Writer’s Blogck
Aug 16th, 2007 by Alison
Yes, it’s been a while.
It’s not exactly writer’s block, but rather a mixture of inertia, lack of topics, and summer vacation. I haven’t been doing yoga either. Sick of things. Blogck. Or blockg. Fog, or fogck on the brain.
How many websites and blogs do you go to only to find they have been abandoned or neglected for months? Even Jenny Diski, the British writer who was the inspiration, indirectly, for my own blog (see the very first entry), neglected hers for at least two months if not more. What is it in the human psyche that grows tired, gives up, fails to maintain the enthusiasm of departure and discovery?
Last week I went to the farmer’s market in the Crocker Galleria in San Francisco. It’s an odd place for a farmer’s market, surrounded by luxury boutiques selling leather suitcases and sexy lady’s lingerie from France and classic Deruta plates from Italy. There you can buy real vegetables from California, organic and local. And recently there has been a stand selling a typical Afghan food called “bolani”, a kind of lavash bread filled with spinach or pumpkin or potato. I bought some last week and that evening sat down to a veritable feast—I’d also bought some cilantro pesto and mint-garlic cheese from the same Afghans, who were young and smiling and gorgeous and entrepreneurial, plying me with samples, and it was hard to associate them in any way with their troubled homeland. Anyway, the point is, I had this dinner which was absolutely new and novel to me, taste combinations and textures I had never experienced, and it was delicious and unforgettable.
A few days later I was talking with a friend who said she knew about the Afghans at the market, she’d been getting their bolani at the farmers’ market in San Rafael for months already, but quite honestly, she was sick of it now. Sick of this wonderful food! how could she be, I lamented, then paused and thought, Yes, we do get sick of everything, eventually. I commiserated, saying what a pity, but isn’t it true we need novelty all the time, in love and literature and music and food. How boredom sets in otherwise; how novelty and change are the fuel for progress and creativity.
Apparently, at least where love is concerned and studies have been done, novelty brings dopamine, the same hormone associated with euphoria, also found in certain drugs, or stimulated by them at any rate. You get trace infusions of the stuff when you go shopping for something exciting. My first sight of my new car—the one I was only interested in buying at that point—filled me with an almost erotic trembling. Some atavistic survival thing; go figure. Now even a drive to San Rafael (seven miles) seems like an ordeal. Sort of, Sorry, Saabito, we’re not going to Point Reyes, I have a headache.
All of which is a roundabout explanation of why I have blogger’s block: it’s not new anymore. Nor is it new to you, dear readers, who have probably given up on me after seeing for the 4th time that I am still complaining about that awful wonderful author and his bad manners.
Perhaps if you would like to share your own experiences of disenchantment with lovers, cars, jobs, houses, music and bolani, we could have an interesting discussion. Or, better yet, tell me if there is anything out there that has never given you blogck, so we mightdebate the secret of maintaining novelty beyond the arbitrary will of our hormonal glands.
I can think of one thing I’m never tired of: the view, twice a day, riding over the Golden Gate bridge, even when it’s foggy.
I never tire of synchronicity and circumstance! Ironically I had a conversation not five minutes before about exactly what you are addressing in this email-novelty.
I was having a conversation with someone who, like me, is constantly finding some new hobby or idea that sets them off in a whirlwind for about a week. When a new, novel what-have-you finds me in my busy, already over stimulated life, I find myself suddenly expending an incredible amount of time and concentration on my new ‘thing’, not to mention spending money on shin guards or guitar picks or new cookbooks or expensive crayons to look the part of new said hobby.
Within a week, however, it’s apparent that looking the part isn’t playing the part and I spend more time in the following weeks diverting polite questions about how “soccer” is going than I actually spent playing the game. The long and short of it is, once the novelty wears off, I move on too.
There is one thing, however, that has dug its way deep into my heart, whose novel flutter has developed into a full blown love affair, that has not only brought me great pleasure but has also taught me about myself-yoga.
I spent my first honeymoon year taking classes and reading books about yoga, buying new yoga clothes, mats, props, and eventually even working at a yoga studio. Then at some point, I hit the wall, and grew bored. I stuck with it anyway, though, cognizant that even if it was no longer as “exciting” I was still benefiting from taking the classes. I’m not going to lie to you-I had moments when I hated going. Sometimes halfway through a class I would grow annoyed and stare at the clock, willing the hands to turn more quickly. There were times when I was impatient with my lack of progress, frustrated with my inability to hold a certain pose, experienced difficulty with breathing, the pretentiousness of certain classes, of the people attending, the cost and the “scene” associated with the studios I was attending. So I retreated for a time, practicing at home in the comfort of my own home, and suddenly a new side of yoga showed itself. I started to understand it intuitively instead of intellectually, my heart was in it, not only my ego.
About five years into the practice, back in the classroom at this point, a teacher addressing the class talked about how our culture is obsessed with fads and hobbies. His contention was that every two years we seem to take up a new sport, and as long as we keep jumping from one thing to another, we will never attain any depth, will never grow. How can we ever form an opinion about something, let alone make any progress or headway, if we only give something two years?
This can be said about so many things-relationships, cities, jobs, to name a few. Really, what this is about is an inability to commit. We want to feel limitless, that in our lifetimes we have a resume full of exciting things, yet looking back at my list, I’d say that my understanding and experience of most of my hobbies is at best shallow. Sure, it makes great dinner conversation, then again so does our president.
At this point, I’ve been doing yoga for eight years, and it has become integral to who I am. It has challenged me physically, intellectually, spiritually, and made me incredibly aware of what it means to really deeply care about something. It lost its novelty ages ago, I no longer purposely walk downtown in my yogini outfit with my mat casually nestled under my arm; now, when I sit on my yoga mat, I’m not aware of the buzz around me, but instead of how it feels to sit there in anticipation of being yoga.