Breaking down the third wall

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have decided to take the plunge and connect all the shocking things I've said on WP to my real life.



www.difficultjane.blogspot.com

Wondering what were the first two walls.

And deeply saddened at how solutions so often become problems. The nightmare that was Germany after the First World War, and the solution.

And the later solution of Zionism, and the lives of Palestinians today.

Wondering if there might be something better than this endless swapping of roles.

Since the arrest of that Serbian guy, there's been talk of Truth and Reconciliation. Maybe...

eh. . . I was just going for a quirky twist on the traditional thespian metaphor, and am somewhat missing your references. . .



ok, not so much the references, only how they relate to walls. . . .

(?)

Things sure got confused quickly here.

But at least now I understand why I didn't understand about the walls. I'm utterly ignorant about theater, other than an excessive love for a few of Shakespeare's plays.

And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?

Line from Yeats that has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but it was stuck in my head and wouldn't let me go.

The other references had nothing to do with walls, so that's why you couldn't see a connection. Believe it or not, it had to do with the topic.

There's a non-subtle pattern that oppression very often ends when the oppressed turn into oppressors. It's happened more than once or twice.

Euphemisms are often used to dismiss concerns about this, but only when the concerns are addressed at all, usually they're not. Necessity and some higher good are inevitably invoked, frequently along with the assumption that the currently oppressed are somehow automatically guilty of something or other. I'm sure you've heard the term "Manifest Destiny," and I'm also sure you're aware of what it actually meant to the people who were in the way.

Nowadays the military uses the term "collateral damage" to describe what happens when people happen to be in the way of their solutions. I suspect the people that were in the way, whatever is left of them, would use other terms. When it's necessary to acknowledge that such events actually occurred, the military absolves all their guilt simply by using the term "regrettable."

*hits Jainaday over the head with little kid's toy plastic baseball bat*

I'm talking about solutions to the injustices against human females that have definitely occurred, and the undeniably real pain and trauma that a lot of human females have experienced. I'm using the past tense here with deliberate ambiguity to refer to everything up to the present moment. Future events haven't happened yet. It's the best I can do with an ambiguous reality.

I'm wondering if simple things like equality and justice and respect are even possibilities.

I'm also wondering why I'm bothering to wonder, since I have less influence on the future of human society than I have on the climate.

Our kind survived four major ice ages during the last million years. Invented art and science in the process. Maybe surviving is all you can do

I'm completely fine with random Shakespeare and Yeats.





with. . . the current blog I have/had posted? With the fact of introducing my WP world to my real world and vice versa?

which topic?




um. . . . ok. . not unimportant, but also not new. . .



*peers up carefully from under/behind the couch*

you be careful with that, I can be a little . . . er. . . .

*sigh*

*gathers dignity and takes place tensely in far, far corner of the room*

(not skittish, not me, not at all. . . . . ever. . . .)**




in my own approach, literally everything is about fighting the good fight.

That means you try to do things that are effective--by the nature of the good fight--and yet effectiveness is not the sole objective.

the sole objective is doing your Best.





**maybe I shouldn't react to virtual playfulness with real life moods. . . *sigh*

Edit:

Ok. . . I also, on, like, fifth reading, made the connection between this and my blog.
Sometimes I'm rather dense. .


We could argue about whether the damage done to men by having to worry if their advances will be repelled with legal action (and by having their advances repelled by legal action) is greater than the damage done to women by being encouraged to constantly live in fear. If you want to have that argument, I'd be willing to. .

but you may note, I didn't (in this case) advocate legal action. I wrote a blog and posted it on the internet telling people to take it seriously and be nice.

In a sense, it might be said that I even advocated against our present legal system, which seems to have successfully created what appears to be a hostile environment for men without protecting women.

Okay, okay, calm down. I won't threaten again to attack you from hundreds of miles away with weapons that are considered entirely safe for small children.

Is there any truth to the rumor that you once pulled a gun during a pillow fight?

I believe in this particular case your insecurities are excessive. Considering your incredible skill at missing my points, you would be utterly immune to any attack with spears or arrows.

I suppose it is true, however, that problems in communication sometimes involve the sender, so I probably shouldn't get too uppity.

In any case, that's entirely irrelevant now, because my perspective has altered. See, I've been out under the sky, and there's some connection there I don't understand and would never dare mention in public, except I just did.

