Tag Archives: Communication

Repeat after Me: I Like You. I Love You.

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Digital illo from a graphite drawing: Love Letter #14Maybe it’s the approach of the fourteenth of February that does it, but I seem to hear relationship talk everywhere I go these days. Maybe it’s because the university (where my husband teaches, conducts, and works alongside singers and musicians of every level both as students and fellow College of Music employees) is in the midst of vetting and hiring a wave of new musicians and administrators to fill in the blanks as faculty and staff move to other positions or retire. Maybe it’s simply because I’m always attuned to what works and what doesn’t, as a person whose relationships shape my life in every way. Very nearly all of them for the better, thankfully!

In any event, whether St. Valentine is listening in or not, it strikes me that there are a huge number of three-little-word combinations that make relationships tick. Some, sadly, tick like bombs about to detonate. Those that tick along like a well-oiled machine tend to avoid the trios of words that begin and end with “I” and “you” but have negatives in the middle, even if that’s what the parties are feeling is most realistic at the moment. “I hate you” or any variant thereof has little hope of communicating anything other than that the speaker is not equipped to reason out of a problem, and whether that arises from sheer, stubborn, stupid self-centeredness or from lack of experience and skills, it would be wise for any of us to attempt to learn and use the necessary tools for genuine two-way communication. The risk of not doing so is far higher than the implosion of that one relationship, though surely that alone should be reason enough to try. Every being with whom we share oxygen in our finite little lives has the power to bring richness and beauty to our existence, or to crush our very ability to see and experience such things.

I know that’s a mighty far-reaching claim, but think about it: every successful interaction or failure on your part colors not only your mood of the moment or day but your ability to rise up on the next ready for joy or expecting disaster. You, in turn, reflect this attitude on those others around you, and while that poison or elixir-of-happiness is rippling away from you in concentric, if eccentric, rings, it is passed along in ever-increasing circles that will always find their way back in one sense or another. Some name this Karma, some Luck, some Destiny, and some, The Golden Rule. But if you can’t pull up your socks and look trouble in the eye and take pity on it with a rational yet heartfelt conversation or ten, you’ve not earned your right to complain about it.

Rational yet heartfelt, I say.

It does no one any good to have a weepy, foot-shuffling, embarrassed, or even joyfully conciliatory moment of rapprochement, no matter how deeply felt, if it isn’t given clear thought and the foundation for future prevention of recurrence. It certainly won’t fix any damage to plan it all out and chart the full course of the détente if it’s insincere or only marginally acceptable to one or more parties to the agreement. If your heart’s not in it, take the time to figure out why—preferably together—and fix the underlying problems before settling the current dustup.

An old but tried-and-true way of saying what one can’t seem to convey coherently in the heat of an argument or when just overwhelmed with emotions is to write everything you’re thinking and feeling down, set it aside for a short period (preferably overnight), and come back to review it. Clarify, edit, and make it say as honestly and fully as possible how you’re feeling and why you think that’s so. Consider whether your partner—at work, home, or play—would be able to understand your view of things better if that essay or letter were in front of him or her. Have you presented your thoughts as calmly and factually as possible, no matter how emotional the content? Did you state things with fair ownership, making sure that it’s transparent to anyone that these are your feelings and interpretations of the situation and that you take responsibility for them? Can you speak without assuming that all of the blame lies either outside or inside yourself, but realizing that perhaps both parties might need to concede a little in order to have a meeting of the minds? Do you admit that you might not even meet in the middle all of the time, sometimes needing to be the one who concedes more ground and others, being met more than halfway? Are you obsessed with being right or 100% satisfied, or can you allow that someone else with a wholly different feeling or goal might be equally entitled to those different emotions, tastes, or wishes? If you can add those recognitions to the ‘document’ before you, why not do it.

Then read again. Is this something that, if shared in humility and a genuine desire to find common ground, could become the basis for a kinder, more thoughtful and productive conversation? Maybe you’ll even want to share it with your counterpart, but unless you promise yourself never to do so as an attack on your partner’s integrity, personal sense of  worth, and human value, think first about how you’d feel on the receiving end. Isn’t that the point, anyway? To find a way to understand how your relations feel and what you’d want if you were in their shoes? If it isn’t, then I’d venture that it’s not a real relationship but the desire to make someone meet your needs and wishes. A person seen as a toy or tool for your convenience and pleasure is not a relationship, whether it’s pragmatic or romantic to you or, no, you’re actually absolutely lacking in empathy.

