One of the things I now do to protect my sanity is spend time at a ceramics studio. I cannot really afford this, but it is essential to mental health and I think cheaper than some more traditional but less interesting alternatives.
This ceramics studio is run by a couple who are not really experts, although they try. We understand this. The teachers are experts but they are not empowered to do certain things, like make sure firing is done in a professional way. The students are excellent and it is because of them, and the facts that it is ceramics, and that it is in biking distance from my house, that I go.
I started last summer, after a hiatus in which I really could not afford it, because an old teacher of mine called me up to say she was giving a class in this studio. She was in conflict with the owners, though, over their lack of expertise. There were issues with waxing and glazing. She vented her frustrations at me and I felt angry at the owners for her sake and yet also manipulated into a conflict that was not mine. It was stressful. It got smoothed out.
Still I have some trouble working in there because of the owner. He is a well meaning person but under stress. He likes me and he needles me. He goes on about how I carry my things: if I balance a tray on my head and carry the rest in my arms, I can move clay, tools, and pieces in progress in only one load, but this is exotic and it must be commented upon constantly. I only did it once and I have been careful to avoid it since, but the comments do not end. He wants to talk and talk but I have paid for time.
I always feel strangely invaded and I appear to have accepted that this is what one must accept if one is to work at this studio. I resent it because I am already being tolerant of poor firing skills. I feel as though I must cajole the owner somehow, yet I am not sure how he elicits this reaction in me.
*
I have missed classes and make-up sessions because of work. Sometimes I miss class or makeup sessions just because at work I have already dealt with enough invasive personalities for one day, and I cannot face another. I am not getting my money’s worth, but I like the teachers and love the students, so I would like to make this work.
I found out from the university that I was going to have to miss two days of ceramics. I e-mailed ceramics ahead of time to ask whether I could make those up on two other days. The answer said yes, and that it was good of me to e-mail because this showed I was coming through on my intention to be more reliable. The tone was snotty and I e-mailed back, thank you for letting me make up classes but please do not speak to me in this snotty tone.
I arrived to the studio this morning to find that my divine Japanese tea set had been misfired. I know they will say this is my fault but the thing is that I have been doing ceramics intermittently, but rather steadily for 13 years and I have not had these problems before. I flashed back to the first conflict I had had with this couple, in the fall, when my original teacher had been involved. I knew I would be shamed again and it would be my fault again and I would be needled about this incident for weeks to come, again.
I also knew I would be tolerant of this behavior because it is all of our policy to be tolerant of the foibles of these owners, who are having a hard time starting up their studio rental business and are putting a great deal of time into it, as well as money they do not have. The first class I took, I took primarily to help my old ceramics teacher out financially, and the one I am in now, I took to help the studio out financially. This means that of four eight week blocs of studio time, I have only bought two for my own sake. There is something wrong with this – there is too much coercion and too much guilt in the air.
*
I never cry, and I always surprise myself if I do. But I started to cry. One image I had was, I wanted to take the extruder – a large metal object – off the wall and beat the owner’s head in. I imagined enjoying that and this worried me. A more realistic image I had was, I wanted to crush my Japanese tea set.
As I was crying and saying “I know it is all my fault, and I know they will make fun of my tea set and what happened to it, and I cannot face their doing this to me again,” another student came up to me. “I notice the same undercurrent,” she said, and gave a few examples from her experience. “He’s just arrived,” she said. “You have to talk to him. You are quite right, he had no reason to write you in the tone he did, you are not a third grader.”
I went to talk to him, through my teeth. He said he his thought his “banter” was fun and he had thought it was all right with me. I repeated that I had formerly accepted that it was what I would have to put up with if I wanted to work in this studio, but that I could accept it no longer. He said I would have to explain to him in detail exactly what was wrong with his tone and why. Teach him. I said I was not interested. I said I was not interested in training pushy, power-tripping Yankees like him to be human beings, and that I the reason I was not interested in his banter was that I had work to do and I was just not that interested in what white guys have to say, anyway.
These things were mean and destructive, for one thing, and naturally, he did not understand anyway. He repeated that we needed to talk, he needed to talk, and I said it was my class time and I was not in a state to talk, if I had to talk now I would be destructive. Then I went and did my work and tried to catch the positive vibes off the students. I made two Chinese jars with beautiful lids.
Then I went home for lunch, and then I went to my office hour. One student stood me up, but at least e-mailed, and the other came and we had a productive discussion. Then it was raining and I was tired and hungry again, so instead of going to do errands or going to the gym I came home and drank green tea and ate dense rye bread, balancing out my system. Now the sun is out again and the children are riding on skate boards and I am exhausted and disheartened.
