Goodbye 2005...........you were a good year, with all the ups and downs.

We've come out alright.

Goodbye raine77, and the journeys you have brought me along with.

For new blog addie, guys, just message me. I like abandoning blog addresses....its like shedding skin. Molting.

Here is my exemplary Dave Eggers snake example:

"
Heh. Heh. Heh. Are you sure you want to be telling me all this?

All what?

About your parents, the paranoia....

What am i giving you? I am giving you nothing. I am giving you things that God knows, everyone knows. They are famous in their deaths. This will be my memorial to them. I give you all these things, i tell you about his legs and her wigs--i do so later in this section---and relate my wondering if i souhld be having sex with my girlfriend in front of their closet the night of my father's service, but after all that, what, in the end, have i given you? It seems like you know something, but you still know nothing. I tell you and it evaporates. I don't care---how could i care? I tell you how many people i have slept with (thirty-two), or how my parents left this world, and what have i really given you? Nothing. I can tell you the names of my friends, their phone numbers, but what do you have? You have nothing. They all granted permisiion. Why is that? Because you have nothing, you have some phone numbers. It seems precious for one, two seconds. You have what i can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and i am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford to give you this. This does not break me. I give you virtually everything i have, and while these things are things that i like, memories that i treasure, good or bad, like the pictures of my family on my walls I can show them to you without diminishing them. I can afford to give you everything. We gasp at the wretches on afternoon shows who reveal their hideous secrets in front of millions of similarly wretched viewers, and yet...what have we taken from them, what have they given us? Nothing. We know that Janine had sex with her daughter's boyfriend, but ...then what? We will die and we will have protected....what? Protected from all the world that, what, we do this or that, that our arms have made these movements and our mouths these sounds? Please. We feel that to reveal embarassing or private things, like, say, masturbatory habits (for me, about once a day, usually in the shower), we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our pasts and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself. But its just the opposite, more is more is more---more bleeding, more giving. These things, details, stories, whatever, are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see. What does he care where it is, who sees it, this snake, and his skin? He leaves it where he molts. Hours, days or months later, we come across a snake's long-shed skin and we know something of the snakes, we know that it's of this approximate girth and that approximate length, but we know very little else. Do we know where the snake is now? What the snake is thinking now? No. By now, the snakes could be wearing fur;the snake could be selling pencils in Hanoi. The skin is no longer his, he wore it because it grew from him, but then it dried and it slipped off and he and everyone could look at it.

And you're the snake?

Sure. I'm the snake. So, should the snake bring it with him, this skin, should he tuck it under his arm? Should he?

No?

No, of course not! He's got no fucking arms! How the fuck would a snake carry a skin? Please. But like the snake, i have no arms---metaphorically speaking---to carry these things with. Besides, these things aren't even mine. None of this is mine. My father is not mine---not in that way. His death and what he's done is not mine. Nor are my upbringing nor my town or its tragedies. How can these things be mine? Holding me responsible for keeping hidden this information is ridiculous. I was born into a town and a family and the town and my family happened to me. I own none of it. It is everyone's. It is shareware. I like it, i like having been a part of it, i would kill or die to protect those who are a part of it, but i do not claim exclusivity. Have it. Take it from me. Do with it what you will. Make it useful. This is like making electricity from dirt; it is almost too good to be believed, that we can make beauty from this stuff.

But what about privacy?

Cheap, overabundant, easily gotten, lost, regained, bought, sold.

But what about exploitation? Exhibitionism?

Are you Catholic?

No.

Then why are you talking about exhibitionism? It's a ridiculous term. Someone wants to celebrate their existence and you call it exhibitionism. Its niggardly. If you don't want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You're taking up space, air.

What about dignity?

You will die, and when you die, you will know a profound lack of it. It's never dignified, always brutal. What's dignified about dying? It's never dignified. And in obscurity? Offensive. Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves. And its fleeting and incredibly mercurial. And subjective. So fuck it."

Goodbye all who have read this blog, and there will be more writings. In another space.

Belief Systems

Beliefs are fascinating, because they construct the world around you. In the bus to work today, i've been reading "A road less travelled" again, by M Scott Peck. He then says mental illness is very often the cause of lack of love (defined in his book) present in a person's childhood. And that when a therapist comes into play, he tries to extend himself to the patient, in meeting the needs of a patient.

Peck continues to talk about how the myth of romantic love sometimes makes one feel that one can only have enough love for one person, and it is not possible to love more than one person. Peck then continues to say that truly loving someone is such a big task that not many people can extend themselves to love more than a few people in their lives. And, when he says love, he means looking out and helping the spiritual growth of another.

I watched a brillant movie last night with my Mom. It was a Black and White, and produced in 1949, i think. It is called "A Letter to Three Wives." The three women in the movie are all so different from each other, and their husbands likewise. They are stuck in a small American town, with a Main Street, and not much going on beyond that.

This movie really got to me. There is something i love about old movies. Somehow, the scripts and the conversations in there is far more inspiring, and somehow more intelligent than movies we get today. It shocks me too, that as early as 1949, Women's lib was evident in that movie, and one of the wives in there who is married to a University professor teaching English is a woman i really liked. Her relationship with George (the University Professor) was especially sweet. They had known each other since the age of five, and their relationship was one where both were clearly equals. George, as most American educators, was poorly paid, but still committed to inspiring the hearts and minds of the young, and especially contemptuous of popular culture (in those days, radio.) SWOON!He was beyond a doubt, my fav man in there.

The other lady i was fascinated with was Lora Mae, born into a poor family, she ends up married to the town's biggest businessman. Her connivances, and subtle vulnerability were shaking, and eventually, touching. My Mom liked her! (predicatably!), and i hated her manipulations, but ended up loving her in the end.

In the end, i guess, it made me think a bit about what a person wants from another, and expects out of that institute of marriage. Have a few friends who don't believe in marriage, and think its just a paper. However, old fashioned me, still thinks and believes in marriage as a very important part of life, and growth. It might not come at all, or one might never meet someone she would be happily married to, and it might be just as well better to remain single then. But, i still believe in marriage, ultimately, as a union of two hearts, and minds, on the same mission of sort in life, who will support each other when the going gets tough, and disappointment sets in. However, the crucial and most important thing is really a sameness of heart, and mind, in what is important in life. There is a Christian verse that is often quoted to say that Christians and Non-Christians should not be together. It is "Do not be unequally yoked."

I take this to have far more serious implications beyond the superficiality of a label as to whether someone is a Christian or not. It boils down to the essence of the two people who are going to get married. Do the same things make them sick? Do the same things motivate them? Do they agree on certain ways of living? And, as with all separate individuals, will they both be agreeable to meeting halfway, or compromising on the differences? There is alot of wisdom in not being unequally yoked.

And, oh, finally, this long essay i have sent out a while ago came to mind, and i thought i think about it so often, that i should blog it. Enjoy!

If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers.If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom.