October 3, 2005

• Well.

  
  

  “Fall” was short-lived. It lasted exactly one day, to be precise– now we’re back to mid-90′s in the afternoon, and 70′s overnight.

  
  

  My thoughts are very “piecemeal” at the moment– perhaps because I have a lot on my mind. September has always been a “heavy” month, in my world. Where August always was marked by a bajillion birthdays, September has typically been marked by death and trauma. On some level, I can “make sense” of that– with “harvest time,” maybe there’s also a “harvesting of lives.” My dad died in September, when I was 18. A close friend committed suicide in September. My favorite aunt, who often raised me in the absence of my dysfunctional parents, died in September. I start making this list (which had a new addition, just a few days ago) and then I realize that this has been a “heavy” year. Close by, and far away– I suppose it serves to remind me that life moves through its cycles.

  
  

  I’ve been pondering the whole notion of “cycles,” recently.

  
  

  It seems to be popular in psychobabble circles to blame a lot of our problems on our parents and family-of-origin issues. Our shrinks often speak of the dreaded “Repetition Compulsion,” and then they tell us that we’re destined to keep marrying our opposite gender parent.

  
  

  But is everything we take with us– and repeat– necessarily bad? The more I look at it, the more it strikes me that there are good things, and bad things we take with us. Some things are by no means a “problem” to repeat. And when it comes to our relationships, it strikes me that the “repetition” is actually about sorting out the wheat from the chaff, within our models. Our pendulum swings back and forth, until we finally relax into some kind of balance– and often it takes us till our 40′s or 50′s, and numerous “tries” before we finally get it right. In my own case, I recognize my pendulum swinging to the precise opposite of my parents, then back the other way– and now it feels like it is moving back towards something that might actually be considered “about right.”

  
  

  Of course, there are those who’d argue that it shows a lack of “commitment” to keep trying to get it right, rather than just “pick one” and then “deal with it,” regardless of how it turns out. Maybe that’s a matter of individual temperaments. Or where you set the boundary between “conforming” and “happiness.”

  
  

  I’ve been writing eBay descriptions again– got a few 100 more items I need to sell before the move. Today it was art reference magazines, catalogues and books. Once upon a time, I was very interested in glass art and tribal art. And European paintings. And because I am one of those people who thinks you can never have “too much information,” I had loads of reference material. But it’s no longer relevant to my life, so it’s time someone else gets the pleasure out of it.

  
  

  The people down the street sold their house. I watched the moving trucks getting loaded, a few days ago. Bodes well, for this house.

  • 12:02 am
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