Dear Diary – Emotional Canaveral – SeaDate 260808
“The Heart Wants what it Wants. But jumping out of a boat never seems wise.”
Jump to: Shinology | Drama of Eli | Un-Robbery | Vals Brother | Code Monkey | divorce
12p – Up All Night
Client work pinned until Monday, which means I have today and tomorrow to make it sing so I don’t get pinched again come 11:30 a.m.
I was so wound up, it took until after 5 to get sleepy.
Great morning sleeping!
Three hours of texting and phoning. OY VEY!
Someone died. Wife excited on last day of school. Someone having a mental breakdown. Someone wondering how I am. Someone wanting me to go somewhere. Someone worried about how to help someone else.
Eesh. This afternoon feels like emotional Cape Canaveral. I need a bunch of screens up showing the weather and the wants of all these minds.
Shin-ology
Shin sent this last night:
'I got tired of waiting for 'Body keeps the Score' on my library app so I bought cptsd: from surviving to thriving on Amazon Kindle. Only like 10 pages in but it's quite validating to read, I'd be curious to hear what you think if you feel inclined to check it out.
Here is an excerpt that I enjoyed, one of many: “This is a version of the time machine rescue operation that I use with myself as well as with my clients. I tell my inner child that, if time travel is ever possible, I will travel back into the past and put a stop to my parents’ abusiveness. In the course of this I say things like: “I’ll call 911. I’ll call CPS [Child Protective Services] on them. I will grab their arms and pin them behind their backs the second they try to strike you. I will muffle them with a gag so they can’t scream at you or even mumble their criticisms. I’ll put bags over their heads so they can’t frown or glare at you. I’ll send them to bed without dessert. I’ll do anything you want me to do to protect you.”
Also “Once the critic is reduced enough that you can notice increasing periods of your brain being user-friendly, impulses to help and care for yourself naturally begin to arise. As this happens it becomes easier to tell whether you are guiding yourself with love or a whip. When you realize it’s the whip, please try to disarm your critic and treat yourself with the kindness you would extend to any young child who is struggling and having a hard time.”
when i read this at like 230 in the morning, i read it as:
'I bought this book 'Surviving to Thriving on Amazon Kindle' and was very confused that the quotes somehow endorsed self publishing using amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing initiative.
The quotes make a lot of sense when today I read it as 'CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving'
I have to say, I found that first quote about calling CPS on the parents pretty off putting. My hackles went up. Maybe I have a bit of the old Stockholm syndrome... maybe my parents weren't really that bad. But fore sure, I want time-traveler me to do no harm. I'd like him to sit down at the kitchen table in the dining room of the old house, the one with chandelier and the big picture window that looked out over the little patch that was supposed to be a garden. The one where I buried my duckling.
Sit down and tell my parents about the glory of the future. how beautiful and intelligent we'll all grow to be. That everything will be okay. That they don't' need to worry or fear. and that whatever demons they were fighting, they will be gone in time as well.
Turn off the TV. Play games together. Learn to laugh and tell jokes. Teach your children to trust. And learn to trust yourselves.
Poor Shin. Plagued with true genius, but not emotional stability. Sounds like someone else I know.
The Drama of Eli
Then there's Eli. OY!
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Tolstoey
Eli Mercer is an old friend who's been through tremendous crisis. And still is. He just cannot seem to make sense of his life. His first marriage crashed and burned when drugs made them both miserable and she found solace in the bed of another man and he to 'teach her a lesson' went and found 4 beds.
His second. She seemed sweet. I'm sure Eli did too. But reality is everyone is broken in someway, and it sounds like two broken souls mated.
I spent an hour and a half trying to ground him. I welcome you to read the exchange. You know neither of us.
He's in crisis and feels like a victim. if Eli has one defining and unchanged characteristic, it is that he to quickly sees himself victimized. And in truth, he is a victim. He's not making it up. But, he allows himself to be in that position by trying to be kind and generous to the wrong people.
Friends. What can you do but love them. Proverbs 17:17 A true friend shows love at all times And is a brother who is born for times of distress.
Some days, everybody needs something from everybody else.
The Un-Robbery
I have friends who got married in their 60s. I've written of them before. And I have a friend who is an ex-con and not my favorite person. or at least he didn't used to be. (grammar, Jack?)
On their honeymoon, The excon, whom we'll call Stoney, house sat. Sitted? For them.
