Kimjongilia

"Kimjongilia: The Flower of Kim Jong-Il" is a documentary, based primarily on interviews with some who escaped to South Korea, primarily between 1996 and 2006. Largely through the narratives of interviewees, but with occasional historical asides (brief synopsis of the Kim family's rise to power and the creation of North Korea) or cultural asides (various North Korean propagandas used to brainwash the society) to establish some context, the film describes the repressive political atmosphere in North Korea, and its heavy tolls on both human life and the human condition.



The producer was available for a few questions afterward. ( I was caught off-guard and didn't immediately have many good questions, but ) she did say that the person who filmed it was inspired to make the film after meeting a man in South Korea who had escaped from North Korea in 1992 and was one of the first to expose the fact that North Korea uses concentration camps extensively to purge (up to the third generation) anyone who could be considered a political dissident (Listening to South Korean radio could be, and was, considered such a crime).

That man was Kang Chol-Hwan, author of The Aquariums of Pyongyang (Ten Years in a North Korean Gulag)

When she met this man and heard his story, she decided to make a film so that others would know. She writes more about her production of the film here: http://www.kimjongiliathemovie.com/learnmore.html





From the film's info page：

"For sixty years, North Koreans have been governed by a totalitarian regime that controls all information entering and leaving the country. A cult of personality surrounds its two recent leaders: first, Kim Il Sung, and now his son, Kim Jong Il. For Kim Jong Il’s 46th birthday, a hybrid red begonia named kimjongilia was created, symbolizing wisdom, love, justice, and peace. The film draws its name from the rarefied flower and reveals the extraordinary stories told by survivors of North Korea’s vast prison camps, of devastating famine, and of every kind of repression."

The documentary is composed of interviews with some who have escaped North Korea, interspersed with information about North Korea's history and development of its leaders and present state.

The interviewees, having made it to South Korea, can speak in ways that no one living in North Korea is able to, and their voices are strong. Many of them speak of their story in a calm, controlled, and concise manner - underscoring the extent to which they must have been forced to adapt in order to survive and come to some reasonable terms with the atrocities they suffered.

One was an officer in the military, one was completely stripped of her family, one was sold into sexual slavery while searching for her sister, one was carried comatose on the backs of his brothers over the border, some suffered for unknown reasons in concentration camps, and one was born there, knowing nothing else until a newcomer brought stories of hope from an outside world.

Several escaped by bribing border guards to buy a pass to get near the boarder between North Korea and China. As one woman said, "If you didn't buy the pass, you got caught. If you got caught, you were shot to death." Crossing directly from North Korea to South Korea is nigh-impossible due to the DMZ that lies between, unless one is willing to go by sea.




The citizens of North Korea are subject to a complete program of brainwashing. They are isolated from the rest of the world and prevented from learning the deplorable state of their own condition. The reigning Kim is viewed as a deity.

As one man says in the film, comparing the way many Christians say grace to God before meals, "... we said grace to Kim Il-Sung." And adds, of the opinion formed in his mind of Kim Il-Sung, ".. we thought he didn't even pee."

One woman recalled her reactions to Kim Il-Sung's death in 1994 while she was still living in North Korea, subject to North Korean propaganda, "When Kim Il-Sung died, I thought the world was ending ... what would we do?" It was unthinkable that not only could the Great Leader and Father Kim Il-Sung be mortal, but that he might actually die and cease to rule North Korea.

A woman who danced as a youth in North Korea recalled how, while starving, she and her troupe were led to sing songs with lyrics like 'how shall we spread this bountiful rice?'. "Even now I don't understand," she says.

"I thought of the Great Leader as a father," said one man, of his realization of the true nature of conditions in North Korea: "So how could he let us live like this?"

Since leaving those oppressive conditions, the escapees have further recognized what was really going on and how they were being deceived, but the previously quoted man adds, "If I were still there, I would still worship him", presumably more as a matter of consequence than a matter of choice.


A woman identified as Ms. Kim asks,
"How could anyone praise Kim Jong-Il? ... I am filled with hatred for North Korea. They killed my family. How can I live without tears? He left me alone ... cursed Kim Jong-Il."
Ms. Kim was arrested because her best friend had become Kim Jong-Il's lover and she knew 'too much' about the lives of important men (she met others who had been arrested for crimes such as spreading a newspaper picture of the Leader on the floor, and for listening to South Korean radio). Her mother and father starved to death in a camp. She lost one son to drowning, one to being shot while trying to cross the border, and one to being tortured until his lungs filled with blood. He is still alive, but hospitalized and cannot breathe on his own. She gave up her daughter for adoption to save her from the stigma of being associated with a family that was imprisoned, so that her daughter would have a chance to marry one day. After 35 years, she doesn't know what her husband was arrested for or if he is alive. If I remember right, she escaped by selling everything she owned in order to bribe the guards to let her pass.



One man interviewed was taken with his family to a concentration camp at the age of 9 years old. Someone in his family had been considered to have committed a political crime, and North Korean practice is to purge 3 generations. He screamed so much that the guards let him bring his pet fish with him. For a time, he dried bugs to feed his fish, but when the concentration camp work began he said, "I had no time to cry. We worked so hard and I was so cold. You don't care about your pet fish when you are dying." He was eventually inspired to escape after reading The Count of Monte Cristo, one of the smuggled books circulating among prisoners. He swore that he, too, would take revenge.

