C a r o l y n ' s D i a r y
diary.carolyn.org
|
||||
|
vIRTUALLY yOURS:
mY
cOGNITIVE
aND
... Today |
|
|||
| be warned: this is my diary... clb | page 53 | |||
|
|
||||
C a r o l y n ' s D i a r y
diary.carolyn.org
|
||||
|
vIRTUALLY yOURS:
mY
cOGNITIVE
aND
... Today |
|
|||
| be warned: this is my diary... clb | page 53 | |||
|
|
||||
The Year of the Snake
A quiet and peaceful new years... I stayed home, and after changing his plans, so did Richard. I actually enjoyed the peacefulness of not celebrating or partying. :) That's good. Sunny skies are cheering me up this morning, and the extra time off again. The Year of the Dragon is over, and I'm gald. Al the change can settle in this new year, refreshing and creating those things I care more about. 3 party invitations to follow up on now with thanks.
A brief moment in which I feel that things can stay the way they are. Later, I am sure there will be a larger push to change again. This morning though, we'll leave well enough alone.
Cats met dogs last night. or about an hour, we sat on our respective sides, with our respective beautiful furry faces, and tried not to scare each other. Although Fleiss really likes to hiss at dogs, stternly turning his back and walking away, Moppins finds dogs a tad less intriging. She happily sat on the counter letting dog noses visit her while Richard firmly held collars. She even purred at them while I petted her. They'll get along.
Well... the shock of having a new house is not wearing off. Gotta make this place more civilized or I'll wear away. It beautiful but empty.
I think I'll do stuff now.
Early morning again. Watching the sunrise. Wondering why the universe is th way it is. Knowing that my slice of it is mostly entirely what I've chosen over the years. Watching other slices of life too, knowing those were options in most cases. Is mine good?
Working on internal feeling and a sense of life -- mine.
Is there a trick to this?
Spent the weekend with Richard's mom visiting. She's sweet, and she worries about him. That's good in a mom. Of course it isn't something I ever had patience for from relatives. So I must encourage or tolerate as a hypocrite.
Still inside.
I'm closed up like a clam shell after spending a weekend in polite extroversion. I need some time to open up with myself, and clarify now. This won't happen this week unless I take my evenings to myself. Writing here each evening will be difficult, and really needed. Pry open clam shell, explore, bleed, unravel, rebuild, and breathe. I don't want to live in a shell. My joy in life comes from opening up and really living. Even the scary bits are better then numbness.
Although this hasn't been self-revealing, I get it. That's what is important to me. I don't want to accumulate internal debris and wake up in 30 or 40 years without having lead my life. I have so much to do.
I've been doing one scary thing a day now for a few days. I don't want to spell out which things were which though since they are all about interacting with people. The way to grow my own self-confidence (back to my old norm of fully unjustified and unexhausred self-confidence) is to do these scary things until none of htem are scary. Will the world become a boring place then? What a chance to take -- in irony of course.
I have 5 minutes here. A day of meetings follows.
I'm exceedingly proud watching the fall of the dot coms knowing that this fate, the fate of the short-term and the greedy, does not await me or the work I've done. Risk management seems more and more important, and I'm glad now that the old engineering training I had has come in so handy. Its almost as if the education I engulfed from Waterloo covered biz instead of eng. Was that their plan then? "How do we produce engineers who don't fall on their faces entering the business world?" Heh... so many of those same engs end up pursuing MBAs anyway. I know now that I won't.
Still and all... 3 minutes over.
Time to impart corporatese unto the body, and move said body on previously mentioned meeting schedule. C'est la vie.
ciau
Sunday morning... 6 am. Flickering awake. Got a lot of good rest yesterday. Wrote email. Played a few games. Generally unwound. I'm still pc right now (pre-coffee)...Save and hold.
End of a 14 hour work day... and its only 8pm. I'm trying to wind down now. Too wound up to read, so I thought I'd write a bit.
Today is the 2 month anniversary of the new house, and just over one month since I moved in. Although there hasn't been huge progress on buying furniture, we do know what we want and who to buy it from. Turjs out there is a splendid little Mission-style furniture manufacturer two blocks from here, the only one in the city. So we'll be custom designing the living room and dining room furniture. The people, artists really and truly, are good people. I'm looking forward to having their work here. The store / manufacturer is called Gen-Cor, and I'm thinking of having them custom build the new office boardroom table too. I think it'd be beautiful and elegant.
God... the stories that come to mind about building a business. I remember the days, years back, when we didn't have an office, when we didn't know how to handle meetings. And yet the work we did was really good. That humble beginning was very healthy for the organization, and for me. I miss that time in many ways. Luckily we're still small and still growing, and making things work and learning how to do things and what the issues really are. These things do build character, and an appreciation of ... well, of how things work. Paring a task down to the basics teaches me, and others I think, what is really important. The frills are nice but not relly needed. A bit of cunning and a lot of planning and thinking things through replaces pre-packaged black boxes. I wonder why as a culture we strive so intensively to use black boxes. Why are we scared to venture out as inventors and entrepreneurs?
