centre of the universe - the dreaming: Happy Snow Day

10/18/2004: "Happy Snow Day" 1) This entry WAS complete, but then I bumped the side 'go back' button on my new mouse and erased everything. That's the second time it's happened to me, and it's starting to piss me off. :plain:

2) I've forgotten my tissues in the car and my lunch banana at home.

3) I had to open a window in the bedroom last night because someone had a really nasty case of the Incredibly Stinky Farts. They were REALLY bad. Bad enough to not only wake me up, but nearly to drive me from the room. I chose to open the window instead. I'll not mention who it was, in order to protect the person's identity.

4) Ever notice that sometimes the Word of the Day sums up most of your life better than you ever could?
Word of the Day for Monday October 18, 2004

maunder \MON-duhr\, intransitive verb:
1. To talk incoherently; to speak in a rambling manner.
2. To wander aimlessly or confusedly.

[T]wo drunken couples... maunder in an all-too-familiar
vein about love.
--Anatole Broyard, [1]New York Times, April 15, 1981

It is a play with melodramatic themes, but García Lorca has
put aside temptation to let it maunder, scream or otherwise
let the emotions take over.
--Richard F. Shepard, "Stage: 'Bernarda Alba' Produced in
Spanish," [2]New York Times, November 23, 1979

As in one of his earlier novels,... Kerr invents a
credibly grim scenario for our future: most of the earth's
inhabitants are infected with a deadly virus and maunder in
fetid cities.
--Charles Flowers, "Blood on the Moon (Really!)," [3]New
York Times, February 14, 1999
_

Maunder is perhaps a dialectal variant of meander (possibly
influenced by wander)

5) When did we all get so grown up? We have a bunch of friends who still lead a bohemian college-style life...they spend a lot of time in the bar, some have part-time jobs, they more or less come and go as they please, and this is fine. But most of our friends have finished school, got married, bought a house, bought a car, had children, got separated, got divorced, remarried, started planning for their retirement, work at "real" jobs, and some have even paid off their student loans. Or some combination of the above. Many of us seem to have "settled down". Some of us have resettled...or, um, unsettled...but that's a part of it too...

When did this happen? Sometime between lounging on my purple velvet bedspread reading books not necessarily because I wanted to but because they were *required* reading, and parking my car in my stall at my office this morning, my life has changed from a daily sitcom to a weekly "drama". Which is still better, I suppose, than it being a pseudo-realistic bug-eating game show....which, come to think of it, is probably a better description of where I've come *from*.

It's more than just the arrival of The Captain, although for me that *was* a catalyst. Even before that, though, I remember the moment when I started thinking about what was to come, and realising that I wanted certain things out of life. It was much more than just angst-filled maundering, more than knowing that you'd go to University...not only because you love learning but because it was simply the next step. It was even more than the realisation that now that you have a $30,000 piece of paper, there should theoretically be something you can do with it. Or because of it. There has to have been a moment, doesn't there, when you can look back at your life and pinpoint the precise moment you were a 'grown up'?

Maybe not. Sure, there are things about my life now that demand more attention, more responsibility. But am I a 'grown up'? According to what I tell The Captain during his long and disturbingly well-thought out arguments about bedtime, bath time, supper time, etc., grown ups get to make the rules, and since I'm a grown up, I get to make the rules. Granted, sometimes that little gem is accompanied by "and the rule is that we have to eat ALL of these cupcakes before Daddy gets home", but more often than not it's about discipline. Aren't grown-ups the ones who dole out the discipline? What's the correlation between being a grown-up and maturity? I know lots of non-grown-ups who are far more mature than "people who should know better". Is it even worth pigeon-holing?

It just surprises me, is all, that suddenly when I look at the people around me, I realise two things. One, I still feel the same way about them and in most ways they've not changed at all. Two, there has been a subtle shift in their lives, in our lives, that has propelled us not toward mediocrity, but toward some kind of 'same-ness' with one another. Some kind of culmination of the searching and confusion that seemed to hang over us for a number of years. It's as if we've emerged from a miasma of wondering and into a new clarity of wonderment.