You probably wouldn’t even be reading this if that last were true. The only exception I can imagine is if you’re interested in developing empathy, or mimicking it, and frankly, either of those beats going without, in my estimation.

So what is the real goal in relationships? I would say that it’s mutual benefit. What are the possible benefits? Endless. In a work relationship—office, school, community, organization—it’s the ability to be more productive as a result of combining complementary skills and knowledge or merely by virtue of doubling or further increasing the work force. Yet more: it’s also the ability to grow and succeed in the business at hand because the combined companionship and efficiency of a strong, smoothly working team allows more creative and meaningful thinking as well as better energy for the moment.

In friendship and love, I tend to think the goals needn’t be all that different. If romance or lust is the only commonality, for a minuscule few that might be enough, but for most of us it’s a relatively small part of the daily equation. Temperate, even affectionate, converse is a fine place to start and end. If our words are considered for their impact on the recipients, the respect for their beliefs and feelings, needs and wishes, they will not only effect a positive response but can reinforce the alliance and mutual admiration. It doesn’t matter if the language if flowery and poetic, or if the thoughts seem original.

What matters is that you are willing to say, consistently and regularly, some positive form of “I _____ you” to your partner, with modesty, commitment, honesty, patience, and kindness. What does your partner want from you? Most likely, the same basic things you want from your partner: respect, liking, sympathy, empathy, care for one’s well-being. I like you. I admire your intelligence, your beauty inside and out, your accomplishments. I respect your ideas, your hopes and dreams. I am sorry for your sorrows, even the ones that I can’t fathom because they aren’t obviously situational. I recognize that your pain and joy are real, and that I am a part of them. I had my feelings hurt, but I forgive you, and I crave your forgiveness in return when I’ve been thoughtless or foolish, too. I want to protect you from whatever you fear. I hope that you will always be confident in my faith in our partnership and that what I do will show my desire to make your life better. I value your opinion and will ask for it when I’m contemplating a decision. It affects us both! If all of that isn’t crystal-clear, I hope that you will always feel welcome to tell me your needs and desires and to ask me about mine and respond positively to them. I love you.

And whenever you can summon the courage to do so, say it out loud. Trust me, if it’s true it never gets dull. I like you. I love you. I wish you well in all things. I am thankful that you and I are partners in this. Life is good, isn’t it.

The Truth is…

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Photo: We All Have Stories to Tell 2I am 100% honest and 90% transparent on my blog. But I write a lot of fiction, and I’ve been known to edit or doctor my work like crazy. I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive. Maybe it’s because the intent is never to mislead and deceive, only to get you thinking (differently, perhaps) or entertain you. Maybe it’s because my own thinking is a rare, if not unique, blend of optimism, idealism, pragmatism, logic, guesswork, paranoia, fear, distrust, problem-solving, hope, and magic realism. Maybe it’s only because I’m a big enough fool to believe that I’m being honest and transparent.

Maybe, though, it’s at least a reasonable assessment because I operate with the belief that anyone who reads my posts is clever or intuitive or discerning enough to tell when I’m inventing characters and storylines, when I’m being deeply sarcastic, when I’m illustrating for comical effect, and when I’m trying to be a straightforward documentarian. Even when I’m making up ludicrous fairytales and spouting jocularities while recording my own little adventures and misadventures, I trust my readers to imagine with me the underlying bits of fact, to spot the universal truths and throw out the chaff of willy-nilly silliness. Foolish? Oh, quite possibly. But I prefer to think I’m just cutting everybody the same slack I deserve, the assumption that we’re not adversaries trying to subvert or enslave or otherwise ruin each other but rather fellow travelers and potential compatriots on life’s wandering way.

By the same token, I expect others to grant me grace when I speak my views about the good and the bad in the world, about what I think are healthy and reasonable approaches to understanding and accepting differences and where I think it important to draw a line and say, I can’t accept that idea or action as having any positive or non-harmful purpose in a world populated with imperfect and fragile humanity. Anyone who can’t allow my opinion to go un-insulted is entirely free to leave the room. Press EXIT and don’t look back! But I haven’t had anyone feel the need to do so in a rude way, and that’s the blogging world I find worth operating in; when I go to sites and blogs, to Facebook pages or zines or any other sort of forum, whether it’s one that invites the sharing of ideas and conversations or it’s strictly a pulpit for one person’s views, I am glad to be free to come and go as I please and, if the topic is one that in any way displeases or bores or offends me, to quietly depart and leave the rhetoric to those engaged in it.

