Facing Reality and Surreality in
\nRetirement: A Call for a Salon on New Paradigm
\nThinking and New Knowledge, Seen through a
\nFeminist Lens
\nGloria Orenstein
\nRetirement obliges you to face REALITY whether you
\nwant to or not. Many of my friends seem to have dived into their
\ndream worlds immediately, but I was greeted, after my preretirement disability leave, and then my ultimate retirement on Jan.
\n1,2013, with the immediate call to face up to the fatal loss of
\ncolleagues and friends. I was really caught short – almost
\nunprepared. There is something about reaching this auspicious
\nmoment, which in your fantasy life is akin to a graduation with
\nprizes awaiting – such as travels and the fulfillment of life-long
\ndreams – that somehow causes your expectations to be almost
\ntotally out of sync with reality. You are immediately faced with
\nendless paperwork and decisions – about medical plans and the
\ndistribution of your money to stretch it to last until the end of your
\nlife. Aha! That brings up the calculation of how much time you
\nhave left. It makes you keenly aware of the number you try not to
\ndwell on – your age, your generation, your senior status. Of course
\nthere are some rewards for seniors, but the decline in income (due
\nto the financial crisis of the country that went on during the forty
\nyears you were teaching and trying to build up your retirement
\nfund as the market was crashing) and the other life and death
\ndecisions you must make, don\u2019t seem to resonate with your
\nretirement dreams. Before you can catch your breath, inundated as
\nyou are with endless forms to fill out, you find yourself reading the
\nobituaries first in the newspaper. I lost my dear colleague Moshe
\nLazar, who hired me and supported me through all my years at
\n57
\nUniversity of Southern California first. Then came a list of friends
\nwho died before their time, and – who were my age. I was also in
\nthe crisis of disability. No one knows exactly how I came to suffer
\nsuch an injury due to my hip arthritis, but I had to take disability
\nfor two years as I could never have walked to my office from
\nwhere 1 parked my car. I was really out of commission for almost
\none year, and little by little, after a lot of physical therapy, I was
\nable to walk, but not much more than one block. Of course I know
\nthat hip replacement surgery awaits me. I also know that with one
\nCortisone injection I am feeling as if nothing had happened. When
\nI have that injection (which they limit, so eventually I can\u2019t have
\nany more) I come to life like in the past and I start to wonder why I
\nwould submit to a knife when I am feeling so fine. This is the part
\nof retirement that I call Facing Reality.
\nDuring my teaching career in Comparative Literature at
\nUSC I had specialized in Surrealism, and I was not accustomed to
\nfacing this much Realism all at once – figuring out when I will die
\n– thinking about how I want my death to be handled, what I will
\nbequeath and to whom etc. These are all things I find I cannot yet
\nface. I have not made many of these decisions yet. I just try
\nbravely to recover from each consecutive blow that comes along. I
\ntry to give a sane answer to friends when they ask \u201cHow is
\nretirement, Gloria?\u201d I don\u2019t want to depress them, and at the same
\ntime I do want to recognize that I actually was enjoying the
\ntwilight of my Surrealist activism with talks I gave at Los Angeles
\nCounty Museum of Art (LACMA) and at the Museum of Modern
\nArt in Mexico City about my long friendship with the surrealist
\nartist Leonora Carrrington. She is another great friend who died
\nduring this period, as was Jovette Marchessault, a close friend
\nsince the seventies about whom I had written many articles.
\nIndeed, as I took out and re-read my letters from each of these dear
\nfriends, from the seventies to their deaths, I had to think about
\n58
\nwhere these precious letters from our correspondence could be
\nplaced. That became another problem when one of Leonora\u2019s sons
\nput a stop to any private papers being made available to the public
\nin important art archives. It became a problem for the letters from
\nJovette, as she really needs an appropriate archive in which to
\nplace her letters. For a while I was receiving news about a death of
\nsomeone I knew quite well every few months. At one point I went
\nto Mexico for the opening of an important art exhibit, and I had
\nplans to meet a good friend and spend quality time with her. When
\nI arrived I called her home, and the woman who was working for
\nher told me that she was in the hospital. I inquired as to when she
\nwould come out, and I was told NEVER. She was deathly ill, and
\nexpected to die within forty-eight hours. That in fact did happen. I
\nhad to bring this tragic news to the friends gathered at the art
\nexhibit. She was so much younger than I was, and she was not sick
\nwhen we talked about our plans.
\nThere were glitches also associated with all the other areas
\nincluded in REALITY. For example, I had taught at Douglass
\nCollege of Rutgers University and built up some retirement money
\nduring my years there – but Tiaa Cref was no longer associated
\nwith Rutgers, so we had to search for my holdings elsewhere in
\nNew Jersey. Many glitches like these went along with the period of
\nmy most difficult adjustment. Naturally I missed teaching – I loved
\nmy students. I loved having an audience that was interested in the
\navant-garde and in Dada and Surrealism in particular. Suddenly I
\nno longer had that audience – but fortunately I had some friends
\nfrom the IN WONDERLAND show at the Mexico City art
\nmuseum on the women of Surrealism who shared my enthusiasm
\nfor that art and vision.
\nUltimately, I came face to face with SURREALITY. Most
\nof us would not think of the constructive and positive aspect of
\n59<\/p>\n
—————-<\/p>\n
A Call for a Salon on New Paradigms in Retirement: Facing Reality and Surreality<\/p>\n
Thinking and New Knowledge as Seen Through the Eyes of a Child<\/p>\n
A Feminist Perspective<\/p>\n
Gloria Orenstein is a writer who lives in New York City<\/p>\n
Whether you like it or not, retirement forces you to face reality.<\/p>\n
whether you want to or not Many of my pals appear to have jumped right into their project ( help with nursing paper writing from experts with MSN & DNP degrees)s.<\/p>\n
After my pre-retirement disability leave and then my final retirement in January, I was greeted with dream realms.<\/p>\n
1st, 2013, with an urgent demand to confront the fatal loss of<\/p>\n
coworkers and acquaintances I was really caught short – almost<\/p>\n
unprepared. There is something about reaching this auspicious<\/p>\n
moment, which in your fantasy life is akin to a graduation with<\/p>\n
prizes awaiting – such as travels and the fulfillment of life-long<\/p>\n
dreams – that somehow causes your expectations to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Facing Reality and Surreality in Retirement: A Call for a Salon on New Paradigm Thinking and New Knowledge, Seen through a Feminist Lens Gloria Orenstein\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9033,7586,1386,7589,9034,9031,7587,7588,7584,7585,9032],"tags":[8809,7838,8811,8808,8813,8807,8806,8814,8810,8812],"class_list":["post-107322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assignment-help-uae","category-best-dissertation-writing-service-in-australia","category-best-research-paper-writing-services-in-usa","category-capstone-project-writing-service","category-cheap-essay-writing-services-china","category-essay-writing-service-usa","category-legitimate-phd-dissertation-writing-services-usa","category-term-paper-writing-service","category-thesis-writing-service-in-canada","category-uae-best-dissertation-writing-help-service","category-write-my-essay-australia","tag-best-master-thesis-writing-service","tag-best-thesis-writing-services","tag-cheap-thesis-writing-services","tag-master-thesis-help","tag-master-thesis-writing-service","tag-thesis-help-online-free","tag-thesis-writing-help-online","tag-thesis-writing-services-cost","tag-thesis-writing-services-near-me","tag-thesis-writing-services-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studyproessays.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studyproessays.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studyproessays.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyproessays.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyproessays.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyproessays.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studyproessays.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyproessays.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyproessays.com\/help\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}