I guess that's okay, then, if that's what 'growing up' is.

"sigh" "It's decided"

5 Comments

Terry , on Monday, 18th October:

1) I always compose my message in notepad then paste it in later. No lost messages, and more boss friendly. :)
5) Hate to break this to you, but we are well past being grown up. Most of us are already making inroads into 'Getting old'. I recently had a political conversation with a stranger. Afterwards, I asked how they had voted last election. They informed me that they were not old enough to vote. I realized that I had just had what I would consider a profound and intellectual conversation with someone who was not born when I finished high school.

*OLD*

cenobyte , on Monday, 18th October:

Composing messages in notepad just doesn't have the same...as Wode would say... "uuuhhhhhh, I dunno what".

Old does not equal grown up. The Captain wasn't born when you finished high school either, and you can probably have a profound and intellectual conversation with him, too. At least, I can.

W , on Monday, 18th October:

Heh, I love when people quote me. Makes me feel special. And not in the special olympics kind of way, either, which is how it is usually. ;)

You know...even /I/ have been feeling older and older, and I'm much younger than you old folks. ;) Not that long ago, myself and /Carl/ were sitting in the Hose talking about how old we felt.

Maybe it's partially on my part just realizing that just because I skipped out on half of the "not quite child, not quite grown up" fun of University doesn't mean I get to save that time up for later...it just means I skipped past and missed it.

Der Kaptin , on Tuesday, 19th October:

1. My suggestion -- reprogram your mouse so that the unavoidable side button has some other function besides "back". Like maybe "take me to the shopping cart page at Amazon.ca." How'd that work for ya?
2. I was just having this conversation with StarChild the other day. She's in that early adult phase of commenting on how many of her peers have suddenly gotten married, started families, bought houses, etc., etc. Freaking about it of course. I said that it's okay for a while to define yourself as what you're not -- ie, not your parents. Not liking what they like, not doing what they did, etc. But sooner or later you have to ask yourself, okay I know what I'm not, but what *am* I? What am I actually going to *do* as opposed to what I'd rather slit my wrists before I do? That's when things start to change, and that's when you discover that, although there are options, there aren't nearly as many options as you might have thoughts. A certain similarity between courses of action starts to emerge.

There are a lot of people who fit the description of "I may have to get old but I don't have to grow up." They tend to keep maundering through their lives, defining themselves by what they're not.

cenobyte , on Friday, 5th November:

I don't know. I don't much like the idea of growing up. I do like the idea of getting old, though. Age is a badge of honour (she says, realising that probably close to 1/3 of her life can now be referred to in the past tense), and supposedly with age comes wisdom. And I've always longed for wisdom.

But I don't know that people who don't want to grow up define themselves by what they are not. And I don't know that defining oneself by what one is not is necessarily a *bad thing*. And why do we have to define ourselves at all, really?

If I am *forced* to define myself, say, at a jorb interview or for one of those online personals services that make me giggle, I much prefer to describe (whether it's true or not) myself in terms of what I *am*, what I *like*, and what I *do*, rather than the negatives. But that's mostly because one could go on ad nauseum about what one is not.

I'm not a bricklayer. I'm not a boy. I'm not contagious, I'm not wearing nylons. I'm not working for the government. I'm not fond of racism. I'm not married, I'm not engaged, I'm not a senior, I'm not a doctor...I'm starting to sound like Dr. McCoy, though...

"Damnit Jim, I'm a DOCTOR, not an ESCALATOR"

I am NOT many more things than I am, but that still doesn't give you a very good idea of what I *am*.

Sure, you could say, "well, from what you've said, I can gather you're an unwed woman".

Okay, so, that's pretty descriptive...I guess...

Who defines themselves in terms of what they're not?

distractions