The coal mining was the worst. The best job was tending the official beehives. The North Korean economy actually depends partly on the large quantity of labor demanded from prisoners. The camps manufacture military uniforms, bricks, and leather shoes. Some of North Korea's exports, notably doilies to Poland, paper flowers to France, and bras to Russia, are crafted by forced camp labor.

One young man was born in camp, never knowing why his parents were there. He describes how at camp, school was simple. They taught you how to dig coal and how to transport it. Korean reading and writing, as well as addition and subtraction were also taught. At roll call, they recited the camp rules, the first of which was "Any prisoner who does not complete his assignment will be presumed to have an attitude ... and will be executed by firing squad immediately." The other rules begin with things like hiding food, not obeying diligently, trying to escape or failing to report an escape attempt, ... all ending with immediate execution.

This young man was inspired to escape by a newcomer to camp who told of his former, outside life. "The best stories were about eating," said the young man. After hearing such stories, life in camp became unbearable. Together, he and his new friend tried to escape through the fences around the camp near the mountains. The young man made it, squeezing through the fence and descending on the other side of the mountain, but his friend never made it, and he realizes that probably his friend was electrocuted by trying to pass through the fence first.

One interviewee comments: It is a disgrace to the human race that such camps exist.




Not all the interviewees were arrested or escaped from camps. One concert pianist, a man whose story proves he truly lived to play the piano, learned of his country's oppression after traveling to study in Russia and then being reported for playing a piece by a French composer after returning to North Korea. This restriction over his ability to play was intolerable, so he bribed the border guards for an escape to China. Before making it to South Korea, he was captured and tortured by Chinese police. Hung upside-down, he tucked his fingers into his armpits, thinking only that he must not let them harm his hands.

In North Korea, an artist is an instrument of the Party, the film explains, children of the upper class - those loyal to Kim Jong-Il - are the only ones admitted to conservatory. Family background (loyalty to the Party) is everything. One woman explained that although she was a singer, her voice was unacceptable in North Korea because it sounded like the voice of a South Korean pop singer, a capitalist.



Although in the 1950's, North Korea proclaimed the great Worker's Paradise, in the 1980's, there were food shortages which became widespread in the 1990's. After the Great Famine in 1994, the biggest problem for the state in 1995 was how to take care of the corpses. A system was imposed by which circulating military trucks arrived to be loaded with, and haul away, the dead.

One boy from a rural area describes how his family went to the mountain forests to collect roots. They ate grass and bark. One day, while foraging, he was soaked by the rain and became ill. Having no money for food or medicine, at first they laid him aside and waited for him to die. He entered a coma. When he awoke weeks later, he was in a room with an old woman who informed him that he was in China. His brothers and sister had carried him on their backs over the mountains and across the border. But, their parents remained in North Korea and there were penalties in China for harboring North Koreans. His oldest brother felt responsibility to care for the family and would make trips back and forth to bring his parents food. One one of these trips, he was captured. He turned himself in, hoping to receive a lighter sentence. He was publicly executed.

"The fact that they killed a guy like him," says his surviving youngest brother, "It's really hard to deal with." The youngest brother still feels guilty, as if his brother's death is somehow his fault for his sickness causing their first crossing to China.



The military also suffered from food shortages. The State provided them only with salt and rice, and they were left to supply everything else themselves. Further, even though the officers gave orders every day, it was impossible to get work done even if one wanted to because of missing supplies. One officer escaped after brooding for 10 years over how his 'so-called country' had become so tragic and horrific. He took his family by boat through a thick fog, dodging government ships (which actually had no fuel) until he saw the trees on the mountains and knew they had made it to South Korea.

The documentary shows briefly the efforts of some groups to locate escaped North Koreans in China and assist in smuggling them to safety in South Korea. Neither China nor Mongolia are safe for refugees.





Considering the godlike status of Kim Jong Il, there is speculation that North Korea will be wash into chaos at his eventual death. For 20 years the entire NK population has stopped working, says a man in the film of the effects on North Korea's industry and economy. If that becomes 30, then I think it will be over.

Others state: If foreign countries stop aiding Kim Jong Il, North Koreans will end it with their bare hands. Of this, I am certain.

and, If the person who created such a place isn't a criminal, I don't know who is.

However, despite the cruelties they suffered at the hands of their nations leaders, many North Korean refugees separate the hand of power from the land of their home.

"If [ Kim Jong Il's regime ] collapsed today, I'd be in North Korea tomorrow."


The film closes showing the hope that North Korean refugees maintain for their own lives and for the future of their family, friends, and home in Korea.

Ms. Kim speaks again at the end,
I am grateful for South Korea and the world and peace -
for the people who love peace and freedom -
since I have tasted freedom, I have to return to save my North Korean people

I wonder if anyone's listening to our pleas?
North Koreans can't speak


(Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program)
(one of 10 films chosen by the IDA to be considered for an academy award)
Kimjongilia.pdf

The message left by the Documentary is that the world has to save North Korea
My own brief thoughts on this is that (although some actions must take place on the diplomatic level) on a more basic level, it is the people of the world - not the countries - and not the United States - who must be aware of and consider the kind of work this will take, on behalf of their fellow people.

( images used are downloadable from the film's website )
( only phrases shown in quotation marks are direct quotes. Others are paraphrased. )

... or a mouse?

Way back in the blurry days somewhere between first grade and third grade, when the elementary school guidance counselor, Ms. Millard would come to class with hand puppets, Dulso (that's what it sounded like to me) the Dolphin and a Sea Otter, and teach us that every person was unique and special in their own way.

