I might just as well change the title of this weekly offering to “Control. What’s that?” It’s not lost on me that the topic is really the thread-theme that has spun through pretty much every entry I’ve written in the history of these weekly missives. Even the music memories are laced with the acknowledgment that at some point I’m either losing or never had control whether of the situation, the person, or even my own self. The actual title of this blog: Does This Make Me? started with something fairly specific. In June of 2019, I had the idea to wrap my writing around fashion. How I wanted to explore what it meant to be responsibly stylish, Style being something I’ve always loved, and the planet being a place I’ve also enjoyed. The reality of the latter coming the fuk apart while the former plays an outsized role in that demise motivated me to put my thoughts down. Exploring sites like GoodOnYou made it clear how conjoined style and environment are. And being a girl who, since high school, hasn’t been able to go past a thrift store without the pull of possibilities sucking me inside, I thought this would be a good fit for some writing. I did that for about a half-dozen posts, then in January 2020, Dennis and I packed up our NYC lives, got into our truck, and crossed the country to California where the Jumpsuits Across America posts subtly, then altogether, changed my focus. There was no lightbulb moment, I just let my attention shift.

More and more I realize how that kind of shift into a certain surrender can be like water running through my hand. Usually refreshing and sometimes frustrating. I see it. I feel it. Can even taste it and hear it, but I can’t hold it, control it, make it stay put unless I use a big bucket. Eventually, though, the stuff will evaporate.

More than not in the last week-ish, I’ve come to realize the futility of trying to even find a bucket. If I step back from the situation, take a breath and a longer view, I can usually find something to settle me down and stop trying to grasp at that shimmery thing representing control. I mean, sure, there are certain things I could do differently to bring about another outcome (I’m looking at you, palm plant in the back that I’ve neglected and probably killed) but when it comes to most sentient beings, my experience lately is around finding sanity through accepting there’s only so much to be done.

Take Desi, our boy cat, for instance. He’s going a bit mental lately. You might notice it from the look in his eye in the photo above. At any minute of every day you may find him on his hind legs scratching at every shiny surface on the wall—mirrors, photos, just generally hanging stuff. Apparently, he’s decided that if he can just get through this magic portal he’ll find some sort of kitty paradise on the other side where food is always and forever available. Because he is apparently STARVING. ALWAYS. and WHY DON’T YOU FEED ME. ALWAYS telegraphs the look in his eye. It’s not like he and I can talk about it. Perhaps he’s just going through his terrible twenty-one-month-old time, although as I remember owning previous cats, they are mostly insatiable for food always even though at some point they just find a favorite comfy spot on the couch or whatever and settle in, resigned. So I watch him. I use the handy spritzer bottle in order for him to know that unsettling things on the wall is no bueno. (Current situation: he’s managed to pull all the push-pins out of the wall, unseating the postcards that used to hang there while the girl cat, Lucille, attempts to dismantle the bottom of a chair in the living room.) Because I don’t want to always be running around the apartment shrieking NO, while squeezing the water bottle in some sort of trigger-finger madness, I wonder if this will ever change. I breathe. I spritz, and am now shrugging.

We could put them to work at my dad’s place where a mouse (a family of them?) has taken up residence and decided that avocados and bananas when left in a bowl on his counter are wonderful to gnaw on. OK, so this is a situation where some control can be levied. We put a plug-in sonic mouse repellent thingy in his kitchen directly over where the fruit bowl lives (we also put the bowl of fruit into the frig). He left out one banana just to see if the thingy in the wall worked. It didn’t. I imagine the mouse (&family?) did some version of shrug as they approached, then nibbled, on the banana. We will now explore steel wool to plug holes and possibly an exterminator. So, yes, there’s some control over that situation. But when it comes to other things in his life: renewing his driver’s license at the end of this month(!!!!), eating dinner (!!!!), over those things I have very little control beyond the sound of my own words delivered to him in conversation sometimes sternly, often jocularly. They may stick, possibly sway, but in the end, he’ll make the ultimate decision around all that: to drive or not to drive (actually the DMV may make the ultimate decision), to eat or not to eat. A cookie? A vegetable? I’m much better at accepting these outcomes than I used to be, say back in the olden days of August. I do still constantly come up with hacks and possible solutions to take care of any possible problems that may come up, but mostly they fall flat given the situation rarely unfolds the way I think it will.

And then there’s control over my own carcass, the still-living-ness of it. The thing I walk around and use every day. I currently have an unwanted mystery blemish hanging out on the end of my nose. It’s ugly and annoying and yes, luckily I have control over going to the derm and having them check it out, remove it, whatever. But I had no control over it appearing there in the first place one week after my regular derm appointment because of course. Sigh. And so it will go. With my nose and every other part of me outside and in. I’m lucky to be in a relationship where I’ve learned to say out loud the parts I used to keep quiet: namely moments that make me unhappy or uncomfortable between he and I. By taking control of my own voice, now we talk about these things. And while, no, I can’t control him or how he feels about this, that, or the other, I can get closer to understanding how his actions make me feel while he listens and more than not understands or at the very least discusses how we can be better. I also try to do that for him.

So while the dictionary definition of control can appear pretty clear cut, the action of it for me is that ever-shifting sand that leads into the ocean. I see the wave, can choose to ride it, fall into it, go through it. I know I’ll never control it. That oher C-word: chaos. Or perhaps compassion. Maybe just choosing.