MISSED COMMUNICATION - Tuesday Mar. 1, 2011
today’s Musing written and published from Cranston in south- east Calgary, near the Bow River valley
Morning walk: -29C(wind chill -42)/-20F, coldest in many years – Gusta’s business done with dispatch, her freshly mown and coiffed coat gathered no glance from commuters plonking along, squared tires bluntly crunching on, but breaking no ice . . .
I think Emerson was right; while the truth is beautiful, so are lies we are told as are lies we tell ourselves. In time, blur, impossible to decipher one from another – I wonder, looking back, does it matter quite so much to know for certain which was fact, and which was the illusion? Is the memory any better, the lesson any clearer, in knowing?
I want to open this morning with a quote – Shakespeare is appropriate, though this excerpt of dialogue is out of context, completely unconnected to my subject and feelings - but I like the phrase, especially on this frigid morn: ‘Now is the winter of our discontent . . . and I have CM in mind who will appreciate the usage, and my meaning.
And time passes . . .
Lens of distance comes out to play – makes issues seem smaller than they were, makes bad deeds seem simple infractions, makes unkindness into minor faux pas events – backward glance, does this dance.
I’m not talking specifics – detail is intensely private stuff, for me, and for the Shakespeare fan.
Lesson is deep, important – I can make the point without discussing details as evidence of deeds, the acts, the crimes of making facts distort, contort, to fit our feelings to please ourselves, to please others.
In polite society we regularly say things to please others – tell them what we think they want or ought to hear, rather than telling truths clearly and in a timely fashion – as we navigate our way in choppy waters between hope and despairing, and back again.
My dearest friends and family would, if they knew my details, say I told you so, or you ought to have known . . . but I chose to ignore my instincts, set aside gut-fear and go with feeling good about some things I should never have felt good about, but somehow I need to do that, so I did.
My e-mail, sent a week ago - response to her last go-away farewell-memo. Not to say I brooded, I wondered plenty about what the response, if any, might be.
There was none.
Hearing none, my assumptions went down several paths that led me, yesterday, to make a phone call when I knew there would be no answer - message left, not to provoke discussion, but to inquire ‘how are you?’ – that kind. Response, by e-mail, was kind and informative – downright cordial, newsy – but absent any comment on the e-mail I sent last week . . .
Oh bother, what to do?
I made a call - a chat, a re-send of the missing memo.
Amid that, pondering - if it had really gone missing at all, or if it was simply more convenient for discussion to treat it that way. Message re-sent, chat ended. A few hours later, a kind sweet note, one that sounds like, reads like and feels like truth.
Is it truth, or kindness disguised to make me feel less bad than some perception of how the truth might feel, for me, to receive, or to send?
Figuring things out – issues that confuse or intrigue – for me, combination of daytime deliberation, writing things down and letting my unconscious subconscious carry some workload too. A few months filled with too much of that, particularly around the issue that has so often found its way to this page - woven belt of truths, lies and problem solving – sorting what is real from what the lies are (the un-truths, half-truths and fuzzy truth).
I love this quote from Charles M. Schulz, the cartoonist: sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, ‘where have I gone wrong?’. Then a voice says to me, ‘this is going to take more than one night’
More enlightening than it has been difficult, and it has been difficult, to understand my feelings, to separate with an emotional cleaver those things which are consequences of my words and actions from those which were someone else’s. It took many more nights than Mr. Schulz required – but in the end, the end, the absolute end of something came to be.
The lens of distance, rearward view, a suitable place I suppose – stuck there, in my backside, peering out, looking away, learning a little – resolving to not do that again.
But we do, again, what we’ve done before, don’t we?
How we solve and resolve things – sort things – like rings on a tree that tell the tree-feller how many seasons of growth and drought we survived.
Innocent enough, my rationalizations and actions self-forgivable . . .
Truth-outing mind-game continues, makes me wonder if we could say ‘out with it’ more often, earlier on . . . wondering if that would make anything better, or resolve quicker.
Maybe it is timing, about what we are prepared to hear, prepared to be told . . .
A measure of what we think we can handle, but too often, I think, it is a measure of what someone else thinks, or thought, we could handle . . .
~~~
WINTER BE GONE
Winter winds
don’t quit
when snow piles up
and road ruts
get polished
but it would be
good to see
this winter
abolished.
~~~
Since starting March 21, 2010, I’ve been writing a poem a day for inclusion with this column - sometimes they are connected to the theme du jour, just as often not. Inspiration comes riding in the window on the breeze .... check out the YEAR OF POETRY: archived poetry
~~~
Mark Kolke
314,492M~~
February 28 - TWO BOOK PROJECT - Comments Received
Unfortunately, in the post modern world (or the post post modern world), you will not find a defintion for truth since every person will have their own version of this on any one issue. Finite beings like us need an infinite reference point as the source of truth-without that, your desire to find truth is in vain I am afraid, WB, Regina, SK
February 27 - E-SPLAIN IT TO ME - Comments Received
in the interest of hugs - Hi Mark, I had to smile as I read your two-book truth column, with a heartfelt giggle at VBL's response to your previous column. Picturing your reluctant hug and in the interests of TRUTH, I looked up the meaning of hug. Nowhere did I find a meaning that resembled a respectful 'thanks for your time'. On the other hand Webster's 1913 dictionary has its first meaning as "to cower; to crouch; to curl up." Maybe truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the (be)holder. Thanks for the smile - and a big hug for your time!, VJP, Red Deer Lake, AB
