Symbol Adequacy and Accuracy

As part of my continuing series on common themes, today’s theme is:

Symbol Adequacy and Symbol Accuracy:
These two are closely related as both involve the concept of ‘good enough’ and ‘not good enough’. If a symbol were akin to an orienteering sign, accuracy deals with a symbol’s definitional ‘heading’ and direction on the compass, but adequacy deals with a symbol’s degree or ‘distance’ to be traveled. Together they form a ‘functionality vector’, e.g. plain heart shaped paper in a homemade lunch may be an accurate direction for a functional love symbol, but some sort of decoration denoting effort and passion might be needful for a functionally adequate love symbol as well.

The fascinating thing about adequacy and accuracy is we can ‘feel’ -sense- when a symbol is accurate and adequate enough for the expression we want – such a symbol ‘feels right’. I think this sensation is due to a comparative (often automatically, unconsciously) with other interior symbols either similar in context or content.

For instance, most people recognize it is easier to determine one or two things that are inadequate or inaccurate long before determining what is accurate and adequate, as surely picking one (1) wrong direction when there are 359 other wrong directions but only one right direction is easy. It is picking that one right compass direction out of all the other 359 other wrong directions that is difficult.

The key bit of process is figuring why the first wrong directions are wrong: “this symbol’s meaning-direction is too much like this other meaning-direction which I already use for something else”. Then using that incorrect symbol knowledge to pick a slightly better ‘more right’ direction, picking increasingly better directions until we achieve a functionality of symbol for our purpose (context) that is ultimately based on previous interior symbols’ definitions and ranges.

And that ‘feels right-ness’ of symbol comes when we realize the next pick of a slightly ‘better’ direction is not worth our effort and resource of self - the symbol direction we have is accurate and ‘right’ enough. Likewise for symbol adequacy although usually once direction is selected well enough, adequacy’s degree of distance is far easier to select.

Feeling Her Fire

When I give control
it’s as if she were having
her way with me – love.

~

Yes, I like feeling
controlled and bossed around but
only by the one.

~

Feeling her fire,
my deep desire, controlled
by her, her fire.

~

In (re)reading  what I have written here to date, I realized some poetry I posted not only never got their fair day of explication, but some poems were actually well worth (re)examination. Today’s poems [035 haiku (when I give)] were written all on the same day in the order presented.

When I give control
it’s as if she were having
her way with me – love.

As with other semi-kinky symbols (obedience or female led), the essence of my experience of ‘control’ is ’feeling’ her passion and her fire in a compact (“for you is for me“) love symbol   apprehended by my interior mental framework without conscious awareness or volition. Although I write ’when I give’ control here, in actuality it is not until I feel as though my wife were exercising that control in some way, to some extent, that the ‘control circuit’ is tripped (as it were) and I compactly recieve (as opposed to say thinkingly, differentiate, search or look for) the semi-electric shock of high-gear, passionate love.

Yes, I like feeling
controlled and bossed around but
only by the one.

It isn’t the experience of a control power dynamic itself that I enjoy, but rather the ’love’ meaning it has for me in our love symbol negotiation, and as a non-atrophied or metastasized symbol in the context of our relationship, I am quite certain with my wife is the only time the symbol is functional for my interior mental framework.

Feeling her fire,
my deep desire, controlled
by her, her fire.

I am beginning to realize that in so many ways I miss the power and fullness of the compact experience by needless differentiation. I wrote this –about her fire– a full three and half weeks before I had my ‘fire epiphany‘, an epiphany that in retrospect seems more like a mere moment of clarity in a sea of obtusity. No less here it is, thankfully here and simple: it is my passion and desire to feel her passion, her fire, that essential part of her that makes her alive and who she is.

On the other hand, I readily admit it is hard to tell if I mightn’t be more controlled by my passion and desire to feel her than controlled by her passion and fire. (And why is it that when I write of such things -even in parallel grammer structure- she has a fire whareas I do not?)

The rest of my thoughts on that day I think serve to further illustrate how frustrated I was feeling about how inadequate my needless differentiation prediliction was at finding the symbols to fully express my passionate love experience. I’m trying to comfort myself in that perhaps the differentiation I did during those three and a half weeks were necessary to find the value in the adequacy of the symbols I already had (an idea which I think also suggests a far more interesting, interactive, ’both-and’ sort of ‘puzzle-pieced evaluation’ answer to the retrospective meaning versus immediate experiential meaning discussion).

And I would cast myself in her fire, could I only find it. Where is it? How can I get there? Does anyone have directions? Are there directions? Are directions even necessary? What must I do?

I feel the overwhelming need to simplify my existence (again) – get back to basics. The edges of my interior spaces have gotten far too myriad and complex to keep up with the seemingly exponential factors and variables. Simply put, I think I feel a little ‘burnt out’.

I feel I have learned and now know so much about who I am as a person and how I can be (more) me and more satisfied in life and love that perhaps I need to let my life and love catch up to what I know. Simply put, my brains outrun my hands. But my hands move so frustratingly slow.

Perhaps I just feel a little less than equal to the living of (my) life right now (as hectic as it feels it has become).

I need ‘more me’ to go around – but can’t have less of her.