Robots, Aliens, and Humans -- oh, my!

I read a lot. In fact, one of the total pleasures of my Third Third is that I get to keep on reading and reading and reading no matter what time it is. I figure I can sleep in or switch the next day’s activities from “challenging” to “laundry,” and put my brain on hold. Sometimes, the words swim because I am so tired … but the book is so good.

Every now and then, Tim will lift his head, scowl at the clock, at my light, at me. I won’t move, won’t say a word. Maybe he’ll think this is all a bad dream. And when he goes back to sleep, I put a pillow over his head so the light doesn’t bother him. Sometimes, I’ll go out to the couch. That’s if I know the book is so good I’m going to keep on going and going.

A friend recently asked me if I’d join her on Goodreads. The idea is great – book sharing is always great – but I just can’t handle another online thing. So I rely on my book club, on the recommendations of friends. Once, my friend Robin picked Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card for book club. It was an odd choice: sort of young-adult-ish, science fiction-y, but I was hooked.

I like a good story in a book, a creative imagination that tells a good story. But if the book can also shed light on what being human means, then that book turns on light bulbs, sparks conversations, dominates my waking life for a while. I think and think about it. To me, thinking has a lot to do with being human so thinking about being human just maximizes the whole business. Science fiction thinks about being human a lot (what with all those aliens).

I just finished an extraordinary book, Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer. The main character is married to an astronaut roboticist who is also autistic. I love autistic characters (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, among others) because they think a lot and they think in very unusual ways. So an autistic roboticist is thinking about what makes a robot a robot and what makes a human human.

‘There are three things that robots cannot do,” wrote Maxon. Then beneath that on the page he wrote three dots, indented. Beside the first dot, he wrote “Show preference without reason (LOVE)” and then “Doubt rational decisions (REGRET)” and finally “Trust data from a previously unreliable source (FORGIVE).”

He is saying this because those things don’t make sense, there’s no logical reason for them – maybe reasons against them – so it wouldn’t be a robot thing. But then the bigger question: why are they human things?

Okay, you get the picture. If you were here and not in the ether, I’d be delirious if you read the book so we could talk about it. [Please comment if you do read it. We’ll talk.] But if you were here, you might roll your eyes because I could really talk about it to death. Sometimes my idea of human is a little too much thinking and talking.

Anyhow, Ender’s Game is like DVDs with lots of seasons and episodes: it has sequels and sequels. So I just read The Speaker for the Dead (the sequel), and in it, one of the little alien characters (who’s sort of half-animal, half-tree) is describing his life to the human colonists:

“The first life is within the mothertree, where we never see the light, and where we eat blindly the meat of our mother’s body and the sap of the mothertree. The second life is when we live in the shade of the forest, the half-light, running and walking and climbing, seeing and singing and talking, making with our hands. The third life is when we reach and drink from the sun, in the full light at last, never moving except in the wind; only to think and on those certain days when the brothers drum on your trunk, to speak to them. Yes, that’s the third life.”

Get it? He’s entering his Third Third, too! It’s his time in the sun, his time to reflect, to advise, to feel the full light.

The whole universe has a Third Third – even the aliens!

The Great Sunglass Saga

Losing sunglasses did not start in my Third Third. I have left sunglasses all over the globe, wherever there is sun. Once I’m inside and remove them, they’re at risk; restrooms, restaurant tables, fitting rooms – all are like quicksand ready to suck the abandoned up.

But years ago, I acquired a pair of sunglasses that proved unlosable. I was visiting my high school friend, Rieva, in California, and I was left in a sunglass warehouse for an hour or so.

Rieva has a neighbor who managed to break her windows twice while pruning his family’s tree. He came over to fix the window, and a friendship developed. He wanted to start a sunglass kiosk, and Rieva was involved with writing about, coaching, and supporting entrepreneurs. She helped him out. That was back in 1995. Over the years, Rieva advised, he and his brother worked hard, and Sunscape Eyewear grew. By the time I was left to entertain myself in the sunglass warehouse, they were signing papers for international deals.

Their family is Muslim; Rieva is Jewish. But strong bonds developed and Rieva became an honored guest at family weddings. As discrimination against Muslims has grown, sometimes the family – and the business – faced harder times. But their friendship/partnership thrived.

And that meant lots of sunglasses. Lots and lots. I tried on dozens of sunglasses, checked myself out in the mirror. Tried on more. And then I found them:

They were perfect! Big and bold, bright and goofy. Just my style, like “wearing purple.” When Rieva and her friend got out of their meeting, I modeled. Everyone laughed and he said, “Take them,” told me the model name was “Dazed and Confused.” Even more perfect.

