life, the universe, and everything

they used to call it ether (draft from February 2008)

I WROTE THIS IN FEBRUARY 2008. I DON'T LIVE IN THAT HOUSE ANYMORE, AND THE SUPER DREADFUL 2008 PASSED ALONG WITH ME STILL BEING...ME. LOOKING BACK, IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO FEEL AS I DID FOR THAT ENTIRE YEAR. I GUESS THAT'S GOOD.

some invisible substance that held the universe together. I think that was coined by Descartes. Anyway. Then they figured out that what held the universe together was—the universe. Matter, you know. And the space between all the matter and molecules is actually space, with energy keeping stuff moving around inside it. It's all one and the same. Matter, space, energy, and therefore, dare I say it? Time itself. Cool, eh?

You'd think I could never stop being inspired by that but right now, nothing is really inspiring. We're in the final dregs of winter, and once again, just when I thought life was finally settling into something comfortable with lots to look forward to, things that had been put on hold, turns out I was wrong again. Another rug yanked, another bruise from my backside hitting the floor. Nothing was taken off hold. Instead it was put back on the rack again. NO. WE'RE NOT HAVING ANY DETAILS.

You'd think I'd be used to it by now. It's clear, though, that I never will be. So the thing to do for us Pollyanna types is "pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again." This might be masochistic for some people, but not for the intrepidly optimistic. How to do that, though?

You might say that if the pattern is interrupted over and over again that it's not the pattern you thought it was. But that's where physics comes into play. These patterns we think we see or established aren't even drops in a bucket. Did you know there are many more molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water in the sea?

But knowing and feeling are always, thankfully yet tiresomely, two different things. Right now my feelings are dark but my knowledge is as light as a fresh glass of Pellegrino. Okay, that's a sort of faith, really, the belief that I hold that knowledge. A person has to be able to go on something, to keep going.

Friday night I made fondue.

Fridayfondue

Saturday was a day of being comfortable in my home. First, though, I went to Panera for a mocha. It was odd doing that by myself, but it was a tasty mocha. I got two interesting-looking books from the library, and then Livvy and I watched all 200 minutes of the BBC series from the 80s called Have His Carcase. It's based on the second Lord Peter Wimsey book to feature Harriet Vane, and was pretty good. We kept the fire in the fireplace going all afternoon and evening.

I had two mixed drinks made with gin and Grand Marnier, one with sweet vermouth and one with dry, both with a touch of lemon juice, shaken and strained. After I made the kids their dinner, which was a baked breakfast casserole, I ordered myself some sushi online and had it delivered. Then I watched Torchwood and went to bed. Never touched the computer all day except to order the food.

Yesterday we were going to watch the next in that TV series, Gaudy Night, but I guess someone noticed another person had finally checked out some of that series at the library, and took it out ahead of me. That's irritating since they hadn't been checked out in forever. But hopefully they'll be returned on time. So instead I tried to organize some of my online life and had a bad job of it for most of the afternoon. I felt so low I thought I was going to have to sit in that chair and not move from it until a meteor came in through the window. But I managed to keep going anyway, and then in the evening, LP and I went to Marshall's to get some things to finish our TV wall. We have such similar taste we either naturally gravitate toward the same things, or else one of us will find something and the other will say, oh, yes, of course. It's a good thing.

Tvwall1

Tvwall2

Tvwall3

I think it looks pretty good. If you look at the pictures full-sized, you can see our light-hearted yet noble African princess in front of the vase next to the TV. And you'll note we chose rather peaceful-looking masks, rather than fierce ones.

Also last night I posted an old poem to my poetry page, which I've renamed. I did this because earlier in the day I was at the Wayback Machine, looking for a file I lost a long time ago, hoping it was on an old web page. I found the old page from 1999 that linked to it, but not the link itself. I did run across another series of poems I'd thought were gone, though, and was amused to reread them. A couple of you may find the one I posted amusing as well, or else disturbing. Or both, you know. Anyway, I renamed the poetry page and created a new banner for it in honor of my very first website, and also the mood I am taking up in order to conquer the external aspects of my current pain. We do what we have to do to keep going, like Dory the Blue Tang.

That same old spell...

It's that light and breezy confidence with a measure of reserve just barely visible behind the glint of his eyes. He manages to wear his clothing both fitted and loose at the same time. Unstructured structure? It's something she's seen European men pull off as easily as flipping a switch, and it's one of the reasons she enjoyed wandering New York in summertime, but it's not very common here. 

