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As the Fates weave the threads of our lives into the tapestry of time and space, there are points at which we have choices. Sometimes the window for the choice is momentary, sometimes we have time to think and make a wise change. All choices, conscious or not, have consequences.
So much of our lives happens without even the opportunity for choice, things simply happen around us and to us. The choices then come afterword: how will I react, allow this to effect me, choose to grow because of this?
It is our burden to make the choices which make us happiest Most of us know by the time we are adults that we often have to choose things that make us less happy in the moment to create greater happiness in the future. Partly because our own happiness depends so much on the happiness of those around us whom we love.
Ultimately some choices are so complex and convoluted that we try to see into the future and guess the probable consequences of our actions on ourselves and our loved ones and find the weave of life so complex that we can't predict, and then instead make our choice based on general values and guidelines we've established for ourselves.
I must say that I think following your values is right thing to do when dealing with a choice too complex to predict a probable outcome. But ... and there is always a 'but' isn't there ... don't you have to be very sure that the values and guidelines you are using really pertain to the situation at hand, and have been reevaluated relatively recently to make sure they still align with who you are now, not who you were years, months ... or possibly even days or hours ago?
That's all.
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weft of senses warp of dreams
weft of having warp of desire
weft of solitude warp of love
weft of spaces warp of touch
weft of secrets warp of protection
weft of knowing warp of saying
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This is a thing a friend of mine did, and I'm doing it too.
Feel free to do it as well as you choose, or not.
A - Age: 43
B - Bed size: Cal King
C - Chore you hate: getting rid of stuff I don't need anymore
D - Dog's name: never had or plan to have a dog
E - Essential start to your day item: Coffee
F - Favorite color: Black
G - Gold or Silver: Silver
H - Height: 5’4”
I - Instruments you play(ed): uh ... tried piano when I was 5 - bad at it
J - Job title: programmer
K - Kid(s): 3 daughters
L - Living arrangements: house
M - Mom's name: Rachel
N - Nicknames: Mum, Kat, Boo, Kestrel, Flute, Mommy
O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: None - and only in hospital for one birth - bad idea it sucked, hospitals are for sick people.
P - Pet Peeve: I can't think of them right now
Q - Quote from a movie:
Vivian Jaffe: Have you ever transcended space and time?
Albert Markovski: Yes. No. Uh, time, not space... No, I don't know what you're talking about.
(I Heart Huckabees) ... I know there are better quotes from other movies but this one will do.
R - Right or left handed: Right
S - Siblings: 1 sister
T - Time you wake up: lately it's been between 4:30 and 5:30 most mornings
U- Underwear: Jockey black cotton bikini
V - Vegetable you dislike: I know there must be one
W - Ways you run late: loose track of time
X - X-rays you've had: teeth
Y - Yummy food you make: too many to list, too long since I've made them
Z - Zoo favorite: reptiles, elephants, opaki
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1) I commit to living in harmony with and having respect for love in every way that it manifests.
2) I commit to acknowledging, listening to, and allowing the many facets of my being to manifest in balance with one another and the universe.
3) I commit to embracing the strength to view and love myself through a realistic self image.
4) I commit to releasing the things, thoughts and emotions from and about my past, my present and my future which do not serve me.
5) I commit to finding and connecting to those benevolent friends, guides, totem animals, and other beings who choose to accompany me in this life.
6) I commit to learning to open all my senses and sensitivities to what is around me, and learning to filter what comes in with discernment.
7) I commit to taking full responsibility for my own thoughts, actions and choices, and to not taking responsibility for those of others.
8) I commit to uncovering and understanding my deepest values, and choosing not to compromise them.
9) I commit to dreaming both while asleep and awake, and to dancing in the fields of those dreams.
10) I commit to reenvisioning the repeating cycles of my life so that the patterns they form are beautiful and harmonious.
