The Other Inhabitants of Bear Land

I’ve entered another parallel universe. This one was populated by bears.

But that wasn’t even the parallel universe that amazed me the most.

Tim and I are back from five wonderful days in Katmai National Park, where the bears hang out in Brooks Camp. They catch returning salmon, hoping to gorge out and get fat for their coming hibernation, and there are lots and lots of bears.

Katmai is the bears’ domain; humans are only the visitors. If a bear is roaming around – it’s called a Bear Jam – the humans have to get off the path and scurry into the woods so the bears have a clear path. It’s their path. We get to look at them from platforms (if everything is working right) and up close (if the bears get curious). Mostly they don’t care about humans because there’s lots of salmon.

We get to watch three “subadult” bears playing in the river every day, bears trying to catch salmon jumping upstream, bears sitting in the foaming “jacuzzi” at the Falls, bears just sitting in “The Office.” The bears are so busy with their fish-catching that they stop seeming ferocious. You could almost forget that they could tear you apart in seconds. It’s Bear Land, and they’re just calmly going about their business (tearing apart salmon in seconds).

Around these bears are Bear People. Bear people know a lot about bears. They know which bear is dominant and grabs the best spot at the Falls, which bear has a scar around her neck from a wolf snare once removed, which bear has a big hump. Which bear has widely spaced ears, spade-shaped large ears, blond tipped ears, upright ears, triangular shaped ears, large and round ears, short and round ears, tall brown ears, ears perched high on head, round peg-like ears, etc. etc.

It’s this universe of bear people that I found so … startling.

Some bear people are park rangers. Others – the really compelling ones – are just bear fans. They’re volunteers who come to Brooks to help out, perform tasks, and watch bears. They work long hours and spend their days off … watching bears. If they’re not at Brooks, they’re watching bear cams. They know each other through years of commenting on the bear cams; they have created a community of bear people. They talk in numbers: Bear #435, #910, #284, #410, and they know each of them individually!

This is a whole parallel universe of bear people that I never knew existed. Thank you, Naomi, for introducing me!

Parallel universes lurk undercover in unexpected places. My friend Robin discovered the universe of dance competitors. Angelo introduced me to the universe of train travelers. Jim occupies the universe of Winston Churchill buffs.

While I read lots of Sherlock Holmes and derivatives, I don’t solve international quizzes on the Holmes “Canon,” I don’t follow a gazillion blogs, and I’m not even a Baker Street Irregular. Sherlockians wouldn’t call me a Sherlockian. I study Time (physics and literature, time travel and Einstein), but while I may be more than a dabbler, I’m not an expert. I’m only a tourist, a visitor to those universes.

I’m a little jealous of parallel universe people (and not just because they have an escape from this one). They have such passion! They have such motivation! My friend Connie says that’s not all: they have a focus for learning and development of expertise, and they have affiliation. They belong to a group of like-minded folks who are interested in exploring the same thing. Really interested in exploring the same thing. Deeply.

At one time, I guess I was utterly and completely fascinated by waterparks. But even that doesn’t count as a parallel universe because it was just me.

Lots of people can have interests, but it takes a roomful of them to become a parallel universe. Parallel universes are in the eye of the beholder, the outsider who stumbles across them, marvels at their intensity of fascination, and can’t believe there are that many of them.

So which one do you occupy? Which ones have you discovered?

Is enough enough?

Way back when, I told boyfriend #1 I didn’t know if I loved him enough. He said, “So do you wait till five minutes before you die to know this was what you were going to get so it had better have been enough?” He was that kind of guy, and I’m sure he’d be flabbergasted to know this is what I remember.

By now, all of us have seen that commercial where the spokesperson asks people, “Have you saved enough for retirement?” and they all look at him quizzically and ask, “How do I know what’s enough?”

How do we know what’s enough?

While I’ve been thinking about enough, I keep coming across this word: “tireless.” As in, “She worked tirelessly for human rights” or “She was tireless in her passion for making art.”

So if I were making a scale, this is what it would look like:

In my mind, it’s a scale measuring laziness, commitment, and passion. I’ve written a lot here about feeling like I waste time, that I’m not very productive in my Third Third. But recently, I realized that constant self-criticism had given way to a Third Third rhythm: I liked the rhythm of my days, of my creative activity, of my social/adventurous/New Thing pursuits. I liked the balance I’d struck between being useful and being still. I stopped feeling lazy and occasionally just felt … still.

And then my book club read Founding Brothers about the creation of our country and a friend reminded me of what Ben Franklin had said after the Constitutional Convention.  A woman asked what kind of government we were going to have, and Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Can we keep it?

