The Incredible Lightness of Absence

Missing people in your life is a very normal thing. Death separates us; distance separates us; time separates us. All these elements of their nature are difficult. Our emotional ties to those who have died, and to those who have moved on or moved away (out of our lives) remain -- but are blocked by elements beyond our control.

I miss Sheila every day -- in a hundred ways. Visions and moments of deja vu scatter across my daily life like leafy shadows in a forest. I also miss close friends, former lovers, friends who are "not to be" and categories of acquaintances, either momentary or extended, who have somehow had an impact on my life. Certainly Tosha, Tina, (in different ways obviously), Maureen, and even those who never became more than spectres (and so shall go unnamed) are there as well. 

Absence does not make the "heart grow fonder" -- it only makes for a more solitary life. I miss them all.   

Karma, Tolerance, Love

Some people don't believe in altruism. I do.  I believe in giving to someone: a friend, an acquaintance, even a stranger -- with perhaps no hope or even any desire to get something in return.  Sometimes people just "need" a gift -- they always deserve one. 

Life is a difficult climb. We balance ourselves on our tensions, on our anxieties, on our many many pressures. We float in a sea of vibrations all threatening to change us, to disrupt us, to harm us. Some of us even make more tensions for ourselves -- by trial and error we determine that Sartre was right (Hell is other people), and we believe in what we sow. We accept that it is better to resist than to go along; it is better to fight or curse than it is to touch or love. Humans are a sad lot in that way. 

Sarah Smiles

Some people just don't read "other people" (usually men of women, or women of men) all that well.  What that means is they mistake dyspeptic remarks made by someone else for their own dry-witted cynicism. Or they interpret laughter as being because of their own inherent wit, rather than being aimed directly at them. 

Usually men are the stupid ones. Often egocentric men are so concerned with their own importance that they fail to see they have been "out-verbalized" or "hung out to dry" by some witty young female. It can get worse if the man is older as well as being insensitive. That is the paradox of the "commedia character"-- the cuckolded foolish old man!

This is the idyllic old man's foolishness that glistened eyes lead us into. So be wary when Sarah smiles.   

Sarah's Song

Precocious, fiery, angry, rough, yet soft, yielding, compassionate; funny; verbal, intellectual, offbeat, yet traditional, normal, orderly,doctrinaire. A paradox walking!
A sinuous sylph sitting! Who is she?

Is she the administrative cruel taskmaster? Or is she the confident and laughing facilitator? Is she tough, stern, and misanthropic? Or the softly helping partner? What is she?

Does she know her own age? Does she understand her own life? Is she introspective as her love of reading suggests? Or an extroverted party-er -- as her stories detail?

She is Sarah, nonetheless.

Cogito Ergo Sum

Writing and teaching are professions that could really feed off of one another.  I find my teaching to be a rigorous taskmaster to my own abilities to think and write concisely. The things that I want to say, to others, via my blog -- are for the most part not petty, nor are they prurient, nor vengeful, nor even particularly current. They are for me, though, important enough to warrant saying.  Just to make sure the ideas are out there -- are acknowledged -- and understood. 

I understand that for some my exercise on this blog might seem a particularly vain or even arrogant exercise. Not so in my mind! I write to keep my brain focused and reactive to all things going on around me. Not because my ideas are superior, or better in any way; but simply because they will add to the foment. 

Descartes was right:"I think, therefore I am." And Shakespeare was also right -- "to be or not to be" is the question; and thinking will provide us with the correct answer, eventually. And it could go either way.

Sarah, Camille, Tosha, Mary, Christina...

I am convinced now that any blog that mentions a woman's name in the title is much more likely to be picked up by the "zombie searchers" on the Internet (as a possible source for erotic literature or even porn perhaps?).  After having now written more than a hundred posts I find that only the titles that could be considered "double entendres" or cute sexual jokes or just naming a female -- are picked up like gold.

That says not so much about the Internet, or humans -- but more about the way search "spiders" are set up to reel in salacious material. So far I have written no salacious material and I probably never well --- by anyone's standards. Nonetheless there are searchers (ZOMBIE SEARCHERS, I call them) who are just seeking smut in some form or way. It is part of the sensual dumbing down of our time, or our "generations:" specifically, the age of the Internet troll, the Internet voyeur, the Internet loser. 

It is a testament to our times -- to our ignorance, to our appetite for the lusty (without the honor of the actual completed desire). We are becoming less and less capable, and more and more voyeuristic. We are wasting time watching the world go by. How sad!
My apologies to all the names in my title -- whether I know them or not. 

The Female Psyche

Have you ever seen (or heard) a woman dominate a room at a party just by sheer energy combined with focused humor, volume, and an ability to say something just shocking enough to turn every one's head? Well of course you have. Many women, especially after a glass of two of wine (but some without any alcoholic encouragement) just naturally dominate any "scene" they are part of. Their stories do it. Their viewpoint does it. Their humor does it. 