Those sunglasses were never left behind, never lost, never misplaced. True to form, my daughter hated them. “No one wears pink sunglasses,” she said. I’d point out pink sunglasses to her, and she’d say, “No one over ten wears pink sunglasses.” But I loved them, and they endured.

Until a friend sat on them in the car.

She felt terrible, immediately ran into a store to buy a replacement, which I ungraciously refused. I tried not to pout, but I’m pretty sure pouting symptoms escaped: “I’ll fix them,” I muttered. She was really a star, and I was really an immature shit.

I do repair things. If something’s torn, I mend it. If something’s broken, I try to get the new part. If something’s faded and dirty, I restore it. If I can’t do any of those things, I may even use it all torn, broken, and dirty. But even I know when it’s beyond hope. Those broken sunglasses were beyond hope. (My daughter did her happy dance.)

Not only had the metal hinge on one sidepiece snapped, but the plastic anchoring the hinge was shattered. I took them to opticians’ offices, where everyone looked, shook their heads, and said, “Not possible.” But I hung onto them, not ready to throw them away.

So here I was last week, blogging about eye doctors, preparing to go on vacation to a sunny place, and I decided to try again. I brought the sunglasses to Southside Optical, and instead of the shaking head and “not possible,” I was told to leave them for Chet. A half-hour later, Chet phoned.

He’d fixed them! He showed me how he’d had to re-melt and rebuild the plastic, cannibalize a hinge from somewhere else to replace the broken one. In the process, the other half of the hinge broke so he replaced that one, too. He said he was the only place that had “hot fingers” (or something like that) so he could melt it and fix it.

Chet saved the day, saved the sunglasses, saved it all from a “not possible” fate. Sometimes, the world just works.

Not dark: glow-in-the-dark

I found a New Thing, a really new, New Thing. Sure, it was in the dark, but it was right under our noses, here in Anchorage for five years, and I didn’t even know it was there. What a discovery!

My friend, Jinnie, and her husband, David, invited us to glow-in-the-dark miniature golf. I’ve done neon bowling, but miniature golf was new. I was ready. Six of us were ready. Well, as ready as you can be when you have to weave around industrial buildings to get to the right spot, and you’re sure you’re lost, but then it’s there: Putters Wild. Hidden treasure!

It seemed a little confusing at first: why were there 3-D glasses at the sign-in desk? Oh, it’s indoor, blacklight, 3-D miniature golf! Oh, this is getting interesting. We have to pick out two color balls and decide whether we’ll do the Pacific course first or the Polar 9 holes. We start with Pacific.

Yikes, it’s black – except for the glowing walls, fish scenes, underwater-looking sculpture things. The rims bordering the holes are glowing, seeming like they’re elevated in the air. You’re positive you can roll your ball under them, but it’s all an illusion. It is all so disorienting, you love it.

Picture this: six adults – sort of lost in the dark – bumping into things. Realizing the walls are soft canvas, painted with spectacular 3-D underwater scenes, but that the next time we stumble into them, we might fall through. Putting things down and not knowing where you put them.

And six adults, all of whom have a different understanding of the “rules” of miniature golf: one closest to the hole putts second, one furthest from the hole putts second, putt until your ball goes in, putt in order, keep the same order for each hole, change based on how you did on the last hole. But you’re all in the dark, bumbling into bumpers and incredibly disoriented by the dark and the illumination and the 3-D. And someone has to see in the dark to keep score.

Tim has an orange ball. It looks like it’s floating in the air. Julie can’t figure out how he ever hits it. I feel like someone has put a sack over my head and is steering me from adventure to adventure.

And then we get to Humpback Hoop-Dee-Do, and the ball whirls around and shoots out. I try to take a photo, but I can’t use flash and it’s very dark, and it all glows and so you can’t even imagine how you’ll translate this into painting without blacklight.

At Beluga Bend (but I can’t be sure because I’m keeping notes in the dark), the ball goes in a hole, up an elevator, and then down a glowing path whirling all around before it lands on the green.

And Jinnie says she loves miniature golf so much that just as I’d crossed the country visiting waterparks, she wants to cross the country visiting putt-putts (which I think is a regional thing; what did you call them where you grew up?) And we reach the end of the Front 9 and the joke-telling hole takes our first balls while Tim sticks his head in the Killer Capture. It was that kind of night.

And afterwards, we talk to the new owner, who says, “No, this place has been here for five years.” And you can’t believe it because you’re in your Third Third, ready to relocate from Anchorage because there’s nothing new under the sun here and you always thought of yourself as the kind of person who could sniff out anything that was fun. And look, here was something incredibly fun and you didn’t even know about it!