On the other hand, I know that there are many (including friends and loved ones) whose thinking and whose opinions and beliefs are so dramatically different from mine that I find it difficult to refrain from civil comments yet I hesitate to leave what I think are slanderous or libelous statements, patent falsehoods, or dangerously misinformed “Facts” and “Truths” standing without challenge, feeling as though I’m slinking off ignominiously and leaving a ticking bomb in the middle of a train station by not offering a clear counter-statement to it. It is not, however, in my nature to enter into debate, no matter how civil. I find it very hard to form and articulate my ideas in a way that I find satisfactory, and am easily cowed into silence by bluster or bullying from opposing viewpoints, so I nearly always tend to “let the Wookiee win” rather than engage in what I’m almost always certain will be not only a losing proposition as a discussion but ultimately, demoralizing for me. Mostly, I’m jaded by past attempts into sensing that those whose beliefs are both loudly and firmly held have no interest in hearing my point of view, let alone considering it as having possible merit.

I was struck by this yet again recently when I encountered a long string of posts from a casual acquaintance who took boldly opinionated stances on several different issues of politics, religion, and social policy that he not only conflated into all being essentially one large conspiracy of evil, crime-backed, world-destroying intent that just happened to, as far as I could see, implicate me personally because the nefarious network he was outing as so hateful included (by name) many people and organizations that I am convinced have quite different, if any, involvement in the acts and policies of which he accused them, and in most cases, act on and endorse things that I find hopeful, helpful, healthy, and humane. But I didn’t think there was the remotest chance he would be anything but dismissive and angry if I were to express the least of my views there. And I was equally sure that he would be hurt, mystified, and convinced that I am not only cozened by the evil empire he hates but probably a brainwashed agent of their horrible intentions of world domination and destruction. So I sit and suck my paws sadly and feel sorry that such divisive attitudes can just bulldoze me like a runaway tank.

It cheers me more than you might guess to return to my friendlier neighborhood here, to be able to speak my mind and show my little pictures where if anybody disagrees, they just share what interests them to share and move on. Where if they question my veracity or accuracy, they ask questions and/or offer useful corrections kindly and without reproach or personal attack. Yes, I make up all kinds of stuff and tell stories that have sometimes have more whoppers in them than any single Burger King franchise. But I never try to hide whether I’m talking sincerely or pulling anyone’s leg for entertainment.

Yes, I edit virtually every photo I post at least a little. But the very act of taking a photo is an editorial process: the photographer chooses what her audience sees, how much of it she sees, from what point of view, and so forth, before ever fiddling with the picture for further artistic or story-driven reasons. And further, in the instances when I’m not making digitally doctored artworks out of the photos for what I believe are fairly obvious illustrations rather than factual expressions, any alterations I do make are attempts to help the photos show what I saw and experienced rather than merely what my camera is capable of capturing and showing, at least given my paltry technical skills with it.

So I stick by my claim: I’m honest and transparent here. But it is my truth, my sense of clarity and my perception of reality that I’m sharing here. I know that nothing I say or do here will change the minds of any who disagree, nor will my posts save any little part of the world. If they save someone from a bad mood for a little while, that’s pretty good. If they somehow manage to make someone who does disagree with me think about what I might think or why, that’s pretty good even though I know my chances of changing a mind are negligible if any. And of course, I could be wrong. If all my posts do is allow me a dash of release while I exercise my creativity and try to suss out my own point of view a shade more clearly, that’s not such a bad thing either. If you’re still here keeping me company when the post is over, now, that is a fine thing indeed. And that’s no lie.Photo: We All Have Stories to Tell 1

Keep the Lines Open

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In a general sense, I know life is better and easier when the lines of communication remain open and flow freely in both directions. Recent notes from friends and family who have been visited by disasters—natural or otherwise—remind me of how spectacularly crucial the communication becomes in moments of crisis. The mere words “it’s okay” have virtual magic powers in those instances when we know that something big is happening and we can’t be there to offer help or consolation. I have mostly been incredibly fortunate in this regard, rarely hearing of terrible goings-on in progress without being able to get regular reports from my connexions in their midst, but like everyone, I have had enough moments of that intense fear and anxiety arising out of ‘dead air‘ to know what high value is in keeping the flow of information steady.

