"AI" Again

Well, I wasn't going to weigh in again so soon, but I feel like I am almost jumping out of my skin these days.

So yesterday, I TV-channel-surfed through a headline about how Artificial Intelligence was going to "fight" global warming. By the time the reference registered, I surfed back through the channels and couldn't find it again, but a computer search just now indicates that it has been the topic of quite a bit of media reporting.

This is the intersection of two of my biggest frustrations. Frustration number one: the concept that any kind of fight is the solution to any serious problem on this planet. There may arguably be winners in sporting events, but I just don't believe there are when wars are fought in society at large. "Fighting" global climate chaos will just create more chaos, in my opinion, and I've said enough about this in the past so that I won't repeat myself and bore you silly!

And then, back on August 14, 2018, I explored how we humans are rushing headlong into "artificial intelligence" while the intelligence of women is still undervalued and, at times, totally ignored. It's just horrifying to think we are skipping such an important step. An AI "fight against global warming" is doubly unlikely to succeed, especially if women are under-represented. I hope all involved will gently try to steer the conversation away from "conflict" mentality and terminology, at the very least.

This is a little tangential, but I've become almost beside myself about plastic. Yes, I may use it less than the average person, having such a tiny footprint on the earth now; no home, no car, few belongings. But still, no matter how I try, most of my purchases have some kind of plastic packaging. I go into a big box store, and almost swoon from the (admittedly exaggerated) impression that the amount of plastic in that one store is enough to clog an ocean; when I think about the other millions of stores worldwide, I can barely breathe. Recycling isn't enough.

I imagine myself back in, what, the late 1940's or 1950's, being the sole woman (maybe a secretary) in a boardroom full of male executives. They are all excited by the prospects of what can be done with plastic, and the profits that will come from ever-expanding use of the material. I can see myself, timidly raising my hand, asking, "Ahem, I am not a scientist, but I wonder if you are considering whether plastic breaks down in nature, so that there won't be too much pollution." And I can almost hear it now (because I have been at the receiving end of phrases like it in real life); "Young lady, don't worry your pretty head about that. If it causes pollution, we'll worry about it later."

Well, we've reached "later."

My hunch is that if women had been allowed equal power as public co-creators of our world for the last few thousand years, we wouldn't be anywhere near as technologically evolved as we are, but we would also not be at the edge of such a steep environmental cliff.  Women might have helped steer a more sensible, gentle, respectful path in our interaction with Earth. Nature can't help but try desperately right now to return her planet to balance. Whether we like it or not, we may be tossed back in time to the moment where women stopped being listened to, and get a second chance to work together, men and women, as co-creators. Now that would be real intelligence, the human brain working at full capacity, no artificiality required.

"And"-a-two

The biggest "aha" from what I wrote the other day is this: I have been more responsible than anyone for maintaining a split down my middle. When I've been in England, I have done everything possible to "fit in" and not seem American. Oh sure, the minute I open my mouth, it's evident that I am a North American, but in every other respect, I have tried to disappear. I've tried to be relatively quiet, unobtrusive, colorless. In my encounters with the church music or academic worlds over there, I have tried mightily not to be too enthusiastic or self-revealing, because those things inevitably seemed to be conversation-enders. I've allowed myself to be corrected ("That's not how we say it") and subtly molded into a less outgoing, less visible presence. And I've liked that. I've liked walking down the street like any other middle-aged British woman, carrying my bags of groceries. I've liked people coming up to me on the street asking directions because they assume I'm local. It has always been somewhat of a relief to be in a more constrained, "civilized" milieu. My more independent/powerful/lively/vocal self didn't just take a back seat, she would almost dissolve entirely into the ether. The whole New Age/new spirituality thing is relatively nonexistent over there. A few years ago, I went into Cambridge's main bookstore, Heffers, and asked for their New Age Spirituality section. The clerk looked blankly at me, and walked me over to a shelf where there were, like, three books total. In an American bookstore, there might be three or four entire bookshelves.

Then, in America, how to be the more scholarly/restrained/mystic/England- and English church music-loving me? She has been literally and figuratively a ghost on the landscape. I might have fit in a bit if I had pursued a PhD and entered university teaching. But I just didn't understand back then that I might be good at that or that it was an option. And today there are a few churches in the US where I might be able to sing the music I love at a reasonably high level, but right now, I'm too exhausted to search them out and move to yet another new part of the country. Overall, over here, I've focused on a more outgoing, more "artsy," more New Age-y, more feminist "me," a "me" more rooted in the future, not the past. Virtually none of my women friends speak the language of choral evensong, so, not being able to figure out how to mesh these two contrasting worlds, I've left it out of the conversation entirely.

