[pros-uh-li-tahyz]

verb (used with object), verb (used without object), proselytized, proselytizing.

1. to convert or attempt to convert as a proselyte; recruit.
Opinionated as I am, I put very little personal stake in being right. I think what I do because I’ve made educated and reasoned decisions about a given topic. Or because I have listened to compelling arguments from other people who have brought me around to their way of thinking. Or, because it simply pleases me to do so.

This last one seems to present the biggest problem for other people; particularly those at the end of the intellectual spectrum that faces mystery as something to defeat or dispel. I should have good reasons for thinking what I do, they tell me. I should arrive at my conclusions only after climbing the mountain of arduous study, carrying the equipment of objective reason, and look down on the vista of most-likely outcome.

And, in some cases that is exactly what I do.

Yet in others, I feel this approach is not only misguided, it is downright counterproductive. There are things beyond counting in this universe we simply cannot know. I am comfortable with this ambiguity. I feel reassured by the understanding that there is no way to comprehend certain things. I find it both delightful and liberating to encounter certain experiences with the awareness they are beyond my ken.

Moreover, I trust my instincts. I was raised in an atmosphere where it was ordinary to accept the uncanny. It has made me an exceptionally credulous person, and while I’ve been accused of being a sucker, I would rather see things my way than through a veil of poisonous cynicism.

It would be a mistake to believe this means I scorn academic rigor, reject doubt as a philosophical process, or object to inquiry as a critical component to a well-lived and fully realized intellectual life. It is rather to say that I am best served by exercising each in their turn, and then when I have done all of that, discarding them should I find an answer I like better.

I say this not to imply I discard apparent truth for a version of reality I blithely prefer (at least, not most of the time) but instead that sometimes, it is harmless, symmetrical, and happymaking to allow the truth to be something not in perfect alignment with what is broadly accepted as the collective “reality.” I am familiar with that kind of dissonance, and I think it serves me very well indeed.

It is because I understand this isn’t really a defensible position that I have never tried to defend it. Pressed by people who wanted me to quantify my beliefs, I have resorted to simply saying;

“I believe what I do because I like to.”

This is a not very pleasing answer for a lot of people. Some of them are downright offended by it. My utter disinterest in convincing someone else my worldview is valid runs counter to a lot of the cultural messages we absorb. To my mind, I am in fact the only person who need believe what I do. I have never needed exterior validation for my point of view, and even if I am all alone in thinking what I do, it serves and satisfies such that I am content to stand within its borders all by myself. If my satisfaction disappears, I abandon my position with utter alacrity, and no sense of hypocrisy whatever.

For without ever having to defend my beliefs, I am perfectly content to relinquish them should better, clearer, or more compelling evidence present itself. I need retract no unequivocal statements about How Things Are because I have never really claimed to know.

And I suppose that is, in its way, something I could see the value in advocating, after all.

[bluhs-ter]

verb (used without object)

1. to roar and be tumultuous, as wind.
2. to be loud, noisy, or swaggering; utter loud, empty menaces or protests: He blusters about revenge but does nothing.

verb (used with object)

3. to force or accomplish by blustering: He blustered his way through the crowd.

noun

4. boisterous noise and violence: the bluster of the streets.
5. noisy, empty threats or protests; inflated talk: bluff and bluster.

It happens occasionally that the weather perfectly reflects my inner climate. Yesterday was one such. Events have been at a gallop for a while now, and it was perhaps inevitable that with all the swirling influences at work, a gale might rise to life; and so it did.

Instinctively, I lean into the wind, most times. Experience tells me that making progress usually requires a willingness to press on against resistance and bear up under forces set in opposition. That to do this builds character, produces results, and is the process by which wisdom is gained.

Every so often though, it seems safest and best merely to take refuge and let the gale blow away whatever is not strong enough to endure the storm; to clear a path of the withered and outworn in favor of possibility nascent and unseen. That this may result in the loss of comforts long taken for granted seems only the proper price of such headway, made almost entirely possible by complete surrender.

And after all, the lights came back, after a dark and quiet spell.

[hahy-ey-tuh s]
noun, plural hiatuses, hiatus.
1. A break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, action, etc.
2. A missing part; gap or lacuna: Scholars attempted to account for the hiatus in the medieval manuscript.
3. Any gap or opening.
4. Grammar, Prosody. the coming together, with or without break or slight pause, and without contraction, of two vowels in successive words or syllables, as in see easily.
5. Anatomy. a natural fissure, cleft, or foramen in a bone or other structure.

It seems to be an unintentional but reliable tendency of mine to periodically cease all efforts at creative output. The tides and vagaries of life being what they are, it is perhaps understandable, but considering I know self-expression to be high on the list of happiness-making items, I’ll admit to the occasional exasperated sigh heaved in my own direction in the face of a lapse in industry.

