N.N.O.

I was so distraught over the course of the last couple days that I didn’t have time to make a new Obligatory Image for this entry; so I had to enlarge a detail from my previous post’s Obligatory Image and make it serve double duty. (Actually what happened is that when I tried to zoom in and snap a closer photograph, the purses folded over and revealed a clamp and scissors on their underside.)

Dear diary,

Well I made it thru! You have no idea how worried I was — I didn’t even write an entry here yesterday, I was so worried… I was worried sick about this thing called National Night Out, where everyone in the neighborhood gathers together so that the neighbors can meet each other. This was more scary for me than the most important job interview; because this street where we moved to (we just moved here this year) is situated, or rather the houses on it are situated in a way that makes them exceedingly visible to each other, and thus the residents are very aware of each other; the houses are the opposite of secluded; what this means is that the people who live here end up encountering each other constantly, when they exit or enter their abodes, or anytime they’re outdoors — and thus, in this case, that old cliché about small towns seems applicable: everyone always knows everything about everyone else. So this National Night Out party, to my mind, had the potential of making or breaking the rest of our life here. I really love this area, and I want the neighbors to like me; and when it comes to social events, not only am I awkward but I have the habit of saying the taboo thing at the taboo time, or for being insufficiently normal (even if extraterrestrials were found to be living among us, I myself would be deemed more alien than these aliens, solely on account of my passion for outlandishness) — so for whole days before this party started, I was trembling in my soul and repeating to myself “Don’t mess this up.” But, like I hinted when I started this here entry with the sentence “I made it thru!”, everything turned out totally fine. In fact, it was more perfect than I would’ve dared wish. Every single person we met was friendly, and some people were even great wits, whose remarks had the timing and cadence of stand-up comedians. I honestly can’t believe our luck in discovering this neighborhood — it actually makes me feel a little guilty; for, think of all those people living in neighborhoods that are dangerous or dull. Why do I deserve this paradise while other people suffer? Perhaps the answer is: Just because one possesses something doesn’t mean that one deserves it. Only if you truly enjoy something do you deserve that thing. And since I enjoy this neighborhood more than anyone, I deserve it richly.

So I got my just deserts. And I’d like to take yet one more moment to concentrate on how worried I was about nothing! I was so sure that this neighborhood get-together would go wrong for me, that I would do something stupid or impolite (my middle name is FAUX PAS), that, after full years of neglecting the practice, I even engaged in a session of meditation yesternoon. I mean my poor crude version of what I think is “Transcendental Meditation”: I never wanted to fork out the $2000 USD that the people who officially teach that method request, so I just made up my own designer knockoff, where I sit upright in a chair with my hands on my thighs and with my eyes closed, after setting a timer for twenty minutes, and I mentally repeat the word RUM till I hear the cattle-bell ding. Any thots that arise other than that repetitious RUM just get plowed over and mashed flat inside my mind, because that mantra RUM (I keep it generic, out of respect for the nondescript) represents the bulldozer that begins and ends the world. So the result is that once the meditation session concludes, I feel like a million bucks. Or at least like a fraction of a single installment payment upon two grand.

This timed experience, by the way, reminds me of something I heard people talking about at the party. About five of us were gathered together discussing culinary techniques, and the whole group of us were surprised to realize that we all instinctively use the same means to alert the rest of the family that “Dinner is ready!” — that is, we always end up triggering our kitchen’s fire alarm. So this could also be a good way to end one’s Transcendental Meditation session: the piercing beep of the smoke detector. Tho admittedly it might be a little jarring. Plus you’d have to figure out a way to build a blaze that would take exactly 20 minutes to arouse the robotic olfactory sensor.

But I was trying to conclude this short entry (I’m still exhausted from the proceedings, but in a good way; that’s why I’m attempting, for once, to be brief) by underscoring the fact that my tendency is to worry too much, and that events tend to turn out far better than my expectations. This is excellent news: It’s a scientific finding to be celebrated. (Is it not?) So now help me devise the moral of this piece — what should we advertise our experience as having taught us:

1. Fretting about the future is wholly unnecessary.
2. Fretting about the future pays off handsomely.

Every vote counts, for I simply cannot tell if all my worrying and pacing and meditating had the effect of making me a better partygoer than I’d have been otherwise, or if it’s precisely the high anxiety that I expended in preparation for this event that caused the thing to go off without a hitch.

Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

Those are the words of Jesus, according to Matthew (6:27). By “taking thought” I assume he means “worrying”; and by “adding one cubit” to our “stature”, I assume he means “become a better person.” So this maxim has always stuck in my craw. I love its sentiment, which, to me, is basically: Stop fretting about the upcoming social event! But I always have reserved a bit of wonder about its actual feasibility… or rather its practicality, or its prudence — its relation to potential. Because I can just as easily imagine the act of “taking thought” as being so effective in increasing a given person’s stature that it influences the fabric of spacetime. What I’m hemming toward is this: Perhaps sweating bullets before a performance is an effectual way of praying. Maybe the ineffable DOOM that decides all outcomes only answers to agony. And it prefers its agony inward — which, being interpreted, means: to suffer without complaining. So I’ll end this note with another quotation from Jesus:

When ye fret and agonize, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their appearance, and let their countenance fall, that they may seem to be wroth. Their hope is that some passerby will remark, “Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? Hast thou been fretting over the forthcoming neighborhood soirée? Do not fret! As it is written: ‘Who by agonizing has ever managed to become a better person!’ Instead, let come what may: And if thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?” But no one ever stops to advise thee like this; and if one did, it is very bad advice; therefore I say, on the contrary: Whenever thou frettest, wash thy face, and iron thy clothing; that thou appear not unto fellow partygoers to have been fretting all day, but this shall only be known to the inscrutable DOOM, which lies in wait secretly (it is immeasurable to the tools of Science): and this selfsame DOOM, if you privately follow my instructions to a tee, shall break forth and pounce upon thee openly. (Matthew 6:16-18)