Oh! The Places You'll Go (Or Not)!

As I get older, I am surprised by how few things endure the test of time, and equally surprised by those that still seem relevant 20 (?!?) years later. For example, although it's probably a cliché, every time I return to “When Harry Met Sally”, I find there is something different that speaks to me. When I was going through my divorce, it was the scene in which Billy Crystal is relaying his wife's departure to his best friend Bruno Kirby at the baseball game (in between doing The Wave every few seconds). Billy reveals that, after his wife tells him that she wants a divorce, he asks her if she doesn't love him anymore, to which her response is “I don't know if I ever loved you”. I had always understood that scene as as I was probably meant to- Billy Crystal is the good guy, and his wife is a calculating, deceitful, cold bitch (as further evidenced by the fact that Mr. Zero knew she was out the door before poor Billy). However, after 6 years of my own largely unhappy marriage and some serious soul-searching at the end, I understood why Billy's wife might say that. Perhaps she was, for the first time, being honest.

Another rare example of something which still resonates with me is the Dr. Seuss poem “Oh, The Places You'll Go”. I originally received an illustrated copy of the poem when I graduated from high school. I am not sure I even read it then, dismissing it as a cheesy, overreaching attempt by an adult to relate to a graduating senior whose path to success was assured, and missing the mark by about 15 years. Maybe I ran across another copy at some point, but it probably wasn't until I moved to Houston and my mom forced me to clear all my childhood debris out of her garage (she had downsized and was limited on space) that I picked up that same graduate gift book and finally really read it. Perhaps I had not yet been through enough Bang-ups and Hang-ups (culminating in a Lurch, leading to a Slump and, eventually the Waiting Place or possibly Alone) to appreciate it at age 17. However, I now return to it for reassurance whenever I hit a rough patch, knowing that if Dr. Seuss had survived enough Slumps to map out the subsequent, inevitable Waiting Place, then my experience is not unique and I will eventually end up in Great Places where Boom Bands are Playing.

I did almost a 2-year stint in the Waiting Place recently. Miserable in my job and suffering in my personal life (see aforementioned divorce), I considered how I would prefer my life to be. I had a great night out with a friend in which we brainstormed alternative dream careers. The short list was comprised of Anthony Bourdain's job (eating my way across the globe but instead of TV, I would prefer radio- I have this thing about confronting the disconnect between the mental image, versus the reality, of my physical self, and a radio version of “No Reservations” would not strain that fragile co-existence between the two); work as a writer on Law and Order (how could anyone possibly be expected to do anything other than lie on the couch during the oh-so-rare Sunday Law and Order Criminal Intent marathon) or move to Paris with my standard poodle Max and write a book. As it turned out, my current life most resembles option #3. While not Paris, I am living abroad, trying to write something worthwhile, in addition to doing other things with my time.

I had reason to revisit Dr. Seuss the other day- a friend of mine is in a Slump at the moment. A Spaniard, he was unfamiliar with the great literary works of Dr. Seuss, and I pulled up “Oh, The Places You'll Go” on the iPhone and, after explaining that Dr. Seuss takes certain literary liberties (much like his exalted counterpart, e.e. cummings and the greatest of lyricist poets, Woody Guthrie), began reading Dr. Seuss's roadmap to and out of a Slump. My friend also found relief in knowing that his journey was not only one not unknown to others, but so often traveled that its directions have been put to rhyme.

In revisiting OTPYG with my friend, I realized that I too am in a bit of a Slump. For me, indecisiveness and fear are the telltale signs of a Slump (“You will come to a place where the streets are not marked. Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked. . . . Do you dare to go in? . . .And if you go in, should you turn left or right…or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?”). As Dr. Seuss so elegantly puts it, a Slump is a place where “simple it's not . . .for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind”.

Usually so decisive, even fearless to the point of lunacy, I have been in retreat for the past few months. I try to avoid eye contact on the street and walk around with my headphones on to avoid conversation. I dread making even the simplest of phone calls. I freeze when asked the most basic of questions. This all stems from my lack of fluency in Castellaño (believe me, as I have learned, it is different from Spanish, requiring a certain lisp and an elitist disposition). For me, so far Spain has proven to be a very hard culture to break into. I say this in the context of having lived in Germany while learning to apply a rudimentary, sterilized classroom sort of German (the first time I went to a bakery in Germany, I walked out with 10 bags of sweets and 100 Deutsche Marks poorer- I was waiting for the very formal and polite wrap-up question I had memorized in German class of “Und moechten Sie noch etwas, Fraulein” and instead got the curt Berlin abbreviation of “eh- wa' noch damit?”). I also moved to Ecuador, not having even the limited benefit of classroom Spanish instruction (my flight into Quito had to be re-routed to Guayaquil and I only realized the change of plans after I had been waiting at the luggage carousel for four hours). It's been a while since I haven't been master of the spoken and written word (even to the point of obnoxious-as a lawyer, I was trained in little else other than wordsmithing) and perhaps I have become more timid and complacent as I have grown older, but this mind-maker-upper finds herself as beaten down as the good Christian wife who strangely keeps running into doors and falling down stairs.

Without unfairly generalizing too much, I find Spain (or at least, Madrid) to be a very closed, unfriendly, unwelcoming culture (and again, this is with the experience of having lived in Germany). The generally friendly attitude of Americans, while perhaps largely contrived, offers a certain amount of pleasantness around even the most menial of social interactions. This is in stark juxtaposition to the Spanish attitude, which regards every social interaction as an opportunity to criticize (or, on a good day, merely correct) the obvious non-Spaniard (which, as best as I can tell, equates to sub-human or, more accurately, sub-Spanish). Don't have Spanish pedigree as evidenced by your South American accent, unusual vocabulary choice or maybe just the shape of your head (as it was once, ever so politely, pointed out to me- apparently I could pass for French, for whatever that's worth)? Then expect to immediately be “rescued” by the most broken of English that apparently trumps your Spanish, which at one point you would have described as highly conversant and functional in the legal setting. I think my Spanish has actually gotten worse as my usually ever-present-and-excess-reserves confidence has flown the coop after each of these increasingly unsatisfactory and disheartening interactions.

Dr. Seuss wisely notes that un-Slumping oneself is not easily done. Hopefully this written acknowledgment and release proves to be cathartic and I am back on my way to Great Places.