In the wars...
Nov. 17th, 2001 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deathpixieI've had one of my 'Clumsy Days' yesterday, where basically my subconscious seems determined to inflict damage on myself. I've come out of it with a burn just above my jawline from hot cooking oil (note, do not fling veggies into the wok when making stirfry. Slide them in) and a rather pretty blue bruise on my right knee from when my MTB decided to get onery and flip me onto the wrong side, the side with the foot still attached to the pedal. In the middle of Wodonga's main street. *hides face* That's the downside of SPD shoes and cleats - yes, you don't need to worry about toe clips and you get double the muscle power, being able to pull on the pedals as well as push, but you need good reflexes to detach, and sometimes gravity is the victor. I really need new shoes, as mine are a size too big and wearing out; cleats as well, as they're getting old and worn, but at a couple of hundred dollars, I might see if I can get a bit more wear out of them. Like until I'm working full time.
BRM and I had one of our interesting talks yesterday. He's just finished his course, so he was feeling rather mellow - well, hung-over was a better description! - and we ended up talking about existential philosophy, among other things. About freedom of belief, and how it's difficult to truly have it, as society expects us to conform to a certain degree. About education, and what's expected of teachers, and why it is parents see schools as substitutes for their own parenting. About mental world maps, and a quote from Neil Gaiman's American Gods:
"One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless.
The tale is the map that is the territory.
You must remember this."
Leaving aside the bit about stories, just momentarily, we all carry "maps" of the world inside our heads, built from what we experience, what we learn, what we seek out, what we're told. And BRM and I were talking about how people - no specific people, just people - walk around with large blank expanses on their maps of reality: "Here Be Dragons" areas. Things that they don't want to know, or have been afraid to know, or just couldn't be bothered knowing or honestly have never had the chance to know. And how in order to have as accurate a picture of reality as possible, you need to seek out those areas and explore them. Find the undiscovered countries of your experience.
Sometimes people - again, no specific people, just people - content themselves with one small area, and may have an almost perfect map of that area, surrounded by white space. And their view of the world, and the ways things are, becomes increasingly disconnected from the way things actually are. By holding onto old views, old knowledge, without seeking more or accepting that previous views may be incorrect, you become out of synch with reality. It becomes too difficult to realign them, not without some major mental re-mapping.
This is one of the reasons why I got together with BRM in the first place. He has a way of looking at things that just makes me stop and go "Wow. I never thought of it like that before!" It's why I love talking with people better read and more intelligent than myself, because there's always something new for me to learn, something for me to digest and contemplate and incorporate into my view of the world. It's why I need to read more. ;)
We also talked about the rough patch we were having in June-August, and it was calm and reasonable. He admitted that yes, things were hard for me too. Which is a big step, and a sign he's coming out of the funk he's been in for months - when he's depressed, he's selfish, horribly so. A function of feeling bad - I think I said somewhere on an R&R thread that when we're feeling down, we become self-absorbed, because we're in pain and when a person is in any kind of pain, it's difficult to turn your mind to anything or anyone else. Or something like that - I don't remember it very well. I might go look for it later, since the R&R still has a lot of stuff on it from ages ago.
I'm going out for dinner with mum tonight. Dad's off on some reunion thing, and she's home alone and hiding from her stalker. There's this woman form her golf club who is seriously fixated on her, and who is driving her nuts. Apparently she came around one night this week threatening to kill herself if mum wasn't her best friend any more - she's not dealing well with the prospect of mum going to Western Australia for a month. So we're nicking off down the pub to escape. Mum's problem is she doesn't like conflict and doesn't want to upset anyone, including Leslie. If she bugs me while I'm looking after the place, I'll be telling her where to go in no uncertain terms.
BRM and I had one of our interesting talks yesterday. He's just finished his course, so he was feeling rather mellow - well, hung-over was a better description! - and we ended up talking about existential philosophy, among other things. About freedom of belief, and how it's difficult to truly have it, as society expects us to conform to a certain degree. About education, and what's expected of teachers, and why it is parents see schools as substitutes for their own parenting. About mental world maps, and a quote from Neil Gaiman's American Gods:
"One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless.
The tale is the map that is the territory.
You must remember this."
Leaving aside the bit about stories, just momentarily, we all carry "maps" of the world inside our heads, built from what we experience, what we learn, what we seek out, what we're told. And BRM and I were talking about how people - no specific people, just people - walk around with large blank expanses on their maps of reality: "Here Be Dragons" areas. Things that they don't want to know, or have been afraid to know, or just couldn't be bothered knowing or honestly have never had the chance to know. And how in order to have as accurate a picture of reality as possible, you need to seek out those areas and explore them. Find the undiscovered countries of your experience.
Sometimes people - again, no specific people, just people - content themselves with one small area, and may have an almost perfect map of that area, surrounded by white space. And their view of the world, and the ways things are, becomes increasingly disconnected from the way things actually are. By holding onto old views, old knowledge, without seeking more or accepting that previous views may be incorrect, you become out of synch with reality. It becomes too difficult to realign them, not without some major mental re-mapping.
This is one of the reasons why I got together with BRM in the first place. He has a way of looking at things that just makes me stop and go "Wow. I never thought of it like that before!" It's why I love talking with people better read and more intelligent than myself, because there's always something new for me to learn, something for me to digest and contemplate and incorporate into my view of the world. It's why I need to read more. ;)
We also talked about the rough patch we were having in June-August, and it was calm and reasonable. He admitted that yes, things were hard for me too. Which is a big step, and a sign he's coming out of the funk he's been in for months - when he's depressed, he's selfish, horribly so. A function of feeling bad - I think I said somewhere on an R&R thread that when we're feeling down, we become self-absorbed, because we're in pain and when a person is in any kind of pain, it's difficult to turn your mind to anything or anyone else. Or something like that - I don't remember it very well. I might go look for it later, since the R&R still has a lot of stuff on it from ages ago.
I'm going out for dinner with mum tonight. Dad's off on some reunion thing, and she's home alone and hiding from her stalker. There's this woman form her golf club who is seriously fixated on her, and who is driving her nuts. Apparently she came around one night this week threatening to kill herself if mum wasn't her best friend any more - she's not dealing well with the prospect of mum going to Western Australia for a month. So we're nicking off down the pub to escape. Mum's problem is she doesn't like conflict and doesn't want to upset anyone, including Leslie. If she bugs me while I'm looking after the place, I'll be telling her where to go in no uncertain terms.
