Lo que hay

Damn, teenagers are creepy.

No wonder there are so many groups dedicated to helping them out, helping them grow. They're like statues without faces. They wander around in packs, ignoring everyone around them because they don't have eyes yet.

Some of them are OK. My niece and nephews all seemed to come through it as people, athough they had their weird moments. But were they just normal around me? Was I part of their view, so there wasn't that disconnect that is there between teenagers and the world? Around teenagers, I always feel about 40 feet tall and massively real. You could smush their heads like clay and reform them. Was I that shapeless as a teen? I kind of doubt it. I would have adapted better to adolescence if I'd been flexible.

At any rate, about the best you can say about teenagers is that they'll get over it.

Bilingualism delays onset of dementia

Damn, how soon would I have started losing it if I wasn't bilingual?

Wish fulfillment.  Satisfaction.  Feeling good, physically, emotionally.  Being smug, possibly arrogant.

What aspects of life can I relate to the nine of cups?

Sexual satisfaction, orgasm, sleek sensuality.

Emotional sufficiency, lack of fear, feeling loved, cherished.

Being overfull, stuffed, satiated, not wanting or needing more.  Nothing new to taste, everything loses its sharp edge of delight.  Bland comfort.  Living off the fat of the land.

The mother sits with her child, sleeping off a meal, cradled in her lap.  The pets are fed, the curtains are drawn, the house is warm and secure.  She settles on wide hips, and smacks her lips with satisfaction before beginning to snore.  Everything is there and nothing more is needed.  When there is nothing more to want, there is nothing more to seek, then all anyone can do is sit down in swelling comfort to die.  It is the essence of completion and stagnation.  There are times when this state is a welcome rest, and times when it is a suffocating bog.

It is not so much be careful what you wish for, but be careful never to stop wishing.

What should I look for today?

Look for ways in which you are content.

Look for needs that are being met.

What are you taking for granted?

In what ways do you need to rest and be happy with what you have? In what ways do you need to seek movement and change?

We were listening to a country song in a restaurant the other day.  The main message of the song was how much the singer (or writer) wanted to 'go back,' to relieve high school, or some other vague past, how much he wanted time to stop.

I looked at my husband, puzzled, and told him that as much fun as I had in high school and college, I've never wanted to go back to it.  In fact, I can't think of any time or any place that I'd rather be than right here and now, and that has always been true.  My husband shrugged and said, "That's because you don't worship death."

Now is a great moment.  Sure, there's plenty wrong.  But there's plenty right, too.  I have everything I need, I have money to buy nifty presents for people and lots of people to buy presents for, people I genuinely care about.  The worries about the future fall less into "Shit, we're all going to die," categories and more into "is this going to turn out the way we want it to?"  We have more wealth and freedom than most of the world throughout most of history has ever known could exist.  We have enough to share with those that don't have.  And it's interesting.  You never know what might happen next, or what it all means.  I've lost quite a bit of my youthful flexibility, but then I've gained quite a bit of knowledge and confidence.  The world just keeps getting weirder, you can't help but giggle.  And I have someone who loves me more dearly than I thought possible, and I love him so deeply it still has an edge to scare me, after thirteen years of marriage.

It could all go away tomorrow.  Well, I guess that something that surgery and health problems have taught me is that losing the appendages isn't the end of the world - and it's all appendages.  My best death would be quickly, and together with my husband - nice quick car accident when we're 93, say - but if he dies and I'm still around, then I'm still more of a person than I ever would have been without him, and I'll have that as long as I have my mind and breath.  I know damned well that things could get bad, worse, terrible.  All the more reason to be so glad I'm living now and enjoy it.

Nothing special, you know.  I'm going to work today, watch TV, snuggle in bed.  I'm going to try not to eat too much because the weight is hard on my spine.  I'm going to listen to the boom box my husband gave me for my birthday churn through five CD's at random.  I saw the full moon this morning, setting in an incredible blaze of yellow light outside my kitchen window.  I'm going to surf the web and hold lengthy debates with myself on obscure topics, and enjoy the research.  I'm going to start a new chapter in my ancient Greek textbook, email my husband at work, take a long walk, and make plans for parties.  I'm going to grumble over my pain meds and hear my husband say he loves me and tease my nephews.  Ooh, and I've discovered that I get really high on endorphins.

