Collection

I'm not sure I've linked to Reider Amy Shaefer's blog before, but she is a wonderful and witty storyteller. Please enjoy The Incident of the Broken Stick - and a couple other stories! (Other Reiders: when she says she's going back to the reef, does that mean *our* little home on Teh Intarwebs?)

My chocolate-covered espresso beans were getting a bit existential on me this morning, with only a punctuation mark ...

It might have been too much for me, pre-caffeinated: but still it was funny!

All thought of current events aside (and I feel the headline is extremely shoddy/misleading), Vanity Fair has a great historical look at Russia. If you care to think of it as contextualizing the present, that's fine, but in itself this article provides literary and history lessons well worth reading.

Okay, and in closing - this next link is NOT safe for work, and for some readers it might be distasteful in any setting.

The sexual advice column Savage Love has a very interesting look at the psychology of the golden shower, sex more generally, and whether the most famous golden shower in history, currently in the headlines, was about sex at all. (It seems explicitly not to have been; assuming it occurred at all; sources and facts are all still under intense review.) The piece provides an intelligent view on what so far has been referred to as "perversion" - but the reason for it may be much more disturbing than that. It's also an intelligent view of the mental and biological facts of (a) how icky sex is, and (b) how human beings get past that. ON at least two levels, this is truly an intriguing read.

How Could I Not?

Yesterday was the 50th birthday of the man I love. He's still very far away, and the relationship we have is one that many of those who love me feel isn't good enough for me.

I deserve better.

What those in my life lose sight of is: he deserves better too.


Who do you know who has what they deserve?

Who gives what their loved ones have the right to expect of them, or gets it?

It is a constant loss to me, that my life is lived without the simplest touches, without laughing in the same room, without a partner to pump the gas and empty the litter and go out to eat with and just hear, breathing. This isn't the choice I would have made.

But to gain these things by substituting someone else - somehow, over the years (and I still look around at my options), has not been a viable choice. And that *is* the choice I definitely have made.

He has said to me:

You have a heart so strong and so fine, I am honored for you to have found me a place in it. That you want to give, and give, and give-- I'm humbled at times by your generosity. If I'm hurting you want to soothe, even if it is just to be near... your need to fix my hurts is so powerful.

The way you revel in my appearance. Call me beautiful. The way you mean it. No one has ever found me so fine.

How you have labored to be with a man so far away... putting off the idea of a more convenient partner so you can be with me.

You use your wit and your intelligence as if your appearance had no power, and the effect is devastating.

There is no generosity in me. I just don't know what else I could do, but as I have done.

To someone who has endured it, I said: to abandon someone suffering depression would be immoral.

And I've never found the man yet who could distract me from this one.


It's not what I deserve. But nothing else is, either. All I can do is hope the day will come that - even for a moment - I can give him the blessing he deserves.

Traveling Thoughts

This has been on my mind the past week or so. It seems a long time ago; and yet, everything I described then, I recall with such acute clarity now.

People change, time changes places. But memory is strong stuff. For which I am ever grateful.

22, 222 ... and 20150626

Twos have for whatever reason always dominated my addresses, phones, room or apartment numbers and so on in my life.

Today is the twenty-second anniversary of the day I married Beloved Ex, and he’s been much on my mind of late. We’ve talked a couple times in the past month or so, and I’ll call him tonight to wish him well on our day and reminisce a bit like proper oldsters.

BEx was twenty-two (hah) and I nineteen when he and I first met. He was a would-be rockstar and I was – really quite unformed. I’d been through my little hippie kid phase, and entered into a bit of a groupie rocker chick mode when he and I got into a relationship, but as to who I wanted to me, or was, there were a lot of questions unanswered – indeed, unexamined at all – back then.

We were together six years before we married, and all I knew was that I had a good man and that was valuable enough I couldn’t look beyond that point. I clutched on entirely because he was (and is) a fine person and not half bad looking.

It’s funny, but I never had a thing for blonds nor the Nordic God thing in a man, but the fella I married was all of that. His resemblance to Michael Hurst of Hercules: the Legendary Journeys has always struck me, because – though Hurst appears a good deal shorter than BEx – the humor and goodness in their smiles were alike. But for maximum recognition value: BEx resembles Rutger Hauer to an almost alarming degree – physically. His demeanor is nothing so forbidding (men Diane likes: nerdliness comes first, then good-looking), and BEx is twenty years younger than the Replicant, but feature for feature the similarity may be stronger than Aeolus’s.

A friend of mine during the years I was married to BEx once explained to a table of friends out for a drink and a nosh, about the color of BEx’s eyes. She told the story of how her dad used to take her and her brothers camping. They would climb this beautiful mountain, in fresh air in the sunshine. They would stop at the top to lay out food and eat by a beautiful lake. The water was blue, and so clear you could see to the bottom. Her story went on a good five or ten minutes. And it ended, “And THAT is the color of Diane’s ex’s eyes.”

Gee. And all I ever did was gank from Carla Tortelli, who said, when asked if a handsome man’s eyes were blue, “*Sigh* Like Windex!”

Image: Wikipedia

I Googled him this week – why I don’t recall, but sometimes you Google an ex, and this is one of those “aww – Beloved Ex” weeks. This time, I got one of those ghastly Olan-Mills-for-the-corporate-office type portraits; weirdly taken from a high angle, so he’s looking upward and kind of cheesy, all be-suited and too tidy and slick. His blond-ness has subsided somewhat, but for one of your Nordic types, let it be said he is ageing spectacularly well. Lovely crinkles at the eyes, white teeth he doesn’t have to treat to get that way – that one crooked little incisor I was always a little too much taken with. The overall effect of the corporate pose is a bit “MY NAME IS HERB. TRUST ME!”, but the depth of knowledge if you know BEx lends a “yep, that’s him”-ness that sees that same old smile, the slight nervousness … those eyes.

I never had a thing about blue eyes themselves, but BEx’s blue eyes truly always were beautiful to me. In addition to his Nordic looks, BEx also has a Hungarian strain, and something in the expression of his eyes always spoke of the same melancholy Mikhayil Baryshnikov always had. As bright as he seemed to be, and as slightly silly, BEx houses a melancholy spirit not uncommon in the men I have loved. He and I laughed for years about an article he once read, that men who liked small breasts (I didn’t grow mine until years after our divorce) tended to be “slightly depressed” and men who liked larger chests were into football and less educated. Hooray for reductive stereotypes of men based on reductive stereotypes of women!

So last night, spending time with a nice array of the women on my mother’s side of my family (two aunts, mom, and a cousin), I shared the photo because I knew they would love it. Aunt G. would hardly have recognized the man in the picture, but those eyes were utterly unmistakable. Mom, who always did like BEx, may have suffered some resurgence of the “why the HECK are you not with this man” even as she simultaneously does know and understand. I paint a good picture of BEx and take my responsibility for my fundamental part in our divorce, but let it not be said I see no errors nor shortcomings at all.

