Thoughtful spot
Here I am at my Parents-in-Law's house in the country. I'm away from the Internet which, oddly enough, has actually caused me to catch up a little on my studies. I have tons of reading and writing to do and with the temptation of LJ, Yahoo Spades, e-mail, and the fixed gear gallery gone (and all of my bicycles 500km away), I've actually caught up quite a bit. Note to self: If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, depriving yourself of computer is never a bad idea.
I saw my Niece for awhile today. She's improved a little bit. I can stand her now whereas I used to find both her looks and her personality appalling. She still looks like a boy albeit a less repulsive boy and her attitude has gradually improved a bit. She's now tolerable; almost likable. In fairness, she's come to be very polite and her life has been and continues to be pretty interesting. She does a lot of sports, travels, sails, and it seems like she's landed a pretty good job. She actually came to play tennis, but we chatted awhile too. It's funny when I think of it. First of all, she's my niece. It's just the way it is in French families, or, at least in all of the French families I've ever known. Once you marry into a family, all of your spouses family is your family, you don't make any distinction anymore. Furthermore, they don't do 5th cousin 12 times removed and all of that other Anglo-Saxon crap. They keep it simple: All of your parents' siblings and cousins are your uncles, no matter how distant. Their children are your cousins, no matter how distant. They only really make a distinction when talking of first cousins and then only when it's necessary to allude to closeness. It makes for a large family and something that I never knew in my own family growing up. On my side, I have first cousins that I've never met.
My niece is 8 years younger than me. She's my niece because she's my wife's [first] cousin's daughter. And she calls me 'vous' because that's how she was raised; you always use the formal pronoun with uncles. It's weird. It makes me feel old and detached because I'm closer in age to my niece than I am to my cousin (her mother). But that's the way it is. Why is it important? I guess I felt like writing about it so it must be. Look at it this way: If I had married her instead of the MSU, (which would have been highly unlikely for a lot of reasons but bear with me here) I'd have to call the MSU 'vous' when we see each other because she'd be my aunt. There are other similar cases. On the other side of the MSU's family, we have cousins who are younger than my brother-in-law's kids. I don't know if my brother-in-law's kids use 'vous' with their uncle, but he uses 'tu' with me which also feels weird. He just got his driver's licence but he's my cousin, not my nephew. We're from the same generation so it's "tu". Funny...
I have a very interesting, unique, and lonely subjective reality.
I was thinking of something else: In my wife's extended family which, as I've said, includes all of her parents' and grand-parents' cousins no matter how distant and all of their children, let's say about 200 people that I've personally met or heard tell of, I know of one divorce. Needless to say, it was and continues to be a scandal. I guess it all depends on your perspective, but they must be doing something right that no American family I've ever known is doing. I mean, in my family circle (on my side) not extending farther than my first cousins and my true aunts and uncles, I think there are at least a dozen divorces and my immediate family is much smaller than that of my wife. Possibilities have occurred to me: Taking into account the stereotypical French tolerance for taking lovers (if it's true I've never been privy to any actual or alleged cases of it), the couples tend to stick it out at all costs. First, there is an attachment to land and inheritance that I've never known and, I assume most Americans have never known. It makes it so that people resolve their differences and attempt to not create them in the first place because they choose to live near to each other generation after generation. Similarly, when you live in a country that's the size of California, it's difficult to come up with excuses year after year to not see each other, at least during the holidays. Even though Asian culture is more famous for it, the result is that the dignity of the family takes on a life of its own. On the verge of giving up and getting a divorce, the marriage has an ace up it's sleeve; if you do it everyone will know about it. I also know that my wife's family is somewhat unusual, even for French families. They are almost universally conservative, more-or-less devout Catholics who tend to marry into like-minded families. I sort of suspect that it will gradually change. I mean, some of them have even married Americans! *shudder*. But it's still remarkable that such a large extended family has remained so one-minded even into our day. For what it's worth, I'll strive to help to keep it this way.
--
I don't like coming here very much, but in this particular case, it was probably a good thing. My brother-in-law isn't here and he's usually the one who harshes the atmosphere around here the worst anyway. Furthermore, it's gotten really bizarre at home. I'm feeling buried all the time. I know that that's due in a large part to my own lack of organization. That doesn't change the fact that more and more, as I grow older, I'm discovering that it's very very very good for ones mental health to go somewhere where there is very little to do. It's starting to seem that in order for me to relax, someone has to take away all of my toys and lock me in a closet. It's the only way I ever stop long enough to think.
Yet another reason to consider this monastery retreat thing even though it's looking less and less like I'll do it this year if I do it at all.
