Tagged: relationships
The Pathetic Way To Go
They were all in his bedroom.
His brother was the family’s steady anchor, permanently tarred to the deep floor of the ocean of unknown outcomes. He had flown in four years ago, without stopping—without even thinking—to even pack a carry-on. He had stayed bedside throughout the recent wars, throughout the fires, throughout the droughts, throughout the pestilence, throughout the famine. Nothing had moved him; nothing could move him. Nothing would move him. In the four years that had passed, he aged ten. He was worn threadbare. He was balding. He was broke. His wife had left him after the first year. His children hardly knew him. But he was there. And there he seemed destined to remain.
But it was his sister, whose lightest smile always seemed to be returned as though seen through the closed eyes, that wove the siblings together. It was his sister who fed both brothers, his sister who changed the sheets, his sister who replenished the water and flowers of well-wishers, his sister who put on a happy face—indeed never once betrayed an awareness that today wasn’t the best day.
And today, this day of days, was about to be the best day.
His mother and father had arrived last night, cutting short their long-delayed vacation to some distant paradise without hesitation. He was their son. They had only ever left his side, for the first time in years, after finding in his Bible a single page of scripture with a note indicating that “their happiness” was his “heaven”.
All his cousins and aunts and uncles had rushed to be there as soon as word had spread. It had not mattered to any how many planes, trains, boats, or cars it took. No matter the skyways and byways, no matter the cost, they were there.
His wife sobbed and sobbed. Her life was miserable before him and had been perfect with him. She did not know, she could not imagine how she would ever carry on after. So she wept, she cried, she sobbed, she cried, and finally she wept some more. Everyone who knew him and knew of him understood her pain.
The room went silent as his eldest daughter appeared in the doorway. No one could remember the last time he had heard, let alone seen, her. But somehow she knew. Somehow she came. The dim, flickering candlelight revealed the jewelry that had first confused her identity. But when she turned and tossed her backpack aside, the sweet jingle of countless keychains she had affixed, along with the rustle of laminated letters that hung from every zipper confirmed what all were hoping—after so many years away, she came.
His other children were still on their way. The current project that engaged the pair, the world’s two greatest, most creative, most motivated, and most delightful members, had necessitated their delay. In fact, it wasn’t until the world heard and fed the wildfire rumor of the gathering in that room—and for whom and wherefore—that the people pleaded, risking their own detriment by forestalling the work, for the siblings to now travel to where all knew their hearts already lay.
“He’s awake.”
The barely audible whisper was first heard by his sister, as she was handing a fresh coffee to its speaker, her weary, ever so weary, brother—one that never did arrive.
The porcelain mug’s landing on the plush carpet pronounced a soft sound at which his wife, the ever inconsolable and fairest of all to assume that noble title watchman, raised her tear-streaked face. When her fingers rose to wipe all evidence of unhappiness away, the visitors communicated the only news that such action could betray throughout the room as quick as light, yet as soft as feathers.
Right when his brother turned to repeat the announcement, his eyes landed on them. They had just arrived.
“Come! He’s awake!” He repeated as he motioned the children to come and directed the crowd to open a path.
“My dad!” his daughter said, her cheeks uncontrollably wetted with tears of joy.
“Father!” his son declared. Revealing a relationship that transcended time and space—indeed one that could not be rocked by consciousness itself—he added, “We did it! The world is saved.”
Seeing him seeming to make an attempt to raise his head, his brother said, “Rest. It’s no time to exert yourself, good brother.”
“As always, good brother,” our hero began, acknowledging their secret greeting, courageously and with a knowing smirk, one long-since absent and missed, “You’re wrong. It is time; for time is short.” His breathing was burdened with immeasurable truth.
In the history of time, the tides of all oceans had not swelled so much as to fill what all present saw pour forth from this dearest, this loyalist of companion’s eyes. Turning to the room, he cried with exuberance so far only matched by the warming Sun, “He’s right!” he declared. “He’s always right. It’s why I love him.” The very walls joyfully echoed the contagious rapture spread unto all. And then feeling along the bed until his hand touched the familiar, strong, able, and trustworthy hand of childhood, he squeezed with a tenderness not unnoticed by our hero and turned back and said, “You’re right. What would you have us do?”
