late. sloppy tired. sad.

[fflo]

i'm a bit run-down tonight, i fear. the computer fates just sent a little angel my way, though. twice. yet i am sad.

it's not just the calling off decision i took earlier this week, though that may likely set the groundwork for this state. i'm sure my not being in full fine fiddle is in play, too.

my recent superstitiousness surrounding hunches, or the flavor of the air, or the feeling in the gut, the chest--- whatever it's about, it strikes me, after it's done doing what i put it there to do, and as superstition should at this point, as a bad sign regarding recovery that's supposed to be accomplished by now.

several of the silly thoughts i've been thinking would be so childishly chagrinningly embarrassing here that i think we're all better off with me not "sharing." (sharing like sharing the plague.)

i've been thinking tonight that i'd really like to make this new year feel fresh and clean, with me standing in the place where i live and the time that i'm in and looking forward to the year's unfolding. i'm not jewish, but the new year so VERY starts in the fall. day after labor day, specifically. it's not just my academic family origin, or my own many early years of schooling around that calendar; it's that fall is, of course, the true season of rebirth. to a seasoned, salty poet, vs. a simple-headed seasonal naturist. fall is rebirth of the 'rebirth of wonder' sort, cuz it's only in fall that we love a season the way we do when we can smell long, cold winter in the air. autumn is the season that comes around again and reminds us, afresh and anew, that there's a limit to things coming around again: the primal notion, to my mind.

fall is the season of rebirth and renewal for those who don't deny death.

maybe there's something in that line i can use.

Comments

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

fall is good. it is for those who can stand to wait again. or to see unqualified happiness not come around again. this is because they have and savor (again!) history.

i'm sure we'll be seeing each other on the equinox, the first point of Libra. we'll celebrate our years together.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

yes. let us. indeed!

i can barely wait for the nip in the air to make me feel alive in contrast to something just by standing out of doors.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Recovery never really follows expected schedules. And sometimes, especially in the case of really big things to recover from, it leaves us . . . not necessarily "unable to ever recover," but often just a significantly different person after recovery than we were before the trauma.

I don't very much relate to your experience of just waiting for a feeling to happen with someone, because what I wait for is certain previously-decided-upon facts which, if I find them, will persuade me to decide to start the feeling. However, the specific facts I have waited for have arguably never been altogether well-chosen, since finding them does not seem to have usually led to much happiness. Though I often blame that on my having given in to a feeling when most of the facts were present but one or two important ones were still missing.

But also, arguably, the fact that I try so hard to focus on facts and not feelings is a response to past traumas and a way in which my recovery from them (primarily from Christine) left me a significantly different person than before. So, am I still not really fully recovered, ten years later? Or am I recovered and wiser now? I'm not sure I'll ever have an answer for that. I'm not sure there is an answer.

I'm possibly rambling irrelevantly here, so I'll stop now. But I'm possibly rambling vaguely relevantly, so I'll post it on the off-chance it's thought-provoking in one way or another.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

you'll have to pardon me being cunty here---in the sense of 'ballsy' switched up, not the common nasty petty thing--- cuz of course i don't know you 'cept maybe from Adam, but i feel compelled to wonder (sort of) aloud whether you don't figure, in your fact-checking heart of hearts, that the fact thing isn't a strategy for getting closer to others you stand a decent chance of trusting, vs. a stategy not to get close at all, including to the sufficiently high percentage fact list passers. you know, close enough to be wounded in the heart, and not the disgruntlable philosophical stance.

as i say, i don't know you enough to have a whit of support for such a notion. it's just what popped into my head reading your words here.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I'm not at all offended (and I promise not to be, even after I figure out what you're trying to say), but I'm afraid you used rather too many double negatives there for me to be able to follow what you're saying. Are you suggesting that my fact-checking is or isn't a way to avoid getting close to anyone at all?

[(Anonymous)]

ah, grasshopper copy editor, counting the negations ...

which do you think?

