007
I continue to be afraid when the sun sets. Every single evening, it is as if my body believes this will be the last time it will feel the world grow dark.
loss, in installments
September 3, 2007
You lie dying in bed for three days. I leave you there for a full week after, having wrapped your body in gauze and placed you inside a cardboard container roughly shaped like you but not form-fitting.
You stay warm inside the container. I lay my hands on its top to draw out your heat. I lean over and close my eyes, palms and left cheek into cardboard.
You go cold when the week is up. I put you in your Honda Accord and drive to the community furnace, which takes anything that can be incinerated: old furniture, manure, the dead. Two lanes lead to side-by-side ovens, hot open mouths stoked by young men. A conveyor belt rolls into each oven, black tongues leading to what look like fraternal hells.
The line of cars grows longer as drivers queue up, what they want to rid themselves of strapped in their trunks or to the tops of their vehicles.
We wait in the sun.
I haul you to the conveyor belt when it’s your turn — after the broken Edwardian occasional chair and before the pile of fish guts. Sun exposure has done you no good. The container oozes something like sap. You are slumped into one corner, dry.
This is the smallest I’ve ever seen you, the most brittle.
The young men stoking the furnaces go on break just after I’ve loaded you up. My hands and shirt glisten with what has seeped from you. We wait. I adjust your gauze. We don’t say our good-byes because we’re still not on speaking terms.
The young men return. Conveyor belts start up not a moment too soon. The heat has angered those in line: A man throws burnt-out light bulbs in all directions; others fight back with piano keys and scrap metal.
I watch you jounce along toward the heat. I put my hands together. They feel cold and slightly tacky.
This is my blog wherein I, Dana Guthrie Martin, write things and stuff. Most of the time, writing and I hobble along in a sort of three-legged race where there is no finish line. (more...)
Selective perception imposes the illusion of consistency. — Nathan Moore
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beg, borrow, but don't steal
This work is licensed under Creative Commons. If you don’t credit Dana (by using her full name and preferably by linking back to the appropriate post) for however you copy, distribute, transmit or adapt her words, you are being bad. And naughty. And she will have her servant monkeys hunt you down and cut your hands off so you can never copy, distribute, transmit or adapt anyone’s work again and call it your own.
(Unless, of course, you were to use your butt cheeks to manipulate your keyboard with the copying, distributing, transmitting, adapting and whatnot, but Dana fortunately has only met one person whose butt cheeks are that talented. He could play a major third on a piano using nothing but his ass. She kids you not.).
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flick, flick, flick
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i cannot be bought