The latest round of wind- and snowstorms in various parts of my loved ones’ worlds is an instant review of those times when, amid a winter howler or while driving through flooded terrain or hunkered down in a good-sized earthquake, I had no easy access to a telephone or (if they were yet a household item) computer. A perfect example from my own memory is one clear winter Saturday when I was working around the house and the winds began picking up significantly. I hadn’t watched the weather forecast and was unaware that any storm was incoming, only realizing over a matter of a couple of hours that the gusts had grown to a point where I was hearing the towering evergreens and maples close to the house creak and branches snap, and could look out the back windows and see Douglas-firs dancing like hula dancers. But nothing major had broken when I looked outside. I was so preoccupied with the impressive action and the whistling and moaning noises of the trees that it startled me into an electric jump when the phone rang.Photo: Storm Clouds

I trotted into the back bedroom to grab the phone where I could sit at bedside and watch the wind’s power at play through the window while reassuring my sister, who had called from a bit farther north to see if everything down our way was safe since the reports of the storm had in fact preceded it northward. I was cheerily reporting on the show and the snug and intact condition of house and inhabitants when I saw a six-by-four-foot section of the back fence uproot twenty feet behind the house and sail like a kite right through the plate glass window. Thankfully, the shards of flying glass went in the direction of the fence, which in turn was not aimed directly at me, so as soon as the crash and shatter quieted I could speak into the receiver that was still gripped in my hand and assure my sister that I was quite all right, tell her what had happened, and promise to call back after the window was closed off again. Because, of course, with that wind, the rain was close behind.

The instance was fortuitous in many ways, not least of which was that my mother arrived on the scene mere moments later, and that we had pieces of plywood in the garage large enough to cover the whole big window with just two hunks. We dutifully covered the new opening with plastic sheeting, screwed plywood panels over it to close, and put up a bit more sealed plastic to hold off the remaining elements, and managed, if I remember right, to beat all but the first sprinkles of the downpour. A good seal was, we knew, important, since in our region there were not only vast swaths of evergreens to knock over or prune limb by limb onto roofs and through windows but many of them were Douglas-firs, a shallow rooted variety that is not hard to fell full length if the wind catches it just right. And in such windstorms in the area, many do go down. Growing up in a family of carpenters, I knew full well that even if we could reach one of the relatives and set up repairs earlier than other folk, their calendars would be jammed for days or weeks after a storm like this one.Photo: Kicking up a Storm

The first order of business was, of course, to call my sister back and tell her that not only were we all safe but the house was closed up tightly again, the bedroom carpet vacuumed about six times over to get all of the glass out of it, the fence section dismantled and relocated outdoors, a temporary barrier put up where it had been so that the neighbors’ horses couldn’t just walk over for an unsupervised visit, and that the wind was already abating, leaving mostly rain in its wake. She, in turn, called the other sisters to pass along the news. No one else was ‘visited’ by anything untoward in that storm, and we all lived happily ever after. And though it was a challenge to reach my uncle’s construction company and get a repair appointment, we even managed that before the day was done. Of course, having closed up the broken window sufficiently, we did have to get in line behind people without roofs, with trees lying lengthwise through their bedrooms, and the like, as was only fair. For them, I could only hope that they hadn’t also been harmed themselves—and could still call their loved ones to report on their safety.

FutuRetro

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One of the things I so love about travel and touring is getting a much more powerful sense of history; standing in and on the places where events and lives long past have happened, whether grand or insignificant, utterly changes my understanding of those people and occurrences. My first trip overseas, that Grand Tour I was so privileged to take in college with my older sister, was an awakening I never expected. I hoped the trip would be a cure for my sophomore blues, and indeed it was, beyond anything I could have planned or dreamt before, but more than that I was startled by how connected I felt to history.

The drizzly and cold autumn day when we visited Canterbury Cathedral was atmospheric enough in its way, but I remember standing on stone steps worn into a soft bowl by the thousands of footsteps that had passed over them in the centuries of its existence, looking up into a palely gold ray from a lamp, seeing the motes of dust whirling in it, and feeling that time itself was floating down around me in delicate pieces, that the spirit of every person who had ever set foot on that same smooth hollow in the stone was present there with me in that very moment. It was almost as though I could hear their voices and see the scenes of the past play out in the faint gloom around me, all overlapping and yet perfectly present. I felt my own place in the whole of the human timeline in an entirely different way than I ever expected, tinier than ever, yet surprisingly more concrete and tangible.