It's all good.

Christianity makes no sense at all, and its least sensible argument is the idea that you can't have morality unless there is a god.  Running a close second is the idea that life has no meaning unless there is a god.

I've never seen any reason to believe in god, much less the Christian version of god.  Addressing Christian morality in particular, what exactly is the Christian god's code of morals?  The only response I've been able to find that is even halfway coherent is 'The Ten Commandments' - a set of rules that spend a great deal of time on dubiously moral theological stances and throw in a couple of laws with a certain universal 'd'oh!' factor.  As a moral guide, much less an absolute moral guide, they are a complete waste.  Follow that up with the biblical record showing that this god is apparently above his own laws and able to break them at will, and order others to break them, and they aren't very absolute.  Christianity has no moral principles - it has theological principles, and a diverse moral tradition.

God is the only source of morality?  Which god?  What morals?  Where are they codified, and who follows them?  Christianity fails to answer very basic moral questions, goes contrary to several obvious moral truths, is so variable that there are thousands of denominations all following different moral paths.  There is no coherent ethical or moral system, no evidence that followers of Christianity have a better moral guide, no evidence that people who are not Christians are immoral, and no evidence that being Christian helps people to be moral.

As far as meaning in life, meaning signifies that there is someone there who experiences the meaning.  My meaning in life, whether I base it on 'god,' or on dedication to the betterment of humankind, or to spreading love, or to spreading peanut butter, is something that I construct for myself.  No one can make meaning for me, it has to be internal.

I've run across Christians who argue that this is a limited meaning of life, and that Christianity offers ultimate meaning.  I have yet to run across a definition of 'ultimate' in this sense, I suspect because there isn't one.

In what way is having some outside source to validate your life an ultimate meaning?  If I raise chickens for food, they have an ultimate meaning for me, but I doubt it improves their sense of self-worth.  Having a god who has a purpose for you (Christian version: to burn in hell if you don't play right) doesn't grant your life any more meaning.  Another Christian argument is that my life somehow means less if it is temporary.  This flies in the face of everything I know about meaning: time has nothing to do with it.  A baby that lives for 2 minutes before dying does not mean less than a child of five, nor does a child of five mean less than I do because I've lived longer.  Many things mean more because they are temporary.  You watch your child's first steps because they will never come again.  Fireworks are lovely; if they were eternal they'd just be neon.  My life is what I have, what I experience, my life is now.  This is meaning.

Saying that love isn't real if it isn't eternal, that my actions don't count unless there's an everlasting accounting, or that if I'm not specially remembered as the center of the universe I must be nothing is...bizarre.  I'm not a god, and I'm not the center of the universe - I'm me, at this moment, doing what I can and what I love.  I genuinely don't understand why people don't see that as enough.  When I die I'll be gone, but everything that I am, was.  Nothing changes that.

I exist. I can't prove that, but I don't really care; if I don't exist, then there's no reason to worry about it.

I'm fairly certain other people exist, because if I were inventing them they'd be less irritating.

As for the existence of objects in the universe, the only information I have on them is my perceptions. There is no way to prove or disprove my perceptions. I'm content with knowing that if I perceive something as cool, I don't then perceive it as burning me. My basic perceptions are consistent enough to give me at least the illusion of interacting with a universe. That's good enough to start with.

There is no way to compare my perceptions directly with other people's perceptions of the universe. However, enough of a similarity exists to communicate. Whether or not my husband and I both see the same color in what we call 'blue,' we are consistent in identifying the same shade as blue.

Of course, perception is much gooier than that. Colorblindness is the inability to identify a shade that other people identify consistently, as a minor example. Huge topic.

I think that the universe exists independently of my perception of it, because there are basic things I cannot change by changing my perceptions. Getting drunk doesn't change me into a wit, it just makes me think I am.