Introspections

This is just what happens when I clean the attic in my head.

[fair-song]

I think I suffer from the etymological fallacy a lot. I'm neurodivergent and I have a verbal IQ of 130. I love words. In the last few years, my chronic health issues relapsed and it's been hard to think with much clarity for any length of time. When things made less sense, I sometimes would Google an etymology to get a better understanding of how a word came to mean what it means. I think there's some value in that... You know, it's just occurring to me that I ought to look up definitions at the same time and do, not just a comparison, but also find distinctions between the current meaning and older uses. I digress.

In so doing, I have often changed my relationships to words and I worry sometimes that I'm actually making words means things they don't actually mean.

But then again... I brought up the etymology of worship to my reverend. Apparently, my assertion that worship is about appreciating things you find valuable - not financially, more emotionally - was spot on. So, sometimes, I glean really good insight.

I suppose the notion of using etymology to gain insight into words and their current meanings, in a sort of conceptual way, is not a bad one entirely. I may just need to be more careful in the future.

All of this was brought to mind because I saw a video of a scholar on theology, or the bible (exactly what his discipline is called I'm unsure because I don't have familiarity with this area very well; it's hard for me to remember the right terms). He was responding to someone's poor understanding of the etymology of Elohim. It's plural, but can be used like the royal "we" - about one entity.

I remembered how I thought the exact same thing in college when I was exploring things about mythology and religion on Wikipedia. Man, I get some hair-brained ideas sometimes through logical leaps and assumptions. My dad, the engineer, wouldn't like it. I think I just get excited. And don't have the guidance and resources I need. And, I have really good reading comprehension, but I struggle to read anyway. It's hard to explain that last one. I just can't do all the academic research I need to do to deeply understand the things I'm so curious about. It would probably be really fulfilling.

But, Dr. McClellan is here to save the day. And all my etymological foibles about Canaanite mythology can go by the wayside. As much as I feel foolish and disappointed in myself for making that mistake, I probably just don't have very much energy right now. And I'm getting better at doing better logic about language.

In the end, language is a shorthand. A self-referential set of signs. And you shouldn't confuse the map for the terrain. Language isn't meaning. It just helps us structure conceptual meaning by defining it. To boil something down into a word or name... An art. But without the thing or person, without witnessing them, it's all just babbling.

Which is why I've been considering taking a more playful, irreverent pose AGAINST words. I call it "lingo fuckery" or just "lingo fuck". Maybe that'll help with the stress. I wish I could go back to school. My mind is so active and I just need more to chew on. If my mind were a stomach, it would be eating itself alive. I could learn so much! I could be be so much more at peace! Instead, I flounder. A bird, stuck in a cage, distressed, plucking is own feathers. What it would be to fly!

[fair-song]

You will never fully comprehend reality. But the noumenal will always fully contain and comprehend YOU.

Do you feel disconnected? It's not all or nothing. Reality, or other people. Faith in the unknown. Embrace the mystery of others and the universe. You are less than all. And that is fine.

[fair-song]

Not all devils are predators

And some angels are executioners

[fair-song]

I hope my observation that there are more opportunities than for a single person than any individual would ever need is true. I just watched someone walk away in an airport and I wish I had offered them my number. We had a really nice conversation after I arrived before we both checked in. Hell.

[fair-song]

Reality - Acceptance - Suffering

I am not reality

I am part of reality

I am made of matter

My brain is matter

My thoughts and desires come from my brain (which is part of my body)

They are real, but they control nothing

I can exert my will on the world around me if I had the power

And influence it in small ways

But I don't control reality

And reality is what it is

Everything exists for no particular reason

Meaning though we may find in it

It didn't decide to exist

It just happened

And now it is

And it is what it is

There is not mallice in an event that had no will

Though will comes from it

Because within it, life happened

And then life became aware

And then had will

And weirdly

We decide what we like and don't like

If there was no observer to evaluate the goodness or badness of things

All things in existence would be neither good nor bad

And yet existence looks within itself and some tiny parts of it feels disapproval about other parts