*
If my tea set had not also been discovered to have been misfired on the same day as I got the snotty e-mail, events would not have accumulated and I would not have lost my cool. And part of this is my fault since I am under terrible stress of different kinds. But the ceramics studio is my favorite de-stressor and this is the reason I want it to work out. And it appears that it will not, and I feel it is my fault, and I can perhaps find another place to work, but I like the students who work in this place.
And now if I stay I will have to work it out with this guy but how do I get him to stop bothering me? Why is it that the men who work in the studio are left alone and treated with some respect but if you are a woman you have to cajole the owner to work there? And, is it real, or is the reason all of this bothers me to the degree it does that it reminds me as much as it does of what happens at work? And finally, is it all me?
In Reeducation it would be said that it was all me and what I needed to do was change my attitude, so that I will no longer perceive as bothersome what is bothersome. I disagree and I am also afraid even of entertaining such suggestions. I am afraid of what will happen in me, to me, if I say it is my fault or if I try to work it out in a heartfelt manner with this owner, which is what he wants. I am afraid that if I bend that far, stretch that far, accommodate that much, I will lose my grip on living.
All of today’s events are very symptomatic of much which happens in the local culture: everyone is pressing their limits, and at the same time trying to protect themselves against others who may be pressing their limits. It is exhausting. And I am afraid that I am coming down on this studio owner because I can, because I cannot, here, come down on someone like my chair or my dean the way a reasonable person would say I need to do.
And I know what people say about the entire situation: 1. You should leave, now! But I am too weak still, and I cannot afford it; or 2. You should accept things as they are and not try to travel so much, you cannot afford it! I am convinced, however, that there is a middle path. And yet I keep trying to take such a one, and it is always when I am succeeding, or have been succeeding for several days in a row, that something happens to smash me like that tea set. This is why for many years I simply remained in a broken state, because to mend only in order to be broken again seemed so impractical. Each broken piece had its own tranquillity and sang its own song.
*
And I am afraid that it is all true, what I was told when I was little and what Reeducation said when I was grown up, that there is something terribly wrong with me that I cannot see, and I need to accept more accusations and agree to be pressed upon more closely, because I am disappointing and immoral and to let vultures eat my flesh is the least I can do to start making up to the world the pain I have caused it.
And I do not like writing these ideas down because they are false poisons I would like to dislodge from myself, not allow to lodge yet more deeply. Yet I am writing them down so I can look at them and see clearly their poor logic.
One of the problems of coming from an abusive background is that one fears extreme violence will ensue not just in retribution for assertiveness or disagreement but for being a person. This causes very great tension since one must, of course, be a person in order to function even minimally. Another problem is that one can easily be convinced that one’s assertiveness is a form of abuse. A third problem is not knowing what behavior should or should not be tolerable to a “normal” person. A fourth problem is having had abuse modeled too often and assertiveness, not often enough. A fifth, related problem is how mean one can be, oneself.
Some of the things I do not say because I think they are mean, people tell me are not mean at all. Other things I do say because I think they need to be said, people tell me are mean. Still other ways I find of saying things, because it seems that only these ways get my point across, feel abusive even to say. I do not know at all how to assess any of the statements or situations alluded to in this paragraph.
*
I thought my life’s work was something else. In fact, I know it is also something else. I used to think that if I could continue to have the luck to avoid toxic atmospheres and abusive situations, I would slowly heal on my own and also be able to concentrate on my life’s work. But many days, especially now, I suspect that my life’s major project is recovery from abuse. I do not know if this is accurate. It seems all too small: many people do that and something else as well.
Perhaps it is that they integrate the two projects, incorporate the one with the other. But it seems to me still that some form of respite from the daily onslaughts would be in order. I try and try to find this in the current venue, but I am often failing at it – more seriously than I see until events such as those of today reveal the extent to which my good humor is put on with very great effort. Perhaps with too much effort.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I don’t know — when I do a workout in the gym it is relatively depersonalised. You go into a zone where all you see are body parts. This seems to give me an adequate enough break from having to deal with people.
Oh, boy. I wish I could zap some kind of support at you.
(And a lot of this sounds so familiar to me, especially the part about having no idea what is ok and what is not. & it kind of helps to know that I’m not the only one, so I’m selfishly glad you posted it too.)
J – “Having to deal with people” – a good way of putting things in perspective. I should miss the gym less. It has to do with the driving and the parking. But I was there Tuesday and it was stellar. I think you’re right.
T – You’re zapping support just by commenting. And yes, partly I post these things in case they will be helpful to anyone else. “[E]specially the part about having no idea what is ok and what is not” – yes, this is the very hardest.
