Remember that Seinfeld episode where George decides he has been doing everything wrong, and starts to follow the opposite of his normal instincts? He goes up to a beautiful woman, and instead of trying to impress her, he tells her he's unemployed and lives with his parents, and she is immediately attracted to him. A few years ago, I started to formulate a similar theory about my life but I don't think I've written about it here, and in the wake of "The Real Me," I figure, what the heck? It's Saturday.
OK, here goes. What if, instead of spending years learning to play the organ and getting a master's in church music history, I was just meant to go straight to singing and hearing the music I love in its own setting? What if, instead of learning Old Masters oil painting techniques and getting an associate's degree in art, I was meant to have someone paint a John Singer Sargent-like painting of me, and to be surrounded by great paintings and beautiful architecture? What if, instead of working for a decade for a major news organization, I was meant to be a newsmaker? What if, instead of my paid jobs as paralegal and paraprofessional and adjunct professor and other "helper"/support staff roles, I was meant to be a leader? What if, instead of cooking and baking for others (which I genuinely enjoy), I was meant to be cooked for? What if, for me, having my feet in the right place isn't on a rocky shoreline or in the mountains or in a forest, but surrounded by human-created art, music and beauty of all kinds -- that I am not solely responsible for creating?
These are just queries. I don't know the answers right now. It's like, in the late-20th century world and economy I was born into, everything had to be a career, especially if you walked out into the world with huge student loans and no resources. With my skill set and passion for beauty, was my career going to be writing, or playing the organ, or painting and teaching art? What training did I need? It turned out that all of these almost guaranteed too little income to immerse myself in the beauty I yearn for, and too little income to be powerful or secure as a single woman in any way. Absurd. It's not that I want to be passive. But my true active "power" is my intelligence and wisdom -- the rest is, in a sense, the beautiful home for and expression of that power. (The reason I have no home isn't that I never got a degree in architecture, but it feels that way sometimes.)
I'm so "post"-everything and new paradigm and feminist that even if a fortune were to come my way tomorrow, I know that the right apartment and the right art on the walls and the right concerts or church music or museum exhibits wouldn't be the whole story. Me being me, I would continue to push the envelope of tradition somehow, trying to make it happen in the context of all people finding their right place in the world, the "place" that works for them. And in that formal portrait, I'd probably be wearing a 21st century swingy tunic, leggings -- and pearls. Definitely pearls.
I'm so "post"-everything and new paradigm and feminist that even if a fortune were to come my way tomorrow, I know that the right apartment and the right art on the walls and the right concerts or church music or museum exhibits wouldn't be the whole story. Me being me, I would continue to push the envelope of tradition somehow, trying to make it happen in the context of all people finding their right place in the world, the "place" that works for them. And in that formal portrait, I'd probably be wearing a 21st century swingy tunic, leggings -- and pearls. Definitely pearls.
