First Kiss and Six Degrees of Separation

Hi, Boomers,

Alas, I have some free time. My year old grandson is asleep with his morning nap and everyone in my family is out. The two older grandsons are in ski school and their parents, my son and daughter in law are picking up my ex-husband a lady friend up from the airport. I'm in Park City on a family week's vacation and it is so beautiful that I can't take my eyes off the snow coming steadily down every minute of the day and night. We are packed in and it is completely serene.

The other day I received a note on my Facebook page from a boy who gave me my first kiss in the back row of the Rafael theater in San Rafael. I was astounded and, well, so downright astounded that I coudn't move for several minutes. He was my first love in fifth grade, and he, a much older boy in the sixth grade, was my sexual experience. The First Kiss. I will never forget. And I remember vividly this first crush because I really liked him for a very long time. I'm that kind of girl: hard to let go of really like or love because people get close to my heart, inside my heart and I'm way too sensitive to that condition. This note from my first crush - a good kisser as I recall because I remember good kissers - gave me pause in so many ways.

It has taken me awhile to get use to this social networking gig. For so long, I resisted. In time, I just discovered that if I surrendered and accepted what is instead of fighting what I want it to be that I would be okay, it would be all right in my brain and I could cope. As a result of my released anxiety and rigidity, I've reconnected with a good portion of my high school graduating class and renewed friendships and even engaged in making really good friends with those people I didn't even know very well in high school. When I had my reading and signing of my book, Sixty, Sex, & Tango, Confessions of a Beatnik Boomer, at Barnes and Noble in November in Corte Madera, CA, I was astounded at the warmth and comfort of seeing some my old classmates who live in the area, and some even came from the east coast. I was elated and excited and I still carry that joy with me. And it was all a result of social networking. Who knew?

My first kiss reminded me that we are all separated by only six degrees. We know people who know people who know people and then we all know the same people in a few strokes. My fifth grade boyfriend was talking to some friends at his high school reunion in October of this year, and they were talking about "what ever happened to...." and my name came up. The two guys he was talking to knew me well in school - one from grammar school at St. Raphael's and the other from our high school, Marin Catholic High School in Kentfield. One was on the cheerleading squad with me and I adored him. He married his high school sweetheart whom I adored, too. Kind of reminded me of three guys in a locker room talking about the girls in school and how they discover who "puts out" and who doesn't. But thankfully they weren't talking about my first kiss but where I was and how I could be contacted on Facebook. So my first boyfriend contacted me. Turned out to be a smart guy and a blogger, too.

I also found an old favorite friend on Linkedin yesterday. I thought she still lived in Idaho and found out she is back in LA and I'm thrilled - we are joyous to have each other back in our lives. These connections have happened so often since this social networking paradigm has exploded that I am still in a state of wonderment.

In the beginning, I hated text messaging. I write in my book about my loathing of the construct of texting instead of actually hearing another voice on the phone (which I still prefer). It upset me to think that social interaction had taken such a wrong turn. But my private yoga clients kept texting me and it drove me crazy and in defense I had to text them back because I know they were too busy to talk to me on the phone to discuss changes in their schedules. I was finally convinced that I had to be involved in the texting connection. All my young and beautiful yoga clients were thrilled.

In our modern society it is difficult to have straight, honest social interaction. In my life, the only way left to me is by dancing Argentine tango. Through tango, one socializes and rediscovers a meeting point with people that can rarely be found in modern society: the embrace of two people, the shared wordless conversation with pauses and physical embellishments, the thrill of the music recognized by a man and a woman. Texting pales besides this kind of human connection. Tango has staying power because its conventions and traditions remain constant and comforting. I will never succumb to dancing apart to house music. It's the sterile cuckoo.

Today, there is an outright race to see who can reinvent the reinvention of the social networking media. I'm not going to be an old fogey about this state of affairs. Hey, I'm even one to download movies on my computer for entertainment because I'm too lazy or cheap or more than likely don't have a date to go the movies and experience the film in its glorious color and technology and immediacy of performance. I can take the easy way out, too, but it's not such an amazing experience without the full monty.

So we need to make accommodations to our social interaction. It's so much fun to hear from my first kiss, my first boyfriend, and so much joy to hear from my travel friend who is taking an amazing trip to Patagonia, and so happy to receive word from my oldest best friend since childhood that she is gathering her spirits after the death of her beloved husband and creating new traditions for the holidays. What could be better at this stage of my life to take up the slack of social interaction when everyone lives so far apart? I am blessed by the the instrument of the computer, the electronic age, and the genius brains of all those pioneers who take us to another level of communication.

The best thing about all this is that no one, absolutely no one, can take away from us the face to face, body to body embrace.

Namaste

Joan

Going Along with the Zeitgiest

Hi, Boomers,

Question: Is going along with the zeitgeist always the right thing to do?