Distractions abound and certainly, it’s been an eventful year, but to have some more tangible record of all that passed in the last twelvemonth would be gratifying. Even if occasionally difficult, it would afford me the opportunity to review the time with a more objective eye. The material changes being only the most apparent products of events unfolded and played through, they are substantial. Internal conditions have undergone even more radical alteration; a veritable revolution, that.

So I stand on this shore, with previously unbeheld vistas to consider; the far landscape hinting of a familiar but departed past. At my feet a collection of belongings, intentions, and dreams I held dear enough to retain, some all newly acquired. Sunk into the sea over the horizon, a host of ways and means cast onto the water to sink away into darkness, having far outlived whatever usefulness it once demonstrated.
So all unburdened and newly equipped, I set out again, for the first time.

noun

1. doubtfulness or uncertainty of meaning or intention: to speak with ambiguity; an ambiguity of manner.

2. an unclear, indefinite, or equivocal word, expression, meaning, etc.: a contract free of ambiguities; the ambiguities of modern poetry.

Gaaaaaah! My eyes!!!

As I’ve said before, I prefer it when things are explicit. When I understand without question what is happening or being communicated, I feel at ease; even if the outcome isn’t what I was hoping, at least I know it’s time to start mourning that fact.

Remove that surety and I spend an inordinate amount of energy trying to run down all of the iterations of the possible, probable, and likely. I uselessly attempt to imagine this near infinite variety of scenarios until I am exhausted and all but batshit crazy.

Needless to say, I am not a fan.

Rationally, I know that nothing is certain; no outcome guaranteed. I understand that even employing the most particular language to convey very specific intent does not ensure such results will occur. More, I understand that chaos is the rule of law. That spending time trying to intellectualize entropy is useless, exhausting, and like to make someone all but batshit crazy.

Ahem.

So, I have decided that instead of continuing my quest toward forcefully enacting universally explicit interpersonal communication, I’m going to try and practice sitting with ambiguity. To turn inward and listen to the panicked overwrought voice and simply hear what it says. Once I’ve heard it, to subject its assertions to reasonable scrutiny, and then accept or reject each premise on its merits. Or more likely, just sit there knowing that feelings aren’t usually that cooperative to this kind of treatment; that it’s okay to feel sad, uneasy, worried, or uncomfortable if that is the reaction I am having at the moment.

Of course, I’ll probably have to tell myself this explicitly a few times before it sinks in…

 

 

noun

1. an act of redeeming or atoning for a fault or mistake, or the state of being redeemed.

2. deliverance; rescue.

3. Theology . deliverance from sin; salvation.

4. atonement for guilt.

5. repurchase, as of something sold.

Smart is sexy

Once upon a time, someone wise and compassionate helped me question the path I was on, and for that I am deeply grateful. Unfortunately, once I knew I didn’t want to keep heading the direction I had been pursuing for years, I was utterly at a loss for what to do instead.

Trying to regain my bearings, I changed course, and floundered badly. Once a confident navigatrix, I was suddenly completely lost at sea.

Long years passed where I believed I no longer had the necessary skills to set and follow explicit passage successfully. I suffered a crisis of faith and function; I was robbed of my surety that I would see the other side of the horizon and arrive in good trim.

And then, things changed.

Clouds I forgot had not always obscured my vision rolled away and I could again see the stars by which to set my course. I regained my confidence and my composure. The evidence of my senses and successes all served as independent approbation for my capacity to embrace and execute my vision for the future.

I was reassured and redeemed.

I got straight A’s motherfuckers!

 

 

 

 

[ per-sev-uh-reyt ]

verb (used without object)

1. to repeat something insistently or redundantly: to perseverate in reminding children of their responsibilities.

It has been years. Near twice as long as we knew one another. There is nothing to justify the lingering regret and persistent longing.

Only that it seemed, at the time, to be everything I wanted. Only that I believed something magical had occurred. Only that I had never – and still have not – known anyone so utterly beautiful and wholly irresistible. Only that for a time, at least, he claimed to love me. Only that it seemed impossible.

And, after all, it was.

That is what I really can’t get over. How foolish, credulous, and faithful I was on the very slimmest provocation. How by fulfilling the archetype and being well beyond my grasp, I was dazzled to ignore all the ways it truly was.

Now, my eyes wide, I see nothing to lure such willful blindness. No temptation to ignore the wise whispered warning inside me. Nothing to overwhelm my senses and thereby, my sense.

I am so safe.
And disappointed.
Dwelling upon the gorgeous, decrepit, memory of a dream.

 [mas-uh-kist]  

noun

1. Psychiatry. a person who has masochism, the condition in which sexual or other gratification depends on one’s suffering physical pain or humiliation.

2. a person who is gratified by pain, degradation, etc., that is self-imposed or imposed by others.

3. a person who finds pleasure in self-denial, submissiveness, etc.

 

I Hurt Myself, Today

Root canal and final exam, today. I did this to myself. Clearly, I enjoy suffering.

Not like that’s news…