I noticed that I was sitting on my hands in the restaurant this afternoon... in Florida, at the hottest part of the day... and the windows/sunroof were open in the car as I drove there... my bedroom was freezing around noon and the rest of the apartment was warm, toasty, even... the strange thing is now the windows are open and the apartment is warm now that evening rolls around... ah, Springtime in Florida, how odd...

so let's see, I napped when I got home from work, right out here in the big green chair, and then Rasputin and Precious woke me for lunch at Michael's... delicious, as usual... and I actually took half the meal home (wow, will power huh?... well, only cuz I wanted a piece of their chocolate cake for dessert... now there will be a veggie week ahead, right?... of course there will)...

fascinating life, isn't it?...

this afternoon I did a lot of reading, some random and some following links about some sort of drama full of accusation and, well, drama... I have no idea what the truth is, but I know that I as much as I would like to, I do not have time to learn enough about IP addresses and internet protocols and whatever technical proofs people use to prove or disprove who flesh and blood people might be at the other end of computers... as if that is possible without actually going to the person and facing them eye to eye... I've seen the drama before in newsgroups and chatrooms and all over the web and even got caught up in it back in the 90s when I was young and naive (as if I am not now?... laughter is so rude, and funny, so join me?)...

but to be serious for a moment, hurt feelings are nothing to laugh about... and then again, neither are sick people (whether the disease is of body or mind or as is often the case, both)... and disease is ever so relative... most people who routinely (daily, at each meal and more often) poison themselves with chemicals that are scientifically proven to do damage to living tissues in all sorts of ways probably don't consider their choice to commit slow suicide a disease... caffeine addicts, for instance... or sugarholics... even smokers or regular drinkers of alcohol (the legal dope) do not consider their choices to be mental illness... but if someone sucked on a car exhaust pipe a half hour a day (in small increments every hour or few) they would probably be locked up as a danger to themselves...

and then there are imaginations... and blame and guilt and revenge and all sorts of judgments... people judge so much, is it ego or insecurity or some deserved right?... and blame... can anyone truly hurt me without my permission?... no... I choose who I trust, who I empower to have any control over my emotional stability or hopes or dreams... I can let my imagination go and believe I know someone well enough to trust them with my life, if I so choose, but that is my choice and ultimately, my imagination... even looking into someone's eyes gives me only what my eyes perceive, only what I want to believe... that the person I am holding or living with or making love to or sharing life with is safe to trust unconditionally is a leap of faith I take within myself... and if they change or reveal untrustworthy qualities, I am responsible for taking that leap... but it is so easy to blame them for fooling me...

and then there's the internet... the vast (and relatively imaginary) cyberspece... here we are words, written symbols on screens... occasionally we expand sharing to gift exchanges, material objects... sometimes we advance to voices... much less often we move to brief eye contacts, visits... and rarely we move to more frequent physical sharing... how often do we move to gazing into someone's eyes, sharing meals and space and time?... once in a blue moon... and even when that blue moon occurs, we still have only our imaginations to trust to take the leap of trust...

it takes much time, diverse and intimate sharing in physical space, and mutual testing experiences to truly start getting a sense of a person's heart... of someone's true intentions...

yet it is so convenient to be quick to judge...

here, when we remain only words, there is no way to truly know someone... no way to judge someone... no way to trust someone unconditionally enough to empower them to effect your affect... not without huge leaps of faith and active imaginations and then the risk for misunderstanding is so great, it's practically a miracle when we truly come to a real understanding... most people would write things to people online that they would never imagine saying to a person's face in the physical world... whole personalities change or are created in literary form, often without intentionally setting out to do it... often just for the sake of continuing the written sharing... for the attention... for the brief lightening of the loneliness... for the illusion of having friends, a sense of community, being loved...

candora (and others) play with those wonderful precarious emotional illusions and literary fantasies all the time, but I always try to remember to remind myself that it is a wish, a dream, a hope... hope can be oh so powerful...

anyway, I hope this might give anyone reading some food for thought about the foolishness of judging and claiming we know someone else's intentions, no less their reality, based on online text and whatever ISP data that can be aquired with spy software or whatever means available... I've seen flesh and blood people make such horrible mistakes based on so little information... I've seen self-flaggelation, physical injuries, and suicides come from words online... I've seen people travel thousands of miles with the hope of a savior, some with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a one way ticket, only to find themselves with total strangers who have no reasonable chance of sharing life together... we want to believe... but

"we do not see things so much as how they are, as much as how we are"

(and who can return the source of that quote?... even if I may have paraphrased it slightly in my memory)... I believe that we usually find what we want to find... we usually find proof of what we believe... if we truly believe in love, we find proof that it exists... if we are so afraid that it may not exist or that we may not be worthy of it, we find proof that people should not be trusted... we can justify using others that way... if we deny our fears and blame others for our lack of faith in ourselves...

a starving person will steal, even kill for food... survival... and for so many reasons many people are starving for attention, for understanding, for acceptance, for love... when we as a species allow ourselves to become so cold, so distant, so isolated, aloof, elitist, cliquish, judgmental, busy, afraid or whatever leads us to live so apart that people are starving emotionally, who is responsible for the emotional desperation, the mental confusion that leads to attention seeking through any means possible?... surely we are responsible for ourselves, for our walls, for our isolation... but we are also responsible for our judgments, for our ostracization of others due to their differences or desperations... do we ignore the hungry child?... in truth, most of the time as a species, yes... do we ignore the crying child begging for a human touch, for warmth and comfort of a hug?... sadly, too often, yes... so the needy among us are annoyances, cast out and left behind and blamed for their neediness... who, at one time or another in their lives, has not cast a single stone?...

meanwhile Precious is looking for dinner and Rasputin has fallen asleep without making preparations for her, so it is time for me to return to the physical life, the real world... my hope is that you enjoy your evening and keep your imagination, experience, and life in perspective... as much as we might love the written words and love believing in the hearts behind the words, I hope you remember each day to go out and touch what is real...

. o O ( NOTES ARE THE NEW HAPPY PILL ) O o .
(just let me know you were here)