Of all the times she came to class, one of my more concrete memories is of a discussion about how sometimes people give things away because they want other people to be their friends, and they think that if they give away their trading cards or their candy or their toys, that people will like them. I also remember a class discussion on how some people were like Monsters and some people were like Mice. I might be confusing two different experiences here, but - the kind of people who are like Monsters are the kind of people who put other people down because it makes them feel good about themselves (I did not understand how this worked for a very long time). The kind of people who are like Mice might be quiet and nervous about playing with others. They might give away their own toys so that other people will like them (I also did not understand this exchange for a very long time).

I'm glad that thought stayed with me for the 15 or so years since I heard it, so that this week, I could recognize this unhealthy symptom in myself -
having recognized it, I hope to dismiss it.

I have noticed that recently, I tend to feel a need to be able to provide others with something in order to be worthwhile to them - be it food, good company, or anything that I think will make their experience of being a friend of mine more enjoyable. I become overly conscious of evaluating whether I think they would decide if it was worthwhile to spend time with me.

I have been accused in the past of martyring myself, but I contend that I derive personal enjoyment from being able to share things with others, and from contributing to a good outcome overall. I think that in most circumstances, my willingness to share and contribute is generally constructive, although I recognize that things can get lopsided.

But, this is different. While I recognize that I enjoy sharing things (and food is especially fun to share), I have recently found myself feeling helpless when I don't think I have anything to offer, as though I myself and not worthwhile to others unless I have something to give them. Do I expect this of other people? No. I enjoy them for who they are and for whatever we happen to do together. Why shouldn't I think that friends would expect nothing more of me?


I am trying to relax and to trust that my friends are my friends,
regardless of any consideration of how I can benefit them.




Thanks, Mrs. Millard.

Indwelling

Indwelling
By T.E. Brown


IF thou couldst empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,
And say—" This is not dead,"—
And fill thee with Himself instead.

But thou art all replete with very thou,
And hast such shrewd activity,
That, when He comes, He says :—" This is enow
Unto itself—’Twere better let it be:
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me."



In a much previous post,
I hoped I would not be left empty for the way I internalized this poem.

I think I would like to add to that,
a hope that I would never be full.. either extreme can be prohibitive of interactions of an individual with the surrounding environment. Were I full, I would no longer be able to receive new input from my surroundings. If I cannot interact with my surroundings in any way, I might as well be dead.

my goals

(in no particular order)

1) surpass my masters

2) follow the tributaries to the river

3) follow the river to the ocean

4) become the ocean

5) to be bridges

6) to be glad to have been here


7) to wedge at least one life into this lifetime*

Disparity ( and goals)

I've had some conversations stretching over the months about setting goals in life.

The people I've talked to have set strong courses for themselves, deciding what they want and aiming their careers and efforts towards a future that will bring them money. With money, they can acquire what they want - be it things or activities or lifestyles - to sustain and thrive.

I wasn't so sure. I think I want more a particular means of living.

They would remind me that also, if you want to do some good in the world, it helps to have money. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for example. Look at how much good the Gates (and others with enough wealth) can do because they have money.

But, I've thought of this before. And what troubles me is -How did they get that much money in the first place? While so much of the rest of the world is so poor?

I suspect that if I made a lot of money like that and then contributed it to charity, that I would still not be able to make up for the series of injustices that allowed me to collect such a share of disparity.

I am not against the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I'm not against people who work to establish a healthy life for themselves. The System exists as it is, and we must work within it.

But, I think I believe that I want a future where such foundations do not exist, because I think in that world, they will also not be needed.


My goals?
The best description I have so far is that I am trying to follow a tributary. I don't know where it's going, but I can feel the current and I want to find the river where these things come together.

Stars

I was worried once, years ago, that I'd accidentally misplaced associations and lost something important, but no,

the voice that comes from the sky reassured me,

You will always find your love in the stars,

(and, the voice is right).

Programming

Somewhat recently, I realized that it seemed like I'd been thinking of programming more as a culture into which I wanted to be accepted than a tool that is useful for commanding computers.

If I can remind myself of that second thing - to view programming as a tool - it becomes more approachable, some pressure eases off from somewhere, and I think I feel more able to explore since my goal is now more directly to discover uses for these tools.

Lack of interest

He told me about how in high school, he was trying to tutor some other guy in Alegebra or something. It wasn't working very well. The guy couldn't keep his attention and effort focused on the subject.

The way he told it, the guy was trying - he wanted to learn, he wanted to focus, and he wanted to be interested.

But, he just wasn't interested, and there was nothing he could do about that.

no resignation

I have been playing with the concept of

"no resignations"

as a substitute for the phrase

"no regrets"

since I have begun to believe that living according to a rule of 'no regrets' puts pretty high stakes on the chance that I will risk and lose, which I think is actually counterproductive for me. Also, I have known myself acting out of an avoidance or fear of somehow still harboring regrets, despite the fact that it is often difficult to anticipate what things I might or might not regret and to inform my decisions with that anticipation.

(I am speaking very much in the first person because I am aware that others may perceive the reminder 'no regrets' in a more personally useful manner. It has lost its use for me, possibly encouraging me to take rash actions in the name of not regretting.)

I like the concept 'no resignation' because it prods me to, whatever the situation, not give up. not give in. To the best of my abilities, my actions (whatever direction) will be choices. I will not suffer or cripple myself in advance for the sake of things that I cannot know whether or not I will regret ahead of time.

But I will do my best to not leave myself at the mercy of my situations, but to make what seems to be the best choice at the time and not to resign to circumstances making the decision for me.
If I regret one of those decisions, so be it.