But I enjoy trailblazing. In fact it always seems to make sense to me to learn more about a thing then the black box solutions would have me do. Why? There's so much that can break, and its nice to be able to trouble shoot. I feel like I've just figured this out.
We had dinner with someone (yes, another person with the idea that they might invest in the company) last month. He impressed me in one way which his business partner confirmed. This man always gets right into the thing he is involved in. He gets in depth into understanding all the ins and outs. He understands. And after awhile, he knows as much as I would or others would. You have a choice then to keep up with him, or ahead of him, or to let him grow bored, and move on. Fascinating. Or at least I was... I learned something there viscerally. Sometimes I will learn that way. Mostly I thin it sets an incredible example for others. I am wondering thouguh if it isn't also an intense way to live... growing bored with the world isn't worth it.
Hyper... wow.
Ctrl-x Ctrl-s ----:**-F1 Page53.html (HTML Fill)--L383--72%-------------- Wrote /usr/home/clburke/public_html/Page53.html ----:---F1 Page53.html (HTML Fill)--L385--71%--------------
Fleiss is back.
It seems I've been initiated into the Cabbagetown community. You might have seen posters up in the neighbourhood for a lost black cat. That was Fleiss. I have him back now, after countless phone calls about black cats (and gray cats, and cats with white feet,..).
He was hiding very warmly in a wood pile around the corner, scared to come out, for 5 days! He's fine now. It was a great way really to meet all the cat lovers in the neighbourhood. Dog owners have it much easier. I even had two calls from a woman named Kat :)
His wood pile came with a house, a really nice couple, and at least 3 cats who lived there. And a bowl of cat food, and a cat carrier. I think he might have decided to stay there if he'd stopped being scared. Luckily the woman saw my posters and called. And I thought he'd wandered miles and miles away. He was within calling distance of the house but too scared to come out.
I'm so relieved. He'd been away since last Thursday. And it was cold.
I cried on the weekend, walked around yelling his name, listened intently out the front door, and missed one meeting last night to bury under a wood pile.
Welcome to Cabbagetown -- where people really do read the posters.
And on and on...
It's raining out right now. I've been going to the gym 2 and 3 times a week. I've been working crazy hours at the office and from home. There is something going on that sparks an interest in me apparently... It's variety. Having the opportunity to get involved in costruction, the design and building, of 16,000 sq. ft. of space is fun. And tiring and overwhelming and beautiful. I like it. Someday I'll development a new office tower, just for fun. I wonder what the interim steps are to learn that...
And its still raining. If only it were really spring now. But it is still January.
The dot coms continue to land on their ears. Other, more "stable" organizations are also wilting a bit. Slowly the economy is changing for awhile. I've been waiting for this for 3 years. I am interested in learning how my recession proofing plans will work. I remember in 1982, after I first went off to the University of Waterloo, specifically because I could self fund my education through coop jobs, my first work term came up in Jan 1983. I wasn't old enough to sign the work papers with Nabisco. My parents had to. That was humiliating. I had wanted to take every last cent I had (which was nothing) and hire a gaurdian lawyer. I still have the indepence bug. That first job though was landed a few weeks into the term. The early 80's recession had hurt the flow of IT jobs then. Although I was studying engineering, the position required 4 months of custom coding back when a PC was a DOS machine, and basic was a language of choice.
[smoke break]
The last day at The FSC Building. The packing team is just heading out. I'm wiped. We'll be in the new space on Yonge Street on Monday. Time to head out!
C
Early monring. We'll open in the new office today. It's just amazing, something we've worked hard for, and earned, saved up for and designed and then built. I'll miss the mornings at the FSC Building, but waking up to pop downtown into the heart of the city every day is inspiring. We can see half of our clients' office windows out our own. I've missed the steel and concrete since moving here to the burbs. I've missed the aliveness of interaction on the streets. And I've missed my day job -- I've been the "client" for the past 2 months.
My "before" pictures should be ready shortly.
I don't like...
and each of these has a story attached. And I'm still stressed out beyond belief, overwhelmed with two moves in three months, and no support system any longer. Missing warmth. No clothe. No textures. no life. Rehydrate me.
magical will power moving the world. take away the yellow and blue. i want greens and oranges and reds and browns and beautiful grey. water-filled leaves reaching towards the window, the sun, the blue skies. cats with mouthes filled with birds and mice and eyes aglitter under a rainbow. fairy land.
causality. push and move, reorganize, invent. make one thing out of something else adding some missing value. over and over and over and ... my treadmill. the human condition. improve. invent. market. distribute. repeat. over and over and ...
where is the peace. even monks of old seem to have made wine and parchment and furniture. what of the absolute nothingness, a divine state of transcendant blissed out fuck-headed blank. over enlightened, under effective, inside out. falling.
