Monday, February 16, 2009

This is my attempt at a speed blog. Coffee is rushing through the system, calling the body to certain biological functions which, if neglected, will demand embarrassment. So how can I write as quickly as possible with the fewest number of mistakes on matters of great importance. I'm sitting at IVY Tech, Rudisill, having finished a remedial class on writing. I wonder if grading all the remediation will have an effect on my writing, on my quality, on style. Would I need remediation or is all education a form of remediation of what we should have learned but didn't or didn't learn when the opportunity arose, or never had the opportunity. If no opportunity, then no learning and hence no remediation. No re- can't go back to what never was; which opens the doors to what will be - ever the hopeful door. Read Jesse's depressing blog on sitting at Panera's watching couples that have fallen out of love, or at least are not gushing over each other (or mooning over each other, as my dad would say-- but mooning has taken on a whole new meaning bringing a very different mental image to mooning over each other). Relationships change, shift, and move. Some couples have little to say because it has all been said before and the pair relax in the comfort of the other without the need to entertain the other with dry wit or jokes or gossip or the rest. Being relaxed and comfortable in another's presence is also a type of communication. A communication of not being put on the spot, or not being required to be anything other than what we are, that is, at the root of what we are when we are in the bathrobe, or less. I have seen this between old people who have to take care of each other. Helping your old, wrinkled, incontinent partner in and out of the tub, off the toilet, wiping their ass, are all forms of communication. To be sure, a CNA could do this, but then it would be done by reason of employment. When I am older, more wrinkled, and not much to look at in the nude (not that I ever was) and in need of tiresome care, how will it be? I have no idea. My dad, at 93, still cares for himself in a very independent way. No one needed to wipe the ass, thank you very much. Will he need it someday? Not for me to say.
A breather. Yesterday, when I was bowling with the family, only the third time I've gone bowling in about 20 years, I had the most remarkable experience. I felt like I wasn't there but was somehow seeing it, feeling it from a distance, that I could have stepped out of time and place and been somewhere else for the moment and then return back and not have been missed. Time had no meaning. Rolling the ball had no meaning. That I could have willed the outcome, somehow. And no, this was not the effect of medications or the like. Have you ever felt that? Someone once said that writers occassionaly percieve such moments, that they are more observer than participant. How does this fit in with the two charts on the blackboard? Could I be both observer and participant at the same time, which would either be some sort of synthesis, or not being either one. Perhaps I'll blog more of this in the next posting. (Posting is a great word, have you studied its roots?)

2 comments:

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  2. Let me attempt this response again. My last attempt had a glaring grammatical error in it, and my pride simply could not let it go.

    I, too, have had an observer/participator experience while bowling. I was seven years of age and had never bowled in my life. My teacher took my class bowling one afternoon as a treat. I bowled an eight, that is, I bowled a total score of eight. Yes, it was very embarrassing.
    Take my current size, decrease it by twenty years, and give me a heavy ball to throw. Get the picture?
    And I have never cared for bowling since. :)

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