(no subject)

What will go here in a couple days is a long, rambling post about me and my world. But it went some very weird places, and got a little too naked and a little too self-pitying and a little too much like calling the world out.

The topic sentences were, however.

Long day with my mother, shameless advantage taken of her desire to buy me things.

I have such a desire for things, and I judge myself pretty harshly for it.

I try to figure out who this person that I want to be is, and I'm afraid that I've just gotten stuck in a rut of "not this" being the answer to every question about identity, even if that's not true (there's a song lyric or poem that I can't put my finger on. Something something every question we know.)

I don't know how people pick who they are going to be.

A lot of the time, I feel one step removed from other people's processes.

I'm good at reading other people as a way to try to keep from getting hurt thing, but bad at it as way to make myself and my world a happier place.

And yet, I want to cultivate idealists, and sometimes I look at things and say "I can do this better."

And really, omnia, there's a better answer than some sort of mock-vulcan thing.

More Peter Mulvey!

The poem I was talking about

The Story We Know
By Martha Collins

The way to begin is always the same. Hello,
Hello. Your hand, your name. So glad, Just fine,
And Good-bye at the end. That’s every story we know,

And why pretend? But lunch tomorrow? No?
Yes? An omelette, salad, chilled white wine?
The way to begin is simple, sane, Hello,

And then it’s Sunday, coffee, the Times, a slow
Day by the fire, dinner at eight or nine
And Good-bye. In the end, this is a story we know

So well we don’t turn the page, or look below
The picture, or follow the words to the next line:
The way to begin is always the same Hello.

But one night, through the latticed window, snow
Begins to whiten the air, and the tall white pine.
Good-bye is the end of every story we know

That night, and when we close the curtains, oh,
We hold each other against that cold white sign
Of the way we all begin and end. Hello,
Good-bye is the only story. We know, we know.