[fflo.livejournal.com]

that was me there, of course

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I think you are being quite insufficiently cunty, not even daring to clarify what you're trying to say even after all the disclaimers! I'm not that scary, am I? I don't think I make a habit of exploding anytime anyone ventures an excessively timid psychoanalysis of me . . .

I'm going to guess, just because I've decided it seems slightly more likely that you'd be so deathly afraid of offending me with this suggestion rather than the other one, that you were suggesting (perhaps it would be better described as avoiding suggesting) that my fact-checking is a way to avoid getting close to anyone at all, including to the sufficiently high percentage fact-list passers.

The main problem with that possibility is that I'm not sure how to reconcile it with the fact that it certainly seems to me that I have made and still am making extreme and vaiant efforts to get close to the sufficiently high percentage fact-list passers. That's not to say that the possibility necessarily can't be reconciled with this; it's just to say that I don't personally see any way of reconciling it.

Actually, to me what is most interesting here is that my focus on facts apparently comes across to you as so strange that you would seek explanations for it, rather than seeking explanations for your own focus on feelings (although admittedly, in my original comment, I deliberately presented my focus on facts as being possibly in need of explanation and/or criticism). Really, I don't think my fact-list approach is anywhere near as different from most people's as it might at first seem. I think that really most people have a fact-list; it's just that they're not conscious of their fact list, and what they actually pay attention to is their feelings. But feelings have to come from somewhere, don't they? And I think the feelings come from noticing when people meet a predetermined fact list. For example, many people are attracted to people of certain age ranges, socioeconomic statuses, physical body types, and (and this is where many people's fact lists are probably rather more intelligently chosen than mine) behavioral patterns. These are fact lists too, whether or not the people who use them are actually conscious that they are using them.

I think what actually is unusual about my approach is not the presence of a fact list, but rather the specific items I've chosen to put on my fact list, which considerable evidence unfortunately indicates have not tended to be well-enough selected so far, and also the fact that I tend to have a rather longer fact list than most other people seem to have. I think that these aspects of my approach are worthy of questioning. But I think that focusing just on the mere fact that I have a fact list at all is really just failing to realize that in actuality, most people have one.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

ah, but you got me even though i didn't clarify overtly... cuz you're analytical! i actually thought it was maybe a little cunty in the old-fashioned sense to call you 'grasshopper' --- ha.

you know---i feel compelled to point out again that i don't know what you do of course---there's so much you've touched on here, i could really go on, i'm sure, in my vapid generalizations. ---ohp, there's bumping me off my session on this machine. i'll be back! please hold.

okay.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

first: though i'd generally prefer not to offend you, i'm hardly deathly afraid of it. sometimes you wax hyperbolic, i'm sure you'd admit!

the focus on facts, as we're calling it here, doesn't seem strange to me for its unfamiliarity at all, or for absolute contrast with my own generally accessed mechanisms when responding to and evaluating people. i mean, sure, we all have our dealbreakers---halleloo. some of us have longer lists than others. some of us have lists so long and specific that so many are excluded you might as well have walls and a moat. for me it became clear early on that it's already such a subset of humanity that i stand a chance of being truly fond of--- i want to work to keep myself open to appreciating as many of those folks as i can. 'sides, it's good exercise, keeping the heart open to others.

to me it's a fuzzy continuum, how much you invite/allow various people in, presuming they show some interest, which of course they're more likely to do if it seems as if they may garner at least partial entry--- and if it seems, every bit as much and maybe more, that you're interested in making a venture of your own into their territory. it's trust we're talking about here, isn't it, really? the longer the hard-and-fast checklist, generally, i'd wager, the less freely able to give it a go trust-wise-speaking.