Anyway, none of that is something she can see. It's just what she imagines when she senses a certain frequency in the air, conjured from very little data, more from what she knows or wishes she knows to be there. Impressionist filter on a dimly lit photograph. But as she imagines it, the sunlight is at a sharp afternoon angle, and the surfaces around her gleam reflective, like the surface of the ocean she still mourns and craves; thirsts after in poetic fashion.

He's one of those familiar strangers; someone you see for the first time and are sure you know, though you really never do. He's weather-seasoned around the eyes, but his smile is bright and youthful, willing her to return his carefree regard. She is nearly certain that if she breathed in just a certain way, she'd inhale his scent and he'd know the warm vibration of her skin beneath his fingertips. She's more certain he already does. 

My Boyfriend Bill

if he were still alive, would be 95 when this is posted. Now, let's face it. Even if he hadn't died by "misadventure," no way was this guy making it to 95. Odds were against him living past 70. On the other hand, my dad did. Of course, in my dad's family, dying at 77 was actually somewhat early. Okay, back to wherever we were headed.

My love for William Holden developed slowly over about 30 years, and then suddenly, bam! I could not get enough of him. At nearly 45 years old, I was crushing hard like 1977 ripping pages out of Tiger Beat hard. And after about a year of rewatching his films and catching up on so many I'd never seen, he started invading my thoughts. In 2011 I plastered one of my Tumblrs with him, posted about him here several times, and then last year I saw so much of him at other Tumblrs, etc., I was jealous. I mean that in the possessive sense. I've never minded sharing Gene Kelly or Hugh Laurie, etc., but Bill Holden was mine. What did a lot of young persons know about that world I was birthed into, the world which shaped who he became, and informed my sensibilities as I grew up and as it passed away? This world, the one we're in right now, is unrecognizable by comparison. To love this glowing yet damaged creature fully outside of context is to love a different person than do I. Yes, I cropped his wife Brenda Marshall out of this photo. It's a metaphor.

But that's mostly preposterous, of course. I know this. I know what it says about me, too. It's not, though, like I'd get into internet fights about it or whatever. It's just a reflection. 

It's like how I am about James Garner. I can barely speak of it and risk suddenly being surrounded by a spontaneous retroactive adoration that waters down this particular intensity I've held onto for over 40 years. It's weird, but it isn't really weird at all. It's dreadfully, drearily ordinary. I so dislike confronting how ordinary I am sometimes, don't you?

William Holden was like Dean Martin in certain respects. He did what he did because that's what he did. He was both laid-back and very fussy. He appeared to be all surface; handsome, handsomely wearing what he wore, looking effortless, like sprezzatura.

Looking back, it's obvious how smart Dean Martin was, and that he was laughing at everyone else and how seriously they took themselves. I mean, their effort. He was serious when he needed to be, without all that energy-consuming effort. 

I'm not sure Bill Holden was quite so smart, but I do think he possessed the same sharp view of himself, other people, the whole world. Some people, they're tortured by it all, and he was one of those people. And so, Africa, right? But also so much booze and cigarettes and needing to bathe over and over again. Perhaps trying to wash away something he could never take back. Anyway, it wasn't all effortless effort for him at all. Yet he kept at it.

I can love all that only retroactively because I've seen it in others, first hand, and because I'm fascinated by the puzzle of it all. In the every day present here and now, I like my puzzles to be crosswords or mazes on a little screen, and I am way, way over tortured passion. But it is a seriously groovy fantasy, not unlike when you're 15 and you find out a movie star you love prefers other men and you think, because you are 15 and silly, I could change him. He'd want me. 

Nah, it's not really like that. It's just intensity, power, a sort of kinetic chiarascurro, and that's exciting; knowing what you know now, all that experience filters your view and colors your desires. You know how to play with fire, or at least imagine that you do.

Is someone reading this and thinking very earnest thoughts? Let's turn the record over and consider this. It is raining hard as I write this, the iPod across the room is playing a gentle jazz tune, I forgot to wash some of the paint off my legs from when I was working on a new canvas earlier, and in a few minutes, when I turn out the light to sleep, I'll press one of the pillows to my side in this great big bed, and contemplate something only briefly earnestly. 

From here

To here

Bill Holden was a movie star, a box office hero. Did he want to be revered for more than that? Did he want to be revered at all? Probably not. Who can ever live up to it? 

I watch this and grow sad and think, yes, he died too soon. It was a "wrong" death. 

But I cannot be serious for more than 9 minutes at a time. (And as pt 2 appears to be missing, that's just as well.) So then I go back to thinking of him as my boyfriend Bill, just before I drift off to sleep.

Like this,

Or this, 

And especially like this:

More photos collected here.

Titles are so limiting, aren't they?

