The propitiation continues

The Moving Gods are fickle and demanding things that follow more closely Douglas Adams' theory ("There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.") than the changeless nature of changeable things. You know you will sweat. You know something will be broken. You know that there is such a thing as things going too well. You know this.

But you have no idea how any of these things will manifest.

People whose moves are always easy are people that I cannot bring myself to trust; they do not move through the same dimension of this world that I do and are suspect. Usually I run into problems of time and space - needing more of the former and not quite enough of the latter. I start packing too late and do not enlist enough help to make the move timely.

We started packing in June and half of my things were already in boxes.
Everything of mine (with the exception of the backseat's worth of things traveling with me and the cats (not owned by me, but traveling with me (can't own cats)(they are the rulers of the living space)) is in one of two storage units.

There is also a discomfiting amount of stillness in moving: sitting in cars, waiting in lobbies, filling out applications at tables, hoping for phone calls, etc. When all of that is added to the frenetic race to get all of the boxes up the stairs before your legs fall apart and all of the kitchen stuff unpacked before your stomach growls through your colon that it is revolting and will now start eating your brain and all of the bathroom stuff out so that you can take that shower that you've been promising yourself for the past I don't know how long and finding all of the screws that put the bed together because there will be sleep tonight, dammit! - it seems like a balance, but it isn't. This is the closest that most of us will ever get the constant imbalance of a life unplanned and unscheduled but very definitely lived.

Will Durant provides me with a certain degree of background awesome.

The cats have learned to hate their afternoon walks, except for Horace who is constantly in need of going to the other side of the front door and then just not really doing anything.

And tonight, there is a social event. Mama made deviled eggs. I haven't eaten any of them.


Yet.

The thing where nothing is really happening. Yet

Because it will be happening. It will be happening in carloads - quite physically. There will be mapping directions and planning interviews and apartment viewings and then interior figuring and domestic economy engineering and finding places for all of the books (mind you, I am only bring 9 (maybe 10) boxes of books to the new place)(not including the ones that have books as padding). This will all happen.

Starting Wednesday. Not yesterday Wednesday, next week Wednesday.

I'm also less than one hundred pages from the end of the Big Book that I'm reading and less than 200 pages from the end of the Other Big Book that I'm reading and have resorted to writing letters and thank you notes. I rewrote my cover letter once this week, and will spend time this evening and tomorrow doing the same. Probably Saturday, as well. Resumes are flexible. I am happy about this.

I don't even have enough dirty clothing to justify the 2USD expense and time of doing the laundry.

This is not my favorite thing in the world. I did this for months last fall and it was not good. People didn't like talking to me very much, or, more like, the talking to me was just confirmation that I was not enjoying things like I like. As I am not in a position to indulge in long-term bleh, I self-medicate with cat-cuddling, gentle thinking and wandering around twitter and Whitechapel for electric jolts of "If you want to do a thing, then do it" and that helps. The doubt thing - it waits outside the office door and slides in like Ethel when she wants to get something you don't want her to have. Ethel is furry and warm and sweet to me. Doubt is infinitely less so, and a terrible conversation partner.

I think it is time to see if I can find something beautiful to look at and share it. Yes?
Good.

Here: Aljoun Castle in Jordan.

Robin LeBlanc took a picture with a mantis in it.

Kickstarter shows me fun card games.

There.
Go.
Live.

Abduction is my new favorite word

"This procedure occurs in the decoding of known linguistic terms as well, when one is uncertain about what language they belong to. When someone tells me /cane!/ in an excited voice, in order to understand whether it is a Latin imperative («sing!») or an Italian holophrastic indexical proposition («dog!»), I must hypothesize a language as a frame of reference." page 40, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, Umberto Eco, Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1984.

(it should be noted that blogger does not like the symbols for absolute value. it thinks i'm trying to 'tell' it something. i find this beautiful. and fitting.)

Abduction - very quickly explained is the process of observing a Result and determining, finding or guessing the Rule that leads to the Result. In order to get to something like a Rule, Cases in which the Result can be verified must be thought of or studied. Well, that's not entirely true - Copernicus couldn't actually study the truth of the heliocentric universe outside of theory and "admirable symmetry (p 42)."

There is a huge amount for me to be excited about here, not least of which is that this is the first thing he's talked about in the whole book that has managed to make sense in the long term (i.e. after I closed the book).

Because it relates to how people learn each other, not specifically and I am sure that I'm taking this fashion for interdisciplinary studies far too far with this amateurish thought play, but isn't that part of learning too? If I have always been a professional then when have ever learned? I can't even imagine how dull a life lived without learning could be. It's better than drugs, kids. And the high lasts. And, yes, it is a high. Intellectuals: stoners without pot.

I feel less presumptuous than I could given that Eco uses examples of nonlinguistic signs to discuss an activity that he seems to regard as important to the understanding of language as method of communication. Friendship falls under the category of nonlinguistic, I believe.

I believe that friendship is a kind of relationship that is strongest when people pay attention to each other in reasonable moderation. No Stalky McStalkington. Also, none of that I Define Me As You nonsense. Neither of those approaches expresses affection, respect or love. I would even argue that those tendencies, along with other really extraordinarily bad relationship habits (many of which I've had) are not about the loved one but about the lover. There are at least two people in every relationship - if both are not involved, then there is no relationship.

I've been extremely fortunate in friendship to know people who are fully involved in their own lives, and so all of the learning of each other and the paying attention has happened over a long period of time. I can't think of a friendship in my recent past that has involved more than the most fundamental and basic explanation of personal codes and motivations. In other words: the work of putting a Rule to a Result has been slow and easy and occasionally even conversational and allowed conversants to learn as much about each other as we did about ourselves. Double Win Fudge, baby!

