i met dan while i was running the art show at fiddler's green. (actually, i met him at breakfast at fg, but then we were about to go set up art show. despite being kinda skinny, he's good for hefting things. just in case you were wondering.)
he writes not just travelogues of his life on line, but actual essays about things he's done and how he feels about them.
[happily ever forward] 05 This is what I want.
this one almost made me cry. i think why isn't everyone like this? why doesn't everyone understand about the tradeoff between independence and intimacy and that you don't really get both at once?
I was the most independent person I’ve ever known; I walked away from entire classes of friends with nary a look back or a fleeting nostalgia, not out of maliciousness but simply because it was no longer convenient for me to hang around with them.
And when I found someone with whom I could connect, with whom I could give up my independent ‘I’ for a bound ‘we’, I jumped at the chance. And that has been my salvation. I could have died so many times over, and ultimately would have, had I not finally found what I was looking for on all those trains and from the tops of all those high-risers: dependent belonging.
i don't actually want to clone dan; for one thing i've already dated a tall skinny blond dan and dating another would be weird. for another, in pictures his kids are wearing catholic t-shirts, and i suspect not in a post-modern hip ironic sort of way, which would be difficult. but reading this makes me wistful.
1 Comments:
I'm flattered by your post. A friend has been asking me for advice on marriage and when you know you're ready and the like recently, so I've been thinking a bit about this subject again.
I think selfishness has become more socially acceptable. Everyone has to be An Individual. You're not supposed to Hold Anyone Back. Wanting someone you love to spend time with you is Bad Selfish; loving someone and yet insisting on never forming any attachments with them -- or going through the motions of, say, marriage but diluting the meaning until there's nothing left -- is Liberated Selfish.
One of the letters in Salon today (or maybe previously this week, I hadn't checked bloglines recently) contained the line (paraphrasing) "Feminism means a woman can never be criticized for her choices." WTF?! I mean, I'm sure the person misspoke and doesn't mean that literally, but putting it that way says something. This is indicative of a larger trend in our society to eschew criticizing others and demand that others not Impose Their Views on us. There is no protected class off limits to criticism of their imbecility. If I see someone throwing knives in the air and then standing underneath them looking up as they fall I'm going to verify that they are an experience juggler and, if not, politely convey the point that this seems like a bad idea. It's their body, sure, but what about compassion for strangers and the villiage idiots?
I don't know where I was going with this anymore. Thinking about people bringing strife into their marriages out of IMHO erroneous notions of freedom and individuality gets me upset. (Clearly. ^_^)
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