Love & Loss

a modified message to a friend, and partly a message for my present and future self as well:

Probably largely because I am in a personally healthy place right now,

I think that from where I am, I can say that I think it's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.

It is certainly inconvenient sometimes, and certainly can seem senseless, but I think I am glad for having the opportunity to experience a depth of that aspect of humanity.



If I were not doing well now, I would probably think otherwise.
So, keep taking care of yourself, and making good decisions for you, and then (to whatever degree you felt like you loved/cared ) you will probably also be able to stand somewhere in the future and be glad for the experience.

I don't think you really need to hear this, but -
Take care of yourself now - by continuing and developing and moving forward with who you want to be -
and the future will be good too.

Mistakes

Mistakes I have made:

1) Assuming that people I want to learn from are willing or able to teach

2) Assuming that people who are teaching know the best way for me to learn

3) Waiting for other people

4) Thinking that others might wait for me

5) Denying or delaying my own interests/abilities for the perceived sake of others

6) Refusing to defend myself from people who love me

7) Refusing to defend myself from people I love

8) Hoping that others might be willing to make such mistakes for my sake

9) Thinking that I was right

10) Thinking that I was wrong

11) Assuming that if a person knows me closely, they necessarily also know me well.

12) *Listening to others (more than to myself)

13) Not knowing what to say when I hear things that I don't believe to be true.

14) Thinking that if someone does not think well of me, that there is something I can do better or differently to gain their esteem.

15) Thinking that someone(14) did not think well of me

Other peoples' birthdays

I like other peoples' birthdays because on that day, you are allowed to show your appreciation and admiration for someone else by doing things for them, wishing them well, or giving them things that, based on knowing them during at least some of the other 364 days, they will enjoy having.

On other days, such things can sometimes seem out-of-place.

There are so many obstacles to communicating to people that they are loved. Even if I can learn the language (including not just words, but gestures as well) with which to say it so that they might understand, it can be hard to say in a way that will be accepted. Even then, I'm subtly ignoring the fact that it might even be hard to actually say - in any language.

One of the things that I am vaguely selfishly aware of having wanted for a long time, is the ability - the freedom - both to love someone and to tell them so - the satisfaction of feeling that I have been able to communicate to someone I love, how I love them - it is a gift that I would most like to give and to observe being opened. And further - to know that they understand how I love them.


There are some that do.

Interestingly,
I think they are the ones who would know anyway.

Harbinger

Do you feel that?

As I walked home this morning, my footsteps were overtaken by the scuttling of escaped leaves and spiraling seedpods riding the lip of the wind along the street.

I think my squirrel-mind has been anticipating -
storing-up, and hoarding -
comforts and securities, sensing
both an end of summer
and a dread of winter-coming.

But, perhaps out of a sense of enough stability,
I remember to pick my head up.
It will all be ok.

I have been seeing:
events and people colored with a familiarity that leads me forward.

I pick my head up, remembering that this scent of air is the apprentice September preparing the trees for that artist October. That memory brings the life from my feet into my neck, and I look up to observe the entire ritual.

Do you feel it in the wind? Do you smell that?
It is change. The Change brings death. These are exciting times. The leaves scurry along the ground.

Last week, I realized with dread that sense of end-of-summer, and the heaviness of the impending, long darkness of winter. It was not until a few long moments later that I remembered that between winter and summer comes fall.



Fall, and the brilliant golds, scarlets, oranges of fading emerald leaves - and the sky is colored with the same bone-drying winds that crisped the apples.



It is a time for opening of doors and windows. Secured indoors, I cannot feel the breeze or smell the wind, and feel an curious apprehension that I will not notice the piper passing by, but will be trapped by continuing to go about my business. No, that must not happen. Throw open the doors and windows.


In the moving air, can you taste that?

These are exciting times: it is a far-off death. It moves through the house and cleans the air. It is a salt to draw out the flavor of living. In the company of September and approach of October, in the anxious tugging of the breeze by leaves the color of tea, summer departs and I am reminded of a vivid obligation to live.


It's the spring-time of my life

Love is

Someone once told him, and he passed it along to me:

"Love is a constant attempt at understanding."


It reminded me of what I thought I'd learned from the lyrics of Fleetwood Mac's Landslide


A willingness to seek and understand, especially amid constant change, I think, implies a willingness to be transformed, since new understandings change and develop a person in different ways.

So, with help from The Alchemist I add:
"Love is a willingness to be transformed."