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Not everyone who reads this is on facebook (where I briefly spoke about my hair), and so I am going to talk about my hair. I have decided to stop using indigo on my hair as part of the coloring process, but to continue using henna. This means as my white grows in I will be coloring it a dark red-orange color, and the natural brown hairs will pick up a red tone. The indigo went one step further and added an indigo tone (blue-jean blue) over the red, to turn the whites reddish brown, and the browns almost black. It's going to make me blend into the crowd a little bit less. It's not going to look natural. Henna has a remarkably natural red color, but people just don't "go red" in a typical "go gray" pattern. ... and just in case any of you didn't know, I definitely have enough white in my hair so that this will be very noticeable, not just a small sprinkling of red highlights. This will be a gradual process, because these natural colors are much, much more permanent than chemical "permanent" dyes. The color already on the length of my hair isn't going to fade, or in any other way go away except if I cut it off. So the roots are turning deep red, and the length is still brown. I will probably get some inches cut off to help the process along. The only real question is if my employment will object. I sincerely hope not. ======================================== ================ For those of you reading this on facebook, my REAL journal is at http://drememynd.livejournal.com ... public, but not private, posts are forwarded to facebook as notes. If you want to read my private posts, and you think I'd want you to read my private posts, join livejournal, and friend me. I have several friends on livejournal who don't actually use it just so they can read my occasional private post. I have a feeling there may be more private posts in the future. I'm going through a lot of inner stuff right now. And there are quite a lot of them in the past, should you feel like reading tons of old stuff about me. Feelings:  me
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I was filling out a facebook application today that has you list all of your actual relatives that are on facebook, and even lets you add more people who aren't so that you can make a family tree. Decent idea, fairly buggy still. Oh well.
What was of interest to me was that while I was scrolling down the list I kept seeing people and thinking "oh, that person is family" and then when I took a split second to remember what the relationship was I realized they were family of the heart, but not family by biology, marriage, or adoption, and I felt a significant sadness that they don't fit into any standard definition of what family is.
Even some people to whom I can claim a tenuous family connection are very difficult to categorize. What is my ex-husband's wife to me? Technically nothing, but because he and she maintain relationships to my kids and even to me to a lesser extent (although I wouldn't say we're close at all), they are both still family members in a very real sense. I put her down as "Sister By Marriage To Ex" but there isn't really anything I "ought" to call her. I guess she my children's step-step-mother? Do I write that down?
Then comes the difficulty. Even if I were to list some unrelated people as relatives, how would I know what to call them? How would I set up a "tree" for them?
Which leaves me feeling sad.
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I find it hard to make friends.
It seems, at it's core, to stem from some negative self-image delusions which I've been carrying as baggage for so long I hardly even feel their toxic weight anymore.
I find myself surrounded by new-for-me people and some of them stand out as bright lights: people who I find myself drawn to, wishing for friendship and connection. But I hold myself aloof, taking each step tentatively, fear coursing through my thoughts.
I think caution and care is reasonable and necessary when forging connections with people; until you actually start to get to know them, how do you know if this connection will be good for both of you or not? After all, not all desires for friendship are mutual. Negotiating a friendship is like negotiating a romantic relationship, in "mini-scale". Is there enough mutual admiration and respect for us to connect? For us both to enjoy that connection? Does one of us require much more time and energy than the other? Will that cause tension? How often do you need to hear from or see me to feel like I'm still your friend? How close is this friendship going to get? Do we like to do the same things and/or talk about the same things? Do we have shared values and interests?
All of that is wise caution, but it's not just wise caution which guides my steps with new friends. It's one of my wounded inner-selves which whispers nasty things in my ear:
"They won't like you, you're damaged."
"What do you have to offer someone who is that cool anyway?"
"You're such a hermit; you'll offend them and drive them away."
"People don't like you, you're a looser."
"Your social skills are so bad you'll offend them and embarrass them."
"People don't want to be around people who look funny, like you."
... etc ... etc ... etc ... etc ... ad infinitum
It doesn't matter if the nasty whispered things are rational or not, they still hurt, they still hinder me. I need to heal that inner-self (or selves) which behave this way towards me, because it's not at all nice of them.
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I posted this on Facebook
If you haven't done this yet, it's a great exercise!
======================================================
1) I have the most common form of familial syndactyly. My second and third toes are fused on both my feet. I have a first cousin, and a nephew who also have toes like mine. I'm hoping that if I ever have grandchildren at least one of them will also have "webbed toes".
