I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I wrote Sorry. Well, I can, I know what I think, I just don’t know how it came out that way.

I have a great deal of frustration over folks not getting it, and not bothering to ask me about it. Like the entire episode with everyone implying I only fall in love with people who break up with me. Granted, I lose out a bit because I’m frustrated with having to keep having that conversation. I’ve tried off and on, in different ways and degrees, over the years to try to explain some things to M. I don’t know that they get across, and I think. Well. Hmm. I think this may have been a mistake. I think, in retrospect, its a matter of figuring out other people as best you can and letting them figure you out at their own pace. Hmm.

Not having had many good leaders, maybe a couple, I’ve been wondering what that is lately. Part of it is setting an example, and perhaps that is unintentionally the most common by way of experience. But what is conscious? I can’t identify a situation in the last five years or so where I think a move was made for my benefit.

There is a commonality at play here. As Fromm speaks of the anxiety of separation, perhaps this is my disappointment in my connections with other people.

My ideal guy is an axe wielding bearded mountain man who is too busy chopping wood to fill out an online dating profile.

But I didn’t grow up in the middle of nowhere, I grew up, well, next to nowhere. Right? I don’t know. I want to have people who say this sort of thing read We Took to the Woods. Still, might that be too romantic?

I tried to talk to the girls about quantifying how much they’ve dated, but we ended up spending most of the time discussing the rules for if you’d count someone or not. Ultimately, have I been dating too much? Relative to the first 25 years of my life, the last three has been, well, busy. From a perspective of Maslow, this is to be expected. I’m relatively successful in the other parts of my life. I’m seem past the conversations of this past spring regarding how I was waiting for a partner for certain things to change, so they could change together. Partially, reality is catching up with me. My father seems to get exponentially worse as time passes. People I’ve never met ask me to come and talk about what I do. I have more insurance policies than I care to keep track of. Are these the things by which to measure life? Or is it the discussions about what’s important. There was a time when I didn’t consider moving from Seattle, not because I was against the idea but just because I was caught up in life. Now it feels inevitable, only a matter of years. Will I finish up my current project in the new few years and move on, or will something else enticing keep me here rather than taking me back to the woods.

In the second chapter Fromm has begun to talk about how all anxiety stems from our aloneness. I spoke to M tonight about my problems sleeping last night, and stress came up. That’s too complicated to draw those lines, but sure, its a big empty bed, and I’ll play some Whiskey & Company to that.

My Aunt asked me about Sarah Palin on facebook today. I figured it would be worthy to safe my response to look back upon from the future.

That’s my uncontrollable sarcasm as work. You’re probably used to being protected from it, but now that you’re on the internet you’re exposed.

This isn’t an easy or simple conversation to have seriously.

I believe Sarah Palin is not a critical thinker. I tend to find her opinions narrow minded and offensive. Most of all, I’m frightened by her popularity. If I think that her beliefs lack a diversity, adequate introspection and self doubt, a human depth, what does that say of those that choose to follow her?

I’ve long been afraid that prejudice is only considered wrong insofar as specific acts become social taboo. Racism is generally considered wrong, sexism is getting there, but prejudice based on religion, sexual orientation, and class are alive and well. Not to mention day to day prejudices around transportation and lifestyle.

Usually the fact that I’ve chosen to read books about issues rather than partake of sensationalist news networks, whose job, lets not forget, is to get you to watch their commercials, protects me. My lifestyle tends to keep open-minded thinkers closer than those who are more than happy to tell me how they think I should be living.

I haven’t lived long enough to know if dangerous times are ahead, but I do think they aren’t going to be easy. I’m scared of the desire to make the United States a Christian country, walled off to outsiders, under the belief that everything would be easy if it wasn’t for all the people different than us.

I wouldn’t want Sarah Palin to be President of this nation any more than I would Julian Assange. Perhaps she is representative of a frightful majority and will be. Honestly, the most virtuous Americans I have seen lately have been former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the end, as the chasm between the middle class and the rich continues to grow, and as more and more Americans falsely believe if they just work hard enough they too will be rich, it doesn’t matter. Those with the most to lose, who own all of our television networks, our media conglomerates, who run our newspapers and our magazines will continue to dictate what we talk about in our checkout lines at the grocery stores. We continue to be manipulated by those with the most power, because they yearn to remain these.

