"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, April 09, 2004
Don your socks and set your clocks its time for this Blog's Blogger Idol Week 12 Top Picks!
As the feathers flew there were particular poultry pundits who procured this blog's regard. They were, in no particular order:
GreenMan - The mystery of birds.Proof positive that birds are the same the world over. I used to hunt some of these same birds. Don't tell my wife though.
connexions - Hoot. A joke this good deserves a place in the top five!
And there ya have them. Check out the rest of the entries by clicking on the icon on the top. Until next week....!
year Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English yere, from Old English gEar; akin to Old High German jAr year, Greek hOros year, hOra season, hour
1 a : the period of about 365 1/4 solar days required for one revolution of the earth around the sun b : the time required for the apparent sun to return to an arbitrary fixed or moving reference point in the sky c : the time in which a planet completes a revolution about the sun
2 a : a cycle in the Gregorian calendar of 365 or 366 days divided into 12 months beginning with January and ending with December b : a period of time equal to one year of the Gregorian calendar but beginning at a different time
3 : How long this blog has been here.
On Monday, April 7th, 2003 I opened this blog with the statement "Sometimes you have to tear yourself in half to find yourself at all."
In the intervening year, this blog has recorded more than one ripping apart. At the time I had just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a mental illness I had apparently had for at least 30 to 35 years. All that time, not knowing I was sick, I had been fighting it until it almost killed me.
And it was a squeaker too. Take a look at the archives.
So now, here we are, a year later. And I feel like I should give some words of sage advice, or at the least a bit of a status report.
Well, lets see. Did I get ripped in half? You betcha.
Did I find myself?
Well, that's a harder question. I could approach it from lots of angles with lots of spins but all in all I have to say the answer has to be...
No.
Have I mastered living with this illness? Not on your life. I take my meds faithfully, and they help tremendously, but I still have triggers that can send me into a downward spiral on a moments notice.
One thing that I have now that I didn't before is a good support network.
Now I have to work on my reluctance to actually use it.
All in all, when I sit back and assess things, I have not really progressed far at all in the past year. In some ways I have even slipped backwards. In other words, I'm still a mess. I want to be strong, and I fight as hard as I can, but I just don't have it in me. I just don't.
Then again, it is midnight at the end of a particularly bad day. This may make these thoughts suspect.
[Sigh] Happy Birthday, Blog. Let's blow out the candles and have some cake.
"Know thyself," said the old philosopher, "improve thyself," saith the new. Our great object in time is not to waste our passions and gifts on the things external that we must leave behind, but that we cultivate within us all that we can carry into the eternal progress beyond.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803 - 1873)
play Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English plega; akin to Old English plegan to play, Middle Dutch pleyen
1 a : recreational activity; especially : the spontaneous activity of children b : absence of serious or harmful intent : JEST c : the act or an instance of playing on words or speech sounds
2 : what I can't take part in
Sometimes, life can suddenly turn around and surprise you with a hateful, wild bloodthirsty stare and then slice you from your throat to your intestines.
Well, maybe not you, but that's what happens to me. I can be merrily tripping along thinking everything is OK and in the space of an instant something will happen that throws into sharp relief the fact that I am somehow different from those around me, and they intend to treat me that way.
Play is when that hurts me the worst.
To me, being able to joke around with a person and just enjoy their company is a sign of acceptance. I remember when I was younger and my best friend "decorated" my car on my 16th birthday. I remember playing huge organized games in college (not sports, games, I'll go into that later, another post) and loving every minute of it.
I remember playing Dungeons and Dragons until all hours of the night and playing chess by email, playing some of the early BBS on-line games, and sitting on a beach in the Carribean playing Pictionary with coworkers.
I even remember when drinking and clubbing was a sort of game, one I participated in far too regularly for my own good.
But, in the now and the here, something has changed, and it feels like me.
This April Fools Day not a single person attempted to play a single trick on me, even though I played pranks on several. I just wasn't on the radar. There is only one person now outside of my immediate family who regularly forwards jokes, etc. to me.