Being the life of the party -- being the center of attention -- wanting to have people play off of their words, and with their words  -- comes in perfect stride for many women. Women in their forties, who still have the pinch of youth in their attitude and manner, often use their "dominance" to control an entire get-together. That is "fun" for them; or maybe it is a necessity. It is sometimes difficult to say which.

Actually I admire this trait, this skill -- as I see it engaged by some gifted individuals.  I realize that their are personal and/or psychological reasons for their zesty control. But whatever the reasons, it is still an interesting rite to observe. It makes me love women all the more. 

To Tosha

Somewhere along in time -- whenever I decide to open up this blog a bit, you will read this one post. Tosha, you have been a joy to me for many years now -- even before you selflessly gave Sheila and I more than a year of your time -- to soften the ending of that beautiful woman.

While you were my student I found you to be intelligent, questioning, hard-working, more capable than most at close examination, open to learning from all sources, and sincerely and completely interested in acting, theatre, and the arts. Your marriage at the time could not stand up to your intense growth and artistic inquiry. For that I am sorry for you. Robert is and was a good man -- but he was not to be a "permanent man" for you, just the first. And you will always love him for that, and you should.

Now as your career in Chicago begins to mushroom into a "real vocation" -- whether it is primarily as a teacher or an artistic director (you could do and succeed at both, or either) -- you still remain a woman of intensity, focus, and compassion.  I like to think you learned some of that from your family, and perhaps some from Sheila -- who was all that. Whatever the source -- it is in you; and you are the more-rounded for it.

Your artistic life in theatre will have up's and down's, just as your normal life has had
--  but you are a success story no matter what the outcome of a show, or a season, or a career.  You are a success as a human being -- full of drive, desire, focus, and confusion -- just as all the best of humankind. You are a peach (a Georgia Peach) but you are just as surely an apple (of many men's eyes), a rose (by every name, sweet), a
labyrinth (lost and found within many times over), a picture of simplicity (like the Mona Lisa, and as unreadable), a calm sea (swirling beneath). You are wonderful -- to me. I feel a paternal pride for you that even I don't understand or completely comprehend. Thank you for your love.   

Kerfuffle Over Sex

Most of the strangest conflicts in my life have been over sex. How well are you doing it? Who's doing it to whom? Do you want me to do it? Did you want me to do more?
Am I capable of doing more? Can you move while we do this? Why don't you want to talk while/during/after we do this? Are you lying just to please me? Are you pleasing me -- and it's all a lie? Do you care? Do I?

A "kerfuffle" is a disagreement over something -- resulting in two different views of the same situation. Sex breeds kerfuffles. Mostly though, people don't want to and simply don't talk about them. On the opposite side, some people only want to talk about those kerfuffles, even if they only occur infrequently. The amount and extent of these kerfuffles indicates the degree of incompatibility, I think. If the argument is always "the thing" on someone's mind -- than perhaps that's all there is: the argument.

Jennifer Star Trek -- take note! 

All in the Game

Fighting for a fair salary for a fair amount of work for the faculty, both full time and adjuncts -- that is key to being an honest administrator.  Today was a kind of "showdown" day for keeping the lid on three now initiatives at STC -- the ECCA, the LCCA, and the W-T accelerated college programs.

We shall see if STC lives up to its commitments and actually pays people what it said it would -- or whether the Master Professor is right about the duplicity. 

A Female Society

No man is an expert in the trappings of the female society. The female society operates under very different rules than society as a whole. Females value different elements of life -- they have different priorities, different endgames, than any other gender (male, humanoid, robot, transgender, other?). Females have the clearest notion of a society that is effective and will provide nurture for all. 

Females also rule the interplay between genders -- though sometimes they either don't take advantage of that rule, or they don't recognize that they have the advantage. I love females -- I love their strength and their reserve, their savagery and their comportment, their intelligence and their emotional power -- but I do confess to a total inability to understand them even though I have been studying them assiduously for my entire life.
Females rule.  I understand that. But that is pretty much the extent of my understanding. 

About the Future

When thinking about the future -- one always runs directly into the present.  The present situation in most things is: outrageous, unthinkable before now, stupid, self-defeating, confused, jumbled, inauthentic, worthy of note, crazy, unimaginable, and just plain ordinary.

"Ordinary" in the sense that the present day is always "out of whack." Or is it our view of the "present?" Are we unable to accept the present because we live in an ever-moving past, basing our observations on change on our recollections of how things were (or how we thought they "should be")? I think human beings truly resist change.
We just can't handle it. We rebel. We hold out for something better, a return to something better, when the past was not "better" at all, only just the past where we were oh-so-comfortable.

My future is my present. What I need to do is accept what is -- and smooth out the edges where I am most affected; and not worry so much about a new condition, especially one that may seem to diminish my standing somehow. I don't want to get into a semantic tongue-tie-off, but change is inevitable; change is happening right now; change is moving the world; and I can move along with it, or die off resisting it.
Which will it be?