did i mention i hate moving, and that even punctuation and grammar slip away through the seams in my mind, that artifical social contruct that I personally adopted as my own some time ago. grammatical solitude inside subjective isolation, or contentual (my fav word) asphyxiation inside well formed strings. both? rare. a choice to amke that i have refused to accept. choose one or the other. NO
I didn't accept the choice between brains, efficacy, and looks way back when. why now after a decade, two, of fighting the essence of convention that must be reality, do i feel that i have to choose? ah yes. living with the grammar monster. not that he does grammar things at home. but he is a grammar monster. stir out of the norm for a minute and justify it. wade into the surrounding spaces at just the wrong minute (half the time) and be treated badly instead of well... for no extra-person reason. random number generator - thanks Craig. i understnad what you meant more than half my life ago now in calling me that. imagine though, craig, a non random number generator (as they all surely are), a very moody one. in fact very few numbers are generated, although these depned on mood swings. more moods than numbers. you did not see the robot.
We earn our lives.
The alarm clocks ring throughout, waking bricks and logs and cats. I'm up already, two hours into putering and writing and feeling better again. Sickness gone.
The grammar monster and I ordered furniture this Saturday. The house will slowly come together, more slowly then perhaps me.
I've been waging my age old battle against small talk, how talk, local interest talk. It's coming together. But you know, I think I'll grab a quick shower, and head into the new office. There are no more grey walls.
6am chirp!
something in this house, may be a computer or a smoke alarm or an old watch lost in the floor boards, chirps exactly once at exactly 6am. It alays gets me up at this time, but I've only heard it with consiousness twice.
How do i find it if it chirps once a day at 6am once?
[below are real people with real answers]
A
A: my goodness! :)
A: get up before 6am and listen :) moving closer each time. It may take a few months to track down *grin*
so would you like to visit and help keep watch.... for 3 months?!
B
B: * giggles *
B: train the cats to stare at the source of the sound position the cats to assist you in triangulation
S
S: A setup of 3 directional mikes, set up at right angles. 3 more identical setups. Place all12 mikes at 4 different corners of the house (origin, X limit, Y limit, Zlimit) and record the relative volume of each mike at 6 am.
S: Then correlate and you have the exact location.
S: Heh heh.
J
J: set up a tape recorder to catch it...
T
T: i think it is the technological age version of the Telltale Heart - what are you feeling guilty about?
T: :-)
T: (as philosophical as I can w/ out my morning coffee)
P
P: build a space time distortion generator. set it to repeat the sequence from 5.59am to 6.00am in a loop. start it. you will hear the chirp every minute. you will need to create a dampening field around yourself but one that lets soundwaves in. run them both and you'll find the device. hope this helps.
Ah the reasons for writing... I feel this morning as if I've run out of distractions for this weekend. Distractions are administrative work details I can do remotely, and feel I'm accomplishing something. Without paper support and without people adding to the queue, I'm just sorta caught up right now. [Ctrl-T]
So I don't feel like writing now, but I've run out of things to read and fiddly things to do, and the rest of this hemisphere is still busy sleeping in. So I'm just thumb twiddling, and I suppose I could do laundrey. Or write marketing literature, or my talk for next week. Or plan the cancelled vacation I was going to take starting yesterday. ... Lots of things.
I will try to take it easy. I will do some research on the proper anser to "So where are you going on vacation?" I currently puzzle at the question. Who has time to plan vacation time?
A long time away. Broken computer. Office move. Transitioning back into normal day job. Remembering my emacs commands. And the real thing going on...
Am I supposed to talk here anymore about the real things going on? Can I allow myself the luxury and pleasure of truly examining how I feel about things, and what my opinions are? I have so many obigations to keep this and that confidential these days. I've signed more NDA's in the past 6 months then paycheques. And for what? To keep secret things that everyone generally suspects and knows anyway... So I'll leave it at that, and go on to the stuff that NDA's don't govern but that others wish I'd not talk about... Me.
Me. Basically learning about the animated forces ofmy life. I'm comparing the effect of being around people who don't remember that WE'RE ALIVE, WE'RE LIVING BEINGS!!!! How can we forget this simple thing? And living beings need things. "things" is certainly not the right word. We need to be cared about, loved, watered, fed, walked, entertained, and we need to play and communicate and create. We need to express and hold and shiver and explore and run away in fear. And we need other living beings everywhere.
Bruce and I drove to Peterborough in his new car this past weekend. There were trees everywhere, and water and snow. And clouds. And small houses, and farms, more snow, a few hills, and many little businesses in the heart of Peterborough (PTRBRO). We didbn't have a reason to do this except that his new ar is turbo-charged, and fun and comfy. It was nice to us living beings. This trip was enough to remind me that I want to be around life.