What always throws me for a loop is the dating version of that process: the assumptions that people make (informed or delusional (which are really the same thing (but anyway))) in order to define the person sitting across from or next to them. (What the hell is it about romance that makes assholes out of people? I'm not comfortable with the roses & rainbows version of romance and that was problematic for me for about, oh, a month this summer. Only, I'm really good at ice cream and long walks and sitting on the porch and wandering living conversations and if that isn't what connects your life to someone else's in the best possible ways, I pick no.)

When you say something about a decision you've made in the past, and someone then asks you what you would do in a totally different but somehow related situation and files that answer away in the third layer of Things Known About You? That's abduction - trying to find a Rule that fits your Result.

It's completely natural, and not a bad way to learn people. Unless. There are Rules that govern the behavior of people who fall into different categories, and all of those categories are associated with a specific set of personality traits. Recognizing what category defines a person most closely is part of how we as people, as humans, decide with whom to make friends, or who to pick up at the bar. Until you are outside of that bar or you meet someone whose life does not run according to familiar routines and suddenly those Rules and categories are meaningless and, in some cases demeaning. They become stereotypes and labels rather than heuristic devices.

Raise your hand if you have ever decided to just stop explaining yourself because it never sinks in anyway. Because it is impossible to avoid breaking someone's carefully constructed model of the world when you have to explain that much. And that's not usually fun to be around.

I'm over it by now, and have discovered a willingness to leave a conversation without rancor when necessary. I'm also lazy and prefer to use my energy according to my designs.

The people I feel the most for are the ones who are the poster children for Category, the ones whose behavior always fits the Rules. According to the 2 dice square thing that we were taught in school - those people are much rarer than the anomalies like us. (think about it - how unique is everyone that you know? how 'crazy' is your family? how many people do you know who are the only people you know who would say that thing or make that cake or put that spin on a thing? - we are not so unique, we individuals) What about someone who is entirely determined is going to elicit specific love and appreciation? Really - it's easier to love a weirdo than you might think.

There is something kind of lovely about not testing people's personalities in order to verify what I think of them. It is even lovelier to have befriended people who think of me what they will without having to test me (or each other) to validate their opinions.

Stillness considered

The semantics of stillness confound and frequently frustrate me.
Calm, Still, Relaxed, Chill.
Zen and Relaxed are not the same thing.
It is possible to take life not personally while still in motion.

One friend acknowledges the undeveloped ability to stop,
another asks what I fear.
Legitimate responses, and worth considering.

My current result is this:
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to make of myself.
One day that self made herself known and made it quite clear that she had things to do.
I could stop worrying, and just be still.

I learn stillness in small increments and define it gently.
As any skill, these things take time.
Time at the whim of a feline,
Time at the side of a telephone,
Time shared in chairs reading different books in silence.
As any life skill, it changes everything subtly.

Subtlety is defined as the set of all things that are not defined as me.

It is a skill.
Fuck.
I kind of like not having that one...


(not a poem, just written with lots of space so that I see what the words say)

Closets and hidden hypocrisy

Categorical statements and I have a long and occasionally problematic relationship. They tend to make a liar out of me. I resent them fully and yet have not figured out how to get them out of my life.

I found four pairs of high heels today as I was organizing the closet in my office. It was an immediate thought that I would need to issue some kind of retraction to a statement I made in my last blog entry lest I be called out.

Defensive, much? Bitter, many? I can't think of a non-platonic relationship that I've had where we both were not almost perpetually under an ill-fitting microscope. It is a response that I've earned, this anger and bitter.

But it is dull. And it gets nothing done. And it takes up space in the closet.

Friendships take so much time to build that there is no way to go forward without putting a label to something like an inconsistency and moving on. When you can see nothing but those labels, look elsewhere, and don't be too discouraged if someone else does the same. It is not possible to be everyone's beloved.

It is, however, possible to be beloved of your own closet. Which means that the denim capris that make me look like a model in Women's Edition will have to go. As well as the >shorts< ooo, those are not okay.

Not gonna wear it, don't keep it around, right? Not gonna love it, why worry whether you like it or not? Space is at a premium in this world. No need to take up too much.

Although, I do have this brilliant idea for keeping the broken down boxes from getting ew-y and filled with insecty things and too much gross: I will stand them up on their folded ends, supported between shelves or posts or filled boxes, and I will wrap them in a tarp, to keep whatever it is that might just move into the dry and warm attic from making a home in the things that will hold the guts of my home when it comes time to figure out just what that means. Again.

I interact with the stuff of my life, these nerve-endings in shoes and empty boxes cringe every moment, my fingers shake with the case cutter in them, ready to slice open something else, some other internal organ holding only it knows what. Every box could be marked Pandora and it would be less of a Greek Drama. My days begin in a line of fire over the trees out of my window and end in a pool of blood from my own caustic roaming. I wish every day for the this to be done. For something to settle into itself and become the thing called 'How I live'. And yet, much is in the wrong place, much is in no place yet, there are still unopened boxes that much be faced. The ones called "Storage" are for the next life, the next home. I forget how tiring it is to do this. I forget to wash my hands and rub my feet. I forget to always be gentle. I forget to require clarity.

I kept one pair of the high heels. I wore them in a wedding 5 years ago. If I never wear them again, I don't really care. They are a part of my past that I love.

about last night's question...

You asked me what I'm waiting for, and I said Mr. Right.

but that is a lie.
because I am not waiting and I am not looking and
I am not about stop not looking or waiting because
I'm busy.

It's just a phase, part of the choice that I made when it seemed the most obvious thing in the world to acknowledge what was in front of my face and follow it. I get growly and pull up grass and loll about at the trunk of a too young tree and then it bores me and I wander on into the future alone.
For now.

My mother says that life is what happens when you are waiting for life to happen.
I don't have that kind of time.