Believers vs non-believers
Aug. 13th, 2006 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaWhy did God (the Universe) (destiny) create me as Someone Who Believes? More to the point, why did He then stick me with a family/spouse/friends who not only Don't Believe, but who feel a responsibility to disabuse me of These Silly Notions?
I'm not talking about religion here. (Although I suspect that some people in my family who used to be quite spiritual have fallen away from following their beliefs . . . that used to be called "backslidin'." However, that's not what I'm talking about, and you really can't judge whether somebody else is actually backslidin' or not, anyway--that's between them and God, and YOU can't see into the heart.)
I'm talking about . . . what's the word here? Funny how a writer equipped with thesauri of all kinds can't come up with one. Okay, how about an example?
Today, hubby woke up with a sick stomach and vague complaints of feeling bad. This isn't unusual (he and Mama trade viruses daily, and I am confident that either my vitamins, my current way-restricted health-nut diet, or just plain virtuousness and right living keep me from suffering with these things), but I suggested a ride in the car "out to the country" might help. A Sunday drive. The van bouncing around on these ol' farm-to-market roads usually makes your stomach better, and if it's because you are stressed and feeling closed-in (which it often is), the getting out will help you. Take it from Great-Gramma.
He started to feel better right away, I think. We stopped near Southfork Ranch for a train. It was an AT&SF, I think (or at least that's what the locomotives were painted with.) Three locomotives followed by a bunch of empty truck trailers going back to be filled up again. He had been blathering on about real estate values and stuff like that, but now he started whining that he and his compadres would surely be laid off within a couple of years. "Johnny and Doug and I give it about two more years, tops, before Alcatel takes the project back to France and we're out on the street."
Rather than take my usual tack of reassurances and so forth, this time I said, "Well, that's great timing! Because I'm going to get an agent in a week or two, and then I'm going to be in Dennis's movie, and then you won't have to support the family alone. You can get a job that you still enjoy, but mostly for the health insurance."
That stopped him for a moment. "You can't count on making any money," he began. "Even IF she does take you on as she said she would--and remember, you can't count chickens before they're hatched, and this could fall through just like everything else always has--there's no guarantee that the book will sell, or that it'll be successful if it sells. And as for that movie stuff--" He snorted. "I don't believe it'll get made. And even though you all think that YOU can get in as an extra, the production company will want their own people."
"I think you're wrong," was all I said as I signaled to turn on one of the older roads, lined on either side by pastures. The horses, cows, and llamas alike were huddled under the trees, out of the sun. We haven't had any rain in forever. "The guy who is doing the film already told Dennis I could be in it. How many people want to travel from Hollywood to Dalhart?"
"Yeah, Dalhart!" He snorted again. Obviously, he was feeling better. "How are YOU going to get to Dalhart?"
Well, duh. "Drive."
"That'll take more than a day!"
The last time I checked, buddy, this van was financed in my name, and as long as Ford Credit doesn't object, I can pretty much drive it wherever I can afford to pay the gas for. "Yeah, and that'll be fun. Besides, you want your own vehicle when you get there. I'll want to take my costumes--I'm going to be in three scenes, and I thought I'd be different characters for each one--and my usual junk. We'll be there for a week or so."
"Where are you going to stay?!" He knows I don't much like seedy hotels. My idea of "roughing it" is "room service closes at midnight." But hey, with the van, I can even sleep in the van if need be. I can get a pup tent. There are options.
"They're going to get a hotel or motel. There'll be an entire cast and crew, remember. And I think it's going to be really fun and interesting just seeing how a movie is made."
"You'll have to be in their union!"
"I'll join the Screen Actors Guild. They'll have to apply for me, but somebody'll tell me how, because I think you can't join until you have a role. We'll see. Even if I just go out there to meet Dennis and see the spectacle, I'll be happy."
