"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me."
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
"When I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break."
Akhenaton (d. c.1354 BC)
And now, the current weather, from some random person we pulled off the street:
Friday, September 12, 2003
A Scratch on the Glass
mar Pronunciation: 'mär
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): marred; mar·ring
Etymology: Middle English marren, from Old English mierran to obstruct, waste; akin to Old High German merren to obstruct
Date: before 12th century
1 : to detract from the perfection or wholeness of : SPOIL
2 : What can happen to a good mood when you feel left out of something.
I think the root of the thing is in my insecurity.
Actually, the past few days have been pretty good ones. I've been fortunate enough to have good moods and no real bears have tried to eat me. That's always nice, to get a respite like that. And I have this feeling that the tide may actually be changing, that maybe I am healing some instead of just hitting a hill on the roller coaster.
My head seems to be climbing out of some sort of dark madness, and I can feel the fresh breezes on my soul. Cool, crisp, invigorating.
Gary blew up again today, but it wasn't at me. I was able to stay mostly out of the way. I didn't like that sort of behavior when I was six, and I don't like it now. Amazing that he was able to get in his late 50's and still act like an eight year old a lot of the time.
Oh well, he has to go home alone every night. That's what happens to people like that.
Talked a little bit to my step-daughter this morning. She needed some help earlier this week putting together a business plan for a loan at the bank. My goodness she has done well for herself! At times I begin to think that my entire move here to Richmond was a bad one, since I have ended up trapped in so many ways, but then I look at her and my stepson and I know that my own personal sacrifices are worth it, because they could never have done this well in Florida.
And in that I do find some measure of peace.
I know, I'm rambling. So why have I chosen "mar" as the title word of this entry?
Sometimes I can walk into a room full of coworkers and find myself suddenly feeling very much an outsider. I realize, or think I do, that their worlds have a lot more in common with each other than with mine, and that troubles me. I do not want to be an outsider, a person that is looked on with a feeling of strangeness. I want to be one of the group, a member of the pack, a comrade.
I really am not used to not feeling that closeness. But I am having to come to grips with the idea that maybe I was wrong all this time, that I was always the outsider, the odd man out, the extra piece on the chessboard.
And that thought can mar the best of days, the brightest of moods. Its like a scratch on the glass window of life, you can still see out of the window but everywhere you look, you are looking at the scratch too.
But is it really scratched, or am I just imagining a scratch?
Or should I even care?
But God help me, I do care.
There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time.
Rebecca West (1892 - 1983)