The fundamental issue is this – I love BEx and always have and always will. But love is no reason to share your whole LIFE with someone. My life is going reasonably well. Only if, without him, it could not, should I be committed like that to any man, even if I do respect and care for him as much as I do.

There are those for whom in fact that would be more than enough, and compelling and successful. Without regret: I just am not one of those people. What I do regret, as candid as I may be in this blog and with certain people I love, is nobody’s business but mine and BEx’s.

Image: that was me

Twenty-two years ago in the morning, it was quiet in my parents’ home. I hadn’t expected that, somehow; thought I might be the center of attention in a hive of activity. But I had breakfast alone, I think – and had to kind of pull that together catch-as-catch-can. My dress was in the best garment bag ever – my childhood twin fitted Snoopy sheet fit it EXACTLY, and pinned shut to hold it together just right, in nice soft poly-cotton. My dad and mom were not given to maudlin hugs and Very Special Moments, and so at some point I worked my way up to my room and spent a long time getting ready. I put my hair up and did my makeup and put on my mom’s pearl jewelry, and I hope I cleaned my beautiful engagement ring so it would sparkle (my engagement ring is really beautiful, as was BEx’s band; we both still have them, which seems right for us two).

I don’t really recall getting to the church, but once there I have some memory of putting on the girdle and ivory hose and shoes, and then ceremoniously being dressed, for perhaps the only time in my life post-infancy. My dress was a marvelous thing, ill-suited to a Southern summer day (long sleeves and satin, high necked, and close to the body). When we went outside for photos of the bride …. even with dress shields, you cannot stop the river of sweat that will run down your spine on a hot noonday in the windless lee of a tall chapel, wearing so much heavy textile. Even the embroidery lace was thick and substantial. This confection had been hand made for me by a friend whose own anniversary, the day before this wedding, meant she could not be with us on the wedding day.

My dad and I convened in the vestibule of the chapel and there wasn’t a dramatic moment between us. I wanted one, but somehow the business of the pageant took us away, and we walked down the aisle (never knowing a month later he would be undergoing a sextuple bypass after a heart attack).

My grandmother wore magenta.

My mother wore baby pink, and she and my mother-in-law looked so soft and so pretty.

BEx had, at that moment in his life, basically a dutch-boy haircut. After years of long, beautiful curling warm-blond hair, in that period and after what seemed to us a drastic cut, he looked like the guy on the label of Sam Adams bottles. In a tailed and cravatted tux, he just looked handsome. And nervous as hell. I looked – I don’t really know. Manic and rapacious kind of come to mind, but I may have a bias against my old self. Maybe.

Ceremony over, we took more photos and walked to the reception, which I remember mainly for my overly self-conscious feeling I was being SUCH a successful, grown-up polite hostess. I talked with everybody, smiling and unfailingly (my idea of) gracious, which I suspect was a bit on the arch side. What became of my husband, I have no idea; I was doing my duties, which had nothing to do with him.

I changed into my going away dress (a gorgeous cut, but a black dress I now remember as a haunted, bad-omen object) and hat. We drove away in dad’s red Fiat, top down, and NOBODY shaving-creamed the beautiful finish on that car. No shoes or signs either. Just two young people in a great car.

We went back to my folks hosue for a while, where we opened presents. That night, we stayed at the Embassy Suites right in town. Before embarking on what little passed for a honeymoon, we stopped at my cousin’s farm and picked up my brother, for a day at an amusement park – bro along because (a) I rarely saw him, he lived in Hawai’i back then, and (b) he and BEx liked each other, and could ride the rides I’d get sick on. I hardly really remember the day, but I think we had a good time. Then we drove up to DC to stop in what turned out to be the hotel in which Marion Barry had been busted for drugs a few years previously. ROMANCE. It was a room on an alley or some equally ugly outlook, and I ordered ROOM SERVICE as a deranged splurge.

The next morning at breakfast in their restaurant, BEx was away for a moment when someone came to the table, and I self-consciously remember saying the word for the first time: “My husband will be right back.”

We stopped for lunch at my aunt’s house, with her and one of my cousins; a gloriously tasty gorgonzola and walnut salad I still remember to this day amongst our summer treats.

Then, on the road, back to Ohio.

We did have time alone, but our wedding and honeymoon were family-packed; a varied, busy affair indeed.



If self-condemnation is clear and stark in these memories, it’s not out of regret for the marriage nor even living resentments – against myself nor anyone else. Maybe just a way to keep myself honest. But those days themselves – this day, this anniversary (which, from glorious and sunny in 1993, is now a stormy, dark, and muggy affair indeed) … they are almost as fine as the man who gave them to me, shared them with me.

Happy anniversary, Beloved Ex.



And happy anniversary to all those couples who, today, can finally marry one another in every last one of our fifty states. Congratulations, in joy and gladness.

The IMPORTANCE of Costume

One of the things about the clothes we wear, even people who aren’t obsessed with fashion or looks, is that for most of us, some events or feelings actually imprint themselves upon what we are wearing at the moment something happens. How many men do you know who have a “lucky” pair of shoes or shirt or the like? How many women wear some particular outfit because it was what they wore when they got a particular job or met someone or just had a great day the first time they took it out, and it still makes them feel like a million?

I am not even sure where its box is right now, and will never so much as fit an arm in the thing again; but my wedding dress is one of those artifacts of my life I’ve never found a way to “give up” … Not least because giving it to any relative of mine would bring with it the knowledge that I was a rotten bride and my marriage broke up, but also because I’m not close “like that” with any of my cousins, and my nieces don’t appear to be stacking up (ahem) to the same build I had (chest-less), and my style in 1993 probably isn’t to either of their tastes anyway. But that dress was made for me – literally built ONTO me, over the course of a day – by a friend I still consider deeply dear to my heart. It is a thing of gorgeousness, and its fate – preserved in a box, never to see the light of day – seems largely inescapable. Who would wear it? I can’t bear to cut it into crafts projects. It is the only garment in my life I ever expect to be one-and-done, so to speak; worn only one time and literally never again.

But even lesser things have their psychic cachet. I can tell you exactly what I wore to work on the first day of my last job; one, because Cute Shoes remarked on it to me as the first clue I had some style. And two: because it was the dress I was wearing when I was laid off, on a gorgeous day in spring, from the previous job – and that dress deserved better than that. It got it; I had hated previous-job anyway, and been looking for months before I won the layoff lotto at an employer that “never” did that. Except that one time.