“Bring her to me.”
At once his oldest now became the focus of the room.
“Help me up, brother. One final time.”
The room gasped as they watched. His mother fainted.
At last he was sitting at the head of the bed. And she was there.
“Da-”
“Shh—” he interrupted, eyes earnestly declaring the sad truth that all were too kind to admit. “Don’t speak. Know that in all these years, wherever your travels took you, I was there too.”
“Oh, daddy,” she cried. “I knew you never abandoned me. I always knew. I just didn’t know how to come home.”
“There, there, my beautiful girl,” he said, bravely keeping his tears at bay.
“I kept everything,” she added suddenly. “It’s all there. Every gift. Every letter. Every book. All the socks. It’s all in the bag. I wanted you to see it.”
As his eyes followed her gesture to the bag she had worn in, the answer to Earth’s oldest question, “Is there anything this man can’t do?” was finally answered. The levy broke. The man couldn’t hide his joy.
(To be continued…)
I, 18CT Colorado Eggs vs. I, Government Commisioner
I am a 18CT Colorado Eggs—the ordinary packaged 18CT Colorado Eggs familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can open their refrigerator door.
I am a Government Commissioner—the ordinary imbecile Government Commissioner familiar to all boys and girls and adults who have come to expect nothing of value from any government official because of their ignominious utterances like the above idea that any economic experience is the result of only one factor.
****
No pencils were harmed in the production of this post. But I can confirm with special and satisfactory delight that three chickens died to make this post possible.
Eureka! Marriage Realities Exposed
I concluded my recent review of Joker: Folie à Deux with the pathetic (full of emotion…) question, “Why do we hurt each other?” Well, just this second the answer came me.
“We hurt each other because we don’t think we do.”
No, I did not just plop into a very full bathtub like ol’ Archimedes. But I am reading a book on the subject of the universe and one of the thematic points is the whole “mostly empty space” thing I mentioned in discussion of Nolan’s script’s mistaken definition of quantum mechanics.
So, if you need an analogy, use this. We hurt each other because we think of each other as mostly empty space. The truth, however, is we are all full. (Wow. That’s fun. No, not “awful”, but we all are full. We are full.) We are filled space. We are space filled full. (Not empty.)
But that’s just a fun physics analogy that may or may not tickle your fancy. Don’t miss the point!
We possess the power to hurt each other unintentionally.
****
PS – For kicks, the actual origin of this Eureka! moment for me is I believe one of my wife’s announced desires is surely destructive to our marriage and family and consequently insist she give it up. Whereas she believes god authored it or approved it or some shit. And as I was reading just now, after I stopped her from randomly starting the dishwasher without my dish in it and saw her eyes say, “Even this action is wrong?”, my mind wandered to the ongoing hellscape of my marriage.
Do you see? Her desire—to her—isn’t harmful to me. And my decree—to me—isn’t harmful to her. But I can assure you, as the nursery rhyme says, “Needles and pins, needles and pins, when a man marries, his trouble begins.”
The best part is Christianity is one of the last forms of order which unequivocally, unconditionally, and without exception places the husband at the very tippy top of the food chain, so much so that even in 21st century conservative, Biblical doctrine, the doctrine is simply avoided. “Why lose even more people by giving unpopular teachings airtime?” seems to be the approved stance.
Incidentally, I even unintentionally started a skirmish in a friend’s marriage (both former international missionaries) by asking them to confirm for me that they were, both 1. Not studying the bible together within their marriage and 2. He is not leading her in any semblance of a formal bible study. I asked them to merely confirm it because a newly converted friend was lamenting to me that his wife (also newly converted) wouldn’t listen to him read scripture to her. And this couple lost their composure in a big way, getting as defensive as I have ever seen—of course the wife being the dominant justifier of the state of things.