And I'm not currently, enough anyway. I've been slipping into what I'd call a state of passive suicidalness: "Wouldn't it be nice if I just ceased to exist." Nothing active, not a cry for attention. Just a simple emotional acknowledgement that I'm not getting enough attention, and more htan that... I'm not feeling good about myself. [god, writing makes me feel so much better] These thoughts having been building and simmering for awhle... I think I've got a handle now on them too, finally.
I'm not getting enough love and caring. I'm not in turn providing any to any other living being either. I'm watching my plants die without water. It's a most modest form of mutual sadism. I'll water them when it makes sense again too, when I don't burst into tears filling the watering can.
Luckily my cats are quite wonderfully insistant that they are each alive. They don't allow me to be this way towards them, and I can't say how much I appreciate that they care enough about themselves to stay out of htis black mood. Beautiful creatures. I wish every other creature was as wondefully self-loving. I wish I could be again.
So that's the deep dark secret that no NDA can touch upon. Cool in a way for me. My thoughts and feelings may very well effect my results in the world, but that's alright. Not expressing them also does, and for the worst!
C'est la vie.
Sun Apr 1 08:33:22 EDT 2001
Daylight Savings Day
April Fool's Day
Hard to tell who to believe this morning!
Playing with Active Desktop which sucks, so I made my own: Carolyn's Diary Desktop. The URL is: http://carolyn.org/Desktop.html which I've saved as my homepage, and will update whenever...
I'm feeling a lot better again. I've been venting whenever I've felt like it, and talking about issues and things with whoever I feel like. How much better this is. I've been starting flame wars on mailing lists and heated discussions with friends. I like questioning basic assumptions. I guess I've been so incredibly cocooned in being what others expect me to be that I was suffocating. So vent away.
And isn't that a charming word for complaining and griping and generally being an asshole. Vent. Like a volcano with too much heat and pressure building up. Here are your options, world: I will vent or I will erupt. :) Beautiful. Implied of course is a failure to habdle the pressure before getting to this point.
So right... write. About things... Pets.. Richard gave Marlowe, his 4 year old dog, away last week. He's ahppier, the dog's happier, and everyone is a lot quieter. Dagney is old, and Peter says she isn't eating any longer. Beautiful Dagney. I'm sad for them both. For a nice change, my cats are both just fine. No longer bored condo-cats, they cruise outside morning and evening.
Millions of how details. My life.
So I vent the why details out whenever I feel like it. No more running for cover. Let's see how that goes for awhile.
The fog obscures the buildingsin the distance. The view reminds me of apple orchards, and fresh air. Homey and yet out of touch. Still the smell of fresh Macintosh apples and hay and horses, water and grass, is around.
"change" is god in this wonderful book i'm reading by Octavia Butler - Earthseed. Everyone fears change too much so they try to prevent it, or ignore it. Some try to conservatively hold the status quo still.
The strength of change comes in shaping the forces, shaping god. Why is change god? People will grow used to any mythos except the one they already fear. Agreed.
Buildings are slipping onto the earth framed in bright blue sky, their footings airbrushed in white still. I still see the orchard. [Oakville was built on orchard land. Part of the fruit belt, now part of sub-urban sprawl. Every yard had a few fruit trees left, and an old farmhouse around the corner. I'm realizing that I've grown up in an orchard.] Tropical Jamaican sun melts the footings.
You might have caought me on CTV the other day, or at Centennial College this week, and certainly in a belting thunderstorm last night. Beautiful. And soon breakfast.
My computer desk at home, comfy reupholstered antique "club" in front, has windows beside it, facing north. I sit in the third floor roof peak of my aery looking over Cabbagetown and in the distance, the towers of St. James Town, clouds and tree tops and birds.
My new office space at work is also on the third floor, with a utilitarian desk facing away from my westward window. Behind are views of enourmous billboards for Lotus and Gap, and the Eaton Centre housing 250 Yonge Street and the new Bally's gym. Traffic below never stops.
Both spaces have high ceilings and old brick walls, lots of glass and roominess, and serve well how I work. Each lacks privacy with the open concept arrangement, and in both spaces I am unable to put everything away -- I'm too busy.
I have a strong sense of vertigious confusion over which direction I'm sitting. In neither case do I place my back to the entrance, but I vary whether I'm able to glance u tht ewindow easily or not. In one space, papers scatter all the surfaces, in the other, clothes, indicating my general and predominant use of space, as storage.
The dyslexic spinning rotation though keeps me from finding things. I'll need to rotate pieces of earth and the building foundations.
I've received lots of email responses from the audience members at my last talk, quite a lot more than usual. I must be gaining some sort of effectiveness at my new "inspirational" talk. They refer to the talk as motivational. Cool. At almost 36, its about time I'm able to focus those energies into communicative efficacy.