I'm conflicted. Today I got a twitter account and I feel sick inside. Ready to vomit up every bit of social networking I have done in the last year. First, I swore I would never text message (see my book, Sixty, Sex, & Tango, Confessions of a Beatnik Boomer and my new website which will be up in a few days). I've been text messaging like an addict for a month. And then I vowed you would never catch me twittering. And I'm twittering. I can't believe my wonderful, delightful friend and website designer opened an account for me today faster than I could say, "No, never, not me, don't do it! I don't want to go along with the crowd! Leave me alone!"

I wrote my first twitter to Chesley and I learned some of those signs. Hash. What's that word all about? Now I have to go to T-Mobile and open something called a twitter account so I can twitter on my phone. "Twitter once a day," Chesley said to me as he was putting the finishing touches on my website. "Remember, this is the way you are going to market your book." Twitter one a day. Right. Meanwhilem I'm trying to find time to blog twice a week. Who has all this time? I have a day job.

"If you want to sell a book, you've got to twitter. That's the social networking zeitgeist," I said to my friend John at our Saturday sushi dinner before our milonga.

He looked at me blankly. "Zeitgeist?" he sheepishly asked. "You know darling, I didn't go to Berkeley in the 60s so I never learned that word."

"Didn't you ever watch Woody Allen's old movies, back in the 70s and part of the 80s when he was really a relevant film maker? "

"No, darling, do tell," he prodded me with a smirk. "You must know all this stuff because you went to...."

I cut him off. "Don't be smarmy, darling. It's really simple. When Woody made "Manhattan" or "Hannah and her Sisters" or "Annie Hall," he was humorously reflecting back to his audience a moment in our culture when our emotional and psychological relationship were paralyzed by anxiety. We were a country full of angst ridden people who were never truly honest about relationships. His characters tried to hide from each while they were trying to have relationships and everything got irrational, and, of course, it was funny. But we were really laughing at ourselves. And we all ran to therapy to solve our problems. Woody's characters and their situations held up a mirror to that particuar time in which we lived."

"Isn't that what we do all the time?" he smartly asked.

"Yeah. But today we lie more than we used to. At least Allen's characters were trying to be honest."

"But you know Woody Allen is really not a very good film maker today. He's not what he used to be. That "Vickie, Christina, Barcelona" story was really, really insipid and self-indulgment."

"Well, I guess if you keep pounding the zeitgeist to death, you get smello-drama," I said. "Like social networking is getting to today. Too much of anything flattens out the living experience."

And then I saw "60 minutes" tonight. Zuckerman, the founder of Facebook was talking about combining email and messaging and some other relating concept into a giant pimple that was to be inserted into people's brains and we would all become social networking godzillas. Believe me, this 26 year old dude will find a way to consume Google and Yahoo and every other information portal until finally our world will truly be flat.

This whole social networking concept turns human brain matter to mush. Everyone begins to mutter the same banalities. Thinking is reduced to one liners and log lines and trivial pursuits. Chesley told me that when I twittered, I was to be brief. No more than three lines. Even Arianna Huffington from the Huffington Post twitters. I saw her one line today. OMG! She is someone I thought had some form of higher intelligence. Even Arianna has succumbed to a social marketing pressure.

And sadly, so have I. I hope I won't go to hell for this.

Namaste

Joan

Digital Drag

Hi, Boomers,

Yes, we're boomers and we are living in the digital/computer age. Aren't we lucky.

Just this morning I was listening to my fav, Howard Stern, (don't condemn me to life imprisonment without possibility of parole) rant about living in this age of technology and, oh, yes, war. Let's not forget the a little over nine years of war initially in Iraq and now in full bloom in Afghanistan. News flash: the war in the Middle East has now surpassed the Vietnam War in length. Remember that war? Every night on the 6 o'clock news Eric Sevaried or Huntely an Brinkley brought us up close and personal a brutal war that played out in our kitchens while we ate dinner, or in our living rooms while we drank our nightly martini, or in our bedrooms as we dozed through the 11 o'clock news hour with our plastic local TV newscaster.

Stern remarked about what a bummer it is to live in this time. It's full of catastrophes and deaths (June has been the most brutal month for US casualties and 2010 has been a year in which will are expected to lose more American lives than in any other year of this protracted conflict - WAR!!!!!!). He bemoaned the BP spill, the corporate corruption of our government - a government bought and paid for by oil companies, and the US Chamber of Commerce, and Wall Street institutions and on and on and on until we have only limp-dicked puppets in Congress. To reflect how impotent our government has become is completely oxymoronic: it can't pass bills on any scale; party politics is moribund; the scale of childhood poverty is now registering about one fifth of our population; and we rank dead last in medical care out of all the western European countries. So much for our health care bill and what was wrong with universal heath care, I might ask? People are losing their homes or walking away from their homes because they owe more than the property is worth. It's more difficult to get a mortgage than it has ever been because the banks like to keep their cash in their safety deposit accounts or under their matresses until they see their way clear to process a loan or two. What's wrong with now, buddy? Wall Street is back in full stride making money with no apparent product to sell with no apparent ethics in place. I still don't know what a hedge fun it, by the way. Still no regulation. Still no coherent foreign policy. Russia is mad at us. China is tolerating us. Iran gives us the finger everything they think about us. The Afghan government thinks they are better off without the presence of the US. Hello, Taliban, good-bye freedom. Welcome Al Qaeda, let's kill whatever population is left of Afghanistan.

