Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
You all have Hilary (who made the mistake of asking me to keep y'all posted) and your own patient natures to thank for being subjected to the ongoing saga of my psychological development (?) as mediated by the I Ching. Here is the latest.
It is late Sunday night in my part of the world. This morning I got up very early and scrubbed the kitchen. (We heathens don't recognize days of rest.) And then I went back to bed for a little more lazing around. (We rest anyway.) I lay snuggled in my bed, which I have outfitted luxuriously, and was drowsing and engaging in pleasant reveries about handsome Asian men I have known. These days, when I think about men, I deliberately think about Asians instead of, say, gnarly, homely little white guys whose hair was blonde back in the day when they had some. Asian men are as far away from that as I can get mentally, you know?
Anyway I was curled up under the covers, pleased with the knowledge that I'd have a spotless kitchen to get up to, half-drowsing and half-fantasizing about these gorgeous hunks of Asian masculinity I used to fool around with. They weren't people I could have made a life with, and when after about a year apiece it came to pass that I realized the relationships were doomed, they ended one way or another, by which I mean to imply that things didn't end the Hallmark Card way. Meaning that in those breakups there wasn't much of "You've been so wonderful, a fine and decent human being, a mensch in every way and a veritable tiger in bed, and I'll always cherish the memories we created while we held this delicate butterfly of love between us, we two, but now we must go our separate ways and so I release you happily and with eternal love that we may continue our individual, separate growth, and I wish you and those who will come to be yours the best and the most beautiful always." No, there wasn't much of that in these breakups, which will positively astound those of you who have any memory whatsoever of how I've presented myself in posts here. But also remember, I was smart enough to amputate after a year in both these cases, which probably is still too long, but at least we know that I don't always tarry year after miserable year in hopeless relationships.
Oh, they were such handsome men, these Asians! I loved their skin, their dark eyes, their black hair, their ... Where was I going with this? I had better meet an acceptable male soon. So anyway, I was lying in bed, drowsing and thinking of my Asian lovers, and suddenly I realized that I was immensely happy (and not because the Hallmark Card realization finally had arrived). The feeling of utter contentment didn't last long, at least the consciousness of it didn't because I was more than half asleep, and kept drifting in and out. But man I felt good! The first few moments of a good cocaine high must feel like that. And it was remarkable because it stood out so starkly from most of what I've felt for I don't know how long.
Later in the day, I was out generating some natural endorphins, something I do regularly in a small group of people with whom I have in common an enjoyment of this particular means of generating natural endorphins. (It's something you can do in public and not get arrested in civilized countries, by the way.) My mind was on athletic endurance idle, and all of a sudden I had another very strange feeling, a feeling very foreign to me. It was short and small but intense, as if a microscopic hydrogen bomb had gone off somewhere between my sternum and my solar plexus. I thought, Huh? What is that? That's how odd it seemed; and it was gone almost as soon as it came.
By then I was closer to this side of mental idle, but still not completely compos mentis, and I went probing for this feeling again, but it was nowhere to be found. So I tried to look back and figure out what it was. The closest I could come to it was an image of a very little girl, not in immediate pain, but recovered from some terrible pain, hurting because she'd been hurting, very frightened and traumatized. In my mind's eye, she was very leery, just barely peeking up out of this hole in the ground from under something like a manhole cover. I hadn't picked up a coherent thought from her; she was too young and frightened to think or communicate clearly, but if she had thought or or said something, it would have been along the lines of, Is it over? In my efforts to recapture or at least figure out what I'd felt, I half-conjured that thought and visual image, but they don't describe the feeling very well. It was perhaps 2 seconds' worth of fleeting but very intense relief and a tiny ray of--not quite hope, but a little glimmer of curiosity--about why the noise and chaos have stopped now.
I tried and tried to track down this creature, or the emotion associated with her, but could not. I suppose it makes sense that a small person who's just barely screwed up the courage to take a peek outside, would hide again, especially if she realized that a big person was looking for her. I was intrigued but had run into a wall--figuratively and not literally, I am happy to report--and so I went back to enjoying my natural endorphins and my companions, who, like me, must have been pumping a pretty good quantity of them by that time.
Later in the day I was driving to an errand, just a routine trip alone in the car on a grey day. I was listening to some very good old American music on the radio (latter half of the 19th century, old old ragtime), and suddenly, for the second time today, was suffused with feelings of joy and contentment. The sad part about this is that the very first thing that popped into my mind was, Oh my god, what's wrong with me? This is the second time today! That is the truth; I felt happy--twice in a day!--and immediately began to worry that I'm losing my marbles. And then I realized there's nothing wrong. This, I realized, is what is properly referred to as feeling happy and content.
Q: Tell me about that little girl.
A: 7.1.2-->24.
Q: What's up with feeling happy?
A: 51.1.5-->45
Sounds good to me. But one of these days I'm going to converse with the Yi on the topic of how long and why I've been so miserable that a few good minutes stand out as peak experiences. Perhaps this is the common experience of humanity? If so, it's no wonder that drugs are so popular.