And today is the first whole day of my vacation! So... right what am i going to do with this time off. Haha.. Get very bored I hope. Go lie on a beach on the Lake Ontario shoreline shivering. The opera, art galleries, movies, dinners, shopping for books and clothes and art, and gardening, and well, nothing! My last vacation to London and Barcelona was beautiful. This time I'll stay home and vacation in my home city. Anti-travel vacation.
And I loaded up my ssh application three times this morning, each time with a weak and unformed intention to write here. I took myself up on this the third time, mostly aftering reading my last entry and wondering what was going to happen next -- and I'm living this life. I find this weakly ironic.
CHANGE
Change little things.
Change the overview big things.
Change a cat's nickname.
Change my plans for becoming old.
Change my socks.
Change my cells every 7 years.
Change a lightbulb.
Change how I spell words.
Change happens.
Change direction.
Change colour.
The whole world changes if you wear colourful clothes and select fruit-flavoured icecream. Instead of black with moca flavour. Instead of blue with butter pecan. Instead of white with vanilla. Instead of what habit dictates.
The whole world changes when you wear a business suit with high heels and a conservative hair style. Instead of a small black dress. Instead of jeans and beads and sandals. Instead of a winter parka. Instead of nothing.
| STREET | ACCEPTED STYLE | STYLE TO TRY |
|---|---|---|
| Queen West | youthful, creative, colourful | 3 piece suit |
| King West | tourist getup | overalls |
| Bay Street | suit | party dress |
| Finch and Jane | hip hop | suit |
| Queen's Quay | yuppie | workshirt |
| Bloor and Avenue | jewelry and expensive clothes | tshirt and jeans without the jewelry |
| Queen East | Beachware | Queen Street West clothing |
And we're back to: what is the point?
Life goes on. Picking goals. Following along the momentum path. But how do you enjoy yourself? When does life become rich and fulfilling? What is it about focusing too much on one thing and not enough on all the creative things... that just empties me? What would i rather be doing with my spare time? I have this week off. So far, over three days, I've been laying low. But there's more to it than that.
I want so much warmth, and there isn't any anywhere. Just hanging out with intereesting people doesn't work anymore. The goals are gone. Being middle aged (heh, who admits this?) is boring. The enthusiastic potential of youth is wahed away with half complete projects which don't finish. Gambling, tossing coins, and generally letting the world ebb my actions isn't working quite right. I'm not a social person, and I need that energy. And I've been through the loops and cycles of me enough already. Let go of who I am. That's what's left to do.
Who would I rather be? Seriously.. not the trumped up fantasy dreams of riches and places to go. Something else. Warm surroundings. I'm living with a 6 year old. I don't want to be the parent either. So I'm alone here. Experiment complete. Shall I move into a place of my own again perhaps? Shall I take over warming this new house up by myself? Perhaps I could. I don't want to though.
I've been stood up twice by Richard today. Over 7 hours now, he'll whine if I just go off by myself. He's a lonely critter. Does that matter much?
The point is to do things I like to do. Just wish I knew better what these were. I like surfing ideas, and energy, and positioning to once in awhile say something amusing or smart. The standards are high these days with the 30 somethings. The sling factoids around and know enough about the theory behind stuff, and lots about their own motivations. There's nothing much to tlak about. So many of them collect less coping people. So I don't do this much any more. And the alternative is to collect functional and driven people who I am always tempted to organize into something bigger -- the point, if you will.
Lots of words.
Alright... the silence is too much. MP3 on. Better. Already. "Cocaine" Funny choice.
So many of my memories are silenced too. Should I write that autobiography now, or have someone help me with a biography? That'd change things radically. Book tours. Peoples' attitudes altering. This makes me smile. That's a great idea. A biographer. Haha. Time for some big changes in my life. It'd blow my mind to let people know what I've done. Paris. Carey. Grad school. Growing up. TV. Law school. And the people.
Time to find a writer.
Notes from a vacation... offline
I've been crying all day. It's so bottled up inside. Listening to music this time.
First real day off and I've lost all connection to the internet. Okay. Not really. I feel like I've gone to some sunny island, with bad connectivity, and no sun. At least the flight was cheap.
I've decided to hotel here at the house. Perhaps I'm missing the point about vacations... certainly the tears are a bad sign. Are they? I went through this loop yesterday.
One good thing about the holiday timing is I'm skiping all the Easter small talk. I'm very self-satisfied. perhaps I'll plan to vacate similarly in the future.
Richard's been humouring me, shall we say, inspeaking about issues I find more interesting. We wandered on to the point of life -- surprise! I am firmly convinced that the really interesting change in society, in humanity, happens over a term of no less than several hundred years if it is conceptual only. Counter-example: communism. The time was just ripe for that permeation. But the more solid, scienctific concepts seem to take several hundred years to become part of the popular culture, and part of the cultural mythos guiding a society. I shouldn't say scientific concepts... more like the concepts of science are an example of mental tools that permeated over several hundred years. Now they are mostly metaphorical underpinnings... the base metaphors supporting our observation habits.
