Cynday 20 June 1999

According to the latest Psychology Today, two days are not enough. Mother's Day and Father's Day might have been suitable in the past, but now there are all kinds of families. You can't even count on having just two biological parents any more. Not to mention that the number and gender of the acting parents vary wildly. Me, I come from an old fashioned home, that way. It was pretty obvious that the only thing that was more precious to my parents than each other, were us kids. I came into this after they had some practice, so my bigger brothers may have something to add here, but by my time they treated us like we were some kind of incarnations or something. Like we were supposed to have the Truth within ourselves and just need the simplest of ethical framework. As far as I can remember, my parents never told me what political parties (if any) they voted for. They did not teach us any particular religion, though my father's philosophies occasionally touched on religious topics. We had a Bible in the book shelf, but also Norse mythology, and a small Buddha statue was prominently placed in the kitchen, next to the large clock (fittingly enough, though it would be years before I got the connection). One of my favorite books contained excerpts from the Hindu epos Mahabharata, which I have revisited in recent years. More disturbingly, my parents seem to have gone out of their way to not influence our sexual preferences either. (Either that, or they were too shy to even hug when I was around.) Not that I didn't guess pretty soon how things were hanging, as it were. Even so, I can thank the goats for my basic sex education (though this was not hands-on, only detailed observation). To cut it all short, I liked my parents, and I still do. They are great people with a high spirit, and they would certainly have been my close friends if they had lived somewhat nearby. They don't. They live in this beautiful, remote place surrounded by fjords and mountains and insufferable morons, which is just too bad. I have lots of good and bad memories from the tiny village where I grew up. But the good memories are mainly from me being alone with the streams and the woods and the mountains and the waterfalls, whereas the bad memories are from the people who today are the adult villagers around there. I bet my former schoolmates don't exactly miss me either. If you think I'm arrogant now, you should have seen me as a kid. Then again, sometimes people can change. As a boy, I used to hate my oldest brother with nearly religious passion. But he changed, and so did I. He's also a man I would be proud to have as a friend now, along with the other two who I sort of got along with all the way. But all of them live out west there, in the fog and the deep shadows of the mountains. Whereas I live here, on the easy going sun coast, which fits my body and soul quite well. And I guess we are all pretty much self-contained without each other. I can't honestly say that this is a bad thing, though my girl friends through all these years have shuddered at my "indifference". It may be that some parents need to be missed; but what pride can a decent human take in the misery of his or her offspring? I am, by and large, a happy man. That's a pretty good hint that they must have been doing something right, at least. "And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed but I feel so close to everything that we lost we'll never have to lose it again... ("Tower of Song", still by Leonard Cohen.)

Todays distorted day name spelling is inspired by Cyndi Lauper, whose CD "12 deadly cyns" I have tried in vain to find in the past week, trudging from one record shop to another. I know it exists and approximately how it is spelled and look like, because I saw it last time I visited Supergirl's family. Actually I remember it only for the great "Girls just want to have fun", which I suspect that I could need to remind myself regularly. ... Now, for a really interesting journal, you folks should go read I wasn't built to get up at this time. This 14 year old Englishman is a pretty good proof of the Flynn effect. He's smart, he's addictively funny (and intentionally so) and he sure has a better layout than I. I think he is overdoing the thin strip of text thing, but it is at least better looking than mine on a large monitor. Now I have to experiment to see if I can make my journal more decorative too... ... Stuff that did not make it today for lack of space: The neighbors are moving! Losing my mailing list virginity A virtual neighborhood Rain, rain and the greenhouse effect Soda requiem