I do not know what it is like to be a woman, but I do know what it is like to live under authority. And as it isn’t terrible or tragic or unbearable, I just don’t see the issue.
How Do Flat Earth Lunatics Account for the Darkness Between the Stars?
I befriended and consequently wished I had never befriended my first Green Beret at seminary. Suffice it to say, going from US Special Forces immediately to four years of Christian undergrad followed immediately by three years of Christian graduate studies is a bad idea. (All curious souls should be asking, “How does one pay for 7 years of schooling?” Good question. The answer is, “Post 9/11 GI Bill has 36 months of coursework and if you are collecting at least 10% disability ((most vets are)) you get another 48 months!”)
As I had flown operators like him around Iraq, while the rest of the seminarians hadn’t, he and I naturally bonded easily. (I fully aim to cause you to think of the Tesla Green Beret as I relate this experience with one.) He was intense. So am I. Yet I couldn’t help but feel weird around him knowing that at any time he had the upper hand and I was quite literally at the mercy of his mental faculties. He expressed once that one of the softer professors displayed a fear of him, which my friend chuckled off as if he was perfectly harmless.
But then the moment came when he texted me a flat earth meme. From that SMS until a mere couple of weeks later, he couldn’t release. My last text to him was, “I do not care what conception of the universe is in your mind, but I do believe that we should be able to change topics.” And his last text to me (in response to mine) was, “We cannot talk about anything else until you get that (effing) ball out of your head.”
Faithful readers know that I have posted either two or three anti-Flat-Earth-Lunatic posts on here with the purpose of giving easy to use conversational strategies to destroy these lunatics. The first post posited the employment of economics, first question being, “Have you ever started a business?” Last question being, “So you’re telling me hundreds, no thousands of workers (concrete for a rocket pad itself requires the use of Quickbooks to run accurate payroll for all involved) are being duped to work for nothing, but you can’t persuade anyone to give you their money?”
A second post offered, “Have you ever looked at the night sky through a telescope?” And if miraculously they answer “yes” you move to, “At your convenience, I am available these dates, please show me how to identify a planet from a star. They all look the same to me.” And today, I would offer a slight variation to this angle by suggesting we ask, “So, which brand of telescope you rocking these days?”
Recently, with all my reading, I am more and more anti-FELs. Not just for your reading pleasure, then, here is a third method of attack (or consider it training for your children and family).
****
Me: “It’s not the stars that baffle me. It’s the dark.”
FLE: “Huh?”
Me: “I’m talking about the night sky. People are always ooooing and awwwwing at the stars—even creating horoscopes to this day based on them—but that’s not the awe-inspiring part of the night sky by my thinking.”
FLE: “Hmm. Umm. You know the earth is flat though, right?”
Me: “No it’s not. But seriously, think about the dark part of the night sky. The part in between the stars. You can see it right?”
FLE; “Sorry, I was looking at my phone. There’s this video right here that proves the earth is flat. What? Sure. Yes. Well, no. I mean, have I showed you where the Bible says the earth is flat? What do you do with that? You’re a Bible-believing Christian, yes?”
Me: “I think you did. But just look at it all. All that dark. What do you suspect accounts for it? Is it the black paint on Ptolemy’s sphere? Is it countless tubes of nothingness pointed from the bounds of infinity directly at the earth of all places? I mean, it stands to reason that since we can only ever see more and more stars with bigger and bigger telescopes—wait a minute. Have you ever looked through a telescope?”
FEL: “Gee. Look at the time!”
Me: “You want me to believe the earth is flat and yet you believe the dark you see unaided is actually darkness, even when using a telescope? Ha. Haha. Aaaaahahahaha. Okay. I’ll stop. Now what were you saying about some video?”
FEL: (Crickets. And then assuredly they return to not looking through telescopes.)
****
You’re welcome, Blog-O-Sphere.
The Right Kind of Start to the Day
Santa brought my daughter a prism for Christmas this year. Where’d he get the idea, I wonder?