Mental collision.
Better today... It's after 10pm. Whole days without all the stress is such a relief. It's gernally the stress that seems to be taking a toll on me. With it removed for almost a week now, I'm slowly cheering up. Or at lease, today was a good day.
I have a bit more energy to just be happy being me.
More tomorrow.
I'm almost through this vacation / birthday week. 4 days left. That's good. The tears and what-not turned out to be a bad case of PMS along with the lack of warmth and comfort. I sure wish I could tell that's what the depressing storms are caused by. Still, somehow I think that if everything really was great for me, then PMS couldn't turn so nasty. Do I fail to give hormonal chemistry its due? I don't know. Some of the old belief system I shared with Peter, that we can pull through anything by mind power, still lingers. The problem with this is not so much that its wrong, it isn't, but that it requires terrific awareness of causes.
Rohan took me out for my birthday yesterday. We went for dinner and to see Idemeneo, Mozart's greek opera. A beautiful evening serving to remind me that I enjoy my friends. When we spalshed out of the opera house (The Hummingbird), there was a spontaneous parade too, in celebration of an important hockey win for the Leafs.
I dropped by the office yesterday after going to the gym. I was only there for a few minutes, but the frenzy caught me. That place moves quickly. Lots of things. Lots of energy. Wow. I live in that space most of the time. And I hadn't noticed it. The new office space serves the fast pace very well. Its so large and peaceful and calming, that you can get extra frenzy out of your day without taking a hit as fast. Good design.
I wonder how houses can have the opposite effect.
Its very sunny and cold today. Yesterday was Tylenol day, the day of pain. Simply ignoring the pain did in fact make it go away. So silly me for not ignoring the emotional tidal waves of the prior week. Silly maybe, but stuck with it.
I miss having the time to write, and more importantly, the mental looseness needed to let my thoughts come out. They are normally so sculpted by how concerns. How this. How that. How to find a new insurance brokerage. How to motivate a comfy sales team. How to make sure the plants get watered the right amount. How to be a good employer and run a successful company. How to handle each ethical dilemma as it ariases ... those are the most fun. Ethics permeates so much of what I do. Curious that. I'd thought business dictated how the responses had to be. But there is a lot of latitude to be as ethical as possible, as good to each person as possible, and still run a solid business. My anti-dot-com philosophy of several years ago is now emerging as a strong business ethic elsewhere. So what I'm doing now has these wonderful, publically accepted explanations. Heh. Perviously I just thought they were good policies. Now, I still think that and others seem to respond more fluidly to them.
Action. Reaction. What do you do when you're motivated by the state of rebellion. Action by others. Reaction as a method of tweaking, altering or down right refusing the action and its ramifications. When finally all tht is left in the system (god, this sounds so Hegelian) is the rebellion, it doesn't work. To amuse myself, I'll suggest that synthesis is can be learned or acquired. Some comprised merging of the best of each value system. Still and all, it isn't the same as rebelling. Rebelling has a clearly defined target, with a description. It's known. So tactics can be used to respond successfully. When that target is gone, after it gives up, then ... senescience hits the rebel. So me without my parental nightmare in the picture of my life. Or with the foes of two years ago.
How do I productively formulate selected parts of society and the business as the foes? To do that would create an essentially uncompromising target that would not foreseeably go anywhere. That'd do me good. It's also reminescent of my teenage dreams for a post-apocolyptic society. Wits agains the elements. And microwave-warmed crunchy cornmeal muffins.
The joys of a vacation.
--- just logged off, and picked up diary mail, intending to do other things afterwrads,... but... ---
People are reading this space again it seems. I thought a year off would release the attention. Hmm..
Several notes from old friends, which are wonderful... [Note to self: take time to respond to these.]
One note from "mom". Now I remeer a couple of years ago I received an email which I swore up and down had been spoofed by Craig,. There were small indications that this old friend and current wacko (in a good way, but still) had hacked a a public account and sent email pretending to be my sister. Turned out it really was her, and we talked a couple of times. i have a slew of pictures of her three sons.
And now a note, which this time really looks genuine, from "mom". Sounds like her. Wish I could believe there was no sarcasm or self-pity in that message. I'm quite proud that this visitation doesn't make my heart flutter the way it used to. I guess I can believe, that I do believe, that she has no consequence in my life. I wonder how old she is now.
More seriously:
Hi Mom, It is and it isn't. As with most of us, I gather. I've always tried to maintain a balance between what I wish the world was, and what it could be in the future, with what it is now and how it became that way. My world right now isn't what I expected it to be. Although I've never planned the medium range, letting it mostly come as it will. So I have a couple of companies, two cats, a house, a solid and conventional reputation (annoyingly so to me), and lots of unburned ambition left. Interesting that. Hope is, as it always has been, my touchstone. Thanks for knowing that. Lack of the personal pronoun has marked my writing style over the years, and I've always wondered why. It is you. A peice of family culture passed into me before I could self-express. The "I" was always missing in my old world. [Hope: I played Hope in a childhood acting class presentation of Pandora's Box. Gold lame dress for the tall willowy girl, glitter in hair, and a sense of wondrousness. My acting career caught my essence.] In the current Carolyn world though hope predominates even when I'm weary. How could you have known that? Did you see the play?
