Thoughts on My Daughter’s Birthday

These are actually thoughts I’m having on the date of her birthday, not thoughts about her birthday. Sometimes too many words are involved in order to make something clear. Especially in a header. And more than once I have thought that the preposition carries a boat load on its little shoulders.

• The daughter was sitting on the floor in front of the TV, eating a toasted-cheese sandwich. This means that it is a Friday and the rules are set aside for “Wild Wild West.” Her hair is shimmering and shining its thousand shades of brown in the sunlight that streams though the window. The boy is sent to his room for some childhood offense and loses out on the broken rules and favored TV show. Just as he walks by, without turning around or looking,

This from the girl: “He’ll never learn.”

• Another TV night, this time on the front porch. The girl is sitting in a chair, not eating, and watching a show. It’s another shoot-em-up but not a western. At some point a man rushes into his bedroom and lands on his bed. As he does so, the bed explodes.

This from the girl: “Oh boy! Is he ever in trouble!”

• The girl and boy are sitting on the sofa. They are watching a TV show. I walk into the room and ask them what they are watching.

The girl answers: “I don’t know but it must be ‘Mission Impossible’ because I don’t know what’s going on.

• Baby Z and I just got our noses slammed by a door. It was the cat’s fault. Her last words were “CAT! NO! No cat.” Followed by a slam. I was stunned. So was baby Z. We just looked at each other.

• The point of it is that a true novel would never end. We are living it after all.

• What is the need to be doing two things at once? Or is it something else making a distraction or a comfort in the background? Nope. It’s about having something to distract the part of the person who becomes aware.

• When the boy was very young he came into the bedroom to tell me that he had a stomach ache in his head. And he came laughing into the kitchen the first time he got the hiccups. He’d hiccup and giggle, hiccup and giggle. Big brown eyes wide and grin the whole of his face.

• Religion and Sex are the same things…sooner or later someone is going to end up on their knees.

• Hey, if we start every new sentence or break with a capital letter why do we need periods at all? Aren’t they redundant?

• Slowly you fall back in love with the things that mattered to you.

• “Permission to leave the battle, sir? God? God, sir? Permission to leave sir?”

• Household rooms need to be renamed: living = group therapy; kitchen=anorexia /bulimia /gluttony, talk therapy; and so on.

• Fear is the dog that’s lapping at the heels same as the voice that calls you back to awareness…

This is a photo from the candlelight chamber-music concert that we went to when we celebrated my birthday here in Cleveland. It was so beautiful. Then the daughter went to Portugal to lease an apartment and celebrate her birthday which is on the 28th.

Of Biped Mutterings And Mumblings

When I was younger, if anyone said, “The Church,” the meaning was The Catholic Church as in, The Holy Roman Church. I wonder if it is the same today. At that time in the past the Church was the primary mode of communication, certainly of news for RCs (Roman Catholics). It was the 50s, and it was the Church which delivered the news through its own filters and dogma. At least that which was disseminated by the local parishes. It was The Church which gave us our social norms, and in turn to some of us, the difficulties leading to an ultimate tearing away from the robes of Catholicism.

Witness the “wait-a-minutes” caused by the the Monsignors of old. Those who spoke from the ornate dais above us during Mass, symbolizing that they too, were above us. Thus the burning and chaffing from the chastity belts of youth:

  • It is wrong to read the comic books with Superman in them. No creature on earth could be greater than God or comparable to Him. “Stop it, child!” A terrible sin in the making. *Gasp* I was not stopped. I did not believe that Super was greater than God. After all, he wasn’t real. He was a creation of both a human being, and God. (An easily assignable hierarchy—from a child.)
  • We should not go to softball games where the men or boys take off their shirts. Ah, to gaze upon that muscularity of sex would certainly lead to longing and desire. (Hadn’t occurred to me.)
  • To question is to doubt. Especially if it is an unanswerable issue of dogma. And yet it was a mind, a God-given mind which led to that train of thought. No room for discussion. That was a real toughie and led to yet more puzzling streams of consciousness. (Did that foster the meaning-assigned fabrication of answers—those not necessarily accurate—or was that an attribution of personality?)
  • The song lyrics, and therefor song—along with others unacceptable for listening—is “Love’s no good unless somebody loves you/ all the way…” I was so naive that I did not understand the intent. For me this went into the realm of the Spirit, not sex. *Sigh* (It took years to catch unto this one.)
  • The best of the least was anything touching upon knowledge or curiosity. A child of the X list for movies and books, my catalogue of forbiddens only increased yearly. This led to a varied and expansive platform for life. (The mind thing again.)

It seems to me I learned the difference between exports and imports of tariffs was not only in the coming and going, but also in who paid the tariff. Incoming tariffs were to be paid by the importer. Ergo, if the U.S. imported, the U.S. paid—not China.

How is it I can drink two vodkas and it’s okay, but it’s not okay to drink two diet colas in succession? The latter would be over indulgence, gluttony.

What puts us at odds with such expressions as “You can accomplish anything you set your mind to,” is the cognitive bias of others. So, the literal idiot—one whose plans include being a company G.M.—who does not know she cannot accomplish such, has an inability to recognize her lack of ability. She lacks a self-awareness meta-cognition. She belongs to a large group of people who cannot objectively evaluate their own competence or incompetence.

There is not an equal distribution between the knowledge of a quoted line and the author. Many people know “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” but few know that A. Pope wrote it within an essay. Especially when credit is not given to one who is deceased. Think “The center cannot hold,” by Yeats.

I have only recently come to understand the importance of Intention in an action. Not legally, but morally. Although I’ve not thought through how intention might be applied to breaking the law.

TTFN. A lovely expression, or abbreviation, but not an acronym.