I was such a grimy child. I could sit outside and play in mud, or dirt, or sand, or a tree, or my little wading pool, for hours on end. I hated baths and was scared of the shower. I mean, I went to school clean, but did as little as possible on my own to make that happen until I was at least ten. 

People thought of me as a tomboy. For awhile, I did, too, but looking back, I realize I never was. I didn't play with dollies much, or Barbies much, though I had both. And I had a little toy kitchen and tea sets and all of it. But they were just accessories to a chaotic life. Neither did I play sports as I was tremendously clumsy, at least, according to everyone around me. I don't remember myself that way. I rode my bike for hours, and could jog for several miles at a time. Latterly, the family bowling gene appeared. Whatever.

As a child, I played with clay, paint, craft sets, crayons, glue, rocks and sticks and leaves and paper and paper and more paper. Yet no one thought of me as artistic or creative in the slightest. 

I'm beginning to wonder if they thought anything interesting about me at all, other than that I was always covered with dirt or something colorful and sticky that was probably also stuck to my carpet. 

I played detective and cowboys and indians. But all girls did, because there weren't exciting girl things to be. We sometimes thought we wanted to be the superhero or the cowboy because he was cool, not because he was a man. I mean, by extension, men got to do the exciting powerful stuff, so that was part of it. It's just—it was the merest breath of a hop for me to want to be Bret Maverick to, well, wanting to be with him. I mean, not that way, that came later. Just there, his, breathing in his awesomeness. 

Tonight as I undressed to shower after putting in 70 leeks, and gosh do I hate planting leeks, yet I love growing leeks, I thought about how I was as dirty as when I was seven. Not really at all, though. It wasn't visible except on my hands. But I'm an adult, and so of course, I felt just miserably but also gloriously dirty from digging and raking and planting today. And of course I love a good strong shower, and emerging clean and new. Yet I can't wait to get out there tomorrow and do it again. I mean, not plant more leeks. Something. Something else I can nurture and grow while playing in the dirt. 

Yes, this is a dull photo of 70 baby leeks. Gardening is tactile. 

This wasn't really about that when I first thought of it...um, unlike other women I know, I haven't thought of myself as a "girl" in many years. And never truly a "tomboy," which, really, is fairly misogynistic if you think about it. Sometimes I think I don't relate to other women very well because they're trying so hard either to be one or not to be one; I am never quite sure about it all. But then, too, in certain ways, women can relate only to each other, and it's important to recognize and cherish that. I do. 

I spent many years watching my children enjoy doing the playing and digging and messing, and so I did very little of it myself. But it's who I am naturally. I chop and mix and bake or shake. I throw paint around. I collect stacks of books. Sometimes I spill things. And I dig in the dirt. But I also like a neat clear space, tidy shelves, organized tools, and clean skin. 

This is me preparing to remove garden grime. I decided that if I shared this fairly terrible photo, every other photo of me that follows it will look very good by comparison. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder...

I'm continuing to strive to be the best parts of myself; the original ones and the later ones that come with maturity. 

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

It never hurts to think well of yourself, or at least to think well of your possibilities. I really am pretty much who I have always wished to be, just have to do a bit more with it.

Then, too, I am also thinking of Joseph Cotten's perfect, almost over-chiseled lips. The sky is growing dark and my attention turns from the external to the internal. So to speak. 

Rita, girl, you are a mess. But I understand. 

My Bi-Weekly Cincinnati Outing: Report #4

I hope you enjoyed my little audio post. I'm going to do a better one, hopefully this evening, but for now, here is a long "dates with myself" entry, with a few links and photos for you to enjoy. There would be more photos, but my internet connection seems to feel about as well as I do just now. 

Two weeks ago I spent my afternoon at the Cincinnati Art Museum. I'd been there once or twice before, but not in nearly a year.

I have visited major art museums in Kansas City, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. They each have something special about them. In New York, in that massive old building, you see art you've heard about all your life. In Philadelphia you see what seems like a true richness of creativity. Lots of good examples of 20th century style; Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, Color Field, etc. Detroit has some great sculpture . I remember least about Chicago but what I do remember is being completely immersed in culture. Pittsburgh is a city that is practically made of art and beauty amidst a certain amount of decay. I'd want to talk more about the contemporary art there and could write pages.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City is one of my favorite places to be out of everywhere I've been. It's beautiful, inside and out. There is a wealth of treasure there, literally, particularly the Imperial Chinese collection. And it's free, so you can wander in and out as you please, as you enjoy the complete outdoor setting, most especially in late Spring and early Autumn.