Today, I wore a dress with an odd mix of emotional ghosts attached. It’s a tasteful number in beige and white, just longer than the knees, sleeveless but conservative, an empire waist with a tie, and a little pattern from there up. It made as good a choice as possible, during the heat of an August day, when I had to go to traffic court: and found myself served with a half-million dollar lawsuit.

The lawsuit is over, and at about the moment that happened, last year, I purchased my Prius – getting rid of a *car* freighted with too much emotional weight – and somehow this dress, the thing covering me at the moment I experienced the greatest horror and cowering fear in all my life, does not bring with it the latter emotional recall, but only its own light color and comfortable wear. Yet I can’t wear the thing without knowing its history.

I color that history now with gratitude – because that ordeal IS over, and I am intact. And it feels GOOD to know that, to remember the fear, to have that in the past. And the dress looks nice, its lightness speaks of spring and of summer, its conservative and flattering lines give me a power-boost at work, and the memory of the people who have said it is a nice dress feels good too. Even my MOM liked this dress. It’s a good dress.

And memory is good, and keeping myself honest, and being grateful – these are all important.

Some days, it can feel important just to look slick. Looking slick in comfort: bonus points.

But memory is always there. Of the important things – and the less-so. The day you were wearing the comfy jeans you like, walking alone on an autumn day, kicking leaves. The boots you had on once when you almost slipped on ice, and didn’t – whether they really saved you or not, you’ll always think of them as Good Boots, and you’ll have them repaired if you can, rather than tossing ‘em and buying new when the leather stresses or the laces go or a grommet on an eyelet comes loose. We can develop actual gratitude even for clothes, if the serve us well.

This is why the disposable clothing industry is sad (even aside from its implications for our natural resources).


I have a little jersey jacket. They’re wonderful, little light cardigans that can stretch a sleveless top’s seasonal functionality, or take us from chilly morning to warm afternoon with no changing or little fuss.

This one, I happened to buy the last time I saw Mr. X.

I’d arrived in the town where we were meeting, and it was early afternoon, and I didn’t “need” to check in immediately, so before I got to my hotel, I stopped at a Ross Dress for Less, and bought a couple things. A long blue sundress with beading around the neck; this little taupe cardi with a bit of a peplum and a nice drape.


The thing about jersey – particularly lightweight jersey – it’s a very flat fabric. If it develops a hole or even a run, there is little that can be done. And what heroic measures would even the best seamstress take with a $12 garment already three years old?

This little jacket is great, I use it all the time, through three-quarters of the year. It’s flattering, goes with many things, and stretches any number of outfits’ utility and versatility.

And it has a little hole in the back, in the peplum, in a broad stretch of fabric that wouldn’t lend well to mending even if I had the skills. A patch would be bulky and unsightly – and, indeed, any bulk over a weak spot could actually create weak spots in its own perimeter. This fabric is THIN.

And the jacket has had three years already – in a variety of garment generally manufactured to last six months or less. This is actually part of the design/making of disposable clothes. They’re meant to be ditched. Not fixed. Just replaced. There’s another cardigan jacket out there just as good; there are fifty; a hundred. This is meant to be tossed, replaced by new.


This is something I wore three YEARS ago, when last I saw the man who ruined me for all the other ones. When last I saw the friend in this world who knows me better than even my oldest. When last I saw his laughter, heard it, MADE it. He’s touched those sleeves, put his arms around the back of this jacket. Felt how soft it is, even as I have a hundred times since, without him.



There’s really no way, even with the finest needle, to pick that hole and pull it back together. It’s small, but it is a hole. It can’t really be fixed.

And yet. And yet. I resist throwing the thing away. It keeps me JUST warm enough, it looks good in front still.

If only I didn’t know it had this flaw. This unfixable, and un-hide-able, flaw.

Videos

I can't say anything about this clip except that it's beautiful ...

... and reminds me of Danny and Annie ...



This is a rerun for this blog, but a worthwhile one, especially after yesterday's anniversary.

A Thought ...

... sometimes, when you love someone enough to give your life for them:  it doesn't mean you die.

Author's Notes

Today - the people and their institutions.


THE FRANKS
The name of the Frankish empire, of France, of the French themselves, is thought to have come from the word francisca, most often translated as the name of the small throwing axe unique to the people who carried them, and who were themselves unique among the “barbarian” tribes of Late Antiquity.  These people valued their individual and their tribal independence to such a degree that freedom, itself, has at times been ascribed as the meaning of the term francisca, either in combination with, or actually instead of, its definition as an ax.

The term Frank was not clearly in use as early as in Clovis’ time, though some sources do appear to refer to francia as a place name.  I have used the name for the land (francia) and the name for the people sparingly if at all, due to some of these ambiguities, but also in keeping with the fact that nationalism of the sort recognized by a modern reader would have been outside the experience of the people represented here.


FRIEDELEHE
This concept of marriage (often called concubinage) may be the artifact of historical research, rather than an actual institution of the Franks and/or the period.  Most sources referring to it did so from the outside, and centuries after the fact.  However, the institution is enough accepted, particularly within the general audiences for historical fiction, that I preserved it as authentic and used it for the relationship with Evochilde.

Given Clovis’ apparent continence with women, and particularly given the prince’s status, it seemed appropriate to bestow on Theuderic’s mother a form of legitimacy and inheritance rights which is understandable to most readers.  For the record, the general definition is:

The term is thought to mean “love-marriage”, though this simplifies a more complex arrangement.  Its key defining quality is mutual consent – both man and woman voluntarily entered this relationship.  The friedelehe is thus defined as a concubine with acknowledged status—lacking the full rights of a wife, but holding a legally defined position both with the man to whom she voluntarily bound herself thus, and in his household.  Her children would have been legitimate, able to inherit, and would have been viable heirs.

Clovis is frequently alluded to, in much-later historical analysis, as having fathered Theuderic with a mistress or concubine, but sources fail to record specifics on the matter one way or another.  These presumptions may be easy simplifications.  See “Evochilde” note for particulars relating to this work.



As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes - Latin, Lover

Today we have a couple of the Latin terms used in The Ax and the Vase most frequently ... and a look at Clovis' friedelehe, lover, first wife - the fictional mother of his first son, Theuderic.

COMES
Companion, comrade (plural:  comites).  The Germanic concept of comitatus, described in Latin by Tacitus, describes a wider relationship with the special connotation that comrades in this relationship would never desert one another on the field of battle.  A king’s comites were the most trusted companions, but as seen here this is not a hereditary/noble title.

This sense of the title illuminates the extent of betrayal and cowardice in Chararic’s failure to support Clovis on the field; as well, perhaps, as the extent of punishment it was for Clovis to renounce his kinsman and comes, Ragnachar, for all to see.  The term evolved into the modern title, comte’, or Count.  It shares a root with the words committee and constable.