So we make ourselves miserable

Not by choice

But by nature

Because we like or don't like things

But we have to have preferences

There's no way to be a functional human and not do that

And so I find myself sometimes in situations where I realize that I'm acting as if the world is a just place according to my wishes and my fears and my struggles

And angry when people don't appreciate it

This isn't because I'm wrong

It's because I'm not meeting reality where it's at

I'm not accepting reality for what it is

And I'm expecting things that aren't going to happen

But that doesn't mean that I'm wrong

It means the world isn't yet as it should be

And how do I hold that dilemma within me and reconcile those two conflicting truths?

I honor my pain

I hope for better

But I act in accordance with what is most realistic

Because that is moving through the path of least resistance

And if I can, do small things to make situations, reality, more preferable

[ahundredpercenttrash]

[fair-song]

Death and fate ask us to consider what is really important in life. Stoicism would say about fate that we must accept what we have no control over. What we do have control over is how we spend our time when we have the option. Sometimes, the fear of wasting time makes us fill all our time with frothing and frenzy. But this may be the most ironic waste. Because we become frazzled and don't have time to make sense of the busy-ness we do. In that way, it is as the Greeks told us fated prophesies would sometimes unfold. That resisting fate is impossible and trying only fulfills prophesy, anyway. Somehow, some way, it happens. Perhaps not about the outcomes of football games. But one thing is certain. We all must die. So. Will you spend all your time toiling when, if, you have the option to waste a little time? Sometimes doing nothing is the best thing you can do. And sometimes time wasted is time well spent.

[noviembre-18]

[fair-song]

And if you are not

The love of my life

I will say that I was wrong

Not of life but of love

[fair-song]

Become the Tree You Were Meant to Be

I find that I'm learning who I am over and over again. Because the grander I get, the deeper my understanding of myself becomes. Sometimes getting grander is getting bigger, from teeny-tiny-dom to big-and-burly-dom. Once your big, you get older. From the start, as I come to understand myself as I reach a new stage, I see that it's very similar to who I was, just MORE. Like a sapling to the tree it becomes later. The things I new about myself when I was a kid are still true. They're just more complicated, more sophisticated, placed with more awareness of the world in which I find myself. As I understand the world and others better, I understand myself more deeply as a part of the fabric to which all our collective threads belong. But I'm the same person. Richer and wiser. But the same.

[fair-song]

Full of intention

And not much hope

Around and around the ground

I grope

Searching around

For pretty things

Lollipops, rainbows,

And butterflies' wings

Sunrise come

And sunset go

Going afar

Where nobody knows

Desperate, fearful

Weak and diseased,

Nothing I find

Nothing I please

If only I

Had stayed at home

Not pressed myself

To be more than loam

I am who I am

I am but a Mann

If that were enough

I'd've had a good plan

For when I ventured

Far flung away

I would have been unperturbed

And been what I may

Searching for delight

Rather than running from shame

Would make me a'might

Rather than lame

[fair-song]

I think a lot about communication. I have learned that there are many things to be mindful of in communication. For instance, asking yourself "What is the goal of what I'm about to say? What is my intention? What outcome do I hope to affect?"

This has been a learning curve. It's also something that has given me angst. But the key that I have found to alleviating that angst is this: the purpose of saying anything, sometimes, is simply to share. And sharing connects us. Sometimes there is no ulterior motive to communication. Sometimes we just want to communicate for the sake of communion (with a super teeny tiny lowercase "C".)

[fair-song]

Footprints

We must walk because we are walkers.

When we walk we leave footprints.

How many? How deep?

To exist is to be a walker.

To exist is to have an impact.

It is not a sin to exist.

Let us exist in harmony

And leave beautiful footprints.

[fair-song]

Where Has the Charm Gone?

