What the boys are up to today....

Every time I log on I browse through the main Yahoo headlines and then move on. I rarely click on any of the news links. For me, it's a bit like checking through the kitchen window to see what the boys are up to, whether they are chasing the cat, killing each other over a shovel, or pissing into my rain barrel. It's always sort of the same stuff.

Painfully Plain Pleasures

Theorists disagree about the number and quality of our basic emotions. Some list as many as eleven (Arnold), while others reduce their number to only four or five.

One study (Parrot 2001) lists six primary emotions, including love, joy, surprise, anger sadness, and fear which lead on to a longer list of secondary emotions such as longing, pride and exasperation, which again connect to an even larger list of tertiary emotions (for a complete listing go to changingminds.com).

I like to keep with Marrow' approach who limited the list to two basic emotions, pain and pleasure. However, I would like to qualify this by adding that both pleasure and pain often are merely anticipated. Whatever secondary or tertiary emotions may be connected to them, more often than not they are not based on the actual experience but rather on an perceived or anticipated experience.

Pain or the anticipation of pain is, of course, directly linked to our feeling of security and how we estimate our chances of survival.

Belonging to a group, being accepted and valued by its members, for instance, plays a very important role in our human evolution. This is true especially for women, who due to their vulnerability as physically generally weaker and reproductively more involved sex, have been (and in many environments still are) very dependent on protection through others.

According to this approach, anticipated pain, this underlying feeling of insecurity, can bring on all kinds of emotions, including those usually not linked to pain as for instance in the Stockholm Syndrom (love for an abductor). And, by the same token, it can help explain why in abusive relationships there often is much talk about love.

As to my own feeling this morning, they are definitely leaning more towards the side of pain. And yet, a vague but nevertheless powerful feeling of loneliness earlier today has been somewhat eleviated by a brisk morning walk across the fields with a few friendly faces along the way.

About that Apple

Zoe just left to go to bed. For the last two hours we have sat on the sofa by the window, watching the Midsummer sky change from an orangy pink to a many layered purple, and talked.

The topic eventually shifted to religion. Surprisingly, while deeply agnostic, I suddenly heard myself praise the power of images from the Old Testament. Images like that of the Tree of Knowledge continue to give me goosebumps. It neatly anchors our perpetual and yet futile search for truth.

A funny thing happened...

Susan, my dear friend back in Costa Rica, is quite attached to the word “funny” - especially when it relates to the many unforseen events that life keeps shoving her way, you know, all that stuff that happens while one is busy making other plans...

It seems that having kids exponentially contributes to the amount of “stuff” that can happen any given moment. From little things like scraped knees and barfing pets to bigger stuff such as broken hearts and teeth all the way to the really big crap such as messed up relationships and empty coffres and then, of course, the general horror scenarios of sickness and inevitable death.

And while we usually keep a tight lid on the last category, it tends to linger quite effectively in the back of our minds to make us just a that bit more pathetic when dealing with the lesser upsets.

In fact, having kids and being responsible for them 24/7 is one big lesson in mind control.

So, when dealing with Addy’s Downs Syndrome and a non-supportive con ex, “funny” is probably a healthy way of putting it.

I love you, woman. Hang in there!

Twenty-three, twenty-two, twenty-one

As we are nearing the end of our first school year, I am beginning to drag like a wind up toy on its last leg. Any chance to slow down even further is welcome. I have started to drink Earl Grey (with milk!) - whenever offered.

By the time everyone at home is up in the morning, I usually regret I made it out of bed in the first place. Approaching school, my feet become laden like in a time warp and after drop off, I linger to an extend that seems suspicious to even the chattiest of parents dotting the parking lot.

I will talk about anything - and at length - just to avoid having to trott back up the hill to my mountains of laundry, patches of weeds, and oceans of to-do lists. Sometimes I wonder whether I am lacking some life-enabling gene that makes tedious routines feel like comfort food.

But, hey, this is June and the countdown is running!

Daddy does it...

Now that’s funny. Xena style body guards and fluttering grey moths all around the “King of Kings,” daddy Moammar, el gran liberador de las mujeres!

But then, women were always good at that...letting themselves be intstrumentalized eitther as sex objects or as madonnas.

Hitler did it with “Kinder, Kirche, Küche,” the Communist movement maintained a stable support that way, Berlusconi tried it, Gaddafi does it.

A bit of positive feedback goes a long way with the girls.

You Suck!

Peta thinks I am the worst feminist of all times.

“F... you suck at being a feminist!!” she chided me when I dropped off Charlie’s Angels at her house. She has carpel tunnel and is in dire straights for post-op diversion.

And she is not the only one who thinks that I am not true to the cause. But then, I am not sure there is one cause for women. Peta, for instance, thinks that women are in charge anyway and that men are just bloody jealous.

While not that original, most free spirited women that I know, like to take that route - for obvious reasons... Why sour your life with all the shit that’s going on?

To those women - basically all my female friends - I am a prickly thorn. Although they generally agree with my ranting and ravings, they don’t want to hear about it all. Yet, funny enough they scorn me when they think I lapse.

But in all honesty, I speak less for women than for humanity. I just want people to reach their full potential instead of living lives as abused and abusers. And if hormones are in the way of that, I will name fingers and point names.

And, by the way, I do think Natalie rules!