gumption

[fflo]

that's a good word, isn't it.

i won $3 last night at the pool table from a somewhat goofy sad happy affable tall guy, funny, mostly, with his bravado that "it's raining men" came out in '81. which was when he did, too. came out. get it? ha ha. anyway i thought the song was from later than that, thinking back on the grainy projected video in the bars. finally somebody i tried hitting up for it had the internet in his pocket & i prevailed--- it was '82. phew. i was thinking more like '85. but i took the money.

affable guy was in a 10-year relationship right after he came out. suggested that might be part of how he's alive today.

then there was the capricorn in the necktie, and the pisces & the cancer i liked so well. and the others. what got into me, i wonder. conditions were right, i guess.


barely made it to shmizla's yoga expo today. shmizla is quite something, it turns out, in yet another way.

i had been wiping out the lazy susan, having emptied it completely, getting down to business about those particular cobwebs i'd only half-assédly gotten after before. suddenly i thought i oughta check the time for the bending bodies. it was only 15 minutes off. all the stuff i didn't toss is still out in the kitchen. gonna be a two-day thing after all.


in recent weeks the idea behind one particular expression has come to me several times. i give you the idea to meditate upon, should you think it might serve:

look: again, it's that —
the baby with the bath.
the baby with the bathwater,
baby with the bathwater.

and there it is again,
the baby with the bath;
the baby with the bath,
again.


was thinking this morning how i've got some stuff to work out. trying to hope i'll rise to it. to them, rather--- more than one it. i might well turn out to have the energy, the faith, the courage, and the gumption. it's the will. cuz it is optional. and it's so tempting just not to. not to cinch yourself up, muster what you've got, and give it a go. if you don't have to. since you don't have to. unless you do pretty much have to.

it's like this ("what---vague, double-talky & confusing?" well, yeah!): there's dealing, and there's dealing. i'd like to deal. now that i can kinda deal, much of the time. if you don't go ahead and really deal, the only way to keep dealing is to deal away all the real-deal dealing. and be left merely dealing.

i think it'd be easier if i had a belief in my strength of character that went back a long way. the roots of that thing aren't very deep in me at all.

gumption = faith + energy + courage?

if you've got the answer on that equation, maybe you can also point me to which pocket it is i've got the will stuffed in.

it's like a lighter. you know you've got it somewhere. you just had it a minute ago, didn't you?

chuckle chuckle, ha.

Comments

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

I really like that equation. I think you've got it nailed.

(Apropos of nothing except that equations are involved, my friend Mark once had a funny dream that he wrote about on his site: "I had a hilarious dream last night, though it presented itself as a nightmare. Let's discuss it. I looked at my chest and noticed, amidst my manly collection of hair, that two PLANTS were growing out of my chest! I was of course very upset and tried to get in touch with my doctor, but it was so late in the day, they were closed. So I had to go to a science class and ask if anybody could explain it. Luckily, somebody could. Apparently a scientist had recently discovered that the equation for this biological anomaly was as follows: OVERACTIVE BRAIN ACTIVITY + TOO MUCH FUDGE + SPRINGTIME = PLANTS GROWING OUT OF YOUR CHEST. The cure apparently just involved coating the local area with benzoyl peroxide and squeezing the plants out as one might do a pimple. At this point, a few other people in the class admitted that they too had plants growing out of their chest, but they had been too ashamed to admit it. One guy had a veritable GARDEN under his chin!")

Back to the point, it might sound annoyingly twelve-steppy to say, but I find one helpful trick in dealing with difficult problems that you know you have to deal with is to let go of the result. Sometimes, I find it oddly freeing to believe that life is inescapably capricious; thinking about how many plans I've made that have gone awry helps boost me to do things that I think will be unpleasant-but-necessary. If things that are supposed to go right go horribly wrong, surely some things that you expect to go badly will go better than you could've hoped! There's no way to know, so sometimes all you can do is just go, y'know?

Good luck. You're smart, strong, and awesome, so you're going to be fine no matter what!

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

OVERACTIVE BRAIN ACTIVITY + TOO MUCH FUDGE + SPRINGTIME = PLANTS GROWING OUT OF YOUR CHEST.

I like it!

thank you

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

for coming and for watching and for engaging. it meant a lot to me, as it always does in situations where support systems make themselves evident and one has no access to the conventional ones.

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

i think it'd be easier if i had a belief in my strength of character that went back a long way. the roots of that thing aren't very deep in me at all.

Don't know if it helps at all, but I have a belief in your strength of character that goes back a long way. You are one of the few people I know who lives without the hypocrisy that most of the rest of us are steeped in.