Do you read the newspapers?!?

So I feel tremendous responsibility to not let our country down, to keep a republic. I write many letters to my Congressional delegation, I teach English to new immigrants, I go to vigils and marches and make sure I’m standing with the now-marginalized-more-than-ever-before. I donate to rights-preserving organizations.

But I’m not doing this tirelessly. I’m still kind of lazy about it. I’ll spend a whole day caught up in a new novel or my nights finishing Orphan Black season 4. I’m beginning to think that tireless is not an operative adjective for my Third Third.

I’ve been tireless in my life. I’ve fought for political access, for affordable housing, for public transit, for women’s equality. I’ve burned my candle at both ends. I’ve felt part of something bigger. I’ve liked living “notched up,” fueling the energy that flowed and flowed. But now, I only operate at lukewarm.

Is this aging? Am I tired?

But we don’t have that luxury now. If we slack off, we can’t keep our republic! (My sense of urgency would insert LOTS of exclamation points there!) We have to do more than enough. We have to be vigilant and positive and proactive and resourceful.

So I’m back to beating myself up. I’m no longer still; I’m just lazy.

But this weekend, at the Human Rights Day vigil, I spotted a man carrying a sign:

I’ll think more about tired and tireless, lazy and still, enough and not; but for now, I just have to make sure I do. And keep doing. And do a little more.

Profiles in Third Thirds: Sharon

Let me tell you about Sharon. Sharon is my hero (and role model). For all the time I’ve known her, she has put her energy into improving the world. She just reminded me that we first met when she was teaching workshops on training nonprofit boards and I was in one of her classes. But after that, Sharon went on to start the YWCA in Anchorage. She took it from a tiny, little one-person operation to a major force that owns its own building, positively impacts thousands of women’s lives, and is thoroughly sustainable even when Sharon left after many years.

During all this, she served on the School Board for 7½ years and, not to go unmentioned, was a BizBee judge for TEN YEARS. (We both love spelling and grammar.)

So now Sharon is 75 and retired. Her Third Third? Pursuing her domestic hobbies: mostly wool appliqué and cooking. She has a sewing room dense with projects and hundreds of cookbooks (a thing which totally mystifies me – I can’t even imagine how one would begin to peruse that many cookbooks. Sharon says looking through a cookbook at the end of a day is her reward for getting some of her to-do list done.) Sharon even batches all her out-of-house appointments and errands so she can stay home most days with her projects.

As Sharon puts it, “I gave up trying to save the world and being personally responsible for ‘empowering women and girls and eliminating racism’ and am content to play a very small part.” But she still registers new voters at citizenship ceremonies and donates her sewing work for nonprofit auctions. Friends receive her gifts, and I love her rhubarb chutney on salmon.

During her professional life, I tried to learn how Sharon balanced it all. Now, in our Third Thirds, I’m trying to learn about contentment from her. She says it took her seven years to “come down” after retiring and give herself permission to enjoy it. She tells me wise things like:

“What is the rush? Have you taken some days to just do nothing since being employed? Taking a day with no goal in mind usually ends up being a day where you end up doing something that you like to do….”

“I’m learning to accept that there are only so many hours in a day and what doesn’t get done today, bar some catastrophe, will get done tomorrow.”

“We realize that we gave it a shot but we can’t save the world so it’s now OK to focus on what makes us happy….”

This is what I’m trying to learn from Sharon even though I still hear a nervous calendar clock ticking away in me: I still don’t know what my next Big Thing will be. What passion will drive me? Do I even know what makes me happy? And besides, is that too selfish to pursue? What makes for contentment?

But Sharon knows – and now has the time for – her passion. Her passion is sewing. She calls it her dessert. In the fall, she’s teaching her first class on wool appliqué at a local quilt shop, but she’s always experimenting with new techniques and tools. She couldn’t show me any of her work – she gives it all away – but we went through photos together.

Sharon made this purse out of ties for her husband’s daughter. She said, “It’s made from his old ties (since he doesn’t wear ties anymore). She loved it and I cried when she told me that she could smell his closet on them when she opened the present.”

Her sewing connects Sharon to the women who came before: “My grandmother had her own little sewing shop and my mother at one time did sewing to bring in extra money.” She’s made pincushions that fit in vintage teacups, folk art designs, and wall hangings. She’s made table runners, placemats, and many, many pillows. She’s even made a crown for a princess. They’re all given away as gifts.

