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Rage and Omens III
So.
The poem (I guess it's a poem) "Barometric Omens" was written in 1994. I just composed it at my desk at work one day. I have no idea what mysterious wellspring in my head spawned it - it's not really like anything else I've ever written. The blank boxes with the arrows were part of the poem from the beginning.
I enclosed it as the front page of a letter to Marc - in 1994 I was up here and he was still in New Orleans. I don't have many examples of letters I've sent; I have lots of letters other people have sent me, but seldom keep copies of my own. I was looking through the few examples I do have, and found the poem.
It seemed like a good thing to post as a harbinger of this entry - an entry I thought I was going to post the next day, but other related issues have intervened.
"Barometric Omens" is about anticipating great change - about signs and portents. The rage I have written about in the last two entries is one portent. Here is another.
A couple of days ago I wrote a long letter to my mother. Typed, I should say. I don't write more than the occasional note in longhand anymore. Just one of the many ways the electronic world has changed me - which was a recurring theme of the letter. The other theme was my gender issues - which I finally explained to my mother in detail. The things I couldn't tell her in October because she was so busy running my sister's wedding. The things I've wanted to tell her for ages now. I don't know how she'll react, but that's not the point.
The point is, the letter was heartfelt, interesting, and well-written ... and after I finished it, I spent ten minutes considering whether to post a copy of it here.
After deciding not to, I realized I was a little surprised with myself for having to consider it. That is, I'm surprised I was tempted to post it here at all. It's a private letter. One of its joys is that it's a private letter. Once it's here, it's no longer a private letter. Yet I put a lot of otherwise "private" material here.
If my mother did read these pages, I reflected (not for the first time), she wouldn't have a problem with the frankness or the content ... but I think she'd be startled at how far I have voluntarily pushed back the curtain on my own life and emotions. My family does not think of me as being an emotionally forthcoming person, to say the least. Some of that is because they've only gotten brief glimpses of me for several years now and I've changed ... but some of it is justified: I'm a lot more demonstrative here than I am in person.
You folks know more about me, these days, than my family does. And that frightens me.
I feel like I've forgotten where the borders are supposed to be ... even though I'm not sure I want borders. I have an exhibitionist streak; I like putting all this information out. I don't ask you to accept it, reject it, or even read it. I just like telling tales, and my best tales are about myself because that's the only character I seem to be able to describe competently. (Sigh.)
I like my online life. I have a lot of friends in this medium, which is a good thing, because I sure wouldn't be getting those friends from face-to-face contact - I don't go anywhere or do anything that's conducive to meeting new people.
But I feel that I may need to step back a little bit and consider whether, for all the positive ways this sharing has affected my personality, if it has any negative aspects as well.
And yet ... and yet ....
As I commented in the previous entry, I need this forum. I have come to depend on it as a release mechanism. If I vent my rage on real live humans, they get angry. If I gripe about all the things I want to gripe about, my real friends assume I am an ungodly grouch. This medium - although, obviously, it also reaches many or most of my real friends - is just anonymous, just indirect enough that the bile can safely be spewed. Sometimes.
I depend on that to keep my good name intact. Because I'm actually a very pleasant person once I get rid of all this other garbage.
Of course, everyone says that, don't they?
I have to find a way to reconcile my dependence on this medium with its dangers. I'm sure there is one. I just don't know what it is.
© Columbine
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