So for me, the Cincinnati Art Museum has a lot to measure up to. It does, you know, in one particular area of focus I'd never seen at another museum. That is local art, and in particular, the local art movement here in the 19th century. There was a thriving art culture here, you see, and the museum has great examples of it, but especially very good education on it. You really *learn* when you are at this museum, if you wish to.

weekend randomosity

This first bit was posted to Google Plus. (Good morning. Or whatever. I mentioned last week I've been doing my blog for over ten years now. I'm going to share in this box the way I shared early blog entries. The only difference is that the pictures have to be clickable down at the bottom, instead of inserted with html.)

I slept in this morning. When I looked at the phone it said 8:51. That seemed quite like enough to be going on with. Getting older is funny that way. The sky is lazily spitting snow at us again. Most of our snow this winter has been so; occasionally it sticks together at the surface, but not with any earnest effort. Today we're going to see Parsifal through the Met's live streaming program, but instead of going to our usual big movie movie theater, we're going to our #2 spot; Newport on the Levee. That's one of the places (along with Monmouth St., such serendipity, you don't even know) I'll go to for a date with myself, but when it's warmer out. Anyway. We think Newport AMC might have better speakers for HD opera than Milford Rave. I hope so.

Oh! (Most of) You don't know this because I don't blog all the details anymore since we have "social media" and also now and then I use discretion, but a few days ago, someone ransacked my car and stole my Kindle Fire out of it! I...replaced my key battery after that happened. The oddly good news is that I have "extra" money this month, so I ordered the Fire HD and it should be arriving today. I got the same size; I like it to fit into a handbag, but it will have better sound, better wi-fi, and double the hard drive space.

It would not be easy for a typical hoodlum to break into our house, but leaving the car in the driveway,  that should be safe as anything where I live. Yet it was not. I felt just creepy and awful, but a person I know online had her whole house broken into recently, and that had to feel much, much worse. 

When I went downstairs to make a cup of coffee and retrieve my laptop, this enchanting message appeared on my phone:

 

And when I went to check notifications at Google+, I got to see this:

I have many friends at G+ and talk to them semi-privately more often than not, but when I post public links, sometimes I get responses that aren't super relevant to what I'm sharing. It doesn't matter much but you see the notification number and you're all "ooh, someone liked my thoughts...no, I guess not."

Finally, a word about March weather. March is typically very difficult for me, breathing-wise. But last year was super! Okay, it was a little creepy and "is the sun falling from the sky," and so forth, but I felt really, really good. Here are bits of data for you to look over if you can possibly muster interest. 

 

• 
• 

 

 

I said it (all) before but it bears repeating now

I have three songs running through my heads; just bits of them, really. That one, "Creepin' up the Backstairs" by the Fratellis and something I woke up with in my head by Sharon, Lois and Bram that will take me a little time to identify, which goes, "How d'ya do? How d'ya do? How d'ya doodle oodle oodle oodle ooh, yeah!" but I'll remember it soon.

The point (insofaras one can be said to exist) is that it's now been over ten years since I started my blog. It wasn't this blog, but this is a direct descendent of it. The son and heir, if you will. (Of nothing in particular.) If you go back through the archives that far, it's kind of a mess. Things were different then. But it's mostly all here, at least text-wise. 

Anyway. In my head, all words are keywords for a song. Any word, spoken with some certain cadence or tone, will trigger a song for me. Rhythms of sound do that as well, but words are the main triggers. I've learned to calm that down by having a continual background soundtrack in my head, and it's probably why I ended up listening to so much jazz and lounge music. But lately I haven't been filtering it all very well, so it's a bit like one of those CD sample stations at Target inside my head right now, looping through oddities.

Last night I was reading some ten year-old entries and they struck me as so young. I mean, very few of them should be read with any eye toward seriousness. They were mostly intentionally silly. But even that, well, if I am intentionally silly now, it sounds very different. To me, at least. And I'd hate for someone to go back through them all and read it without hearing an arch (albeit unsophisticated) tone. But it's me, nonetheless.

"If I Knew You Were Comin' (I'd Have Baked a Cake)" is the Sharon, Lois & Bram song I woke up with. It isn't on YouTube, but by golly, Bobe Hope and Bing Crosby are. 

But if you have a sudden verve to hear every rendition of this song, be warned most of them are marked wrong and are the same singer. The one I like most (besides, I'm telling you, Sharon, Lois & Bram,) was by Georgia Gibbs & Max Kaminsky's Dixielanders.

Where were we? Um, what's changed in ten years? A little and a lot, but not actually much at all. If you see what I mean. Don't be so linear, okay? Let's keep things loose. A couple years ago I was seized by a burning love for Bill Holden which previously had been only a sort of idle attraction/admiration. So, that's a thing. Ten years ago I lived three miles from the Atlantic Ocean, now it's over 600. I weigh more. I'm much calmer. Those two things aren't meant to relate to each other, just be side by side.