I understand the situation but I do not yet know what to do about it. I suspect but am not sure that it is one that cannot be resolved but must be avoided – I have the impression I am not strong enough to deal with it at this point. I’d like to be wrong on that but I fear I am right. That is what makes me sad about the whole thing.
Hi profacero,
I forgot where I got here from, but I understand what you’re saying about people who grew up with abuse having no knowledge of where to put boundaries.
I think how you handled the ceramics shop guy sounds perfectly fine. He is one of the sort of people who deliberately take advantage of politeness, so being nice or polite to him is not a reasonable goal.
Thank you, Helen! It’s hard for me to read because he *seems* so reasonable on the surface. I tend to think I am overreacting. But come to think of it – once he had his dog there, which shat in the middle of the floor, and I was walking with a loaded tray and didn’t see it, so I stepped in it, which made it stink, and he had to clean it up, and he acted as though the fact of his dog having shat in the middle of the floor were my fault.
It’s hard for me to read because he *seems* so reasonable on the surface.
Why are you concerned about how someone appears on the surface? You don’t need to justify your dislike of someone to anyone.
I think it pays to realise that the rational mind is one thing and the instincts are — and ought to be — something else entirely. Follows your instincts, but be prepared to let your instincts justify your decisions to your rational mind and not the other way around (unless you really feel that you are off-base in a particular instance.)
Well – I like the studio space, and I don’t dislike the guy, so I’d like to be able to work with or around him.
And I wonder if I’m off base but I think it is a conditioned reaction.
My instincts tell me I’m being pushed around, that’s for sure. But I am not handling it well and I am also not sure I am not transferring stuff from work onto this situation.
Yes, I understand.
Things become difficult when you start to believe in the social realities around you. I try not to.
I’m glad that you’re struggling to claim a space that de-stresses you, and that you haven’t lost faith in that space. What you’ve had to do sounds really brave and but scary.
I’ve also paid more money that I could afford on classes that I couldn’t attend regularly. I hear you on being too drained to deal with another set of personalities, or — in my case — everything things like traffic. I get too introverted, though, and, despite my reservations, doing things like going to yoga ultimately benefits me.
I’m really drawn to your descriptions of your ceramics work!
A good friend told me today that the journey I’m taking is not one toward simplicity. Things do seem to get more complicated.
There are so many things in there I would like to comment on! I will try to keep it short.
Well, first of all, thank you. Your elaborate description of your day is something I can relate to entirely.
Second, I would tend to agree with Jennifer: you do not need a reason to feel uncomfortable with someone, or to dislike them. As a matter of fact, I am convinced that these feelings are the “alarm” that warns you about something you would not — and are not — able to explain rationally.
Same thing for the transfer part: I suspect that it is the case for everyone. Whether you are transferring or not (from your work or your past), in my opinion, does not change this man’s actual behavior. You may be sensitive, but you are certainly not delusional.
I guess what I’m trying to say is… trust yourself. That tea set seemed highly symbolic, and your tears over it probably reflect the part of you that does know. (Sorry for sounding so didactic, here. It was not my intention: I speak from my experience, of course, and was trying to keep it short. Hrm.)
Kiita – thanks – “brave but scary,” this seems right. I think I’ve got ceramics potential, but I need to really put consistent work into it. This is the problem. I can take it at the university but classes usually conflict with classes I am teaching, and it also hangs me up at the university more. I’ve just gotten an idea – scour the area for amenable studio space. There are people in towns out in the country who may rent it. And the adventure of going to every gallery in the meantime will be fun. 🙂
Stupendous – thanks to you too – so the description of the day isn’t boring – good! And I think you’re right – these are alarm bells – and you’re right again – I may have “overreacted” but I wouldn’t have if there weren’t something there. Also I notice that since I tend to put up with too much, it takes an overreaction to get *my own* attention that something is wrong. And you’re right again: the tea set is highly symbolic.
I hadn’t thought of that – I thought it was just the most technically advanced thing I’d ever done (a tea set involves handles, spouts, lids that fit, cups that come out looking relatively uniform and truly fitting with the style of the pot, etc. – it’s a technical challenge) – but actually it symbolized me somehow. When I saw how the teapot looked – permanently disfigured – it had been beautiful and still was, but was permanently disfigured – I thought “Now they’ve hit me or burned me such that I have permanent, visible scars, they have really gone too far, DAMN them, I’ve got to kill them now.”