10-01=09

I like today's date

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)

Proceed

There was a backpacking trip that I went on once during which we trudged through several days of cold, wet, and wind.

While we hiked, I walked forward to the evening when we would stop and drink warmed water. When we stopped, I stepped through the tasks of pitching camp, preparing food, and other useful manners of stalling myself until the darkened evening when we would retire and I would shed my weathered clothes for the drier shell of a sleeping bag and a more comfortable subconsciousness. As the evening progressed, I awaited the dawn through closed eyelids, since then I could remove myself from a stale and stiffened sleep and proceed again through another day, to another night. Each stage less-than-ideal, anticipation of change the only relief.

Sometimes there is no situation I would choose to have, but to continue proceeding from one to the next. I remind myself that the only solution I know is to endure, to proceed, to keep moving forward in consideration that the things at hand are temporary, and anticipation of something both better and distant.
前途是光明的 道路是曲折的.

On the last day of our hike, the wind and rain departed and we slept beneath a tent of stars.

Limits of Articulation

In the sense of consciousness as articulate and self-conscious reflection, an emotion can become conscious only if one has ( at the minimum) a language with which to 'label' it and articulate its constituent judgments.

-Emotions and Philosophy,

quoted on Kitten-Flinging Good

Progress

(Content is difficult to phrase, so I imagine I will return and revise the words from time to time)

One day in mid-May, I realized that I was in Hell and that I wanted out at any cost.

I began again the struggle to believe that if I committed myself to small changes,
that in the unforeseeable future, I would eventually be somewhere different.

I imagined the abstract day in which I would make it far enough to look back from somewhere different.

And I did progress in increments, the website happier.com and the book Reality Therapy both being instrumental in giving me particular thoughts and direction.

I tried to practice discipline of intention.
I followed the exercises, hoping to practice recognition of my own positive traits until I believed them myself, trusting in the claims of the exercises because they were my only map, consisting of an arrow pointing forward and away.

I noticed something that I think a friend recently called 'dignity' coming from within, apparently having been summoned by a vacuum, and by a realization that not only I would never acquire it from anything or anyone else, but without it, I would not make it very far.

May wasn't all that long ago.



Recently, a friend of mine - who had previously brought up ideas of hell and getting used to it - noticed some 'unhealthy looking people' near a bus stop and mentioned that it reminded him of some dark years of his own life.
made me remember too.

He presented his wonder at the small miracle of waking up each day and still recognizing himself as himself.

Today, I talked with a philosophy friend of mine - with whom I walked a strikingly similar terrain, though through different paths in the darker parts of the cave - and we still recognize each other.

We came through in increments, tiny struggling increments, but are far enough to look back on where we were before, as well as who we were before. But we still recognize ourselves.

I have made it to the days I imagined - to a future that is different than the past I hoped to leave.

I have made it to the person I thought I was and that I wanted to be, and I am grateful for the friends who have been patient and who recognize me.

The three of us all are conscious of the depths of our personal hells,
and of managing ourselves and our environments positively and carefully so as to never return, now that we are far enough to see where the pits we recognize begin.

.. therefore, our lives will be awesome

Dreamed

I know it's been out for a while, but I still really like this video.

The Senate

I heard them play once, years ago at Reed, and spontaneously bought their then-recent first CD (These Cold Winds).
Sadly, it never worked out to have them return to play at Reed and I never ventured to Seattle to find them.

The Senate has claimed themselves as Seattle's Rock and Roll String band and defined the phrase "Face-melting acoustic riffage."
(Harmonopticon)

And soon, they will perform their last foreseeable concert at the Triple Door in Seattle on Aug 30th.
No way I am going to miss it.
(Pied Piper)

Made of

Sunday Hootenanny at the Big Pink



We are not made from mud, my darling

but impossible,
impossible longing

- Hazel (and the Once and Always CoOp)

Death to my deathbed

A while back, in March? or so,
over the dinner I owed him at Lili's in exchange for prior talk, 牛肺, and 水具鱼,...

We'd been talking about various philosophies and different useful texts,

I explained about the characters in the Conference of the Birds and though he hadn't read it, as I listed off some represented traits he added '... and the bird that wants to understand why this particular route is being chosen and what the significance to flying over this river is...' which I identified with all too clearly.

Later, we spoke of choices and motivations.

I really don't want to have regrets, I told him,

Sometimes I try to think of myself on my deathbed looking back,
and try to anticipate whether I will regret something.
I really don't want to feel like I would.
Sometimes living for no regrets seems like a lot of pressure.


Well,
he said, after a pause.
You know what I think you should do to the self on your deathbed?

... kill her?

kill her.


We both took a drink from our water.

memento photos

In the movie Memento, the main character suffers short-term memory loss, and so has developed a few ways of allowing himself to function in the real world.

One of these methods is to take photos of people he interacts with. He keeps the photos and writes a few words of description on the photo. When he meets a person, or if a person seems to know him, he consults his photos to see if he should know the person, how he can expect the person to treat him, and whether he can trust the person.


Of the people you know,

Who would you take photos of?
What would you want to remember of them?
What description would you write on the photo as a preface to any future interactions?

Seems accurate

Leaning back from NetHack, he stated (and I paraphrase):

I died because I did something stupid. Which is surprisingly unavoidable.

It seemed to me, very true of bad things in general.

YourWorldofText

I followed an away-message link to a page full of black and gray blocks.
Zoomed out slightly and found:



Thus was my introduction to yourworldoftext.com/proggit


More adventures to follow...

What is Love?

The answer is to keep asking.