Yes. I recall that from decades ago. Long ago, when I was still the rebel and you the target, I knew my best revenge would be to let you have this. Alright. You do. I suppose you can peak into my life when you will, and I've wondered if you had been. I know now that you've finally hit the internet, ... or that your husband has. [I find it amusing that I'm left with the family name and neither you nor Niffy are. Don't you think that amusing, since I rebelled?] I don't think of the past much. As you may never have noticed, my memory for things is fairly bad. As I child, I'd force memorize things to fool others. I'd practice the stories of what happened at school while walking home, rehearsed for presentation at the dinner table. Did you know that? I don't think so. I still remember a fair number of them. You didn't know. What do you think about? Besides me, your lost daughter. What do you do now? Are you happy? Did Bill and you fall in love? Does he still buy you things? My impressions of a decade ago. Sorry. I hope you think good thoughts, that my revenge has finished, and that the daughter slot is filled without the sadness of your letter. Somehow. Perhaps in a way I do fill it for you. Perhaps your grandchildren won't have to fill a slot for you. I hope that. I thought once about giving Niffy (she'll hate this old nickname of yours) a lot of money for her kids. It started when I received a cheque from Bubba's estate for $2k. I never cashed the cheque. It would have been wrong to. It's here somewhere still, perhaps in one of the boxes. I should give that cheque to Niffy to add to the other things she'll inheret. Did you knwo that she cared about who'd inherite (spelled completely wrong!!) what when you died. We played hide and seek in the house, and she'd go to your china cabinet, and salivate. I'm glad she doesn't have competition from me. That hurt me so badly back then. Now, I'd just give her that $2k and whatever else. If I thought the children wouldn't be placeholders or toys. Remember how she was always scared of Suky? That scared me too. Then. I'm sure I shouldn't send this letter to you now. Heh.
I'm not loved though. Not acording to my values and needs. I know so many people who would disagree. Deep down inside me though, I'm missing that love. Please save yours for those around you. ... No that's wrong too. Love isn't something you can save. It grows with more giving. And I don't. Wish I did. Hope I will. Know you should too. Take care. I'll hear from you the next time someone dies, or its my birthday. Love to you too.© 2001. Carolyn L Burke. For the amusement value.
Smoke break...
... and server upgrade...
Alright.. I'm outta here shortly. Been spending the last official day off really just relaxing. It's hard to do.
Some observations: I don't like spending time without a brain distractor. Many things seems to qualify including novels and short stories, movies, rapid conversation, movies. What doesn't qualify: going for a cigarette break, having a shower,... basically letting my mind remain unstimulated by external sources. I'm caught up.
Cure: meditation, yoga, peace.
Painful stuff. I'll start tomorrow ...
Let go of the details for one hour a day. Still researching writers. Had two offers though, one from Carey!! And another suggestion that I write this bio myself. No!!! I want perspective, and I want marketing.
And I want another cigarette. Outta here. Smiling though.
vague meanderings... but quick ones.
gotta get to work... but gotta write. :)
notes:
Lost track of the date. The month flips soon, an I'm sure someone will remind me. How people are so bloody useful. Been tanning out on the deck. Relaxing peaceful, listening to neighbours hammer and build fences and plant seedlings.
It's like if you're not born into the right places, then the antics you go through to matter, well they just don't. Or let's put it another way... the antics (really) you perform get absorbed into your surroundings. So to make an impact (well, for me to make one) you need to note what those surroundings are. God, this is so fatalistic... And I'd rather not think that way.. To finish though.. So the antics fit into the story around you. Making you a major character or a minor one, or even part ofthe scenery. And we're all born into different stories. What the hell ... dull people are born into intereting circumstances all the time. And the other way around. The few intersting people are usually born into dull stories. Very few interesting people start out in interesting places.
And this all-encompassing american dreaminess twists our hopes into knots. Tail-chasing values which do not in fact lead to the promised end. Well, we are all fools really. Create you own values. The ones you really have that you can live true with and happily with. Where the hell do they lead?
Fine.
Go there.
Go with some backbone and spirit and joy. and pain and struggle... of course.
But there is a way to find the more interesting stories too.
I know this one man who betrays everyone he meets. He's charming and wonderful and full of high-spirited energy. He's invited into opportunites, enjoys them fully, without ever really contributing substance. But this latter goes unnoticed.. more on that. He's the golden boy. And offers come his way because of the high wattage and sparkle. And he, with regret and disappointment, and honestly, tears in his eyes, moves on. He loks back frequently. And moves on anyway.