He was a bit discombobulated. He started to formulate another "nonsense, you'll never," reply, but it was sounding a bit more unsure. Luckily, we'd reached the Dairy Queen, and he had said he wanted an ice cream freeze thingie to settle his stomach. I swung under the distinctively shaped red sign and started talking to the drive-through speaker. I had brought a Medifast shake in my silly little insulated cloth lunchbox (with Blue Ice to keep it cold), so I wouldn't have to go without.
After getting a few sips of his ice-milk-with-crushed-M&Ms-and-cookies, he went back to the old "you won't make any money" tactic. "If they take this project and give it to their French engineers, we're out."
"You're good. You know people who used to work with you. You'll find another job that's just as interesting."
"But not around here. We'd have to move."
"That's OK. I love California. There's no reason we couldn't go out there, and you could find something there. Or even just down in Austin."
"But I don't want to have to pack up and sell the house!"
"We wouldn't sell the house. We could rent it out or even use it as a bed-and-breakfast--"
Here he went into a rant about how you can't just be a B&B unless you're zoned for it and so forth--none of which is strictly true, as there are many B&Bs that are in private residences, with and without hosts on site--and so forth. I needed to negotiate some traffic there, anyway, as I was on my way back through Plano to Richardson and home.
"Okay," I interrupted after he seemed to start running out of steam, "we'll just rent it out. It needs to be completely redone anyway--the carpet is a wreck, it needs paint and appliances, and so forth--and you know that houses out here rent for $1500 a month and better, even if they haven't been updated." We've rented several houses out here in the past, and this is true. "We'll continue our mowing people and get a maid service and just add that to the rent--it's $20 a week for mowing in the summer and $25 every two weeks for the maids. That way, Elmira"--the lady who runs this maid service; we don't use them right now, but I'd use them if we hired someone--"can tell me if the people start trashing the house."
"That's impossible! You'd have to sell the house and use the money to buy another one! That's how people DO it!" He waved his arms. "That's how normal people DO IT!"
Well, I am definitely not "normal people." I never have been. "I don't see why you think I wouldn't have the cash to move and keep this house. Besides, lots of people go somewhere else and rent for a while to see if they like the place. I've been right here since July 4, 1967, and I'm certainly not going to dump it on a whim . . . if we rent in California, for example, we'll still need the mortgage deduction, which we'd still get if we rented this house out. And we'd get some other deductions that landlords get." To head him off in another direction, I added, "Until the government takes away the mortgage deduction and squeezes out the middle class, that is."
He didn't disappoint me, swerving onto the new rant-road (he had run out of track for that last train of thought.) "Which won't be long! They're taking away all our rights!" (He pretty much covered the ground that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
peake covers in that linked post, is what I mean there)
From then on to home, he talked about how you can't trust government (I pointed out that here, WE are the gov't, but he countered with the point that most citizens have abdicated their responsibilities and are just letting themselves be ruled by fear and fear tactics as they give away more and more of our rights and our privacy, which is true) and the usual stuff. It was just as well, as I didn't want to have to argue about whether anything good can ever happen to ME or not.
I mean . . . they just don't BELIEVE. Am I wrong to BELIEVE? I don't know. I was somehow wired this way, though. I always BELIEVE that this or that will happen, that such-and-such is possible, that something good will come out of a situation. It's tough to go on believing . . . maybe I'm like the guy in the song "Reason to Believe," someone who shouldn't be clutching at straws. Obviously, that Positive Thinking crap doesn't work for me. And of course it's best to keep one's mouth shut about one's career in front of one's family in the first place . . . I know, but for some irrational reason I always think I'm going to hear something different out of them. Why? Just crazy, I suppose.
I guess I'm just a dreamer, a fantasy-land-liver who floats along on a pink cloud, and instead of thinking of how I should be refinishing the floors and reorganizing the CDs I'm thinking of some aspect of some stupid book that I insist on typing up even though there's realistically very little hope that anything'll ever come of it. I'm just an idiot who plays the piano despite not having any reason to believe that anyone else wants/needs to hear that . . . and playing for myself is a selfish reason, I know. Still, their attitudes begin to get to me. I always just nod, smile, agree that they're entitled to believe that but that I continue to disagree, whatever . . . swallow all snap-back replies and just play like it's fine, that I know I'm just a fool. Still. . . .