 Ten years ago I was the pedantic bohemian, now someone else is. I was merbelle, and kind of still am. I was sylph, and Emily, and Greer, of course, and those two things do go together. Now I'm Lily and it seems I really am, but if I'd known that would going to happen, I might have worked at being Lena, instead. 

Do you think I am very, very shallow? Do you think I'm always laughing at life or at least at the people in it? Do you...equate being sincere with being serious?

When I was pregnant with my third daughter, who is now 21, the man tried to teach me to meditate, to turn off my endless running thoughts. He believed he failed. But that's not so. It was a very slow-burning lesson, perhaps. Some years later he got all into taoism and sucked the marrow out of that before moving on to the next thing, but I connected it to being pregnant with my daughter, quieting down, opening up, absorbing, resting, and letting go of urgency. However, when you have a lot of little kids and a sort of fickle living situation, it's so difficult to operate that way, slowing down time like a bird or a squirrel. 

Now I have the luxury of seeing the snow fall outside my window right now just as I choose; as individual flakes, or as a stream of moisture, or as mostly air with tiny infinitesimal interruptions to it, too tiny to matter until they all collect together at the surface of earth over my garden. 

And it's silly to have three songs in your head unless you consciously put them there to enjoy together. That's what I've learned over the past ten years. 

Shhh...

 

Posted at 09:18 AM in Essay, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)

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This is longer than usual; like three pages of a book. I think you'll like it.

So much I remember and so much I don’t when I think back to 9th grade, the end of the 1970s, the end of my childhood in some ways. In the fall of 1979, I was 14 years old, and I took the bus every morning to high school in a growing town just outside of Kansas City, Missouri. For most other years, I can remember the songs playing on the radio while Dad got ready for work in the morning. I certainly remember that when Steely Dan released Gaucho a few months later, we listened to “Hey Nineteen,” just as we’d enjoyed “Deacon Blues” and “Peg” from Aja a couple years earlier, but I guess that was the year my musical taste wandered further from pop radio than ever before, while Dad’s remained largely planted in soft rock at that time.

With Dad, my memories are all musical; mixed into paint, the woods, history, long walks with the dog. With Mom, they’re food, books and movies, long talks that I just don’t remember now. But I do remember I never felt like there was a topic we couldn’t discuss. It must have seemed that way to her; I was so internal, and she had a social need for conversation I probably never satisfied. I don’t know. But we did talk about boys and clothes and school, and she tried to encourage me and help me feel good about myself. 

I was really into Michael Jackson just then. I remember the kids making fun of me in...history class? I wrote his name in fancy script on the chalkboard and they said, “but he’s black.” So funny to recall. Off The Wall was an impressive album, though. And Prince came along, and there were new records by the Village People, Gloria Gaynor, Chic, but then, too, Herb Alpert, and on another front, Blondie, Gary Numan, the Cars, the Boomtown Rats. And we got “Rapper’s Delight” that year! I made little distinction between them all and was never quite cognizant of the fact that everyone else did. Oh, and the Eagles. It’s all music, and that was a very good time to be a kid listening to it. There was so much more I wanted to hear, but I found what I could, and made the most of it.

So I went to school, took that long bus trip every morning, with music in my head and stylish clothes on my still coltish frame. We were in an undefined interim between Annie Hall and the Preppie Handbook. I followed the trends but had been establishing my own style for a couple years, one of the few aspects of life about which I felt very confident just then. My skirts were the correct length, (remember when there was a correct skirt length?!) but I wore them with an artful sense of informal balance. I didn’t take schoolwork as seriously as I did what I listened to and what I wore, and I felt very good about my clothes and my music. But I was self-conscious, nonetheless. It’s hard now to explain why. I still felt like a victim of my early school years, yet I knew I was in a much bigger world, one where I could have made a whole group of real friends if only I had any idea how. I don’t remember wanting to be popular, but I do remember wishing I could be liked, and less alone.

This started as a thought for an INTP community at Google+ and spilled out like coffee dribbling from a badly formed carafe. Self-indulgent. Indulge me. 

Something I was thinking about earlier got me to wondering why people assume everyone of my personality type is not creatively-minded. I think it's a misunderstanding of creativity, but also a need to shoe-horn people into little boxes. As you can easily guess, I'm against that. But another aspect might be that my type is so rare among females. It isn't the type to be giddy about being rare, either, for the most part. "Ooh, I'm an xxxx, and that's a rare type, you know!" I've seen that a few times. Grow up; we're all special. None of us is special. And it's as hapless as wearing a t-shirt that reads "Normal is overrated." And boring.