By fair-song

I love to ponder

But lately

It's become obsessive

Desperate

I need to know something

It invades the small moments

When I'm not driven to think

About the main point

That drives itself into my side

So that the craving colors my sight

So when I see a school bus

I don't so much feel it

The aesthetic

The vibe

I think it

My brow knits up

And I break it down

All the colors

Corners

Shapes

Of the bus

Analyse it

And all my attention

My energy

My mind

Is consumed by the manipulation

Of the moving parts

Of the thing in front of me

It distracts

From the feeling

Of school days gone by

Of a chilly morning

Fresh and looking forward

To sitting at a little desk

And getting out the number 2 pencil

That smells as pencils do

And writing on the blanched paper

With slate grey graphite

And the paper, of course

Smelling as paper does

All from that bus

Looking like a thing out of time

Goldenrod yellow

Back lines framing its edges

When were these designed?

60s?

50s?

Earlier?

It has the aroma

Of an earlier virtue of beauty

And the feeling

Of smallness

Of safety

And childhood

And none of that occurred to me

Except for a split second

Before the calculating thoughts

Took over my forehead

In a desperate attempt to SEE

And yet, the stretching

The straining

The THINKING

Blinds my heart

And confuses my eyes

A schoolbus

I wish to my lucky stars

That I feel again

The spirit of the scenery

The landscape

The texture

Of the world around me

Enchant it

Inject some romance into it

Or maybe enchant me

Or maybe put the romance back in me

Whatever this is

It's tedious

And dull

Stale

And disconnected

[fair-song]

Hot Head

By fair-song

Sometimes my emotions get the better of me

I want curl up in a ball and pout all day

I'm feeling kind of low and utterly useless

Sickened with pathos, pathologically formless

I lack the nerve and struggle in vain

Make excuses to avoid the pain

I'm feeling like a loser, a thorn in their sides

Ineffective, inefficient, insufferable am I

I'm losing control, losing my cool

It's so ugly, so gross it fills me with rue

I'd like to be poised and graceful and charming

But sometimes I fret, fit, and fly into harming

[fair-song]

Blood Moon

Bt fair-song

It was the bloodiest blood moon for 600 years the other night, and the moon is still full tonight.

The thought of its mystical significance crossed my mind, which prompted the following thought of dismissing it as mumbo jumbo immediately after. But I don't KNOW the extent of its material significance, and while it isn't helpful to make a lot of presumptions about it, I need to keep the part of me that those thoughts come from alive. Because it's the part of me that wonders and is open to possibilities. Maybe there's something someone out there has scientifically understood about the material impact of a blood moon on the psyches of people and I just haven't heard of it yet. It doesn't help me to shut down my thoughts and feelings like that in some vain quest to feel like I'll be perceived as smarter or saner because I don't entertain even the passing thought of something fanciful just because it delights me. And it may actually close me off from asking good questions and disenchant my world. As long as I'm not going down the rabbit hole, its good to think like that sometimes.

[fair-song]

Embrace

By fair-song

We met

And you enticed me

You asked for it

And I gave you my hand

With yours clasped so wholly

With your fingers wrapped

Around the flat of it

You led me by that hand

Away to a house

Yours, and in you brought me

Into the enclosure of walls

Surrounded, safeguarded

Up stairs and around a hall

Through the final threshold

Into a bedroom, yours

It was shielded

From the bright light

Of a cold winter day

Warmer, too

You guided me down

Onto the bed

And took up position over me

Your back, like a low, protective archway

Or the bow of a tree overhead

You pulled up a blanket

Past your back

Past your shoulders

And even further

Over our heads

And wrapped us in a cocoon

And after all

The embrace of your hand

The embrace of your house

The embrace of your room

The embrace of your back

The embrace of the blanket

You loved me

And then embraced me

With your whole body

[fair-song]

Not Cute

By fair-song

Youth was very queer

And tilting my head,

I said something dear;

Which they condescend.

I was not equal.

I was not enough.

Just an object of

Lovely, cheery stuff.

Their font of delight,

Shooting out like darts,

A'clouding their sight,

Was breaking my heart.