genetics...a curse and a blessing? Current mood: anxious Category: Life Genetics. They can be a wonderful and terrible thing. For instance, right now my hands keep going numb. Thank you dad. thank you for that. I come by it honestly but here is another thing...my daughter. my oldest one. she had one of her very first anxiety attacks. something that started for me around her age(nine and a half) when I began to think that each and every plane that flew over head was going to crash down and kill me and my family. each time I heard one, I had to run outside and watch until it disappeared into the distance...and then later when I found out about global warming and how the earth was going to get too hot for us to survive. this plagued me until just about seven years ago when I realised that all I could do to change it would be to learn more and to act out what I learned. so, back to the point. today, she informed me that the polar ice caps were melting and in another five years they would be gone and the sea level would rise to the height of the statue of liberty. what do you say to that? what do you say when you know that she is right? when you know that overpopulation will continue to add to the problem and that overpopulation will have no end? how do you console a precocious little child how has dissolved into tears, complaining that her stomach hurts and that she in no way wants to die at the age of fourteen? tell her it won't happen? tell her it will all be o.k. when it may not? when things as far as I know are never going to one hundred percent be o.k.!? fuck. if anything I hated myself for passing on these tendencies to fret. to know too much. all I could do was hold her and tell her that no matter what, I would try my best to make sure that she would be cared for. she asked one million and one questions about what could be done to reverse this(a positive thing yes) and I had to sit there and field these questions, knowing that in a way, resistance is futile. the ball is rolling. my mothering instinct battling with my intellectual side, with my nihilistic side. fuck fuck fuck. I love them both so bad and have been fretting for the past nine and a half years, knowing that I have brought them into a more than imperfect world and now...now she KNOWS this. she fears this as I always have. what can I tell her to make it right? how do you explain to a child the thing that it took me twenty five years to learn? to explain to her that although life is imperfect, we are here to live and be happy. to live and do our part to make it more beautiful more liveable. sigh. I tried but having the one track mind of a child, she just does not understand. she can only worry. she feels as though she has no control and I made the mistake of telling her that EVERYTHING we do as humans, create greenhouse gasses and that all we can do is minimize our impact in the only ways we know how. by minimizing our energy intake, our consumerism and whatever else. now, I find her watching me like a hawk, asking me if the heat is on and if so, do we really need it? I see this behavior to be akin to my own when I obsessed over the goddamned airplanes. something that was irrational in a way because I could not control it just as her behavior is irrational because she may be far too little to have an impact. I can only hope that this vein of thinking will lead to bigger and better things. that her intensity of thought and understanding will help her if she lives past the age of fourteen...help her to read up, to gain knowledge and spread the word. be active. be conscious. It is all I can really hope for. to raise a child that wants things to better and is willing to work hard to make sure that it happens. and here I will wish for the thing that I have always wished for...to be blind, to be unaware, to expect the best and ignore the possibilty of the worst. but here I will sigh again because as I said before, genetics are a bitch and I came by this intellect honestly and so has she. all we can really do is work through it and do our best to turn it into a positive thing. 9:44 PM 5 Comments (Add Comment) | 4 Kudos Edit Remove

Thursday, November 15, 2007 Living, breathing, understanding Category: Life While living and breathing, my life has taken me through so many emotions. Sadness, happiness, love, hate, desperation, helplessness, elation and more. Throughout it all, I have found myself trying to make sense of it all. Trying to find understanding whether it be of myself, or the world around me. I have gone through at times, blindly breathing, feeling, doing, while at other times I have had moments of clarity, moments where I believe that what I am doing is what I need to be doing to be sane and comfortable. Throughout it all, I have been just trying to gain understanding the only ways I know how. By keeping my eyes open as much as possible, seeing the things around me and finding ways to appreciate them. Recognize them as being part of my fate. Things like going for a walk with my four year old daughter on a brisk fall day, with the leaves turning from yellow to orange to red, the wind blowing the ones ripe for decay all around the little body of my daughter, clad in brand new jeans, embroidered with purple and pink flowers and her purple sweater, the hood pulled up over her little head, pink shoes tripping through the leaves and branches on the cracked sidewalk while watching her grip the new purple umbrella I bought her earlier in the day when the sky had opened up, letting loose a cold wintery rain. While no longer raining, she is intent on having this purple umbrella above her…Things like making a bowl of kettle corn over the stove for both of my girls in the middle of the day, the wind howling around our little house, a fire in the fireplace, crackling and popping every so often as we bump fingers, fighting for the best bits of popcorn, me sitting, silently gazing at their beautiful downturned faces while listening to their chatter, their farfetched stories of princesses and schoolyard drama, my eldest daughter making up theories for everything as she goes along, inadvertently persuading her little sister to believe in the unimaginable…Things like going for a ride in the car when the air turns warm, the smell of grass and soil in the air, all of our windows rolled down, hair blowing, music blaring, looking back in the rearview mirror and watching them dance and sing to themselves, to eachother, the sun shining on their light brown and honey colored hair, everything new, everything simple…things like looking up at the sun shining through the trees, lighting up the fall leaves like fire and knowing that I may one day use that image in a painting or watching the face of a person I love and wanting, more than anything, to capture the shapes of it, the lights and shadows with my hands, paint, and a paintbrush on canvas, memorizing the lines forever…things like making love with another person and knowing that it is something more divine than sex because at that exact moment, I am connected to that person in a way that cannot happen while fully clothed. Feeling as though, through this connection, I am creating something powerful, something magical or even feeling as though through the action of making, giving and receiving love, I am healing, not hurting a part inside myself and my partners self that may be damaged from the past…even things like laying awake at night, thinking and worrying about my daughters lives, about my life. Thinking of things that I cannot change, thinking of things I can and knowing that these moments like all of the others, are important…the dark and the light are both important when trying to gain understanding. I cannot have one without the other. Maybe I know this from keeping my eyes open, my mind alert and my heart warm and yielding…maybe I just know this from age. Turning thirty has changed me in a way, made me more receptive, warmer and more understanding of the life around me. Growing older has made me feel more comfortable inside my own skin, more able to appreciate the beauty of myself and what is around me without squirming around, worried about how I appear or what I am going to do next. So, maybe the conclusion I am coming to is this: breathing is living and living is finding understanding and finding understanding is what makes me feel complete and when I am finally complete, I can die without regret, knowing that I tried to see and understand what was around me as best I could and knowing that it was all worth it because lived, breathed and tried my best to understand the life around me.