update from sparkleup

writing/sawtooth/limerent-object.html

@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@
 (why the sense of duty and control: old-fashioned family of blue-collar coyotes - domestic animals being royalty, remember - pushed hard to lift him up)</p>
 <h3 id="characters">Characters</h3>
 <ul>
-<li>Dee<ul>
+<li>Dee Kimana<ul>
 <li>Coyote guy</li>
 <li>Psychologist</li>
 <li>Raised very religious</li>
@@ -80,6 +80,21 @@
 <p>I think that the best way to put the goal is to use my language skills to journal about emotions so that I have a record. If I could study scripture and study psychology, then surely I can study my own notes and from there, learn and grow to handle my emotions in a more deliberate and constructive fashion, right? Basically, write what I feel and how I react so that next time I can react better.</p>
 <p>All of this, however many hundreds of words, all because I told Jeremy that I think I have a crush on a girl and didn&rsquo;t know what to do about it.</p>
 <p>Ah well, I suppose that this has already been therapeutic, in its own way. I have a task I can set for myself, and, knowing me, all I need to do is let my sense of duty loose on it and we&rsquo;ll see if it bears any fruit in the weeks and months to come.</p>
+<hr />
+<p>I have noticed over the years that we tend to place benches in the strangest of places. I noticed this at seminary, those years ago back in Chicago. The placement of benches ought to be deliberate. There ought to be some sort of goal in putting them where we do. A bench placed in a part with a careful view across the grass, through the trees, down the street would be ideal. You could look at the kits playing in the grass, the trees moving in the breeze, down the bustling street. Instead, we place them facing buildings along sidewalks.</p>
+<p>Or, here at work, we place them facing a parking lot. I know, of course, that this bench is here because it is intended to be a place to wait for someone to come pick you up in our car-ridden town. I <em>know</em> this, and yet this bench feels so fantastically pointless. There is one in front of short-term parking which feels far more apt a place for such a thing, but no, perhaps that was not enough: this one is along the side of the building, facing that overflow portion of the lot that on some days sees no use at all.</p>
+<p>There is this occasional trend along certain places of the Internet, I&rsquo;ve been told, of seeking out so-called liminal places. I think that the term is ill-fitting, as liminality has a very specific meaning. I do not think that many of the places described as liminal that show up on social media and forums on the &lsquo;net are liminal so much as abandoned and vaguely spooky. They are not a place between, they are not a place one transits, not a border. They are simply poorly lit or forgotten.</p>
+<p>The important thing about liminality, though, is not that a place be forgotten and certainly that it not be in any way scary, but that it should slip and slide beneath your interest. Liminality requires some form of passing through, It needs to be a border that you cross or a place that you enter for the sole purpose of exiting. Abandoned shopping malls are not literal. A barn, canted awkwardly to the side with age, standing alone in a field is not liminal.</p>
+<p>A parking lot is liminal. An airport is liminal. A drive-thru is liminal. These are the spaces that exist only to be traversed. They are the spaces where, should you get stuck in them, you will be struck by the unnerving quality of the experience. They are not places that you visit. They are places that, should you visit, you will feel unwelcome because they resist the idea of doing so. They push back at you, in some intangible way, and say: &ldquo;You are not meant to be here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>I am stalling.</p>
+<p>It&rsquo;s perhaps a little strange that I seem to get the most out of journaling during my lunch breaks. To me, it feels as though I ought to be doing something so personal and introspective back at home, rather than sitting out on that awkwardly-placed bench in front of the office in that liminal parking lot, but there is something about the discomfort of that place combined with me already being in the therapeutic mindset that makes this the ideal situation.</p>
+<p>I am stalling, though, because I know that it is easier for me to get caught up in words than to actually do the work at hand. Perhaps I am in the mind of liminality because this idea of liking someone, of wanting to pursue a relationship, is so new to me.</p>
+<p>I have long since acknowledged that, despite my ability to listen actively and to guide patients through therapy, I am insufferable. I do not mean to denigrate myself in this. It is a fact and I am comfortable with my role in life. I am autistic and comfortable with all that comes with that (indeed, it works to my advantage in my professional life as I work primarily with other autistic animals). I have few friends outside of a professional context. I do not enjoy drinking. I am devoutly religious. I suspect, for some whom I met at university and seminary, even at the boarding school before that, that I am out of place for being so &lsquo;low&rsquo; a species in such lofty places as those, for such are the places for the cats and dogs of the world, not a coyote who has, in their mind, pried himself up from the blue-collar professions of his ancestors or some imagined poverty.</p>
+<p>Along with all of this, however, has come with a necessary distance from romance and relationships. This is another thing that I am comfortable with. The celibacy that was in my future at seminary was not a thing that I was in any way uncomfortable with, and when I moved on from that life I saw no reason to change that. I do not enjoy the word &lsquo;single&rsquo;, because that implies something &lsquo;less than&rsquo; in today&rsquo;s society. I am happy alone.</p>
+<p>Occasionally I will pick up the occasional romantic twinge, and when I do, I will cherish it. I will sit with that feeling and enjoy it, and then I will put it up on some shelf within me to be a part of my life, and yet in some way apart from it. It is not unlike praying in that sense: God is always a part of my life, and yet is apart from it. I do not subscribe to many of the modern evangelical takes on religion, wherein god is within you, but something far more conservative and old-fashioned. God is beside me, perhaps. Above me. He is with me, but not within me.</p>
+<p>Another way to look at this is perhaps that these feelings are embers, or the smoldering of paper that has not yet caught fire into a relationship. You can see the faint tint of red crawling along the fibers of the paper, and yes, I suppose that you could blow on it and coax it into something more, but better, for me, to watch it slowly consume the paper, enjoy the beauty of the ember and the delicacy of the papery ash it leaves behind, and then, once it has gone out, acknowledge that it has left me a new person.</p>
+<p>That, however, is not what Kay has done. She has launched herself into my life as a bright spark. It is not the slow crawl of smolder along paper but the bright flash of magnesium caught fire. Unstoppable. Undousable. Inevitable.</p>
+<p>This - this and the fact that that she is named Kay, instilling a sense of synchronicity in my mind, that I be (nick)named Dee - is why I brought her up to Jeremy, this brightly burning light in my life that has suddenly claimed me</p>
             </article>
             <footer>
                 <p>Page generated on 2021-01-17</p>