Now go chide Hilary about what happens when she invites a person who typically churns out several thousand words of prose a day, to "keep us posted."
It is late Sunday night in my part of the world. This morning I got up very early and scrubbed the kitchen. (We heathens don't recognize days of rest.) And then I went back to bed for a little more lazing around. (We rest anyway.) I lay snuggled in my bed, which I have outfitted luxuriously, and was drowsing and engaging in pleasant reveries about handsome Asian men I have known. These days, when I think about men, I deliberately think about Asians instead of, say, gnarly, homely little white guys whose hair was blonde back in the day when they had some. Asian men are as far away from that as I can get mentally, you know?
Anyway I was curled up under the covers, pleased with the knowledge that I'd have a spotless kitchen to get up to, half-drowsing and half-fantasizing about these gorgeous hunks of Asian masculinity I used to fool around with. They weren't people I could have made a life with, and when after about a year apiece it came to pass that I realized the relationships were doomed, they ended one way or another, by which I mean to imply that things didn't end the Hallmark Card way. Meaning that in those breakups there wasn't much of "You've been so wonderful, a fine and decent human being, a mensch in every way and a veritable tiger in bed, and I'll always cherish the memories we created while we held this delicate butterfly of love between us, we two, but now we must go our separate ways and so I release you happily and with eternal love that we may continue our individual, separate growth, and I wish you and those who will come to be yours the best and the most beautiful always." No, there wasn't much of that in these breakups, which will positively astound those of you who have any memory whatsoever of how I've presented myself in posts here. But also remember, I was smart enough to amputate after a year in both these cases, which probably is still too long, but at least we know that I don't always tarry year after miserable year in hopeless relationships.
Oh, they were such handsome men, these Asians! I loved their skin, their dark eyes, their black hair, their ... Where was I going with this? I had better meet an acceptable male soon. So anyway, I was lying in bed, drowsing and thinking of my Asian lovers, and suddenly I realized that I was immensely happy (and not because the Hallmark Card realization finally had arrived). The feeling of utter contentment didn't last long, at least the consciousness of it didn't because I was more than half asleep, and kept drifting in and out. But man I felt good! The first few moments of a good cocaine high must feel like that. And it was remarkable because it stood out so starkly from most of what I've felt for I don't know how long.
Later in the day, I was out generating some natural endorphins, something I do regularly in a small group of people with whom I have in common an enjoyment of this particular means of generating natural endorphins. (It's something you can do in public and not get arrested in civilized countries, by the way.) My mind was on athletic endurance idle, and all of a sudden I had another very strange feeling, a feeling very foreign to me. It was short and small but intense, as if a microscopic hydrogen bomb had gone off somewhere between my sternum and my solar plexus. I thought, Huh? What is that? That's how odd it seemed; and it was gone almost as soon as it came.
By then I was closer to this side of mental idle, but still not completely compos mentis, and I went probing for this feeling again, but it was nowhere to be found. So I tried to look back and figure out what it was. The closest I could come to it was an image of a very little girl, not in immediate pain, but recovered from some terrible pain, hurting because she'd been hurting, very frightened and traumatized. In my mind's eye, she was very leery, just barely peeking up out of this hole in the ground from under something like a manhole cover. I hadn't picked up a coherent thought from her; she was too young and frightened to think or communicate clearly, but if she had thought or or said something, it would have been along the lines of, Is it over? In my efforts to recapture or at least figure out what I'd felt, I half-conjured that thought and visual image, but they don't describe the feeling very well. It was perhaps 2 seconds' worth of fleeting but very intense relief and a tiny ray of--not quite hope, but a little glimmer of curiosity--about why the noise and chaos have stopped now.
I tried and tried to track down this creature, or the emotion associated with her, but could not. I suppose it makes sense that a small person who's just barely screwed up the courage to take a peek outside, would hide again, especially if she realized that a big person was looking for her. I was intrigued but had run into a wall--figuratively and not literally, I am happy to report--and so I went back to enjoying my natural endorphins and my companions, who, like me, must have been pumping a pretty good quantity of them by that time.
Later in the day I was driving to an errand, just a routine trip alone in the car on a grey day. I was listening to some very good old American music on the radio (latter half of the 19th century, old old ragtime), and suddenly, for the second time today, was suffused with feelings of joy and contentment. The sad part about this is that the very first thing that popped into my mind was, Oh my god, what's wrong with me? This is the second time today! That is the truth; I felt happy--twice in a day!--and immediately began to worry that I'm losing my marbles. And then I realized there's nothing wrong. This, I realized, is what is properly referred to as feeling happy and content.
Q: Tell me about that little girl.
A: 7.1.2-->24.
Q: What's up with feeling happy?
A: 51.1.5-->45
Sounds good to me. But one of these days I'm going to converse with the Yi on the topic of how long and why I've been so miserable that a few good minutes stand out as peak experiences. Perhaps this is the common experience of humanity? If so, it's no wonder that drugs are so popular.
Now go chide Hilary about what happens when she invites a person who typically churns out several thousand words of prose a day, to "keep us posted."