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shadowkatBefore I leave on Friday morning, dark and early, thought I'd wish those reading this and on my flist a happy holiday where-ever you may be. It's so odd that I choose to share these musings with people who I've never seen.
I realized a few weeks back that I had no clue who reads this journal and who doesn't. I certainly can't use the user info page as much of a guideline, since I don't friend's lock any more (gave up on that ages ago). All that tells me is who probably is reading, not who is. Plus several people have responded, repeatedly to this journal, without ever adding their names to the list - while there are people who did friend me, that never respond to the journal or seldom do. Therefore? I feel often as I write that I'm just randomly sending thoughts out across the miles...no idea who will happen across them.
Tonight, you find me fighting down my own anxiety. It always rises before a trip, like a tidal of wave of nerves that I fight to control. Gritting my teeth. Taking deep breaths. Forcing my mind to other thoughts. The trip will be a short one. Barely time to get there, open gifts, and come back - but as the holiday season washes over me, I realize that I have more in those three days than many folks do. Yes, it's just me, Mom and Dad. Kidbro, sisinlaw and baby Cedar are staying in wintery Beacon this year. And yes, part of me envies Kidbro his little family. Yet...I know that I have more, with just me and my parents than countless people out there do.
And this week my heart goes out to them. The US of A
or The States to those abroad, attempts to be a "non-secular" society, but I think fails miserably in the attempt. Like it or not - it is Judeo-Christian, and I can't help but wonder how those who aren't Judeo-Christian feel each year around this time, inundated with holiday greetings? Then there's the people who have no one. Who are alone in their apartments. Working the late shift in the hospital or the police station or the firehouse or the airport because they don't have children, or lovers, or parents to go home to. Or just because they drew the short straw. Or someone has to be there just in case people get sick or people do something wrong. Or the soliders who are celebrating this season overseas in Iraq, while those who sent them there, sit cozy around their Xmas trees. Did you know that the highest number of suicides is around Xmas? Depressing isn't it? Yet, people still send out those dreaded Xmas letters, or bragging letters (as I like to call them), blithely unaware of where they may land. Received one today, which I scanned and discarded.
I prefer cards - with their pretty pictures and simple messages. In some respects, the card feels more real and personal than that mass produced holiday letter that seemed to arrive along with the computer age. Makes one miss typewriters or the age before typewriters when such things were impossible. (And I'm sure within these three sentences I've probably offended half the people out there who deign to send such things. OR maybe made them think twice before doing so? Dare one hope. ) On the other hand, perhaps I have no right to complain - I have not sent any cards this year. Still on a pretty slim budget. And by the time it occurred to me to buy the things, it was well today. Feel a little guilty about that - having received one from my downstairs neighbor, who has been kind to me this year - loaning me her phone when mine was out of order. She thanks me for being a good neighbor, and I find myself wondering, have I?
Looking back on this year - all I see is a fog. It's been more or less of an endurance race or test for me. Lots happened, but most of it to other people related to me by blood or friendship, while I sat on the sidelines watching, a speechless by-stander, uncertain how to participate. There but not there. Sometimes I think I'm more here, within the pages of this journal, then out there. But that's not true of course. As friends who've met me offline will no doubt attest to. And here like out there, I find myself stumbling over words, saying things I later regret, worrying over the effect, and thinking "no, no, I did not mean to say that!" or "oh god, who was that person - that hateful person who said those things or thought those things?" or " oohh how did I ever come up with that? And can I do it again?" And wondering how many people I've alienated through my words or lack of words or actions or lack of.
Life is hard. Free will - that odd gift that some of us believe god has given us, makes it hard, I think. Although I wonder about the whole concept of "free will." Free will implies we can control our actions, thoughts, reactions, and environment. Yet that control appears to be limited by so many factors - such as the bodies we are born with, the environment we are born into, the people we come into contact with, and the opportunities provided. All we really control is how we react to stuff - and even that is limited by well, our bodies.