But feelings have to come from somewhere, don't they? And I think the feelings come from noticing when people meet a predetermined fact list.

who the hell knows where they come from? we can venture pretty solid guesses about some of it, but it strikes me wiser to throw up the hands on this one, apart from the lark of speculation. also strikes me wise to acknowledge that we have many ways of knowing, and complicated relationships even with our own instincts. in short i think feelings come from a lot more than predetermined fact lists, regardless of the extent to which we contemplate our own lists, or try to codify them. trust issues and control issues being so intertwined, sure seems plausible to me that to insist too on one's list, and to concentrate on refining it & contemplating it--- well, that seems like a different kinda business from the kinda business of luv. even a contradictory kinda business. and a terribly cautious business. which is also a contradictory kinda business.

i know what it is to be caught up in the head. the list is in the head. it is indeed good practice not to lose the head in forming connections with others. but the dear dear connections don't come from the head, even if you can tag 'em later with reasons they make sense. and sparks--- sparks are so delightful that we want to contemplate them and think on 'em just to experience them some more in another way. there are all kindsa theories. but i don't think you increase your chances for joyful intimacy by going over the requirements for the job, and in fact i can see more than one way that you might well diminish 'em significantly by putting the focus there.

don't think i think i'm analyzing you. i'm just reacting to your words.

part 1

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

That was quite a hold time. I think your LiveJournal has great potential to become a corporation!

"for me it became clear early on that it's already such a subset of humanity that i stand a chance of being truly fond of--- i want to work to keep myself open to appreciating as many of those folks as i can. 'sides, it's good exercise, keeping the heart open to others."

Getting along with people who disagree with me is all very well for friendships, and I do specifically make an effort to keep people around me who don't agree with me - that's what my rule about "everyone on my mailing list who adds me automatically gets on my LJ friends list" is for, making sure that I have to continue interacting regularly with people who disagree with me on various issue.

But when choosing someone to be my very most trusted confidante, ehhhhh, sorry, but the idea of having someone who would not be on my side on major political issues that really really matter to me just definitely does not sound acceptable at all to me. I don't know why it is that this matters so much more to me than it seems to matter to most other people - maybe it's just that we all tend to feel a need to improve in some manner upon our parents' marriage, and my parents have a very good marriage, so really the only area in which I ever saw room for improvement (and I definitely resolved for most of my life that I wanted to improve upon this) is that my mother is a Democrat and my father is a Republican, and even though they're both rather centrist and thus have more politics in common with each other than either of them has with me, I just really could never understand how they could put up with such an arrangement.

Besides, isn't it kind of important to choose someone who you won't just start out thinking is the best person ever, but will be able to keep thinking is the best person ever, even while you meet many more people in the future? Even if I could temporarily persuade myself that it didn't matter that someone believed the world was created when the Cat Deity hacked it up as a hairball because the person didn't make a habit of talking about their ridiculous beliefs all the time, sooner or later I would get into an argument with some other religious nutcase who did talk about their beliefs, and I would be totally fed up with the ridiculousness of knowing that 92% of the world holds beliefs that completely disregard all evidence and critical thinking entirely, and I would want to be able to go to my partner for comfort, and having to finally face the realization that my partner was actually one of those 92% would severely shake my ability to intellectually respect this person . . . and then the next time I met a nonreligious person who had enough other traits that I really liked, I would be very struck by the realization that I had a lot more intellectual respect for this person than I had for my partner. And I can't think of anything more completely totally fatal to my desire to be in an intimate relationship with someone than a realization that they're not really all that high on the list of people in the world whom I intellectually respect.

part 2

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Exactly the same process would happen if I chose a partner who differed from me in any of the other deal-breaker ways that I require. There are certainly some areas in which people can disagree with me plenty without losing my intellectual respect, but the areas that I've spent half a lifetime thinking over my opinions and am very, very passionate about are not among them, and there happen to be quite a few of those.

I'm willing to believe that some people are better at intellectually respecting those who disagree with them on their pet issues than I am. But I suspect that a larger portion of the difference between them and me is that having really high intellectual respect for their partner is just less important to them than it is to me. That's all very well for them, but I don't think it'd work for me. I can't even conceive of being happy that way. If my only choices are between singlehood and a relationship with someone whose intelligence does not impress me, then bring on the singlehood. I mean, I love the idea of getting married someday, but the whole appeal of getting married is the idea that I'd be in love with the person, and the whole definition of being in love, for me, is that I am dazzled by someone else's brilliance. So the minute you suggest that I should settle for anything less than dazzlement, all you're talking about is a miserable loveless prison that has absolutely no appeal whatsoever.