I can't ever resist muttering, "See, Lord, don't you think they need to be shown up? Couldn't this stuff actually be true just to show 'em up and teach 'em a lesson about putting people down?" But He doesn't hear that kind of prayer because it's negative, I suppose. Still, just this once I'd like to see 'em be proven wrong.
And maybe a few more times, too . . . there are a bunch of other things that COULD happen if one only BELIEVES.
I'm not talking about religion here. (Although I suspect that some people in my family who used to be quite spiritual have fallen away from following their beliefs . . . that used to be called "backslidin'." However, that's not what I'm talking about, and you really can't judge whether somebody else is actually backslidin' or not, anyway--that's between them and God, and YOU can't see into the heart.)
I'm talking about . . . what's the word here? Funny how a writer equipped with thesauri of all kinds can't come up with one. Okay, how about an example?
Today, hubby woke up with a sick stomach and vague complaints of feeling bad. This isn't unusual (he and Mama trade viruses daily, and I am confident that either my vitamins, my current way-restricted health-nut diet, or just plain virtuousness and right living keep me from suffering with these things), but I suggested a ride in the car "out to the country" might help. A Sunday drive. The van bouncing around on these ol' farm-to-market roads usually makes your stomach better, and if it's because you are stressed and feeling closed-in (which it often is), the getting out will help you. Take it from Great-Gramma.
He started to feel better right away, I think. We stopped near Southfork Ranch for a train. It was an AT&SF, I think (or at least that's what the locomotives were painted with.) Three locomotives followed by a bunch of empty truck trailers going back to be filled up again. He had been blathering on about real estate values and stuff like that, but now he started whining that he and his compadres would surely be laid off within a couple of years. "Johnny and Doug and I give it about two more years, tops, before Alcatel takes the project back to France and we're out on the street."
Rather than take my usual tack of reassurances and so forth, this time I said, "Well, that's great timing! Because I'm going to get an agent in a week or two, and then I'm going to be in Dennis's movie, and then you won't have to support the family alone. You can get a job that you still enjoy, but mostly for the health insurance."
That stopped him for a moment. "You can't count on making any money," he began. "Even IF she does take you on as she said she would--and remember, you can't count chickens before they're hatched, and this could fall through just like everything else always has--there's no guarantee that the book will sell, or that it'll be successful if it sells. And as for that movie stuff--" He snorted. "I don't believe it'll get made. And even though you all think that YOU can get in as an extra, the production company will want their own people."
"I think you're wrong," was all I said as I signaled to turn on one of the older roads, lined on either side by pastures. The horses, cows, and llamas alike were huddled under the trees, out of the sun. We haven't had any rain in forever. "The guy who is doing the film already told Dennis I could be in it. How many people want to travel from Hollywood to Dalhart?"
"Yeah, Dalhart!" He snorted again. Obviously, he was feeling better. "How are YOU going to get to Dalhart?"
Well, duh. "Drive."
"That'll take more than a day!"
The last time I checked, buddy, this van was financed in my name, and as long as Ford Credit doesn't object, I can pretty much drive it wherever I can afford to pay the gas for. "Yeah, and that'll be fun. Besides, you want your own vehicle when you get there. I'll want to take my costumes--I'm going to be in three scenes, and I thought I'd be different characters for each one--and my usual junk. We'll be there for a week or so."
"Where are you going to stay?!" He knows I don't much like seedy hotels. My idea of "roughing it" is "room service closes at midnight." But hey, with the van, I can even sleep in the van if need be. I can get a pup tent. There are options.
"They're going to get a hotel or motel. There'll be an entire cast and crew, remember. And I think it's going to be really fun and interesting just seeing how a movie is made."
"You'll have to be in their union!"
