Complexity: Check
Jul. 22nd, 2011 02:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wolven7The barn was already on fire and the door was actually just a handful of whitehot metal.
I have a habit (nasty or admirable, I don't yet know, for myself) of looking at the range of human experience as a checklist. There are things I want to do, to feel to engage in, and they are... Nearly every so-called "pleasurable" thing you can imagine. Every taste, every sight, scent, smell.
Lately, the thought of reading books is like a weight, because it's immediately followed by the horrfying realisation that there are always more books and there is always less time. And that just... shatters me.
It's greed, pure and simple, but it's true, and it's real. I want everything. I want the time to Do Everything.
But this has always been true. This most recent flare-up is based in the fact that I am in a rut, in terms of my life and choices, and experiences. Very little is new, and so the desire I feel for everything is heightened. It's really quite simple, and the fix is pretty simple, too.
Something new. Some new way of being, of seeing, of doing. New job, new town-- or just something new to do, in this town. Something. Anything. Different. If I can make that happen, I can, again, see that there is... time enough. Time enough to do what I can, and to learn how to do more in the time that will remain after that.
There is always something that can be done...
But this has wandered. Sexual explorations are the most often seen on that check list. Do you know why? There's developmental stuff, in there... Things about how I was socialised and what I saw when, but the basic fact is I have a weird relationship with sex, intimacy and communication. I've been curious about sex, since I was around 4 years old; but my first sexual experience (not counting kissing; let's classify that under the broader "erotic experiences") was at 18, and the first instance of intercourse wasn't until three years after that. I was an early and a late-bloomer.
Here we come to questions of communication, and problems of intimacy. I've always held that sex complicates issues. People say it doesn't, but it almost always does, unless you make the concerted effort for it to Not. (Imogen Heap - [The Moment I Said It]). But even this is a sense of change and complication, because it's observed, now, and has changed, because of it. Physical intimacy, if nothing else, culminates a curiousity. It checks a ticky-box, and the mind goes "Well that's what that was like with that person." And then it compares and correlates it with the projected experience, and then different things start happening, in the thoughts. That's a gross generalisation, of course, and feel free to elucidate other perspectives. I'm just talking about what I've seen, versus what people intend and what they say they want.
I would like it if sex, intimacy, so-called romantic relationships didn't complicate, but instead only complexified. (Don Henley - [The Boys of Summer (DJ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
comorbid Top Down Mix)]). I've said it before that I think these are different ideas, and here's what i mean: When we complexify, we are making a more intricate, more thoughtful interweaving of parts. There is an awareness to complexity, a sense of intent and direction, and willingness to navigate the seeming chaos. Complexity is built. But complications happen. They are the snarls, the tangles, the trippings over of wills and desires and realities. Complication is what happens when you're in the middle of running down a hill, and you are all-of-a-sudden self-conscious about what you look like, and what you're doing, and how the fuck do legs actually work, anyway? And then you're tripped and tumbling.
Complication renders complexity almost useless... but we have to engage in complex thinking to remove ourselves from or resolve complicated situations.
Curve - [Turkey Crossing]--- I've gone afield again. I'm really only here, at all, because I need to drink more water before I go to bed. Let's course-correct.
I prefer complexity. Both are necessary, both are the "True" states of the universe (blind determinism paired with thinking, willing, acting minds, if you will; or even if you won't. Whatever), but I like the view from complex better than the view from complicated. Complex means that I can trust you to think and act and mean as you are best suited to do. That I can know that you can be brilliant, however you are. (Curve - [Fly With the High]). Complex means thought and conisderation, and I always prefer that to the alternative, even if I know it's not always true.
You're my friends, my lovers, my family, my online acquaintances, and points between and beyond. So... I want to be complex with you. I want our relationships to grow around and through and into one another.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Cast - [I'll Never Tell]--- Sex complicates, is what I was saying. It creates silences, it creates places you can't talk about, it changes things. You claw your life back open after what is often thought to be one of the most open moments of human experience.
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - [Lovely Creature]--- Or maybe I'm projecting. Now, don't get all weird and start asking me if my relationship is okay. My relationship is really quite wonderful; in fact it is deeply complex. What i'm saying is that, whether it's the addition of sex or just the change of a designation (girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, lover, person-with-whom-you-have-an-arrangement, whatever), there are particular moments when the tennor and content of the communication in your interpersonal relationships is going to come under the prospective purview of either complexification or complication.
Kim Vermillion - [Absinthe (with Helen Keller's Ukulele)]--- I urge you to choose the former.
By the way, for those keeping score? This is the kind of post I might want to use a filter for, only maybe with more explicit examples. Which is why I'll probably never use a filter. If you're in my head it makes sense.
Cole Porter & Ella Fitzgerald - [I'm Always True to You in My Fashion]--- If you want to be in my head, say so in the comments, and I'll endeavor to explain.
