I can’t figure out what to do. Do I care enough about hanging out with Ted* and Margaret to go to Work City*; do I care enough about going to my friend’s big art festival weekend to ask Ed if I can go to Work City and spend the night, spend the money, and call my sister-in-law or call my work friend to see if I can stay the night?
That would mean that I wouldn’t be back until right before noon on Sunday. That would mean that I wouldn’t be back until later to do Asia’s hair, laundry, etc. I’d be impinging on sister-in-law’s and work friend’s time with their significant others.
And then there’s the Black Women’s Book Club tonight, that I’m not too hot on attending. I mean, I haven’t read the book. Who am I kidding--I’m not interested in reading the book. Confessions of a Video Vixen? No, not interested.
It’s all a part of this fucking schizophrenic thing. Not part of a community here. Not part of a community in Work City. At what point do I make a commitment to one or the other? Is there room for both? Do I become financial with the Deltas here? I keep coming back to that. Why?
Perhaps I’m getting closer to the real issue now. It’s not enough to have a friend on Gardenia Drive here in town. A set of colleague/friends in Work City. To have one connection with one person. Another connection with another person. Another connection with yet another different person. Why? No web unites these people. As a friend of mine would say, there is no social network, only a bunch of dyads and me trying to develop them all, absent an understanding of and participation in the networks that these other people belong to.
A funny thing, really. In thinking about my potential to become part of the relevant social networks that exist, I come up real short. As an aspiring Buddhist, I have very little interest in going to church on a regular basis. Family? The bonds of kinship as they are understood here are foreign to me—probably because they are so closely interwoven with going to church. And then there’s the whole deal with everyone knowing everyone else’s business and being pushed into the social role of being the “lawyer’s wife” that just makes me want to puke—mainly because it is predicated on the misconception that somehow S.O. and I are living life “high on the hog.”
And what of building myself into the networks of the “work friends,” the ones that I can most easily connect with? Since S.O. and I share a car and a life and a daughter, do I grow more distant from S.O., do I further deplete our resources by renting a car every other weekend and driving 75 miles away to feel “connected, do I drag A. to my social events, and risk inhibiting her own ability to be a part of the social network where we live?
Clearly, there is no easy answer to all of these questions. S.O. suggested making connections with people who work at the small university here in town, but doing that seems to be just another way to put another fracture in my life. When would I have the time to do that? It’s all just so fucked up. I find myself wishing that staring into the computer screen would open up an alternative universe—one in which there are people who are as consumed with the complexities of living a life in-between as I am…
I'm thinking the answer lies in driving to Work City, getting really fucking drunk, and crashing in my office. That sounds really healthy, doesn't it?
*Pseudonyms
No comments:
Post a Comment