The Old Partner In Chains

Cool front blew in.  Kaley is having a sleep over with Emmy and Lauren.  They talk and laugh like happy jittering machine guns.  It's a continuous sound, maybe like a gatlin gun.  To speed it all up, we roasted marshmallows.

Tonight, went and saw "Bah Humbug".  Kaley was Scrooge's old partner in chains.  She is exceptional.  I wanted to turn around and tell everybody that she was my girl.  After the show I met the director who was a professional actress.  Her eyes lit up when I told her I was Kaley's dad.  I seriously think she might go with this thing.  It'd be the coolest to see her do a play downtown in Houston some day.

Prior to the show, I read a book I found in somebody's trash pile.  It was a book by Carl Jung called "Man And His Symbols".  It was fascinating.  It was interesting to read his take on the relatively new front the modern rational world is for modern man.  There was a picture of some crazy tribal man in some far away jungle.  It said, "this man believes he is a lion, a real lion".  Modern man thinks a lion is this --- and there was Webster's definition of a lion.  It's similar to a post I wrote a while back (and possibly why I found Woody Allen next to that ape-like skeleton so funny).  Here is the snip from here:

The girl asked what kinda fish it was.  I said, "I think it's a perch."  The boy asked, "What's a perch?"  I held it up and said, "This." (I've thought about this for the last hour - why did he ask such an obvious question?  What did he mean?  Why was I so punctual about holding it up and saying, "This."? as if I wanted to say reality is wiggling in my hand.  As if his question was bookish, like a perch is a such and such of the such and such family of fish species...  As if to say, I am sick of simulation --- go catch a fish, boy... is that what I mean???)

Then I imagined having a conversation with the fish, "What bit you?"  "How did you get away???"  The perch's story was lively - a life and death struggle.  It beat all the stories from fishermen (except for the old man and the sea ;-)

And if I'm quite honest, or maybe somewhat honest, if that is possible - I do connect with these creatures.  I wonder what their world is like.  I am more fish than I used to be.  If I stare without blinking I think about fish that always have their eyes open.  Always open.  That may sound weird, but really it's not.  Weird is thinking you understand a fish because you can categorize it as a vertebrate.  It's not wrong to taxonomize... as it's necessary and has meaning, but there's something missing in the over-rationalization - sometimes an end in itself.  So we live in a world where we are very step-by-step, orderly and hierarchical , but right there underneath the surface there is this fiery otherness  - always there, always awake like a fish eye.  Well enough of that.

Twice in the past couple days a stranger has spoken to me.  I have shelled myself in here phonelessly working at home and being in a one car family where Kaley, Kim and Kovi pretty much are out and about.  I felt something I have missed. It's not so much them as me, something brighter.

I hesitate to mention this out of embarrassment, but I went to fix the swing in the oak tree today and fell out of the tree.  I stepped on a branch that snapped out from under my foot.  I got a bad set of scratches under my arm.  The arm took the foot's mistake.  Looks like that X-Man, Wolverine, got after me.  I think I dropped 9-10 feet.  I managed to fall on my feet.  In an odd way, it was exhilarating - like some sorta shock therapy.  Dear me.  If I don't go mad, I should enjoy all the surrounding laughs.  The song tonight was good - the reason for life is simple, it's to live.

Oh, bah!