In a prior post, I indicated a difficulty in feeling sympathy for those who lash out while under the influence of some sort of mental illness or chemical imbalance or physical disorder. I am sorry for that. Because upon reflection - I realize it really is a matter of "but for the grace of god go I". I have a cousin that has a chemical imbalance. He is bi-polar. Severe. This is coupled with social anxiety. And an inability to stay on meds. He's quite brilliant and kind actually. But he cannot function in our society without assistance.
He graduated from high school at the age of 14. And can understand complex mathematics. Yet, at 45 years of age, he remains single, unemployed, living with Dad - at least that was the last I heard. Last year - I feared for my own health - thinking I might have Wilson's, I don't, it turned out to be just an essential tremor (requires medication which helps with anxiety but at least it's not copper poisoning). Last night's episode of House described the symptoms of Wilson's in detail and that, moved me. In the episode, the woman suffering from an undiagnosed case of Wilson's came across as schizophrenic.
It makes me wonder what it would be like to actually have it. And relieved I don't. Life is hard enough, I think, without it. Hard to decide what to do and what not to. How to decide what are the right choices and the wrong ones.
The choice to take this job. The choice to reach out to certain people.
I admit, I'm not fantastic at the whole initiating contact bit. A weakness, I think. Perhaps one caused by fear or uncertainity?
As I write, I wonder how much of this I want to keep and how much should be deleted as word vomit...random thoughts inadvertently placed upon the page while an old episode of Lost whispers in the background. I'd forgotten to
switch the channel to West Wing, or just jump off the net and delete all of this in one fell swoop - gone, safe, from whomever may decide to read it for good or ill.
Are we responsible for the words we create? I think so. But not for how others choose to recieve them? Or interpret? Words are so limiting. Language is.
Our bodies. I believe we have souls - because my gut tells me there's more to this being that is me than just blood and flesh and random nerve energy. But
I don't know what a soul is. So cannot prove it to the scientifically skeptical. (Hmmm wonder if that is a Miss Malapropism? Sheridan's The Rivals is playing on Broadway right now and NY1 keeps showing clips of it - specifically Miss Malaprop - the crazy character who always uses the wrong words. This is a trait that runs in my family - my brother, me, my mother - all Miss Malaprops... a side-effect of the dyslexia no doubt.)
If I could reach my arms through this screen I think I'd like to give some of the folks or most of the folks on my friends list a hug. Yet in person, it is doubtful I would do much more than nervously smile and babble. Hesistant to hug. Being big and bony and towering over most folks - tends to go against hugging. But in my mind I hug. Repeatedly. As I say, bodies they are so limiting. Grammar too - actually. Hence the short one word sentences. I like to lose myself in the rhythm of my words, my thoughts, letting my emotion unfettered loose upon the page, rippling through the sound of the words if not the meaning. I often wonder what they look like to someone outside my mind. Just as I wonder what I look like outside my mind. To me my eyes are green.
Yet others tell me they are blue, gray, or light green. My hair is flecked with gray. Others say it is light brown with highlights and only I see the silver or gray. There's a song in Cabaret that is whizzing through my brain at the moment..."if you could see Elsa through my eyes, she wouldn't appear..."
and I wonder if that's true, does everyone see each other differently?
Ah...the brain ramble is at it's end, I think. Which is a good thing.
As a coda...I have been re-watching the BTVS DVD's S1 and S2, at Passions.
And am coming slowly to the conclusion, much I'm certain cjlasky's chagrin,
that I prefer the later seasons. I prefer Season 6 and 7 and 5 and 4 to Seasons 1,2 &3. Why?
Why? Ah. Simple. The later seasons resonate for me emotionally.
