Monday, January 17, 2011

January 2010

I thought I’d give this a try.  The decision came when I understood my more important and reliable relationships were all on Facebook.  Instead of continuing to play Mafia Wars, I wanted to do something more, take more of a risk in allowing people to get to know me.
            I still wonder how this happened to me.  In large part I attribute my shrinking reservoir of warm bodies to my move/relocation from New York City to Newburgh in the fall of ’99.  My expectations in undertaking this risk proved unrealistic.  I had thought my good will in undertaking such a huge relocation, compounded with my decision to purchase a foreclosure property and become a homeowner for the first time in my life entitled me to a sturdy network and foundation of support.  But somehow in transitioning from a city with a population of 8 million to a city with a population of 28 thousand, I learned some lessons, had to study the difference between an easy anonymity and being stuck with relationships I couldn’t get away from, dysfunctional or not.
            For years I’d put out an email newsletter, Letters from Newburgh.  But these contained peoples’ names, and the results of distributing these were less than sanguine.  More than once, I had to publish official apologies for offending individuals who were both mentioned in and receiving the Letters.  The last of these was in January ‘08.  So the challenge here is to philosophize.  I believe the personal is political, but clearly want to avoid a gossip sheet.
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I suppose in picking up the thread of my published emails I can suppose that there exists an audience for me, an audience interested in following the thread of my life.
            I come from the streets of The City—New York, and have recently begun referring to myself as Tenement Trash.  So far the stock reaction has been a withdrawal in shock and dismay that I could think of myself in those terms, but actually, I find it quite helpful.  Growing up in a poor, working class family in a railroad flat in Yorkville as a first generation American put me on one track.  But the ruling class expectations of my German father and Finnish mother put me on another.  My life has played out along the divergence of these two very different sets of expectations.  In a way, you could say that my background destined me for a failure that would never have been tolerated by my family.  This trajectory turned an only child into a solitary adventuress.
            After my the first shock of mental illness at the age of eighteen, I learned to skillfully conceal anything important in my life from parents and extended family members.  Now decades later, having finally finished with the notion that I need psychiatric care and medication, I’ve made the determination to keep my cards even closer to my chest, steer my own course rather than parse the ‘ore of emotion’ into a pablumesque babyfood in talk therapy sessions.
            So there is the germ of it, folks.  While President of the Mid Hudson chapter of Mensa for 3 ½ years, I wrote a monthly column for the newsletter, running approximately 500 words.  I think that’s still a good template.  I’ll stop here.