Thought is viscous

"No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous."
-- Henry Adams
from Quote of the Day

hmmmm.... This time of night, thought is sometimes viscous- adequate words definitely are..
;-)

Unconscious Mutterings Week 101

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Pistol:: gun
   
2. Rick:: know a couple
   
3. Full circle:: Life; everything moves in a circle
   
4. I wish:: no personal wishes I want to think about at the moment; but it would be nice to see no natural disasters and no bombs and bullets in the world for a while or longer. (Is that like the classic beauty contestant answer- world peace?) OH, wait a minute, I do have a personal wish: I wish it would stop raining for several days! I need to be in the sunshine.
   
5. Frame::supporting structure; of perception- individual world view; reframe- view from a different perspective
   
6. Adult:: defined in many ways and often accompanied by unexamined, subconsciously adopted "rules"
   
7. Photography:: some beautiful examples on the internet
   
8. Stew:: homemade, cold weather comfort food
   
9. Cheat:: dishonest, lie and steal
   
10. Brad:: Pitt is the only one that comes to mind

Want to play? Go to Unconscious Mutterings.

a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder?

Cold rain beats down outside
again
Dark sky hides the sunlight.
I slip
allowing the grayness to seep inside
Drowning joy and light.

My reward for the day

Sad young woman; disappointment dripping down on her cheeks, only half hearing the words from the woman on the phone- cueing in on the words that meant waiting longer for full time employment in an assisted setting. She knows what she wants, and what she wants is this job- with people she likes working with, the daytime hours, not too far away from home, and the paycheck it will bring. She has learned the job, she knows exactly how to get there on time, and the money will mean she can do things on the weekend that she was previously enjoying- movies, shopping, music- going out with her fiancé; life as an adult with a little breathing room. Right now she has to save almost all the part time pay and the state and federal assistance she receives to buy groceries, pay bills and rent. We all want a job where we like the work and the people and have a little money left over to do a few things that make life fun.

The woman on the phone was trying to gently explain to her, then telling me--how the company was ready to hire a team from the work group, said it would happen in January, but now are not sure they can hire them- maybe budgetary problems or a contract of theirs that fell through. At that point, the very nice woman on the phone was quite ready to let me deal with things that were stuck in a disappointed loop in the young woman's mind, so she said her goodbyes to me, with a message for the young woman and hung up.

I listened to how much the young woman wanted this job, and how long she had been waiting, and how ready she was. I listened to the words that poured out - and in between got a sense of how much she didn't understand, and even hints that she might feel it was something she had done wrong.

How to acknowledge her disappointment, not step on or negate the emotions, yet help her reframe so she can see more than the immediate picture? How to suggest that sometimes no matter what, things go a different direction than we expected, but it often isn't the terrible thing we think it will be? Is it possible or even right for me to suggest a different way of looking at things? I know this young woman's tendency to get stuck on certain kinds of things and be unable to think about anything else. This particular event could even be synchronistic, but how to explain synchronicity where abstract thinking is difficult?

"I'm sorry for crying, for getting so upset" the young girl says shortly. I understand you are disappointed" I say gently. "And crying is not something you have to say you are sorry about". "Crying is ok when something makes you sad and unhappy, just as talking about what it is that makes you unhappy, is ok."

After a few moments of silence, I tell her: "There are two possibilities that you might want to think about- two things that could happen. The first is that after a little wait, this will all fall into place - you will finally have this job and in the meantime you have all these appointments and important beginning of the year errands that we can get out of the way. The second possibility is that this isn't the right job for you but you will find a better one. You have a lot of people working with you, a lot of people on your side to help make this happen." I held out my hands in balance scale fashion- "over here, with a little more waiting, you get this job you want; over here you get a different job that will also be just right for you."

Now I know there are all sorts of other possible variables in the outcomes... and all of them are dependent on a lot of other people working behind the scenes in different ways. But it is true- I didn't lie- this job or another one- and if the first one falls through, the other one will be better because it will be hers.

You should have seen the huge smile that lit up her face when she thought about it as a win-win situation- no matter what happens.

"Change is the only thing we can count on for sure"

"We count on a high degree of sameness not only in ourselves, but also in the people we care about. No matter how much we may complain about our difficult brother or critical mother, we still count on the fact that they will be pretty much the same person the next time we visit them. We may want them to change-- but only so much, and only in the ways we desire. Others feel similarly about us. It's not just the capacity to change, but also the capacity to resist change, that stabilizes our sense of identity, our continuity with the past, and our connections with others.