I identify with the characters in them. The early seasons, as enjoyable and fun as they are - simply do not. Plus High school is a simple story to tell - structured rigidly with clear arcs and themes: 1) First love, 2) Authority, 3) Boyfriend Turns Evil, 4) Prom, 5) Homecoming....and none of those themes fit my high school experience. I didn't date in high school. I didn't go to dances. I didn't try out for cheerleading (well once for drill team, under duress, and my experience was closer to Dawn's actually. Actually my high school experience was much closer to Dawn's and possibly William the Poet's than Buffy's, Willow's or Xander's.) I didn't have close friends that I remember or have kept in touch with. I spent most of my time with theater, books, and studying and getting through it. Once high school was over? I
leapt to college and promptly forgot most of it. It wasn't traumatic. It was just dull and hardly worth writing about. But hey there's a teen audience out there - so we get tons of high school shows, all with the same themes, same
trajectory with small differences here and there. I have yet to see one that does not have an episode focused on The Prom. Or signing yearbooks. Or cheerleading.
At any rate, BTVS took off for me in Season 4 -7. I got obsessed with it in the later seasons, because it was about that period in our lives which unlike those three years of high school, happen over and over again, no matter what age you are. The post-adolescent period, where we don't know who we are, or what we want or who we are to become or should become. We don't know what is the right or wrong choice. Or who to love. There's no longer a rigid structure and life does not fall into an easy one two three step by step guide. It is rare for a tv series to deal with that period and to do it well. BTVS not only played with this period, they actually did a decent job of it. Taking huge risks in the process. And handling some tricky themes - such as depression,
addiction, angst, and a sense of being set adrift without a clear purpose.
For that reason, I prefer 4-7 and will own those over the first three seasons and will remember BTVS for the later ones. 1-3 were easy, good, clear TV.
4-7 were tough, difficult, and risky TV with some of the most ground-breaking episodes to grace a screen - among them: Restless, Hush, The Body, Fool for Love, Selfless, Conversations with Dead People, Dead Things, Bargaining, I Was Made To Love You, Doublemeat Palace, Once More With Feeling...
Okay wandering off again...to watch tv and relax before bed. One more day of work before the quick three-day holiday break.
Have a wonderful three days everyone. I hug you with my mind and heart if not my body...through my words both prickly and kind, as always take from them what you will.
I realized a few weeks back that I had no clue who reads this journal and who doesn't. I certainly can't use the user info page as much of a guideline, since I don't friend's lock any more (gave up on that ages ago). All that tells me is who probably is reading, not who is. Plus several people have responded, repeatedly to this journal, without ever adding their names to the list - while there are people who did friend me, that never respond to the journal or seldom do. Therefore? I feel often as I write that I'm just randomly sending thoughts out across the miles...no idea who will happen across them.
Tonight, you find me fighting down my own anxiety. It always rises before a trip, like a tidal of wave of nerves that I fight to control. Gritting my teeth. Taking deep breaths. Forcing my mind to other thoughts. The trip will be a short one. Barely time to get there, open gifts, and come back - but as the holiday season washes over me, I realize that I have more in those three days than many folks do. Yes, it's just me, Mom and Dad. Kidbro, sisinlaw and baby Cedar are staying in wintery Beacon this year. And yes, part of me envies Kidbro his little family. Yet...I know that I have more, with just me and my parents than countless people out there do.
And this week my heart goes out to them. The US of A
or The States to those abroad, attempts to be a "non-secular" society, but I think fails miserably in the attempt. Like it or not - it is Judeo-Christian, and I can't help but wonder how those who aren't Judeo-Christian feel each year around this time, inundated with holiday greetings? Then there's the people who have no one. Who are alone in their apartments. Working the late shift in the hospital or the police station or the firehouse or the airport because they don't have children, or lovers, or parents to go home to. Or just because they drew the short straw. Or someone has to be there just in case people get sick or people do something wrong. Or the soliders who are celebrating this season overseas in Iraq, while those who sent them there, sit cozy around their Xmas trees. Did you know that the highest number of suicides is around Xmas? Depressing isn't it? Yet, people still send out those dreaded Xmas letters, or bragging letters (as I like to call them), blithely unaware of where they may land. Received one today, which I scanned and discarded.