Something fresh and new – and disorienting and goofy – and suddenly you light up with freshness and newness and having the friends to enjoy it with and you think “what else is out there?”

Anatomy of a Descent

The problem with getting depressed in your Third Third is that you’re missing the guard rails that keep you on track. There is no job where you have to be at the desk; no kids you have to get up for school. Even your volunteer teaching is on winter break. There is nothing forcing you to suck it up: you are free to fall into the abyss with no hand holds.

On Monday and Tuesday, I felt the mood descending. I was like a balloon slowly deflating, air leaking out of me, but I had some scheduled distractions and engagements to keep me afloat. But Wednesday, there was nothing on the calendar.

The night before, I’d posted the blog about my travails with the Internet and drawn the picture of a hysterical me. Immediately, regret and panic took over: I re-examined every sentence, positive they were signs of a woman too desperate, too over the edge. Positive I’d missed the humor entirely, that I’d gone too public with my craziness. My God, I’d even given her crazy eyes.

I worried about this all night long. I never went to sleep. I tried reading, but the woman in the novel wasn’t in a good head place either. Besides, my whirling thoughts were drowning out any thoughts the author could possibly have put on the page. At 5, I decided I had to turn on the T.V. It’s in the living room. I got out of bed.

Evidence of descent #1: Watching T.V. in the daytime. (I have never done this before in my life. This is a really Big Sign.)

But at 5 a.m. in an Alaska winter, you could still count it as “night.” Thank heavens for Netflix. I discovered Blacklist. Not only does it have mysteries and twists in the plot, but it has a zillion episodes. After each, Netflix gave me a few seconds and then would automatically feed me another episode. I chain-smoked Blacklist episodes. When Netflix was worried I’d left, it asked if I was still watching, and I told it to “continue.”

Evidence of descent #2: I did this for 13 hours straight.

My mother battled depression most of her life. I think her solution was to stay busy, mostly cleaning, dealing with four kids, working till she was 72. She did things to make sure she was “up and at ’em” – she always made the bed as soon as she got out of it.

Evidence of descent #3-6: I never made the bed. I didn’t even brush my teeth, comb my hair, or put on a bra.

I didn’t have to be anywhere, didn’t have to look presentable for anyone, didn’t have a reason to engage. This was my Third Third: I could create my own dungeon.

Evidence of descent #7-a million: Whirling thoughts.

In between Netflix episodes, I thought some more. I thought about how I’d gotten off track in my Third Third, how I’d abandoned my future of worthwhile employment. How this blog idea was an egotistical amateurish pursuit. How I was looking flabby and old. How my daughter made such thoughtful, measurable resolutions for her new year and how I didn’t even make resolutions because I wasn’t going to fulfill them anyway. How we’d had people over and had a great time, but it was over and now seeing friends again would take Effort. Mostly, about how my “otherly-mental,” double-edged sword of a brain would always betray me eventually.

Evidence of descent: You don’t even muster movement when exposed.

Tim came home for lunch. Now it really was daytime … and I was still watching T.V. Even embarrassment didn’t move me. Tim said the freezing temperatures had refrozen the lake, there was ice skating again. What I suspected he was really saying: “What’s the matter with you? Get up and get out, get some exercise, see some daylight.” I went to the bathroom and then back to the couch.

Evidence of descent: refusal to take remedial steps

You think, “Go ahead, force yourself, put on your skates,” but you don’t. And then you decide you’re sabotaging yourself and you’re the problem. Which you already knew.

Towards evening, the phone rang. It was a friend.

Evidence of recovery: I picked up the phone

I’m not sure if our conversation cured me. I honestly think 13 hours of T.V. did it. (I did finally turn to Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries for some fluff so I could eventually sleep.) I think I had to get my thoughts out of my head. That night, I slept soundly and thoroughly. I went to a morning meeting and luncheon, had a great time with friends, went ice-skating.

The freedom of our Third Thirds is both liberating and terrifying. Mostly, I have quiet, non-busy times when I can feel content and reflective, letting my thoughts drift pleasantly without the constraints of Job or Kid. But I also have unquiet, non-busy times when my thoughts – unconstrained by the usual “guard rails” of Job or Kid – drive over the cliff.

Moral of this story: this Third Third is a new road under construction. Just as I’m laying the route and building the road, I have to include new guard rails, new structures that work for me personally. (Not to include 13 hours of T.V.)

Gasp. Choke. Unwelcome adventures.

Oh, yikes, the wrong people have found me on the Internet. I am beyond upset. I am vibrating with agitation.

