Weird Venus fact #47 … I almost always make two cups of coffee in the morning. I really enjoy the first one. I rarely drink the second one. The next day, I toss out the cold remaining cup, silently scold myself, and proceed to do the exact same thing. What is that saying about insanity being the repetition of the same behaviour, always hoping for a different outcome?

Weird Venus fact #48 … I like to number things. I just don't always start with #1.

My life has a soundtrack, as some who know me well already know. I have a habit of bursting into song at inopportune moments. It can be quite disconcerting, I suppose. While on my way to work the other day, someone was on CBC-1 discussing "old" music and seemed to be focussing on the Beatles. Immediately one of my favourite Beatles songs ran through my head and then, of course, out my mouth. It is a rather obscure one, but I've always been fond of this catchy little tune. This song has a sort of unfinished quality to it … everybody sing …

Isn't this sort of contradictory? If I fix the hole, will my mind not also be stopped from wandering?

Same question, really. Filling the cracks will just keep my mind in again, won't it? Doesn't this defeat the purpose?

OK, so if I fix the cracks in my door, the disagreeing people can't see in anymore. But my mind has become trapped in an air-tight, R-2000 home. This can't be good.

My mind! It escaped! Maybe something to do with the colours …

Ah, yes … the silly people. The blue meanies. Fixing holes in submarines … very good idea indeed.

The logic is a bit bizarre … maybe the song isn't so much "unfinished" as "unresolved", like the penultimate chord, just hanging there, wafting through the air. Still, it bounces and makes me smile and tap my foot. Maybe that is where the logic resides, in the bouncing, smiling and tapping.

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What would happen if you randomly married Nietzsche quotes with Family Circus cartoons?

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One of the many points of interest on my desk is Diva the betta fish. I've had to nurse him back from the brink of death several times in the past few months. At the moment, he is doing ok.

Diva – 1

I changed his water last night – the first water change with the new plastic "plant" I bought to keep him amused. I notice today that  there are air bubbles clinging to the new plant and I thought that looked kinda cool.

I suck at taking pictures, but here are my best efforts.  Lex would make these into works of art. I just point and shoot and pray.

I wonder what other people have on their desks that is interesting. Perhaps I'll submit that as a Vox Qotd, see what happens … in the meantime, heeerrrreee's Diva and the Bubbles!

Diva’s Plant

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There are times in my life when I go through my days in pretty good shape, functional, mostly happy. On my external surface, things are good. And, in truth,  I really am getting along ok and finding pleasure in day-to-day activities. But there is something going on behind my eyes.

I remember the 9 -12 months of agony leading up to the break-up of my last long-term, live-in relationship. For six of those months prior, and for well over a year after, I had this feeling right behind my eyes. Tears … maybe that was part of it. Tears that wouldn't come – maybe. It didn't feel like something a good cry would solve. More like a heavy anticipation, the fear of revealing things hidden, of speaking and re-speaking truths that were unheard, or partially heard, or mis-heard. At that time, five years ago, I remember teaching one of my toughest classes wearing sunglasses, telling my class I was suffering from allergies. There was something about the harshness of how the fluorescent lights were hitting my eyes that was triggering the harshness of the words spoken and heard the night before.

For several weeks, I've been in a similar place, a heaviness behind my eyes. Part of the problem has been the semi-public attack on me a few weeks ago by the representative of an organization that I gave three years of my volunteer life to attempting to build. The animosity has been present for a while, measured actually in years and months, undercurrents, whispers. I know … I know … I know that little cabal is a group of morons and I feel the support of all the people who reassure me of this. The support feels good – don't stop – but I shrink away from polarization, of creating an "us/them" dynamic. It turns three dimensional people into flattened cartoon characters, me included if I choose to participate. I've never seen anything get resolved that way. I'm trying to be very Buddhist and not engage at all, on any level. Yet I hold it, just behind my eyes somewhere, hoping it will heal over time. In fact, know that time – not revenge, not confrontation, not sabotage – will be the only true healer. I also really only have hope for my own healing as I have no clue what motivates others with cruel intentions towards me.