DOMINE
“My lord.”  I wanted to use a title clearly illustrating subjection, in the sense of a kings’ subject, without evoking too-medieval a tone.  Here again, as I adopted the theory (oft questioned) that the Franks of Late Antiquity, and Clovis himself, were heavily Romanized, I borrowed from Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series, and adopted this address.  It is intended to both evoke a certain tone, but also stand apart from terms used in much fiction of this genre and period.  It has been perhaps the greatest asset in my attempt to avoid too much “antique-speak” in the tone of the manuscript, while still contributing to the world-building of this alien time and place.


EVOCHILDE
FICTIONAL.  Though it is known that Theuderic I is not the son of Clovis’ queen, Clotilde, not a breath of evidence testifies to the nature of Clovis’ relationship with Theuderic’s mother, nor who she might have been.  The name Evochildis does appear fleetingly in some sources, but even this is unreliable.

After the cautionary example of his voluptuous father, Clovis’ sexual behavior is notably unremarked by sources.  It seemed correct to simplify the king’s amatory adventures in the form of strongly bonded relationships and, to some extent, silence.  Theuderic’s birth is recorded as having occurred in 484, well before the advent of Clotilde.  I saw no reason to complicate matters with towering romance, nor to dismiss the emotional importance of a first love either.  A friedelehe who dies in childbirth fits the timeline.  It also explains Theuderic’s clearly estimable position with his father, explains the absence of any other documented concubine or lover alongside the queen, aligns with the position Clotilde herself eventually seems to have held with the king, and finally, simply, reflects the realities of the time.  For a man to love a woman might easily have meant, in this age and for many thousands of years before and since, to kill her.  As, “to be the queen, she agreed to be the widow”, so both parties in sex, for centuries before our time, always knew:  to be a lover might be a bargain with mortality.



As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Cat's Eye(s)

For ten years, this was a catless household.  Sweet Siddy-La, for all her wonders, never was a cat girl, and she was blessing enough I was happy to be cat free as long as I was lucky enough to have her.  Every now and then, I'd think about how charming it is to have a pet you can scoop up and nuzzle, but I never felt deprived, not with her around.

In July, it'll be two years since I had a cat again, and Gossamer has been a pretty wonderful companion.  He and Penelope together are the source of more of my laughter than any other thing in the world.  They are dear in such different ways, and I'm so thankful I found each one of them.

One of the magical things about a cat is the high honor it can be to earn their trust.

Some people may be familiar with the way a cat can sit silently, regarding you, and make a point of squeezing its eyes shut for a second or two.  I wonder how many people know what this closed-eyes moment means, in feline parlance.

Many mammals express trust and/or submission by exposing their bellies - the ultimate expression of trust and acceptance of authority over themselves.  Cats are far less prone to expressing submission the way dogs may do with their humans - but they will sometimes tell you they trust you, which is as deep a communication as one creature can give another.  A cat who closes its eyes at you has given you the profoundest gift any of us can give:  its trust.

Image:  Wikimedia

Cats' eyes are known for their hugeness, their luminescence, their steady gaze.  They can be so intense, and those who know Gossie know his eyes are great green jewels.  As brightly as they photograph:  they look like that in life.  I used to joke, when he was a kitten and his coloring still softer and paler than it has become, that he had "snot-green" eyes.  But they've always been arresting little beams of light.  He's always had a remarkable little gaze.

By the time I adopted Goss, I had finally learned how to behave in forming a new relationship with a cat.  The main thing, even when they are VERY small still, is never to impose yourself on them physically.  You can offer pettin' and scoop 'em up twenty hours a day, as long as it's always an offer first, and you let them accept.

The amazing thing is how incredibly affectionate a cat you can find on your hands, when you don't start off your life with one, picking it up and snoodling on it, every time *you* feel like a snuggle.  How trusting a cat you can find before you, if you always, always - always - offer your attention openly, but stop just short of actually giving it every time, and let them consent, every time.

A hand held out, but not connecting for a pet or a caress, will attract a cat into a pet or a caress pretty much every time, if he has enough autonomy in the transaction that that last two or three inches is *his* to close, to make the connection.



It's like that, too, with writing - and, I think most particularly, with revising, with very fine polishing.

The work I'm doing now is not formation - not even restoration, but a revisiting.  This is the word that keeps coming to mind, when I describe it to anyone.

I'm not recreating what came before and I removed, but I'm opening a door to all the accumulated knowledge, the lost scenes, the descriptions and everything I know and did not use, or took out - and I'm finding that, what needs to be back in, is coming to the door, coming to me, without my having to really inventory the sum of what could be used, and wrestle it out of my head and onto the page.

The advantage of having worked on The Ax and the Vase for as long as I have is that I know its resources really well.  I live in a world littered with useful components, and if I don't force my way to one nifty thing or another - if I am open, exciting things will come.

Gossie knows I don't impose myself on his little body without his knowledge and consent.  Because of this, he's willing to close his eyes around me, because he trusts me with ... well, if not his person, then his feline, perhaps.  Because of this, I have a gregarious and friendly cat who is totally Mamma's Boy, even when neato new people are around who can give him exciting and new and yummy affection and admiration.  He's great with new people.  But he's more "my" pet than any cat I ever had before, and I've had some really nice cats in my day.

Ax seems, too, to trust me, and to come to me, at this point.  And as I type now, there seems to be a trusting little warm ball of grey nestling against my hip.  Aww.


It's ironic that learning how not to control something in life turns out to be the best way to get it to cooperate.

I really need to apply this to my human relationships ...

ACTIVE Voice(s)

The first moments of my day this morning were spent in the usual way, but with a soundtrack that nagged me almost from the moment I turned on the TV.  I tend to listen to old movies in the morning rather than watching any news; a holdover from a schedule that had me out of the house before any news even began airing, I've learned it is a far nicer way to start the day than with the important boxes ticked off - what will the weather be, what terrible thing has happened or is about to, what pontificating on the economy can we do at this hour?  NPR always tells me exactly what the "news" does, so first thing out of bed, a gaggle of people long since dead and gone acting out stories I don't even have to look at on the screen turns out to be a peaceable starting point.

Today, though, my peace was niggled.  One of the actors in the day's pre-code romantic comedy (Oh the scandal!  A wife trying to wile her husband back into her own arms!) had a voice it took me only syllables to know I had heard before, but which I could not quite identify for a few minutes.  That sort of thing can drive you to distraction at the best of moments; at six-thirty a.m. when you've hardly washed your face, it can topple you outright.