2) All four of my grandparents were born before 1900. The eldest was born in 1861, 100 years before my sister. The youngest was born in 1887, 100 years before my eldest daughter.
3) When I was 7 or 8 (2nd grade) I wanted to be a philosopher. When I was a teenager I wanted to breed plants like Luther Burbank, but was going to settle for studying botany in college. I ended up designing and writing computer software.
4) I gave birth to two of my children in an out-of-hospital birth center attended by a nurse-midwife. I wish I had all three of them that way! All three of the births were "natural" (without pain medication). The pain of child birth wasn't nearly as severe as some other forms of pain I've experienced.
5) I spent the greater part of my elementary school age playtime creating a civilization of plastic horses with my best friend. We created everything from religion and mythology to an economic scheme and the clothes they wore. When we couldn't access our horses (like at recess) we used our hands as "creatures" and had a separate society for them. We even had a simple physiology figured out for a five-limbed human-hand shaped intelligent life-form.
6) When I was a sophomore in high school I read The Agony and The Ecstasy by Irving Stone, a novel about the life of Michelangelo. I was so moved by the author's description of the artist's sculptural process that I went our to our garage, grabbed an old, dried hunk of clay, and carved out a rather well-formed male torso. That's how I discovered I had a talent for sculpture.
7) I can't remember not knowing how to read. I was already a fluent reader by the time I attended kindergarten. I don't know if my poor spelling skills are because of the way I read ... I see words as whole symbols rather than collections of letters ... or if I read the way I do because of the difficulty I have remembering arbitrary sequences.
8) I have had difficulty my whole life with spoken communication. It's only in the last 10 years or so that I've recognized that I seem to possess very mild forms of two disorders which would be disabling if they were full-blown, however I don't have them severely enough to qualify for a medical diagnosis, even if I wanted one.
8a) Nominal aphasia is characterized by problems recalling words or names. According to Wikipedia, people with nominal aphasia often speak in a roundabout way in order to express a certain word which they can't remember. That's me! And yes, it happens to everyone, just not as often as it seems to happen to me... I think I've gotten pretty good at word substitution and round-about speaking, trying to "cover it up".
8b) Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) ... according to the Wikipedia, people with APD intermittently experience an inability to process verbal information. I have difficulty processing verbal information ... it's not that I don't hear it, I hear sounds, but they don't always have meaning for me. I've annoyed a lot of people asking them to repeat themselves, which doesn't always work. I am sometimes successful filling in the words I don't understand from context, but I'm not always right. Background noise, poor diction, and whispering make it that much worse, but loud, clear speech sounds certainly don't guarantee my comprehension.
10) When I was younger social interactions usually terrified me because I didn't know what was expected of me in any given context... which led to social phobias, temper tantrums, social stigma, and depression. I've worked very hard to learn some of the social rules that govern interpersonal interactions, because I really do enjoy interacting with people (at least some of the time). I still fail miserably at times, but I generally worry about it less, relying on the good will of people to forgive my social foibles.
11) I prefer my humans to be genuine... however I also enjoy interesting characters. People who pride themselves with either fitting in or not fitting in, and people who like to live hiding behind masks tend not to interest me very much. Who we think we are, who we actually are, and who we are becoming are all topics of interest to me. I'd like to believe I am working towards a fuller understanding of who I am, and also working towards living a genuine expression of the person I'm unveiling to myself.
12) For most of my adult life I thought that people ceased to exist after death, that our minds were simply manifestations of our physical bodies. I was open to the idea of continuing to exist after my own death, but didn't expect it. When my mother died, while I was sitting next to her body, I had experiences which convinced me that some part of her had exited her body and was communicating with me through emotional and physical sensations. Yes, it could be wishful thinking, self delusion, or some other trick my mind played on me to soften the blow of loosing her. I choose to believe, although I don't think we find answers to all our philosophical quandaries in that existence, I think it is as full of mystery as life in these bodies is.
13) I am a lazy, procrastinating fool full of wishful thinking and grand ideas about the things I think I want to do, but never do. My conclusion is that I must not really want to do them all that much, either that or I like being lazy even more.
14) I must have shaved chocolate bits in my chocolate-chip ice-cream, not the large chunks which have become so popular, but which are so disappointing to me that I can't eat the ice-cream.