"it's trust we're talking about here, isn't it, really?"

Actually, I'm not sure that we are. I think it's primary respect that we're talking about. Because if the question is whether I trust people to behave like decent human beings toward me, to do their best not to hurt my feelings, and so on, then I'm pretty sure my tendency is to trust practically everybody, pretty damn near instantly, with hardly any question-asking or getting to know them first at all (which is precisely what gets me into trouble later when they all too often turn out to be jerks).

This is, again, why I am perfectly okay with being friends with people who don't meet my fact list qualifications. Granted, they need to meet one or two of them to be of any particular use to me as emotional supprot or understanding at all, but they don't need to meet a whole lot of them. This is because when choosing friends, it is only important to me that they be decent human beings who can sort of generally understand me, rather than that they be the world's foremost geniuses who dazzle me with their unsurpassed brilliance.

Re: part 2

[fflo.livejournal.com]

well, uh, good luck with that.

Re: part 2

[fflo.livejournal.com]

by which i don't mean to be a shit, btw--- i do wish you luck.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Every season of changing weather is a chance for renewal. The weather can grind your down into a rut. But the first frost, the first change in the leaves, the first snow, the first thaw, the first day without a coat, the first green, the first night it's warm enough to leave the windows open, the first day it's cool enough to leave the windows open--each change is a chance to clear your head.

Same for the artificial calendar. The first day of school is a new beginning, the first day of no school is a new beginning. Every crazy holiday, whether it comes from your grandparent's religion, or national tradition, or hallmark, or some goofy website, is an opportunity for a new start.

You take whatever the calendar throws at you, and once in a while, something will do you good.

As an amateur astronomer, here's what late August throws at me:

In the wee hours of the morning, before dawn, the temperature reaches the dew point. Dew, of course, makes the grass wet, and it soaks your shoes. By this time the mosquitoes have gone, and if you are out where it is dark enough to see the stars well, it is quiet. Occasionally you hear a car passing from an early riser. It's damp, and a bit chilly, but if you exert yourself, you'll get hot fast enough. It's still summer, but in the east, stately Orion is rising. Orion, the most striking of constellations will be reigning over the winter sky soon enough. By then, it will be too cold to lie out and take him in. The Great Nebula in Orion is the most amazing thing to see in a small telescope, but it's dim and subtle and requires patience. In a few months, it will be too cold for patience. This morning, Orion is too low in the sky, and the dew is forming on the eypiece and fog is coming, so for all your patience, you can't see so well. As Orion rises, the sky lightens, and this last summer night is coming to an end. As you pack up the telescope, you think you catch the first sniff of fall.

The telescope is wet as you put the tube and the base in the back of the car. When you turn the key, the sound of the engine startles you. Driving through the countryside, Ground fog appears in the low areas. It gives the impression that half the land has been flooded by a lake of fog. Sometimes you get a clear view to the east, and as the pale blue dawn grows, Orion is harder and harder to see. YOu get home, and all you can see are a couple of the brightest stars, and whatever bright planets are out. Your face feels hot. Is it the cold? Is it windburn? I call it starburn--exposing your skin to the rays of a thousand suns for hours on end must burn. Sleep comes easily.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

wow, peter. i started to put some of your first paragraph in italics to then say wow in particular to, but i didn't want to leave out any of it.

it's not everyday a body gets comments like that one. thanks!

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you liked it. Sometimes I get kind of verbose in other peopele's journals, and I'm afraid I might be seen as taking over their space with my off-topic rants.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

don't worry about that with me

i like comments--- don't you?

if people don't want comments, let 'em make entries uncommentuponable!

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

Every season of changing weather is a chance for renewal.

I whole-heartedly agree. And I second fflo's "wow"!

[psychesdesire.livejournal.com]

I'm stealing that line...
I have been feeling the same way for a bit and with my Jewish tradition I have the New Year starting soon as well...May the new year be a good year for us!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

May it indeed!