*
I have never wanted to kill anyone before. Usually what I want to do to people who irritate me as this man has is push them off the pier, into the bayou. That wouldn’t kill them – the water is slow and shallow and the alligators don’t really bite. But their legs would go flying, they would get all wet and muddy, they would be off my pier, and they would be all bemused to find that I actually have the dexterity to push them off, poof!
Then there are people I would be delighted to have executed or die in an accident. However since I do not believe in executions and don’t really wish mortal or other accidents to take place, I don’t mean it. I’d be just as happy if they got attractive job offers or something, and moved far away.
This guy, however, although I don’t *really* want to do it, I still relish the idea of doing in personally, so I can take revenge and then see with my own eyes he is really dead.
Whereby you can see what a primitive and primal reaction I am having. In real life I would prefer to have a nice, cordial working relationship in which he, however, does not needle me. But at a psychic level I want to beat his head in with a large metal object and I still take pleasure in the idea of doing it – although of course I will do no such thing.
I guess I get the idea of trying to claim a space, but may I say that this particular space is not a safe one for you? There are so many ways in which this person has shown a lack of respect for you, and your gut reactions to it are right on. You are trying to work around it, but why waste your precious energy? The idea of finding another studio space sounds great! Your creativity should never be stifled by someone else’s psychic mess. And I know that this is also the source of much pain in regards to your life’s work and the completely inadequate place in which you are trying to carry it out.
I’m sending warmest vibrations down the Mississippi to you.
Merci – yes – the thing that is hard to judge about that studio is that it is so much less destructive than, for instance, the university, and than many venues here. The entire culture is this way, so it becomes really hard to judge what one must put up with and/or can avoid. (I cannot stand Eastern U.S. culture and that includes both Yanquilandia and the Old Dominion.)
“And I am afraid that it is all true, what I was told when I was little and what Reeducation said when I was grown up, that there is something terribly wrong with me that I cannot see, and I need to accept more accusations and agree to be pressed upon more closely, because I am disappointing and immoral and to let vultures eat my flesh is the least I can do to start making up to the world the pain I have caused it.”
I’m late coming to this post. I understand this thought entirely as I have had it myself often, especially lately, but much less articulately than this. I truly think that coming to a conclusion like this one is a symptom of being a sentient person who expects to be treated as a person and not as an object. In my humble opinion, there are too few people who have such an expectation and who cannot grasp the concept. If you were one who went about causing the world pain, I doubt you would be thinking about how to make up for it. You would instead just go thoughtlessly on about your way, continuing to dole out abuse, much as those you describe here do.
Academia (in the limited way that I know it) is pretty abusive. I don’t think that I’m being hyperbolic or overly self-pitying to suggest that my self esteem has been crushed by it, more than once, for reasons that had nothing to do with teaching itself or scholarship. Then there’s the additional stress of not being able to afford the means of relaxation available to the upper-middle class and the resentment about that after having spent long, long years preparing for a career and longer years “lauching” that career. Then there is the omnipresence of people who will say all manner of abusive things and not understand that they are abusive. If I knew an owner of a ceramics studio, I would think that we knew the same person. But I guess it’s a phenomenon. I also know someone who will say abusive things and to whom I’ve said, “That’s abusive because of A, B, C, D, E, F, etc, and who has responded, “Oh, well I want to do better. Educate me.” This type of exchange is likely to inspire me, a pacifist and generally mild-mannered indivual, to fly into a blind rage.
So please don’t let the vultures eat your flesh! It’s not you! (I know that there is no recipe here, and I sure know that “just get out!” is not one of them.) Thanks for the post!
Thanks for commenting, A.F.! This:
“I truly think that coming to a conclusion like this one is a symptom of being a sentient person who expects to be treated as a person and not as an object.”
…is a view of the matter I keep forgetting is probably the truest. I tend to think that regular people expect to be treated as sentient beings and only I allow myself to be treated like an object – or that I am of the class which is supposed to be treated like objects, whereas others are not and have no problem being treated like sentient beings with the rights of sentient beings. But your point of view is much more revolutionary, and I like it. 🙂
Academia, I agree. Also on the “educate me” thing. I have been hearing that from dorky guys for nearly 20 years, since I first became a professor. At first I innocently thought, I see, people here are in the dark ages and need modernization. Only lately have I realized that the whole thing was just a technique for draining and weakening.
I have so been there.
A big part of the problem for me is that there is this expectation that if you’re in a bad situation, well, you must fix it; if you are being taken advantage of or treated poorly, you must push back; and then it will all be okay. Well, and good, except that the world treats some of us badly most of the time and it’s a lot of work to push back against that. It is worthwhile work when we can do it but sometimes we fail and sometimes we can’t summon up the energy — then we start to feel it is our fault — and it’s hard to remember in those times that actually, no, it is not our fault but the fault of those who are treating us badly.
