NVC, part 1

Many of you may recall that I did a weekend-long workshop on Non-Violent Communication (NVC) a few years ago in Norwich, England. Sunday, I did a 3-hour introduction class thru Urban Alliance for Sustainability. To be perfectly honest, I am wary of throwing myself into the whole self-improvement universe – not because I don’t think I have a lot to improve, but rather because I think the vocabulary and mentality you learn alienates those who don’t ride that pony. I believe in the search for self-improvement, but only in the context of how everyone else relates and communicates.

I’m surprised that I’m able to draw in this recent quote:
Ilana said: it’s almost as if there are as many ways to have awkward interactions as there are people (with whom you can have them). (Here I begin to paraphrase) We have all these Miss Manners-type books prescribing how we should treat each other, and there’s still no one solution. We all still do it awkwardly.

That conversation was about something completely different… or was it? There isn’t any one right way to be with other people, and at the same time, we’ve all found ourselves offended when offense wasn’t intended or scratching our heads about a person’s real meaning. Yet, all each of us really wants is to be happy, to have people around us committed to our happiness, and to commit ourselves to the happiness of others. It should be so simple.

At the beginning of the workshop, several people stood up and stated their intensions for being there. People talked about getting away from judgment, about the desire to turn conflict into collaboration, about wanting to keep an open heat. This moved me.

Before the next step, we spent a moment discussing confidentiality. The upshot was that it’s OK to share your own experience, but not someone else’s. I will try to respect that request. They said: this is how trust is built; I disagree. I believe trust is built through acts that express empathy and compassion – this, of course, encompasses disclosure issues.

Our next step was to discuss our intensions for being there with 4 other attendees. I only spoke with 3, but thru that process, I devised 3 intensions, the local to the global:
1) to have happy intimate relationships
2) to do my job of convincing people to use efficient transportation better
3) to discuss national and international issues with people with differing views and promote a more democratic society in the process.
Interestingly, as I described my job to one (older) woman, I saw her face shut down. She had no interest in auto-addiction (not the words I used with her). When I reached “promoting a more democratic society” her face lit up. I realized that much of my movement is generational, and if we don’t the message through to people young enough, they might never be able to hear it. This is another reason why everyone should do a year abroad in school – it fosters an open mind.

I’m rambling on, and I would like to get to the point. I’ll do that another time….

More thoughts on my favorite topic

Scientific American: relationships are what makes funny. One example given was Seinfeld. I’m not sure of the exact source.

I had a moment of clarity the other day about… you guessed it: relationships. The problem is that I don’t know exactly which words to use to describe it. But I think a key to a health relationship, to one that builds all parties up rather than takes them down, is democracy. That is, decisions are made together. Starting from the problem, and onto a un-pre-determined solution, determining together what will work for both people. This can be anything from what to do on Saturday to whether or not to continue the Relationship.

I’ve been with a different person each year for the past 4 years. The closeness (in time) of these relationships provides an unusual perspective on relationships, since everyone is so different. For example, 2004-2006 lacked democracy (although 2004 made up for it when I brought it to his attention). Countless studies have found that boys aren’t inclined towards collaboration. I also think that I’m attracted to pig-headedness. However, not all my boyfriends have approached our relationship undemocratically.

I had another sort of revelation recently. I love my gallery. I love sailing. I love jogging. I love my apartment. I love the articles I write. I love the study I’ve been contracted to do. I love my friends and my family. I love San Francisco. I love riding a bicycle. Basically, I love my life. Inviting anyone to be a closer part of my life would be such a big gamble, since I recently experienced so much unhappiness from doing that, I wonder if it would ever be worth that gamble. My happiness feels so precious and fragile; I want to protect it.

Carolyn tells me that I am significantly happier when I have a boyfriend. She also tells me that I was “profoundly unhappy” in my last relationship. So, where does that leave me? Well, I don’t know. I do know that I have developed a bit of distain for this idea of Love. It’s like Tam and I were saying last night: I always cry at weddings but not necessarily at funerals. Good things are dangerous – the more you have, the more you have to lose. And I don’t want people I love to lose that much. So, living in a place of having lost already is much safer.