Always somewhere greener. He will continue to do so for a long time. Until he becomes a lonely man.
Because those he leaves behind start to notice after he's gone that the glitter sparkles whenever he visits even though he one drops by for a few minutes. The solid contributions thers make add up over time. His never do. In fact, they were never there.
I fell for this charm too. But I'm seeing more and more that there's little substance to this bouyant charm. Ther could have been. The ability to have been real was there. But it will slip away, tarnish and hide forever.
Gold too tarnishes.
Wow... that brings back memories... i wrote a story, perhaps a poem, when i was ten or so. The end line was "He was offered gold, but settled for lead." I remember cming up with the line, and backwards writing a story about a gangsterish sort, who gave up the beauty of life that he already had for a bullet, through betrayel of all that he loved from greed. ... I wrote that poem when I was ten. Good god how miserable I must have been at 10.
Usually I remember third person visuals of my pst. these hurt though. They flash overlay on the real now space. It hurts to not be able to tell the difference. Remembering.
I almost felt like writing back to mum, er, mom, yesterday. So many people (all of them?) chat with their parents, visit with relatives. There's a societal undertow to follow along doing the same. Swept away in herd communications. Tugging. Follow. Do the same thing, faster, better, to be a good soul. So write to your mom. Make her feel good. Heh. Lot's of luck on that. Torture myself, needlessly, in order to pretense a vision of normalcy. No!
I'll continue carving a path of my own.
So back to stories... I'm parked in a middle-class story right now. It's certainly a vast distance from where I started. Expensive house in expensive downtown city, cool entrepreneurial job, investments, travel, interesting friends, blah blah... from a start of white trash immigrant boring people. No that's too extreme... the boring part is sufficent if you add uneducated.
But lots of people do this stuff too...
Okay so what the hell... stuck in a story. Stories run their courses too, like rivers, they start young and rush down quickly to sea-level, over time wearing away the curves and twists, meandering into sleepy wide amazons. Fertilizing the shores as they grow old and slow. But human stories, mine anyway, seem to take 3-5 years to conclude. Sometimes i renew, creating decade long stories. But I don't think I'll renew this. I think I'll take a page from the golden boy. Skip and jump into more interesting stories. Period.
It's a thought.
4pm. Catching the last rays of su on the deck, and a smoke.
Truly normal and childish Sunday, with Reiner sleeping the day away, and then claiming it was my doing. That's just hilarious. I give up on expecting things from him. He's not reliable socially towards me. Fine. We were supposed to do some house chores. I know neither of us cares to do them. I didn't miss that, and now I have a nice tan too.
Monday morning. The office people start to pop up on ICQ. The sun rises. The cats are fed. All is calm and good in the world this morning. Gotta finish buying insurance today, and start a couple new employees. And pick a topic for a talk I'll do in June: with a lot of confidence -- don't back down this time!
Otherwise.. bizdev. :)
I cannot really begin to write about more thanthat. Nothing presses. There cntinues to be a lingering whisper of solitude included though. Let the exroverted pangs push me further only when I'm ready.
Ah... another ICQawake person.
One off interactions. Don't defect on one off interactions to cherish and nuture your self-respect!
Well that morning entry ended in not much. I got to chatting with chatting with Angela about [the backspace key hasn't been mapped properly in this world... it pulls up emacs' help screens. Egads.] leadership and vision.
[without a backspace key, all typos will remain for all eternity -- a personal choice] [now word-wrap is funky. oh my.]
leadership... what i know about it to date:
Well, that's more than I thought I knew about eladership. Another ingredient [the following letter was a potential typo, and has been cordoned off: f] is vision.
I've been working on vision for quite a while. The leading hypothesis currently is that my vision will form the seed of ghe bigger crytalline vision for my worldy efforts. A bio seed at the center of a manmade enterprise, crystalline, aesthetic, powerful (okay, crystals shatter a tad too easily). So what is it? Who am I/ What will I be? What will I will to be?
What will I will to be?
Goals, lady. WHat are the goals? In life? Toniught? Tomorrow? Next year? Over my life time? For me? My cats? Other people? and the world?!?
What are these elusive fruits? A bowl of mixed fruit... numbers of goals, big and little, timely and long-term, broad and narrow, selfish and sharing... Cherries, and oranges.
Going away now.
So there I was, sitting on the bench, 19 and counting, waiting. The things I do for others. Colours stuck from last night's dreams over the scenery. I couldn't sort out the reds from blue. The city bus passing by let out a screech. Humid air wavering over the busy sidewalks in multi-hued silence. Waiting.
Perhaps I'll never learn where it came from.
| CD Extended |
| CD Conversations |
|
f.i.n.a.l.e |
||
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|||
All daughter writings of Carolyn's Diary are copyright © Carolyn L Burke, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and may not be copied without permission except for non-commercial gain. See what your lawyers can make of that.
|
|||
