Life has been a curious mixture lately with a bit of horrible intense drama and a bit of slack and routine, cramps and whining and sleeping late; yet as usual, though I think I've been doing nothing, when I look back and count up, everything seems so full, so good, so luminous. I feel like I'm riding a giant wave, exhilarating, heady with power. I have worked long days with the good feeling of knowing what I'm doing, being useful. I've had some bad days physically, and emotionally, but also, kept my shit together, and have a brain full of ideas and books. What I love, I love to be thinking and getting new information, playing, talking, looking at things with my awareness open. This week despite emotional lows I am full of poetry... I am Having an Interesting Life I suppose...
I'm reading a fantastic book that the SkaRat recommended to me, called I Am A Cat, published in 1905. It's so good! It's hilarious & sad. The introduction laid out charmingly how the author- Soseke Natsume - was something of a failure in his career & as a scholar - his teaching career sort of crappy - his pittance of a scholarship to go to London - which he mostly failed at because he hid in his room for 2 years doing nothing but reading a ton of books. OMG... my kind of person. It is all the cat's pomposity and charm as he observes Human Nature... the scribblings of his human & the funny (catty!) conversations of the slack-ass scholar's obnoxious, pretentious, half-assed friends. I keep thinking that surely the different characters sketched out must be making fun of particular figures from some intellectual scene in Japan at the time. I love the translation... it flows beautifully and succeeds in being funny (or at times in conveying that something complicated has just happened that would be funnier in Japanese, which as a translator, I appreciate).
I am also still reading the Crypt0 book but it is lost in the house somewhere. It is very good. Though... has that annoying golly-gee drooling P0 Br0nson flavor to it where you just want to go, Jesus, get a room already with your dreamy-eyed hacker boys. At least it does make it clear - the homosocial nature of geek culture. It was odd to read of what's his face staying in McC's house where I worked too. I could picture it (not the specific physical setting - I mean that I know the atmosphere well.) It explained some things to me about the feeling of working there and what was expected - expectations that one would have a sort of salon of underemployed geniuses who do your domestic labor and settle in a bit like extended family - not that I don't appreciate some of the judgements and sentiments of that - but a fate I would particularly like to avoid from either side of the equation, underemployed genius side, or benevolent salon-aspiring employer whose homoerotic bonding time period had sadly passed with N. and M. in the late 50s and early 60s. Honestly the more I contemplate that looming fate for myself the more I want to do it co-op style or not at all. Anyway, read Crypt0 book and besides the actual ideas, thought of the cultural phenomenon where you do what RS4 did and ride your collective exhilarating wave of thought & collaboration, but it is not permanent, like having a brilliant rock band, and you may never get that synergy again in life, which seems awfully melancholy. One would just refuse to believe it.
My other book has been Godfather of the Kremlin which ummm what's his name in Brussels recommended during a moment when I felt like there was no possible conversational topic since I was not really part of their work meeting, did not share their wonky knowledge of their topic, and did not want to talk about myself, so I asked this obviously interesting person what unusually good books he woudl recommend. It was this one. I'm enjoying it greatly... it's super business-politics wonky and explains Russia in the 90s and specifically how Berezovsky and other capitalist gangsters looted the country during privatization... the whole thing with the vouchers is so horribly fucked up.. and I was deadly fascinated with the aeroflot story - the textbook case of how to loot a company you don't own.