I’m home sick today. I just finished watching Dune. Its too bad life isn’t like the movies, there isn’t a prophecy to believe in where someone will lead us to peace, to a brotherhood without suffering.

Update:

Then she called me a closed minded true democrat. This is perhaps the most I’ve ever written at once about my views.

Splitting peoples beliefs into a dichotomy is pretty scary too. I’ve never identified as a Democrat, although I may be registered as one for the sake of the primaries here, as I’ve been somewhat active in bicycle and mass transit advocacy i…n the city.

In general, this is my point. My beliefs are mine and I don’t identify with anyone else’s. Some of these beliefs are strong, and some aren’t. If anyone wants to question them, they’re welcome to anytime. However, I do require people have had thought deeply about their questions. Thought terminating cliches and media talking points aren’t fair or interesting.

I just spent a half hour reading about political parties on wikipedia. It seems like a waste of time trying to find a label that fits my views as of today, when I could spend that time thinking about my views. When I think back, there was a time I would have called myself a libertarian. As I read about that, it sounds like those ideologies fit into both parties (wikipedia lists it under both) which makes the whole party system seem more destructive than helpful to me.

I am a “cold dead hands” type when it comes to gun ownership. I think that is relatively rare for the democratic party and excludes me pretty solidly.

Yet, I am against the general intolerance and prejudice of the republican party toward other sexual orientations, and religions. I would take a gay muslim who has long been introspective about who they are as a friend over a straight christian who hasn’t. Can you have gay muslims? I don’t know. Sure. That’s the point, I don’t believe there is a righteousness around who you should be or are. It sounds like my beliefs about marriage exclude me from the republican party pretty quickly.

Both of these examples sound libertarian, best I can tell. But then I’m a supporter of universal health care. I believe good health should become a basic human right and I worry about how every expanding class roles affect peoples access to health and their upward mobility. People tend to call that big government, or even socialism. Which, sidebar, is absurd and a sensationalist red flag. That’s a long conversation.

And then, I’m an upwardly mobile white male. The only thing missing from a stereotypical mold is a strong religion. I think and worry long about white privilege and the benefits of growing up with a pair of loving middle class parents (despite our tribulations over the years).

I’m solidly upper-middle class by income, but I drive an old rusted out truck thats falling apart and refuse to replace it. But then I ride a bicycle more days that I drive a car.

I grew up in the woods and yet I support sustainable logging. I can’t even begin to summarize my difficulties finding peers in the city when it comes to my heritage from Maine.

So what does that make me? This democrat versus republican class system is an example of exactly what I’m afraid of. I agree with Jon Stewarts views that America is being decisively divided at the hand of media because it is good for them, not because it is good for us. Watching news networks makes me physically ill it is so upsetting. If you want to know what I believe you have to ask me and we have to discuss it.

I really don’t know what to make of your implication that I am closed minded and I’m pretty bothered by it. This thread has entirely been me thinking about my views and trying to state them. Nobody has offered another view and tried to argue for it.

Wiktionary (interestingly merriam-webster doesn’t list the word) defines closed-minded as “unreceptive to new ideas or information.” That’s exactly what I think is missing, the discussion of ideas and information. I think beliefs come hard, and should come a lot harder than it is generally implied that they do.

If you want to accuse me of being closed-minded, you need to provide some new ideas or information and let me reject them first.

Part of me hoped to stick to light reading for a while. Reading two books in a few days was a nice break. Here I am though, reading The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm.

J and I spent a while today talking about how my identity is its own mountain; it doesn’t change between relationships. I commented on how I used to think of myself as a social chameleon when I was a teenager because I would move between social groups.

In the introduction to The Art of Loving, Peter D. Kramer writes, “Fromm was popular precisely because, in an age of ideologies, he was not an ideologue. He took what he needed – and enthusiastically – from Judaism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and, later, Taoism and Zen Buddhism, but Fromm was finally a humanist.”

I wonder if I’ve ever really tried to join these social groups. Ultimately, I think I’ve taken what I’ve liked and left the rest. It wasn’t that I was pretending to be something I wasn’t, but rather that I approached them as an ally, and respected them even when another might argue I had little to learn from them.

