Table of Contents
ALSO BY ANNELI RUFUS
Party of One: The Loners Manifesto
The Farewell Chronicles: How We Really Respond to Death
Magnificent Corpses: Searching Through Europe for St. Peters Head,
St. Chiaras Heart, St. Stephens Hand, and Other Saints Relics
The World Holiday Book: Celebrations for Every Day of the Year
California Babylon: A Guide to Sites of Scandal, Mayhem, and Celluloid
in the Golden State (coauthored with Kristan Lawson)
Weird Europe: A Guide to Bizarre, Macabre, and Just Plain Weird Sights
(coauthored with Kristan Lawson)
America Off the Wall: The West Coast: A Guide to Unusual Sights
(coauthored with Kristan Lawson)
Europe Off the Wall: A Guide to Unusual Sights
(coauthored with Kristan Lawson)
INTRODUCTION
Were going nowhere fast.
Im stuck.
We say it in despair. In desperation. In denial. It becomes a punch line, an excuse. Well, hey: Im stuck.
We say it when we cant move on. Or wont. Or simply dont. We say it while immobilized, body and mind. We say it, too, when we are moving very fast indeed: in circles or running in place.
We say it about our jobs and relationships, our families and our habits and our homes. We say it when we cannot drive certain regrets out of our heads, certain desires, people, places, things, ideas, choices made that we cannot unmake. Or believe we cannot.
We call our stuckness by a thousand words, exquisite metaphors. Im frozen. Paralyzed. Marooned. Trapped. Enchanted. Enslaved. We say: The worlds passing me by. We say: Oops, I did it again.
Or: I cant get started.
Im missing out.
Im faking it.
Im sick.
In lands of plenty, in the lap of luxury, in the fast lane, were stuck doingover and overthings we do not want to do. Stuck in places we do not want to be. Stuck with people we do not want to see. Stuck with stuff. Stuck without enough. What irony. You and I will almost surely never be sold into slavery. Those days are gone. We will not become indentured servants, will not be shanghaied and dragged off to sea, locked in the hold, hands chained to oars. We were not betrothed at age ten. Thats stuck.
In all of history, no population anywhere has ever been so free as we.
And yetsomehow we all feel stuck.
We say so sadly. Angrily. Resentfully. Regretfully. In shame. Its so embarrassing to be exactly where you were before. To have to say so when folks ask: So are you still... ?
We fling it at others, a taunt, an accusation, saying: Know what you are? Stuck!
I am. Our lands of plenty yield as many ways to be stuck as there are of us, but here is mine:
Im immature. I am a child inside. Oh, go ahead and say Im not. Note that I am a forty-plus wife and homeowner with two university degrees and a career. All true, yet inside I feel seriously, absolutely, twelve. I am fearful, simple, and watchful, living in my frosted-cupcake world within a world. I mimic adults my actual age, aping their tones and smiles as if I understood what they mean when they speak, but I do not.
My real childhood blazed with bright sunlight, a gleaming sea. Bright picture books and striped beach towels and costumed carnivals at school. And how was I to know in seventh grade that, long hair flying, lapels flapping, I would more or less stop growing then? For no reason I have ever discerned? That every day henceforth would require playing dress-up, playing keep-away, playing tea party and house and pretend, for real? My life depends on this. Passing for normal.
Faking it.
Im stuck.
Could I grow up? A bit, perhaps. Through some hardship, say civil war or drifting on a raft after a shipwreck, spearing seagulls with a straightened hanger.
See?
More on this later.
But I have learned to adapt as a survival tactic. As have you, perhaps.
Who else is stuck?
My friend who spends six hours a day at eBay.
My other friend who is sleeping with a married man.
My friend who keeps moving from town to town, endlessly starting over.
My relative who always arrives late.
My other relative who spends too much.
Sam, who can no longer fit into the drivers seat of his candy-wrapper-strewn Honda.
Jake, who procrastinates.
Paul, who still feels the shock wave from the grenade every time he closes his eyes.
Caroline, who has been in grad school, off and on, for thirty years.
Kathy, with track marks down her arm.
Alex, who hands out conspiracy-theory flyers on the street corner.
Teresa, who makes plans and always cancels them.
Dale, with his drawerful of maxed-out credit cards.
Morgan, who looks sheepish and lights another cigarette.
If in these pages I appear ungentle, forgive me. I am my own worst critichard on myself, hard on you. For our own good.
I see stuck people.
Like all living things, Homo sapiens are creatures of habit. The more we think or do anything, the easier it becomes with time. After a while, its second nature and we operate on autopilot. Which is not, for much of our our daily routine, in principle, so bad: we would waste time and energy having to assess every task anew. Practice makes perfect. Then it tips us into ruts.
Yet at what point does comfort become a drug?
We get stuck of our own volition. We do it to ourselves, though we are unwilling to admit this. Others do it to us, too. They snare us, stultify us, sneakily spread superglue under our shoes. Some do it out of love. Yet strangers do it, too. Powerful forces out therecommercial, social, politicalwant us extremely stuck indeed. The more immobilized we are, running in circles with one foot roped to a post, the more they stand to gain. The more immobilized we are, the more predictable we are, the more controlled. Easy to trick. Easy to trap. They have invested fortunes in researching how to get us stuck and keep us stuck on their products, their policies, and their philosophies.
Bet you cant eat just one.
No two stucknesses are quite alike, and yet...
The reasons we stay stuck are quite the same.
Three reasons, mainly, which will surface time and again in these pages. Pick a stuckness, almost any stuckness, and its reason will be one or more of these:
We stay stuck because we are lazy.
And/or because we are scared.
And/or because we have no idea who we are and do not want to know. When push comes to shove, we are stuck on ourselves.
If that sounds harsh, it should. But you can flip it if that makes you feel better:
Getting unstuck, becoming free, requires vitality. Bravery. And enough honesty with yourself, about yourself, to change.
There.
By lazy, I mean our temptation to take it easy, let it slide, pull the covers over our heads. Denial is a kind of laziness. Avoidance is another. Changecoming unstuckis strenuous. Altering attitudes, routines, beliefs, goals is like training for a sport, toning muscles you might never have flexed before, meeting strangers and learning skills and saying yes or no and meaning it. Here in the lap of luxury we are accustomed to the easy, the instant, the automatic. Thus effort itself is now anathema to us. It seems wrong in principle. We have forgotten how to sweat.