Strange Timing

You know that my specialty is sharing too much. So, you won't be surprised to learn that I just had most of the hair removed from the lower half of my body for the first time in several months. (I'd even had a dream about it. The situation was dire.)

Afterwards, I headed to a cafe to use their wireless and finish a homework assignment. Here, I walked right up to the back of a man and asked him if he was leaving. Well, guess what? It was a boy I kissed at a party 5 years ago and haven't seen since. I'm not going to date him now, but I thought it was strange timing.

Cultural experience

Yesterday morning, I had an interview at a large internet company in the South Bay. I trekked down to 24th and Mission at the ungodly but designated time for its shuttle. There was a mob of young men in leather jackets, jeans, and new canvas laptop cases; so, I figured they must be my people. But I hung back to get on the shuttle last. It filled up, and ultimately a young man gave up his seat to let me ride to my interview.

The bus was really crowded, and they had turned 2 people away (including the guy who gave up his seat for me to make it to my interview). Since the job I interviewed for included running the shuttle service, I could see that I had my work cut out for me. I kept elbowing the guy next to me, and he kept nudging me. I wanted to believe he was hitting on me (he was pretty cute) but I was also aware of the reality of the situation.

The bus had wifi, and I noticed that everyone on the bus was using the email of a competing internet company. I thought that was rather odd.

The first stop was a full 20 minutes earlier than my stop was supposed to be, and I asked the guy next to me how many stops there are:
Him: 4, I think
Me: the schedule they gave me only included 2
Him: some are new, I think.
Me: I’m trying to get to X business park. What city are we in?
Him (shrugging): this is the main campus.
The 3 other women on the bus got off together, looking rather eccentric, and walked together towards one of the buildings. Most everyone else (young men in leather jackets) had a different stop – a stop clearly for the competing internet company. At the last stop, one guy asked me: do you know where you’re going?
Me: No
Him: Did they give you a building number?
I mentioned the company name…. well, it turned out I had gotten on the wrong company’s bus. I guess I thought multiple companies might share buses.

The person interviewing me later clarified that there are actually 4 companies with shuttles from SF to their South Bay campus: eBay, Genetech, Google, and Yahoo!. The shuttle driver dropped me at another shuttle stop where that shuttle arrived shortly and took me to the Caltrain station. Then, another shuttle took me from the Caltrain station to the proper campus. I was only 30 minutes late. I wonder if I could have walked.

So, basically, I toured the South Bay by public transit, and the dot com thing still happening there. The person interviewing me wanted to know all about the other company’s shuttle facilities: what kind of transponder did they have? Yeah, I checked that right after I got on the bus. (Not.) But I was a bit of a company spy already having had that experience. She said they’d had some turnover in the position managing the shuttle which might explain the inadequate capacity.

Who knows what will happen, but I’m kind of excited about trying an entirely different sector of the economy. The obvious jobs for me I already know have undesirable aspects. I’m less excited about the commute, but it got to feeling almost romantic to me on that bus ride down, like we were these people who do this crazy thing and it’s like meditation – something that you do that you don’t really understand but is fun anyway. I don’t know what I’m talking about anymore. Someone please kiss me to shut me up.

Hey baby, can I fix your bike?

Yes, you read that right. I just had a lovely second date where a guy I met a couple weeks ago began fixing my bike. There was a roommate crisis which required him to rush off, but first I locked my bike in his office. I’m not sure if the rush-off was intended (even subconsciously) to be passive-aggressive. I’m not sure if the locking of the bike in his office was intended to tie me down. The date was one of my best in a while. I think it was because we were doing something I enjoy doing (rather than sitting around over drinks and talking, which can be boring), and because there was a nice energy going.

I guess the other good date this season was one with The Professor, but he ruined it by telling me, apropos of nothing, in gruesome detail about his then-girlfriend’s miscarriage. I’m still traumatized. Even though it wasn’t meant to be, many other aspects of that date were good.