I did get to it, though.  The voice was attached to cartoons.  I knew that almost right off - a voice I had HEARD, but knew that was the end of it.  It wasn't a familiar "actor" I was hearing, but a voice-over.  I let it percolate as I brushed my teeth, coming in and out of the room, and once I was getting dressed for work I knew it wasn't just voice promotions or narration, but cartoon work.  And yet - not character work, not per se.  This wasn't Mickey Mouse talking to  me.  It was the voice, in a cartoon, that comments upon action otherwise scripted and drawn as pantomime comedy.  It was the very particular voice of the man who had explained to me what was up onscreen in enough cartoons to stick in my head, and I sensed it wasn't Looney Toons, but couldn't put my finger on it.  Thank goodness for TCM's movie schedule and this little career summary.  As coolness goes, he couldn't have much outdone this cultural contribution.

When I got into my car to go to work, the necessity to appear as if I am not entirely ignorant generally prompts me to listen to NPR rather than music in the morning, and I was rewarded once again with a voice from my past - but not one I had heard before, this time.  Athol Fugard was a playwright during a little-known (now) period in my life, when I believed I was going to go into theater.  *Master Harold and the Boys* and Zakes Mokai were the chords through which his voice played in my life, so I knew the structure and shape of his voice without knowing its sound.  Zakes' voice was quite fine enough, and I remember it to this day - but the words and the shapes were written by Fugard.

It got me to thinking (I'm nothing if not self-absorbed) about how many people will know the shape, the structure of my voice, who may never *hear* it either.  Less and less, perhaps, as the age of information progresses - yet I have always found some charm in not "knowing" the authors of the works I love best, and suspect that the sacred-space of reading may not drive all readers into personal relationships with authors.  One may hope, anyway.

It doesn't even take the publication of the novel to create this strange, intimate remoteness either.  I think of the friends I have made online - some, over the years, have become the dearest "real" friends I have; but most are people I will never meet in life -and am struck by the realization, not that we'll never see each other in this world, but that we will never hear each other.  There is a power in a voice, which brings to immediacy people we may never meet otherwise.  I had team members at my last job - the resume phrase was "highly virtualized team" - I never met at all, but we did talk, and many of us regularly.  The number of "my kids" I never met in person was remarkable, really - and that's far from my first at-bat on vocal relationships I'll never realize face-to-face.  Back when I was the assistant to the president of the largest of four nationwide divisions, I trained the other ADMINS without ever meeting them - and still think fondly of "my guys" whom I took such care of, but who never had occasion to come to our little satellite office to visit.  I've had countless encounters and acquaintanceships which took place through work and/or strictly by phone.

The girl from a finance company who own the loan on the windows I had installed  years ago is familiar to me by name and by speaking with her "Thanks, I don't need a new loan today, but you have a good one!"  The guy who's been calling, trying to sell my boss some service or other, who keeps his follow-ups regularly enough he feels "bad" for "bothering" me "all the time" is fine by me; we're both doing what we get paid to, and he doesn't treat me like a menial, so he gets the polite treatment.  The person who once called a job I had, to report a crime relevant to my employers, who was scared ... and whose fate I will never know, but which matters to me to this day ...


I have to imagine I'm not unique in this curiously modern development; that there are more voices in all our lives than we realize from day to day.  Then one voice pops up, saying something we don't recognize, but with tones so particularly familiar we're taken back into childhood ... and another voice reveals itself, thirty years after his words spoke to us first, through others ... and a day is filled with echoes of voices, and that is a good and interesting thing.  How many people do you speak with in a day, develop lightweight rapport with, perhaps even "get to know" over time, through repeated transactions ... whom you will never meet in the way we used to think of that word signifying?

How much does it matter, if you meet them - or hear them - or never do at all?  I can say I still care about my friends on Twitter, though there are few I expect ever to know outside of the internet.  I want the best for 'em, we find encouragement together, we're cheerleaders and shoulders and wisecrackers and pals.  It may not be friendship like I have with Cute Shoes, nor engender the compassion I have for my family - but it cannot be said I'm indifferent to the fate of those I know online, either.

Are you indifferent enough not to need to comment ... ?  Or does this happen to you, too?


Edited to add:  Smart Woman is apparently the movie I was watching, with the extraordinarily familiar voice of  Mr. Edward Everett Horton.  Remarkably:  his voice did not age from 1931 to 1964 - the latter of which was the period of his career from which I came to know it ...  (Hear here.)

Collection

Disorderliness in the soil, or sweet entropy ...

Fight or Flight in the Office … ?  This isn’t supposed to be a blog about work, but it’s often about people and our interrelation, and certainly about science and our behavior.  And so we include this link, which I found both vindicating (everybody in every cube farm knows of these facts, and some of my former colleagues in outright open-plan farms double-know them) and fascinating.  We all know what bugs us, but sometimes it’s good to see these things quantified.  Not that this leads us to much hope for change …

The Pronunciation of Smaug.  Need I comment?  (No.)

Beauty in terrible condition, from the Passion of Former Days photography blog.  There is perhaps as much fascination in the decay of artifacts as in artifacts themselves.

An unexpected peek into the (English) historical perpsective on same-sex marriage - yet another of those ideas/issues humanity didn't wait until the twentieth century to consider.  Courtesy of History Extra - which, while you're considering the link above, also has this piece on homosexuality during WWII.  "Lashes and slap" indeed - and that may not mean what you think.  (Then again, maybe it does.)

For those who admired the gorgeous needle work post (a beautiful video, worth revisiting), English History Authors bring us a new look at Stuart period needlework pieces, with a bit of the history of the stumpwork style - truly wonderful photos at the click-through.

Finally, the proportions (and omissions, yes) given to history and culture are a fascinating study in themselves, in this piece.  This link comes courtesy of Cute Shoes, who sent it to me ages ago and I've only just gotten around to finally watching it.  The images chosen speak to their editor, but they are just as vividly communicative to us.  It's an interesting piece, so I'm including it here (but the link above, should you have the framing issues I know vids come with on this page for some browsers, will take you to a nice copy as well).

Anniversary

Housecleaning has always been a rite, a worship, for me.  A thanksgiving, stewardship of what I have been given, what I always hope to earn, to deserve.

Here is a post about the people who were the vehicle by which I was given everything I have, everything I am.  About an artifact I hope my nieces will love someday, too.



Today is the fiftieth anniversary of my parents' marriage, and though dad's not on this plane to share it with us, mom and I had a brief celebration of sorts, doing a crossword together on the phone this morning.  We used to do them as a family, spanning the kitchen and family room, calling out clues and answers out loud; crosswords were a shared thing for us.  Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the first "word cross" puzzle, too.

I seem to like anniversary markers, though through most of my life I'd probably have said that sort of thing didn't really have meaning in itself.  But as I've grown a little older, time - and its observance (and marking) - means more to me, or perhaps I just recognize what it's always meant to me.  Mr. X being so far away probably throws this tendency into higher relief, but that's okay.