I made a new year’s resolution 3 years ago to take up more space in the world and I am still working on it. I think it could be a lifelong project.
I made a new year’s resolution 3 years ago to take up more space in the world and I am still working on it. I think it could be a lifelong project.
I’ve learned to make it my principle never to expect a moderate level of decency — but to be glad when I find it. I’ve also made it my principle to always push back — but never to hold without a feeling of contempt a society that is barbaric enough to place this necessity upon its weaker members.
“…you must push back; and then it will all be okay.”
I need to guard against this. I don’t push back enough and I idolize even that. Thanks, human, and Jennifer!
I need to guard against this. I don’t push back enough and I idolize even that. Thanks, human, and Jennifer!
Actually, whereas pushing back is very necessary, because Western society has adopted a set of social darwinistic motifs, and whomever fails to beat their chest in unison is considered the inferior ape, a truly civilised society would operate on the principle of harmony or “wu”.
…or “wa”…. actuarry.
Yes but that is precisely what Western / modern society resists, punishes, and so on.
Yes but that is precisely what Western / modern society resists, punishes, and so on.
It is actually quite a strong part of Australian culture. You are expected to push back — man or woman — unless you are in a very conservative industry. I think it may go against American capitalist culture, which is more ideologically hierarchical. But what I’m saying is that it is far from delicious to be in the midst of a psychological rugby scrum — and to be expected to do this as a matter of course is energy wasting to the extreme.
in the extreme, I meant, hohum.
I have trouble waking up this morning. Waking up sux.
Ah, I meant that “wu” is punished.
Here I think one is also expected to push back, especially in the psychological rugby scrum that is culture to the east of the Mississippi, but academia is one of those very conservative industries.
I was 15 years old when I had a nuclear meltdown after years of abuse, a lot of it exactly as you describe in this post. Nothing to “shake a stick at” so much, and yet there. Like a cancer. I learned on that day that telling people to Fuck Off is sometimes the nicest thing you can do for not just yourself, but them as well. I now have a strict Fuck Off policy that I do not hesitate to enable. Ironically, I almost never have had to say Fuck Off as an adult because the very fact that I am willing to say it, means that others do not dare cross my boundaries.
Here I think one is also expected to push back, especially in the psychological rugby scrum that is culture to the east of the Mississippi, but academia is one of those very conservative industries.
The pushing back brutalises and removes the intellectual meanings or sense of human relationships from the equation. You do it if you must, but there is no point maintaining your respect for others in this kind of context. Better not to feel anything at all.
The kind of culture that necessitates a kind of pushing back but prohibits that action itself atrophies human relationships, and in its own way forms a culture of anti-intellectualism, because it prohibits the intellect from experimenting with its environment with the goal of making changes to it.
Lessons – yes. I had one such policy too, earlier on, but it got disabled somehow – I need it back! Thanks for reminding me…
J – Yes indeed – exactly – !!!
Hm. How did the fuck off policy get disabled?
“You are in another culture now, you must learn its ways.”
“You are more privileged than these people, you must show patience and tolerance.”
“You are in another culture now, you must learn its ways.”
“You are more privileged than these people, you must show patience and tolerance.”
These — but also: “Nobody is actually hurting me because otherwise I would feel physical wounds or blood pouring. Sticks and stones….”
I also lived in a foreign country and suffered for a year with ridiculous crap because the natives could tell that my lack of assurance about their local policies made me ripe for abuse. I finally asked myself, would an American tourist take this crap? (I am not American actually). The answer of course is that I would be a loud arrogant bull in a china shop. Which I promptly went back to doing. Actually I was quite polite until the moment I saw the ‘look’ in someone’s eyes, and then I went for the jugular. I discovered only 1 in 10 are genuinely able to be aggressive. Most are only passive aggressive. This is true almost anywhere.
Another tip: answer to the true subtext and not to the words. Makes anglophones very, very uncomfortable to have their language unmasked.
Pride, and telling people to fuck off, is expensive. But it’s cheaper than the internalizing wall of hatred of just ‘sucking it up’. Fuck off I say! Yay!
Actually I was quite polite until the moment I saw the ‘look’ in someone’s eyes, and then I went for the jugular.
I was quite polite, too, and terribly accommodating and willing to believe that “the communication error” was all on my part. The wool was pulled from my eyes when somebody said something which all of a sudden alerted me to the fact that people were must making excuses for things in a way that assured the status quo. In fact they were quite happy with the status quo, and all assertions about failure of communications or whotnot were just part of a sado-masochistic game in which each and sundry was generally enjoying his or her role.
