Vocational Callings

Lydgate is right; or rather, George Eliot is right in writing, from Lydgate's POV, about one's calling to a certain line of work. Lydgate sees knowledge for what it is: "wordy ignorance" that can be mastered with study. He's never been a good student because he hasn't found a particular calling. When he takes down that "dusty row of volumes with grey-paper backs and dingy labels" and discovers, for the first time, that blood enters the heart through valves, he is struck by an ocean of unexplored information. He is struck by the beach. He didn't even know there was a beach beyond the wood of his schooldaze youth. He wandered beyond the wood one day, and through the grey-paper sky he saw a beach, and beyond the dusty row of sand he saw the water, and now he puts his foot in the water and feels the movement of an entire ocean, and beyond that, distant shores and the moon tugging the water and the forces of the universe that are too large for anyone to comprehend while stuck in a wood. That is the discovery of potential. That is a calling.

Accomplishments?

I realized that I've done a lot of things on Ktin's life list. I don't think I would ever make a life list. Cataloguing my desires and ticking them off as completed is not appealing to me; plus, I don't think I can be quantifiable about what I want and when I consider something "finished." The idea that I've accomplished things that are on someone else's life list is a little strange. But that's the situation we have at hand.

Depending on how strict your methods are to determine an item "completed," I can cross off nineteen from Ktin's list, out of 61. With utter confidence and no ambiguity, I can cross off twelve. Ktin herself has completed only fifteen.

In the coming time I will comment on my completion of Ktin's life list.

Bearing confinement

Sometimes I really feel like I just can't bear to go outside, or bear to be inside. The thought of encountering the same old places and people with their ideas of who I am is cramping. I believe that to a great extent we are whatever it is others perceive us to be. I cannot bear it.

My experience of being confined conflicts with the self-imposed nature of my confinement. I am confined a mist of unhappiness. But is that true? Does the mist itself confine me, or is it just my inability to overcome that mist? By this I mean, is there 'really' a mist? And by the way, when does a mist become a miasma? Of course I 'could' go out, I could face the world--or at least face Chelsea--the doormen of my building, at least--the walkers and wanderers in this gallery village--the cupcake eaters and stroller-pushers--the other dogs--the other dogs' owners.

Today it seemed 'beautiful' outside, so I went out with the dog and did enjoy a short walk. I wanted to be out more, but I had technological work to do. Ultimately I failed to reconcile necessary computer time with being in nature. Thus I stayed in and kind of dallied about the computer, wandered about my house, ate a truffle, talked to my mom, began reading a book. Unbearable.

Here we are.

O Prosaic Life!

Put a teabag in a cup, waited for the water to boil.

Bulletproof cold fractured

thoughts, movements.

Time took for moving across the kitchen

a peek in the fridge, but

nothing new, but

dripping water from the melting ice. The power was off.

Octave-traipsing children’s wails from downstairs

(unclear whether pain or pleasure)

and concurrently

their zipline’s Doppler vrrrrr

and crescent steam noise from the now boiling water.

Something about this feels sadness,

something about this feels mortal town.

Now a toddler’s crow squawk. Now a crow. Now tea.

(Feb 2010)