Yes, Sharon finds that her time often just dribbles away with projects getting deferred by the “shoulds,” by errands and appointments and watering the garden. And now, her time is getting squeezed because two big tasks have been added to her to-do lists: cleaning up her sewing room jumble of projects and purging her cookbook collection. It’s the de-cluttering albatross. As she puts it, “I don’t want to leave a mess.”

Sharon tackled the big jobs in her Second Third and is now devoting her Third Third to more personal pleasures. Is it so different? Sharon thinks she’s run out of steam, but she’s still giving of herself. Maybe before she used her talents to empower, to fight racism, to save the world. Now she’s using them to add affection and kindness to those around her. The world is still a better place for having her in it.

Emerging from total immersion

I’m home. New York City is now reflection, not possibility. (Oh, no! I’m missing The Crucible!) It did SO MUCH, but what was that exactly? What does it mean for my Third Third?

I absorbed A LOT of culture: art, theater, and the simple culture of being around humans making lives. I was awash with creativity – I had IDEAS and oomph and motivation and plans and energy.

I kept a calendar of my plans for the month. If I heard about an author talk or a free day at one of the museums, a special event in Central Park or a comedy show, it went on the calendar. Sometimes I had three things for the same time period, and then I had to choose. New York is boundless and limitless!

And if, by chance, there wasn’t anything on the calendar, I’d say to myself, “You haven’t explored 23rd Street. Today, walk 23rd Street.” So there I was, walking down 23rd Street and a woman handed me a card and explained it was Holi day and an Indian feast in her restaurant was only $2 today so would I like to eat? So I looked inside, stayed, and had a great meal for $2. Little surprises popped up all over New York, and I had the flexibility and curiosity to follow up.

Just before I chalked Yetta Goldstein’s name on the sidewalk to honor the victims of the Triangle Factory Fire, I got a call from Michele, Yetta’s grandniece, so we did it together. Turns out Yetta was from Bialystok, the same village my grandmother emigrated from! Here I was, an anonymous visitor from Alaska, and I managed to find connections to the inside stories of New York. With 8 million people, there are stories to connect everyone with everyone.

But I have to tell you some of the astonishing artistic creations I discovered. I like museums, but if you give me my choice, my preferred art moves, it performs. So I sort of stumbled into New York’s art museums – mostly because they all have free days so what could I lose?

I saw things that were direct infusions of creativity into my brain! I saw things I couldn’t have imagined, but they were windows into a way of perceiving the world that simply blew my mind. Here is Barbara before – here is Barbara after.

I entered the world of Peter Fischli and David Weiss at the Guggenheim (which I’d never been to before; it’s the round one with ramps). In Suddenly this Overview, they displayed hundreds of funny little clay sculptures – with hilarious titles – that freed my mind.

Anna O. dreaming the first dream interpreted by Freud.

 

How different the world is when you see it this way! Everything is so comical, so full of alternative reactions. Later, sitting on the airplane looking through the Safety Information pamphlet at all the graphic instructions for water landing emergencies, I thought, “What if I told a different story with the same graphics?”

Inexpensive cruise line delivers your luggage.

Okay, maybe it’s not art, but it’s a mental shift. I like mental shifts. They’re interesting.

I went to youarenowhere (meant to be confusing: is it “now here” or “nowhere”?) Andrew Schneider’s one-man show. Later in the play, the light shifted on the curtain, making it reflective. Andrew did a batch of gymnastic moves and we saw the audience behind. Eventually I realized I wasn’t in that audience: it was another audience behind the curtain! With another guy mimicking Andrew! Finally, the curtain dropped and a confrontation ensued between the two guys, and we had to stand up and change places with the other audience. I’m still not sure what it says about simultaneity, perspective, or who’s right (I am sort of shallow that way); but I had never seen anything like it before! The reviews – which thankfully kept the secret – said it was “brilliant,” and it was. When I got home, I had an email asking if I wanted to come back, to be in the “other” audience.

I learned the word bricolage, building something from just regular old stuff you gather. Tom Sachs, in his A Space Program film, built a whole space center and Mars landing expedition from junk: cut up FedEx envelopes yielded the Tyvek to make astronaut space suits. It all looked so real-ish, and now I’m looking at my junk differently.

Oh, I can’t even describe Laura Poitras’ installation on surveillance. (She made Snowden’s documentary.) She fueled both my outrage and my awe – how she moved us through an immersion in surveillance and what it feels like.

So many creative people. Hundreds of creative people. Writing about them is so stale compared to the experience of them. For a month – a whole month – I got to steep myself in the worlds they created. I was changed.

Now the question: can I hold onto this “Barbara after”? Can she survive removed from that environment?