If you guessed, “Who is Isaac Newton?”, then you guessed right! Of course, it wasn’t the legendary Isaac Newton who noticed apples, but the historical person Isaac Newton who recorded his thoughts and experiments for posterity, who painstakingly measured the wavelengths of colors with a prism and analogized gravity to a slingshot.
This morning my four year old daughter, A-, ran from the sunny window of my bedroom and promptly returned with the prism to try to make rainbows.
Naturally, no one needs to make rainbows with a prism anymore. This is because (despite morons abounding) to all important parties, color measurements—and even light measurements—are as solved as shoe sizes.
But the ability to see? That is truly rare. But my daughter has it. And who gave it to her? That’s right. Her very own Santa Claus, otherwise known as Dad.
It was the right kind of start to the day.
****
Oh, and I finished that other EPIC COLLECTION(!!!) of X-Men I mentioned.
For posterity, one effect that occurred while reading these 450+ pages of comics was the ability to see the rather finite amount of “types” these stories can have. IE, after you exhaust good vs evil in the plain sense, you have to move on to plot devices like making a good guy character seem evil, but lo and behold it wasn’t really the good guy, but the bad guy all along through some obvious and ingenious use of their powers! And then they also introduced the concept of using an entire comic(!) for a character in the story to tell a (in this case bedtime) tale involving slightly altered characters etc. Is that called meta, but inward; instead of breaking the fourth wall? In any case, time for a break from the Uncanny X-Men! (Don’t worry, Strangest Super Heroes of All, I still love you guys.)
I Like My Life
Not halfway through January and here is what I have been able to knock out.
Let me be for the first to say I read way too many comics in the last two weeks. That X-Men “Epic Collection” was 500 pages. I am over halfway finished with another, not pictured. I only started reading comics recently because of trying to completely cut movies. But I can fully admit that they are or can be a bit juvenile and unsatisfying when read at the pace I have been conquering them. If you’ve ever tried to binge watch X-Files, then you know what I am talking about.
Grant’s memoir was amazing and astounding on nearly every level. What a time to have been alive.
Einstein, as I have said, was life changing.
The Second Jungle Book was, on the whole, better than the first. I will probably read only the first Mowgli story of the First and then jump to the Second with my kids when they are a ready. (Ricki-Ticki-Tavi is in the Second.)
Hiawatha can be skipped if you can call to mind any of Hollywood’s best Indian monologues from the 90s—I’m thinking specifically of the Last of the Mohicans’ “at the birth of the Sun and his brother the moon” moment when Hawkeye is wooing Cora. But it clearly was deeply influential and is therefore a must-read classic if you’ve got the time. (It’s a poem, but can basically be read as if a novel.)
Leviathon is unlike anything you have heard about it. I have to rank it tops—just clearing Einstein—as far as what you absolutely must read if you have always been interested and merely await a kick in the pants for motivation. Einstein is life changing for the reason that afterwards you will join me and an exceedingly few others in feeling good because “now you know”. But what you now know kinda reinforces the fact that you aren’t that interested in keeping up with quantum physics and beyond.
But Hobbes! Hobbes is life changing regarding its implications for your daily decisions—especially in the political part of life. I’m suggesting that, especially for Christians, a careful reading of Hobbes will more likely inspire you to pursue righteousness for the right reasons than any sermon you’ve heard or any other book you’ve read—ever.
Just Finished a Book By Einstein; Christopher Nolan is Wrong
The title of the book is The Evolution of Physics.
Given there is still plenty of daylight, but my brain could use a break, I decided to revisit Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Why not, right?
In it, the woman asks, “Can you explain quantum mechanics to me? It seems baffling.”
Nolan has Oppie answer, “It is.”
He continues, “This glass— This drink— Our bodies— are mostly empty space, groupings of tiny energy waves bound together-”
She interrupts, attention laser focused, “By what?”
“Forces of attraction strong enough to convince us ‘matter is solid’.”
I do not know where Nolan got his material. I can imagine that he read Oppenheimer’s own writing and deduced this or—cringe—Oppenheimer even said this. I can imagine it, but I don’t believe it.