Part of the problem has been watching my long-distance relationship evolve into something that causes both of us more pain than joy. A wise friend said to me the other day that it may be possible to sustain a long-distance relationship that has been established in person … but virtually impossible to build one up at a distance. I think this is true. It is hard to witness an evolution into more tears than laughter, to know all I have to say will simply cause more pain. To have found no solution to the widening gaps between us. To come to care about someone and then know that you must break away, and that this is going to hurt … either end of that stick is a shitty place to be.

On only one occasion have I been the person who has been informed of the end of a relationship. In my history, I'm the one who initiates the break, except in that one case. The one time that roles were reversed, I thought I was going to die from the pain.

Recently, I have had to take a deep breath and examine my sense of health and balance and reality. And be the one to say the words no one wants to hear. And know that she will see it differently someday but right now, to her, I'm an asshole.

I've learned that the damage that two people can cause each other by staying together when they shouldn't is far worse than the pain of an ending. It took me four and a half years to recover from the shit-kicking my self-esteem and self-image took in my last long-term relationship – all the compromises, the pieces of myself I left behind, that rendered me invisible. People shouldn't have to do that … the point is to revel in each other, to nurture even the parts that don't quite fit or that rub one of you the wrong way.

I can't allow myself to leave pieces of "who I am" behind, ever again. Even if that means being alone. Even if that means being an asshole (temporarily I hope) in the eyes of someone I care about a lot. Even if that means wearing this heaviness around for a while, again, just behind my eyes.

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Soba-window

As per my previous post, here are a couple of pics of Soba. I don't think he likes having his picture taken.

First, I had to stand on a chair and make him look at me, not look out the window …

Then I had to try to get him to keep his eyes open long enough for me to get a shot. I have an older model digital camera with a really annoying delay. So this was the best I could do … perhaps you can see the orange glow enough to get the idea … 🙂

Soba-eyes

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Any minute now, my phone will ring which will mean that my friend will be waiting for me at the gate. Which means I'll grab the bag of garbage that is waiting, head downstairs, meet my friend, toss the garbage, and walk to meet more people for brunch.

How's that for blogging "in the moment"? 🙂

Here is something I'd like all my lurkers to read. Nope, don't know who you all are exactly, but I have my suspicions. Note to D in Picklering: It might just be worth re-activating cookies.

I am cat-sitting – a fuzzy black ball of energy named Soba. Later today, while he is watching wide-screen TV for cats, I'll try to take a picture and post it. He is really cute, and occasionally loud. And occasionally invisible because of the black "hiding in shadows" factor. Of course, he is only invisible if his eyes are nearly closed because they are bright orange. I'm not kidding.

The "wide-screen TV for cats" is my very large window, something he doesn't have that kind of access to at home. So, for hours, he lays right on the sill and stares out. This makes the picture-taking a bit tricky because of the amount of light pouring in … I'll see what I can do.

OK … time to get shoes on …

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In my last blog, I had a sidebar to the right that I could fill with links to neat places. On the downside, there was very little room to explain why I put the links there. On the upside, the links were just … there. Easy. Handy.

No such luck @ Vox. (Yet.) I have voiced my blogging desires to the universe. We'll see if the universe coughs up.

Until then, may I present The "Sue" Links? It didn't start out this way, with me having three links to artists/writers named "Sue". It was just something I noticed one day.

One of my many heros is Susie Bright. A goddess, a proponent of sex-positive feminism, a wise-ass and all round smart chick. Here is her blog which gives more details on her wide and varied career in publishing, film and cage-rattling. Most importantly, to me, she hosts a weekly Internet radio show on all matters sexual and political called In Bed With Susie Bright. For sheer entertainment value this is, bar none, the best deal on the Internet. I've subscribed now for several years and Susie never fails to make me laugh out loud AND think very deeply about some of my own beliefs and why I hold them. The ultimate "laugh out loud" moment for me happened when Susie told the story of Hunter S. Thompson leaving her voice mail – long, rambling messages, ranting on about a wild assortment of things. This, in itself, isn't all that amusing until the moment when Susie acquired a new cell phone number and a local insurance broker acquired her old cell phone number. I remember listening to this while I was driving to a friend's cottage up north and I had to pull over, I was laughing so hard. Maybe the fairy goddess of all things Susie will drop on by and remind me of the Show number that this appeared on? Please?