Wanted: An all-consuming passion

I’ve just finished reading The Great Detective: The Amazing Rise and Immortal Life of Sherlock Holmes by Zach Dundas. I read all the Sherlock Holmes’ stories when I was in junior high … except the very last one because I didn’t want to live in a world that had no new Sherlock Holmes.

Little did I know there’d be Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey, Jr., and Elementary.

Dundas was that kind of kid, too. As a preteen, he founded the first Sherlock Holmes fan club for fans under 21. Now, with a young family, he decided to find out what the Sherlock Holmes mystique is all about. He visited the Baker Street Irregulars (New York’s still-active fan club from the 1930s) and London’s Sherlock Holmes Society. He met the editor of the Baker Street Journal, discovered the Baker Street Babes. He read or watched the scripts, plays, and films “starring” Sherlock Holmes. He researched Arthur Conan Doyle’s life, all the derivative literature, the Great Game (scholarly studies about Holmes and Watson). He checked out assorted 221B Baker Streets, the moors of the Baskervilles, London streets. Along the way, he discovered that FDR was a secret fan member and that a whole genre of fanfiction (“fic”) exists (which I think is kind of Sherlock porn).

The book is funny, fascinating, and well-researched, but it’s also something bigger: evidence of a quest, a mission. And I am so jealous.

Here he was with something that interested him so much, he’d invest years in it, drag his family along on his exploratory travels, meet people, attend things, follow up on leads.

I want an interest like that.

Back in 1980, I discovered my first waterslide in Spain. I ran up, slid down, ran up, slid down, all day. Then, when Sophie was 2, we discovered a tiny waterpark in Puerto Vallarta. It was a little bitty thing, but it whisked us out a tube in a whirl of water and splash. I was hooked.

After that, I found waterparks wherever we traveled. I told Sophie that if I ever had a summer off, we’d cross the country by waterpark. So then I got a job with summers off.

I began correspondence with waterpark designers, manufacturers, trade associations. They sent specs, photos, videos. We started mapping out our path across the country. Then, in the summer of 2002, we did the National Waterpark Tour. We drove 10,000 miles, visited 24 waterparks across the United States, wore out three bathing suits, and only had ten stitches to my head. Along the way, I stopped off at public radio stations and delivered commentary. We met with waterpark owners. Where we had family or friends, we’d drag them off to the waterparks, too. Tim met us mid-trip.

At each waterpark, we were the first on line at 9:30, the last out of the water at 8 p.m. Every waterpark was different. Every single one aroused our interest and delight and challenged our fears and courage. It was a summer of pure joy. I could write a book about it – and did (an unfinished one).

For years, I couldn’t go anywhere or do any speaking engagement without people asking, “So tell us, which was your favorite waterpark?”

But that was 14 years ago. And nothing has taken the place of that mission, that passion, that all-encompassing quest, since then. Many, many things interest me, but not to the level of two years of preparation and dream fulfillment. And yes, a major part was the chance to spend that time with 10-year-old Sophie.

I could sit here and tell you waterparks may be a silly passion, a shallow exercise in adrenalin. It’s not saving the world, after all. In fact, it’s right up there with surfers following waves, and they’re at least in nature. But really – the thrill, the cleanliness of water, the absence of my land-clumsiness, the variety in design. I still love a good ride, but another tour? No.

My friend Angelo has been in love with trains his whole life; in his retirement, he’s collecting oral histories of railroad folks. He’s working on a book about it. This passion drives his retirement years. I want that!

You can’t install a mission into your life. It has to develop organically from passion. I do believe you can set yourself up to be receptive, to be open to a new interest, but mostly you just have to be ready to follow passion when it emerges. In the meantime, you have interests and projects, mini-passions and mini-quests.

Where is the Big One? How do I find it?

It starts with a class

In my quest for my new life (one that would restore my absent creativity and use my hands) and recognizing that I needed structure, I decided to sign up for a fiber arts class. It was a great class: phenomenal teacher, warm and supportive women classmates, very demanding course work. I decided I would Do Art!

It had been a long time since I Did Art. It soon became clear to me that these women were Artists-with-a-capital-A. They’d been doing art for the last 20 years while I’d been doing other things. So the problem with trying new things in your Third Third is that other people have been doing it longer and better so you’d better be prepared for your own mediocrity.

While they’re making masterpieces, you’re making things to put on your refrigerator with a magnet.

Or else, while they’re making lovely felted hats (and you find wool too itchy for a hat), you make a lovely tea cozy. Except that your teapot is a large, 10-cup teapot, so your tea cozy becomes known as the “tea yurt.”

