Slow Wednesday

But ever so nice.

Reading Michio Kaku's "Einstein's Cosmos". As a biography, it sucks. The holes are obvious and the writer is way too kind. As a overview for the uninitiated in Physics, it's wonderful. I'm actually reading it for the second time, as I finished it in a day. By far the most engrossing read I've had since I came to Kuwait.

Went to the beach, off Arabian Gulf road, next to Pizza Hut. I used to go to a small place in Salwa, but since the weather got warm it's been harbouring either ticks or jumping spiders the size of US quarter dollars. Once was all that took. I didn't stick around to count legs.

I took book, water, towel, myself down to a more open, sunny part of the beach and got a little burned while I was reading. Some guy crawled onto a rock overhang and started looking at me, but I started scratching out physics experiments in the sand and he lost interest.

The Sweetest Man Onna Planet, alas, is no longer. Oh, he's alive, and now openly appreciating the delights of his capacious and obtuse armful, righteously defending his sexual proclivities against all the more svelte (read, narrow minded) world. However, like most of humanity, he isn't quite what he seems. Just managed to hide it a little more successfully from others for a little longer. On Friday it started raining puzzle pieces: by the end of the storm the picture was looking like the third panel of "The Garden of Earthly Delights".(Google it if you want the detail. Hieronymous Bosch)

I got a bit of news so overpowering, so absolutely damning to any future interaction with him (while answering so many lingering questions), that I cut the relationship. Most thoroughly.

********

During this journey to shut off the screaming "This Isn't Right" siren to the left of my kidney, I've been accused of some pretty cool stuff. Being an (evil) man getter ( I LOVED that, kept imagining some guy at Pride cross dressed as Dorothy, lisping as he flogged me with a cooked spaghetti noodle), being anti-social, being a coward, running away, being sick. Oh, yeah, and "No Self Esteem".


















I could refute all of those individually, but it would give more to it than the giggle they earned. So I will address the core issue that I was presented with, which is "You Don't Have A Choice" and "How Dare You Pick?"

Of course I have a choice. I'm a grownup! I choose the people in my life, I choose who stays there and who goes. Of course I pick- that's because I'm picky. Push comes to shove, I vote with my feet. Vote myself off the island- I've been known to vote myself off the island, roll up some rocks and start my own, and vote myself off that one too. This could be mistaken for running away. But running away implies that I've left the scene or a relationship without attempting to help or fix the situation. Which I'm addicted to doing- I'm a teacher. "Let's find a better way" is in purple crayon on the inside of my eyelids.

What it doesn't address is the second party, not willing to change.

After you've seen the Big Light a couple of times, after you've held your Grandmother's hand as she dies and watched other people in this steady march into the afterlife, it changes you. You get to appreciating the 3mm of skull between your Self and the big cold world. Snuggle up under that dura mater with some cocoa- this life is pretty fragile and painfully short.

Not only do I have a choice, I don't have time to make the same mistakes even twice. That would include including people in my life who somehow doubt I am the best judge of my own happiness.

I think I was above the tide line when I drew some of those physics sketches in the sand. I'm going to go back tomorrow and keep working.