Everything you see is a Mirror

Rorshach inkblots, windows, mirrors,... they're all the same idea.


Everything we observe is necessarily filtered and understood through our own personal perceptions. Everything I perceive is a projection of myself, because I am the only tool I have with which to understand what I see. Everything is a mirror.

Knowing this increases clarity - not because it increases visibility or because it lets me see more - but, because it allows me to understand better what I AM perceiving and interpreting, and from this, I can better learn.
(I am less likely to be mistaken by thinking that what I interpreted was just a representation of the thing itself)

Since everything is a projection of myself, then (even if all I can ever see is myself) the extent to which I am ready to acknowledge myself increases the depth and dexterity of understanding with which I can interpret others.

Even if projections of myself are the only tool I have with which to interpret, the use of any tool is a skill that can be learned, and a good tool in good hands is useful for many things.

from whence a grid?

I recently saw a wonderful exhibit on the works of M.C.Escher at the Art Museum.

The museum displayed many of his sketches, and I was intrigued at the meticulously penciled grids he had drawn on some of them to guide his lines. This is no surprise to me as an amateur artist. I am well aware that the drawing of a grid is often an extremely useful first step of a sketch, depending on the artist intends to draw. The grid establishes a structure for the shapes to come. I have been in some classes and seen the videos on perspective drawing demonstrating how to guide the straight lines from the vanishing point to create well-angled roofs of buildings. I had seen the 'before' and 'after' pictures of art - before and after perspective drawing (implication: before and after the introduction of rationality into art). I listened when they pointed at the 'before' and 'after' pictures to demonstrate that one of them looked more 'real.'

But, as I was contemplating the place of grid and straight-line drawing in the training of an artist, and as biked through the valley of the Springwater Corridor where for a brief span of time the only man-made object was the curving trail beneath me, and as I walked with my empty breakfast bowl back between the contoured trees at the edge of the park, I started to wonder more seriously ...

Nature is not made of straight lines.
Whatever first gave someone the idea of grids and lines?
And when did we begin imposing grids and lines as an internal or background structure for things?
And why am I only thinking of this now?

an Argument for Semipermeability

No man is an island, entire of itself

- John Donne
Meditations XVII

This quote is a point to which I have, of late, returned frequently. It has been useful for considering what it would mean to be an island - and how a thing or a person would come to be considered an island. I am aware that different people have different opinions on what importance (if any) they give to social interactions. Further, I have a sense that there is something that society considers vaguely noble about the notion of someone personally strong enough to shun society and living a brilliantly productive hermit lifestyle.


My thoughts at this time are first, that a human has many different aspects, each with their particular needs. Second, that a human exists within many different environments. And third, that a human exists as a subset or a part of each of these different environments - a human is not separate or other than the environment - which semipermeability and interactivity are necessary for survival and growth.

We think too big: we think of ourselves as one whole thing, and we say that this collection has a name and is a being.
- Danny Schmidt, "This Too Shall Pass"


For example, it is easy to consider a human as a physical being.
As a physical being, we live in a physical environment. Our physical being has physical needs and in order to meet them, we must interact with the physical environment in order to sustain ourselves, survive, and grow. It is easy to consider that a human who is physically separated from his or her physical environment would be deprived both of new nutrients and a means of eliminating waste products. Our physical bodies are a part of our physical environment, and our needs require that we interact with the physical environment and allow things that are healthy for us to pass into and through us.

I began to think of these things first, when I realized about two years ago how very influential my physical condition was in affecting my more internal emotional and psychological internal environments. I have been more able to consider the ways the people I am around contribute to my emotional and psychological environments, and further, that it is not reasonable to suppose that I should expect to maintain a healthy physical / emotional / psychological state in an environment that is poorly suited to it, or an environment in which I have not learned how to interact to meet my sustainability needs.

It is easier to consider how to meet our physical needs in a physical environment
For some reason, perhaps because they are not as readily visible, concrete, or tactile, it is more difficult to consider humans as emotional, spiritual, or psychological beings, and to consider how exist within those environments.

But, I believe the same ideas apply.

For example, if we consider a human as an emotional being,
this being inhabits an emotional environment and has emotional needs that must be met in order to sustain, survive, and grow. This must be done by interacting with the emotional environment through the means of people, pursuit of interests, and self-development. You might argue that these emotional needs are based on chemical reactions which are a physical thing, but reducing everything to physical explanations is not a useful solution here.