And does anybody in government ever read history? No country - no country - has every conquered Afghanistan. Not in the past, not in the present will it happen and not in the future will it occur. Why the British joined us in this fiasco is beyond me. They had already been their in the 19th century and lost! What about Russia? They were their for ten years (matching our time there next July when we are supposed to pull out) and they limped home with their tail between their legs after losing so many men that had no army left.

But, hey, wait!! We live in the internet age. That makes it all better. We've got Goggle controlling all communication, all print, all entertainment. They own You Tube. They own all content - well, mostly all content. We can know what is happening before it is happening in this electronic age. We don't need print news anymore because the internet sends it out before we can read it in the morning's newspaper. Poor Rolling Stone this week. They preceded themselves on the internet with their McCrystal story. Oh, sorry, you don't get the newspaper anymore. What's the point? Every paper or magazine can be read online.

On Tuesday someone hacked into subscriber's the email lists and sent out a link to a Canadian Pharmacy advertising, what else? Viagra. I was one of those people hacked even thought I don't use AOL anymore because it sucks, and my list included fellow yogis, old friends, and my ex-husband. He was the first to respond on Wednesday morning in an email. "What's this you sent me? I think this is meant for someone else." Unfortunately, he failed to see the humor in the situation. One of my friends took me off his email list. How dare I send him this spam. He emailed me back telling he me gets this stuff sent to him all the time. So much for digital drag. P.S. AOL never owned up to the incident. Not their problem, I guess.

While not bemoaning the internet age, while not trying not to look hip and with it, Howard Stern longed for the past - when things were simpler, when life was more carefree, when around every corner we didn't see the homeless, the dispossessed, the hungry faces of children on every blighted block in our urban sprawl. We used to have a middle class, buddy!

What Stern said was: we used to know things that were true in our society and expect things to be a certain way, and now they are not. Do we know the truth anymore? The truth is manifests itself according to the gospel of the media: Fox, MSMBC, CNN.

Is that good or bad? Is that right or wrong? Institutions used to function and move an agenda that benefited both rich and poor. A blue chip stock actually had real value. We bought a home and lived in it for life. We settled in our communities and had responsibilities that we fulfilled. We went to school, graduated from high school, maybe went on to higher education, but if not, we got a job in industry and became a productive member of society. And then we retired at sixty-five and then we lived about twenty more years and then we died after having lived a good life. Everything had a place and everyone knew how to live in that place.

But that was the pre civil rights era when economic disparity, black segregation, and society's outcasts hid behind closed curtains. People of color were out there somewhere in America and that they didn't have have equal rights or equal school didn't really matter. No one saw them up close and personal. That wasn't good. Women couldn't climb a house ladder let alone a corporate ladder an get reduced pay for just about everything. The glass ceiling wasn't good, either. And we still had lobbyists in Washington. Remember: "What's good for GM is good for the country." We'll always have lobbyists. Our government was set up that way. It's called "peddling influence" and it's our way of life.

Then we boomers came into the picture and we changed all that. Voting rights and equal rights was our mantra and we went to war, too, and we fought honorably but for a cause that was called "the Domino theory" instead of "weapons of mass destruction." We were told the Reds were out to get us and we believed it without bothering to examine the evidence or analyze the enemy, and we didn't win and we brought our boomers home and everyone else turned their heads in another direction and said, "Not my war; not my commitment; not my emotional or psychological problems; not my lost limbs." We were too busy making money and getting fat on the easy life and buying things that amounted to nothing. Can you really take a Jaguar to bed? Can you cuddle a sailboat? We were getting addicted to oil and cars and not paying attention to making our country a better place to live and helping others less fortunate.

And did the boomers give back to their country? Did they make America a better place to live, to work, to die? You can answer that question if you like.

So what was special about the old days? Maybe after WWII, when we fought the good fight against National Socialism, when we brought our troops home and honored them, and sent them to college or had jobs waiting for them in industry. That was a pretty picture. That was before the digital drag, before greed is good, before September 2001, before our leaders in the first decade of the 21th century failed to do an honorable job for America. That was before America drowned in the oil sludge of the Gulf along with the fishing industry and its hard working fisherman, along with the dead wildlife and an sluggish economy and the arrogance of BP.

Living life is never simple, never clear, never certain, never on a level playing field.

Our founding Fathers slugged it out in 1775 and 1776 and 1777 (remember those Articles of Confederation added later to our cherished Constitution?) and we will continue to slug it out in America, in the digital drag, which makes us look smarter and more hip and with it and lots more human. After all, we can social discourse whenever we want on Facebook. And we can Twitter until hell freezes over.

I'm coming up for air now.

Namaste

Joan