Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Why I Post At All

I have been posting for five days. Mainly, at the request of certain friends scattered about the country who I see not often and talk to only sporadically, despite their repeated emails (I have a horrible hermit streak). A request that in this new year I be more accessible, even if it is only in glimpses, out of context and indirect. I would have most likely honored their request regardless of when they made it, for their sakes and not my own. But, with a coincidence of timing, their request was made at a time when I found myself without outlet and so the idea had even more appeal.

Drawn to seclusion I may be, and yet there are occasionally those with whom I find I feel secluded even while totally exposed. That I rant to, cry to, reveal myself to again and again in every light imaginable. I had such a one until days ago, when I realized that the every light imaginable had not included the one capable of clearly illuminating our circumstances. And I revere the person still, but they are no longer another home for me. And I chose, though it felt not like choosing, to be silent to them.

And so, with some small part of my spirit wandering, I was perfectly inclined to agree to this venture of brief glimpses and lack of context. And I expected nothing more from it than to bring pleasure to those who have pleased me for years and to perhaps find some small venting of myself in the process.

And I have read many other people’s posts in the past five days. A page at random, bits of archives here and there, posts in the middle of the page, without chronological relevance. And in that time, I have commented twice. To posts that for some reason resonated within me at that exact moment in time. I cannot say why one and not others, surely there were others that I found comment worthy.

And a girl I commented to today, said about my comment:

“…what you said seemed to have the energy of a benevolent universe. thank you for your wisdom.”

And how, other than flukes of fate and timing and mood, was I there to be wise for someone who needed wisdom? Such things make me so contemplative about how little I understand anything. And I think: “how odd it all is” because you know what amuses me most about the situation? That she was just as receptive as I was giving.

How often does that happen in “real” life which is so filtered and so often our minds and opinions are prefabricated? What if this girl turned out to be *not* a stranger? Were she to turn out to be my neighbor who all this time has seen me through eyes, under raised eyebrows, that take in my cut offs and scruffy hair, in the yard with the roses and overgrown herb garden? Would she dismiss my words without hearing them? Or if she turned out to be my mailperson or my waitress at my favorite bar or my best friend or someone I know’s ex-girlfriend….

What a difference the context you know a person in can make in how you hear what they say, in whether or not you are inclined to even listen. It is a trait I believe I have mostly shed in the many years I have been studying myself, but how often you *see* it.

What if I had walked up to this stranger in the grocery store, after overhearing her post via conversation, and made my comments? Would her reaction have been the same? Would the wisdom still have been inherent in my words? Or would she have already made 10 million split second judgments of me and have placed them between my spirit and hers? Perhaps it’s my hair she would not like or my eye liner or lack of it. Perhaps even just the sound of my voice. Any and all such filters we create again and again and again throughout our in-person interactions with others. And such filters are necessary, of course. Such boundaries and valuations. The world is full of stimuli and it must be channeled and prioritized in some fashion.

But the key is to build such walls and channels as temporary as possible, so that they contain but can still be moved. And the key is to notice when such necessary structures of convenient processing become immovable temples built to ourselves.

I am glad I was here. I am glad I commented when I did. I am glad she heard me when she did. I am glad we do not ‘know each other’ and never will. I am glad that we existed for one moment of anime to anime and not persona to persona. And while she is grateful for my ‘wisdom’, I find I am grateful for that moment which validated my having chosen to be posting here. Symbiosis is a beautiful thing.


8 Comments:

Blogger aspyre said...

So curious, your cohesion & progression of logic.

I think I love you, but I will keep reading to be sure. :)

January 05, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

good girl. sorry to hear about the choice that wasn't a choice to give up the outlet. But, good girl. As for the cosmic intervention of a benevolent universe, didn't you always say that the gods rewarded painful choices by gifts of unmistakable proof that you have made the right one? Immediate gratifications that affirm your feet on the right path, things that scream so obviously "this wouldn't have been possible a day/week/hour ago because I was nowhere near this road"? And that by such you're assured you've veered in the right direction, no matter how overhung and gloomy the path might look to the regular sense of sight? Happy birthday beautiful one.

January 06, 2005  
Blogger Ladarna Daorsa said...

::putting finger tips to chest, dimpling and blushing:

Oh my, did I say all that? I think I stole it from Eddings.

I shall tell [all of] you a story later. About a boy with a hole in his pocket and my idle hands.

