Metaphor

Near the end of A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle, Mrs Whatsit tries to explain Free Will to Calvin and Meg.

She says (and I am editing for clarity) "In your language you have a form of poetry called a sonnet...It is a very strict form of poetry...There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That's a very strict rhythm or metre...And each line has to end with a rigid rhyme pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet...But within this strict form the poet has complete freedom to say whatever he wants..."

"You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself."

I don't know that I agree that an entire Life is a Sonnet, but I do find many components of my life are sonnet-like.

Tango is one bit. There are certain ways to do the steps, but you can dance any pattern you like. There is something of a sonnet in my labyrinth walking habit.

There are other things, but they aren't coming to mind right now.

Way

I am water.
I move over and around obstacles.
Troubles pass through me like a stone in a pond.
Joy rests on my heart like a leaf on a stream.
I embrace the darkness.
I reflect the light.

Apology

In The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defined "apologize" thusly:

APOLOGIZE, v.i. To lay the foundation for a future offence.

But, then, he was very cynical.

I've been thinking about apologies since I got one that I found unacceptable about a month and a half ago. It seemed .... weak. Insincere. Nonchaloant, even.

"Sorry. Let's move on. This isn't important to me."

I'm not sure that is the truth of it, but it is how it felt. And that is what I responded to.

So, I've been thinking about that apology. And apologies in general. That if they aren't phrased correctly, they are useless.

Last night, I had dinner with a girlfriend. She said that she and her husband had recently realized that they had both been missing apologies. Each felt that s/he had apologized when s/he was in in error, but that the other never did. What they finally realized was that they use different language to apologize.

She would say "I'm sorry." and feel like it was done.
He would say "I messed up" and think he had fixed what was damaged.

But, she needed to hear regret. And he needed admission of culpability.

It is interesting to me how we need varying amounts of those 2 elements.

I seem to require a bit of both in order to feel that someone who has hurt me, in whatever way, is truly contrite.

An authentic life

au·then·tic (ô-thntk)
adj.
1. Conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance, or belief: an authentic account by an eyewitness.
2. Having a claimed and verifiable origin or authorship; not counterfeit or copied: an authentic medieval sword.
3. Law Executed with due process: an authentic deed.
4. Music
a. Of, relating to, or being a medieval mode having a range from its final tone to the octave above it.
b. Of, relating to, or being a cadence with the dominant chord immediately preceding the tonic chord.
5. Obsolete Authoritative.

I think I don't like the word "authentic" when used to describe one's life. If you are living it, it is authentically yours. You own it and you are responsible for it.

Even if you don't want to be. Even if you want to blame your choices on your mother, or your FoO, or circumstnaces or fate. You are the one that makes the choices, for whatever reasons you have, and, then, is forced to live with the outcomes.

They are still your choices and your actions.

I prefer to use other adjectives to define my life. "Honest" and "happy".

I want to be honest with myself AND honest with those I encounter. And I want us all to be happy. When I hit hard parts is when honesty will cause unhappiness. I HATE those bits. Eventually, though, honesty wins out.

And I live with it.

Authentically. Conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance, or belief.

Critters

I think that part of the reason that horror movies appeal to us is because no matter how awful our lives may be, we may have jobs that such, sweethearts that aren't sweet, family that drives us crazy, prayers gone unanswered or bodies that refuse to behave healthily. No matter how bad real life may be, zombies aren't trying to eat our brains. So, we come out exhilarated from the adrenalin and happy not to be slasher bait.

Middle Class Child Syndrome

Many people who grow up in the relative affluence of the middle class have a hard time adjusting the the reality of their situations. We do not realize that our parents really don't have all the money we could ever want and we think that the world is going to hand us everything that crosses our minds.

This is due, in part, to never really having to do without anything essential. We never get to be truly hungry for longer than a couple of hours. We always have a coat. Shoes are always season appropriate. We get told "No" because our parents choose not to give us something, not because they CAN'T give it to us.

The fact of a Budget never crosses our minds. Even when we hear the word and are told that we must stay within it, the range is large enough that truly doing without is just not happening.

And that there is a budget of sorts for other things, teachers' patience, parents' tolerance for attitude, etc., never occurs to us either.

So, we get to become chronological adults with no real grasp of shortfall. Until our parents no longer support us and we fall on our asses.

MCCS is marked by not getting your shit together until after you have failed dramaticly. Not every child of the middle class has to endure it, but I have seen a LOT of friends and relatives go through it.

Note that I used self-inclusive pronouns.

I will be letting C live with his choices about schoolwork and I will not be nagging him any more than I have because I hope for him to learn the lessons of failure sooner, rather than than later.

I don't want him to fail, but I willing to allow him to.

Perspective

I think that the way we see people is very complicated.

When we are little, someone is nice to us and we associate their bodytype and facial structure with niceness. Someone is mean and we do they same thing. So, by the time we are in elementary school, we have a fairly large encyclopedia of associations and as time goes by it just increases.

In addition to the visual associations, there are situational associations. We learn from watching our parents, family, friends, and seeing how they respond to the people they interact with. Bakers are friendly or surly. Cops are protective or authoritarian. Clergy are distant or reassuring. Etcetera.

And I think those associations hold for a long, long time. It takes heavy retraining to unlearn them.

So, we start with an assumption, based on that "layered" collection of impressions, then we start adding pieces of the individuals we spend time with. We learn that this person laughs when we tell a certain joke. That this touch gets a positive response. Or withdrawal. We share experiences and build something...an idea of who that other person is,

The thing is, all we get are bits and pieces. Stories about our childhoods. Knowledge of how we behave with our families. Seeing responses to incidents that are based on all that layered perception. And filtered through our own layers of understanding.

Some days, I think it's a wonder we are ever able to communicate at all.

Shape

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To those who are "child free"

If you don't want children, PLEASE DON'T HAVE THEM!! God/dess knows we don't need more abused, neglected, badly treated people running around. We don't need to have more people who have been damaged by feeling unwanted or like they aren't living up to their parents' expectations or whatever head fuck you would perpetuate on them.

People who WANT children do enough of that by accident.

But don't roll your eyes at me because I had one.

I like him. This "mom" thing is pretty cool. When he was inside, it was kind of like Alien, except he didn't kill me when he came out. And watching him see the world with new eyes was so fucking astounding!

Watching him learn about the ugly bits has been hard, too. When people hurt his feelings because he doesn't fit in their box, it makes me want to hurt them. I have a far greater courage for him than I ever had for myself.

He has learned some stuff from me, but he comes up with such neatness on his own and I GET TO WATCH FROM THE FRONT ROW.

And there is a lot of time when he makes me batshit. I keep forgetting he doesn't know stuff just because I do. That there are some things I've neglected to teach him and osmosis hasn't worked for them.

So, some days, he's an idiot.

But he's my idiot and I had him on purpose.

Like people who don't want children should NOT do.

Fractals

The problem with Fractals is that you can never get close enough to get a really good look.


I have been fascinated by them for years and I delight in spotting an obvious fractal shape in nature. This kind of program is a complete time suck for me.

I used to have Fractint on my mutt computer that I used straight up DOS to operate. I played with it for hours. And hours.

And hours.