The problem with that definition is it neglectfully forgets a key point—or two, to be precise.
First, and this is directly from Einstein, it isn’t merely “tiny energy waves” but should say, “empty space, groupings of invisible energy waves.” And second, add “and energy particles”.
In full, and I hope to bring out for us lay folks the full sense of what I read in the clearest possible manner, if defined by Einstein, according the format Nolan introduced, the answer to “What is quantum mechanics?” when asked by a thin woman as a come-on (sapiosexual) at a bar is, “This glass, this drink, our bodies are mostly empty space—groupings of invisible energy waves and energy particles bound together by forces of attraction strong enough to convince us ‘matter is solid’.”
Put shorter—for illustrative purposes because I know this is uncommon—“Our bodies are invisible.”
Paraphrasing Einstein, for this claim to be true and/or accurate (the claim that “‘our bodies are invisible’ is quantum mechanics”) this claim must be tempered with, “when moving near the speed of light and observed indirectly.”
Now. You. Know.
Two Ideas For Books
Whether all experience it, or just certain personalities out of those who get the idea to write, I have learned that in the beginning of the career of unsuccessful writers there is a strong desire to not “let the cat out of the bag” too early. There is a belief that “I have a good idea and it is so good that someone else might profit if I share it before it’s for sale by me.”
But I have been blogging for over a decade now, and helped a few others with their books, and I am convinced that all that is hogwash. Life is just too complicated for a single idea, unaccompanied by the innumerable trappings of fate, to succeed.
To prove this, I share that recently I have had two ideas for books. These are prompted by a desire to somehow manifest that reading the classics has tangible results at a level somewhere below “advance of our civilization”. (Implied- civilization definitionally cannot advance if it is built on lies or ignorance of itself—so read the classics! It’s all at stake!)
Firstly, I want to write a book called “Union” that has a chapter for each, of what I have to believe would be at least twenty, type of artificial union between materials that man has developed. Knots, screws, nails, velcro, glue, epoxy etc. When I write it, the descriptions would be quick reads and informative. But the result would be the perfect contemplative admixture of “so what?” with “if we can figure out mating materials, why can’t we figure out relationships?” I have to believe—contrary to all evidence in my life—that we can figure out human relationship/union.
Secondly, I want to write a book—which may be uber short—which highlights a theme which I have seen in the bios of all the authors in my Great Books of the Western World and companion set Gateway to the Great Books. The theme being, the fact that the authors spent the entirety of their lives learning (as opposed to our deeply unreflective “go to college” mindset) coupled with often epic intellectually-based struggles well into old age. Each chapter may just be one page, often only one sentence. IE Hobbes – Forbid from publishing in his mother country from 70 yrs old to 91 yrs old when he died (don’t quote me, this is from memory and may be wrong on all points). The trick to this book is creating knockout punch sentences without getting repetitive.
****
“Go to college.” Ha. What a joke.
If you want to run with this, do it. I dare ya.
On the Ol’ “Horse Running Beside the Train in which a Horse Moves to the Front” Thought Experiment
I can’t quite remember his name with certainty, but he lived in the house with the green shutters at the tip-top of the hill. He was right across the street from the bus stop.
One day he says “If nothing can move faster than the speed of light, explain this…” Then he gives the supposedly Einstein-derived thought experiment in which you imagine a train moving at the speed of light, inside which is a horse who moves from the back of the train to the front, and then add to this scene a horse beside the train who is pacing the horse in the train.
I took his point to be the classic midwestern point of “Einstein is wrong” sentiment (falling within the broader category of “bein’ smart ain’t nuttin’”), because the horse beside the train is obviously going faster than the speed-of-light train.
But I am working through Einstein’s own The Evolution of Physics and the truth is far different. Whether the kid knew it or not (it is possible I totally misread the moment), the thought experiment is not the one Einstein proposes (at least in this book) but does capture the concept—being relativity. In short, the speed of light is the limit. The horse beside the train is not going faster than the speed of light. This is Einstein’s discovery or theory or whatever you want to call it.