That was when I went for the jugular.
One more thing:
“Some of the things I do not say because I think they are mean, people tell me are not mean at all. Other things I do say because I think they need to be said, people tell me are mean. Still other ways I find of saying things, because it seems that only these ways get my point across, feel abusive even to say. I do not know at all how to assess any of the statements or situations alluded to in this paragraph.”
This is true for all people. Everyone is a freak. Everyone takes offense at different things. So I have decided to be direct, and to be a bitch. It solves many more problems, and it is my natural state. Niceness is a trap built for women.
In fact few men would write anything like what any of us have written here. They would either punch the man in the head, or be gone. No ruminations. No man stays awake at night wondering if he is “nice” enough.
In fact few men would write anything like what any of us have written here. They would either punch the man in the head, or be gone. No ruminations. No man stays awake at night wondering if he is “nice” enough.
So much the worse for those men.
And as a postscript to my previous post, I will add that the monkey-ape who smashes others in the head and is gone has nothing at all in common with a professional boxer. As I am learning, a skilful boxing match is really like a prolonged two-way conversation, where all sorts of subtle signs are read and interpreted — and sometimes misinterpreted. You really do need to be able to ‘read’ your opponent and not just come on all hot headed.
Otherwise, you are just a monkey-ape.
Profacero: what a moving post–and readers: what intelligent comments. Coming to this page is like being ministered to.
“Everyone is a freak. Everyone takes offense at different things.”
This, I had not figured out. It’s *very* useful.
Being direct is always good; my problem is noticing abuse. As in, not wanting to go to the studio but not knowing why: it’s something I like, why do I not want to go?
I do like the boxing analogy but I’m really only interested in deploying that at work – not for recreation where I’d rather *relax* … !
Men worried about whether they’re being “nice” enough – you know, I think they do, but in the wrong way. They worry about how to mollify people they’ve pissed off, but not about how to stop pissing them off.
Everybody – reiterated thanks for all of these comments, which I am still digesting.
A last thought on this, from one of Carlos Castaneda’s books. I am not a fan of his but there is a passage that stuck with me over many years:
Don Juan [the bruho] says: “If warriors can hold their own in facing petty tyrants, they can certainly face the unknown with impunity, and then they can even stand the presence of the unknowable.
Nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable.”
Imagine that the final, unequivocal trials of the warrior are not the huge scenes of dramas! They are in fact the man at the ceramic studio!
Our mistakes are in thinking these situations are minor, and not major. Thus we shame ourselves when we find great difficulties in the situation. Don Juan’s concept has provided for me enormous utility in providing context.
Also: we do not have to make battles in every situation. We do not have to fight the principle of the matter. We do not always have to fight, fight, fight, even when we are correct. Sometimes walking away is not a defeat, but a victory, because it allows the conservation of energies for more important things. A warrior is not one who fights every battle that comes her way. She is the one who chooses carefully according to her needs and necessities. There will be more ceramic studios, and more of those men. There are times where I enter a place in order to do battle. And there are times when I wish to make pots. I refuse to interchange those situations. It sounds to me like you want to make pots.
That is a great comment and a great one to find at this moment.
I’ve just been down there because it was one of my scheduled times. I went down basically to let the teacher know what was up and make a plan to get finished the things I have in progress so that I can leave in an orderly manner.
The teacher got it and was incredibly sweet. She doesn’t want me to leave because she thinks I am generally valuable and she was trying to convince me that she could protect me from this stuff – but then realized I was right, she wouldn’t be able to, at least not yet, because she doesn’t have that kind of power in the studio.
Still it was a lovely conversation and plan. Of course the wife overheard us and had to come and interrupt and try to give me advice on how to get along better with her husband and I said I was not comfortable discussing it with her and she would not leave. So I lost it again, started jumping up and down and saying, “I am afraid of him, I am afraid of him, I know he is not safe for me, I do not like him, I am trying to get out of here, I am not being paid to be here so why are you trying to force me to stay and to deal, for $100 / hr. on my schedule I will consider giving him manners lessons, maybe, maybe, but that is not what I am here for, please let me just leave, let me leave!”
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It amazes me how much of a huge defensive fit I still have to throw in order to protect myself from being talked into “negotiating” with situations I want to just walk away from.
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Warrior against petty tyrants: well yes, I am doing this with my department chair and there it is actually important to do the battle, in the way Don Juan says and for those reasons. In the case of the ceramic studio, I just want to make pots.
So – thanks again for this comment.
I think anyone would throw such a fit when faced with such ridiculousness. My only advice is to learn to laugh at these people. People who are so out of reality can’t handle being laughed at or made fun of, even goodnaturedly. My project has been to reprogram myself in this way. First I was defensive, later I was confrontational and aggressive. I was good at it but it was still too energetic and left a bad taste in my mouth. To poke fun, that is easier and more satisfying, but more challenging. It is challenging to not take something seriously. I can only do this on good days.
Once I was an academic and now I run a small business. Customers are like little rabbits or little mice. They are for the most part timid and must be carefully coaxed out of the bushes. Once they will take a little bit of food from you, they will keep coming back to the familiar against all odds, if you treat them well. It has a mystical aspect to it, this coaxing and feeding and making money from selling things that people ‘need’ for their own strange reasons. So I can say in any case that this ceramic studio will not last long in their arrogance. You cannot be the only person alienated there. The idea that they are entitled to customers, that their customers should cater to them, that they are best at everything even when they crack your pots, it’s the path to certain failure. The wife of course must teach you to tolerate her husband because otherwise she would have to see that he is in fact intolerable and that worse yet, he will sink their business. Which he clearly will. And then they will tell themselves during bankrupcy that their customers are such terrible people.
Anyone would throw a fit, oh good: I think a therapist would say that once I got “better” I’d be able to stay calm and collected, but the fact is that most of the time and in most situations, I am. Laughing, good point. I’m confident enough to do this in most professional situations, but not in personal ones, this is my problem. I am very easily cowed and the only way to pull out of that, when it happens, is to be very aggressive, which takes a great deal of energy, as you say. Two people who are great at the laughing thing: my first ceramics teacher and my hairdresser. I’ve known both for many years and they are both people who have to deal with customers and their neuroses. They are *so* good at recognizing the sticky / the ridiculous and just laughing.
The studio: I am not the only person alienated, but the majority are not, and there are historical reasons for this – namely that most, including the owners, were students together at another commercial studio which closed. So they are all on the same page, and handle each others’ neuroses somehow, whereas I’ve always worked where the people in charge are real experts and I know what real experts do … and know what firing at the wrong temperature causes, and that that is not caused by anything else and is the ‘fault’ of the person loading the kiln and firing.
The teacher says that eventually the ‘community’ of teachers and students will take over and the owners won’t be around as much … and that then, the studio will prosper. I hope so for everyone’s sake, but I think I should work elsewhere.
Reiterated thanks for commenting.
P.S. Having an exit plan from that studio feels sooo good. Because I so like the teachers, students, and location I’ve been seeing it as a positive thing in my life and some days it has been, but there’s this huge drag factor and I hadn’t realized it until right now, knowing the exit strategy has been formulated. Whew.
And also: I keep thinking, if I were more perfect and so on, less vulnerable, then I would have been able to manage this situation. It is as stressful as it is because I am having similar problems at work and in my family.
I have to keep reminding myself that just because I truly cannot handle it now, does not mean I should be able to handle it. For example, at work I have had the same essential problem for ten years and was formerly “strong enough” to just put up with it. Does that mean I should have … or would it not have been better to recognize that it was indeed intolerable and to have done something about it at that point?
The perfectionism thing is a real trap. We’re all a long way from perfect. Actually the perfectionism thing is a trap because it forms part of a Platonic equation which is false. It goes something like the Perfect is the Good is the Masterful. But if you have to be perfect to be masterful then you never will be. So that equation makes us all into sinners who are destined to fail.
I like better the equation that to be masterful is to be able to deal with the imperfections of life in a way that respects life as essentially and perpetually imperfect, but which somehow elevates the state of things’ imperfection towards being something more, through one’s way of respecting things for what they are.
This is a different way of looking at things. You move in when the tide retreats and withdraw when the tide comes rushing in, and there is no shame in that. Such responsiveness is wisdom itself, and imparts an elevated status to the situation you are in.
But it is hard to undo the Platonic knot, once it becomes associated with emotional reflexes in your mind — and for many this might take a lifetime of unlearning.
That is a very good post from Jennifer.
Also I would say that ‘perfectionism’, ‘woulda/coulda/shoulda’, are types of self-abuse. And the abused have been taught to ruminate and internalize everything. Too much thinking about what *you* are supposed to be doing. What about these other people who are not supposed to be abusing you in the first place? And too much taking everything seriously. Can you find the funny side of all of this? That is the ‘sweet spot’. Find the comedy and then take your pots and never go back.
“The studio: I am not the only person alienated, but the majority are not, and there are historical reasons for this..” I am going to take a guess here and say, without knowing you at all, that you are incorrect. There are probably many others alienated, including within this core group. But people put up with crap until it becomes too inconvenient. And they probably all think that they are the only one taking it too hard. All it means is that they are still on ‘this’ side of the fence whereas you have passed to ‘that’ side of the fence.