So if my Third Third is going to be about keeping curiosity alive, trying New Things, then I have to let go of needing to feel skillful and accomplished. I have to accept being an apprentice, a beginner. Actually, being a beginner is easy. It’s being an intermediate that’s harder, when mastery proves elusive because it takes those 10,000 Malcolm Gladwell hours. Do we really have 10,000 hours to devote to mastery? Well, we would if we’d decided on The Big Passion, but what if we’re still experimenting around? What if we’re exploring several Lukewarm Passions?

The thing is, it is really electrifying to be around master craftspeople. They have tried so many different materials and techniques. They introduce you to papers and yarns, things named matte medium, gesso, roving. They add illumination to their sculptures, layers to their papers. They drape fabric and plaster over metal frames. And they are so generous with their acquired experience.

Best of all, the studio is open. So you can drop in, work on art, and get to know each other. Taking a class automatically satisfies the “structure” requirement, but if it’s filled with friendly folks, it also moves into the “sense of community” category. And then, miracle of miracles, you might discover – if not The Big Passion – a little, entertaining, enjoyable, creative Little Passion. For me, it was embroidery, the means to make gifts for my friends. Wine glass cozies!

Afterwards, you might re-figure your work space at home to include an art space. You might start hanging out at Michaels and Jo-Ann’s and racing there every time a new batch of coupons shows up with the Sunday paper. After a while, you might end up with the critical mass of art supplies. Other friends may discover Art, too, so old friendships might take a new turn, and then – lo and behold – you try drawing and next thing you know, you start a blog with pictures.

Wow, that was some art class!

Profiles in Third Thirds: Rick

Rick was an IT guy. Upon retirement, he became a sailor. No, a Sailor with a capital S. Rick took three different sailing classes. He bought a boat and a slip in the Seward marina.

Rick has a big list of things to do to fix up the boat. He has made selected panels on his boat gorgeous by varnishing the teak. To do this, he has to apply twelve thin coats of varnish. He only does this on small sections that he can bring home and work on in his garage in the winter.

Rick wants to install some shelves and take out others the former owner had installed. Turns out, there are two versions of the glue that attaches them to the walls: 5200 is permanent, you need a crowbar to remove it. That’s what he’s removing. But he’s using 4200 which is strong but not a killer.

He’s created repositionable curtains for the windows. He coils up his lines just so. He got a terrific deal on a $500 bumper which he is incredibly proud of, and he is involved with the local yacht club.

Are you getting the drift here? Rick is passionate about this boat and sailing. He has taken a new direction in his Third Third. He’s not ho-hum about it at all. I am so jealous of his finding this Thing. He is doing the Third Third so right!

We went out on his boat. The first day was sunny and gorgeous, and it was just Rick and me, and he said, “Hey, let’s take her out.” We motored slowly out of the harbor. This is how Rick looks when he is at the wheel. See the confidence, the smile, the beaming happiness. He is in the place he has picked in all the universe.

Then Rick said, “Take the wheel” because he had to mess around with the sails. No, Rick’s boat does not have this many sails. That is how many sails it felt like the boat had because I was at the wheel and the wind was blowing and sails were flapping and the boat was tipping.

I learned how to watch whether the sails were luffing and steer so the wind came in the right direction, how to watch my speed. But this is how I looked when I was at the wheel and too many things were happening at once. “Rick,” I said, “I am millimeters from hysteria.”

Once I went on a roller coaster (by mistake). At the end of the ride, the attendant had to pry open my hand on the iron bar to get the ticket out. That’s how my hands felt on the steering wheel of Rick’s boat.

Ultimately, we came back in, and the wind was behind us, and things got calm, and I fell asleep on the deck in the harbor and this is a pretty cool way to go into your Third Third if sailing is your thing. And this was a New Thing for me so I felt brave and … enriched.

The next day, Tim and Patti, Rick’s wife, arrived, and we went out again for a longer trip. Now we could spread the labor around so it was a lot more relaxing. Patti or Rick was at the wheel or they were both flailing and flaking with the sails or tying things down or readjusting things. Periodically, Rick would beam and happily say, “Patti and I are a real team” (and they are). A few times, Patti would say, “This really isn’t one of my favorite things.”

Uh, oh. What if your Third Third requires a buddy but your buddy isn’t really into your Third Third? What if that buddy is essential but that buddy doesn’t want that life? What if your buddy wants to volunteer in Africa and you want to take cooking classes in Paris? What if buddies arrive at their Third Thirds at different times? What if you don’t have a buddy at all?

What if your sailboat requires a crew?