Poem for the New Year

[schroederjt.livejournal.com]

http://www.upress.pitt.edu/htmlSourceFiles/pdfs/0822955806exr.pdf

It's by Robin Becker, and I think it shares a certain spirit with your post.

Re: Poem for the New Year

[fflo.livejournal.com]

geezus holy mutherpalooza

thanks, j

i thought i dug the opening and then i got to "Now you surrender/the pleasure of description...", and i forgot about the lines that had gone before

which is also maybe in the spirit here referenced

Re: Poem for the New Year

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

Again, for the second time during this post/comments/whatever, I say "wow."

Re: Poem for the New Year

[fflo.livejournal.com]

seriously!

occasionally i get comments back like these that make me really glad i posted something about what i was thinking/feeling. funny how sometimes you touch a chord with people. er, 'ring a nerve'?

[trollhagen.livejournal.com]

fall is the season of rebirth and renewal for those who don't deny death.

Interesting! Fall has always been my favorite season. Even after I became an avid gardener, and thusly should cling to summer, I don't. Fall is still my favorite season.

I'd never thought of it as starting anew per se, but I guess in many ways it is. And I certainly don't deny death. Plus, a garden doesn't die, it just rests.

About your comments back and forth with the other LJ user, I thought it was fairly obvious what you were saying--that she herself must look inward and see whether her fact-checking is true to her nature and if so, whether it is in fact a way to keep people at bay or whether it's a way to justify falling too easily for someone and if so, does she let people in too easily? At least that's how I read it. And these are questions we should ALL ask ourselves, really!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

yeah--- i've got to answer her latest, and hope i get a chance before mallet's creek closes (it's so muggy at home right now). these days part of my take on stuff now and then includes some (rebellious to my upbringing) idea that we fool ourselves with our heads more tragically than with we do our hearts. and all the while figuring it's in the interest of banishing foolishness.

wonder if i'll be calling myself a gardener in a few years. sure have become more of one than i ever woulda thought i would. even though cosmonaut volkov fell over (it was like a launchpad disaster), he's showing signs of recovering from his second major trauma of the year. oh, and his fruit has been tasty this weekend!

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

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<<Interesting! Fall has always been my favorite season. Even after I became an avid gardener, and thusly should cling to summer, I don't. Fall is still my favorite season.>>

I think the older I get, the more I appreciate the bland heat of summer on my muscles and bones, whereas a few years ago I would have said spring and fall were my favorites. I am somewhat of a beginning gardner myself, and I was just thinking the other day that if you're a perennial gardner, as I am, fall is very much the season of renewal because fall is the best time to move plants, divide them, and put in new perennails and trees. So you are "planting your seeds" at that time and hoping for the best, and you will wait through winter to see what happens. And then the earliest, coldest, muddy pre-spring days when you see a shoot of green coming up where you've almost forgotten that you placed a plant (or a bulb, more likely, if it's that early) make you feel happy and proud.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

back at the office now, in the overdone a/c (and on a cooler morning), i feel ya on the muscles and bones! (been walking around with a weird muscle problem in my upper back on one side for, like, two weeks now--- urg.)

bulbs--- yes. maybe i'll manage to try that this year. i think i've finally gotten it in my brain where a** a**drew had her various whatsits. but they travel, so sometimes a crocus or daffodil appears someplace entirely removed from the lot. squirrels? i dunno. 'sfun, though.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Just yesterday I noticed some yellowing in the super-tall maple outside this window. A few leaves toward the fringe, and a few more way up high.

Glad you got away for the weekend.

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

Where I live (Maryland), it was in the 80s as it got dark last night, and very humid. I feel spoiled at being able to walk out of my house in shorts and a t-shirt at any time of day. it can't last. yesterday some of us went tubing. the day was cloudy, but it was so warm and humid that we mostly weren't cold. the potomac river near harpers ferry was like a pool in temp. some leaves are turning, but someone told me that at this point it's not a "fall thing" yet, but rather it's because our summer was for the most part a drought.