(no subject)
I think the hope a journal like this must be that if I write a thought down, it will leave me alone. Probably not, though; a hope that unrealistic is untenable. Anyway, some thoughts:
Little kids are almost endlessly entertaining. They're also a pain, but that's not something I have to deal with much when the kids in question are my cousins. Most of the family was gathered for a cousin's confirmation, and it was warm out, so Sean and I got to pull out all the tricks for entertaining really little kids that we haven't been able to use since Molly and Danny were that age. And in that respect, little kids are a great audience, too--they're usually easy to please. Plus,, it's pretty much guaranteed that they'll only get more interesting as they grow up. I really want to see how some of these kids grow up. Some day, perhaps, I'll attempt a written tour of my extended family, but such a task is more than I'm prepared to undertake now.
I recently learned that "thou" was not only the second person singular pronoun in English, but also the familiar form of the second person pronoun--in other words, "thou" and "you" correspond pretty much completely to the familiar and polite second person pronouns in most of the Romance languages, and a number of others. So, for instance, it's probably a good idea when reading Shakespeare to pay attention to which form is used, since "thou" is generally used when speaking to inferiors or as an insult. Which leads me to another reason why Tolkien rocks: when the Mouth of Sauron uses the "thou" form to address Gandalf, his verbs are conjugated correctly, and there's a level of insult there that I never even realized was present. And as much as Tolkien loved his languages, I'm sure that he meant it that way, too.
My mother maintains a very strange view of me--selective and distorted. That is to say, she seems to latch on to some (perceived) features of my personality and exaggerate them in her mind...the way you might expect a stranger or a casual acquaintance to do, almost, which might have something to do with why it bothers me. I doubt that's actually it, but it helps to explain why it might happen--after all, I tend to avoid giving her my thoughts in depth on all kinds of topics. I think she does the same things my siblings, though (...and probably for the same reasons). I'm just not sure how far it goes with them; after all, things that pertain directly to me are much easier for me to see. I suspect this leads to a number of other things, but I'm not yet sure what they might be.
I always come back from break feeling more like myself again. I need to figure out why this is. Something to do with the people.
I often get the feeling that the ways my life moves are inevitable. I suspect that this isn't unrelated to the "stew" theory of personality (from Brette via a friend, I believe, q.v.), and I also think it might have something to do with the patterns we expect to see in the stories we read, expanded to make sense of our lives. Or am I the only one who gets that feeling?
Also, attachments are nothing but trouble.
Pardon my introspections; that is all.
Little kids are almost endlessly entertaining. They're also a pain, but that's not something I have to deal with much when the kids in question are my cousins. Most of the family was gathered for a cousin's confirmation, and it was warm out, so Sean and I got to pull out all the tricks for entertaining really little kids that we haven't been able to use since Molly and Danny were that age. And in that respect, little kids are a great audience, too--they're usually easy to please. Plus,, it's pretty much guaranteed that they'll only get more interesting as they grow up. I really want to see how some of these kids grow up. Some day, perhaps, I'll attempt a written tour of my extended family, but such a task is more than I'm prepared to undertake now.
I recently learned that "thou" was not only the second person singular pronoun in English, but also the familiar form of the second person pronoun--in other words, "thou" and "you" correspond pretty much completely to the familiar and polite second person pronouns in most of the Romance languages, and a number of others. So, for instance, it's probably a good idea when reading Shakespeare to pay attention to which form is used, since "thou" is generally used when speaking to inferiors or as an insult. Which leads me to another reason why Tolkien rocks: when the Mouth of Sauron uses the "thou" form to address Gandalf, his verbs are conjugated correctly, and there's a level of insult there that I never even realized was present. And as much as Tolkien loved his languages, I'm sure that he meant it that way, too.
My mother maintains a very strange view of me--selective and distorted. That is to say, she seems to latch on to some (perceived) features of my personality and exaggerate them in her mind...the way you might expect a stranger or a casual acquaintance to do, almost, which might have something to do with why it bothers me. I doubt that's actually it, but it helps to explain why it might happen--after all, I tend to avoid giving her my thoughts in depth on all kinds of topics. I think she does the same things my siblings, though (...and probably for the same reasons). I'm just not sure how far it goes with them; after all, things that pertain directly to me are much easier for me to see. I suspect this leads to a number of other things, but I'm not yet sure what they might be.
I always come back from break feeling more like myself again. I need to figure out why this is. Something to do with the people.
I often get the feeling that the ways my life moves are inevitable. I suspect that this isn't unrelated to the "stew" theory of personality (from Brette via a friend, I believe, q.v.), and I also think it might have something to do with the patterns we expect to see in the stories we read, expanded to make sense of our lives. Or am I the only one who gets that feeling?
Also, attachments are nothing but trouble.
Pardon my introspections; that is all.