Inordinately Realistic

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

A HAPPY SNOWY VALENTINE'S DAY!
Plow & Hearth Birdseed Wands
Not to be too cynical on Valentine's Day, but while driving along in the car one day last summer with the radio on, the irony of these lines from the ABBA song "Angel Eyes" caught my attention:

"And it hurts to remember all the good times
When I thought I could never live without him"
For months, my brain has been circling around these lyrics, and now seems a good time to take a closer look at the irony. The singer's fondest thoughts are of a time in her relationship when she "thought she could never live without him." I usually just sing along, but this time, I started to wonder, How good of a relationship was that? Or how bad? Bad enough to make me rethink the nostalgia that I have for some of my good / bad old days. What am I recalling with such fondness? The years when I thought that my heart would break in two? Well, if those were the good times, maybe they weren't so good after all despite the hazy romantic edges of memory. Perhaps the narrator is saying that it hurts now because those times were so great and now they are gone for good. More likely, I suspect she's recalling a time that may have seemed good enough but was also hurtful -- and that's why it hurts to remember.

Good times shouldn't hurt, yet sometimes from the very beginning, a relationship consists primarily of the kind of good times that it hurts to remember. Come to think of it, it can even hurt to have some of those good times in the first place. Kind of like -- in my chick flick choice for Valentine's Day this year -- Georgy Girl's relationship with Jos.

As Georgy learns, those are the kind of good times that you have to stay away from. Learn what you can and move on. I was pretty pleased with myself twenty - five years ago, when Gerry and I completed some personality profile questionnaires to help us understand our relational issues, compatibility levels, and marital readiness. When I scored in the range of "Inordinately Realistic," I was convinced that I had used all of my bad relationships wisely!

In honor of Valentine's Day, here are a few inordinately realistic proverbs that have spoken to my heart in troubled times:

"A long time ago I was desperately in love.
In fact, you could leave out the 'love'
and still get a pretty good picture."
from "True Romances #2"
in True Stories
by Margaret Atwood

" 'Love,' says Squire Allworthy, 'however much we may corrupt and pervert its meaning . . . remains a rational passion.' "
from Tom Jones
by Henry Fielding

"It is overdoing the thing to die of love."
~ French Proverb ~

"After awhile you begin to realize that lots of people have had
previous marriages that just never come up in conversation.
Especially if there are no children, then it's really nothing
more than a bad date, a long bad date."
~ A Wise Friend ~

"I can't believe we once threw dishes at each other, but we did.
I can remember which plates, which cups, which glasses,
and which ones broke."
~ Margaret Atwood / same story as above ~

"What can be broken, can be fixed, he thought.
What can be broken, can be fixed.
There was a dimension to all of this he had to ignore,
a reality, if you will.
But a balance wheel can be reattached,
a shaft can be machined, from scratch if necessary.
Still, it would be too late for him.
The normal, or maybe not the normal,
part of the doll still worked perfectly.
The other could be fixed.
But not for him, never for him, fixed or not, that was gone forever."
from "Moriya"
in By The Light of the Jukebox
by Dean Paschal

Inordinately realistic or not, I still adore a sentimental Valentine!
~ like this collage of vintage favorites from my friends Diane Cox
and Victoria Amador (whose name is perfect for Valentine's Day)!
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, February 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Nothing To Live Against

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Philadelphia: Ginkgo Branch & View from 3rd Floor ~ Autumn 2000

Josef In The Windowsill: So Placid and Self - Contained!
(Same Window, Same Ginkgo Branch ~ Summer 1994)
In The Little Book of Letting Go, Hugh Prather questions why we wear the seams of our socks against the skin, so that they look smooth on the outside but feel bad on the inside. Wouldn't inside out make more sense? Interior vs Exterior.

Circumstances vs State of Mind. Which matters more? Prather says don't let circumstances become more important than your mental state: "If it were possible to summarize all mystical teachings in a single sentence, this one would come close: Make your state of mind more important that what you are doing" (7, 76).