I prefer cards - with their pretty pictures and simple messages. In some respects, the card feels more real and personal than that mass produced holiday letter that seemed to arrive along with the computer age. Makes one miss typewriters or the age before typewriters when such things were impossible. (And I'm sure within these three sentences I've probably offended half the people out there who deign to send such things. OR maybe made them think twice before doing so? Dare one hope. ) On the other hand, perhaps I have no right to complain - I have not sent any cards this year. Still on a pretty slim budget. And by the time it occurred to me to buy the things, it was well today. Feel a little guilty about that - having received one from my downstairs neighbor, who has been kind to me this year - loaning me her phone when mine was out of order. She thanks me for being a good neighbor, and I find myself wondering, have I?
Looking back on this year - all I see is a fog. It's been more or less of an endurance race or test for me. Lots happened, but most of it to other people related to me by blood or friendship, while I sat on the sidelines watching, a speechless by-stander, uncertain how to participate. There but not there. Sometimes I think I'm more here, within the pages of this journal, then out there. But that's not true of course. As friends who've met me offline will no doubt attest to. And here like out there, I find myself stumbling over words, saying things I later regret, worrying over the effect, and thinking "no, no, I did not mean to say that!" or "oh god, who was that person - that hateful person who said those things or thought those things?" or " oohh how did I ever come up with that? And can I do it again?" And wondering how many people I've alienated through my words or lack of words or actions or lack of.
Life is hard. Free will - that odd gift that some of us believe god has given us, makes it hard, I think. Although I wonder about the whole concept of "free will." Free will implies we can control our actions, thoughts, reactions, and environment. Yet that control appears to be limited by so many factors - such as the bodies we are born with, the environment we are born into, the people we come into contact with, and the opportunities provided. All we really control is how we react to stuff - and even that is limited by well, our bodies.
In a prior post, I indicated a difficulty in feeling sympathy for those who lash out while under the influence of some sort of mental illness or chemical imbalance or physical disorder. I am sorry for that. Because upon reflection - I realize it really is a matter of "but for the grace of god go I". I have a cousin that has a chemical imbalance. He is bi-polar. Severe. This is coupled with social anxiety. And an inability to stay on meds. He's quite brilliant and kind actually. But he cannot function in our society without assistance.
He graduated from high school at the age of 14. And can understand complex mathematics. Yet, at 45 years of age, he remains single, unemployed, living with Dad - at least that was the last I heard. Last year - I feared for my own health - thinking I might have Wilson's, I don't, it turned out to be just an essential tremor (requires medication which helps with anxiety but at least it's not copper poisoning). Last night's episode of House described the symptoms of Wilson's in detail and that, moved me. In the episode, the woman suffering from an undiagnosed case of Wilson's came across as schizophrenic.
It makes me wonder what it would be like to actually have it. And relieved I don't. Life is hard enough, I think, without it. Hard to decide what to do and what not to. How to decide what are the right choices and the wrong ones.
The choice to take this job. The choice to reach out to certain people.
I admit, I'm not fantastic at the whole initiating contact bit. A weakness, I think. Perhaps one caused by fear or uncertainity?
As I write, I wonder how much of this I want to keep and how much should be deleted as word vomit...random thoughts inadvertently placed upon the page while an old episode of Lost whispers in the background. I'd forgotten to
switch the channel to West Wing, or just jump off the net and delete all of this in one fell swoop - gone, safe, from whomever may decide to read it for good or ill.
Are we responsible for the words we create? I think so. But not for how others choose to recieve them? Or interpret? Words are so limiting. Language is.
Our bodies. I believe we have souls - because my gut tells me there's more to this being that is me than just blood and flesh and random nerve energy. But
I don't know what a soul is. So cannot prove it to the scientifically skeptical. (Hmmm wonder if that is a Miss Malapropism? Sheridan's The Rivals is playing on Broadway right now and NY1 keeps showing clips of it - specifically Miss Malaprop - the crazy character who always uses the wrong words. This is a trait that runs in my family - my brother, me, my mother - all Miss Malaprops... a side-effect of the dyslexia no doubt.)