Suzie Vinnick is a Canadian blues / folk artist who is yummy.  Yummy, I tell ya. 33 Stars is a CD that rarely leaves my CD changer for long. Lately, every time I get a notice about a live performance, I'm already booked which is annoying. Soon I'll be back out in the crowd, drunkenly urging her to sing that laid back Rock'n'Roll number.

Suzanne, a.k.a. Sue de Nym and several other noms de plume, is also a kick-ass musician. She rocks when she plays centre or wing on my hockey team, too! There are some cuts from Fanfaria here, but the quality isn't great. False Messiahs is my fav … maybe the artist herself will grant me permission to post the actual song in higher quality here.

There you have the three "Sues" who all spell their names differently, but who rank highly enough with me to get their own link post!

02 False Messiahs

Update: Suzanne, bless her, has stepped off her longboard long enough to agree to let me post the full version of False Messiahs here. Thanks!

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Wow – anybody else remember this?

Coke hilltop commercial

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I'm posting about my post, so I guess that makes this a meta-post. 🙂

The warm reception that my Bloggin' v 2.0 post received was a bit overwhelming. I realize that I am now experiencing a bit of performance anxiety.

That post actually started out as the body of the e-mail that I intended to send to friends and readers about the change in my blog address. It was Sunday morning, the coffee rocked, and I was riffing about blogging. I get a lot of feedback that my e-mails are "too long" and "too detailed". These days, I think anything written in paragraphs with proper punctuation is deemed "too long". One of my pet peeves is the deterioration of English as both a spoken and written language – but I also think there must have been a tutor in Shakespeare's time who was worried about the same thing. The language has changed and also survived in a continually mutating form.

Nonetheless, as I reviewed the length of this announcement to friends/readers, I realized that no one in their right mind would read the entire thing and that I'd better give them a choice about doing that. So the announcement got shortened to a few lines, the e-mail became that post, and the post wound up on the front page at Vox for 24 hours.

Wow. More than seven people are actually reading this. And thinking about it. And writing back to me. Enter performance anxiety.

My best thoughts about blog posts come to me when I am nowhere near a computer. Usually they arrive when I am driving up or down the Don Valley Parking Lot, wishing I could get out of second gear, and muttering under my breath about global warming.  I'll have an "A-HA!" moment as my engine idles and spews god-know-what into the atmosphere – a confluence of connecting ideas so powerful, moving and obvious that I simply MUST record it in my blog for posterity. Time will pass, classes will get taught, activities will be executed … and I will get home and remember the "a-ha!" but have no freaking clue what it was about. Yes, I should have a notepad handy, or I could remember that my cell phone has an audio memo feature specficially for this kind of thing.

I guess a "note to self" about taking notes would be a "meta-note"? 🙂

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I've been playing around with the Vox sidebar interface, trying to figure out how to do a simple list of my favourite links in the sidebar. Don't think this is possible.

However, I think I may like the alternative better. I've started, and will continue to build, "collections" of items of interest. When I find a link I want to share, I'll post it in a "link post", marked as such. Then I will assign the post to a collection. So here is the first link of interest, just sent to me by my ex. She is also responsible for the FCCFU video … hey, credit where credit is due!

Here is a link that will tell you how rich you are in comparison to the rest of the world. I think it is a brilliant demonstration / reminder of much of the Northern Hemisphere's "have" status and the blatant "have not" status of so many.

If you can't find something to be thankful for … and you are using a computer and have time to blog … you probably need to visit this link.

Edited to add: Well, I was wrong. I was sure I read somewhere that you could add posts to a collection, but I guess not. You can add collections to posts, but not posts to collections. Hm. So, for the moment, I don't see a way to easily share some of the neat links I stumble across. For the moment, until another solution presents itself, I'll just post them "Link Post #?: (topic)". Hopefully, I'll find a way to group them or classify them.

Maybe I should have pursued a career in archiving or meta-data after all … 🙂

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