If a person were cut off from the emotional environment through which they give and receive in ways that are emotionally healthy, they would suffer in ways less visible than a person physically isolated, but similarly severe. Further, when the emotional being interacts with others, not only is the person's emotional state influenced and developed, but the emotional beings that the person interacts with are also affected. This requires an emotional permeability. The person is not an isolated component, but is a part of the emotional system.

An interesting thought is to consider the emotional, spiritual, and psychological environments. What do they 'look' like? How do we inhabit the environment? How do we interact with the environment to meet our needs and how do we affect others living in the same environment? What things from each environment are healthy? What does it mean to be permeable in each environment? How does our presence contribute to each environment?

Clearly, physical beings need food, water, and air.
Other aspects of being require a sense of self-worth and of being worthwhile to others.

These needs are met and the various aspects of being sustained and developed through interaction, both giving and taking, with the environments, of which, we humans are a part.

Therefore, a human is necessarily not an island, and further, it does not seem useful for me to think of myself as an island, and even less useful to aspire to be an island.

Something which does not interact with its environment is, in that sense, dead.

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

This man had brilliantly-expressed attitudes towards living and dying.

His full lecture at Carnegie Mellon lasts 1hr 16min, but it is well worth the watch.

I am glad for the opportunity to learn from his inobstructable life.

Fig and Lemon Tart

I recently had the joy and privilege of viewing and eating this.








A marvelous lemon-and-fig tart from Patisserie Cafe Lili.


The curl of lemon perches atop the four quarters of a soft, sweet figs moored in a brightly-flavored dish of thick, smooth lemon filling.

I choose not to care

I think am learning that the person I fell in love with either did not, or at least now does not, exist.

I loved a nonexistent friend who spoke clarity through confusion, who held my hand and guided me home at night, who encouraged me to challenge myself, who was interested in my thoughts, who hugged me for staying up with him and warding off the hallucinations of sleepless nights, and for whom I tried to persevere and be a strong and capable person. I loved him after I ceased to recognize the person who looked like him.

A real and present friend of mine has a difficult lack of relationship with her distant and un-present father. She wrote once a while back that she would not care about him any more - not out of any sense of malice or ill will, but - simply out of the precaution that people you do not care about cannot hurt you, and she no longer wished to be hurt.

I suppose
that a friend who does not exist cannot feel hurt or hold it against me if I decide that I can no longer care

couple

They naturally enjoy being together and doing whatever the other is doing.

They are comfortable with each other and take comfort in each other.

When she is hungry, he feeds her. When she is stressed, he calms her. When she is upset, he holds her. He does not suggest that she should have taken care of herself better than to be hungry, stressed, or upset. He looks for ways to make her feel good and tells her things to encourage her to feel good about herself. He is glad when she uses and practices her abilities.

When she is well, she feeds him. She looks after the things he forgets, remembers the things he says, and gives them back to him later. She encourages his interests and abilities and celebrates with him. She often does not need to particularly solicit his attention because they have a habit of asking how the other is doing, and when he senses that she is unwell, he acts to understand and remedy her condition.

They look out for and treat each others' interests as their own.

I am glad to know these people. They are good reminders.

a star by any other name is just as far

I am thinking now that, even if I were in love with rising stars, these are just as inaccessible.

Perhaps that is the feeling of longing - the distant tension as of a thread or filament strung tight to something unseen and yet-unreached, but which nonetheless exerts its presence as a tug.




I suspect that citizens of owl city might also feel this tension of stars.



Perhaps it is just that I do not know what this thread is tied to, but sometimes I can feel it move.

girl friends

Although I tend to think that I generally get along better with guys than with girls, I have recently been impressed that first, a considerable proportion of my closer friends are girls and second, the number of us which have suffered intense and extreme hardship of spirit in the last few years and are now successfully rebuilding.

I am impressed by the relative similarity and simultaneity of our various ordeals, since this has enabled us to help and support each other, and to share what we are learning.

I am impressed by the substance, character, and strength of these women close to me - who have variously withstood and broken under intense pressures -
because they dared to love and to love deeply.

I am impressed by their struggle first to endure, then to salvage, then to build and grow again, because they desired to live and to live vividly.

I am grateful, honored, and fortunate to know these women even in our darknesses, to rebuild myself in this company of students-of-living, and to share with them this wealth of experience, strength, and perhaps even wisdom.


We are already a little old for our age(s). But we are all so alive,
and we will live until we die.



Thank you, friends

An Exercise

What things today are going well? What things today happened that you liked?


Why did these things happen?

(source: happier.com)