My flirtation with the young sailor continues. At least now we have each other’s phone numbers. My other sailing buddies say I should just ask him on a date, but I’m just not there. They say I am too friendly with everyone, and the guy I like might not know that… I like him particularly. But I prefer to keep things light and non-committal.

Which reminds me of something else I’ve been meaning to do for a while: write down all my favorite original quotes. When my sailing friend said I was too friendly, I quoted my mother:
“It’s easy to make people feel shitty about themselves. Most people already do. If you want a challenge, why not try to make people feel good about themselves.”
Thus, my “excessive” friendliness. She replied that I do a pretty good job of making her feel good about herself. :-)

Another quote that I love, from Kate Gordon, who I went to grad school with:
“If you are asking yourself these questions (is it happening?), then it isn’t happening.” Or, in other words, when it’s happening, you aren’t questioning it. “When it’s right; it’s right” (not an original quote).

I will continue to jot down these quotes as I remember them.

Time Travel

Speaking of heartbreak (Quack quack, speaking of ducks), I stopped by Creativity Explored a couple days ago, and they had a fiber sculpture in their window a little like my aunt Judy, the famous fiber sculptor, used to make. Next month it will have been 2 years since her death. I also saw Donnie Darko recently. Despite all of the times it’s been recommended to me, it was OK. I didn’t share its particular interest in insanity and time travel – I thought it missed the point. To me, time travel is appealing to be with loved ones.

Time travel is the only way that we are all always together – I don't think memory is a strong enough word for it. I have wondered what makes now the moment we live in especially when I first wake from dreaming. Maybe it’s a decision. We can also choose to feel like the real present is the time when we were with the ones we love. I think this makes sleeping so appealing when heartbroken. Of course, I think this also compels us to be careful about how we spend our waking life – to focus on the loves we have.

Guess! ...OK, I'll tell you: Relationships

One of the sailing teachers is an older gentleman named Neil. He’s getting married this weekend. I first met Neil a few months ago when he, another sailing student named Joyce, and I went on a cruise to Sam’s in Tiburon for some vegetable soup. It was a really special day.

You know me, within about 5 minutes, I had them both talking about their loves and losses and what they thought it all meant. Neil took a class in relationships, and he’d learned some very interesting things there that both Joyce and I have been telling our friends ever since. The bottom line is that relationships work best when you are with someone just like you in 3 ways. I’ll try to explain what they are:
1) Assertive vs. receptive… or, as Neil described it, masculine vs. feminine. That is, whether you live in the world responding to others’ needs or expressing your own needs.
2) How you respond to things: people react to the events of their lives in a variety of ways: action, emotion, analysis…. And as time passes, that reaction moves to the next type of reaction. For example, you first react to something upsetting by yelling (action) and then the next day you might start to analyze how to fix it and only a while later do you begin to process your feelings about it. Each person, Neil learned, does this differently; you’ll get along well with someone who does it most similarly to your way.
3) Focus… are you a tinkerer or do you fixate? When approaching a project, it matters if you become obsessed with it or if you graze or even how often you forget what you’re working on or what else you’re doing. I wanted to call this competence as Neil described it, but that’s too value-laden for this application.

Today's bleak thought

Is it possible that happy endings are only happy when you stop the story at the happy part? I mean, time is continuous, but stories begin and end where the storyteller decides they do. So, the decision about whether a story is happy or sad depends entirely on when you decide it ends. And every story ends somewhere.

SF Indiefest Party Photo

Porn Palace party people

Thoughts on Trainspotting

Given the rainy day and my hangover, I watched a movie this afternoon, Trainspotting. So much better than last night but I had to pause a few points because I was so disgusted with the needles and the shit. This movie is painful to watch. At the end, the main character steals the money from his friends and runs off for a new life -- he chooses life, in his own words. And it was clear that unless he did something horrible like that, there was no way he was going to get out from under their destructiveness. This act made it necessary for him to stay away.