But as a female INTP I can tell you that this is an area not easily navigated or defined, I mean, really, understood. 

If you are, in fact, an electrical engineer, an architect, or someone who builds robots in his basement, you are probably a creative problem solver. Why should that ability not also lend itself to art or music, as well as literature? But we are sometimes instructed that only the touchy-feely types get to sit at that table, because they want to. 

I think I spent all those years being told I was Spock-like, etc., to my personal detriment. I mean, I believed those people. They were the ones who knew, weren't they? I was compelled to trust their expertise and experience, if not their nonsensical attempts at leadership. 

And sure, my creativity tends to take logical forms. When I compose a poem, I love forming interchangeable phrases and lines, and I'm pleased when I can give it an obvious meaning and a parallel unobvious one, and still make it trip interestingly over the tongue. I love the craft of language, and I love bending it to my will. I love the craft of cocktail-making, nearly as much. I love the math in music, and I can be aroused by the way a syllable takes shape at the end of a line in a song sung by a man who knows how to take hold of the thing. I love that all music is interwoven, nearly seamlessly, inside my head, like the view from the sky of a quilted landscape.

But when I paint? I am all vermilion, teal, gold, cream, using my hands, a chopstick, the end of a paintbrush, and it's messy and it's often not very good, but it is, actually, very very good. 

The other day my son and I were in a hobby shop, and we saw, I kid you not, a young man in a black leather duster and black broad-rimmed leather hat, anxiously lapping the aisles. Another man, a little older, was impatient because, as he explained on the phone to someone while standing near us holding a ziploc bag with a game in it, "No one is here. And I was late. Where is everybody?" This one was a large guy, overgrown curly blond hair, unshaven, t-shirt stretched over a sizeable belly and covered in what might have been pizza dust. And he was having a moment of crisis. His people, his peers, they weren't there, and let's face it, they sure as hell weren't anywhere else, except maybe at home playing Skyrim.

In that sense, though I was admittedly laughing to myself, he and I were on the same plane. Who are my peers? I'm constantly being told to go out and get 'em, you know. And metonymy is useless, and no, we are none of us unique, but sometimes even in a swiftly flowing river, the leaf gets caught in sand and it's a long, long way from any tree it could possibly have come from. (From which it could have possibly come.)

I think it's time to paint. 

I ran across a couple comments on a CNN blog today that interested me. Here is part of one of them, which has me mulling over some stuff. 

"What kind of god makes himself invisible and undetectable by any verifiable method and then judges people based on their belief in him? And you expect me to believe this is the same guy who came up with math and chemistry?"

He used the word stupid but I redacted it.

At first I thought one answer by a religious person might be that this god made himself detectable by "coming up with" math and chemistry. But the logic for that is so poor, I don't think it would be used by any sensible person. (And honestly, if you are attempting to argue with anyone who isn't at least generally sensible, you're wasting your time even more than you already are.)

Because to say that is still to say this God can be and is defined by human calculation. And a god so all-knowing and all-powerful surely could not be defined by mere man and plotted out on a white board. Who'd want one like that, anyway? He wouldn't do anything for you that you couldn't do for yourself, in that case...

Back before people had science, they thought chemical reactions that they could see were magic, and therefore produced by a god. Now we can create life in a jar. That seems magical by my limited view of how the world operates, and my tenuous grasp of how vast and intricate it is. But mostly it's just math. Could you then say that God is math and therefore math is God? To some, the second phrase would be blasphemous, but after all, it's just a commutative statement; necessary for a range of mathematical proofs. 

You know how there are these math problems people have been trying to figure out for ages, but no one has, and now and then one is solved, and then everyone else has to decide if they, too, can arrive at the solution the same way? It's how we got important stuff we use, actually, like manned flight, the combustion engine, wave technology, vaccinations, etc. 

Recently I decided to take up Geometry because my son wasn't doing well in his class. The chapter on inductive and deductive reasoning is really quite arousing. I was so excited reading over page 57 of his textbook you'd have thought Bill Holden (circa 1950) just appeared at my door. At any rate, everyone should understand something about postulates and theorems, and the difference between general proof and a mathematical proof. I learned about these things without being able to apply them mathematically, and now my understanding is enhanced by the new knowledge I'm obtaining through this book. 

