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The last word: He said he was leaving. She ignored him. - The Week
Found this through my friend Ivee’s facebook wall post. Incredibly moving.
When Laura Munson’s husband asked for a divorce, she ducked instead of fighting. He needed to learn, she says, that his unhappiness wasn’t really about her
In dance class on Thursday,
My 30-year-old (doesn’t look it all and has really great tattoos on her feet) classmate danced from the shrine she made of herself (as instructed by the teacher, the shrine making AND the dancing).
Let me make this clear. Probably every single dancer in the modern department is the strong woman type. I mean look at the crazy shit we do. Robot chicken, fetal crawling, finding our ephemeral joints. It’s not beautiful flowwy stuff here. It’s the kind of thing you can do only because you are confident and only because you have already refused to conform to this world’s expectations of you/women (we do have one guy though).
But when she danced, you could see she was dancing out of herself, but of a self that was already conjoined with another self. I do not know how to make this sound not cliche (trust me, modern dance is not cliche), but she was dancing in/out/with with her lover. A classmate asked her about her dance after class. She has been married for 9 years.
I always thought that defining yourself by your lover and your love was weak. Strength stems from independence. Independence is mutually exclusive with love via dependence.
I reflect on my own Yuner-shrine inspired dance of linking, of happy linking with God and food and people, of sad-pulled-many-ways linking with God and people. It’s just me. Andd I thought I was strong but it felt so. Ignoble and trivial in comparison to hers.
Her piece ended with this:
I refuse to let you go without a taste of me.
Maybe in 9 years, when I am 30 myself, I will have an inkling of what it means to be strong and in love simultaneously.
Kids on Marriage
A group of young children were asked about marriage…
HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY?
You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and dip coming.
- Alan, age 10
No person really decides before they grow up who they’re going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you’re stuck with.
- Kirsten, age 10
WHAT IS THE RIGHT AGE TO GET MARRIED?
Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then.
- Camille, age 10
No age is good to get married at. You got to be a fool to get married.
- Freddie, age 6
HOW CAN A STRANGER TELL IF TWO PEOPLE ARE MARRIED?
You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids.
- Derrick, age 8
WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOM AND DAD HAVE IN COMMON?
Both don’t want any more kids.
- Lori, age 8
WHAT DO MOST PEOPLE DO ON A DATE?
Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.
- Linette, age 8
On the first date, they just tell each other lies, and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.
- Martin, age 10
WHAT WOULD YOU DO ON A FIRST DATE THAT WAS TURNING SOUR?
I’d run home and play dead. The next day I would call all the newspapers and make sure they wrote about me in all the dead columns.
- Craig, age 9
WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE?
When they’re rich.
- Pam, age 7
The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn’t want to mess with that.
- Curt, age 7
The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and have kids with them. It’s the right thing to do.
- Howard, age 8
IS IT BETTER TO BE SINGLE OR MARRIED?
I don’t know which is better, but I’ll tell you one thing. I’m never going to have sex with my wife. I don’t want to be all grossed out.
- Theodore, age 8
It’s better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them.
- Anita, age 9
HOW WOULD THE WORLD BE DIFFERENT IF PEOPLE DIDN’T GET MARRIED?
There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn’t there?
- Kelvin, age 8
HOW WOULD YOU MAKE A MARRIAGE WORK?
Tell your wife that she looks pretty even if she looks like a truck.
- Rick, age 10
I told you I was a commitment-phobe. Who ask you come along for the ride?
So there are a couple things I want to say. Perhaps I should have journaled while in Italy, it has been incredible and learning and oh-so-much-fun but I will forget it next year, all the small parts. Wonder if God has a pensieve like thing so that we can relive our best moments (though I suppose the point is that heaven will be so good I won’t care).
Number One
There are a few key phrases, as I like to call them, in my life right now. Really, they just codify the important things I learnt in order to make choices, feel about things and understand my world. So right here, is sort of an operational definition of uh, my life.
Equilibrium: The stage is your life that you reach, that is neither better nor worse, but is you. It’s good in the ways you are meant to be, bad in the ways you are meant to be too. You are happy or at least at peace at equilibrium and you are meant to be at equilibrium for most of your life. Some people may call it maturity but I don’t like the hierarchical sound of that. Currently, I think I believe that you cannot really fall in love with the One (oh ominous!) if you are not at equilibrium, because you are not really who you will be mostly for the rest of your life. It’s not quite fair to get someone stuck to you, only to change later, is it.
Expectation Management: Many things in life fail you and make you sad. Your hopes get crushed especially if you are hope inclined (like someone I know). So many think this sounds like cynicism, I really don’t think it is. You are just training yourself to go with the flow, to take life as it happens, not force it to yield to you. This applies to many things. People, nights out, food (need to apply this harder. sigh), yourself, job hunting, romantic happenings etc.
Action Reaction: Great tool to understanding yourself and others, to not judge and not feel guilty, but to look forward and not dwell on the past. Everyone is someway because of something. Someone else hurt them and so they get messed up. We all see that in our own lives, so let’s give everyone a break, including ourselves. Doesn’t mean we get all sloppy and rationalize away all flaws. No, it just means understanding the origins of our behavior and if anything, to correct them properly. Even if you cannot understand why someone is so-like-that-one, at least give them the benefit of the doubt that something happened somewhere to them. This way, you also do not spend excess time and energy being angry/resentful towards someone.