I was looking through my blog analytics, and I noticed that two of the blog visits had an extra bunch of letters in the URL. So I clicked on it.

It went to a fake version of my blog: no header, no right-hand side, just the words and drawings. I totally panicked: my computer must be crashing, I’d ruined its brains, my blog was disintegrating. So then I Googled just the extra letters, and it turned out to be on lots of other websites. Just inserted into them.

I asked Google, “What is XXXX?” but all I got was a homepage, written in Asian characters. The Chinese must be violating international copyright laws with my blog; I was a victim of cyber crime! I was also clearly out of my depth.

So then I had to figure out how to ask Blogger my questions, how to get on the “Forum.” Other people put their questions there, but I don’t even know the process.

Brief interlude for hysterical outburst:

I AM a tech dinosaur! There, I said it! I can’t get an answer to a question without negotiating another completely separate hurdle: I have to ask questions about how to post a question. And don’t even get me started on how am I supposed to receive the answers. Why does everything seem to lead to an endless trip down a technological rabbit hole?!?

Deep breath, deep breath. Remember: every hurdle is just another boost to maintain my cognitive abilities.

I figured out how to ask, and I asked. This morning, a very nice guy responded, and his little button said he was a “Google Expert.” Hooray! He said he couldn’t duplicate the result, could I tell him how I found the bad blog.

So I did my Google thing, and they were gone! Everything with that bunch of letters in it was gone except for the home page. So I checked my analytics again, and there was a third person going to that bad site! From Google! Oh, yikes, this was a mess. (Afterwards, I did figure out that was my Expert looking it up, but by this point, I was so freaked out, I felt like every incident was a cyber threat.)

I explained everything to my Google Expert, and he said “It looks like that site is taking content and hosting it on their server. You might want to contact the website owner to remove your content from their servers.”

Cyber thieves taking my stories and pictures! I was furious, but I worried that contacting them was like trying to unsubscribe from spam, that it confirmed to the bad guys that you were alive and then you’d never get rid of them. Not to mention that everything was in Asian characters. But my Expert told me to, so I went to their home page and clicked “Translate.”

Gasp. I’m even afraid to tell you what I found, that it will add me to their list again. Can I say they called themselves “erotic images” without the word “erotic” showing up in Google searches? (Too late.) And they’re sending people to a fake version of my blog! (Deep breath, deep breath.) I even feel icky touching my keyboard.

Immediately, I thought of the butt lineup from Costco, but that was a while ago. Why would I first hit their radar now? Oh, no! It must have been my butt peeing outside, hiding from the bus. Look here: is that an erotic image to you?

So I quickly replied to my Google Expert, asking him what I should do now, but he’s not responding! Maybe he’s checking my blog and Google will remove me! Already, “3rd Thirds” is only yielding searches about Third Graders. Here I am, in my Third Third, and I’m a Japanese porn attraction.

(sob)

Agony at the eye doctor

You’re sitting in the eye doctor’s office, your face up against the machine, the doctor clicking away and rotating assorted lenses. Then he says…

…and you brace yourself for the most traumatic question imaginable:

“Is it better with A … or B?”

Okay, maybe the question is nowhere near the trauma of Sophie’s Choice, but for the lifetime I have spent in assorted eye doctors’ offices, my stomach still clenches at the question. I once wrote a short story about that question. I know I’ll be going back again soon and facing the question.

There is such responsibility in answering. A prescription will be written, contact lenses ordered, eyeglass lenses ground – all based on the answer. And the answer is always so … fuzzy. Is that D-E-F-P-O-T-E-C any better than that other D-E-F-P-O-T-E-C? So maybe you say, “Can you do that again?”

“Is it better with A … or B?”

They look the same! And you blink, but then they look a little different. Is that just the tears in the blink or is that your vision? Okay, you take a stab: “A.”

More clicking, more rotating. All you’ve done is buy yourself a few seconds:

“Is it better with A … or B?”

“Can you do that again?”

“Is it better with A … or B?”

“I think B.” But then you listen for a groan; are you becoming too difficult? Is there some decision tree that you’ve just failed, some auto-cross-check that means your answer is impossible? Why does your vision have to hinge on YOU? Can’t they just measure your eyes?

Over the years, more and more machines have shown up in the doctor’s office so maybe they are in fact measuring my eyes. Which doesn’t help because – as one doctor put it by opening my file and circling my age – my eyes are in their Third Thirds, too.

I get that our ability to focus (presbyopia) changed a while back. That was when all those menus started being held miles away, as far as our arms could reach. But I wore contact lenses with a close-up region and a distance region and miraculously, they both worked!

I think I could have been happy forever. Until the manufacturer discontinued the brand.