People I talk with online spend what appears to be a tremendous amount of time talking about what they believe or talking about how they don't have beliefs. It would rarely occur to me to take up the topic were I not to see it on a daily basis in what we now ineptly call "social media." In the natural world, I sometimes question how things work, but not particularly if someone decided to make them work that way. I had relationships with people who fervently believed that mattered and who asserted a certain amount of control over what I saw and understood about it all, but at some point I acknowledged the freedom to give away all the baggage they'd saddled on me, so I could get back to looking out at the sky past the blue, and holding my breath between the notes of a trumpet, for my own sake. 

Sometimes I talk with other people who allow themselves to be catalogued as "INTP." I think they suspect I'm a ringer, because there are a number of stones I'm willing to leave unturned in my study of Life, the Universe, and (nearly) Everything. Me, I think they haven't even noticed all the stones I'm collecting and enjoying, and I figure they should surely know better than to measure my examination and perception of the world against their own...

You know music is math, right? And what was I just saying about math up there? 

 

greenwood girl

This is longer than usual; like three pages of a book. I think you'll like it.

So much I remember and so much I don’t when I think back to 9th grade, the end of the 1970s, the end of my childhood in some ways. In the fall of 1979, I was 14 years old, and I took the bus every morning to high school in a growing town just outside of Kansas City, Missouri. For most other years, I can remember the songs playing on the radio while Dad got ready for work in the morning. I certainly remember that when Steely Dan released Gaucho a few months later, we listened to “Hey Nineteen,” just as we’d enjoyed “Deacon Blues” and “Peg” from Aja a couple years earlier, but I guess that was the year my musical taste wandered further from pop radio than ever before, while Dad’s remained largely planted in soft rock at that time.

With Dad, my memories are all musical; mixed into paint, the woods, history, long walks with the dog. With Mom, they’re food, books and movies, long talks that I just don’t remember now. But I do remember I never felt like there was a topic we couldn’t discuss. It must have seemed that way to her; I was so internal, and she had a social need for conversation I probably never satisfied. I don’t know. But we did talk about boys and clothes and school, and she tried to encourage me and help me feel good about myself. 

I was really into Michael Jackson just then. I remember the kids making fun of me in...history class? I wrote his name in fancy script on the chalkboard and they said, “but he’s black.” So funny to recall. Off The Wall was an impressive album, though. And Prince came along, and there were new records by the Village People, Gloria Gaynor, Chic, but then, too, Herb Alpert, and on another front, Blondie, Gary Numan, the Cars, the Boomtown Rats. And we got “Rapper’s Delight” that year! I made little distinction between them all and was never quite cognizant of the fact that everyone else did. Oh, and the Eagles. It’s all music, and that was a very good time to be a kid listening to it. There was so much more I wanted to hear, but I found what I could, and made the most of it.

So I went to school, took that long bus trip every morning, with music in my head and stylish clothes on my still coltish frame. We were in an undefined interim between Annie Hall and the Preppie Handbook. I followed the trends but had been establishing my own style for a couple years, one of the few aspects of life about which I felt very confident just then. My skirts were the correct length, (remember when there was a correct skirt length?!) but I wore them with an artful sense of informal balance. I didn’t take schoolwork as seriously as I did what I listened to and what I wore, and I felt very good about my clothes and my music. But I was self-conscious, nonetheless. It’s hard now to explain why. I still felt like a victim of my early school years, yet I knew I was in a much bigger world, one where I could have made a whole group of real friends if only I had any idea how. I don’t remember wanting to be popular, but I do remember wishing I could be liked, and less alone.

eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn

This started as a thought for an INTP community at Google+ and spilled out like coffee dribbling from a badly formed carafe. Self-indulgent. Indulge me. 

Something I was thinking about earlier got me to wondering why people assume everyone of my personality type is not creatively-minded. I think it's a misunderstanding of creativity, but also a need to shoe-horn people into little boxes. As you can easily guess, I'm against that. But another aspect might be that my type is so rare among females. It isn't the type to be giddy about being rare, either, for the most part. "Ooh, I'm an xxxx, and that's a rare type, you know!" I've seen that a few times. Grow up; we're all special. None of us is special. And it's as hapless as wearing a t-shirt that reads "Normal is overrated." And boring.

But as a female INTP I can tell you that this is an area not easily navigated or defined, I mean, really, understood. 

If you are, in fact, an electrical engineer, an architect, or someone who builds robots in his basement, you are probably a creative problem solver. Why should that ability not also lend itself to art or music, as well as literature? But we are sometimes instructed that only the touchy-feely types get to sit at that table, because they want to. 

I think I spent all those years being told I was Spock-like, etc., to my personal detriment. I mean, I believed those people. They were the ones who knew, weren't they? I was compelled to trust their expertise and experience, if not their nonsensical attempts at leadership. 