Good night.
I have a habit (nasty or admirable, I don't yet know, for myself) of looking at the range of human experience as a checklist. There are things I want to do, to feel to engage in, and they are... Nearly every so-called "pleasurable" thing you can imagine. Every taste, every sight, scent, smell.
Lately, the thought of reading books is like a weight, because it's immediately followed by the horrfying realisation that there are always more books and there is always less time. And that just... shatters me.
It's greed, pure and simple, but it's true, and it's real. I want everything. I want the time to Do Everything.
But this has always been true. This most recent flare-up is based in the fact that I am in a rut, in terms of my life and choices, and experiences. Very little is new, and so the desire I feel for everything is heightened. It's really quite simple, and the fix is pretty simple, too.
Something new. Some new way of being, of seeing, of doing. New job, new town-- or just something new to do, in this town. Something. Anything. Different. If I can make that happen, I can, again, see that there is... time enough. Time enough to do what I can, and to learn how to do more in the time that will remain after that.
There is always something that can be done...
But this has wandered. Sexual explorations are the most often seen on that check list. Do you know why? There's developmental stuff, in there... Things about how I was socialised and what I saw when, but the basic fact is I have a weird relationship with sex, intimacy and communication. I've been curious about sex, since I was around 4 years old; but my first sexual experience (not counting kissing; let's classify that under the broader "erotic experiences") was at 18, and the first instance of intercourse wasn't until three years after that. I was an early and a late-bloomer.
Here we come to questions of communication, and problems of intimacy. I've always held that sex complicates issues. People say it doesn't, but it almost always does, unless you make the concerted effort for it to Not. (Imogen Heap - [The Moment I Said It]). But even this is a sense of change and complication, because it's observed, now, and has changed, because of it. Physical intimacy, if nothing else, culminates a curiousity. It checks a ticky-box, and the mind goes "Well that's what that was like with that person." And then it compares and correlates it with the projected experience, and then different things start happening, in the thoughts. That's a gross generalisation, of course, and feel free to elucidate other perspectives. I'm just talking about what I've seen, versus what people intend and what they say they want.
I would like it if sex, intimacy, so-called romantic relationships didn't complicate, but instead only complexified. (Don Henley - [The Boys of Summer (DJ
comorbid Top Down Mix)]). I've said it before that I think these are different ideas, and here's what i mean: When we complexify, we are making a more intricate, more thoughtful interweaving of parts. There is an awareness to complexity, a sense of intent and direction, and willingness to navigate the seeming chaos. Complexity is built. But complications happen. They are the snarls, the tangles, the trippings over of wills and desires and realities. Complication is what happens when you're in the middle of running down a hill, and you are all-of-a-sudden self-conscious about what you look like, and what you're doing, and how the fuck do legs actually work, anyway? And then you're tripped and tumbling.Complication renders complexity almost useless... but we have to engage in complex thinking to remove ourselves from or resolve complicated situations.
Curve - [Turkey Crossing]--- I've gone afield again. I'm really only here, at all, because I need to drink more water before I go to bed. Let's course-correct.
I prefer complexity. Both are necessary, both are the "True" states of the universe (blind determinism paired with thinking, willing, acting minds, if you will; or even if you won't. Whatever), but I like the view from complex better than the view from complicated. Complex means that I can trust you to think and act and mean as you are best suited to do. That I can know that you can be brilliant, however you are. (Curve - [Fly With the High]). Complex means thought and conisderation, and I always prefer that to the alternative, even if I know it's not always true.
You're my friends, my lovers, my family, my online acquaintances, and points between and beyond. So... I want to be complex with you. I want our relationships to grow around and through and into one another.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Cast - [I'll Never Tell]--- Sex complicates, is what I was saying. It creates silences, it creates places you can't talk about, it changes things. You claw your life back open after what is often thought to be one of the most open moments of human experience.
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - [Lovely Creature]--- Or maybe I'm projecting. Now, don't get all weird and start asking me if my relationship is okay. My relationship is really quite wonderful; in fact it is deeply complex. What i'm saying is that, whether it's the addition of sex or just the change of a designation (girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, lover, person-with-whom-you-have-an-arrangement, whatever), there are particular moments when the tennor and content of the communication in your interpersonal relationships is going to come under the prospective purview of either complexification or complication.
Kim Vermillion - [Absinthe (with Helen Keller's Ukulele)]--- I urge you to choose the former.
By the way, for those keeping score? This is the kind of post I might want to use a filter for, only maybe with more explicit examples. Which is why I'll probably never use a filter. If you're in my head it makes sense.
Cole Porter & Ella Fitzgerald - [I'm Always True to You in My Fashion]--- If you want to be in my head, say so in the comments, and I'll endeavor to explain.