This was reinforced later in the same journey many times, as we passed through or visited (not necessarily in this order) England, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland and stood in the very footprints of many a person, going down the winding passages and cobbled side-streets that had seen multitudes of significant moments long since fled. As this was the first time I visited Norway, the rooting ground of my ancestors from every branch of my family tree, it is no surprise in retrospect that many of those potent realizations came to me in that place—but as usual, hindsight is ever so much clearer than was my youthful wisdom in those days. It was moving, more meaningful than I can express, to get to know the relatives in Norway with whom my family had maintained contact: my maternal grandfather’s sisters and brother-in-law, nieces and nephew. These were days before cheap telephonic long distance, let alone email and internet communiqués, so we had only briefly even met most of these people when they visited America once in my younger years, yet they not only took us in as visitors, Tante Anna and Onkel Alf kept my sister and me with them for a full month and took us to see the family’s two longtime farms, the graves where many of our ancestors were sleeping underfoot. This was incredibly touching, a genealogical history lesson, but the more so because it was taught by the eldest of our remaining family there.

What moved me the most, in fact, was when on arriving in Oslo at our mother’s cousin’s home before we even came down south to be with his parents, we explored the great city a little on our own during the days, while he was at work and his wife and children off having their own day of adventures. It was all so humbling and so magical to feel for the first time that I understood a tiny bit more of my own family lineage and how our people fit into the larger world. We did visit many of the obligatory and famous tourist sites, knowing that there was no direct link to our ancestors, only cultural ones. So I was quite stunned when we visited the Viking Ship Museum and, standing before these ancient vessels, I was absolutely electrified with a sense of shared history coursing through my veins. My forebears were undoubtedly humble subsistence farmers, not the bold and violent and adventurous Viking strain we know through film and television, never mind through the great Sagas—but I felt for the first time something connecting me to those long-gone people all the same.
Photo: Enter the Time Machine

By now I have traveled a fair amount more. I have been on this planet more than twice as long, and I think I might even be a little bit wiser through my experiences in that life than I was back then. But I approach every narrow stone passageway, every weathered door, every window with its rippling antique panes presenting everything that’s beyond them like a warped post-impressionist fiction of itself, I expect to learn something not only about what is there in front of me and around me, but what is inside me. And I know that I will learn something, too, about how I fit into that larger, and ever so mysterious, world if I am wise and patient and alert enough to notice it. So much has gone by. So much remains ahead, yet unknown.

Confounded Conversationalists

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For all of the talking that we humanoids do, we certainly get very little actual Stuff resolved. Our individual biases and filters make it far too easy to hear things with a skew that makes every verbal interaction less of a conversation and more of a convoluted Baroque dance performance. It’s not just that I often realize, after having haggled at length over any given topic with anybody from my husband on outward to complete strangers, that we are in fact sharing the same view, but stating it so differently that we might as well be talking entirely different languages. It’s also not easily brushed off as a problem specific to age, sex, political or religious affiliations, educational status, culture or any of those other Issues we get hung up on all the time; those can play into the ‘failure to communicate‘ plenty, to be sure, but I think there might be a little something broken or at least unfinished in us that makes us almost preternaturally unable to fully and clearly communicate with each other on a consistent basis.

Photo montage: Grizzolar Talk

Does my commentary seem especially grisly to you, or do you just automatically give it the cold shoulder?

We can do it. If we simply couldn’t, not ever, why then we wouldn’t know the difference. So it’s silly of us not to spend at least as much energy on learning to communicate with each other better as we do on miscommunicating or simply failing to even try. I am past-master at garbling what I meant to say, or saying things in such a way that everybody else on the planet hears something different from what I thought I was expressing—I’ve long since outed myself for having that particular foot-in-mouth gift. I guess that means I had better clean out my ears, open my heart, get my brains in better order, and let other, more skillful communicators do the talking more often, and just sit back and listen and learn. Though of course there’s still the possibility that I’m hearing it fine yet completely misinterpreting the information. It goes that way a lot in my particular part of the planet.

The Strangest Kind of Strangers on a Train

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The old tale of complete strangers meeting in transit, discovering they have identical problems, and “solving” the problems by trading crimes to eliminate the people they see as the root of their unhappiness, makes for a striking mystery drama, in fiction. Ask Patricia Highsmith and Alfred Hitchcock fans! But I was reminded recently that we give too little credit to our commonalities as a positive solution to our problems, and end up missing crucial opportunities as a result.

