. Spinning .

Much to think about today, given yesterday’s revelation.   Or rather just facing life facts learned but not assimilated, because with the lantern of Diogenes, I had found an honest man.  I saw the incredulity and almost pity in his eyes, and his reluctance to fuel that fire with truth, and yet he saw that it was needed and he risked that he could trust me.  No charge, this gentle advice, but given with a sympathetic hug.  The reaction this time though is not my usual triumph, but reflection and the need to wholeheartedly with conviction seek a path of acceptance and tolerance that is more than spoken words.  A credo that is uncompromising to my beliefs, and yet not a burden upon others.  Withdraw my passion and delight of being the thorn in their side.

Words come back to me from the past; the opening line of my high school graduation speech–a political stand that I now cannot remember except that it upset my aunt in its viewpoint:

"If you hurt people (pause) by telling them the truth (pause, look meaningfully at the audience) you will not be liked."

Should have been a fast in and out, park right up front and scamper about dumping presents quick like the Easter Bunny.  Unusual number of cars in the lot for a week after semester closing.  I walk the near twenty cars down and roll in the side lobby to find tables draped in white linen and covered with chocolate strawberries, cheeses, all kinds of good things.  The guards are alert in their chef disguises, and I cannot find so much as a book on a table.  I turn to hearing clapping of hands, then look up.  A banner proclaims that the governor’s here.  Oh fucky-wucky, no chocolate for me. 

I scatter about down one end of the hall to the other, done; turnaround, and the clappers are silent with strawberry-stuffed mouths.  I sneak out the main door and hitch myself back into my car.  Ahah, several people stayed properly for speeches but leave the food behind–what fools have it backwards!  I slow, stop, let a man cross the driveway, give him a thumbs-up sign as I see who he is.  He nods with a slow smile.  Nobody else looks much like Geno Auriemma, and really, nobody wants to nudge him with a car.   

Okay, so I’m right.  I’ve been pronounced so by a judge.  But it doesn’t matter; it is time once again to give in because the costs mounting up are more harmful to me in the end.  In time, in health, in money, and in mental state. 

It is a relief to know that my suspicions were founded–I’m not being ignorant, just stubborn when all around me are making up their own rules and even when discovered, can just find a new game to play.  In the meantime I gallop about on a white horse that only wants to go back to his barn and eat hay.

So that’s two wars from which I’m choosing to politely withdraw, before the stallion rears and I fall to the ground.  But it’s funny somehow, to wonder where the seeking of the perfect truth, beauty and good interefere with the mortal world and the justice of right and the worry of wrong.  I suppose it has something to do more with peace versus value, and the giving up of acknowledgement of knowledge when the soul is in pain.

Mellowed and tired with not quite an hour of night’s sleep, I start peeling potatoes as I leisurely watch for the furnace repairman, the easy part of this long day.

Me:  This is going on two years now.  The longer the house sale drags out the more we’re paying in expenses, taxes…

My Attorney:  The taxes are prorated at the closing.

Me:  Uh…to what–the day I think she should have bought the house?

Gee, I hadn’t realized that Survivor Terry is from Simsbury, a couple towns over from us.  I’ve liked him from the start because he has been the most honest and hardest player in the challenges, and any finagling he’s done was only to try to get somebody from the other tribe on his side.  The only thing I didn’t like and don’t really understand is why he didn’t use his immunity idol to save his last tribemate, when after this it is useless to him. 

I also like Cheri, whose scheming has been done at least for a purpose. 

We’ll see who wins tonight at 8:00.  I do enjoy this show, despite the negatives, mainly because it is an unfolding continuing story.

Seek and ye shall find…

Randomly happening upon ideas that then refuse to let go.  Via GLH, I found Yi-Fu Tuan’s site, and a series of what he calls Letters to Colleagues that is a good place to park for a while.  But in a brief letter on the loss we encounter–and what is gained by the sharing with others, this:

The second feeling of loss is paradoxical. How can receiving—taking someone into your life—be felt as a loss? Well, the obvious answer is that you lose your privacy. You get the feeling that cracks are developing in your carefully-constructed world of habits and routines. The cure is two-fold. One is to understand that your carefully-constructed world needs shattering. Being made aware of that need is one great service that the person who enters your life can perform. The other is to see all the riches the other brings in, riches that unfold slowly over time. 

