Silences & Secrets [dull, self-indulgent post. No need to read, really]

I've been having trouble writing lately, and after a bit of reflection, I realise it's because I don't tell enough emotional truth.

When I don't acknowledge the depth of my feelings and hopes, I am clamping down on who I am in a way that doesn't actually benefit me, or anyone around me. I keep quiet about stuff, I tell myself a sanitised version of things. I'm not saying I should be in some kind of uncontrolled verbal-diarrhoea-type-state, but that effectively I'm spending a lot of my time in that wide and expansive place that has so much room for so many of us - De Nial. I keep my own secrets from myself so well that over time I forget them. I hold my opinion so quietly that after a while it fades away. While non-attachment is generally a good thing, I haven't been doing it right - my non-attachment has been a barely disguised form of giving up. That's not good.

I thought about this when I was watching New Amsterdam. One of the things I like about John is that he stays authentic to himself - he tells the truth. He lives his life, and accumulates and looses, relationships, knowledge, stuff, love, family. If the people around him paid attention to what he says, they'd soon figure out his secret, but most of them don't. This is the privacy we have in the modern world - disinterest. Is there a cost? Sure there is! He's treated like a nutter by most of his colleagues, but he holds this in balance with the freedom of living his own truth.

The cost in my life from trying to control everyting from changing, or being lost, or forgotten or hurting has been to slowly ossify in a set of behavious that I never really wanted, but seemed like a good compromise at the time. This is what makes my writing stilted and slightly forced, and quick to dry up - because the price of control is a closed, entropic system, slowly leaking energy towards stasis.

I guess that it effects other parts of my life, but I can't really see them. I can only see it through the prism of this one frustration. Everything else in my life I seem to fatalistically accept as my lot. This systemic link to my own (previously useful survivial) behaviours and the current broader state of impasse has slowly emerged in front of my mind like lemon juice on paper under heat - I swear it wasn't there a minute ago! But now that it is, I better make a copy of it before it fades (trap for the new players with the lemon juice thing!) and make a move.

Frack Me

Dogs and Sci Fi - they just bring people together.
A pretty social and crafty weekend, mostly with the Sisters. It's great having two sisters - it makes for three of us which is a good mischief number, and every now and then when we cackle over something dreadful, I feel a faint shudder of Macbeth fog rolling over some poor guy's back somewhere.... nahahahahahahahaaaa!

Anyway, we made resin fridge magnets (cool and toxic!), I made mustard pickles (I don't know why ok, and I already gave it all away), I won the b'day poker tournament (go me! With a flush no less!!), I threw more old crap away (hurrurah!), and I decided to visit the dog park on the other side of town that Yvj takes her two to.

I love the acceptance of dog parks. I imagine that perhaps this is what AA meetings are like, at least for the dogs. You just are who you are. You're into balls, or you're not. You run or you don't. Whatever. It's all cool. Of course the humans are more fraught. However, I had left on my fab-o "Frack Me" T shirt (purchased over the ever loving interweb) and this opened up an unexpected conversation about Sci Fi with a dalmatian owner. There you go. He recommended a few things, I threw a few suggestions into the mix, we patted dogs (apparently he bathes his dogs in the shower with him, and yes, uses the wife's shampoo on his favourite hahahahahahahaa). Turns out we like very different Sci Fi, but it was a pleasant social conversation interspersed with a running commentary from Yvj for my benefit on all the locals and their humans as they arrived. Quite the scene happening over there!

Back at Chawton, the pace has been pretty languid. I'm reading Lama Sura Das (letting go of the person you used to be) and my favourite quote from it today is "Let go or get dragged". Hi-larious. It's vying for quote of the book along with "Don't just do something, sit there!". Who knew buddhists made their own meditiating jokes? It's a revelation.
I slap my own thigh.

There's loads has happened.... um.... yeah ok, new neighbours. There's a kinda weird vibe and possibly 4 cats, so I'm not looking too closely at that side of the fence these days. Also, working bee at Chawton - the family came over on good friday and OBLITERATED all the problem trees (including "pruning" the mulberry tree to being 3 stumps about 2 feet off the ground). Basically they descended like locusts with electric chainsaws and I now get "quite a lot of light" into the yard. This was traumatic for me, but it's a case of tough love. The dead trees, homicidal trees and the barbed trees all had to go to make way for trees that grow food and give love (not pain). Also, word on the street is that S4 of BSG is about to really kick off.
Frack me, that's good news!

Conversation

Having had a chance now to check both sides of the spectrum, I can confidently assert that good conversation is one of the greatest pleasures of the human condition. Not *the* greatest, obviously, but certainly in the top 10. Also, it has great longevity. Dancing vigorously, sex, winning races or tussles, child birth, these are a young person's game. Chess/Go, conversation, these kinds of pleasures of the mind last and last and last. As long as the mind does.
Apart from passing on one's genes, this is the source of the other immortality, to pass on a taste of the mind. Don't believe me? Think of an inspiring quote - there's your own proof - pretty unlikely you quoted your mum, or anyone else you've ever met for that matter.

It's not just about talking either, there's a big space for listening in the world. What a gift - to be heard.

Feel like a challenge? Give a good listen to someone today.

Leaps and Bounds

How was your leap day?
Anything special?

I love these arbitrary excuses to draw attention to a normal thing. As long as we believe in the reason we've made up, it is entirely 
possible to enjoy them afresh. 
That seems to be one of those hidden secrets to life - to take each 
day, no matter how normal, 
as a fresh day, a new day of all promise and hope for all of humanity.
My heart's not always up to the strain of that much hope, but I am
planning that I shall
metamorphose into someone who can hope without strain.
In that future I will gladly awake each morning and embody this
wonderful approach to life's heartbeat.