The Tau of Gretch

A shear stress, denoted (tau), is defined as a stress which is applied parallel or tangential to a face of a material, as opposed to a normal stress which is applied perpendicularly.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shear_stress

This week I've been a veritable Nutcho of stresses, pushed and pulled into contortions of compression and tension. It begs the question: How much displacement can take place before irrevocable deformation results?

I do not understand much of material science, but grasp that there are several types of stresses within physics and engineering. The so-called normal type of stress is force exerted perpendicular to the face of a material. If you've ever broken a bone, chances are it came from blunt impact of this kind. It can snap a radius or femur in two with casual ease. Hopefully, it's a clean break that can knit itself strong again, once set and cast.

I liken this normal stress to the infinite number of aggravations and motivations that propel us through daily life. We learn to expect them--the traffic jam, the nosy co-worker, the extra-large phone bill--and fortify ourselves accordingly. We just deal with them. These normal stresses make us resilient over time. It's mental conditioning; we learn to deflect and absorb these perpendicularities.

Shear stress, however, occurs parallel to the face of a material. This stress is more difficult to counteract. It's not delivered in a blow we can see coming, and either deflect or steel overselves to absorb. Enough of these tangential stresses in a short period can leave us feeling frayed, pulled out of recognition, deformed.

My shear point was reached this week. First, some context: PMS week. My best friend and I recently had a conversation about this topic, when I was expressing embarrassed recognition over my state.

"What do you think happens to us during PMS?", she asks.

"Well, personally I just get a heightened sensitivity to things that normally I take in stride. I become swollen, physically and emotionally. Everything has the potential to scratch at me, I'm in a state of rawness."

"No." She says this emphatically. "No. What's happening is that your body is full of all the shit you've been taking all month from people. At the end of the month, your body is about to do some serious house-keeping, and get rid of everything you've been carrying since your last period. And if too much shit comes your way, your body rebels. It can't take it any more, and your reactions are just that: not being able to take anymore from anyone."

"Men swing in and out of their "period" all the time, and this is known as being assertive. Women try to keep it together until their bodies can't take it anymore, and this is known as PMSing. It's bullshit."

I see her point. Instead of looking at PMS as a weakness peculiar to the fertile feminine, it could be seen as a heightened state of self-defense. When my body aches and cramps and I feel alternately murderous and depressed and ardent and hungry, this is a distillation of feelings and desires I've suppressed over the course of the previous weeks. This would explain why some months are much worse/heavier than others. Food for thought.

Anyway, it is in this state that I begin to experience my shear stresses. It begins with a creeping feeling that something is off at work. I've just started working on a new and significant project as a subcontractor. The person I'm working through is normally a reliable communicator, in daily contact via phone or text. A few days pass where no or very little response is forthcoming, and I start to worry. I discover he's out of contact with everyone, and that the brief texts I'm getting are more than anyone else has heard.

Already fretful, I'm visited by another tangential stress. It's been my companion for so long I've become inured to its presence. My Ex, he calls and disturbs me deeply. He is in his own state, due to the one-year marker of our break-up and his birthday. He has a penchant for extremes, made more dramatic by an inability to express himself and perfectionist tendencies. Throw in some ADHD and an addictive personality for good measure.

The phone call rips me up. It's terrible to hear him suffer, a person I'd loved so fully. It's terrible to be manipulated by someone who doesn't know how else to be. And it's a terrible relief to hear him say that the break-up wasn't my fault. He told me I'm an amazing person, and had done and been than he'd thought possible in a mate. I hadn't realized how filled with self-doubt I'd been until I heard that.

Dark and light. The dark being his hinting at self-destruction, the dark being his use of my terrible need for approval against me, in an attempt to pull me back towards him. Tangential stress number two; now where's the third, the inevitable third?

Next is the arrival of Guyfriend with a few hours notice. We have a lovely, friendly dinner together, watch some tv in bed, and nestle down as comfortable as childhood pals to sleep. Except both of us are creatures of dreamy desire, and find ourselves thrashing around together before one or both of us wakes up and rolls over in the knowledge that we just don't do that anymore. Habit, mistaken identity, generic desire, the id versus the superego. Who knows?

A night of frustrated sleep leaves me has me behaving gingerly in the morning. One more normal stress I've accepted as part of the terms of this strange relationship, right? Except I'm scraped raw again, upon learning that my work colleague has officially gone AWOL. An alcoholic flare-up, is there ever a good time?

Faced with deep uncertainty over how I'll make my living in the next few months, I reach my shear point. I can't take it anymore. Now, guyfriend's funny stories about his sexual adventures and his esoteric thoughts on love and most of all, a damn picture he has pulled up on my computer of himself with a gorgeous woman he has not winnowed out, well, it all is too much. I cannot understand why a "friend" would hurt me like this, and ask for an explanation.

