Tremendous...
I've noticed a marked lack of activity here, and I sense some of you may be waiting for me to get the ball rolling. As the maintainer of the community, I feel a certain responsibility, as well, to lay it all out there.
So I'm going to try my first official "tremendous season." mindflare and I have been having these through comments at anotherway for quite some time now, as well, if anyone's interested in going there to see what I've been blabbing about all this time.
See, the point of a tremendous season is not to think about what to say next, not to over-analyze, over-organize, your thoughts--just to let them flow. Or emerge, if you prefer it. :)
Here are some of my thoughts right now. I've just moved to Denver (at the beginning of August) and I feel highly overwhelmed. I literally feel claustrophobic in this city, not to mention disgusted by the things I've seen and heard here. I never knew I was a country girl until I left the country--and now I see what I had all along, and it's gone. I'm trying to get it back, though--I'm planning to move to a smaller town in December. In the meantime, what do I do? Do I waste my time sitting around a place I hate? Do I try to get to know it, learn to love it, accept it on its own terms? What is it that so many people here love about living in a city, and why am I missing it so completely?
Also thinking about a friend of mine. We've always been platonic, but at the moment I'm crushing, and that's so weird. She's physically attractive. She's smart as hell. She has a good soul. And yet, I hung out with her in person in Missouri for months and months, and never felt any need to unburden my soul about any "feelings" of any kind--I'm pretty sure I never had those feelings while I was there. I wonder if I'm putting her on a pedestal now that I'm gone, or if she was yet another thing I took for granted. It doesn't matter--I'm a girl, and she's straight, and that just doesn't work, now does it? I just can't bear to tell her, and yet it feels wrong not to tell her--like I'm hiding some dirty, shameful secret. Why does love, or like, so often feel like something wrong?
I"ve been thinking about society a lot, as well. mindflare and I have been having these discussions, as I mentioned before, and he's a big fan of Ishmael and the other works by Daniel Quinn. I read Ishmael and was highly impressed, but I don't really see it affecting my life in big ways now. Yet apparently, there's a website, there are conferences, parables--it's like a lifestyle. More than that--a religion. A literal way of life in the extreme sense. Not that there's anything wrong with it--if one had to choose a way of life, that would be a good way to go. I just never expected it to blow up like that. And I don't see myself as a good enough person to change enough to make it beneficial to myself. (That sentence was long and awkward.)
Let's see, what else is there? My roommate's cats hate me. And I don't know why. I mean, I'm a decent human being, and usually animals in general love me. The pet store where I work (it's also a metaphysical bookstore; I work in both parts) has two poodles, and they adore me. So why, when I come home to these grumpy, cantankerous cats, do I feel like a bad person? It's like if they don't love me I'm worthless--maybe because we as a society see animal instincts as being superior to our own. Thoughts?
So this is the general idea of tremendous seasons. They could ramble more or less than this; I'd call this "average." The next step would be for someone--anyone, this is an open post--to reply to all or some of this message, and see what unfolds from there. mindflare and I seem to work on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis, working our way through successively longer e-mails, and it's been both fun and exhausting. We frequently exceed LJ's 4600 (or whatever) character limit for replies and are forced to split our comments into two or more chunks--and this is fine. In fact, it's great.
Right now, though, I must sleep. I have to be at work in ten hours, and I have to take a shower and get in jammies and read myself to sleep first. Lousy, pointless dreams lately, and waking up ten or fifteen times a night for a few seconds to a few minutes each. I don't really know why--too much on my mind, I suppose. Thanks for letting me share all this, and usually (one last point) the material would be more intelligent--I just thought it might help to have a post on the mundane as a starter. The deeper things can come later.
Peace.
So I'm going to try my first official "tremendous season." mindflare and I have been having these through comments at anotherway for quite some time now, as well, if anyone's interested in going there to see what I've been blabbing about all this time.
See, the point of a tremendous season is not to think about what to say next, not to over-analyze, over-organize, your thoughts--just to let them flow. Or emerge, if you prefer it. :)
Here are some of my thoughts right now. I've just moved to Denver (at the beginning of August) and I feel highly overwhelmed. I literally feel claustrophobic in this city, not to mention disgusted by the things I've seen and heard here. I never knew I was a country girl until I left the country--and now I see what I had all along, and it's gone. I'm trying to get it back, though--I'm planning to move to a smaller town in December. In the meantime, what do I do? Do I waste my time sitting around a place I hate? Do I try to get to know it, learn to love it, accept it on its own terms? What is it that so many people here love about living in a city, and why am I missing it so completely?
Also thinking about a friend of mine. We've always been platonic, but at the moment I'm crushing, and that's so weird. She's physically attractive. She's smart as hell. She has a good soul. And yet, I hung out with her in person in Missouri for months and months, and never felt any need to unburden my soul about any "feelings" of any kind--I'm pretty sure I never had those feelings while I was there. I wonder if I'm putting her on a pedestal now that I'm gone, or if she was yet another thing I took for granted. It doesn't matter--I'm a girl, and she's straight, and that just doesn't work, now does it? I just can't bear to tell her, and yet it feels wrong not to tell her--like I'm hiding some dirty, shameful secret. Why does love, or like, so often feel like something wrong?
I"ve been thinking about society a lot, as well. mindflare and I have been having these discussions, as I mentioned before, and he's a big fan of Ishmael and the other works by Daniel Quinn. I read Ishmael and was highly impressed, but I don't really see it affecting my life in big ways now. Yet apparently, there's a website, there are conferences, parables--it's like a lifestyle. More than that--a religion. A literal way of life in the extreme sense. Not that there's anything wrong with it--if one had to choose a way of life, that would be a good way to go. I just never expected it to blow up like that. And I don't see myself as a good enough person to change enough to make it beneficial to myself. (That sentence was long and awkward.)
Let's see, what else is there? My roommate's cats hate me. And I don't know why. I mean, I'm a decent human being, and usually animals in general love me. The pet store where I work (it's also a metaphysical bookstore; I work in both parts) has two poodles, and they adore me. So why, when I come home to these grumpy, cantankerous cats, do I feel like a bad person? It's like if they don't love me I'm worthless--maybe because we as a society see animal instincts as being superior to our own. Thoughts?
So this is the general idea of tremendous seasons. They could ramble more or less than this; I'd call this "average." The next step would be for someone--anyone, this is an open post--to reply to all or some of this message, and see what unfolds from there. mindflare and I seem to work on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis, working our way through successively longer e-mails, and it's been both fun and exhausting. We frequently exceed LJ's 4600 (or whatever) character limit for replies and are forced to split our comments into two or more chunks--and this is fine. In fact, it's great.
Right now, though, I must sleep. I have to be at work in ten hours, and I have to take a shower and get in jammies and read myself to sleep first. Lousy, pointless dreams lately, and waking up ten or fifteen times a night for a few seconds to a few minutes each. I don't really know why--too much on my mind, I suppose. Thanks for letting me share all this, and usually (one last point) the material would be more intelligent--I just thought it might help to have a post on the mundane as a starter. The deeper things can come later.
Peace.