"I'll join the Screen Actors Guild. They'll have to apply for me, but somebody'll tell me how, because I think you can't join until you have a role. We'll see. Even if I just go out there to meet Dennis and see the spectacle, I'll be happy."
He was a bit discombobulated. He started to formulate another "nonsense, you'll never," reply, but it was sounding a bit more unsure. Luckily, we'd reached the Dairy Queen, and he had said he wanted an ice cream freeze thingie to settle his stomach. I swung under the distinctively shaped red sign and started talking to the drive-through speaker. I had brought a Medifast shake in my silly little insulated cloth lunchbox (with Blue Ice to keep it cold), so I wouldn't have to go without.
After getting a few sips of his ice-milk-with-crushed-M&Ms-and-cookies, he went back to the old "you won't make any money" tactic. "If they take this project and give it to their French engineers, we're out."
"You're good. You know people who used to work with you. You'll find another job that's just as interesting."
"But not around here. We'd have to move."
"That's OK. I love California. There's no reason we couldn't go out there, and you could find something there. Or even just down in Austin."
"But I don't want to have to pack up and sell the house!"
"We wouldn't sell the house. We could rent it out or even use it as a bed-and-breakfast--"
Here he went into a rant about how you can't just be a B&B unless you're zoned for it and so forth--none of which is strictly true, as there are many B&Bs that are in private residences, with and without hosts on site--and so forth. I needed to negotiate some traffic there, anyway, as I was on my way back through Plano to Richardson and home.
"Okay," I interrupted after he seemed to start running out of steam, "we'll just rent it out. It needs to be completely redone anyway--the carpet is a wreck, it needs paint and appliances, and so forth--and you know that houses out here rent for $1500 a month and better, even if they haven't been updated." We've rented several houses out here in the past, and this is true. "We'll continue our mowing people and get a maid service and just add that to the rent--it's $20 a week for mowing in the summer and $25 every two weeks for the maids. That way, Elmira"--the lady who runs this maid service; we don't use them right now, but I'd use them if we hired someone--"can tell me if the people start trashing the house."
"That's impossible! You'd have to sell the house and use the money to buy another one! That's how people DO it!" He waved his arms. "That's how normal people DO IT!"
Well, I am definitely not "normal people." I never have been. "I don't see why you think I wouldn't have the cash to move and keep this house. Besides, lots of people go somewhere else and rent for a while to see if they like the place. I've been right here since July 4, 1967, and I'm certainly not going to dump it on a whim . . . if we rent in California, for example, we'll still need the mortgage deduction, which we'd still get if we rented this house out. And we'd get some other deductions that landlords get." To head him off in another direction, I added, "Until the government takes away the mortgage deduction and squeezes out the middle class, that is."
He didn't disappoint me, swerving onto the new rant-road (he had run out of track for that last train of thought.) "Which won't be long! They're taking away all our rights!" (He pretty much covered the ground that
peake covers in that linked post, is what I mean there)From then on to home, he talked about how you can't trust government (I pointed out that here, WE are the gov't, but he countered with the point that most citizens have abdicated their responsibilities and are just letting themselves be ruled by fear and fear tactics as they give away more and more of our rights and our privacy, which is true) and the usual stuff. It was just as well, as I didn't want to have to argue about whether anything good can ever happen to ME or not.
I mean . . . they just don't BELIEVE. Am I wrong to BELIEVE? I don't know. I was somehow wired this way, though. I always BELIEVE that this or that will happen, that such-and-such is possible, that something good will come out of a situation. It's tough to go on believing . . . maybe I'm like the guy in the song "Reason to Believe," someone who shouldn't be clutching at straws. Obviously, that Positive Thinking crap doesn't work for me. And of course it's best to keep one's mouth shut about one's career in front of one's family in the first place . . . I know, but for some irrational reason I always think I'm going to hear something different out of them. Why? Just crazy, I suppose.