The emotional stuff has been difficult, I have felt intense about my physical issues and had a lot more pain this week, and also, had some fights with Rook over things, which brought up more issues for me than I know how to rightly deal with myself. It kind of brought up old family issues for me. I have particular difficulties when people are angry with me. Oh, can't I be a grownup and not think back on things that happened over 20 years ago -- haunted by ghosts? I understand ghosts now. I am happy with myself- and yet - not. Also, trying to face the ways in which I am, actually, an asshole. That's hard! Rook is also very stressed in his job and this is his last week. He quit! I'm so glad he did, and think it is the right decision. I find it fairly easy to talk about most of my emotional problems or issues or dilemmas but he does not and I did not realize what he has been through. I also felt like, last year, with my health problems, I wanted him to have more support, he did not, I did not know how to provide it, I had my own issues and needed emotional support which he didn't really know how to do either. I hope that is clear, yet vague... I was caught up in my loop of cranky pain, hating myself for not being able to be happy and full of attention and cheerful - hot and sweaty - upset with life - thining that i have not done enough - and that if I am in pain now, I might be in more tomorrow, or unable to even get up and therefore i should use the last of my strength to clear the laundry off the floor and make the room less disgusting - in case I am stuck in it for days - and thus trying to chivvy everyone else around me suddenly to clean and wanting to cry at being The Nag and also full of resentment at needing or wanting help and/or at years when it was my job to do the housework - And the reality of it is that we screamed at each other at the top of our lungs about housework... I am embarrassed... and that spilled over into arguing about everything - but I need to talk about it. I think we made it up and had a good conversation. And for some people that might be normal and part of life, but for me, not. Meanwhile I thought lately that things were calmer with a person who I mortally offended last year causing endless drama and pain, and yet who will not attempt to work that out with me in any way. I wish we could just sit down and talk. Or, if not, then I wish she would step off, keep her emotional pain to herself, and not lay it on me and people close to me. For various reasons, we are peripheral to each others' lives. And we have to accept that and negotiate some way to tolerate that. That's what I think. I can do it if they can. But, terribly, I feel that unholy feeling that something is being projected as being part of me, when it is actually that other person. In other words, that they have major boundary problems and the exact problems they have, they are attributing to me, and that, somehow, while not my Fault really, is partly because of my own strong personality, stubbornness, and what is either my assholishness or shininess depending; so that I am horribly aware that if I were somehow Lesser of a person, there would not be a problem; yet because this other person and I are both rather Rocketship in our approach to life, they bristle and cannot tolerate and I bristle and cannot back down.
I admire an uncompromising, unconventional person who has a strong personality, very much, often even when they position themselves in opposition to me or they clearly hate me or find me annoying as all fuck. A person who insults me, I can often look past the insult, and see the information. I also have Theories about how as a society we need people who don't have great filters and who ignore social cues. I am one of them... But you know, some people are more extreme than me.... I appreciate what is good about them. Holy crap though, I don't mean anything bad. If I'm offending, just tell me to my face... would the world end?
Other people have their own childhood-families and their own ghosts and histories... I am aware... So I will think about my responses to anger (paralysis, trapped, need to flee... flight reflex... ) and try to be easy on a person who has their own baggage, that I might trigger. But, it is not fair to the person triggering it, not to tell them or talk to them. I can't erase myself, and won't go away. The things thrown at me or accusations -- and the tangible results of that -- bring up my own irrational painful issues; abandonment in general. Therefore it seems logical to attempt negotiation, even if that is crazy moon language. Though I would just plain like the chance to explain myself, I would also willingly shut up and listen, not say anything, go away and think about it, and try not to go on the defensive etc. I see no need to hash it all out, but to establish reasonable boundaries, and what are the actual goals of talking at all. I do not expect some buddy buddy outcome here. I just want not to cause suffering to a person, and not to suffer their emotional outbursts and the effect direct or indirect they have on my life. I feel okay that I am saying this on my blog, and that I called the person to make the direct and sincere offer of "let's talk".
Meanwhile. Moomin has had "camp" which is really just day care, at his old school from a year ago, and though I thought he would find it boring, he seems to be having fun playing that he is squirrels with Jos3lyn and Mar1s0l and their entourage, and in the corners of time, reading Nancy Drew books. I had a call that he bumped his head, during a meeting at work, and ducked out to hear him sobbing with ice on his head, could tell he was okay but rattled, went to get him, admired the enormous bump on his head as he ran around and begged me to stay just long enough to have the ice cream sundaes... and enjoyed seeing the kids myself that I used to play board games with at recess... J0anna and the others.... I thought of M4rcus who was the most hawk like of them all and full of scorn and who could almost beat me at chinese checkers. (I would not insult him by letting him win - he was too smart not to see through that and be offended.) I miss getting to be a little bit involved at the school.
It has been 100 degrees or over - unbearable in the house - I got home today from SF, got the old library books, picked up Moomin (braving the horrible hill) and took him to the library. Worked a bit - looked up books with him - the Pilot met us there with Peanut who wants to play computer games - Moomin found a Nancy Drew and several books with magic & dragons in them - Maybe I can make it a custom to go there with him in the evening one night a week and just sit and read. We all went to the new Japanese restaurant on Main and Rook met us there. It's not really very good... alas... I would not go there again ... H1guma is still best in town. We had a nice dinner though. Moomin is eating more foods. He gets into the idea that it is korean food (will eat kim bap, fried tofu, the pickled gourd or radish thingies, and the other day with me and Rook at the korean restaurant in mtn. view he wanted to learn to read hangul characters. I am happy he has an interest but mostly just happy he will now eat more than 10 different things, 5 of them fruit.