January 06, 2005  
Blogger Ladarna Daorsa said...

To Aspyre:

Ah, you love so quickly. What a beautiful thing.

Now, be a good girl and beautiful enough to hate me, resent me, like me, be bored by me just as quickly. Only if you allow me my natural multi-facets -- evoking changes in reflection -- does 'love' honor me at all.

All emotional responses are as valid, and as deserved -- given the time and place and circumstances -- and I would not be cheated out of the sincere acknowledgement the full spectrum gives.

January 06, 2005  
Blogger aspyre said...

I will be brash enough to raise a slight voice of dissent at the notion that love need alter to be true. Also to the hole you left in his pocket, when we should turn our hands to mending whatever disorder comes our way.

January 06, 2005  
Blogger Ladarna Daorsa said...

::blinking in astonishment::

Love not alter? Are your "loved" ones so consistent of demeanor, thought and emotional response then, that they are always lovable? Are you *yourself* so consistent of demeanor, thought and emotional response that you are always capable of love? Does not your neurochemistry dictate otherwise? Light in heaven, have you no PMS?!?!? :)

I do not believe that 'love' (or any emotional response) can be consistent. Or should be. What I believe is that emotional honesty is what should be strived for. Loving this moment and finding yourself disliking in the next does not mean that love will not happen again in the moment following. And be just as true. A love gained once, never lost and never regained would soon become an object of complacency. And I would think it could only *come* from a place of complacency.

I would prefer to be seen as I really am every moment I am it: lovable, hateable, contemptable, irritating, sweetness and light.

I strive always for mindfulness and would have those that would 'love' me do no less.

Unless you think that love is an emotion that can run consistant and complete as backdrop to all other "temporary" emotional states. If so then, yes, we disagree.

As for when we should turn our hands: When we can. Is that not why we have gifts?

And my issue is less with the turning of the hand or not, but with *why* such turning is done or not done. Those are the things I seek to discover in myself and in others.

And I find, too often to suit me, that people do not do simply for the point of *not* doing. They judge things from this direction: *Doing* such and such a kindness will say *this* about me, or put me in *this* position, and so I shall not do it. They rationalize a lack of action by the imagined effect of such action. They judge not what their *choice* says about them, but what they have said about themselves with what they *didn't* choose.

I find it odd.

January 06, 2005  
Blogger aspyre said...

>Unless you think that love is an emotion that can run consistant and complete as backdrop to all other "temporary" emotional states. If so then, yes, we disagree.<

This is the crux of what I believe, yes. With my roommate, friends, or even my exes, whatever irksome behaviour endeavours to disjoint us is utterly insignificant in the scope of our love. Anything else I feel, however true & justified, fades into the temporal while love remains eternal.

In another post, you mentioned your son; do you ever cease to love him?

I find myself doing for senseless reasons more often than not. It seems it would be most effective to find sensible ways to spend energy & gifts, when making people happy may not be the greatest good.

January 07, 2005  
Blogger Ladarna Daorsa said...

//Anything else I feel, however true & justified, fades into the temporal while love remains eternal. In another post, you mentioned your son; do you ever cease to love him?//

I think we may be caught in a semantics argument. Yes, there are certainly moments in which I cease to love my son. Because I am mindful of each moment/emotion as it is. Do I always *return* to loving him? Of course. So perhaps you would say the love is eternally *constant* and I would say that it, and all emotions, are eternally created *anew*.

My original post in response was directed more to the tendency people have to idealize once they "love" and to feel guilty or to repress other emotions with "How wrong of me to think her a bitch when I love her" or whatever sort of self-condemnations just because they think love is Love and beyond the rules of other emotions. You seem to have no such issue, even if for different 'reasons' than I, so well and good.

///I find myself doing for senseless reasons more often than not. - snip - when making people happy may not be the greatest good.///

I always think that making *myself* happy is the greatest good and strive, always, to do or not do in accordance with that. Much like on the airplane in the "what to do with your oxygen mask" speech -- secure yours before assisting others. Only in aiding myself am I complete enough to be of any aid to anyone else. My curiousity is therefore always aroused when I find myself *not* doing something I would "normally" do. I am always curious, in such instances, to discover what greater good to myself I am serving.

::musing::

And perhaps all 'reasons' for such things *must* be 'senseless'. Giving should be, imo, such an intuitive thing. Such as that does not always hold up when examined under the eye of Sense and Reason.

January 10, 2005  

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