Fromm begins, “Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable. In the pursuit of this aim they follow several paths. One, which is especially used by men, is to be successful, to be as powerful and rich as the social margin of one’s position permits.” I’ve made my mark on some of the paths that seem designated as noble by our culture; a good work ethic, success, upward mobility, philanthropy and volunteering. Were they to be attractive? I doubt ever. Perhaps in spits of jealousy I’ve thought about my achievements, but not a motivating factor.

Fromm continues to discuss a culture “based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutually favorable exchange.” He defines attractive as usually meaning “a nice package of qualities which are popular and sought after on the personality market.” However, my struggle over the realities of “M v M” is that I have not been attracted to those holding traits of emotional stability, seasoned communication, or social popularity, that one might think I should. I’ve dated women who, by what I can only speculate I’ve gathered from my culture, should be perfectly what I’m looking for in a partner. Yet, I’m not happy with the so called best I can afford. It isn’t plainly that I measure worth differently though. The working hypothesis has been that I’ve dated women whom I should have been friends with instead of lovers.

I continued to speak with K & J about this today. K echoed a discussion of oneness that Fromm is touching on early in his book when I bought up M’s issue with my public journaling of my loneliness. J seems to be allowing me to lead myself down a path that ends with allowing my irrational desires to lead me toward what will make me happy. The intrusive thoughts of my limerance for M has long settled, and I had accepted time ago on my love being unrequited, yet I’m still uncertain of its final form. It shifts from time to time based on how I feel and I’m still unable to shake the desire to support her. I spoke at length to J about this today, about how I feel I can finally explain this as not literally being a shoulder to cry on, but quite metaphorically, still being a shoulder.

And then there’s the wonderful love of the special person whose presence makes the eyes shine and the heart beat faster, the love that binds two together and makes them both better people than either could be alone.

Perhaps I’m a pessimist these days, but having made all sorts of attempts at relationships with all sorts of wonderful people over the last couple of years, thats the only thing that matters now; finding that again and hoping its mutual this time around.

From Tycho over at Penny-Arcade,

The last time my father left, for real this time, the legal document that came to define our relationship decreed that I had to go there every other weekend. I’m not especially good at being told what to do, by anybody, and neither is he, so when I’d go to the trailer he lived in to angrily serve out my sentence he was rarely ever there.

The last time my mother left, for real that time, I would have been fourteen. As an airline pilot, my father was gone for days at a time, so by default I lived with my mother. I had the choice to move to southern Maine and live with his sister, but this would have meant leaving all of my friends as well. Interestingly enough, it would have also meant going to a high school with football. I was much less socially accepted then than people who know me might believe, but I wasn’t one for team sports either. But it always struck me funny, that they had football there. All I remember from that period is spending weekends in the country with my father. By then, most of the other kids my age had moved out of the neighborhood, and all of my friends were in Ellsworth. I distinctly recall being unable to decipher why he wanted me there, where he didn’t actually do anything with me when I was. It took me a decade to figure out he just liked having me around. As he is my old man, I now try to grant him these sundries when I can.

I don’t think about it much.

Oh hey, I’m posting regularly again. To some degree, one can measure the quality of my relationships inversely with the quantity of my posts. There’s been a lot of work lately. Have I been distant because of work? One could argue, but this is a long-running trend. K said something about this trend, to the effect that I’ve had good relationships. I snidely replied that I’ve had a lot of short relationships. I suppose it makes plenty of sense, but, there is little to do about it. Check out Scott Kurtz’s post about life together.

“Is this because I talk about feelings a lot,” she said.

I huffed.

Folks keep surprising me at reminding me how often you can still be holding the map upside down.

J called me out on dismissing my irrational feelings as invalid and lamenting that they don’t follow more what they would consider rational. Who they was, was questioned.

So what then, do I do, when what I want is irrational, however reasonable?

QC hits home, perhaps in a way only I understand. How many relationships in the last year have I started with good intentions but effectively ended with saying, its me. I’m so god damn afraid I’m always going to feel like I’m settling for what I should want over what I do. 🙁