Art Attack Central
Fixing stuff, myself included…
Recovery?
My lover once said to me, “it’s not the not drinking part that’s hard, it’s the being sober part”. There’s a ring of truth to that statement; I wish there was not. Yesterday I spent the afternoon with a close friend of mine; I thought about having a drink, but I didn’t. I experienced no difficulty with sobriety while in the presence of my friend.
Well where’s the ring of truth then?
Ahh… the ring of truth lies (notice the juxtaposition) in the loss of the lover’s golden tongue, the ease which one makes the witty comment or smart comeback. Perhaps to the discerning sober eye (I) the comment/comeback is off the mark or slightly slurred, but it is the ease of repartee that I’m referring to, not necessarily the quality of a particular remark.
Where are you going with this?
Recovering versus non-recovering! hats. I think it’s highly likely (statistically speaking) that I’m about to embark on a non-recovering escape/escapade. A small dip in the pool of slightly manic, madcap (hat) behavior.
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Love Affair = Over?
love affair = = ?
If (love affair = program)
x = decipher source;
then y do I get core dump?
Common Programming Errors
Arithmetic underflow = poor choice of variable type
- one of us = not best choice type
- one of us has values = not correct
Off-by-One Loop Errors
- one of us = out of sync
- one of us has invaded loop boundary of other
- loop won’t work with our data combination
if (love < enough || love != love)
love affair = over;
else if (love > enough)
love affair != over;
trodden != loaden;
Source Code Availabe for Downtrodden
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Imposter?
From the
“Amongst the most famous of these was Magdalena de la Cruz (1487-1560), a Franciscan nun of Cordova, who for many years was honoured as a saint. She was believed to have the stigmata and to take no other food than the Holy Eucharist. The Blessed Sacrament was said to fly to her tongue from the hand of the priest who was giving Holy Communion, and it seemed at such moments that she was raised from the ground. The same miraculous levitation took place during her ecstasies at which time also she was radiant with supernatural light. Falling dangerously ill in 1543, Magdalena confessed to a long career of hypocrisy, ascribing most of the marvels to the action of demons by which she was possessed, but maintaining their reality. She was sentenced by the Inquisition, in an auto-da-fé at Cordova, in 1546, to perpetual imprisonment in a convent of her order, and there she is believed to have ended her days most piously amid marks of the sincerest repentance (see Görres, “Mystik”, V, 168-174; Lea, “Chapters from Relig. Hist. of Spain”, 330-335).”
Are you obsessed with stigmata, or what?
No, but it does seem an appropriate place to begin vis a vis imposter. One would have to wonder at which time was Magdalena an imposter. Was it during her ecstasties, was it when the Holy Eucharist was flying to her tongue from the hand of the priest, was it in ascribing most of the marvels to the action of demons or was it ending her days most piously amid marks of the sincerest repentance?
What exactly do you mean by imposter in relation to yourself?
I mean those moments, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years within which I was not completely present and yet, pretended to be fully present, and even perhaps when the pretending was unconscious. I mean those times in which I failed to live entirely in the present unfettered by thoughts of concern for how I might be perceived/received. Living in the present requires being aware of the fact that you’re awake (ie aware of awareness), similarly lucidity in a dream requires being aware of the fact that you are dreaming while you are dreaming.
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Relationship or Romantic Fool?
I read “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” when I was 13. I felt an instant kinship with, not her ladyship or his lordship, but rather with the gardener. Then the identification with the gardener was predicated on the intensity/passion of his feelings as he gazes up at the manor house in the darkness. What fascinates me about the gardener today is his alarm over the loss of his aloneness.
I didn’t have a comfort zone with aloneness until I was about 40; prior to that I was obsessed with seeking passion, be it in the arms of a lover or in the very search itself for love/relationship. Today it is very difficult for me to find a balance between intimacy and independence and between passion and practicality. Is there a relationship here, or is this merely a discourse on inadequacy? If it’s a discourse on inadequacy is it mine alone or do you share some of the responsibility?
Responsibility requires only that I be responsible for what I bring to the table. So what other mischief do I have in my carryon? The same year I read “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, I read some hardcore porn. AT 13! WHERE DID YOU GET IT? I used to mow the lawn for a couple 2 blocks from my house. I had an electric lawn mower. The man and his wife both worked full time; they gave me a key to their house so that I could plug in the mower (back in the old days ordinary folks didn’t have outdoor outlets). Well, there were a number of books lying about, and being the inquisitive child that I was, I plugged in the mower, sat down in an overstuffed chair and started reading. In hindsight I think they purposely left the books where I would find them. Although they never attempted to communicate with me about anything other than the state of their lawn, every week there would be a new book stacked with the rest in the same place.
But, that was ages ago; how does it effect your life now?
On the one hand you have passion, and on the other you have sex, and infrequently you get to have both at the same time and that’s what we call love. So? Well… for me the nature of love will always be “tied up” with longing (ie the gazing gardener), while the nature of sex is “bound” to confound me by it’s ability to exist in isolation from passion/longing.
So what do you mean by a comfort zone with aloneness?
I mean being able to take great pleasure in being alone; I mean feeling fine without input or approval from anyone else. There is a wonderful sense of freedom in living one’s live without a significant other. Friendships are more meaningful when they’re nurtured in a way that seems impossible when your energy is devoted/focused on a love relationship. Yeah, I know I’m not supposed to be capable of having a complete relationship, but I do manage to get involved now and then nevertheless. Enough already! I seem to have run off all over the place this morning.
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So Old So Fast
It’s just one of those mornings; a kind of hold your forehead in the palm of your hand morning. Seems like only yesterday I was running to catch the big yellow bus, playing marbles and dodge ball. Not only am I an old graduate student, I was also an old undergad. I returned to college in 1994 at the age of 46 and recieved my BA. in 1996. Imediately I enrolled in graduate school with grandiose ideas of getting a Phd.
So what happened, howcome you never got one?
Well, I got sidetracked for a while by my interest in computers. My initial introduction to computers came via a graduate course in statistics, which included learning to use a statistical program called SPSS: “Oh my god… I don’t know the difference between storm windows and windows 98″. Futhermore, it was no small thing that math was never my strong point. While struggling to keep up with the statistics, I managed to teach myself how to use the computer. Shortly after I completed all the course work and passed the comps. (thesis still outstanding), a good friend gave me a laptop. Suddenly I was wild about getting up a Web site; that summer of 98′ I taught myself HTML. In the fall I started fooling around with Photoshop. “It’s a Photoshop sky”, or “is it a skyblue sky?” My right brained artist side rushed foward and said, “you go girl, this is what you want to do”, and my left brained Nancy Drew side said, “hey girl how do these programs work, what is behind that curtain?”.
Which one did you choose?
Initially I chose to peer behind the curtain; I enrolled at a local community college in an introductory programing analysis course. Then I went on to take C and C++. I struggled with more hair pulling math (the underlying basis of programing). My father said to me,
“Don’t you remember what they said in the Wizard of Oz? Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” Duh, the lights went on and the right brained artist took her rightful place in the hierarchy of priorities.
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The Day After
It’s a gorgeous day in Baltimore hon. Speaking of hon, recently I had the brilliant idea of grabbing the domain name baltimorehon.com unfortunately it was already taken. Always the genius too late. “Lexicon of Bawlamarese: How to co-moon-icate wiff the natives”. Not exactly what I had in mind, but if you follow the link you’ll find lots of “balmorisms”, and if you know any others you can add them to the list. My thinking was more along the lines of a comic scandal sheet sprinkled with totally inappropriate honerisms.
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