I can't remember the last time anyone told me a joke.
I don't even have a best friend anymore.
I feel very, very cut off.
And all around me, life goes on. People joke and play and enjoy each other. And here I sit, as if I am in some sort of plexiglass tube, visible but ignored except as something to work around. I smile and wave and die inside.
I'm trapped.
And if it's me, then can I ever really escape?
If what is happening is universal, can it be anything else than me?
I just really feel, deep in my heart of hearts, that I have so much to offer beyond the bounds of my immediate family. I mean, lets be honest here, family has a sort of obligation to accept me. As long as I am not too extreme, things will go well. And usually I am good at that. But on the outside, when people have no vested interest in how they feel about me, that to me is the only place where I can place a true gauge.
By that gauge, I'm running cold.
Which breaks my heart.
I want to scream and shout "NO! Look at me! I am not what you THINK I am! I can joke and play and laugh and be a friend!!!"
But I can't.
I'm sitting here at my desk pretty much in tears. Time to get control back.
I'm cut and slashed in my spirit, and I bleed all over myself.
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essense of inhumanity.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), "The Devil's Disciple" (1901), act II
This week's Blogger Idol topic is "Birds of a Feather." I almost did not participate because I could not think of a decent topic. But then I did. Enjoy!
The Canadian Goose
friend Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English frend, from Old English frEond; akin to Old High German friunt friend, Old English frEon to love, frEo free
1 a : one attached to another by affection or esteem b : ACQUAINTANCE
2 a : one that is not hostile b : one that is of the same nation, party, or group
3 : Something that can happen on the Internet between people worlds apart
He was all by himself, and he stood out like a telephone pole in a parking lot.
Canadian geese do that, when they are hanging around ducks. I stood on the small footbridge and watched him idly feeding in the shallows of the small lake, in the midst of about a hundred ducks. In the entire lake, he was the sole representative of Goosekind.
He had arrived one day during the early fall before the leaves really began to change. I noticed him one day as I drove to work, sitting in the middle of the lake like some forgotten sentinal, guarding a treasure that had been lost long before. Back and forth he would swim, never still, and the mallards would scatter as he swept through them.
Sometimes in the evenings, you could hear his plaintive cry. He would take a deep breath and let go a honk that seemed to come from the very root of his soul.
You see, Canadian geese mate for life. This male was alone.
His mate was lost forever.
And he grieved.
I wonder sometimes if he wanted to be one of the ducks, carefree in their polygamous innocence. Something about it must have appealed to this goose, because he never joined the other geese when they flew overhead.
There were no birds of his feather, none at all. He was cut off and adrift.
He left the next Spring, and returned that winter as well. Once he migrated the second time, I never saw him come back. Did he fall prey to some hunter out for sport? Or did he find another mate, some other goose to fill his avian heart with joy? I like to think the latter.
Sometimes, just hanging around with others like you is enough. Perhaps he found other birds of his feather.
Today's Internet is a social structure that is unlike any that human beings have experienced in the entire history of the world. Here on the web, combining the vast numbers of people that have access with the ease with which we can find people with like mind has created an unprecidented social movement.
Instead of a society based on regional and local perspectives, we are quickly becoming a society based on the law of averages.
In other words, if there is someone out there like us, we now have the capability in our living room to find that person, even if they are thousands of miles from us.
Not only that, but such people can assemble in groups on-line, sharing thoughts, life experiences and friendship. This situation, where we can "belong" if only we dig deeply enough, has never existed before.
The bad part behind that is that the odd and disturbing guy down the street now can find a whole lot of other odd and disturbing people to hang with.
But the good part, that outweighs it all.
You see, us gooses in duckponds can now find other gooses. Birds of our feather.
We no longer have to trim our feet to fit the shoes.
Birds of a feather. You want to see some? Look at your blogrolls and buddy lists. Ten years ago this was science fiction. Now we are living it.
And I have no idea where we are headed.
A friend is someone who will help you move. A real friend is someone who will help you move a body.
Unknown