This reminded me of a phenomenon I learned about from Friends (the TV show) when a guy acts like a total jerk so his girlfriend will break up with him and he doesn't have to do it. Or even how our bodies, when we're sick, make us smell bad to keep others away. Obviously, a kind person would not use this kind of mechanism intentionally, but the Ewan McGregor character never claimed to be a kind person. I like kind people, and I intend to be one. That said, a lot can be said for subconscious sabotage especially when one is pushed to the wall.

Parties and a film review

I guess the first full week in February is a big social week – Monday was the sailing club’s quarterly meeting which was super fun. I like those guys. Tuesday was Love on Wheels (SFBC’s annual Valentine’s Day party) and another party I enjoyed too. Last night was the opening Gala for SF Indie Fest – the independent film festival.

I went with Gabriel – we decided to volunteer at the last minute in order to get into the sold-out show and party. So, I got to boss a lot of people around to keep them from going the wrong way. The opening film was Inland Empire by David Lynch which was the worst movie I have ever seen. It was nearly 3 hours, and by the end I was really hoping the Laura Dern character would kill me too, please. I like to be able to say something nice about nearly everything; so, I will say that the scene with the weird prophet lady in Laura Dern’s house at the beginning and the scene at the end where the little homeless girl is talking about her friend in Pomona while Laura Dern dies were interesting. Also, the acting was really good. But… BUT… the other two hours and 40 minutes were complete masturbatory crap lacking meaning and respect for the viewer’s time and then repeating itself over and over and over until you want to kill yourself because Laura Dern is taking too long to do it. I guess it goes to show you that if you have a famous name, you no longer have to do good work.

The Gala was at the Porn Palace downtown. Booze was free, but the lines were huge. There was also a pancake station, a quesadilla station and other food station that were pretty fun. The Porn Palace had a prisoner room, a dungeon, and a stable to fulfill all standard sexual fantasies – I have one about a magician, but I guess that’s eccentric enough to be overlooked in this setting. Hard core porn was showing in two rooms but was pretty boring. I mean, people on the screen were having sex; they just didn’t look they were having any fun.

Gabe had a lot of schmoozing to do while I either tagged along or, later, danced. I left at about 1 with a guy who’s trying to set up an alternative film festival in Boston. He was surprised when I dragged him onto the 14-Mission – visitors from out of town don’t often ride the bus – but it had stopped right in front of us and went where we were going. I was still a bit spinny from the vodka when I got home, but I woke up this morning to find everything intact. It’s amazing how well you can do on habits – putting your keys in a certain place, your shoes in another, etc.

The rain is cramping my style, and it seems like it’s going to be a low-key weekend. Now, I’m looking forward to that. I have a lot of work to do.

Turned tables

So, you remember the story from January where I had to break up with this guy I’d been out on 2 dates with? You might also recall me mentioning The Professor. Well, earlier this week, The Professor broke up with me – he’s gotten serious with someone else and isn’t the kind of guy to have more than one thing going.

I’m sure context is everything, but, by comparison with my January breakup, I replied to The Professor (paraphrased so as not to include too much information): “You’re so sweet. Of course, I want to be friends. I mean, I thought we were friends. I’m happy for you.”

I’m not holding myself as some kind of model when being broken up with. I’m most certainly not. Trust me! But these situations were somewhat similar – only a few dates but for various reasons it was still important to say something. In examining them and other breakups, the answer might be in reach (how much you’ve given to the relationship considering your comfort level with giving that without anything in return) or expectations (how much you hoped the relationship would continue and grow). I guess in a way the two are related since you wouldn’t give too much if you didn’t believe in the relationship. But it seems like we should date people we want to be friends with (that is, unless they’ve ripped your heart out and spat on it) – at least, that’s why I was confused by my January man. The psychobabble might be that the healthy approach to dating is to believe in the possibilities without over-reaching. This reminds me of a poem I have on the bulletin board in my kitchen:

even after all this time,

the sun never says to the earth

you owe me.

look what happens

with a love like that:

It lights up the whole sky.

hafiz

Yeah, so, I don’t know how to do that, but it’s good to have goals. I feel like I just, this hung over morning, changed stages. I wonder if it will stick, and what’s next.

I was the photo of the week!

Berkeley Water Front photo of the week