Captain Obvious Rides Again

[wordweaverlynn]

In the past 24 hours, I've realized two things that had a huge impact on me: great big capital-letter Recognitions of facts I'm going to have to integrate into my daily life, self-image, my worldview.

In both cases, the people with whom I discussed these revelations were not surprised at all. I had just announced with great fanfare that water is wet.

So apparently I'm not all that quick on the uptake. What else have I been missing? Feel free to inform me of the simplest, most glaringly obvious facts. I've apparently been wandering around in a daze the last 47 years or so.

ETA Facts about myself or the world. But I do already know that I'm fat.

Comments

[jb98.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't help if anyone told you, had you really not heard those things before? The ground has to be fertile before the seed sprouts. There's something about perfect timing when things just CLICK. For me anyway, YMMV.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely right. i nneeded to realize them myself.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Things about you, about the world, or both?

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Both, either, anything.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

You say, "But it's okay" with a very recognizable lilt in your voice when it's clearly Not Okay At All.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

"OK" has multiple definitions. That one means, "I can't do anything to change it, but at least it won't kill me."

[firinel.livejournal.com]

Capitalism is not all that it's cracked up to be.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Amen to that.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Not to pry, but, um, what two things? (I suspect this'll be a "can't talk about it yet" occasion, but can't hurt to ask.)

The short form

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

1. My asthma is close to disabling me.
2. The mother I thought I had was a story I told myself, because seeing the reality would have been devastating.

Re: The short form

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

1. Ow.

2. Oh.

Shit.

Ow. One of /those moments/. Which will take untold ages to really uncover all of. I yeeg.

Re: The short form

[gramina.livejournal.com]

Re #2: It may, eventually (though not, I think, right now) be useful also to recognize that you built that story from available parts. It was not the reality, but it was not built from a void. It's more complicated than that :(

Re: The short form

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

Ah. No. 1... I know nada about. I hope recognizing it helps you find solutions, though.

No. 2... well. Yes. You're getting pretty damn close to the core of that onion, aren't you? Congratulations. *wry smile*

My sense, if I may, is that your mother has never been a foundation for you. You've always been a foundation for yourself. Now that you're an adult you can spare time and energy for compassion and tenderness for the little girl who had to raise herself among ogres and wolverines.

I fought looking at my parents in therapy for years. Protected them with every ounce of resistance. I finally trusted the person I'm seeing now to guide me through that. It hurt to knock them off their pedestals. And I beat myself up for doing this at 45, instead of 18 like "most" people do. But now I can look at them through the eyes of a compassionate adult, instead of the eyes of a wounded, worshipful, fearful child. And that's much healthier and safer and saner.

I'm sure it feels like somebody just imploded a grenade inside your heart right now. Yes, that's a huge revelation. And it unmasks just how amazing and strong and resilient you actually have been and are.

*hugs* if you want them.

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

You are compassionate, articulate, intelligent and a walking miracle.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Thou art mortal.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Do I get to be the skeleton at the feast?

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

Sky is blue, grass is green.

But....

[mama-hogswatch.livejournal.com]

But it's NOT. I'm looking outside the window right now and the sky is gray and what grass I can see through the snow is brown.

*Running away giggling*

Re: But....

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

It's winter in the Bay Area when the grass on the hills turnbs *green*. As an Easterner born and bred, I find this profoundly disorienting.

Re: But....

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

What colour is it the rest of the time?

Re: But....

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Blonde. (http://www.allposters.com/-sp/California-Hills-Posters_i383269_.htm)

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Depending on the season . . . yes.

the only truth i know...

[oletheros.livejournal.com]

everyone else is just as insecure as you are.

Re: the only truth i know...

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

That's the truth.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

I love the post subject-- but I love even more my initial misreading: "Captain Oblivious Rides Again." Obliviously yours, et cetera. :D

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

I could be Captain Oblivious. Or the Black Knight gtom Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

"I'm inviiiiiiiincible!"
"You're a loony."

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

*grin* I love you. :)

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

Good people listen for intent. Bad people listen like ambulance-chasing lawyers looking for a loophole.

Words are important, but not having the words *perfect* will not doom you with good people, because they're trying to understand, regardless. Even having the perfect, magic words won't work with someone who's just looking for angles anyway, because they don't really hear you.

