Travelling Companions

One of my undergraduate professors used to talk about the necessity of giving students "travelling companions." This professor believed that the readings we gave students could provide them with a sort of guide for life.

What he didn't mention is that sometimes travelling companions are damn irritating. For example: I recently started going to the gym. This requires gym clothes, since the ones I had the last time I went to the gym mysteriously disappeared in the intervening ten years. I'm sure I wore them out. Anyway, trying on gym clothes, my travelling companion Henry David warns me to be wary of any activity that requires the buying of new clothes.

Luckily, I remember that Henry David usually came into Concord every day, to eat with his mother and sister. He would also drop off his laundry, which I suppose spared Walden Pond the status of washing facility. He is summarily dismissed. I will call him back when I would like either a non-conformist travelling companion, or a nature-loving travelling companion. But I am not surviving on beans, and I don't want to live in a shanty.

Wandering around the store in search of work-out clothes that are not spandex, full length, shiny pants, or anything in any way bedazzled (tm), I recall that I am deeply annoyed by someone. In fact, I'm very angry at this person. I enjoy a pleasant fantasy of telling this person exactly what I think of him/her/his/her actions/behavior. Then this person realizes the error of their ways and begs my forgiveness. It's a very satisfactory fantasy, until Buddha intervenes. He points out that anger is generally a way to ignore what currently is, because we prefer the fantasy to the reality. Anger turned toward someone else is almost always anger at oneself, as well. And finally, of course I should keep in mind that all things are always changing and that in life, suffering is inevitable.

Thanks, man. Really, all I want is to remain comfortably in my self-righteous anger and indignation, okay? It's like eating chocolate: toxic in large doses, but comforting in small bites. Go twirl your daisy and I'll get back to you.

Then there's the Writing Shrew. The Writing Shrew always appears just at the time you sit down, full of energy and excitement, to write. She has severe glasses and a pinched mouth that cries out for Botox, a body stiff and stilted that cries out for orgasms. The Writing Shrew kindly keeps you abreast of your mistakes. She quietly asks if English is, after all, your first language. And if, perhaps, you would like to know that what you are writing makes you sound like an idiot. In fact, the Writing Shrew seems to imply, keep going this way and you'll be a speechwriter for Bush.

The Writing Shrew really gets on my nerves, like a relative you don't like that you are forced to give an eight-hour car ride to, so that he can make it to rehab on time. Against my pacifist ideals, I am forced to kill her off in gruesome ways each morning. This is why I am not a Quaker. (And, as should be obvious from this post and the "Fucking Fuckers" post, this is also why I am never going to be a viable candidate for office in this country.)

Various other voices pop in and out, for pep talks. Many of them (Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Frank McCourt, for example) remind me that I really can't complain about any aspect of my privileged little life. Have I had to kill a child to keep her from becoming a slave? No? Well, shut the fuck up about your problems with grad school, then. This is considered peppy by my travelling companions. Then there is the parent voice, the mother voice, the what-would-your-brother-think voice, the cool voice (how cool are you? never cool enough), the everyone-is-watching-you voice, the constant-ongoing-narration-of-events-as-if-removed-from-them voice, the eighty year old version of myself voice. (This last voice generally just tells me I should have had more sex, so I'll keep her around.)