Well, if it’s not a word let’s make it one here, okay?
Again, so much seems to come back to the important difference between being born without the capacity to see or hear or smell or taste and having once had these capabilities and then lost them. I’ve read for example that for some afflicted with the covid virus, they have lost their ability to taste the food they are eating. There are just so many different situations that each of us as individuals might find themselves in.
That’s often the thing about language here. Sometimes what we come to believe in our head is true is hard to capture in words. If not resulting in contradictions then in ambiguity and uncertainty and equivocation. The word “divine” for example. Some seem to have a crystal clear understanding of it, others only in leaps of faith, while others have no understanding of it at all. Which is why, from my frame of mind, tolerance is so important. Once someone comes to conclude that only their own understanding of it counts? Well, as they say, the rest is history.
Yes, I think that is a really, really good way to put it. And it would seem to make the experience of being a Pagan broad enough to necessitate tolerance of others who share some things with you but not all things. It is something that I once felt [more or less] when I was a member of the Unitarian Church. Probably the most tolerant community that I had ever been in.
For me it was mother. Except on those rare occasions when it was mom. But how to explain the difference? Again, even I couldn’t tell you that. And I was there.
Yes, as I recall, that is what Sarah said in the film in regard to the possibility of her becoming a mother. She would want her baby to hear. I wonder though of the arguments of those who would go in the other direction. Is that the wrong way to think? And here I am ever and always back to my own “disability”: feeling “fractured and fragmented” in a world where almost everyone else is not. This can actually be just as disorienting as any physical condition.
Well, if perhaps someday you do become a mother, please take me along on what, in having become a father myself, is quite simply the most complex experience I have ever had. They say that having children changes everything. Trust me: they are right.
Yes, perhaps that is vision itself. Anyway, if you have any “breakthroughs” from dreams down the road, let me know. Likewise, if I have a dream that blows my mind in giving me fresh insights into my own surreal existence, I’ll let you know.
Okay, let’s both agree that the woman in the photograph is almost certainly not you. At least for now.
Only kidding.
And then there is the song she wrote about being a mother: youtu.be/Vkt_Cmrj1hE
"Kid what changed your mood
You’ve gone all sad so I feel sad too
I think I know some things we never outgrow
You think it’s wrong
I can tell you do
How can I explain
When you don’t want me to
Kid my only kid
You look so small you’ve gone so quiet
I know you know what I’m about
I won’t deny it
But you forgive though you don’t understand
You’ve turned your head
You’ve dropped my hand
All my sorrow, all my blues
All my sorrow
Shut the light, go away
Full of grace, you cover your face
Kid gracious kid
Your eyes are blue but you won’t cry
I know angry tears are too dear
You won’t let them go"
I went through my own rendition of this with Jessica. For me it all revolves around that time in a parent’s life when their child begins to interact with his or her “peers”. Suddenly, your relationship is challenged by “friends” who can take your own child’s frame of mind in who knows how many different directions.
It would be like you becoming a Mom. You tell your children about the world around them as you understand it. And, in being children, they will see you more or less as the world around them. But as they grow older and go out into the world as teenagers, they meet others who see the world differently. Especially in this day and age where, on the internet alone, kids are exposed to god knows what online.
I always encouraged my daughter to think for herself. To find her own way. And she did. And, then, as it turned out, her own way is now a very different way from mine.