Ambiguous Health

 A certain amount of existential ignorance and uncertainty might actually be important, indeed instrumental, to obtaining meaning and to the very reason we are ‘here’ in the first place.
~ OH, A Snail’s Shell, or What I’ve Learned So Far (part 2)

Well, after all the nerves and anxiety they found nothing in my wife’s surgery and did nothing.

In fact, they say she seems in perfect health and is breaking surgery recovery records. There will be follow-ups and whatnot but the answer so far is they don’t know what has been happening or whether it will happen again.

(Sigh.) It’s only been a few hours but so far I’m waffling between the extreme relief of just feeling silly for all the stressing out about what has (so far) turned out to resolve on its own (proving of course that I need to learn to cope better) and the extreme of just feeling like we’re back to square one on whatever problem she still has (and I haven’t managed to worry enough yet).

The ambiguity’s horrible isn’t it? And yet it is also an essential part of living life and experiencing meaning — after all, our lives -and our love- continue on.

Sorts of Feeling Good

My wife is a holistic person, she likes things finished with a bottom line and she avoids processes with vague or non-existent bottom lines. So it doesn’t really bother me too much that she doesn’t really want to spend time reading or talking about my magnum opus until I actually have something finished for her – it’s just who she is. Of course on the other hand I haven’t shared it with anyone else yet either.

Thus yesterday I must have been so excited about my story that she asked about it (I’ve been working on it a lot lately somewhat to the exclusion of posting here). I said Really? You want to know? She said Yes, so I told her the first half of the essential plot structure. It took awhile with a great many ‘why this and that‘ on her part but then she said it was more involved and well thought out than she expected. Well you can’t imagine my ecstasy (though I still feigned shock with a smile that she could have expected something less).

And yet a short time later I realized this ‘feeling good’ moment was of a different sort than, say, when she tells or asks me to do something for her. This moment was about taking pride in my work and enjoying the praise of someone whose opinion and standard I value, whereas when she tells/asks me to do something it’s a semi-electric (and sometimes semi-erotic) intimate sort of ‘feels good’ – the sort in which I feel as though I were an intimate extension of her, the sort in which I get to see her fire.

Ironically, in order to help my wife understand how I feel about these sorts of things, I tried to explain these differences to my holistic wife. Perhaps needless to say – while she may understand intellectually what I am saying, she often finds she doesn’t ‘get’ my experience.

Babysitting

I was in the grocery store today and this happened:

Bagger: Hi, how are you today?

Me: Well thank you.

Bagger: You babysitting the kid today?

Right now I’m really thinking: Babysitting? Who ‘babysits‘ their own kid?
But this would be impolite to say, so instead: You might say that.

Bagger: She sleeping? That’s good, you don’t want her to wake up.

Um, because I am a man and wouldn’t know what to do with a baby?
Me: Well, she will eventually.

Bagger: Ha -ha, ain’t that the truth.

Grrr.
Me: Have a day.

In retrospect, I should have said something, at least a bit more overt if still attempting politeness, about this sort of attitude. In fact I usually do – when people say things like, “so got the kids today?”, I usually say something like, “And every other day too!” But I didn’t today and I regret it – if we don’t speak up, how else will people become aware of their perceptions, prejudices and stereotypes and ever change them?

(Sigh.)

Uxory and Writing

Perhaps like most casual writers I have a big project I am working on – I hesitate to call it a magnum opus - but it’s a project so captivating for me I’ve been working on it off and on for years. Right now it’s ‘on again’, but yes, that’s right, I said  years. And frankly I haven’t made a significant dent in the sheer size I envision for the project either.

Part of the problem is ‘finding time’ rather than ’making time’, part of the problem is the exceedingly high standard I have set for myself (it’s going to be a good story or nothing at all), but I think the most essential part of the problem is I have never felt quite as if I have enough talent and skill to write the vision in my head. It’s about adequacy, good enough symbols – words, structure, style – all conveying feeling and the experience of passion and fire. And though I feel passionate enough in my day to day life and relationship,  I have to wait until I feel the passion that inspires and works for my story before I can write it.

It’s been said that writers of books are of two sorts (mostly): there are those that begin by spending months on a completed outline of their story and mere weeks or even days writing, and then there are those that spend months on the first two pages and mere weeks or even days on the rest of it. Obviously it’s not a new idea and there’s  clearly a great many points between poles in this spectrum, but considering my analytic process and differential predilection it’s probably no surprise that for the most part I tend to be an exceeding example of the former kind – I have written several unsatisfactory outlines that I judge would have made mediocre works.

But then again, if this ‘on again’ time around I am going to try ‘just sitting down and writing’, it wouldn’t be the first attempt, ultimately if anything I sort of see-saw back and forth between outlining and writing. The problem with ‘just writing first’ is that I run out of framework I need to write the story, and the problem with ‘just outline first’ is that I run out of character and passion I need to outline the story.

Such need to strike an adequate dynamic balance between form and passion, between structure and fire, is also I think an essential aspect of an intimate (female led, uxorious, d/s, even vanilla and whatever) relationship – and all apropos of the garden hose analogy, and I think of life in general.

People are People

This morning I was feeling a little under it, not really feeling sick surprisingly as I have been taking care of a sick child for the past three days and now taking care of my wife too as she just came down with the cold too. Actually, and quite unsurprisingly, I was just feeling tired -zonked- as I say, unable to really quite get anything going on the day but the bare necessities.

So it was that when my wife came downstairs she was greeted by a ransacked kitchen, laundry and dining room - and she was not happy. And though to her ‘What happened?’ I tried to explain I was just having a hard time getting on top of things this morning because I was tired, her hearing was probably a bit obscured by the sight of the mess. Now you have to understand my wife takes to clutter and mess like a duck to a dentist – that is she doesn’t, it makes her tense and upset – and I know this, and I usually do a great decent job. No, we didn’t have any ‘drama’, but for a moment I was feeling … frustrated, uncared for, unconsidered, unloved, or perhaps as if she cared more about the house’s relative neatness and cleanliness than my tiredness.

But I got up and cleaned up then of course, for there is no motivation as effective for an uxorious man than seeing his wife’s vivid displeasure. It only took about twenty minutes as it truly looked worse than it was, but during that time I realized a number of things. First, twenty minutes of cleaning isn’t worth feeling anything over, and secondly I remembered how much she has going on right now, how stressed she is, and though yes we’re both stressed – she has a pretty bad cold that’s making her reactions even worse.

So as I cleaned I remembered how much she loved me and I loved her, and I increasingly felt better for getting done what she wanted me to do, so much so I almost began feeling I really should have done a better job so she never had seen the mess in the first place. And just as I lightheartedly began wondering why I didn’t just do what she wanted in the first place, I remembered why, I remembered how tired I was this morning how little sleep I had got the past few nights.

And I lastly realized that we’re just fallible, situation affected, people – that she is who she is and that of course I love her for who she is regardless of whether her reactions and responses are exactly what I might want them to be; that of course I cannot expect her to suddenly be unaffected by all the things she usually is, that when she’s stressed things are exacerbated for her not diminished. And that I am who I am: that of course I’m going to get tired, that of course I’m not going to get everything done and live up to every standard, and that when I don’t manage perfection it doesn’t mean I’m unlovable, or somehow flawed anymore than my natural humanity.

Of course, in reality we’re upset, tense and frustrated with the situation in our lives more than with this particular morning’s circumstance, let alone with each other. And of course since I know we’ll both be here, our lives and our love, when the situation’s gone and the circumstances dealt with, I’d best try acting and interacting towards real solutions to the actual problems rather than reacting because of my oversensitive feelings.