Lessons – yes, you’re right – now I’m talking only about your last paragraph. I understand it in relation to my academic departments (there are two). Both are fighting and both have two camps. One accepts that I am not in the fight and only have in mind getting work done. That means they don’t give me s*** about the tie-breaking role I fall into: they in fact appreciate that the one who ends up mediating between the two camps has the actual work in mind, not something else. In the other, I don’t actually agree with either side but had originally, passively, sided with the majority against utter outrageousness. Now I cannot tolerate the majority, either, they are locked into the battle not the work, and I see what the minority point of view is and why they hold it, although I do not agree with all of it, its motivations for action, or its methods. In this situation I’m sure I’ve *exactly* passed beyond the fences, in the way you suggest. I’m also sure others will – I’m only the first – or that others already have and I’m just not aware of that yet.
On your first paragraph, you’re also exactly right, and I’ll keep this in mind: it describes, precisely, the harassment I’m getting at work, in that department, about having passed beyond the fences. In that situation I completely see the comedy and while it’s tense right now I am ultimately not worried because I see the comedy so well. That’s what enables me to stay (now) unruffled and deal in a businesslike manner.
I have had trouble, though, applying all this to the ceramics studio since it’s not my turf or area of expertise, whereas my departments are, and I’m a tenured person with some (small, but real) rights.
This ceramics situation is really symbolic of something at a deep level, gets at me at a primal level because of being trapped by a *couple* in between visions of what something should be and what it is.
Jennifer, yes, excellent. Again it is something I seem to be able to do as regards politics in my own offices but less well in the rest of life – except of course in hurricanes and earthquakes, where I’m an adept in the kind of responsiveness you suggest. Perhaps I could remember to emulate my most competent self. No, I take that back – one cannot be equally competent in all situations.
How strange – I really feel as though I’ve been through something in the past three days – and not something piddling but something real. You’ve all been incredibly helpful. Thank you. I’ve got one more piece to glaze, which I’ll do on the watch of one safe teacher, and then pick it all up, under the watch of another, and then that’ll be it.
That is wonderful if you can come away from this now as an interesting event and not a defeat. I feel much sympathy because I have lived this too many times to count. Each time I learn something about the next time, and my strategies are evolving. There is one thing I can say: this is the test for all human beings, and not just for the abused, past or present. It is hard, very hard, for us all to deal with each other on this earth. With the comedy comes also the tragedy… the sadness of the eternal turf wars, of the ceramic man who is maybe a bit intimidated by this strange female creature, of these people who mistake ‘making peace’ for dangerous compromises instead of helpful ones.
Even the Buddha once walked away, finally, from a monastery where the politics were too entrenched and the monks did nothing but fight. He shook his head and spent his summer alone in the forest before he departed.
I will make another guess now, if I may. The difference in your ‘professional’ and your ‘personal’ lives is probably similar to mine. Which is to say, when you go to work you gird for battle. But when you go to the ceramic studio, you do not. You do not because the ceramic studio is what you to do to “protect your sanity” and you have entered it as a refuge and not as the battlefield. Then when you find yourself in battle you are confused and upset. And yet you will not gird yourself for battle to enter the studio, because that is not the point of why you go there. And yet it’s what you find. You did not want to gird because that would mean you were not giving it the benefit of doubt as a refuge. That is the dichotomy you have been avoiding.
The truth is that battlefields and ceramic studios are where they exist, not where we assign them. You have incorrectly assigned certain places or situations and thus they catch you unaware, and you are startled.
I wish you now every success in the location of your true ceramic studio. I hope you will update us.
“A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it; and then he looks and rejoices and laughs; and then he sees and knows. He knows that his life will be over altogether too soon; he knows that he, as well as everybody else, is not going anywhere; he knows, because he sees , that nothing is more important than anything else. In other words, a man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but only life to be lived, and under these circumstances his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly.”
Excellent quotation and yes, c’est tout vrai.
Interestingly – while for me it’s a big symbolic event because it involves getting enmeshed involuntarily with this couple, originally in defense of a sort of sibling figure, the first teacher – for the studio, at a completely other level, it’s just that they’re only now getting it together and the guy is, as you say, bemused by me.
And/or – it really is more screwed up than that – in which case I held the trump card they weren’t planning on: the teacher who saved me today, I’ve known and worked with much longer than they have.
And probably it is just a little bit of all of the above, and I wasn’t going there for *work* or *battle* but for relief.