1 February 2002 (Friday)
freudy eudy oxen free
I realized last night that I am dating my father.
The parallels are striking. Soren is smart, opinionated, passionate, brooding, contradictory, restless, hopeful, solitary...finds truth in the deep silence of mountains, is fascinated by foreign cultures, loves a good argument where his most cherished views get challenged...damn. He's a dead ringer for my dad. I can't believe it didn't hit me before.
And that means our relationship may have the same perils that my relationship with my father has had. I am easily influenced by the people I love; fortunately this isn't generally an issue, because many of those people are simply supportive and listen more than than they offer advice. But Dad has always been the one to suggest directions for me, point out what he thinks my strengths and weaknesses are, how best to navigate them -- and though he takes care nowadays not to voice his opinion too strongly, I can always sense an undercurrent of judgment on every decision I make. He's provided unsolicited counsel on just about everything that's come up in my life. It used to drive me nuts.
>> more...
posted by enjelani @ 03:32 PM PST [ link ]
28 January 2002 (Monday)
beyond the veil
There were clouds dominating the sky on my morning commute, storm clouds, enormous vapor-sculptures in all kinds of colors: dazzling white and frowning gray, and that eerie silver that white becomes when painted against a dark horizon. They looked the way I think gods should look...inhuman, majestic things, both powerful and elusive. Last night they left snow on the foothills and imbued the pavement with the intimate scent of rainfall; this morning they made a miracle out of sunlight and patches of blue sky. Driving to work was sheer pleasure.
All right. That's enough rhapsodic adjectives for today.
For all my fond writing about scenery and music and so forth, I've always suspected that I don't feel things as deeply as some people do. It's true of everything artistic that crosses my path: Hemingway's novels, Beethoven's symphonies, a really good marinara sauce, beach sand beneath my toes. There's always a part of me that believes I don't quite get it, that there's more to it than I'll ever know and I'm just scratching the surface of this immense beauty. It's a suspicion that my senses are dulled, or maybe were never fully developed, and that everything I perceive is somehow fainter than it really is. I try not to let it bother me. What I do experience is amazing enough. But there's always that voice: So much lies beyond the veil. If only you would open yourself to it...
posted by enjelani @ 10:03 PM PST [ link ]