When they came home. Things were missing. And Stoney was the prime suspect.
Okay, now it gets good.
More to come.
Val's Brother
Another death. He was 79. Not completely out of the blue. But still. She's devastated at the loss and who can blame her. He was her jr by 4 years and she knew him her entire life. I do wish I had a lifelong sibling relationship. Maybe that's why I sought it in her? I truly wanted that closeness, that bond. The rest of it came like a tidal wave. Like that wave in that movie...
I was thinking of 'Deep Impact – 1988 with Tea Leoni. But this Interstellar gif is so great. And the whole time dilation thing applies too.
Eesh, I lost the thread and made it about me. I feel or Val. Her husband said he cried harder than she did.
I've only known her for three years, but she has become very dear to me. I love her direct nature, not crass or unkind, but just no words minced. And she is VERY praising of my journal work.
I need to go see them and learn a little more about the brother. Maybe now is a good time for a visit.
I SHOULD NOT BE THIS EXCITED!
About HTML and Markdown language. The longer I work here, the more techincal I get. I really like writing these long pointless diaries. I don't have to keep stopping to publish articles. Thought I think I will pull from these for standalone pieces.
BUT: it' gets tiresome navigating these 9000 pixel long pages.
ENTER: in-page navigation. I'm pretty good with Markdown language at this point and it's one of my favorite things about write.as. It's what makes bold things bola and post photos and all kinds of stuff. Simple but powerful.
Some stuff though, you NEED html. And that's what I got here. All these buttons to subheads and going back to the top, simple, elegant html. That I wrote!
I are so smert!
Here's a screenshot since typing this stuff results in things you see differently. That text that say a id-“top”></a – that's what makes the top button work.
SUPERCOOL! And no one cares. Coders, as writers should remember, no one loves words as much as they do.
Yes, Jack Keeper think he may be closet code monkey.
His code not “functional” or “elegant” What do Code Monkey think?
Code Monkey like Fritos Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew Code Monkey very simple man With big warm fuzzy secret heart: Code Monkey like you
Divorciversary — Day 60
It came.
It saw.
It kicked their ass.
Usually, when two people get divorced, it’s because they can’t stand to be around one another any longer.
But sometimes there are two souls who can’t stay away from each other, and divorce becomes a surrogate for walled gardens.
Tall walls. Walls that even sunlight cannot penetrate. No sound. No scent. Only the idea of one another can travel from one garden to the other.
Like drops of blood only the wounded can see, those ideas stain the landscape, blinding to almost everything except what once almost was.
'Hate what is bad', they said. 'Think of the children', they said. 'Love good', they said. And they did. Hated bad, thought of others, loved good. They did the work. But the thing that was unspoken was more powerful than two minds or hearts.
In spite of it all. They managed to keep the course. To be courageous. Not because of wisdom, but because of love.
Love was and is their guiding principle. Love is what now makes them strangers though they may know one another almost better than any other human being.
It is both choice and requirement.
In the case of these two, they served a higher purpose. A calling. A salvation.
And the choice was this:
A diminished self, and being right.
Or a full self, and being fully wrong in the eyes of their God. And breaking worlds.
You’d think this would be an easy choice.
But it would only be easy for those without hearts. With out real love.
For Wyst and Wlfw, today is their hurdle. Their hump.
In two and a half years, they couldn’t manage to go more than sixty days without a whisper of life passing between them.
There will be many more, no doubt.
But maybe they’ve finally turned that corner where their roads diverge.
No yellow wood.
No path less traveled.
Just different directions.
Or perhaps parallel.
But in between is that garden wall.
And for all intents and purposes, no matter how painful, distracting, or empty the absence feels, it is an impossible scenario.
Doomed from the start.
So why is it that human hearts yearn for the things they can never have?
Especially when they are already supplied with so much?
Maybe Bob was right.
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.
Raise a glass with me, won’t you?
To the Buttercup and Dread Pirate Roberts.
Good night!
Well, faithful readers! It has been a good, busy week. But this Keeper is tired and in want of sleep. I suppose The Un-Robbery story will have to wait a day or two. Don't worry, it isn't going anywhere.
Good night and good luck!
Love and salutations from this indelible station to yours.
Home | About | Full of Stars | Contact | HeartCartography
“May your seas be wide enough for wonder, your harbor always waiting, and your light never fail when another soul is searching.” – The Lantern Keeper