Today is also the eleventh anniversary of our first date.  I can still recall so vividly getting dressed for that date, our walking together to the restaurant - the very silly place we went - and his engaging telling of The Greatest Bike Wreck Ever Told, a story about X as a kid having what could have been a nasty wipeout and rising from it triumphantly unscathed.  To this day, that memory just makes me grin at what an adorable kid he still can be from time to time.  Not  a lot of people other than his kids get to see that side of X.  It's a nice side.

Mama gave me the wedding album when she remarried, and its images feel so close, for me - even though they all predate me by years.  Padded ivory vinyl and little brass fleur-de-lys.  "Wedding memories" in gold leaf.  Stiff, brass-cornered pages, black and white eight-by-tens, parchment leaves in between every image, every page.  Five little brass feet on the back cover of the book.  A somewhat tattered box.

The photo of my parents' hands on their guestbook, mama's pretty little fingers slim and unbent by arthritis, the ring slender and unadorned - no sapphires flanking the bright diamond , commemorating two children yet unborn and un-imagined.  The picture of my mom and grandma, the pastel hat grandma wore, which I have now, hanging in my dining room.  The picture of mom with my aunts, her sisters, putting on her garter, her appealingly turned ankle, her beautiful little sculpted heel - the wedding crystal and the Fostoria parfaits behind her on my grandparents' mantel, in front of the mirror mama bought for them, which now lives in my own bedroom.  What that mirror has seen.  I remember it, hanging always over grandma's living room, angled downward so we could always see so much, hanging so high.

One of the most striking images in the album is the one of granddaddy walking her into the church.  They're all black and white, and the wedding was in the evening in December.  A puff of wind took up mama's veil and the composition is full of movement, excitement, joy.  Granddaddy looks stoical, but mama is so young, so fresh, so pretty.  The veil rises up toward a deepening winter twilight, framing the dimmer image of my aunt in the background.  Mama, in white, is luminous, a shock of brightness.

My older cousins, little girls, white pinafores, white socks, and black patent maryjanes.  Adorable chubby knees.  Aunts and uncles.  My young grandparents, all of them, together.  These are the only photos I have of all of them together, and I so love these pictures.  I cry a little bit, that mom gave this to me.  This time capsule, this treasure.

This observation of time.  Of a date, so important.

If my mom was beautiful, my daddy was so handsome.  He was a furry fellow, and so dapper.  His hands were warm and manly.  His hair was amusingly thick, here - and yet, as he grew older, as his crowning glory grew thinner, he never looked any different to any of us.  He was a good looking man, they were a beautiful couple.  I had no idea of that, for so long, but once I realized it I have never been able to look back at pictures of them without seeing that anew.

Lace tablecloth, lace long sleeves, gleaming satin, a little linoleum-floored church hall.  Aunt V. putting her hands over dad's eyes as he slipped the garter off of mama's pretty leg, laughter, the sweet comedy of propriety meeting promise, and a couple I know were deeply attracted to each other.  Dad found mom utterly beautiful until the day he died; she always dressed and made herself up for him - until the day he died.

The bouquet, midair, the small group of smiling women - I don't know who caught it.  The photo captures the penultimate moment, the instant of promise the superstition carries, of potential and possibility ... whoever catches it, marries next ...

Mama in her pretty traveling suit and hat, little black shoes on her tiny feet now, her and dad's heads bowed as the rice flies around them, coming down the evening steps.  Out beside the car, the last streaks of light in the clouds above their heads - an image easily as striking, as gorgeous, as mom's entrance with my grandfather.  Her open, nervous, exciting smile.  Mom's smile always so wide.  Mom's smile always a defining feature of her - mom's laugh is so much a part of her self.  Like her, I know people identify me by my laugh.  Mom's youth, mom's face in love.

And the final picture.

Daddy, in the driver's seat, arm around mama, her smile rising above an almost ridiculously large pouf of corsage, the checks of her suit the only pattern in eight by ten inches of black and white and silver.

Daddy's smile.  His eyes all on her.  His peaked eyebrows, his cute nose.

His everlasting, abiding love.  My dad ... was beautiful.



Happy anniversary, mom and dad.

In Praise of the Book

This is a video about so much more than book binding ... but it is a wonderful look at book binding, indeed.




Courtesy of Janet Reid's blog, which is filled with excellent advice for authors, and delicious things like this.

... and here, we have a piece on something a little more than book lending, too.  Have you ever heard of the Little Free Library?  I hadn't either, but am so tickled that a friend of mine at work shared this.  This is one of those neat little internet things I would seriously love to bring into my real world.  I lean toward the Amish ones, but the Little Cedar houses are BEAUTIFUL ...
(Thanks to Justin S. on Twitter, for this little addition to the LFL info!)

Collection

I can't think of the right Weezer joke, but if you can please let me know.  If you want to destroy my sweater ... just don't because it's an Iron Age artifact and priceless  - and kind of heroin grunge chic, at that.  (Meanwhile *I* have a hell of a time finding a good boatneck!)

An interview with Ben Kane about Spartacus:  Rebellion.  (He's probably right about Spartacus' being the greatest slave rebellion in history, especially if fame has anything to do with it ... but I do have to say, Gabriel's rebellion is more meaningful for me.)

Marriage age in the ancient world from Leslie Hedrick - I'm staying tuned for further research here, but an interesting summation!  Can't beat her images, she has a great sense of humor.

Kim Rendfield discusses a court's progresses in the Carolingian world.  I remember reading about royal progress when I was a kid, in "My Enemy the Queen" - and being curious about why a whole palace-ful of nobility would run around like that.  It's clearer to me by now, but always interesting to learn more.  I had Clovis travel both with and without his court, and discuss the deputation of authority across his massively increasing realm a great deal as - ahem - things progress through the course of The Ax and the Vase.

Read an interview with Kristy Feltenberger Gillespie about her Jaded here!  Kristy is one of the Sarcastic Broads, and a friend.

At last!  A cookbook with recipes for herring, tripe, codswollop, and unicorn (complete with a great illumination for the latter)!  NOM NOM.

Last of the Unemployment Wine

It's hard to believe that it has been the better part of three and a half years since I was laid off from my last employer (along with a whole lot of other folks who were surprised to be part of such a move by one of the most legendarily "secure" employers in our whole state).  At the time, one of my managers was so outraged I was cut, he reached out to me personally and asked permission to come by.  We talked, and it was nice - we'd always had good conversations - and he even brought three lovely bottles of wine in thanks for all I had done.  He felt my job loss was an injustice ... but, the fact was, I had never felt a good fit at that place, and by the time they laid me off I had been looking for three months.  My loyalties at a place of work run deep, but a bad fit is a bad fit.