If I could reach my arms through this screen I think I'd like to give some of the folks or most of the folks on my friends list a hug. Yet in person, it is doubtful I would do much more than nervously smile and babble. Hesistant to hug. Being big and bony and towering over most folks - tends to go against hugging. But in my mind I hug. Repeatedly. As I say, bodies they are so limiting. Grammar too - actually. Hence the short one word sentences. I like to lose myself in the rhythm of my words, my thoughts, letting my emotion unfettered loose upon the page, rippling through the sound of the words if not the meaning. I often wonder what they look like to someone outside my mind. Just as I wonder what I look like outside my mind. To me my eyes are green.
Yet others tell me they are blue, gray, or light green. My hair is flecked with gray. Others say it is light brown with highlights and only I see the silver or gray. There's a song in Cabaret that is whizzing through my brain at the moment..."if you could see Elsa through my eyes, she wouldn't appear..."
and I wonder if that's true, does everyone see each other differently?
Ah...the brain ramble is at it's end, I think. Which is a good thing.
As a coda...I have been re-watching the BTVS DVD's S1 and S2, at Passions.
And am coming slowly to the conclusion, much I'm certain cjlasky's chagrin,
that I prefer the later seasons. I prefer Season 6 and 7 and 5 and 4 to Seasons 1,2 &3. Why?
Why? Ah. Simple. The later seasons resonate for me emotionally.
I identify with the characters in them. The early seasons, as enjoyable and fun as they are - simply do not. Plus High school is a simple story to tell - structured rigidly with clear arcs and themes: 1) First love, 2) Authority, 3) Boyfriend Turns Evil, 4) Prom, 5) Homecoming....and none of those themes fit my high school experience. I didn't date in high school. I didn't go to dances. I didn't try out for cheerleading (well once for drill team, under duress, and my experience was closer to Dawn's actually. Actually my high school experience was much closer to Dawn's and possibly William the Poet's than Buffy's, Willow's or Xander's.) I didn't have close friends that I remember or have kept in touch with. I spent most of my time with theater, books, and studying and getting through it. Once high school was over? I
leapt to college and promptly forgot most of it. It wasn't traumatic. It was just dull and hardly worth writing about. But hey there's a teen audience out there - so we get tons of high school shows, all with the same themes, same
trajectory with small differences here and there. I have yet to see one that does not have an episode focused on The Prom. Or signing yearbooks. Or cheerleading.
At any rate, BTVS took off for me in Season 4 -7. I got obsessed with it in the later seasons, because it was about that period in our lives which unlike those three years of high school, happen over and over again, no matter what age you are. The post-adolescent period, where we don't know who we are, or what we want or who we are to become or should become. We don't know what is the right or wrong choice. Or who to love. There's no longer a rigid structure and life does not fall into an easy one two three step by step guide. It is rare for a tv series to deal with that period and to do it well. BTVS not only played with this period, they actually did a decent job of it. Taking huge risks in the process. And handling some tricky themes - such as depression,
addiction, angst, and a sense of being set adrift without a clear purpose.
For that reason, I prefer 4-7 and will own those over the first three seasons and will remember BTVS for the later ones. 1-3 were easy, good, clear TV.
4-7 were tough, difficult, and risky TV with some of the most ground-breaking episodes to grace a screen - among them: Restless, Hush, The Body, Fool for Love, Selfless, Conversations with Dead People, Dead Things, Bargaining, I Was Made To Love You, Doublemeat Palace, Once More With Feeling...
Okay wandering off again...to watch tv and relax before bed. One more day of work before the quick three-day holiday break.
Have a wonderful three days everyone. I hug you with my mind and heart if not my body...through my words both prickly and kind, as always take from them what you will.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-22 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-22 09:30 pm (UTC)(Hmmm. Can one earmark a windfall? Never thought of that before.)
;o)