(no subject)
1.) Forty-seven days until I am done with my job, including weekends.
2.) Mallard ducklings are the most perfect mortal beings I have ever encountered (my cat, of course, is a Faery Knight, not a mortal being at all). And there are six of them residing in our living room. Eighteen chicks also accompany them, but it is the ducklings that are remarkable. They grow bigger by the day, and are feisty and hop out of your hands when you try to hold them, and they have stripes along the sides of their head and perfect little oil-black feet and little black bills like a baby's fingernails and I adore them.
3.) I've been reflecting: self-imposed boundaries and limitations set one free, or at least provide greater depth. When I write poetry I often write sonnets because the constraint of the form greatly improves my verse. Aldo Leopold (author of A Sand County Almanac, a classic work on conservation) writes:
"There is value in any experience that exercises those ethical restraints collectively called 'sportsmanship.' Our tools for the pursuit of wildlife improve faster than we do, and sportsmanship is a voluntary limitation in the use of these armaments . . . A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than by a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact."
I follow a specific religious path less because I think it's the right one and more because choosing one gives me a greater depth in my spirituality. In the case of more orthodox religious traditions, I rather feel that the numerous religious laws are important less for the sake of the law itself (ie, not eating pork) and more for the exercise in self-imposed ethical restraint.
When the ethical constraints are imposed externally as opposed to internally, they become worthless unless the person so constrained can internalize them. I was never able to internalize Catholicism's various strictures; therefore I am not Catholic. But if one can manage to internalize outward limitations, I think rewards are possibly great.
I'm pondering all this not in the frame of religion so much as in the frame of my life. All of our lives are rather like sonnets, but right now I'm angrier and more unhappy with the constraints than I have been in a long time. Some of them just need to change. I think I've learned all I can from them, and I'm looking forward to moving on in forty-seven days. Some of them, though, are more long term and I need to internalize them before I can move on.
I'm not fond of being single. There are substantial benefits: I can go wherever I want, whenever I want, without telling anyone. I can spend as much time alone as I want (or at least not interacting with anyone else), often for hours and hours upon end. I can believe what I want, I can wear what I want, and I can eat what I want, all without commentary (you brainwashed fool/you look fat in those pants/is that cat food?). I am free to plan an itinerant life practicing medicine in third-world countries, and no one freaks out or complains. Generally, I am left to mind my own business as I see fit, and I like that very much. In rational moments, I realize that I like it so much that I wouldn't (or shouldn't) give it up for anything.
Unfortunately, when it comes to being single I'm not so rational. Most of my emotional needs are fairly well met by my circle of friends. Physical desire hasn't been an issue in years. And yet I am made entirely irrational by my desire for a partner. And what composes that desire? Very little. I want to speak to the same person every day about my life, the universe, and everything. The continuity is all important. And I want to curl up with them in the evenings and fall asleep. Falling asleep with someone I love is one of the greatest pleasures of the universe, right after the New England hardwood forest, good music, good food, good friends, and good books.
Frankly, however, as time ticks by I am more and more doubtful- not just in a bitter, cynical way, but genuinely doubtful- that I'll ever find what I'm looking for. All right, I am bitter, and lonely to match, but realistically: the spectrum of people I'm attracted to is notably narrow (The List is still in force and has been updated), I am prickly and often obnoxious with a sharp tongue in my head, and the lifestyle I'm going to lead is not conducive to anyone's romance, much less my own. I'll be living in fucking rural Vermont, for heaven's sake, when I'm not living in a mud hut. I'm not at the point of denying romance as an outside possibility, but I think that's all it is.
So this is where inner acceptance of externally posed limitations comes into play. If I accept this, I think I will find much more depth in my life as it is now. The problem is accepting it. Damn.
4.) You know what the second-greatest thing about moving to Burlington is, right after going to nursing school? Learning to sail on Lake Champlain.
2.) Mallard ducklings are the most perfect mortal beings I have ever encountered (my cat, of course, is a Faery Knight, not a mortal being at all). And there are six of them residing in our living room. Eighteen chicks also accompany them, but it is the ducklings that are remarkable. They grow bigger by the day, and are feisty and hop out of your hands when you try to hold them, and they have stripes along the sides of their head and perfect little oil-black feet and little black bills like a baby's fingernails and I adore them.
3.) I've been reflecting: self-imposed boundaries and limitations set one free, or at least provide greater depth. When I write poetry I often write sonnets because the constraint of the form greatly improves my verse. Aldo Leopold (author of A Sand County Almanac, a classic work on conservation) writes:
"There is value in any experience that exercises those ethical restraints collectively called 'sportsmanship.' Our tools for the pursuit of wildlife improve faster than we do, and sportsmanship is a voluntary limitation in the use of these armaments . . . A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than by a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact."
I follow a specific religious path less because I think it's the right one and more because choosing one gives me a greater depth in my spirituality. In the case of more orthodox religious traditions, I rather feel that the numerous religious laws are important less for the sake of the law itself (ie, not eating pork) and more for the exercise in self-imposed ethical restraint.
When the ethical constraints are imposed externally as opposed to internally, they become worthless unless the person so constrained can internalize them. I was never able to internalize Catholicism's various strictures; therefore I am not Catholic. But if one can manage to internalize outward limitations, I think rewards are possibly great.
I'm pondering all this not in the frame of religion so much as in the frame of my life. All of our lives are rather like sonnets, but right now I'm angrier and more unhappy with the constraints than I have been in a long time. Some of them just need to change. I think I've learned all I can from them, and I'm looking forward to moving on in forty-seven days. Some of them, though, are more long term and I need to internalize them before I can move on.
I'm not fond of being single. There are substantial benefits: I can go wherever I want, whenever I want, without telling anyone. I can spend as much time alone as I want (or at least not interacting with anyone else), often for hours and hours upon end. I can believe what I want, I can wear what I want, and I can eat what I want, all without commentary (you brainwashed fool/you look fat in those pants/is that cat food?). I am free to plan an itinerant life practicing medicine in third-world countries, and no one freaks out or complains. Generally, I am left to mind my own business as I see fit, and I like that very much. In rational moments, I realize that I like it so much that I wouldn't (or shouldn't) give it up for anything.
Unfortunately, when it comes to being single I'm not so rational. Most of my emotional needs are fairly well met by my circle of friends. Physical desire hasn't been an issue in years. And yet I am made entirely irrational by my desire for a partner. And what composes that desire? Very little. I want to speak to the same person every day about my life, the universe, and everything. The continuity is all important. And I want to curl up with them in the evenings and fall asleep. Falling asleep with someone I love is one of the greatest pleasures of the universe, right after the New England hardwood forest, good music, good food, good friends, and good books.
Frankly, however, as time ticks by I am more and more doubtful- not just in a bitter, cynical way, but genuinely doubtful- that I'll ever find what I'm looking for. All right, I am bitter, and lonely to match, but realistically: the spectrum of people I'm attracted to is notably narrow (The List is still in force and has been updated), I am prickly and often obnoxious with a sharp tongue in my head, and the lifestyle I'm going to lead is not conducive to anyone's romance, much less my own. I'll be living in fucking rural Vermont, for heaven's sake, when I'm not living in a mud hut. I'm not at the point of denying romance as an outside possibility, but I think that's all it is.
So this is where inner acceptance of externally posed limitations comes into play. If I accept this, I think I will find much more depth in my life as it is now. The problem is accepting it. Damn.
4.) You know what the second-greatest thing about moving to Burlington is, right after going to nursing school? Learning to sail on Lake Champlain.