And sure, my creativity tends to take logical forms. When I compose a poem, I love forming interchangeable phrases and lines, and I'm pleased when I can give it an obvious meaning and a parallel unobvious one, and still make it trip interestingly over the tongue. I love the craft of language, and I love bending it to my will. I love the craft of cocktail-making, nearly as much. I love the math in music, and I can be aroused by the way a syllable takes shape at the end of a line in a song sung by a man who knows how to take hold of the thing. I love that all music is interwoven, nearly seamlessly, inside my head, like the view from the sky of a quilted landscape.

But when I paint? I am all vermilion, teal, gold, cream, using my hands, a chopstick, the end of a paintbrush, and it's messy and it's often not very good, but it is, actually, very very good. 

The other day my son and I were in a hobby shop, and we saw, I kid you not, a young man in a black leather duster and black broad-rimmed leather hat, anxiously lapping the aisles. Another man, a little older, was impatient because, as he explained on the phone to someone while standing near us holding a ziploc bag with a game in it, "No one is here. And I was late. Where is everybody?" This one was a large guy, overgrown curly blond hair, unshaven, t-shirt stretched over a sizeable belly and covered in what might have been pizza dust. And he was having a moment of crisis. His people, his peers, they weren't there, and let's face it, they sure as hell weren't anywhere else, except maybe at home playing Skyrim.

In that sense, though I was admittedly laughing to myself, he and I were on the same plane. Who are my peers? I'm constantly being told to go out and get 'em, you know. And metonymy is useless, and no, we are none of us unique, but sometimes even in a swiftly flowing river, the leaf gets caught in sand and it's a long, long way from any tree it could possibly have come from. (From which it could have possibly come.)

I think it's time to paint. 

intp alert

I ran across a couple comments on a CNN blog today that interested me. Here is part of one of them, which has me mulling over some stuff. 

"What kind of god makes himself invisible and undetectable by any verifiable method and then judges people based on their belief in him? And you expect me to believe this is the same guy who came up with math and chemistry?"

He used the word stupid but I redacted it.

At first I thought one answer by a religious person might be that this god made himself detectable by "coming up with" math and chemistry. But the logic for that is so poor, I don't think it would be used by any sensible person. (And honestly, if you are attempting to argue with anyone who isn't at least generally sensible, you're wasting your time even more than you already are.)

Because to say that is still to say this God can be and is defined by human calculation. And a god so all-knowing and all-powerful surely could not be defined by mere man and plotted out on a white board. Who'd want one like that, anyway? He wouldn't do anything for you that you couldn't do for yourself, in that case...

Back before people had science, they thought chemical reactions that they could see were magic, and therefore produced by a god. Now we can create life in a jar. That seems magical by my limited view of how the world operates, and my tenuous grasp of how vast and intricate it is. But mostly it's just math. Could you then say that God is math and therefore math is God? To some, the second phrase would be blasphemous, but after all, it's just a commutative statement; necessary for a range of mathematical proofs. 

You know how there are these math problems people have been trying to figure out for ages, but no one has, and now and then one is solved, and then everyone else has to decide if they, too, can arrive at the solution the same way? It's how we got important stuff we use, actually, like manned flight, the combustion engine, wave technology, vaccinations, etc. 

Recently I decided to take up Geometry because my son wasn't doing well in his class. The chapter on inductive and deductive reasoning is really quite arousing. I was so excited reading over page 57 of his textbook you'd have thought Bill Holden (circa 1950) just appeared at my door. At any rate, everyone should understand something about postulates and theorems, and the difference between general proof and a mathematical proof. I learned about these things without being able to apply them mathematically, and now my understanding is enhanced by the new knowledge I'm obtaining through this book. 

People I talk with online spend what appears to be a tremendous amount of time talking about what they believe or talking about how they don't have beliefs. It would rarely occur to me to take up the topic were I not to see it on a daily basis in what we now ineptly call "social media." In the natural world, I sometimes question how things work, but not particularly if someone decided to make them work that way. I had relationships with people who fervently believed that mattered and who asserted a certain amount of control over what I saw and understood about it all, but at some point I acknowledged the freedom to give away all the baggage they'd saddled on me, so I could get back to looking out at the sky past the blue, and holding my breath between the notes of a trumpet, for my own sake. 

Sometimes I talk with other people who allow themselves to be catalogued as "INTP." I think they suspect I'm a ringer, because there are a number of stones I'm willing to leave unturned in my study of Life, the Universe, and (nearly) Everything. Me, I think they haven't even noticed all the stones I'm collecting and enjoying, and I figure they should surely know better than to measure my examination and perception of the world against their own...

You know music is math, right? And what was I just saying about math up there?