There is no doubt in my mind that the only place I'll ever fully feel at home, and in the milieu where I'm likely to thrive, is England. I need the possibility of daily choral evensong in my life, period. However, if I didn't understand it before, I understand it now. From this point forward, I can only go back for any length of time once I am willing to bring my most powerful, outgoing self with me. I have to proudly embrace my American energy on that soil, and bring my whole crazy story with me. And I'll only find happiness and wholeness in the meantime once I find a way to express my English side more effectively, even if it is through artwork or some other unexpected medium. I can no longer keep that form of beauty at arm's length in my American life because of the fear that if I get too rooted, I'll never get home. Because I think that's the crux of it all, right there. Fear.

I am the one who needs to dismantle this painful wall, one stone at a time. No one else can do it for me.

"And"

Saturday was a glorious day in Duluth. Sunny, maybe 72 degrees. I sat on a rock near the lake at Canal Park, looking out at nearly-flat water. A slight northwest wind propelled a single large sailboat. On the rocky beach, a couple searched for sea glass and precious stones, and children threw rocks back into the lake. The midday sun hung relatively low and pale in the sky, a sign that winter isn't far off.

I was grateful for this beauty, and I tried so hard to stay in the present, as wise ones tell us to do, just as I have from so many other U.S. ports-of-call over the years. And yet, like the prickling of an amputated limb, my consciousness felt London, felt and saw and heard the music lists (from English cathedrals, chapels and abbeys) that I've seen recently on social media. I saw the classic art in great galleries and the soaring cathedral structures and felt my feet rooted in another soil. I wasn't fully on that lake shore any more than I am fully anywhere over here, ever. It must be as painful for you, my readers, to read about as it is to be me sometimes, and I am sorry about that. I am plugging away at my book even though it may end up being a hard read. I don't know how to get permanently where I want to be, or to be fully at peace where I am, and, like the little kids, I just had to throw this lifelong conundrum into the motherly embrace of the lake. It remains far too big for me to solve.

Not surprisingly, the next 24 hours unrolled, if not a solution, then at least a new understanding.

As my regular readers know, I've spoken several times recently about rising above duality. I can see that our culture's addiction to division and conflict is killing us. All of us were trained to look at life this way, to "fight" crime, disease, global warming, homelessness, war, discrimination, hatred, evil. And yet none of these conditions is solved by that rigid wall down the center of life and our nonstop struggle. If anything, they are all simply getting worse.

I've seen this so clearly outside me, so why have I not seen the same situation within? I am a being of such contrasts: left brain (lawyerly, organized, managerial, verbal, "male") and right brain (artistic, spontaneous, spiritual, creative, "female"); American (by birth) and English (in spirit); upper crust and poor; passionate about a form of Christian music and Goddess-centered; civilized and yet wild; powerful yet powerless.

Each side of me has been at war with the other. I have wanted one side to win out and extinguish the other, just to make life easier to explain, to make a simpler narrative. I have been terrified of the possibility that I am big enough and all-encompassing enough to be all of these things. If I could consistently say as I began to do above, "I am __ and __," how would my life change?

Nothing in me is wrong or evil. There is no reason to kill any of these qualities -- except to keep me hobbled and small. Perhaps the only "evil"/source of pain in any scenario is the trained impulse to build a wall down the middle, to hunker down, and to start fighting.

This realization helped. A lot. It helped me embrace my reality here just a little, and fully appreciate that beautiful moment on the beach. I'll write more on all of this very soon.

Audition and Visualization

Last week, I plucked up my courage and put together a submission of my book to a literary agent. Within a little over an hour, I had received a rejection note. Now, this was my first effort of this kind, and I didn't necessarily expect first-time success or even moderate interest. But what felt like a kick in the stomach was the immediacy of the turnaround. I'm a "girl" of the pre-internet era, clearly, a "My Brilliant Career" writer of sending things off hard copy and waiting weeks to hear back.

Fortunately, I quickly realized that this had triggered a really powerfully painful response, and why. There has been a recurring theme in my life, arguably since birth, of me showing up raring to go and being rejected without, so to speak, "an audition." Of course, the older I get and the more I write and act from the heart, the more painful rejection becomes. I spent the weekend in a state of shock; but I've survived it; I wrote some more of my book this morning and am writing here as well. As I say, the fact of rejection is less painful than the knee-jerk timing of it. The kindest thing would have been for the agent to wait several days to give a potential author at least the sense that their work has been fully considered, but, ahem, our system is far from kind, the issue I have had with it my whole life.

I didn't watch the U.S. Open this weekend, but of course I was intrigued by the surprising win of the young Canadian player. I heard an interview with her this morning, and she indicated that she had been practicing creative visualization since she was a kid (yes, about a decade!) -- and that she had frequently pictured winning this tournament. Wow, what a sea change for girls born in the c.2000 era compared with those of us from the '50's. It's amazing that such empowerment was encouraged so early in her, when many of us of my generation experienced the exact opposite. I've been practicing visualization for decades too, but earlier negative messages too often seem to negate the progress I make.

Nevertheless, I persist. The courage of these younger women helps to keep me going.