I've been thinking that I may devote more time to making a personal web page again. I mean, I have one but there's not much on it. First of all, I know that there can't be many people who read this LJ drivel of mine. Second of all, when I do put forth the effort to write something that at least I consider to be of worth, I don't really like posting it to something as temporal as LJ. I guess if it were only for me it would be different, but if I'm trying to share an idea, which I often am, I'd like for the few people who are likely to stumble across it to still see it a month or a year from now without having to sift through my past posts which I know they'll never do. Secondly, I've been wanting to try my hand at Java applet writing and even if my applets are damn near useless, the web page is still the platform from which to launch them. Third of all, I've been toying with the idea of trying to organize some of my photos into a quasi-coherent portfolio. Even though I've never created any images that matter, I know that presentation does miracles for the appreciation of any 'artwork' and I'm hopeful that creating a distilled collection will encourage me to spend more time behind the lens. I'm missing it a little. Anyway, it's just another thing on my to do list that I'll probably never get around to. We'll see.
On a related note, some of my pictures are being used on a commercial website without my permission. It's an ad for a B&B kind of thing. That only bothers me because of the principal really. I'd be perfectly okay with it if they'd only given me credit for them. Also, I know where they got the photos from so I'm also pretty sure that they have no idea who took them. I'm kind of torn about whether or not I should say anything.... I know what my photography teachers would say for sure... Hell yea they have to give you the photo credit! Maybe I'll get around to it. All I'll ask is that my name be next to the photos, I'm not asking for royalties or anything. I'm actually kind of flattered that my pics have travelled that much although I have to admit, at the risk of appearing immodest, that one of the shots is pretty good.
---
I've yet to find a bicycle shop that sells track cogs. I find that to be kind of strange in spite of the knowledge that no one rides fixed on the road here. There's no velodrome in town. I think the nearest one is in Nancy. And I wonder: how does one get into track racing? I mean, does a guy just wake up one morning, go out and buy himself a $5000 one-speed bike and run to the nearest velodrome and sign up for a race? Sounds unlikely. I suppose that it must be a family affair in a way. I just can't imagine any easy way for a guy to start riding that way if he hasn't done it practically from birth.
----
I've decided that I'll never be happy (to the extent that happiness is a permanent state) unless I learn to be better organized. It's late in life to turn over that kind of new leaf. The only other option would be go get totally back to basics and live in a mud hut; not realistic. If I want to continue to be professionally successful, a good father and husband, embrace life-long learning, engage in a half a dozen hobbies and still have a social life without going totally nuts, I have to make organization a priority. I wonder if that's even genetically possible...
-----
I had another thought: I wonder who doesn't have adult ADD. I mean, I have a hunch that some people don't, but I'm thinking they're a minority, not a majority. So, here is yet another example of the ever-increasingly interesting American values system attempting to profit from the general malaise of its people. We haven't invented anything new, we've just come up with ways to make snake oil appear to be legitimate medicine. I mean, think about it: Even if adult ADD is a 'treatable disorder', it has almost assuredly always existed. Somehow, we've managed to get where we are as a society in spite of it. Yet, somehow, it's a new epidemic disorder that needs treatment from our increasingly profitable medical community. I have a profound distrust of the medical community in general and psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies in particular.
I saw my Niece for awhile today. She's improved a little bit. I can stand her now whereas I used to find both her looks and her personality appalling. She still looks like a boy albeit a less repulsive boy and her attitude has gradually improved a bit. She's now tolerable; almost likable. In fairness, she's come to be very polite and her life has been and continues to be pretty interesting. She does a lot of sports, travels, sails, and it seems like she's landed a pretty good job. She actually came to play tennis, but we chatted awhile too. It's funny when I think of it. First of all, she's my niece. It's just the way it is in French families, or, at least in all of the French families I've ever known. Once you marry into a family, all of your spouses family is your family, you don't make any distinction anymore. Furthermore, they don't do 5th cousin 12 times removed and all of that other Anglo-Saxon crap. They keep it simple: All of your parents' siblings and cousins are your uncles, no matter how distant. Their children are your cousins, no matter how distant. They only really make a distinction when talking of first cousins and then only when it's necessary to allude to closeness. It makes for a large family and something that I never knew in my own family growing up. On my side, I have first cousins that I've never met.
My niece is 8 years younger than me. She's my niece because she's my wife's [first] cousin's daughter. And she calls me 'vous' because that's how she was raised; you always use the formal pronoun with uncles. It's weird. It makes me feel old and detached because I'm closer in age to my niece than I am to my cousin (her mother). But that's the way it is. Why is it important? I guess I felt like writing about it so it must be. Look at it this way: If I had married her instead of the MSU, (which would have been highly unlikely for a lot of reasons but bear with me here) I'd have to call the MSU 'vous' when we see each other because she'd be my aunt. There are other similar cases. On the other side of the MSU's family, we have cousins who are younger than my brother-in-law's kids. I don't know if my brother-in-law's kids use 'vous' with their uncle, but he uses 'tu' with me which also feels weird. He just got his driver's licence but he's my cousin, not my nephew. We're from the same generation so it's "tu". Funny...
I have a very interesting, unique, and lonely subjective reality.