He claims to be startled. Turns out he had not realized the extent of my feelings for him until that moment, and his response is (wince, wince) pity and concern. He tries to point out why he's not fit for a typical relationship, why I'm better off not thinking about him in those terms, and how much he values me as a friend. Fuck. Me.

It is a relief, in a way, as I don't believe him. He has known the extent of my feelings for some time now, or at least suspected enough to break it off; if not, he is more monstrously self-involved than even I can accept. Either way, the effect is the same: a loss of love for him and all its attendant sorrow. I was gratified to hear him use the word "joy" in describing our time together in the early days of the Experiment, but that's about the only light in the situation.

After he leaves on his perpetual roadtrip, I engage in a flurry of damage control for work to buy us a few days. Then I sit in my kitchen, gripped by the need to get the hell out of town. I've reached the point where it was not going to be enough, to hang out with galpals or clean the house or kickbox or any of the other coping mechanisms I usually rely upon. My sanity is ready to cleave.

Throwing caution to the wind, I decide to go visit the man I'd met recently, who lives two hours' drive away. Whether I end up hanging out with him or sleeping in my car, I just need to go.

So I do, and make a wonderful discovery, In my raw and fractured state, I throw myself upon the kindness of a relative stranger. Not knowing what to expect, I find solace.

It sounds prosaic: he takes me for dinner and asks me about what's going on and listens to what I'm willing to share, without prying or passing judgement on anything. He cheers me up with good tequila and great sex and is all in all so damn sweet that despite myself, I relax into genuine affection. I've resisted for many reasons, but now just give up. Interesting.

I explain this to my best friend, his small acts of thoughtfullness, like stopping me on a hike to do up my shoelace like it was no big thing. "It sounds like you're finally dating a man", she ventures. "Someone who's not afraid of doing things like that, who's able to give and to take. Who's not afraid of showing how they feel. A man, not a dude or a guy."

She's right, of course. I've finally graduated to dating men instead of manchilds. Interesting, soothing to feel a sense of comfort from another instead of having to be the constant source.

At any rate, there are still thorny and unresolved issues galore. I still wonder how to move to go to school, my house still does not sell, I'm encumbered by my past as much as ever. I still worry about my ex, grieve my unsuccessful romance with guyfriend. I'm cautious about a new man thinking I'm so great. Financially, I'm beyond broke. My colleague is still M.I.A. on his bender. I've had an on-again-off-again sore throat for three months, and the engine light has come on and stayed on to indicate some puzzling electrical issues with my car. It is not bliss.

Despite stresses both perpendicular and tangential, I think I'm past the shear point for now. Now it is just the logistics of dealing with all the shit, and holding onto the belief that it'll all work out eventually. I find some intrigue in having had to get to a vulnerable place to find strength. There may be hope for me after all.

Stay flexible,

-G "is for Gumby" Rutte

Drafting an Intelligent Response

Salutations earthlings. Warm spring drizzle is blanketing my corner of the world and adding a new dimension to the surreal. Important events still have not occurred but are spoken of frequently, in the half-assed hope of bringing them closer into existence through reference.

Speaking of the future is drafting an object in the imagination. Did you ever take drafting in junior high school, as part of the wonderful oddity called 'Home Economics'? Draft, sew, cook, work with metal and wood. I wonder if it's still a mandatory glob of useful skills thrust upon teens, or if it's been broken down to sub-modules on demand. Ah, the kids. I fear they're presented with too much specificity and not enough mystery.

Back to drafting. Drawing 3D is a major shift for kiddies adept at outlining unidimensional horses and Garfields and rockets. It breaks a straight-on perspective that we accept as reality, aka what we see.

When we look at something, we don't see underneath and behind simultaneously, correct? A child could assume objects are composed of shifting flat planes that click into our field of vision through movement, and which exist only as we see them. Drafting, however, connects the planes as visible proof that they co-exist, despite what we see or don't see. It makes a gawky 13-year old philosophical without knowing it.

I was good at drafting, if too slow to get an outstanding grade. I'd get bogged down in how the lines connected, get dreamy. Not much has changed in 24 years, in that regard. I still get caught up in the idea of looking behind and underneath. What does it mean, and why am I looking?

Although it is not, benign curiosity can feel like a curse. I have to chronically remind myself that discoveries are just as often stumbled upon as found. Best to keep my eyes open, despite a lack of focus. Once they focus, then the conversation can begin in earnest.