I thought I'd point it out, because it's a conversation I've had a lot lately myself.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

That's an amazing insight.

If I may expand it a bit, I've also noticed that frightened people also can become rules-lawyerish oiver word choice. If you're scared and uncertain about what someone is saying to you, if you feel out of control when faced with emotional truths, quibbling over word choice can help distract you (and other people) from the real and painful point.

[curiousalexa.livejournal.com]

I have long believed in the concept of measuring your life with your own ruler, not the ruler of others. What I finally realized is that explaining my choices to others was not a *justification* for my choices, but an attempt to give the listener a sense of scale, or a conversion factor between my ruler and theirs. This has also taught me to do the reverse, and better understand why other people make choices that seem odd or unreasonable to me (e.g. gas guzzlers).

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's cool. I'll have to adopt that one.

[gramina.livejournal.com]

Well, the the simplest, most glaringly obvious facts are often the ones hidden right at the back of your head; makes them harder for you to spot than for the rest of the world :(

So with irismoonlight I say "you are compassionate, articulate, intelligent and a walking miracle."

You are a powerfully creative, insightful woman with an astonishing ability to integrate and synthesize information, feelings, and experiences. You are a perceptive and loving friend.

You have survived profoundly horrible things, and though they have harmed you in ways that break my heart and enrage me, you are still whole. (I'm edging toward some thinking about wholeness and brokenness, but I'm not there yet and this is not the place for it.)

That I have you as part of my life is a miracle in so many ways. You have been a source of grace and transformation no one else could be -- not only in the good times, but when things have been, well, as difficult as they have ever been, which is pretty difficult. (It's relatively easy, I think, if we pay attention, be a source of grace or transformation when things are really good; it's a lot harder if the transformation in question is difficult or frightening or risky. You have stayed with me in, and mediated, those, too.)

Profoundly courageous and compassionate, powerfully loving, intimately connected to your world, with a wide-ranging, creative, integrative mind and heart; you are an exceptional and astonishing woman.

(I'd add that I love you, but I think you've already noticed that. *g*)

[theodicy.livejournal.com]

:sniff:

That comment (and others above it) make me happy.

I too (like Yr Sweetie) find that things which are evident to 99.9% of the pop. elude me until some big moment when I catch up to where everybody else is.

And I add with L: yeah, I know I'm chubby. Duh. :shakes head:

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

I have noticed that you love me. And you may have noticed that I'm flirting with you. I hope so, anyway.

And I love you. Thank you. I treasure your words and your love.

[http://users.livejournal.com/crossfire_/]

The perihelion advance of Mercury is 43 arcseconds per century.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

You're right. I should have known that.

(And this totally cracked me up -- thanks.)

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

Have you heard about this World Wide Web thing?

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

You win the Internet.

Also, this is the point where I officially lost it.

If it's funny the first time, it must be funny the 947th time

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

Also, this is the point where I officially lost it.

Oh, well, you ftp Mosaic or you go to that store with egg in the name and pay $30 for it. Then you install it and begin downloading sound clips from Beavis & Butt-head and (and you'll like this part a lot) finding websites where people have posted PORN.

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

I don't have any revelations for you except maybe that yeah, the ground has to be ready for the seed to take root. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Stuff like that.

and hey, we all have things that we find out after everybody else, and things we knew before everybody else, too.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

I was just recalling the little girl at your birthday party who was puzzled and entranced by an actual *dial* telephone.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Yah. Karen Joy Fowler: "If you don't fill your head with the things everybody knows, it'll fill itself with the things nobody knows."

[kiparui.livejournal.com]

ETA Facts about myself or the world. But I do already know that I'm fat.

you misspelled "phat (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=phat)", homie.




take your time with #2, please. it may end up having subsections.

[sparsityproblem.livejournal.com]

I don't know you well enough to say what else you might have been missing, but (as you probably know) you're not the only one feeling like this right now.

It must be something in the water. (Which, by the way, is wet.)

[gramina.livejournal.com]

Recent conversation suggests that you may not recognize, or possibly remember, that you are a powerful, insightful writer of both fiction and non-fiction.

Powerful, skilled, insightful, provocative, creative, and deft.