I've got a bad habit for romanticizing my life here. I'm sure you've noticed.
I was thinking yesterday very clearly about how I feel several steps ahead of everything I set down on paper. My brain spins out possible reactions to every little paragraph. I like to think anyway that I am well aware of what you are thinking. If this doesn't read like I'm constantly very conscious of my implications then I'm doing a good job by my standards. You have to believe me, though, when I say I am very aware of everything I suggest even slightly, very aware of how this all sounds. Or at least, that's what I try to be.
I also make many allusions that probably no one but myself understands. That is all right so long as this remains intelligible to those of you who are not me.
Anyway, I was feeling as though I'd like to write something that wasn't in the standard manner of my quasi-cryptic romanticized lists of how great and sad my life is all at once. Yawn.
I feel like offering peace to an old friend of mine with whom I had severed communications with and who promptly severed them right back. I offered to make him a lion but I don't know how interested he is in that.
One of my biggest complaints with myself is the incredible cruelty and indifference to other people I can exhibit. The major tenet of my personal philosophy include the belief that no human being is a waste of space. I believe this about every bit of life - I don't any see bryozoans as worthless either. They are here, we are here, both of us will live until we die somehow. Neither has more or less worth, no matter what.
Anyway, I was thinking the other day about my family and how sad most of them seem. The more I see of my family, the more I feel overwhelmingly driven to be the most successful human being you ever saw. And when I say successful, of course I don't mean in terms of material success. I want to be a good person (by my own definition, of course). I don't want to be an alcoholic or cruel or stingy or a wild spendthrift or ignorant. I want to be kind, unconditionally. But as soon as I feel this new resolve I think with deep regret of all the times I've screwed up, been so cruel and mean.
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While I was sewing with my mom, I said "I think boys should know how to sew." And she said, "Well, don't they? They had to take home ec in Middle School like you."
"Yes, well, but none of the boys I know would sew their own clothes or mend their own clothes. They wouldn't sew of their own volition. I think it is important for all people to know. All people need to know how to sew."
"Margaret," my mom said, "I don't sew my own clothes. I send them to the cleaners to be mended. It's just how things are now."
"But I wish it didn't have to be the way things are."
My mom sometimes thinks I have nutty ideas. (I told her once I thought intramural college sports ought to be abolished and she got pretty upset about that idea. I guess she really likes college football.) I comfort her with the thought that I will never really get the chance to implement my nutty ideas.
2001-10-16, the way things are with me
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