Replica of a Natural Morning

Paul Simon is probably right. There must be fifty ways to leave your lover. But without question there are a million different ways to replicate the outcome of the same mistake in different forms. I write from densely personal stupid experience and inescapable insanity. Hence the apothegm, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” I write this as a reminder to myself. Not that I’ll change my behavior, of course. Because that would be the intelligent thing to do. I just want to go on record with evidence, just in case I need it for the insanity defense.

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I spent time over lunch yesterday with a very intelligent, kind, and beautiful woman, absorbing some good ideas and excellent advice, capped off with an outstanding cappuccino gelato. During the course of the conversation, I discovered with glee that I am not alone in being enamored with the concept of co-housing and enchanted by the possibilities of the tiny-house movement (in which “movement” is defined not as physical displacement in space but as “a diffusely organized or heterogeneous group of people or organizations tending toward or favoring a generalized common goal.“). The time I spent yesterday triggered new ideas that may cause me to adjust my thinking about whether or when to sell my house and what to do should I move forward with a sale. The upside is that I might pursue activities that could otherwise have gone undone. The downside is that I might have invested a rather significant amount of time during the last several weeks (months, even) in pursuit of ideas that might never be realized. But that’s the way life works, isn’t it?  I learned of a place that has captured my imagination in a way few others have: Point Roberts, Washington. So many appealing things about the place!  But that’s not all. I left the conversation with a renewed interest in travel to Greece and Iceland and Denmark. A danger in all this, of course, is that I might get depressed because I cannot “do it all.” I would need several more lifetimes to pursue all my desires. But isn’t that true of all the wishes and dreams one has in life? I won’t let this episode derail me, though. I will use it as another tool in the process of honing things down toward near-perfection.

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Buffalo Trace Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey should be consumed only in very small amounts and never after unmeasured but significant amounts of good India Pale Ale beer. Refer to the first paragraph, above. The lesson need not rely exclusively on Buffalo Trace or IPAs. It could just as easily be Rock City vodka and Guinness stout or Herradura tequila and Red Stripe beer from Jamaica. In the immortal words of Tom Paxton, “It’s a lesson too late for the learning, made of sand, made of sand.” I have it on good authority that consumption of such pairings can lead to dreams in which midgets dressed in Pacific islander native costumes accompany nurse practitioners on house calls.

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Guilt. Regret. Remorse. Shame. Many more related words might flood from the Thesaurus, but those additional words are not necessary. Guilt, alone, will do. I have been thinking about guilt, as well as its etiology and its ramifications, for some time. During that time, I’ve discovered several ways in which guilt is categorized and classified. Depending on whose perspectives one adopts, guilt can be said to be rational or irrational, natural or free-floating, persecutory or reparatory, reactive or anticipatory or existential, adaptive or maladaptive…and on and on. I have no sense as to the true number of classifications or theories of guilt, but I know this: guilt and its companions regret and remorse and shame, etc. command a significant amount of investigative and theoretical energies. Guilt is both easy to understand and impossibly complex. Guilt can be both therapeutic and irreversibly damaging. From the perspective of the layperson whose experience with guilt may be both rational and irrational, whatever form it takes, guilt can be debilitating. It can be so overwhelmingly painful that its soul-crushing strength can lead one to think the unthinkable. I think feelings of guilt must be tackled early and addressed fully. Whether guilt is a legitimate response to acts or omissions or, on the other hand, an irrational reaction to circumstances over which a person has no control, it needs to be acknowledged. Coping mechanisms that recognize legitimate guilt and channel responses into positive thoughts and behaviors as part of “lessons learned” can redirect the power of the emotion in productive ways. Intentionally dismantling irrational guilt and internalizing the fact that it is not a person’s “fault” can dissolve potentially negative, even deadly, misdiagnosed “guilt.”

In all the clinical, unemotional dissection of the emotion and all the thought I’ve given to guilt, though, I’ve discovered something else. For me, guilt sometimes has more power than all the tools I use to assess and dismantle it or to try to disarm its most painful weapons. It carries a bigger stick than I can fit in my bag of tricks.  Sometimes, I think the only reasonable response to feelings of guilt is to allow the emotion to take hold and let it ring out the tears until one is as dry as the desert; hoping the pain is flushed away in the deluge that leaves the landscape dry.

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I encounter a lot of emotion in other people, people I know, every day. I try to keep it out of my writing, purely as a matter of respecting privacy. I do not always succeed; sometimes, it slips in and I don’t catch the fact that I might have betrayed an assumed or even a requested confidence. Given that possibility, though, I try to keep others’ names out of my writing. Sometimes, my words make it easy for readers to identify a person, though; I try to allow that in only when doing do does not compromise the person in any way. All of that notwithstanding, sometimes I want to paint a full and comprehensive picture of others’ emotions, complete with identities, home addressed, phone numbers, and identifying marks. That desire usually does not arise out of contempt for a person but, rather, out of frustration that the person does not seem to recognize or acknowledge the legitimacy or necessity of emotion. Usually, the person is male. Males are taught to hide or even deny their emotions. Those lessons obviously did not “take” with me. But the part of the lessons that said “if men show their emotions, they should feel embarrassed and should try to recover from such an awful faux pas” stuck with me quite well. I resent those lessons. I think those lessons do far more damage to men than any good that might arise from an imaginary “benefit” that might be attached to adherence to the masculine macho stereotype myth. Resentment is a weak word to describe my feeling toward those lessons. Contempt and fury and rage come a little closer, but I think the word that fully describes my emotional reaction to those lessons has not yet been invented.

The irony of the image of the stoic male who either hides or simply does not have deep emotions is this: the image hides a fundamental weakness that belies the myth of strength. Men who can’t or won’t show their emotions lack the strength to reveal what true humanity looks like; as if they could not handle reactions to revelations that they, too, are sentient beings.  And, of course, when I get upset with myself for being unable to hide my emotions, I am buying into the myth and revealing my fundamental weakness. It’s odd, isn’t it, that a façade that tries to hide emotion behind a curtain of  strength is actually a sheer veil whose every wrinkle reveals weakness? I wish I could find a way to unlearn the lesson that causes my discomfort and embarrassment at emotional release.  Even though I recognize what it is, I cannot seem to overcome it. Most men can’t. Those who do are derided by those whose weakness had been perfected to an art form. But, those same men who are derided for exposing their emotions are admired by people who recognize the trait as strength.

Where the hell did that come from this morning? Well, I’m glad I wrote it, despite being surprised that my fingers spun the words.

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Language pleases me. I saw a post this morning, with the following heading: “missing a yellow child’s kayak.” My reaction was laughter, as I wondered whether a kayak for a yellow child was missing or whether a yellow kayak for a child was missing. I’m easily amused, even by normal language not intended to amuse.

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Today feels like a Saturday for some reason. I know it’s Thursday, of course, but it just feels Saturday-ish. Enough for now. I a million things to do, thanks to my lethargy earlier in the week.

About John Swinburn

"Love not what you are but what you may become."― Miguel de Cervantes
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