Good night.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 07:58 am (UTC)Thank you. This was beautiful.
...and exactly what I needed.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 10:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 01:49 pm (UTC)I like your idea of complex vs. complicated. I've found that a lot of the complications come from our own hang-ups, our own "shoulds" that populate our heads. Learning about cultural relativism is one way to get free of the urge to complicate. Or if you're coming from an alternative perspective, that helps too; for instance, I have a severely stunted sense of awkwardness. Situations that other people would find awkward (which I think would dovetail with the sort of thinking that leads to complicating matters) just make me shrug and go "meh" for the most part. I mean, there are still plenty of situations that I overthink, but for the most part, I think people would be able to enjoy complexity better if they deconstructed where they were coming from first, because it's all relative.
Hope that made sense.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 11:20 pm (UTC)I'm usually much the same, but things have clamped down to a very weird state, since our return from our 10-day vacation, back in mid-June. Since then, the desire to experience new places, new things, to just be able to Be somewhere different, and the sexual aspect, therewith, is so much higher.
As to the other, I would say that I have a low sense of awkwardness, but a very high sense of empathy for the awkwardness of others, and thus I seek to engineer both A) Their being comfortable with a situation, and B) A Situation with which they can be comfortable.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 06:47 pm (UTC)"This most recent flare-up is based in the fact that I am in a rut, in terms of my life and choices, and experiences. Very little is new, and so the desire I feel for everything is heightened. It's really quite simple, and the fix is pretty simple, too.
Something new. Some new way of being, of seeing, of doing. New job, new town-- or just something new to do, in this town. Something. Anything. Different. If I can make that happen, I can, again, see that there is... time enough. Time enough to do what I can, and to learn how to do more in the time that will remain after that."
getting on the plane to come back to atlanta, i told ryam, point-blank, that i loved the idea of just storing all our crap somewhere for a year and wandering around the globe 'being' places. he asked where i would go, and i said it was like being asked by my brother, 'if you could choose any city to live in, which would you choose?' because i dont think i've seen enough to even begin to guess and i want to see it all. ryam actually agreed that he wouldnt mind doing such a thing. but this is deeply contrary to all his previous expressions of unwillingness to do something careless and impulsive like move to Manila or teach english in china for a year.
what i'm saying is that i've lived with you for more than three years, worked the same job for three years, made do with what i've got, enjoyed what i have, and yet i find myself asking, often pitifully or pathetically, 'is this all there is? is this what's going to be from now on?'
when i know perfectly well, as you have pointed out, that "There is always something that can be done" and it would be easy to do something. but i find myself increasingly dissatisfied with the easy solutions to my cravings. which is not to say that i dont enjoy each new book, each new recipe, but that i've found that if i really want change, if i really want the truely 'new' or whatever my mind now classifies as 'truely new' then i'm going to have to do harder things. i'm terrified of committing myself to culinary school because i'm worried that all my carefully built up stability will come tumbling down, either because i went back to school or because of something else. costing me both my stability and the dream of that 'truely new' thing.
as you might guess, i'm going to committ myself to it anyway.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 11:23 pm (UTC)And it will be a platform for even larger, better change.
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto
Date: 2011-07-23 03:59 pm (UTC)Through one's early- to mid-20s (in the bourgeois experience, at least) so much about your circumstances is inherently unstable, and so much of your own self remains unexplored, that change is inevitably part of the package of your life. That comes with a certain dynamism in your liaisons.
If you're thoughtful and attentive, you get better and handling change, but you also get better at avoiding being forced into it. You get better and better at preëpting liaisons which cost you too much. But there's a dynamism that's lost as you get smarter.
Some people rationalize that lost dynamism as growing up. They go from rock 'n' roll to square, almost overnight. Others conclude that the chaos of youth is the only way to get it, and they shake their lives into a mess, losing everything in the effort to hold on to that dynamism. They don't think to cultivate that dynamism in smarter ways, in ways they can sustain. But you're not going to make those mistakes.
(And, apropos of nothing, you turned up in a dream I had last night. I was driving along in a car with a few other people, and you were standing in the middle of the road wearing the coat-and-tie from your LJ icon. I was surprised to run into you, but it seemed to be part of your plans to intercept me, so you got into the car, and the dream proceeded.)
Re: Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto
Date: 2011-07-23 05:30 pm (UTC)I don't accept that anything is a "necessary" part of something so contingent, subjective, and changeable as "Growng Up." Everything Changes Everything, and all we can hope to do is change with it-- in as much as we can allow ourselves to change and still be ourselves. It's always a dance between dynamism and stability, because change is useless, if there's no basis for comparison.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-25 06:27 pm (UTC)One of my life goals is to consume all Media. Sisyphusian, I know.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-24 11:47 pm (UTC)