Lost on the Lunatic Fringe

As long as you stay away from the family. I don’t mean my immediate family. I always look forward to seeing them. My extended family, however, are less of a priority for me. I got to thinking about how nice today has been, a Thanksgiving with the man that I love and no bitter aftertaste. We got to talking about the various things that get me tied in knots during the holidays, and it all comes down to a couple of people in the extended family who seem to think it’s their privilege to belittle others.

Recently I had an experience at a work potluck in which I brought a tres leches cake. The cake got compliments and raves. Then a woman came up to me and told me how I should improve it so that she would like it. I thought to myself how rude that was, and how it was something I’d experienced from a number of people in my extended family all my life. It took a stranger doing it for me to realize that it was rude, and that I shouldn’t tolerate that kind of treatment from strangers or from family. I also thought about how I had been brought up never to argue with them or contradict them, and always think about their feelings. It occurred to me that they’d never considered mine, and that reciprocation might be something a reasonable person could expect.

The conclusion I came to was that if I am trying to walk away from them, I should think about just saying “Thanks for everything, have a nice life.” I need to remember that what goes around comes around, and for my own mental health, I need to cut off the diseased relationships that have never been good. Once my own obligations are met, I can walk away with a clean conscience and have my own life again. I don’t have any responsibility for their happiness, and even if I did, that would probably be best accomplished by my absence during the holidays.

I got this song stuck in my head, and I got to thinking about the significance of the engagement ring. Now, I personally never cared about the tradition myself, except on a vague emotional level. I got the song stuck in my head, though, and me being me, I had to analyse the cultural meaning of an engagement ring.

The first thought that came into my head was that it was something a woman could hock if things went south. It was symbolic of economic independence, a gift that a man gave a woman to show that he was giving her freedom instead of tying her down. Then I thought about how it symbolized an investment in the relationship on the part of the man. To most men, a diamond engagement ring is a significant investment. You have to be serious to even consider spending that chunk of your income on a piece of jewelry. That, paired with the idea that it symbolized economic freedom to the recipient creates the situation of it being a sacrifice, a leap of faith.

I got to thinking how people simplify these ideas into an obligation. “He owes me a ring” (In exchange for what?) “She owes me because I gave her a ring, otherwise she should give it back.” (Again, what’s the exchange?) It all seems to have turned something with beautiful symbolism into something ugly and materialistic, or commercial. It’s turned into something that makes women into grasping whores and men into buyers. I can’t help but feel as if so many things in our society and relationships are reduced to this. Maybe it’s because we make a show of love, but love doesn’t figure into all that many relationships. The ideas which would be beautiful in the presence of love and trust turn into something ugly and cheap in its absence, and it’s reduced to something very very close to prostitution. Maybe that’s why I didn’t want an engagement ring before I got married the second time, because I’d perceived it in its ugly sense, and didn’t want to sully my relationship with that.

It’s funny how many things change depending on their context.

A friend and I had a short conversation about how it’s nice to just chill out and enjoy the moments of good conversation and good company, or just peace and quiet. I had to bring up the superstition of the “evil eye”.

In some parts of the world, people believe that if you value or love someone or something too much, you’ll attract the attention of the evil eye. If somebody compliments how pretty their baby is, they’ll sometimes smudge dirt on the child’s face and say something like, “yes, but her face is dirty”. This is to avert the evil eye. It’s magical thinking, that something bad will happen if you admit to something being good.
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We’re a go on the house we looked at for rent. We can start moving in as soon as the landlord gets his deposit and the rental agreement. Hooray!