I don't know why Hugh Prather calls his book "Little" since it is really just a normal - sized book. However, if you're familiar with author Susan Jeffers, she really does have a couple of tiny books containing advice similar to Prather's. Prather says we have two minds -- one that is whole and peaceful; another that is always conflicted, fragmented and busy. Susan Jeffers calls these two minds The Higher Self and the Lower Self. The Higher Self holds inner peace, strength, wisdom and spiritual dimension, whereas the Lower Self is a "place of struggle, lack, fear, and pain" (The Little Book of Peace of Mind, 4).

I have long been aware that when I get upset it is due to circumstances (missed appointment, messed up recipe, items lost or misplaced). This awareness, however, has not yet prevented me from feeling irritated, even though I tell myself over and over that these details are insignificant and have nothing to do with my Higher Self; they are merely circumstances that I needn't react to. As Jeffers says, "Your inner peace has nothing to do with the dramas of your life" (LBPM, 9). But, guess what? I react anyway, giving those annoying little details and missteps the power to determine my mood and the way I feel about and act toward others. It's all small stuff? Oh, really?

As you may have noticed not long ago on the Quotidian Kit, one of my favorite lines of fiction is actually about this same idea. In one of Margaret Atwood's "True Romances," a character is lamenting that her bad boyfriend has left her, and now she has "nothing to live for." Her level - headed friend asks, "Were you living for him when he was here?" And the distressed one says, "No . . . I was living in spite of him, I was living against him." The wise friend concludes, "Then you should say, I have nothing to live against."

I do recall applying this lesson during my early Philadelphia years, back when I was trying to improve my urban attitude. Thinking of Atwood's story, I said to myself, "You need to give up living against the city! You have nothing to live against." But it's such a bad habit with me, it seems that I will try to live against almost anything! The weather, the grocery store, the holiday season, organized religion, centuries of misogynism -- you name it; unless I consciously stop myself, I will try to live against it. And how does one little person live against an entire city or an entire cosmos or an entire family? Not only is it impossible, it is just not necessary to do so, even if it does feel so at times.

Nothing to live against. Brian Andreas makes a similar suggestion in his story, "Western Mysticism": "It's much easier, he told me, if you like the parts you like & you like the parts you don't like. Is that some Eastern thing? I said & he said not really since he was from Idaho & it worked there just fine" (from StoryPeople).

Still I wonder, how do you really learn to "like the parts you don't like"? How do you learn to say, "Oh well," if that's what the occasion calls for, to be dismissive, remain impassive, impersonal, detached? Easy to know these ideas so well yet remain painfully inept at living them out. Oh, Great Buddha (misogynist though you were), Oh, Mother Theresa, tell us: how ON EARTH does one "let go"; how draw the line between "circumstance" and "state of mind"? For a Doubting Thomasina, a Daughter of Descartes, a Western Girl With Glasses, it's not always easy.

Honestly now, what kind of person are you if your circumstances don't impact your state of mind? Isn't that kind of like Oliver singing, "If you don't mind taking it like it turns out / it's a fine life"? But that's not what we believe, is it? What if you do mind? Despite the song, it was not a fine life for Oliver, nor for Charles Dickens. Was Dickens any more Eastern than I?

Was Walt Whitman?

I think I could turn and live with animals,
they're so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied,
not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another,
nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the earth.
(from Song of Myself, #32)

I loved this stanza as a student and for a very long time afterward, even now I guess. Yet I have to agree with the critic who said that Whitman probably didn't mean it -- maybe about the animals he did; but surely not about himself. After all, he lived a life of highly refined intellect, not possible (as far as we know) for cows or cats.

When reading Hugh Prather's book, I couldn't help but notice how often his examples were about puppies. Very appealing and touching, but hello we are not dogs or cats or cows. We are humans with baggage and memory and very complicated brains and the need for discourse. On the more useful side, however, Prather says that progress matters more than achievement, direction more than perfection. We can choose, we can decide. In the best interest of inner peace, we can wear our socks inside out.


P.S. Christmas is coming!
Next post will be on Monday, December 14th
Between now and then, be sure to read
my shorter, almost daily blog posts on
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
(Ginkgo trees, leafless trees, Christmas trees)