Might be something like a non-physical equivalent to trees sending roots into the earth to gather the things that sustain and enrich their lives, only it's inverted, and the spirit sends roots into the sky.

And...well... I'm not a big believer in omens, primarily because I've never had much luck at successfully interpreting them, but I'm not gonna say that things like that are impossible.

I'm gonna post a thread on this sometime or other, but some recent comprehensive DNA analysis indicates with something close to certainty that as a species, we're a whole lot older than anybody was figuring. As best I can remember, the figure was around 1.3 million years, all the way back through and including Homo erectus. All one big species, a single breeding population. Incredibly radical idea, but the evidence is pretty strong.

So if Moses and the Torah is considered the beginning of what we call Western Culture, whatever actually happened on Mount Sinai happened about three thousand years ago, and anything recognizable as science was a whole lot more recent than that.

So what's generally recognized as our complete heritage is actually a whole lot less than half of one percent of our real history.

And I don't think we've gotten smarter. we've got gadgets, like this computer I'm typing on, but I don't think I'd be any dumber if I was writing with a quill pen, or scratching marks into damp clay, or painting on the wall of a cave.

Lady where I work was pulling weeds on a steep dirt slope and she accidently opened up part of an underground ant colony. It was a chamber full of little white larvae. The adult ants rushed into the unexpected dry air and sun and methodically lifted the larvae one at a time and carefully carried them down through a tunnel opening to some safer place deeper in the tunnel system.

Watching the efficiency of their response, and how precisely appropriate it was to a completely unanticipated set of circumstances, I had the impression there was a form of intelligence at work, but I think this was a sort of illusion generated by their odd capacity for coordinated collective action, kinda like us.

I don't see any reason to think that an individual ant is smarter than an individual solitary bumblebee, even though bumblebees don't have a civilization like ants, and I don't think I'm smarter than the forgotten 99 percent of the humans who came before, who searched with their own minds for connections between their own lives and the phenomena around them.

That was a long way of saying that I'm less certain about things than some other people are.

A few days ago a major windstorm came through the narrow valley at work. It knocked down two trees and tore loose several large limbs, leaving some of them balanced on the living tree structure beneath them.

So I've spent the last couple of days cutting and hauling brush. Surprisingly pleasant activity, calming the mind while exhausting the muscles, what the Tai Chi people call a moving meditation. Clearing away the huge fallen limbs hanging balanced, it's been a more dramatic martial art, since it involves using continual awareness of balance to avoid being in the path of hundreds of pounds of falling wood.

So that was the state of mind. Like I said, I don't believe much in omens, but this one was too obvious to miss, the canyon wind completely altering the life of CanyonWind, inducing a state of calm meditation.

Now and then, a sensible idea manages to slip into my thought processes.

But there was a topic to this thread, that topic being your...uhhh...blog.

I haven't been able to get used to that word. It's like somebody tried to figure out how to produce the most unpleasant sounding word possible with the sounds available in the English language.

"Hmmm...How 'bout if we combine 'blob' and 'bog,' and that'll carry along the connotations of 'slob' and 'slog.'"

I'm afraid the word 'blog' is here to stay, but I ain't ready to start using it yet, so I'm gonna call it your 'website.'

So anyway, hauling brush with my brain plugged in to the sky, I recollected something. I think it was one of those Chinese proverbs, but I'm not sure, and it doesn't matter because the idea is more relevant than the source.

But the idea is that people have two ears and one mouth to remind us that we should spend twice as much time listening as talking. So maybe I should shut up and listen a little. I sure can talk for a long time about the need for me to stop talking.

So anyway, I figured I'd check out more closely the ideas you've posted on your bl... website. Maybe I'll actually attempt to think and consider, instead of just reacting. If it was anybody else, I'd figure that since you posted the link, that wouldn't be considered an invasion of privacy or a threat to the sanctity of your personal space, but since it's you...

*sudden flash of light accompanied by sharp severe pain in jaw. utterly disorientated, CanyonWind figures out that he's on the floor slumped against the wall. Eyes attempt to focus, revealing a blurred image of Jainaday standing above. Foot appears to be moving. Sudden pain in abdominal region. Vauge impression of sound. She's saying something.*

"How dare you...*kick*...Think you're allowed to...*kick*...Read my blog"...*kick, kick, kick*

As to fighting the good fight, I believe it was Albert Camus who said, "If I see a man armed only with a sword attack a position of machine guns, I call this act absurd."