The wine, of course, coming on the occasion it did, got me a couple of jibes - "nice! you're unemployed, now you can become a wino!" - but I *have* always been grateful for the sentiment behind it.  I've been laid off many times (I might make quite the case study in our economy, since embarking on the embryonic idea of a career in 1986), but only a couple of my bosses have made a point of reaching out *personally* after the fact.  LinkedIn is all very well, but of course I mean something more substantial.

Anyway ...

This week has been oddly chopped up, and sad.  A neighbor and friend who's been fighting a pretty good fight for a long time indeed, has accepted a job in another state, and our whole neighborhood is sorry - we are losing her.

On Wednesday night, I went to her place for a "packing party" after work, and brought with me the last bottle of the unemployment wine.  It is, though I am no aficionado, a delicious red, with a clarity and lightness, almost a coolness about it - but not too dry, and very pleasing lingering flavor.

Yesterday, I took the day off of work to help her shrink wrap furniture, sort through the last of the pack-able items, roll up and bag rugs, and assist with the young men she'd hired as truck loaders.

Around three or three thirty, my mom came over; she has always liked Neighbor.  She knows how generous she has been, and we have shared a few holidays with her, too.  Mom found herself admiring Neighbor's home enormously.  It *is* a beautiful place, lovely and comfortable.  Mom started off by running an errand I had been slated to take care of, but was so grubby I could not take myself out in public to do it.  Then she stayed for hours.  Another friend came to help, after her own work day, and the three young men helping to move items into the truck were there for probably at least four hours themselves, well into the evening.

As a way to say farewell until we meet again (we all still hope for Neighbor's eventual return, including the lady herself), it was good for those of us there.  Sweat equity in friendship is emblematic of Neighbor's own generosity and the contributions she's made to our little community and to those around her.  It was also, very quietly between me and mom, the most appropriate way in the world for the two of us to spend the day that was my dad's seventy-sixth birthday.  Hard work in the name of helping someone we care for so much.  Dad would have been there too - and barring that, I know he would love to see "his girls" working as mom and I did.

I was pretty proud to be her kid yesterday.

Mom is a machine when it comes to a big job like this.  She and I have on a few occasions tackled things like pruning and trimming work at my house, or basement cleanup, and even as a lazy little underachiever, she taught me well  - I do work like my mom.  Already hours in even before she came into the picture yesterday, I didn't let up until about eight o'clock, and I thought to provide us a nice lunch as well.  But mom, at seventy-four (this month anyway), certainly had Neighbor and the other friend impressed.  She didn't hoist heavy tables nor exert too ambitiously, but she bagged and wrapped and devised "how should we do this piece" over and over, often ingeniously, and improving on the ways we were considering doing things.  She helped me finish off the shrink-wrapping of a gigantic painting, using the "excelsior" from a shredder as packing material to protect it.  Not all trash is trash ...  And more hands are always a treasure, for things like this.

I tried to remember to take a lot of pictures, and got some pretty shots of the gorgeous garden Neighbor has always cultivated.  Evening light in dazzling halo around glossy green berries.  A view through green leaves to my own little Pen-Pen.  The tiniest fragment of the progress as we made it.

This evening, I mowed my grass in the dazzling golden light of September then went over again to empty her fridge.  I sit in the dark now, and it is quiet, so quiet.

The wine is quiet, too.  But somehow it is bittersweet - even if it is still delicious.  Not the same, un-shared.

It isn't a bad thing ... but I feel the solitude of my life right now, as perhaps I haven't since Neighbor (and her handsome, wonderful dog) have lived here.  Not because we spent so very much time together.  But because she embodies community and neighborliness like nobody else I know.  With her gone, our little corner of the city really won't be the same.

Love and Market Boundaries

Tom Williams is sadly correct in a brief surmise about the limits of the market, as a reflection of the limits of our minds and hearts as consumers.  The bit about "Splash" is particularly depressing - but it is a worthwhile read.  So go read it, it'll only take a couple minutes.  I finally bought Cawnpore just to snub the damned market (and because I *am* interested - no matter how huge the TBR pile is!).

Pet Post

It's been a while since I went on a bit about the pets; probably a sign that we've grown accustomed to one another and the frustration, confusion, and happy wonder of new pets is giving way.  I am still fascinated by Gossamer and Penelope both, but far less confounded than was the case in our first few months together (particularly, it must be said, with Pen).

Gossy Mossy Poss-Foss is still quite the loverboy, still a soft and innately human-friendly kit, and I think he may have reached something like his full size now.  It's possible he's a good sized cat, but he is FAR smaller than my previous boys, and I like his (relative?) littleness.  I still call him Scoopy; he's certainly small enough to pick up any time, and Pen has LONG since left that possibility behind.  She was barely pick-up-able when I adopted her, and that was at least ten pounds ago; 45 pounds at her last weighing, and a stunningly muscular girl, she's too much dog for scooping (at least for me).

She shows other physical signs of maturation, too.  Her once bubblegum-pink tum has turned almost black.  This may be a canine indicator of sexual viability, I don't know, but it looks "older" to me in some ineffable way.  With her gains in strength, the tuck at her belly is less pronounced, but I will never have an overweight dog.  My dad said to me before he died, I should not let Siddy get fat, not feed her too much.  She stayed healthy for almost fourteen years, so I think I lived up to his exhortation.  Pen, I hope, stands to get as good a run.

RIP Bebe'

Sidney had a great ruff of a neck, thick with soft, loose skin and the deepest fur anywhere on her body.  Her chest was deep, too, and one of my favorite places to pet her.  This was where she was white, the four-quarter whorl where all her coat came together from four directions.  She was warm on her chest, very thick.

As thick as Pen-Pen is getting with her growth, she'll never have Siddy's barrel chest - nor that deep, powerful bark.  Her voice is more piercing, though I will say she's not prone to shouting with it a great deal more than Sid.  In this part of her body, she's positively skinny - and even her fur stays short at her neck, so she's not the great, soft thing to wrap your arms around Siddy was.  She's a funny combination of rather loose skin (I love taking the wrinkles on the top of her head in my hand) but relatively trim construction, in that her skin, though loose, doesn't feel "thick" in that way Siddy had.  Among other things, she's earned the description Pen-cil neck, because she looks so skinny to eyes accustomed to the Sweet La's big chest and neck.

I've talked before of her great intelligence, and she's borne out expectations since our early and difficult days together.  She will now "sit" and "down" for a hand gesture alone (at least if she is not too wildly distracted; yet she has improved, in that she'll do it now with *some* other things going on).  She can "down" without sitting now, too, and we practice both in lots of circumstances - in the house, in the yard, with others around, on our walks.  Her ability to respond consistently is kind of exciting for me; I'm not the world's great dog trainer, but she is one of the world's great pups, and I know how lucky I am in that.