We compared the price of an apartment and the price of renting a house, and the house came out slightly cheaper, but with the wonderful bonus of not having neighbors directly above, below and on the other side of the wall. There’s a basement, and it’s not three floors to move our furniture up. It’s a bungalow, so the living space is all on the ground floor. We won’t have shared laundry facilities, we can simply take our washer and dryer along and hook them up, and without the need for quarters, we can wash and dry our clothes. We can leave clothes in them without worrying that we’ll piss off a neighbor or have something stolen.
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I’m being offered what might possibly be a much better opportunity, but it would require moving. I ended up turning to my husband last night and telling him that I was terribly confused and didn’t know what to do. I appear to have reached a crossroads in my life, and it might result in things getting harder before they become much much easier. I guess I’m going to have to play it out and see what’s being offered. Considering my qualifications or lack thereof, it would appear to be a huge improvement over what I would be able to do with my life here.

Every time something changes, I have to roll with it and adjust to a new set of circumstances which add difficulty. If I don’t accept and overcome those difficulties, I stay where I am. I understand that if I’m unhappy with the way things are, I have to change them. I’m prepared to do that, but I yearn for a little stability. Don’t get me wrong, challenges keep you sharp. They stop you from finding your rut and staying there. I suppose it’s a part of my brain that rebels against changes that come when I’m not prepared for them. I was not prepared to be thrown into a situation in which I would have to find another job so suddenly.
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I got to thinking about geek stuff again. You know, the really tinfoil hat stuff. I just woke up. Bear with me.

So anyway, years ago I used to know a man who was building a laser to etch jewelry. He was friends with the computer geek I was living with. Anyway, we used to sit around in the machine shop of another friend and talk while they machined parts and generally got everyone’s clothes full of curly metal shavings that would spring out at you months later, little metal parasites that had been living in the fibers of your socks or shoes or jeans.
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Another year older and deeper in debt.

So I guess now is that time of year for reflection, huh? Okay. I suppose I could indulge. In my 33rd year on the planet (yes, 33. You don’t turn a year old until after you’ve lived a year. Your first birthday is the start of your second year.), I’ve learned that nothing you know is certain. There are always exceptions. There’s always so much to everything that you can’t know, so be careful in your judgment of things. I am never that careful, but I DO know better.

You can’t fix anyone else’s life, they can’t fix yours. Giving another person responsibility for your recovery/sobriety/life is a cop-out. It’s worse than a cop-out. That’s because what you’re really doing is setting up another person to take the blame when you fail. Some people are masochists that like to play that game.
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Here we go again, committing thoughts to blog.

I was thinking about shame vs. guilt. Specifically, I was thinking about psychology being applied to either of the two cultures incorrectly. America is a guilt culture. Naturally enough, this is the way American-trained psychologists will treat any client they have. What happens when a guilt-culture psychologist analyzes or treats someone from a shame-culture background? Could it possibly lead to a great deal of consternation and distress on both ends? Would the patient behave consistent with their own culture, and invalidate any analysis done in the context of the analyst’s culture? I can’t help but imagine that even if the psychologist were aware of the difference, they’d fall back on the context of their own culture to process whatever information they got. The psychologist might say, “You should feel guilt. Why don’t you feel guilt?”, and the patient would have no choice but to feel shame that they feel no guilt when they are expected to. Guilt is not culturally part of their lexicon. Expectations and obligations are. I imagine it would become distressing and confusing for both.
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It seems that a vague plan is coming together. Last night Mehdi and I talked it over. We were having an in-depth conversation about something fairly complicated to do with physics and audible frequencies and the potential for things like interference of two frequencies to be harmful to a living organism, like overhead power lines competing with ambient frequencies, or the way that you could conduct an aggressive attack on your neighbors if you only had a biggish concert speaker and a good amp, then turn the bass and the volume all the way up, everything else all the way down….
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There’s this board I go on to pick on people who are guaranteed to disagree with me. It’s known as “trolling” in some circles. I’m not obvious troll or anything.

So anyway, the whole hot-button topic of abortion gets brought up on a regular basis, and the judgment of women who have sex outside of a legal agreement or worse yet, for reasons other than reproduction. You hear some gems.

The gem of the day today was this:

“Its not actually just the womans body anymore. When she is pregnant the baby she is carrying has a right to be brought safely into the world. Put the child up for adoption if you hate it and don’t want it . Life is precious.”
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