(Inspired by rumination over Fleetwood Mac's Landslide)

This song has been a subject of interest, thought, and variation for others, too, including the Dixie Chix.
She and Stevie were 27. I was 22. The lyrics of this song have mystified me since high school, but lately it continues to make more sense. Perhaps I do not understand in the same way, because I wouldn't have put the emphasis on feeling older, but on reflections, landslides, changes,

... and on contemplation of the great reflection of the mirror in the sky.

Good things come in Pink Boxes

... representing quite possibly one of the more amazing 24 hours ever, grand finale made possible by VQ and Voodoo Donuts, and Alex's cell phone.

The Blues is Survival Music

...The blues takes joy and tragedy and plays them both the same. It affirms by saying I WILL sing and dance my life, and make what hurts feel good by acceptance in transcendence. It makes what feels good even better.

-Wynton Marsalis, Commencement Speech at Northwestern
Full text of intended speech

Soak up this rain even if it's rainin'.

How it Works

Some things and processes are inevitable.
There are ways to modify, prolong, or moderate, but I have yet to find a way around.

This is how it works

the greatest fairytale

It's the greatest fairytale ever told, he comforted me regarding romantic relationships, that things will go easily.

A different friend had expressed something similar when her brother and his girlfriend broke up. It's like he just assumes that things will work out. Regarding her stance toward her own relationship with her boyfriend she said, it's my most important friendship.

And from Trackers Northwest,
that great thinktank of human wholeness:
When I first read Martín Prechtel's The Toe Bone and Tooth (now aptly retitled Stealing Benefacio's Roses) I experienced a different story of what's possible with a people, family and a Mayan village living close to the land. These tales were epic, the line between reality and myth justly blurred. All throughout the stories within stories was a thread of people courting one another and the world about them. That was the great revelation for me: eloquence and art is not about talent, its about survival. Its only by the great effort, attention and sincerity do we maintain healthy and beautiful relationships.

choices

It is not that I didn't have the patience, the will, the capacity.

it is that I can choose this out of my life

E

(The cure for Passion is Eternity)


(Brilliant guitarist and songwriter Danny Schmidt, "This too shall pass.")

Know then thyself

Know Then Thyself
by
Alexander Pope
1688-1744


Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Skeptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;

Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;
Reason's comparing balance rules the whole.
Man, but for that, no action could attend,
And, but for this, were active to no end:
Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;
Or, meteor-like, flame lawless through the void,
Destroying others, by himself destroy'd.


Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
But where th' extreme of vice, was ne'er agreed:
Ask where's the north? at York, 'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where.
No creature owns it in the first degree,
But thinks his neighbour farther gone than he;
Ev'n those who dwell beneath its very zone,
Or never feel the rage, or never own;
What happier natures shrink at with affright,
The hard inhabitant contends is right.

Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part. There all the honour lies.
Fortune in men has some small diff'rence made
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade,
The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.
'What differ more,' you cry, 'than crown and cowl?'
I'll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man. And want of it the fellow!
The rest is all but leather or prunella.

Back

As my more recent post activity suggests, I am back.

My voice and my writing, I will again claim as my own.
I thought about moving on to a new blog, of abandoning what I thought of as old words and old self. I thought if I started clean, then maybe I could escape the silencing voices and continue clean.
And I can still move on to claim and develop new territories.
But, I am here to claim my past as well as my present. I become more willing to remain and continuously smooth the distance between my past and my future. I hope they can both learn from each other.

Am I proud of everything in this blog? no.
Are there immaturities? yes. But, they are a part of me as well, and I will try to own them too, and we will all grow.
I am back, and as always, there is a lot of work to do.

The Tree

The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French Writer and Aviator (1900 - 1944)

Breakfast at Lili's

Cinnamon roll french toast!

identity (and gender)

Walking downtown today, I was talking with a friend about some ideas involving personal preferences and how/whether those can be easily cast and grouped into gender differences.

My (female) friend, who is studying patriarchy and such things, commented that when a society creates a role or pattern of expectations for women, it necessarily requires the men to inhabit the complement - the other half of those expectations.

I had recognized something along these lines earlier and can recall being very upset by recognizing that if a person who happened to be a man enjoyed something that is usually associated with something that girls are supposed to like, then he might be subject to criticism that inhibits him from developing that aspect of himself, and that seems like it could be crippling. There is a way that people unfold, develop, and grow into specialized individuals through their interests that can be devastating if inhibited or denied. I'd viewed a lot of the societal confusion over gender identification as a way of being confused over what it means to identify as a person - to have a set of personal likes, dislikes, appreciations, inclinations and to be allowed to own and express that knowledge of yourself - for a person to be him or herself without being judged, questioned, undermined, or subject to the implication that other people knew better than that person what they enjoyed.

My (female) friend observed that it seems more socially difficult for a male to seem somewhat feminine than for a woman to take on a more masculine role. I have agreed that "The radical notion that women can be people too" when viewed in action often seems to read more like "The radical notion that women can be men" - which doesn't do anything to challenge the idea that the default person is a man, and that others are deviants from this standard. We agreed that not everyone should be men and that not everyone should try to accommodate some average but that there are real differences (or at least strong trends) between men and women which ought to be recognized, appreciated, and in a complementary manner. On a more ubiquitous manner, I suppose this translates to the recognition and celebration of the differences exhibited in individuals.

(One of the strongest personalities I know of happens to belong to a woman. Perhaps she would support the "radical notion that people can be women too". She goes by Storm Large, is even bigger than her name, and wrote this song expressing 'where she's from' which is wonderful on many levels, including as a possible response to the notion of 'penis envy' (wikipedia link).)