The filmic version takes as its thesis that the two strangers who meet can find not other, or at least no better, solution to the problem of having bad relationships with inconveniently incompatible people than to murder them, and by ‘exchanging’ murders with each other they hope to escape detection by each having no apparent connection to, or a motive for killing, the other’s nemesis.

While this makes for startling and even compelling imagined mystery, it’s horrific if imagined in real terms. Yet we do similar things all the time in this world, don’t we? Because I tend to agree with a particular point of view in general, say, a specific philosophy or political party’s policies, or my country’s traditions, does that mean it’s wise or humane or practical or generous to follow along without question, no matter what my group, party or nation says and does? We mortals are remarkably good at noticing and magnifying our differences, as genuine and large as they may be. But we’re frighteningly weak, in opposing measure, when it comes to recognizing, focusing on, and building upon our true kinship. This, I believe, easily outweighs in both quantity and importance, our separating characteristics. Digital illustration from a photo: Opening Doors

The recent train outing in Sweden that reminded me so pointedly of this also confirmed my belief that it’s an area where youth is wiser than experience. In a railcar where a young father, not a local or a native speaker of the language, was keeping his fifteen-month-old daughter occupied and contented during the trip by helping her practice her tipsy walking, she made her way with his help to where another family, also foreign but not of the same culture as father and daughter, was sitting together. That group was of two adult sisters and their four or five school-age children. The toddler was naturally attracted to the friendly and spirited older children, and as soon as they saw her, they too were enchanted. What followed was perhaps twenty minutes of delighted interaction between them all, with occasional balance aid from Papa and photo-taking by the Mamas. And barely a word was spoken, much less understood by any of the participants, during the entire episode.

The greatest among the many beauties of this endearing one-act was that the conversation essentially began, continued and ended with the kids reaching toward one another with open hands, waving and gesturing and generally putting on an elaborate pantomime together, and above all, giggling and chortling with peals and squeals of ecstatic laughter.

Needless to say, all of us adults in the railcar grinned, giggled, chortled and otherwise became happy kids right along with them. Resistance was an impossibility and a pointless attempt, at that. And isn’t that an excellent lesson for all? Adults are too busy being territorial and fearful and downright feral to remember that the open hand of welcome and sharing is as quickly reciprocated as any gesture, and a smile of greeting and acceptance is contagious beyond any language, age, or cultural barriers. We can nurse our terrors of the unknown as supposed adults, or we can choose to laugh together like children.Digital illustration from a photo: As If in a Mirror

A Whispering Medium

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Silverpoint is relatively rarely seen nowadays, but it remains a delicate medium for drawing. Putting a point of real silver onto gessoed paper allows the same kind of fine detail and fragility to be expressed that are characteristic of harder graphite pencils’ work. The effect is of pale and careful imagery, a wisp of smoke, a mist, a whisper.Drawing: Silverpoint Apples

There’s an appealing air of the arcane to a medium that’s old and seldom used nowadays, and silverpoint qualifies on both counts. It’s also effective, as I found in my little experiments, on a black background to create gently ghostly drawings, but as ghosts seem wont to do, has a tendency to disappear at the slightest whiff of air, since oxidation darkens silver and it becomes less and less visible against the dark ground. Of course, that very ephemeral quality might be a further attraction, an encouragement to see the medium as a passing fancy best appreciated ‘fresh’ and gone in the blink of an eye.

Drawing: Silverpoint Blueberries

This is, after all, an age in which change comes at an ever-increasing speed and in growing quantities, and we become accustomed to nearly everything having the shelf life of a mayfly at best. We adapt, we move on. Yet we crave the sense of permanence and connection, so here I am marking in graphite over the top of the silverpoint as it fades, or scanning the images to enhance the contrast while it can still be seen. And while I still love the sense of tactile attachment and involvement that writing longhand, pencil on paper, gives me even when I’m up to my elbows in graphite dust, not to mention hoping that the neural connections such physical action reinforces better than keyboard manipulations will stay with me longer somehow, what do I do with my writings? Transcribe the scribbles to the electronic medium by sitting at my keyboard afterward anyway.