I was thinking of something else: In my wife's extended family which, as I've said, includes all of her parents' and grand-parents' cousins no matter how distant and all of their children, let's say about 200 people that I've personally met or heard tell of, I know of one divorce. Needless to say, it was and continues to be a scandal. I guess it all depends on your perspective, but they must be doing something right that no American family I've ever known is doing. I mean, in my family circle (on my side) not extending farther than my first cousins and my true aunts and uncles, I think there are at least a dozen divorces and my immediate family is much smaller than that of my wife. Possibilities have occurred to me: Taking into account the stereotypical French tolerance for taking lovers (if it's true I've never been privy to any actual or alleged cases of it), the couples tend to stick it out at all costs. First, there is an attachment to land and inheritance that I've never known and, I assume most Americans have never known. It makes it so that people resolve their differences and attempt to not create them in the first place because they choose to live near to each other generation after generation. Similarly, when you live in a country that's the size of California, it's difficult to come up with excuses year after year to not see each other, at least during the holidays. Even though Asian culture is more famous for it, the result is that the dignity of the family takes on a life of its own. On the verge of giving up and getting a divorce, the marriage has an ace up it's sleeve; if you do it everyone will know about it. I also know that my wife's family is somewhat unusual, even for French families. They are almost universally conservative, more-or-less devout Catholics who tend to marry into like-minded families. I sort of suspect that it will gradually change. I mean, some of them have even married Americans! *shudder*. But it's still remarkable that such a large extended family has remained so one-minded even into our day. For what it's worth, I'll strive to help to keep it this way.
--
I don't like coming here very much, but in this particular case, it was probably a good thing. My brother-in-law isn't here and he's usually the one who harshes the atmosphere around here the worst anyway. Furthermore, it's gotten really bizarre at home. I'm feeling buried all the time. I know that that's due in a large part to my own lack of organization. That doesn't change the fact that more and more, as I grow older, I'm discovering that it's very very very good for ones mental health to go somewhere where there is very little to do. It's starting to seem that in order for me to relax, someone has to take away all of my toys and lock me in a closet. It's the only way I ever stop long enough to think.
Yet another reason to consider this monastery retreat thing even though it's looking less and less like I'll do it this year if I do it at all.
I've been thinking that I may devote more time to making a personal web page again. I mean, I have one but there's not much on it. First of all, I know that there can't be many people who read this LJ drivel of mine. Second of all, when I do put forth the effort to write something that at least I consider to be of worth, I don't really like posting it to something as temporal as LJ. I guess if it were only for me it would be different, but if I'm trying to share an idea, which I often am, I'd like for the few people who are likely to stumble across it to still see it a month or a year from now without having to sift through my past posts which I know they'll never do. Secondly, I've been wanting to try my hand at Java applet writing and even if my applets are damn near useless, the web page is still the platform from which to launch them. Third of all, I've been toying with the idea of trying to organize some of my photos into a quasi-coherent portfolio. Even though I've never created any images that matter, I know that presentation does miracles for the appreciation of any 'artwork' and I'm hopeful that creating a distilled collection will encourage me to spend more time behind the lens. I'm missing it a little. Anyway, it's just another thing on my to do list that I'll probably never get around to. We'll see.
On a related note, some of my pictures are being used on a commercial website without my permission. It's an ad for a B&B kind of thing. That only bothers me because of the principal really. I'd be perfectly okay with it if they'd only given me credit for them. Also, I know where they got the photos from so I'm also pretty sure that they have no idea who took them. I'm kind of torn about whether or not I should say anything.... I know what my photography teachers would say for sure... Hell yea they have to give you the photo credit! Maybe I'll get around to it. All I'll ask is that my name be next to the photos, I'm not asking for royalties or anything. I'm actually kind of flattered that my pics have travelled that much although I have to admit, at the risk of appearing immodest, that one of the shots is pretty good.
---
I've yet to find a bicycle shop that sells track cogs. I find that to be kind of strange in spite of the knowledge that no one rides fixed on the road here. There's no velodrome in town. I think the nearest one is in Nancy. And I wonder: how does one get into track racing? I mean, does a guy just wake up one morning, go out and buy himself a $5000 one-speed bike and run to the nearest velodrome and sign up for a race? Sounds unlikely. I suppose that it must be a family affair in a way. I just can't imagine any easy way for a guy to start riding that way if he hasn't done it practically from birth.
----
I've decided that I'll never be happy (to the extent that happiness is a permanent state) unless I learn to be better organized. It's late in life to turn over that kind of new leaf. The only other option would be go get totally back to basics and live in a mud hut; not realistic. If I want to continue to be professionally successful, a good father and husband, embrace life-long learning, engage in a half a dozen hobbies and still have a social life without going totally nuts, I have to make organization a priority. I wonder if that's even genetically possible...
-----
I had another thought: I wonder who doesn't have adult ADD. I mean, I have a hunch that some people don't, but I'm thinking they're a minority, not a majority. So, here is yet another example of the ever-increasingly interesting American values system attempting to profit from the general malaise of its people. We haven't invented anything new, we've just come up with ways to make snake oil appear to be legitimate medicine. I mean, think about it: Even if adult ADD is a 'treatable disorder', it has almost assuredly always existed. Somehow, we've managed to get where we are as a society in spite of it. Yet, somehow, it's a new epidemic disorder that needs treatment from our increasingly profitable medical community. I have a profound distrust of the medical community in general and psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies in particular.