Throughout my life, it has been casually observed by myself and others that I feel very comfortable around guys and enjoy spending time with friends who are guys (and did not particularly enjoy spending time with groups of girls). I have sometimes felt that this made me different from some other girls, but I never felt any kind of undue pressure because of it nor any need to fit in. And, of the girls that I felt close to, many seemed to feel similarly as I did.

A couple years ago, this was called into question. A different (male) friend suggested to me that it was odd for a girl to spend so much time around guys and comparatively little with other girls. At first, I thought that perhaps this friend just had a different view of what it meant to be friends, and that there was not much space for inter-gender interaction there. I did begin to think though, that maybe there was some important part about developing as a girl that I was missing by not spending more time in the company of other girls and being... more feminine ... or something. ...Maybe I liked hanging out with guys because I like going places where I might not fit - maybe I defaulted to hanging out with guys out of some kind of fear of being rejected by 'my own kind'. Maybe it was limiting and sexist to adopt such simplified statements as 'I like hanging out with guys" because - as that same friend pointed out at another time - when we see ourselves as a certain kind of person, we sometimes begin to hold that image as particular to our identity and then it is less subject to change or revision or modification depending on the circumstances. We may let that image of ourselves eclipse the best way to handle a situation instead of growing and adapting with it.

- around that time (a couple of years ago), I began to feel much less comfortable with guys that I had previously been on very good terms with. This bothered me because I thought I was only feeling this way because of the comments my (male) friend had made about it. I tried to ignore that for a while because I saw no reason for it to affect me. I did not think I was playing on gender differences or trying to get attention from guys. Having spent so much time with guys, I'd talked about girls with them, saw the ways they could be affected by girls, and paid attention to acting and dressing in ways that I thought were respectful to them (which was sort of my style anyway). I saw nothing wrong, disrespectful, or deceptive there. But who knows, perhaps I would have felt differently even without my (male) friend's comments.

Over time and many other contributing factors, I fell off with a lot of my friends.

Recently though, I have been feeling much better about various components of myself and my life.

*******
story time

I read a story long ago about a woman who trained and ran foot races at an earlier time when the vast majority of runners and athletic participants were men. Once, there was a race with somewhat bad weather, and the wives of all the racers huddled in preparation with towels, food and warm clothes to spring upon them when they finished. After the race, one of the woman racer's male friends turned to her and said something along the lines of "come on, let's get away from all these women." and the woman racer recognized the significance in the fact that although her male friend had used the word 'women', he did not associate her with the women, but rather as 'one of the guys.'
*********

Last weekend, I was able to hang out with 'the guys' that I'd met at a former workplace. It was very good to see them all again, both individually and as a group - they are a lot of fun and pretty great people. Later, we went to a pub to shoot pool (I had to be instructed again in the ways of pool), and some of the more notable features of that evening for me were

That it felt so natural to be with friends circulating that kind of energy of being 'one of the guys'

That whenever I felt odd, it was never because I was being treated differently, but because I would begin to second-guess myself down from being 'one of the guys' to being 'the girl' and irritating myself by feeling necessarily awkward.

That the above item never seemed to phase them.

There is a way that being with that kind of group feels somehow 'at home' to me, and I will not discourage myself from it, or let others discourage me.

I actually feel some kind of very self-affirming confidence in acknowledging this - that yes, I do like hanging out with guys or maybe better: the kind of people that I enjoy spending time with and feeling comfortably myself around are often guys. That is a characteristic of me, and right now it feels very freeing to assert. The fact that recognizing and acting on this is a conscious accomplishment for me tells me that this is probably something that I have, in the past, depressed within myself and a way that I have not 'been myself'.

When I was in Sunday School, learning the 10 Commandments, I asked the meaning of the word 'adultery' and was given the explanation that it meant that boys and girls should not live together unless they are married. I was relieved to find that girls could live together (at that time my best friends (girls) and I were planning our future house, and not allowing boys sounded like a non-issue).

Now, as am looking forward to moving into a house with two friends of mine (both guys), I am amused to remember this story, and I am excited about soon beginning what I think will be a Very Good year.


Am I limiting myself by owning this aspect of my identity? I don't think so. I don't think I select friends based on gender, but that it happens that the kind of people I enjoy spending time with are often male. And, I do think that I will not discourage myself from engaging with the people or the activities that feel worthwhile and beneficial to me, especially when they seem to enjoy me as well. I think that knowing and asserting this about myself is enabling and freeing.

aahhhhhh :)


....
another (female) friend has recently asked what I think about identifying as a 'girl' or a 'woman'
so now I will have to think about that some more.

Game Over

The Game Is Over, When You Choose To Win ...

Message from Future Self

"Don't worry, there's no rush. Take good care of yourself and keep your head up. Have faith - it will be ok."

faith enough

I had been thinking recently about how nice it feels to have faith in something -

Things like getting up in the morning -

like the faith that if I can make it over the edge of the bed, then the light outside will keep me moving - and morning light is beautiful,

like the faith that there might be a breakfast.


Things like how people may respond if addressed - most are willing to return a greeting.


These things give me faith enough to start.

footprints

Years ago, a friend of mine spoke with great admiration of a someone he'd met on a hike who was really tough. So tough that my friend remembered him hiking on through the sand though the blood was beginning to run out of his shoes.

At the time, I did not see what was so impressive about this. Such a person must have been ill-prepared or not maintaining themselves well. I thought poorly of the person in this story for not taking better care of himself and his important-for-hiking feet. I would not want to emulate someone who had let himself get into such a condition.