So passes our world; we labor with new tools to speed things up, revisit and relish the old methodology and tools to slow down and remember, and then run back to catch up with the new again. We, too, are ephemeral as faint images, as ghosts, and we feel our mortality even as we strive to make our marks on the world while passing through it. Our tiny voices and messages may be lost in the ether forever, and that, almost at the instant of their making, but the urge to tell our tales remains. Our little silver trails will fade, but we will have moved on elsewhere as well.

Did that Sound Insincere?

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My family thrives on sarcasm, satire, and silliness, with a tiny dash of the snarky for good measure. It’s in the genetic pattern, and I can’t remember a time or age when we weren’t all generally a bunch of smarty-pants, irreverent goofs around home. I can’t even remember the first time that I began to realize that not everybody speaks that language. Some people think it too flippant (or possibly, blasphemous, at times), and some simply and plainly see the entire world in a very literal light. I can certainly understand how, to them, my family’s way of communicating would be mystifying and, very probably, make us seem really dimwitted or alien, or both. I don’t mind. It’s most likely true, about me, anyway.

Digital illustration: Did that Sound Insincere to You?

There are times, however, when I have well and truly put my foot in it. And I wish that I either could have read the situation better or had simply paid better attention. Sometimes it’s not nice to be flippant or jokey or snarky, or even to say the direct opposite of what I mean merely to lighten the mood or put someone at ease. Such stuff can go very wrong in an instant if I fail to notice that the party on the receiving end doesn’t converse in that language, or doesn’t appreciate what I think of as its lightheartedness.

But to be honest, most of the time I just think it’s their loss.

With one particular exception: I do feel especially ridiculous when I’ve been consistently playful and perhaps outlandish in my communications with a person and I want to get serious for a moment, especially when I want to say something complimentary. Did it now sound like I was insulting my friend because I was uncharacteristically nice and kindly? If I think it humorous to be droll and dry and sarcastic, maybe I’ve gotten too far from being nice! What’s a poor fool to do? Most likely, fall back on my old ways and hope for the best. At least I’ve done marvelously well in my life at surrounding myself with people who are almost superhuman in interpreting my chatter with generous and accepting ears and open minds, so I haven’t yet been banished from polite society despite my shortcomings.

And if you’re one of the many who have thus given me a pass, I thank you deeply. No, I really, really do mean that!

Well, Blow Me Down!

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Digital illustration: Blow Me Down!The old expression in my title here—close cousin of ‘you could knock me over with a feather‘—is a colloquialism for great surprise. It’s also, was so many colloquial phrases are, comically colorful and exaggerated. Hyperbole and humor grow out of genuine life experiences and events. They are anchored in recognizably real sensations and situations as much as in silly imagination.

After all, when in shock, don’t I feel my knees suddenly go uncomfortably loose and slack, and go all light-headed as though not only my hat but the whole top of my head might just fly off at the slightest whiff of a breeze?

The appeal of the idiomatic phrase, regional quirks of language, colloquial expressions and other ‘decorative’ forms of description is that they can often communicate far more about the situation than mere facts can do. They share more of our personality and character and our own experience of the moment than the dry recitation of what can be scientifically charted could ever be able to convey. And they amuse and entertain, which gives much more impact to any statement than simple and bald recitation, and what has such verve is more likely to stick in the memory as well.

Also, it’s kind of hard to make a little illustrative sketch that conveys the astonishment with which an unforeseen hat-snatching or similar surprise nearly so well as one that says, Well, Blow Me Down! If you know what I mean.

Ah, Youth!

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oil painting, digitizedPerspective–it’s so much a matter of perspective when we assess the situation, isn’t it. My sister’s younger son once had a moment of imbalance and tripped, not quite falling but giving the smallest yelp of surprise as he righted himself. His brother, two years his senior, rolled his eyes and sighed ever so indulgently, ‘Ah, Youth!’

Big brother was four years old.

There’s a lot of value in considering others’ point of view, not least of all when it happens, in the literal sense, to be at the same level as one’s own knees, or the top of the kitchen table. The whole world is remarkably different from such an angle. People treat us differently, expect different things from us, more often require time and patience and wisdom to interpret our words and ideas and actions.

We assume, quite rightly, that the young require this sort of accommodation and flexibility in our conversations and interactions. How much more so, then, should we be willing to see the universe more clearly through another’s eyes if we can consider him equal to us in age, experience, or status. We are all children in other people’s worlds, when it comes right down to it, barely able to see over their windowsills or fence-tops, hardly understanding a word of their language even when the speak, it seems our own. We’re none of us so truly far past two years old, apparently.