I'm vaguely aware that concerns about legal action and sexual harassment come up now and then. That's about it.

The only issue that has any relevance at all in my life is the rights of fathers and children.

I may neither confirm nor deny nor speculate upon any allegations hereto.




In my experience, that tends to be an inverse relationship.




I am glad you have hope.




Perhaps. It's always seemed to me that it's not presented as our whole heritage, but rather the bit of it we have any real chance of knowing about in detail. ..



I definitely agree that it's a funny business, measuring intelligence. .



*smiles in that one way that's almost trying not to smile, and also some other happy things. . .*


. . .



I believe the expression you were looking for was:

*hands CanyonWind a cup of tea, sits down, tries not to huddle too far into self*

I don't know how to counter this, at this point, save for earnestness. I hate violence. I hate being accused of being a violent person, something I have an extremely unfortunate history of (the accusations more than the doing, though it's hard to completely say).

The day before I posted my overreaction, possibly the last guy I trusted casually joked about wanting to break a beer bottle over my head. He was drunk, and had been behaving maliciously towards everyone all night. He was standing next to me, holding a beer bottle.


It would be easy just mask my reactions, but I felt such an overature of friendliness deserved honesty. I tried to be honest playfully, but I guess I need to be more clear; I'm pretty fragile about violence right now. Please leave it alone.




I can be pretty direct with Camus, so I think I will. f**k you, Camus.

you knew all about absurdity.



a) I'm glad you picked up so much nuance while I was imaginarily assaulting you.

b) Um. . . then what was all that about collateral damage and so forth?




I am actually very interested to know your thoughts/feelings about the rights of fathers and children. Please tell? (at least something. . . I imagine there's a lot there. . .)

Not entirely certain that your response to this set of circumstances would correctly be described as ideal.


I am only mad north-northwest, when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

1) I did not say it was ideal. Under substantial stress, people do less than ideal things. I'm also not an ideal person.

I know it's an over-reaction. There are certain things I over-react to; I am, perhaps, a little damaged in this regard. It's not always easy, even knowing this, to be reasonable or act like anything that might pass as normal. The degree of control I have over my gut responses is limited. I try very, very hard to manage this as best I can, and if you'd rather I not reveal my true (over)reactions, that option is always open to you; you've only to say the word.

In my experience, people often joke about violence or use implements that shouldn't cause any harm right before they start doing damage. The response is not reasonable at all, but it isn't random, despite that it has precious little to do with you.

I know that this is the internet. I know that there is No Actual Risk At All, and certainly that you did not intend any harm. It's an emotional response, formed at a particularly raw time.

To be fair, I don't even give (hugs) without asking first. Generally this is not a respect of space that I expect, let alone demand, of anyone else--but since you have made suggestions of friendship, I thought you would want to know what was actually going on.



2) Knowing this, how would you describe a response you would call ideal?

So you're telling me you're not an ideal person.

Late last night I was driving the backroads through the heavy woods along the river bottom looking for a place to camp in my van where nobody would bother me.

Ain't got a lot of money these days, but if I did, I wouldn't be spending it on things I don't want. Sleeping in the bush, if I wake up during the night I see a million stars and in the early morning I see the sun lighting up the treetops. I never wish I had walls and a TV.

Up ahead, I saw a pair of animal eyes glowing in my headlights, down close to the ground. There was no moon, and the road was dirt and rocks, so I was going slow, but I slowed down more. I don't want to kill an animal unless I'm going to eat it, and I was wondering what the form was behind the glowing green retinas.

The glowing eyes waited on the road in my path, watching my headlights approach. When I got close, they calmly moved off to the side of the road, into the brush.

It was a raccoon, a young one, out wandering around, figuring things out, looking for things it wanted, the way raccoons do.

It was being what it was, a raccoon, and I think they're pretty neat animals. I wouldn't want it to become something besides what it is.

Raccoon got some meanass teeth and powerful jaw muscles, and if it got the idea I was a threat and decided to bite me on the leg, I wouldn't be entirely contented with the situation.

That doesn't mean I think it should stop being what it is, a raccoon following it's true nature, being what it is, what it's supposed to be.

Like I said, I think they're neat animals. I wouldn't be trying to improve them, even if I thought I could. I think they're just fine the way they are.

awe. . . . I think CanyonWind just called me a raccoon.