Over time, as I remembered the story, I felt myself align more and more with wanting to be like the person who trudged on despite the blood soaking out of his shoes. I wondered if this was a sign that my sense of values and situation management were beginning to lapse. I wondered if maybe I was feeling this way out of a sense of sympathy to a characteristic that my friend seemed to admire so much about this person.

But, I suppose that it isn't quite right to either admire or condemn someone for something like bleeding shoes. I certainly don't know the context of the story, and perhaps there was some unfortunate reason why things turned out that way. I hope I would not be walking in his shoes, but they are still his own shoes.


***

I read a folktale somehwhere about a chief of a tribe who was growing older. As he aged, a younger man, considering the chief to be old and weak, challenged him for leadership of the tribe. The chief acknowledge that perhaps he was no longer fit and they ought to subject themselves to competitions to determine who would be the best ruler. I forget exactly what the contests were, but one of them involved a test to see who could withstand fire longest. The chief just put his arm into the fire until his armhairs began to singe, then he pulled out his arm and quickly cooled it. The young challenger thrust his head into the fire to show that he was brave and strong. He kept his head in as his hairs burned off and his flesh began to blister. The people of the tribe cheered for him since he was winning all the contests by a great margin. There were several tests, and they all went like this. Finally, at the end, with everyone watching and calling for the leadership of the younger man, the chief addressed them all and recounted the results of the tests. In all of them, the chief admitted his defeat and that the young man was the victor. BUT, he said... is this the man that you want leading your tribe? The tests had taken their toll on the young man and his exertion and determination in them had left him burned, injured, weakened. The chief on the other hand, remained fit and sound. The people realized the sort of leadership that the young man offered was too rash and hot-tempered, too willing to expend great resources and force. And so, the accepted the continued, wizened leadership of the old chief.

only consequences

About two years ago, as I considered how to make decisions and carry out actions, I felt myself being slowly paralyzed as my mind began to see more and more clearly the thought:

There is no good or bad - only consequences

I felt a paralyzing fear that this might be true.
I have been grappling with this in various ways for almost two years and I think I have finally come to terms with and even feel somewhat comfortable with this idea.

Who knows if it's right.
You could probably argue a lot regarding what this must mean for my ethical/moral condition or something.

For now I will choose to think that it this means I am less subject to thinking of how I should or shouldn't be doing something and more comfortable with making choices and proceeding to manage the consequences of my choices. Rather than considering what the 'right' decision is, I feel more comfortable considering the consequences of various options and choosing which consequences I would like to continue with.
I think there is something very good about this.

Li'l Oven

I remember being rather young and reading a picture book about a little girl who often plays at her friend's house.

While she plays there, she notices that the other little girl sometimes runs happily to her parents, saying "I need a li'l oven an' some 'uggin!". And then her father will put down his briefcase and bend over to pick her up and give her a hug.

The little girl feels very nice about this and wants this to happen to her too, so when she goes home to her own house, she walks up to her mother and says, "I need a li'l oven." The mother is a little confused, and says well we have an oven here. But the little girl shakes her head and says "that's not the one I want." She tries again when her father comes home, "I need a li'l oven." The parents are confused, but they want to make her happy and see her smile, so they say tomorrow, we will go and find a little oven for you.

Bright and early the next day they got started, and went around to all kinds of toy places. They even found a cute little oven that could really bake small sheets of cookies. But each time they say, "is that the one you want?", the little girl shook her head and says, "no, that's not the one I want." Her parents felt sad because they don't know what to give her even though they looked all day.

As they arrive home, they are getting home at the same time as the father of the friend who lives next door. As the girl's parents get out of the car, they see the neighbor girl run to her father saying, "I need a li'l oven, an' some 'uggin!" and they see him sweep her up in his arms.

They look at their own daughter. "Is that the one you want?" Their little girl smiles, "Yes, that's it." And they sweep her up into their arms and carry her inside.

*****

I remember reading this book and trying it on my parents. I told them about the book and they said that certainly if I ever wanted that, it was good to to ask. Because, they said, a lot of people want to be loved and hugged, but they don't ask. Why not? was my automatic response. Because, they said, sometimes they just don't know how.

(The conversation went something like that)

Corsica is now for sale

on ebay!

Even if you don't plan to bid,
the description is worth a read.

ins verderben (or, coin side dents)

no life without growth
no growth without change
no change without death


destruction is "one side of the coin".
All "coins" have at least two sides. A sphere viewed from the side looks like a coin, although a sphere has no sides in the way that we think of a coin.
I am learning to see and appreciate whole coins and unseen elephants.

Coins have many sides, and perhaps none.
Everything can be learned from.
Stories continue.


***************************

And I didn't tell you how the story continued, did I?


The captain sprang into action, commanding his crew to reverse direction, lighten the load, turn sails, row, row, row! as the sea and hollow wind compelled the ship towards the falls at the end of the world. But, it was too late - they were committed. The hound had gone, but its task was complete. The captain soon realized this and resigned himself to a new course of action: tie everything down, stow everything away. The only possible result of attempted escape was to be dragged backwards over the falls.

He ordered the ship turned and guided directly for the edge of the world. They would go over. The great ship swung, directed towards a nearer horizon than any had before sailed into. Their course set, the crew and captain scrambled to fasten themselves in Above the lip of falling water, great vapor clouds rose and wrapped in the chilling empty howl of wind. Carried on the roaring sea, the ship approached, and joined the falling waters through the empty air below.