I guess I'm just a dreamer, a fantasy-land-liver who floats along on a pink cloud, and instead of thinking of how I should be refinishing the floors and reorganizing the CDs I'm thinking of some aspect of some stupid book that I insist on typing up even though there's realistically very little hope that anything'll ever come of it. I'm just an idiot who plays the piano despite not having any reason to believe that anyone else wants/needs to hear that . . . and playing for myself is a selfish reason, I know. Still, their attitudes begin to get to me. I always just nod, smile, agree that they're entitled to believe that but that I continue to disagree, whatever . . . swallow all snap-back replies and just play like it's fine, that I know I'm just a fool. Still. . . .
I can't ever resist muttering, "See, Lord, don't you think they need to be shown up? Couldn't this stuff actually be true just to show 'em up and teach 'em a lesson about putting people down?" But He doesn't hear that kind of prayer because it's negative, I suppose. Still, just this once I'd like to see 'em be proven wrong.
And maybe a few more times, too . . . there are a bunch of other things that COULD happen if one only BELIEVES.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-13 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-13 09:20 pm (UTC)There is good money to be made in the movie industry for those willing to work hard, learn the trades and take advantage of opportunity.
reading your conversation made the think about trying to reason with Eyeore (or however you spell the name of the downer donkey from Winnie the Pooh)
If we don't have hopes and dreams to believe in, then what is the point of life?
Don't let anyone that that from you!
no subject
Date: 2006-08-13 09:31 pm (UTC)The worst you can do is to listen to destructive people.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-14 12:40 am (UTC)Just for the Record
Date: 2006-08-14 04:07 am (UTC)2. The union we'll have to get you in is the Screen EXTRAS' Guild, which is affiliated with, but separate from the Screen Actors' Guild.
3. Mike just sold his house for 1.5 million to have the necessary liquidity to make certain things happen, like pay sizable advances to those actors he simply must have for key roles.
4. I IM with him every day (except when he and his wife are out house-hunting), and I KNOW that the project is on time and on schedule. I pushed my L.A. trip back because of my eye surgery and the fact that with IM (Yahoo Messenger, actually) we're the next best thing to being in the same room anyway.
5. Mike is savagely removing all those voice-overs that he'd been so enamoured of at first, and he's producing a better script because of that. Tomorrow I'll be getting HIS latest draft for comment. What I've seen via IM is excellent.
6. At present, Mike is thinking of having cast & crew stay at the Pow Wow Inn in Tucumcari, New Mexico, bot for location shooting, some key scenes, and because it's really not that far from Dalhart.
7. Tomorrow I'll send you Vol. I of the soundtrack, freshly recorded by some scary-good L.A. musicians. Unlike "Family Quilt," which was made basically for family members, this one is intense and extreme, as it should be to be the score of a quality movie. Let your mom hear "The Elks' Parade" and "Sherwood Forest" . . . they will kindle lots of memories.
8. I believed enough in this project that I didn't even let the breakup of my last marriage get me down. Hay-ul, spending most of a year writing the FIRST DRAFT (unrecognizable at this point) played a role in that breakup. She felt I wasn't paying enough attention to her because of the writing, and in our "We've Got to Talk" talk she said, "Maybe now you can spend ALL your time writing that movie." Well, maybe I did. Nyah, nyah, nyah.
9. It boils down to this: any and all promises made will be kept.
I owe you a long E-mail letter, but it'll have to be written tomorrow. Half of today went to the movie, half to a year -- 1920, say -- when a march like the one I wrote for a friend's band in Indiana would likely have been written.
Till then . . .
no subject
Date: 2006-08-14 05:20 pm (UTC)Hmmm — Dr. Seligman seems to have a website: the Positive Psychology Center, which links to UPenn's "Authentic Happiness" page. There seem to be a number of self-assessment questionnaires and suchlike available there. (I wish I weren't at work so I could go poke around a bit.)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-14 06:18 pm (UTC)One never got a break by just wishing for it. One gets breaks by doing, and you certainly are doing.
(I haven't had a chance to look at your excerpt yet; it's been rather hectic, as usual. I'll try sometime this week.)