Gossamer Writes

I miss Archimedes's spreadsheets. A lot. I love Archimedes still in some ways; it's just that I love Psyche more, and differently. For all the reasons.

I wouldn't even be worthy of Psyche without first having known Archimedes. There's a justifying beauty in that knowledge, it fills me with gratitude and blots out my shame. It can't even be reduced as I expected to a "whatever path it takes to get to Psyche" motivation.

It's that in addition to all of Psyche's independent merits (which I find to be delightfully incalculable) I see all of the virtues of my previous relationship anew through Psyche's eyes as he experiences the same intangible assets in me.

Perhaps all these qualities were already in me before Archimedes, their foundations at least, but together and often with Archimedes's guidance we skillfully crafted a vast and magnificent estate inside me.

It likely wants some renovations and repairs but it is mine and I find her fucking beautiful, inside and out. So does Psyche.

We could likely both use renovations and repairs; despite that, what we have separately yet equally built cannot be devalued. We are partners, not superiors nor inferiors. Like a great many successful partners our knowledge and abilities are at once chaotically varied and simultaneously balancing; producing a stable compatibility.

We protect each other's weaknesses, we herald each other's virtues, we forgivingly accept each other's flaws, all as we consummately assess and encourage each other's take on this performance called life. We achieve these things through cordial labor and because we trust in the other's abilities and have faith in their intentions.

No one of us is exclusively the teacher and neither of us remains eternally the student. We craft our own hypnotic dance of renaissance symbiosis; like a charmer with their snake capable of switching roles back and forth at will.

Although, neither presence, of the charmer or the snake is at any fixed point a guarantee. All the audience thinks they're sure of is that they've never seen or experienced anything like this before. Yet in a nearly silent internal whisper to themselves they admit that this idea isn't completely novel.

It may be true that they've never seen such a sight before, but, there's something running behind it, maybe flowing under it, and that... That (even if they have no name to give it) they have at least felt it before. Perhaps in a dream? Perhaps in a mostly forgotten childhood memory?

It almost doesn't matter where it's from, because just like the coalesce between the mesmerizing shapeshifting couple in front of them: there's an inherently indestructible truth composed of trust mingled with faith between themselves and this primordial stirring within.

Despite their fear and through the struggle they allow this ancient seed to germinate inside them, and though they are now responsible for its care and development they are no longer alone within themselves.

This is the genesis of the strength they need to request the assistance often required for growth; because protection and guidance of a living thing within and from your own being will often be the driving motivator to achieve goals of heights you never would of dreamt for yourself.

We have titled it evolution, as if all this magic could be reasonably reduced to a single word.

I love that we keep trying though. Alternatively, I propose we don't insist on uniting such a personal and varied phenomena under a single word or even a sentence. In fact, let's strike that and reverse it...

Let us take the experience to them instead of the word. When every last once of us has cultivated our own version of this truth inside, together, requests for such words will burn out like the nub of a candle because we'll all already hold that light inside ourselves. Most importantly WE will no longer feel involuntarily isolated in a populated world; what a beautiful future that could be.

https://youtu.be/l-pF7PFgwzM I think for me and the whole absentee parent thing… life is hectic, always. And at least in my case the fact that my bio dad started another family and was never skilled in deep interpersonal relations is probably the biggest culprit. Along with inherent laziness/selfishness. It was just too much effort (including but not limited to little or none) to be a father to me and my brother.

I spent this past summer with him and my family there, first I’d seen of them in 10 years and certainly since I was a fully formed adult thing. I like most of his personality and his flaws are tolerable. Also, oddly, possibly genetic judging by some of my siblings.

However, I see now asking him to be a father to me, especially at the distance we lived apart was likely only ever a pipe dream. He’s just now learning some interpersonal communication skills like how to consider other points of view, when to maybe not make that funny mildly hurtful joke, etc. You know, maturity stuff. He’s only developed this much from being with my step mother and siblings for essentially my entire life and I can tell it probably felt like pulling teeth at times. My brother’s death is turning a new leaf in him too, an immature leaf that’s trying very hard to reach sunlight but is still mostly in the shade.

The conclusion I came to was he just didn’t have the skills needed to be a father to me and is largely learning them through prolonged repetitive experience not through an inherent want to better himself, I never had a chance.

Like almost every answer I get to the question ‘Why is THIS pain for ME?“ I find it to be minuscule in value compared to the pain it caused, but, so too does the stick of dynamite seem minuscule to the mountain and at least my question has been finally answered so I can better look forward in my life.

I agree, open discourse shouldn't be lost in our attempt to right the wrongs of this world. If we actually communicate and actually listen to each other we get so much more done, even if what we say and hear stings or hurts in some ways that doesn't mean we should stop discussing it.

As always I come back to one of my favorite books, 1984. Everyone focuses on the surveillance, which is horrible, but they typically forget what was explicitly stated as one of that government's greatest tools. The reduction and control of language and by extension thought/discourse.

"You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he said almost sadly... In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning... You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words -- scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone... 'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it."

Don't let them do that to us, let's keep talking about all the things, even if it hurts a bit. The alternative is doubleplusungood for sure.