"I will EAT YOU, Sunshine!"
The BEST photo of Penelope yet

It is still hard on my back keeping her to heel.  Being a puppy, and incredibly enthusiastic - and extremely strong (she is already more powerful proportionately than Siddy, whose top weight was 60 pounds) - there are times she is a pretty intense strain on my back.  With age, I think she'll calm down (just as Siddy did), though I don't think it's possible to ever communicate to her the physical effects on me of her behavior.  After the worst of the back injuries of last year, I think Sid developed some instinct of gentleness - but only to an extent (and I have to say I hope I don't endure an injury like that again, so obvious even a hare-brained puppy can sense it!).  She was also ageing so much last year, she got awfully gentle just with her own body, sometimes so much so it tore my heart to shreds to watch her move.

Penny's first pretend birthday (we don't know for sure, and she may actually be one or a few weeks older than I know) was April Fool's Day.  Happy birthday, baby girl.  May Day will be Goss's day.  Pen was allowed on the couch, and got treats.  Goss, I don't know.  Certainly treats, at least!

Gossamer, for his quiet and entirely adorable part, once he got big enough and coordinated enough to be most typically cat-like, of course takes up a lot less philosophical ink.  Let it be said, he takes up no less of my goopy old heart, nor of my mental real estate.  His ability, though, to just hew to the most ideal possible of feline behavior is incredible.  He's friendly with people (though large numbers of them do keep him *slightly* standoffish - nowhere near the level most people ascribe to cats, though), he's a hell of a cuddle-bug, and he's still every iota as cute and hilarious as he's ever been.  He, Penny, and I have an awfully nice groove going, and I love the bits out of both of them, incessantly.  I find myself on Twitter, having to restrain from constantly posting about the cuteness I must endure, and it's pathetically difficult sometimes.

Pen and I have our "things" - she gets to go outside, training, she and I go for walks, she gets her share of one on one attention - and Goss and I have little silly games we play without her (making the bed every day - he gets to be on furniture and sleep on the bed with me if he wants to) - but Penelope is definitely the jealous one.  Her confidence level in our home is high enough it doesn't seem to actually get to her, but - yeah - she's the LOVE ME baby of the two.

Napping at my feet right now, cool on the hardwood floor on a strangely sultry day for it being so windy (the storm *still* hasn't come, though for three hours it's looked like it wanted/needed to), I watch her feet twitch in a dream.  Her breath is satin-smooth and silent.  Goss was on the Queen's Chair a little while ago, but I would bet is laid out on the dining room table now.

Yes, the cat gets on the counters and on the dining room table.  So-eth it go-eth, mom and anybody else who might look that askance.  This is our house, and I clean it.  If it's cool enough for him, and high enough he can see out the window, he is allowed on the dining table.  :)  It's not like I could stop him anyway.  Some cats you can train.  I've been busy with the dog (and I know better than to leave the butter out for him to play with) ...

Handsome Little Man

Yeah, he's blurry, but I like this pic anyway.

Ford Not Prefect

A good post on the relationship one man has with his truck - but, really, I just love the title.  Heh.

Cross-Referencing Life

It started this morning, when on "Smallville" the egregious Lois gives Clark a speech about how the yet-unnamed, and yet-unknown-to-her hero (at this point in the series, cringingly referred to as The Blur) PROTECTS her by never revealing his identity.  Oh, but it wasn't about to stop there.



Today is my dad's 75th birthday.  He may not be with us to celebrate anymore, but to say "would have been" his birthday is dirty to me.  The day still is.  He just isn't the physical constant, with us, we once had.

I streamed up some Neil DeGrasse Tyson tonight - and the ep of Nova Science Now Netflix had on top of its stack, happens to be "Where Did We Come From?"  An apt choice - we grew up on Nova, on PBS, on Sagan and James Burke and learn-y stuff and adventure-y stuff like Wild Kingdom and National Geographic.  Not even all of it televised, either, kids.

Toward the end of this episode, we have a look at the science of memory, and a pretty good discussion about the nature of identity and humanity, in the context of memory making us who we are.

"Imagine:  you're an adult person, and you spent a lot of time accumulating an identity.  You might not like that identity ... but the very notion that you could literally remove all of it--I don't know what you would be.  I'm not sure you'd be human." --Andre Fenton

Some of the nastiest disagreements I have ever had in my life actually turned on the morality of this question.  Specifically, disagreements with Mr. X.  He's not, shall we say, the most self-satisfied person I ever met.  On occasion, he has wished it were possible that I could be delivered of ever having known him.  He thinks this is the height of morality - the desire to remove a stimulus or stressor which (from a certain, limited perspective) is a negative.

To my mind, of course, the loss of self that represents is unconscionable.  It's all very cute for sci-fi or magic to provide "solutions" for perceived victims of evil, saving them from the memory of an event ... or a person.  Superman thinks he's a great guy for PROTECTING (fostering the ignorance of) the inferior (female) Lois.  The girl in Harry Potter like mind-wipes her parents, apparently quite the heroism (I seethingly care for no part of at all).

We all lie to save people.  But to actually usurp from those around us ... *who they are* - by removing their experience of tragedy, betrayal, hatred, heartbreak - there is no standard by which this can be made whole, by which this can be made morally acceptable.

X has pointed out, as I should here, his impulse is never to actually DO this thing.  Were there such a power (don't ask Dr. Fenton for the "help"), he knows it would be un-wieldable.  And so it seems to him that to be a *theoretical* good, a desire for someone beloved not to have to experience pain.

This is how we misjudge ourselves.  Life can't be conducted without pain - and life without the experience of X (as he knows) isn't worthy of the name.  I don't mean that I would kill myself if I hadn't known X:  I mean that what knowing him has given me (far apart from anything HE has, directly, given me by volition) is as important to me as what knowing my dearest, oldest friends, what knowing my family endowed me with.  The aspects of the person I've become in the ten years since I met him are peerlessly valuable.  The person I am now is not merely someone I would not give up, but is a self I would give my all to defend.  The very idea of alteration, of loss, of all these past ten years have made of me is offensive beyond almost anything else I can conceive.

And I have a high threshold of offense.  It takes a great deal to put me in the state.



Today is my dad's birthday, and even if I don't get to talk with him anymore, the woman I am is made and honed in tribute to My Father.  I'm human, and flawed, and weak, and manipulative ... but I am proud of those parts of me beyond these things.  Proud of the offering I have become - and unashamed that my offering is not just to my father, but made through every single day, in almost everything I do.