(Tuan, Yi-Fu. "Dear Colleague: 1 May 2006." Yi-Fu Tuan.
19 Nov 2004. http://www.geography.wisc.edu/~yifutuan/dear_colleague.htm.)

This: "One is to understand that your carefully-constructed world needs shattering." is what brings further thought.  My first question would be "Why?"  Why does what we build need to be broken apart; is there no value given to the farmer and tender of the plot on which he was seeded?  I understand fully the desire and good nature of expansion and doubt of dependence, but windows and doors are a given.  While some may need to be constantly challenged to change, some may need to be the foundations, to build onto in additions rather than formed anew.  A lot more here to think about than the elegant simplicity of the thought.

Another of his letters caught my eye as I read it quickly, regarding networking:

Networking gives one power—the power of belonging. What an individual says, even if it is important and powerfully said, may go unheeded. What a group says, even if it is trivial and confusedly said, may be not only heard but acclaimed by, first, fellow members, then, the members’ own connections.

Networking empowers an individual, but it also weakens him, as the expression "being caught in a net" suggests. Being caught in a net—even being a willing part of a net—implies a loss of agency and mobility. A scholar in a tight network forfeits his right and ability to think for himself.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. "Dear Colleague: 9 April 2006." Yi-Fu Tuan.
19 Nov 2004. http://www.geography.wisc.edu/~yifutuan/archive/20060409.htm.

This I would tend to agree with and need research further, especially in this day of corporate teamwork and rah-rahs and backpatting that doesn’t necessarily work very well in all situations.

But I am impressed by Yi-Fu Tuan and will go back and read more.  He would be a great man to know as a friend.

I am in a unique position as picture framer and wannabe writer:  Surrounded by talent, visual and text, I can praise, inform, build up the confidence in those who need to go further, cajol them into taking those steps.

An artist whose work I am currently framing for a show had been pushed to explore avenues of reproduction of her work, and now she’s come back with the resources that I share with another.  He’s a bit shy about his work and he shouldn’t be.  I send him off to explore, armed with what has been shared by she with the show; he goes, comes back beaming.  Signed, numbered, limited editions from original work–high quality stuff.  I suggest starting the circuit this summer with a couple shows on the green, then we’ll set him up with a website or weblog for winter.  This morning, I’ll do the same with another reluctant, unsure-of-herself fine artist.

In writing as well I can spot, suggest, and gently push those I note, both local and spread on the giant net of the web, to carry it further, to share.  I flatter discriminately, for it wouldn’t be fair.  The road is too hard for the artist to travel, the cost is great in money and time to feed passion and passion alone.  I am no expert, but I do have an eye and some little knowing, and those with the right combination of love and of skill get more than encouragement; they get a firm push.

In a world of myriad talent of language and color, where the artist ego is often too fragile for the flow, I can help.  Hints and experience come back from some that I can pass on to another. Visual artists are more apt to get paid when their work is accepted, are wary, and all I need do is remind them how many more canvases or tubes of paint they buy now to continue their work.  Justification they can accept.

I go to the mailbox, sort through the mail and a postcard catches my eye.  An invitation to a showing.  I can’t help but smile in some small satisfaction as a link in the chain of events.

I hate this niggley thoughts that invade and take over, grow with questions and argument within the pea-sized space of my brain.

To fight for justice, and to fight against injustice, are not the same by way of motive and possible outcome.  To argue and take a stand on what is thought to be right and fair, carries with it little burden since true unbiased justice would assume that all parties would come through dealt with in good manner.  It is assuming that there is a reasonable and fair standard by which we can judge what is right, and that all are seeking the same thing in the end result of fairness.

Justice is everyone getting to wear a red shirt.

To fight against injustice assumes that injury is or is a possible outcome to an act.  That wrong is in the making–a clearcut wrong that must be reversed to an even ground.  Is this the scales of justice?  I always wondered if it represented pros and cons, or good and bad, or should be balanced at an equal level.  The last, I should think, and that would represent a compromise.

Injustice is having to wear a red shirt.

What is intent and motivation?  Is it more noble to battle against a wrong as it is done with intervention and prevention of injury, or rather to seek equality across the board in stating justice–regardless of the outfall.

Yes, I need philosophy today.  Or maybe just a piece of chocolate cake.