That meant my trials moved from the doctor’s office to the contact lens station. I became that woman’s worst nightmare. We went the monovision route where one eye sees close up and the other sees far away … and your brain rattles around trying to make sense of it all. We tried every different manufacturer, and I was like Cinderella’s stepsisters trying to fit into the glass slipper. Nothing worked. Finally, in desperation, after months of experimentation, I said, “I’m going on vacation. Just give me these.”

So I’ve been kind of getting around. I can watch movies and read highway signs. On a good day, I can read the newspaper and a book, but I bought my first pair of Peepers so I can magnify if I need to read a label or a map. (I got them in bright red so I could still look outrageous and bold with reading glasses; but I’m not fooling myself.)

Lately, though, I’m losing depths. At the grocery store, I can’t see the products if they’re two feet away, which is exactly where they sit on shelves. Everything else is still there, and I can put on the Peepers to read labels, but I’m missing that crucial two-foot span.

If I have to paint or sew, I pull out my old trusty, probably expired eyeglasses. Eyeglasses that never went out in public during my vanity days. So when I make plans outside my home, I have to know what I’m doing: movie, I can wear contacts; conversation, contacts. Painting class; contacts to see the teacher or eyeglasses to see the paper? Book club; contacts to see friends or eyeglasses to refer to the book? This is getting ridiculous.

I didn’t get a reminder notice from my eye doctor this year. I think the contact lens woman probably got a vote on that. I made an appointment on my own. Already, I’m having alphabet nightmares:

“Is it better with A … or B?”

Biggish adventures from smallish quests

This is why it’s so hard for me to get through my piles of reading matter: there is always something interesting. So if I just toss them before perusing, I’ll miss out. What if I had missed the Signals catalog with Light Up Balloons? I would never have heard of Light Up Balloons!

We were launching the New Year with friends over and suddenly I wanted Light Up Balloons. In this snowless Anchorage winter, life is very, very dark. I really wanted Light Up Balloons.

But sudden isn’t how catalogs can deliver so I went on a quest. First stop, Party World. They didn’t have Light Up Balloons, but the woman there said she’d seen them at Dollar Zone. (pause for a yippee)

Now things were getting really exciting! My book club had read the book The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez. The two star-crossed lovers, Mayor and Maribel, meet in a Dollar Tree Store. I had never heard of a Dollar Tree Store … but now I was getting to go to … well, one like it. I guess a Dollar Zone is like a Dollar Tree, but really, I wouldn’t know.

First Dollar Zone: no, they don’t have Light Up Balloons, but the woman there definitely knew they were at another Dollar Zone. She’d seen them. “Oh, but I think I’ll look around while I’m here.”

A Dollar Zone store is like going to a flea market of brand new things. Along the side, it’s party land. That’s where the balloons are and all sorts of decorations. In another section are the soaps and shampoos and hair doodads. Then there’s the wall of kitchen gadgets and plastic things.

Do you remember the first time you ever went into a Costco? There’s a sort of nuttiness that took over – my sister, who lives in Berlin, said they had a word for it in German: Konsumterror. It’s about the pressure for materialism, like a consumer frenzy. All over Costco, that first time, we discovered what we called “orphans,” products that people had picked up and then abandoned later, when they came to their senses.

Well, I’m now immune to Konsumterror, both because I’m a Costco regular and because I’m in my Third Third and anti-acquisition. But I could see that the Dollar Zone was built to feed Konsumterror. Oh, oh! Could they have the little bottles I need for my raspberry liqueur? And my hairbrush handle broke; look at all these hairbrushes. And – not to be believed – they have the exact calendar I’d been looking for for only $1.75! (Too late, I’ve already written about that quest – but I’ll be back next year!)

I fought off any balloon-related Konsumterror by acknowledging that I had to blow up whatever I bought, so I only bought six. Inside the neck of the balloon is a little plastic thing: you click once for a fast blink, twice for a slow blink, and again for a solid light. It took one balloon for me to realize that it was hard to poke through an inflated balloon so I had to turn them on before blowing them up.

Tied on to the mailbox, they were everything I could have hoped for: bright, blinking, colored lights on a dark, dark night, welcoming friends to our home. Well, for a while. Only the blue and green stayed bright the length of the evening. Green is still going 24 hours later. The others are still pulsing but … dimly.

I feel such optimism for this new year. Two New Things right off the bat: Light Up Balloons and Dollar Zone. There’s no way to feel jaded when there are still discoveries to be made and adventures to be had. Adventure is a state of mind.

(PLUS, I figured out how to put Our Third Thirds on Facebook!)