Welcome
"They put me off at the wrong stop when I was born." (Doug Schaff)
Adults, and especially children, because the adults make effort take them to be there, actually like this stuff? Or are they just supposed to and are gullible? So instead of being self-shaping self-accountable self-individuating persons, they are just people?
As a child I was free to obey my parents and to obey my teachers, too. I was free to be coerced to get haircutted slternate Saturday mornings. I was free to have to do "my" homework. I was free to be awed by Broadway (above). I was free to not have a clue about what was between my two legs except that I had to urinate occasionally. I was free to be ignorant that "high culture" existed, from Dufay to Duchamp, from The Bauhaus to Baccarat. I was free to have to take piano lessons practicing Thompson's method and "Anchors away my boys" and also the violin and the viola lessons too.
Well, I was free sometimes: When John F. Kennedy was assassinated and everybody ran to watch it on a television in the school Chapel early that afternoon, apparently they were all so absorbed in the thing that they did not notice I had stayed behind in the now otherwise empty math classroom, looking at the blackborad and the concrete block walls. Nobody coerced me that day to go to Chapel with everybody else, the way they always coerced me to go to their "cheer rallies" for their varsity tackle football and lacrosse teams. I never passed up an opportunity to "slip through the cracks", although you, my reader, may guess that they were few and rarely game changers.
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As I have written elsewhere, my mother ws an idiot savant artist, or at lest adept at freehand drawing and othre artistic activities with no training. Yes, we had a standard issue Glitzmas tree each Zmastime. But while the neighbors were all competl=ng to see who could have the gaudiest multi-color electric lights all over the outside of their houses and shrubs, including electric candelabras (right) in the windows , my mother placed only a single "candle" in each window with a clear bulb in it, shining crystal light. And, again as else werewhere said, she had to make each of these bulbs herself by scraping the paint off colored bulbs because in the 1950s they did not sell clear bulb or if they did she did not know where to get them. Scraping the paint off the bulbs was long, tedious work for her.
So maybe I inherited my "Miesian" ("Less is more, and "God is in the details") esthetic esnsibility form my mother? I cretainly did not inherit her artistic ability which, on the other hand, she did not gain much from in or for herself, alas.
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As evidence that I don't want more, I have less than a dozen piece of potter form 40 to 50 year ago. I do not want mor eof thm. I continue to enjoy them each day. I do no want more of anyhting: I want enough of it and for each item to be of sh=uch quality that I will desire ot use it. That's what I want mor eof: More joy from ech thing I have to do with in my daily living, and to hve a simple life so I can savor each one in depth each time I use it. If I had a thousand piecs of pottery how could I savor them all? Savoring something takes time: it takes leisurs: it can't be rushed, and it can't be cluttered. But all too oten I have not had enough, including having at birth having the end of my penis taken away from me and then each two week having the hair on my head taken away from me. So in that sense too, I do want more: More of waht was mine but was taken away from me. OK, I did want more: more, starting with more enlightened parents end teachers and more joy in living. One suggestion for school:
"Kids retain 5 percent of what they hear and 10 percent of what they read but 80 percent of what they do and 90 percent of what they teach." (Robert Ballard)
How selfish can a child be: to want to be a teacher istead of a pupil? They were concerned about my social adjustmemt? What better way for me to socially adjust than to help younger kids learn (that's not they wanted: they wanted to diminish me to what other kids were: like them. And I also wanted more, or rather I should have but couldn't because I was so massively ignoranced about everthing except knowing I did not want to suffer more. They should have shown me there were things I might want to live for. I wasn't greedy because I didn't know there was anything worth wanting, except to not suffer more, more of and more from: them.
 Unfortunate for themself, the person who lacks one; unfortunate for others, the person that is one. Don't be an a**hole! |
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