15) I must double-knot my shoelaces.
16) I can live with severe disorganization, but when I do organize I go overboard, and get very upset if someone else upsets the little world that I've made.
17) I prefer crispy cookies to soft cookies, and don't like cookie dough or half-baked cookies.
18) Matching colors in an aesthetically pleasing way in clothing and decoration is nearly beyond me. I see color, and like it well enough, but probably wouldn't miss it too much if I were suddenly completely color blind. Pattern, texture and most importantly shape are the visual cues I notice most about the world.
19) Many computer programmers approach the craft with a left-brained, linear approach. Although some of that is necessary in my work, I find that my approach is usually much more right brained. I "see" and "feel" the ebb and flow of the information and the work-flow, the whirls of loops and the near-organic assembly of data-structures. It's a non-verbal, visceral process which I then translate into the computer-language constructs which are symbols which represent the flows I see in my mind. It's not better, but it is different from the way most programmers I've worked with do their work.
20) Although my ancestors come from several different European countries, I identify most with my father's lineage. His parents both immigrated to the United States from Hungary in 1905, and met in this country. I find pre-christian Hungarian culture fascinating, not least because there is so little known about it.
21) I have avoided pushing myself and finding the limits of my ability in any area I actually show aptitude in. I have never actually challenged myself, in anything. I dislike being singled out for doing well, but I like being singled out for my failures even less. I have found the things I am bad at to be much more interesting than what I am good at, because I have feared succeeding too well most of my life. What's funny is that I don't even know if "succeeding too well" is even a possibility - I am probably not that good at anything!
22) I "live in my head" much of the time. The world I enjoy most is made up of thought forms, ideas, speculations and interaction with other thinking beings about those things.
23) I dislike argument and conflict. I dislike debate, although I don't mind conversation about a disagreement. I dislike all forms of competition against other people (I don't mind competing against computers, I guess), including games. I prefer playing games without keeping score. I have a great need for everyone to try get along and try to respect one another, especially when the people don't like each other.
24) I hate shopping for clothing. The places people shop for clothing are almost always overwhelmingly full of people, over-bright colors, confusing displays, and too much sound ... I get overstimulated and very unhappy very quickly. I also hate deciding what to wear in the morning. People think it's weird if you wear exactly the same thing every day, and it's not good to make people feel weird about you, they often take it out on you in the form of verbal and social abuse. I still buy lots of a few things in different colors, then try to mix and match. I often need help mixing and matching, but have learned some basic guidelines which allow me to dress myself most of the time.
25) I love cats... I understand cats. I even like the way cats smell. I don't understand dogs, their body language seems "weird" and I used to be very frightened of them. The three cats who live with us now, Bingo, Domino, and Maggie, bring me more joy and happiness on a daily basis than I can express.
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What was 2008?
It was a hard year. Life and death both laughed at me while they smacked me across the face with reality. So much pain and joy wrapped up into one little year-sized package. It was a crucible I was not going to emerge from unchanged.
"‘Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar."
It's always been one of my favorite quotes. Alice doesn't know who she is because she's been experiencing so much change that she feels that she surely can't still be herself, whereas the caterpillar, living with the inevitable arrival of metamorphic change every day of his life, just can't relate. He knows he's himself, and will still be himself as a butterfly.
I thought I'd find the answer as I 'grew up'. Well I haven't. Found the answer OR grown up, thank you very much. In fact, I had been looking forward for much of my life to 2008, thinking that surely the year where my age is equivalent to "the answer to life the universe and everything" might be the year I figured out who I am. Silly, I know, to think a pop-culture sf reference could have a bearing on reality. It's also the age my mother was when I was born, and so I had a second expectation of a rebirth of sorts.
Suffering does not necessarily lead to wisdom. Death of a part of your soul does not necessarily lead to its rebirth in another area. Joy can be immensely intense, and in no way eclipse immense sorrow... (Instead they held hands and giggled like old childhoods friends reunited after many years). Transformative experience doesn't always end in a transformation to something better and more evolved.
I should write here about how this year changed me, but that will have to wait for another day when I actually have a clue.
I beseech the universe for a boring 2009. Thank you.
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