Change is an anxiety-arousing business because whenever you make a change, you can't make only one. There is no guarantee where it will stop. ... ..."

"... ... Every new place we visit --be it a foreign country, a budding friendship, a child's birth, or a new job-- evokes a new world within us. To avoid the anxiety inherent in change and growth, we may doggedly cling to the familiar. By clutching tightly to the safety of sameness, we may try to keep everyone and everything as sure as sunrise and as fixed as the stars. But it's not possible. Life is process, movement, and transformation. Try as we may to "hold back the dawn," change is the only thing we can count on for sure."

Harriet Learner, Ph.D. (2004).
Fear and Other Uninvited Guests : Tackling the Anxiety, Fear, and Shame That Keep Us from Optimal Living and Loving (pg. 74, 77). Harper Collins.

You can't get there from here

More rain, and while classes started tonight, I am home. I did speak to my professor earlier, though I am not sure she was particularly sympathetic. She did agree not to drop me from the class if I didn't make it.

I tried to go, but even getting to the Metrolink station involved figuring out how to traverse flooded streets (which proved too much for me). The other alternative at that point, a three and a half hour bus journey- wouldn't have gotten me to class much before it ended. So I came home just in time for a new heavy downpour to occur, then a thunderstorm which included hail- so much for it being scattered showers, as someone told me it would be. I think next time I will take my camera - for proof that you can't get there from here.

The Foothills are a neglected place when it comes to mass transit, but I still have to figure out a way to get from here to Alhambra in heavy rain. It is expected to rain to some degree all week and possibly next as well.

I'd better get a new umbrella too.

Childhood passions

I was wondering how much various amateur/home science things cost these days, and delightedly found Edmund Scientific's website.

As a child and a teen (in those ancient times, as my son likes to tease), the Edmund Scientific catalog was one of my favorites to receive. Until I left home, I secretly (from my peers) kept a weather station growing up in Indiana (secretly, because even I thought it might be a little too geeky for a girl of the times). I kept logs and manually collected information, including calculating dew point with a sling hygrometer, etc. My little station anemometer was hard wired to flash a light for each revolution. I counted flashes and then converted that into MPH. For a while even as an adult, I had an anemometer like that first one, mounted up high on the amateur radio antenna tower (yeah, I played with amateur radio too, thanks in part to WD9BFA).

Weather and Radio weren't my only science forays, but other than geology, they were the ones I spent the most time involved with back then.

Song in my head

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion
I want to walk in the open wind
I want to talk like lovers do
I want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you

So baby talk to me
Like lovers do
Walk with me
Like lovers do
Talk to me
Like lovers do

Here comes the rain again
Raining in my head like a tragedy
Tearing me apart like a new emotion
Oooooh
I want to breathe in the open wind
I want to kiss like lovers do
I want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you

So baby talk to me
Like lovers do

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion
(here it comes again, here it comes again)
I want to walk in the open wind
I want to talk like lovers do
I want dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you

(Lennox/Stewart
(Eurythmics)
(Alex Parks)

Unconscious Mutterings Week 100

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Newspaper:: headlines
   
2. DVD:: another media storage format
   
3. Resolution:: image
   
4. Intimate:: not
   
5. Song:: lost the one in my heart- replaced it with something different... lost forever, or for a while is hard to tell from this vantage point...
   
6. Essential:: critically necessary elements
   
7. Whistle:: and bird chirps (parrots and others)
   
8. Glass:: through the looking glass, where the world operates on unknown rules and it's probably good to have things shaken up periodically. It forces one to take stock.
   
9. Countdown:: to the new year; to the start of the next ten weeks; to the next thing, situation, goal, problem to solve, storm, day... Maybe it's much better to live this moment instead of being too concerned with countdowns.
   
10. Child:: mine is sometimes careless, stubborn and impatient (did I cause that?)

Want to play? Go to Unconscious Mutterings.

First day of the year ending

Well, technically it is after midnight so this is the second day, but since I haven't gone to bed yet, I don't count that yet.

I have been playing around with a new template, tweaking it this way and that. I don't think I will finish it by Monday (when classes and clients will need attention), but I will keep working on it in bits and pieces. I set up a test site to play with it so I don't lose anything here.

More rain is headed in; we will need life jackets before long. All the little daily concerns (like places to be, deadlines to meet) are starting to flood back into consciousness.

I sure wish I had more time off. I am just about rested up and ready to tackle several projects around here. I guess I should be glad I am on this side of the world and have work, classes and little projects --instead of needing to be concerned about shelter, food and rebuilding a whole life.