When the captain awoke and pushed himself free, he stumbled out into a cavernous world. Slowly, he discovered more of his ship and his crew, in surprisingly good condition. The roar of the falls echoed in a constant atmosphere of sound. They had plunged into a deep lake far below the earth and washed onto a feature of twisted rock. He turned, surveying the environment and saw only rock, formed and molded like clay, rising on all sides around gaping tunnels.

If they intended to continue, and return home, they would have to find a way through the dark passages to the surface.

They had arrived in Hades.

(Here, I do not remember how the story continues. It involves exploring, daring, cleverness, and trickery. But they do return to the surface. And of course, even more story continues from there.)

(if any parts of this story sound familiar to anyone, I would really like to find this book again! It is not a novel. More of a picture-and-story book claiming to be Norse legends. I read it as a child, remember some, and am paraphrasing a LOT.)

"Competency vs Kindness"

For a long time, I had felt somewhat contemptuously about philosophy. The ways I heard it talked about, it always seemed too artificial and withdrawn to justify the tremendous self-important ego I considered its abstract entity to have.

Later in school and in my own time, I read more broadly and deeply about the 'earlier philosophers' and philosophies from other parts of the world, and I came to appreciate a sense of vivacity - the desire to seek life and the urge to live well.

That's what I appreciate about these guys: TrackersNW. Admittedly, I don't know too much about them, but from the few I've met and the things they seem to care about - despite how easy it would be to think they are being silly - I think they are some of the more real and honestly striving (and fun!) people I have met.

Please see following text from their email update (posted here because I don't see it on their blog)

Competent or kind? What type of people make a community thrive? Question I often hear in my personal village.
How many of us can parallel park a 35 foot trailer with a 32 foot skin on frame boat on it, organize the logistics to feed 30, 60 or 200 people, shoot an arrow straight and true, get a stuck vehicle out of the mud on a flooded bush road in Botswana, code a new piece of software that helps people communicate in radically new ways, use their leatherman to repair a broken walkie talkie or track a cougar, finally catching a glimpse of that elusive cat? All these things were accomplished by colleagues of mine in just the past 3 weeks. Maybe by coincidence, I find all these folks to be very kind.

Yet this is not always the case for competency. I learned a long time ago that mastery does not always mean nice. Around the world, some of the best trackers, survival skills experts, martial artists, primitive skills masters, herbalists, writers, artists, pundits, scientists, designers, permaculturists, engineers and especially educators can act like "A-class" jerks. Experts stale in the knowledge that no one does it as good or great as them. As an eclectic teenager, I grew up revering nearly any and all competence. In my older age, I have rethought this ardent reverence for such salty dogs.

It took me awhile to realize there are two paths to competency. One stems from insisting that a study, art or philosophy is more important than even the people and land around us. Enhancing science, style or reputation becomes the ultimate motivation. This awareness can cloister you from the living world. And in the long run, leave the "expert" old, sad and lonely.

The other "competent" is borne from compassion. Empathy transmutes to vigilance for tending land, family and the village. The point of knowing is not simply for knowledge itself, but instead its a choice to place your gifts in service to the greater whole. Individuals competent in this way rarely refer to themselves as geniuses or masters, yet their regard and attention for their work can always be relied upon.

The same can be said about there being two ways of "kind". By our culture's definition "nice and good" is equated with syrupy words, universal harmony, right emotions and world peace. Yet becoming truly useful often requires giving of yourself, courage, sacrifice, personal risk, confusion, standing stalwart through conflict, doing hard work, challenging the status quo, setting healthy boundaries and focusing your attention. Real kindness, real care for your community and fellows is rarely the easy or perfect way out.

There's really not difference between competency and kindness. They're one choice. The value of competency derives from the attentiveness and passion found through kindness. And the village thrives by this regard and care.

Project Sarurun

Project Sarurun
A grassroots arts and crafts campaign to benefit children affected by war or violent conflict. Great changes are an accumulation of many small deeds.

Please learn more about this project and the upcoming auction. It begins very soon.

babies

When I was young, I was told not to tickle the feet or stomach of my baby brother. "He doesn't understand what he is feeling," said my mom, "And he doesn't know to scratch it to make it stop."

After that I sometimes persisted in tickling my little brother, but I made sure to rub my fingers in a soft scratch afterward to stop his skin from feeling that weird after-tickle. What my mom said was true - he was confused and defenseless. He was a baby and could hardly focus on particular items, let along understand what it meant to be tickled. Even if he could have understood how to make the feeling stop, he did not have the means to bend and scratch his own foot. All he could understand was that he was uncomfortable, and all he could do about it was writhe.

I have been thinking lately, that one of the things about growing older and more experienced is to try to understand what exactly we are experiencing, where it is coming from, and how to respond.

A baby only knows what feels good and what doesn't. All it can do in response is enjoy something or begin crying. As the baby grows, it learns different kinds of feeling good and bad and why they feel that way. As it learns how different things affect it, it can begin to try responding and learn to take care of itself.

The example I have used is of physical discomfort, but I think this is true for other kinds of feelings as well. And just because I am no longer a small baby, doesn't mean that I don't discover feelings and effects that are as mysterious and confusing to me as a baby must feel when first being tickled. But I will learn, and become coordinated to understand what causes these things and how to respond.

It's ok

Go on

You gotta take a bow,
and do it your way.

*

no fear

fear. fear and despair.
these are torturous and crippling.
These prevent humans from living even while they are alive.

make it stop.

yes,
I am a hypocrite.