Author and journalist James Howard Kunstler recently was the opening speaker at an (un)conference, one of these grand "deSIgN shall s@ve the world" events that incubate faith that yes, we can do it. He spoke of the distinction between intelligent response versus a solution.

My understanding of what he said goes like this: when solutions are spoken of, it's in the context of perpetuating an untenable present. How can we keep going as we are, even as we know this reality is unsustainable and even undesirable? He gives the example of proposing electric cars as the alternative to traditional automobiles, because the idea of having to re-shape the whole way we live and work and interact is overwhelming.

Solutions are clever compromises, a bargaining tactic we use to avoid meaningful change. Solutions are ways we play tricks on ourselves. Intelligent responses, on the other hand, are ways to engage in answers or tactics that address not only a question, but the underlying psychology that underpins it. Here is a problem; now let us look underneath and behind it and to the side, and talk about all that, and what the structure can realistically and positively support as a "solution".

So using his example: it's not yippee, everyone just needs to drive a Prius and we'll be fine. It's more like hmmm, is it sane or feasible to center our lives around roads and parking garages and gas stations? Do we fear a loss of convenience, an examination of what we value as freedom? Are worries about uncertainty and risk and social engineering justified, or automatic responses to our current way of life being challenged? Are we, in short, finding clever excuses for the insularity of a single dimension?

I write about this because I'm equally fascinated with Big Ideas and little pathologies. On the surface, we're all solid ground. Looks good, let's build our solution here. But wait. Underneath is where we see the true load-bearing capacities. Here may be rabbit warrens and ant colonies and worm holes and organic matter, all of which could subside and threaten the integrity of whatever we build superficially. If we recognize they exist, we can move our site to bedrock or dig through it. Best to know, though. Collapse may be spectacular for onlookers, but is only devastating to occupants.

Believe it or not, these esoteric musings help me make sense of daily life. In my last posting, I was ready to reject a recent person of interest based on what I perceived was a lack of sexual interest in me. I made caustic reference to the ex-Date, who'd drifted into silence. These seem like logical, or at least understandable, responses. Protective measures. Refreshingly, I find I'm not so fragile after all these days. Either my sense of self has improved or I'm tired of erecting defenses, or maybe I'm not taking things as personally as I used to.

I was suspicious of the new guy's sweetness, of his expressing how much he liked me. What was wrong with this person that he liked me so much? Why was he so nervous about pleasing me? The more I get to know him, the easier it is for me to accept that he just does like me, and is working through his own pathologies and defensive measures. Okay.

I've also concluded that it's not my job to protect him from me. I've been frank about leaving town in a few months to study several thousand kilometers away, and I refuse to speculate on what I'll be doing during or after my studies. I've been open about a lack of interest in a long-distance relationship. This could change, or not.

In the meantime, I'm getting more comfortable with enjoying myself and being enjoyed in the present. This weekend, he surprised me with a great bottle of bourbon. He bought me breakfast, refinished my French doors, and got me using a radial sander. It's nice.

As for the ex-Date, after a few weeks of silence I sent him a courteous email wishing him the best. He wrote back apologizing for the absence of communication, which he called juvenile on his part, but confirming that he'd felt we were drifting apart. He linked a change in his residence with moving on in the emotional sense, and wished me the best back.

I thanked him for the resolution, and so we end on a grace note rather than a sour one. I regained enough respect for him to feel good about having once been interested in him. My interest in him was marginal, and mainly sexual in nature. I was seeking a distraction from a larger hurt. That's neither good nor bad, just the truth, and it's part of the ongoing conversation with myself to accept that love is not an all-or-nothing venture. Not one dimension, not three, but an exploration of various planes and intersection and angles that can't be contained by the size of a sheet of paper or a deadline. Maddening, uncertain, exciting, continuous.

With that, I go back to work, which today consists of learning more about software design programs and spreadsheeting applications. I'm trying to find the joyful mystery in it...

Gawky 36.9 year old Gretchen signing off-

Snap! D.H. Nails It

The feelings I don't have, I don't have.
The feelings I don't have, I won't say I have.
The feelings you say you have, you don't have.
The feelings you would like us both to have,
we neither of us have.
The feelings people ought to have, they never have.
If people say they've got feelings,
you may be pretty sure they haven't got them.
So if you want either of us to feel anything at all,
You'd better abandon all idea of feeling altogether.

-D.H. Lawrence

One Day, My Freak Shall Come...

May is wondrous, is it not? We get the first real tastes of summer in May where I live. Extended days of sunshine, the flirtation with 20 degree heat, pasty arms and legs sprouting from fleshy winter tubers dressed up in shorts and t-shirts. It's the promise of a new year and a new season.

Of course, the nights are still cool enough to remind us of the previous four months of the new year, which really isn't that new anymore. A reminder that we best be paying attention as the continuum, well, it continues.