Number Two
I finished reading Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul by my love, Douglas Adams. So i realized, I come away from most of his books not understanding something. Which means I need to do more reading and comprehension exercises. You know the ones where you copy the answer straight out from the text because your tuition teacher taught you that way. Anyways, it makes me sad about my capabilities, but its nice. It means I’m not just reading chicken shit all the time. I’m also sad because I don’t think I’ve much to read of his anymore. And he is dead. I could go back and read HH2G since I always forget half the convoluted plot by the time I finish a book, but every time I read a book I always get that deja vu sense and its really not that enjoyable. DG’s works have that sense of surprise and shock which is taken best once. So that is all upsetting. And I cannot do anything about it. Except complete his extremely difficult text-based adventure game! :D
Number Three
I haven’t watched sci-fi in a while :(
They are still quite into the ballads <3
My life in Italia thus far.
It is getting too easy…
To find flaws in men. It really doesn’t take long at all to figure out that one particular issue that destroys my respect for a person. This really is the crux of it all - respect. It seems that men are less and less worthy of respect; or perhaps more accurately, it takes much much more for me to respect someone. Or maybe it’s because my perception is growing increasingly worldly and, for lack of a better word, perceptive. Here are the three most common scenarios:
- Man does not have ambition. Respect dies.
- Man has ambition. But only talks about it and never actually does anything. Respect dies.
- Man has ambition. Does something about it. And then inflates himself, often manifesting in incorrectly perceiving others as lower beings. Respect dies.
Now I feel like some priss, because really, who am I to talk? I am suddenly afraid to be that old auntie spinster who never got married because she was “too good for everyone”. Despite how dreadful that future sounds, I still cannot alter the way I think. Being with someone you do not respect is probably worst than being alone.
Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for what I have.
Say Goodbye to Your Head (Draft 1)
It used to be a luxury, but as you know, technology makes many things accessible. After most of the ethical issues were resolved (with money), it was only a matter of time before the technical issues were resolved (also with money). It was quickly becoming commonplace to take a holiday from one’s own self.
It’s simple, really. First, you go to the travel agency and deal with the conniving travel agents, haggle and stop yourself from being repeatedly sweet-talked into “upgrades”. Then you chose a destination, called very nicely, a consciousness vacation. Back in the early days, when all of this was still quite contraband except for the filthy rich, it was called very crudely, a person. However, when it was all becoming accessible, the politicians were quite frightened of using that term. You can understand, of course, not just that politicians are easily frightened, but also that being able to take a vacation in another person is quite bewildering. So as this began to take off, the travel agencies combined forces and hired a linguistics expert in the area of calming phrases (once again with money) who coined the term ‘consciousness vacation’ during a hot steamy shower and made his fortune. After choosing your consciousness vacation, you stepped into an orange booth and pressed a button. Just like that, you would suddenly be someone else, with no memory of who you were before. And da duh duh, you would be them for a while. When your time was up, the private militia hired by the travel agencies (oh you know the story, with…) would hunt you down and bring you into an orange booth. There, you could choose what memories you would like to keep (by default you would forget being hunted by the men in orange uniforms and frightfully orange guns, unless of course, that was your kind of thing, then you would let yourself go on this one upgrade), press a few buttons, and poof there are you are, back in your life.
Now, not unlike the previous kinds of vacation, there were several genres of consciousness vacations. Eco-tourism, luxury, adventures, honeymoons, gastronomy, the list went on. However, the most expensive of them all, were the low-anxiety ones. Basically, the very anxious, and rich (the two go hand in hand) vacationers always chose the low-anxiety consciousness vacations. The most expensive of them all, was Sherwood Timple. Everyday, Sherwood rose in the morning to his coffee and butter toast. Then, he would proceed to his job, which was to feed the ducks and swans of the town with more toast (butter constipates them and make them very cross). After which he would receive his pay, which was just enough for his meals for the day. Sherwood then spent the rest of his day walking around and looking at trees and bushes, that sort of thing. At night, he returns to the cottage his mum left him, practices the harmonica for some time and goes to bed. For this, very rich people pay very very much. Unfortunately, Sherwood was quickly amassing his own fortune due to high demand. Travel agencies expect that in a while, Sherwood would decide to use his fortune and his anxiety level would consequentially rise. The filthy rich will be fine however; a whole new phenomenon of people trying to be as mundane as possible has arisen in response to this demand for low-anxiety consciousness vacations.
What was this life she was supposed to lead? What was this world she was supposed to lead it in? And what was this universe that kept coming at her through her eyes and ears? What was it for? What did it want?
She’d been born in a spaceship that had been going from somewhere to somewhere else, and when it had got to somewhere else, somewhere else had only turned out to be another somewhere that you had to get to somewhere else again from, and so on.
It was her normal expectation that she was supposed to be somewhere else. It was normal for her to feel that she was in the wrong place.
Then, constant time travel had only compounded the problem and led to the feeling that she was not only always in the wrong place, but she was also always there at the wrong time. She didn’t notice that she felt this, because it was the only way she ever felt, just as it never seemed odd to her that nearly everywhere she went she needed either to wear weights or anti-gravity suits and usually special apparatus for breathing as well. The only places you could ever feel right were worlds you designed yourself to inhabit - virtual realities in the electric clubs. It had never occurred to her that the real Universe was something you could actually fit into.
—HH2G Mostly Harmless
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
