ultra chicken - he's legend!
Today I was just sitting at work, rolling around in my head the problem of how to give a scene graph a Locale when it already belonged to a SimpleUniverse, and I suddenly thought how strange the phrase -I love you- is. When you say it the first time, it's like an establishment of something, a step toward something ... so even though saying it or having it said to you the first time -is- a rush, it's sort of heavy with responsibility ... Then once in a while, much as you don't want to, you say it because you need to hear it said back to you ... Then, although that insecurity could possibly be because the extent of your love has made you vulnerable in the relationship, it still seems dishonest ... Then there are those times that the person does something unexpectedly beautiful to you, and it doesn't even make much sense usually why it should constrict you with so much joy, and it is somewhat selfish still because -you- get to look on this mysterious and beautiful landscape of their self and to shape it in a small way ... but mostly you just feel unselfconscious ... I don't even know what to call it ... if you weren't in love with the person, it would probably be something like appreciation ... maybe love amps it up to amazement ... And that perhaps taps a little into the reservoir of feeling you have about the person and you involuntarily remember laying on a floaty pool thing in the middle of the night, talking about progression of time and weird anthropology and the pool makes you think of what their hair looks like when wet and wet hair makes you think of the time they pulled you out of the shower when you climbed in with all your clothes on, not exactly happy about it but they shared their sleeping bag with you anyway ... and you don't even have to actively shut off the remembering, because the person is real and beautiful in front of you, trumping even the memories of them ... but the few memories that filtered in make you happy too because they make you aware of the enormity of the happiness this person has brought you and of the connection you've felt with them ... then you want to tell them how happy they make you and how much you want happiness for them ... and hope that you're a part of it ... and how much you respect and dig them for the things they go through and the choices they make and who they are ... And all that's what you express when you say I love you ... that's the most strang thing about it ... it's intense ... if you expressed all of it aloud, in careful paragraphs, it might even be scary ... yet when you just say I love you, the person understands and says it back. And the best thing of course is when the love you feel is so intense and incoherent that you can't even think of any discrete memories or individual reasons why you are suddenly aware of every single drop of water exploding off your skin onto his skin and beads of water slide down his hair and make liquid craters on your skin or why the water-loud silence is the most beautiful silence you've ever lived in or why you're not, for once, anxious about anything or greedy for anything at all ... not even really happy because what you feel transcends that ... not euphoric either because euphoria is always precarious and tinged with terror ... you just feel more like you're living in a luscious dream than you've ever felt ... and more like you're living in exactly your own life than you've ever felt ... This is when you say, I love you I love you I love you, not even out loud, you just think it ... because that's the only way to even remotely explain anything ...
I've been thinking quite a bit about Dan's post a while back about the void in definition of masculinity. I agree that there is one. I am not altogether sure what the definition of femeninity is right now, but it seems like a lot of pseudo-feminist stuff I've read in the past couple years suggest that a woman be multi-functional, capable of balancing both a career and family, balancing both a healthy self-awareness and a competent public persona, balancing both a societal compassion and a strong survival instinct ... call me crazy, but that seems like a pretty good recipe for success as a human being ...
I'm not really all that sure what characterized masculinity before the feminine revolution(?) revolutions(?), but I think big things were physical energy, professional skill, agression and territorialism, emotional muteness, stoicism, and conformity. Some of those are great, but, hell, who wants to stoically prowl around the boundaries of their emotional silence? So for whatever reason there isn't a clear definition of masculinity, perhaps thats a good thing? Insofar as it lets men now define themselves instead of being defined by mores of centuries past? And for a little rant of my own about emasculation, I watched a run of The Simpsons, American Dad, and Family Guy this weekend. Ok :: confesses :: so this was offically the first episode I've ever watched of The Simpsons, but -- seriously -- is it coincidence that Homer, the dad in American Dad, and Peter are all unintelligent, unethical, and ugly? And by ugly, I mean they eat and drink too much? By which I mean they lack rational control They all (and by all I mean the dad guy and Peter and potentially Homer) have some illusion about their head-of-the-family status, but the kids don't respect them and it's pretty clear to the audience that the wife ... for some crazy reason known only to women ... loves him and hences both tolerates him and props up his own idea of his importance. Yeah yeah yeah it's funny and it's clearly absurdist irony, right? Riiiiggggghhhhttt ...
Perhaps more on this later ...
I've been thinking quite a bit about Dan's post a while back about the void in definition of masculinity. I agree that there is one. I am not altogether sure what the definition of femeninity is right now, but it seems like a lot of pseudo-feminist stuff I've read in the past couple years suggest that a woman be multi-functional, capable of balancing both a career and family, balancing both a healthy self-awareness and a competent public persona, balancing both a societal compassion and a strong survival instinct ... call me crazy, but that seems like a pretty good recipe for success as a human being ...
I'm not really all that sure what characterized masculinity before the feminine revolution(?) revolutions(?), but I think big things were physical energy, professional skill, agression and territorialism, emotional muteness, stoicism, and conformity. Some of those are great, but, hell, who wants to stoically prowl around the boundaries of their emotional silence? So for whatever reason there isn't a clear definition of masculinity, perhaps thats a good thing? Insofar as it lets men now define themselves instead of being defined by mores of centuries past? And for a little rant of my own about emasculation, I watched a run of The Simpsons, American Dad, and Family Guy this weekend. Ok :: confesses :: so this was offically the first episode I've ever watched of The Simpsons, but -- seriously -- is it coincidence that Homer, the dad in American Dad, and Peter are all unintelligent, unethical, and ugly? And by ugly, I mean they eat and drink too much? By which I mean they lack rational control They all (and by all I mean the dad guy and Peter and potentially Homer) have some illusion about their head-of-the-family status, but the kids don't respect them and it's pretty clear to the audience that the wife ... for some crazy reason known only to women ... loves him and hences both tolerates him and props up his own idea of his importance. Yeah yeah yeah it's funny and it's clearly absurdist irony, right? Riiiiggggghhhhttt ...
Perhaps more on this later ...