As with all knowledge, it is the presuppositions that matter and the thought experiment is based on the presuppositions of mechanical physics, whereas—it would seem—reality is not. (Reality is not based on mechanical physics—at least not entirely.)
And, yes, like you, I do have a bit of “so what, Albert?” in me. But then I remind myself that the point of my reading is not to “learn to care”, but to learn so that I can call out BS when I see it.
A Short Dream and a Long Dream
What I am calling the short dream was initially not clearly a dream; this is because it happened upon waking. But the falseness of the reality I experienced has to put it in the dream category.
I awoke, as normal, to go to the bathroom. I was at work, and as you know, in a sleeping bag. The particular bag I use is a queen size (really, just two “adam and eve” bags zipped together) and so sometimes while on the twin mattress, I can get oddly wrapped up.
Keep in mind, it’s the middle of the night. And I’m tired.
So I start yanking harder at the silky outside of the bag and unfortunately I feel it tear. I finally make it out, and, glasses-less, zoom in close—in the dark—to confirm that it’s torn. Confirmed. Then the walk to the restroom and back is unremarkable.
As I am laying down to try to resume sleeping asap, I cannot help but look forward to getting a new sleeping bag. Luckily, the excitement abated quickly and I fell asleep again.
Lo and behold, in the morning there was no damage!
Obviously, to my thinking, this dream was unflattering evidence of some kind of addiction to perfectionist shopping—which I am told afflicts nearly all of us. The remarkable part, to me, was how I really couldn’t believe the bag wasn’t torn. Crazy. Moving on.
I’ll keep the long dream’s recap short.
I had pissed off an Indian I work with (feather) and he told his pals and they were coming to kill me. I knew they were coming to kill me because a really fat mutual friend, also a pow-wow Indian, told me. And this friend wanted to help me by arming me to the teeth.
The odd thing about this dream is, like the short dream, I awoke to go potty, knew that it was a dream, wanted to know how it ended, and then fell back asleep and picked it right up again! As it continued, the main action was concentrated on the fat Indian resignedly giving me all sorts of guns as I made small (and weak) talk.
I can tell you it felt real. Like I felt sick to my stomach while I was in the dream and in the bathroom over the fact that I had caused all this nonsense. I also pulled my own weapons cache into the dream and seemed to consider opening it—I’m talking about waking up and opening the gun safe—in case it wasn’t a dream. Powerful, dreams are, no?
Well, the other key feeling the dream was causing or bringing to light was a hefty resignation alongside confusion at the fat Indian’s actions because I knew I couldn’t win. Surely he had to agree, no?
This dream pulls in a lot of disparate parts of my life. The main theme, to me, obviously comes from back in college when I told the blacks that I had been hanging around that we whites told racist jokes and then inquired about any white jokes they might have that were worth sharing. Not a happy group after that. Nor unified. The ones who could take a joke clearly stopped the ones who could not from black on white violence.
Additionally, I have an Indian co-worker, who I have, this time unintentionally—I was trying to find common ground—offended. (Religion, politics, AND immigration are to be avoided at work. Also, the fashion combo of flannel and rat tails is generally not donned by hispanics. Lesson learned.)
Lastly, I am currently reading The Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. In them, he recounts a duel and offers his opinion that he would never let anyone known he was going to kill them—if in fact circumstances led him to conclude that he needed to kill someone. Conversely, if he ever so-offended someone that he learned they were out for his blood, he would do or say, within reason, whatever was necessary to make amends. (I think there was an implied “it could only be a misunderstanding” aspect to this.) My point being that this connects directly to the “resignation” and “sick feeling” part of my dream. Implied was that I knew that a group is unconsolable (different than an individual) and so they were surely going to get their kill—even though I knew in advance.
And obviously we’re all thinking about “do I have enough guns?” all the time. Hehe.
How about you, faithful reader? Anything odd in the head movies to recount? If so, don’t be a stranger. Post it and/or comment below.
Captain’s Log 