I'm enjoying the kick of a fey spring. It's a good time to take stock of the mistakes of the past, and the consequences of more recent lapses in judgement as well. All part of the continuum. Whether it leads to a particularly "self-actualized" self remains to be seen, unless the actualization is accepting that I'm kind of an asshole as well as all the good stuff.

I don't know if things move quickly in my world because I have a lot of time on my hands these days, or I'm just the impatient kind who likes to move things along. What's it been, a week or two since I outed myself as an old-fashioned romantic? Bleating away, swollen with recovering feelings and PMS. Hinting that one day, if I'm steadfast in my convictions, my prince shall come...

You may be chagrined to learn I'm backsliding away from that position; I know I'm irked with myself (and of course amused). I'm bled out and got some of what I thought I wanted, two occurences which bring a fresh and sceptical perspective. So that's what I concluded? Really?

Fickle cow. No sooner do I have a eureka moment of utmost sincerity, do I start experiencing deflation. No sooner do I find a comfortable perch from which to survey life's rich pageant than I start to experience boredom with that particular view. Ack. I may be beating a hasty retreat to a romantic absence soon enough. An emotional beige may be appropriate for a spell. (A "spell" being more than a day, the duration of my last kick at it.)

The nice man I met a couple of weeks ago has turned out to be so nice. So nice it makes me uncomfortable. There's a fine balance between being appreciated and being idealized. Plus he thinks a lot.

I've met overthinkers before, of course. The ex-Date was one in his own right, except he found some liberation from anxiety in the sex act (eventually) before getting paralyzed by the other stuff. If he'd stuck with objectifying me, we would've been dandy.

The flip side of that is the nice guy overthinker. He likes me so much that he worries about pleasing me, worries that he likes me more than I like him, worries that it's not going to be as magical as it should be, etc. So of course it's not. I'm left in the position of having to reassure him.

This is workable in the short, short term. I'm not wholly unkind, and don't mind reassuring someone or playing polite. Much like ignoring a drop of spittle flying out of someone's mouth while they're talking, or feigning deafness at occasional bathroom noises, polite definitely has its uses.

However, as I'm not looking to cast myself as Girlfriend or even An Understanding Let's See Where It Goes Candidate, it's insincere to continue. Eventually, it'll get farcical. Embarrassed for the two of us, I'll blurt out something along the lines of "Dude, quit spitting!/Man, you really need to cut out the cabbage..."

It's been an interesting exercise, mind you, to rise to the challenge (one of us has to, correct?). I'm proud of my creativity, and gotten fine results under the circumstances. One small cheer, please, for a can-do attitude.

Still, to me there is no more glorious, prosaic truth than a rigid cock. It may be fleeting in the grand scheme of things, it may be attached to 180lbs of moral relativism and inarticulate confusion and outright lies, yet it is something to be sure of and that my friends, is good enough for me at this point. I still worship at the altar of Priapus. I'll take that hard truth over a discussion of feelings, which is really a discussion about doubt. I don't have the appetite or patience for those conversations without sexual certitude.

I recognize the irony, if not outright hypocrisy of my stance. I was guilty of being the overthinker with my ex-lover, which did eventually lead us to a solid and interesting friendship devoid of physicality. Fair enough. Other circumstances were at play, but there was still a respectable amount of sexual chemistry between us and some lovely, dirty sex even as the end drew near. Not many people would call it quits when we did, preferring to exhaust it completely. I'm lucky to have him in my life, if only to teach me that lesson in timing.

Back to nice guy. Conventional wisdom may dictate I be patient and understanding, but I don't think so. Not me, not now. No, this one calls for retreating in a sensitive and tactful manner, but in a way that leaves no doubt about which direction I'm headed. Back away from the nice man. Back away while you still think he's nice.

Anyway, if there's anything to be learned it's that I don't know jack-shit about what I want or what my type is. I wrote once about the perfect situation being a man for each room of my house to fulfil separate needs. Now I see my ideal emerging as a Frankenstein creation: a dash of the nice man's sweetness mixed in with Guyfriend's intellect and sexual prowess, poured into the ex-Date's hot bod. Something along those lines. We're all looking for a workable composite.

Hence, let me set aside any further comparisons of myself to pastries, or any stolid analysis of my romantic desires or types. These thoughtful conclusions will strike me as false almost immediately. Better to keep it amorphous.

For now, it's reasonable to conclude I'm a sweet old-fashioned girl who daydreams of fucking every nice pair of shoulders she sees. One day my freak will come, and hopefully not in my eyes. Surely not an unreasonable hope.

Schizophrenically yours,
Gretchie