Marcus and the Big Gay Gorilla in the Room

I found this story on Raw Report:

Bachmann tries to explain comments about being ‘submissive’

in which, as the headline points out, Bachmann explained a comment she made in when running for congress in 2006, that she was submissive to her husband. She explained the wording of it, and whether you accept her answer or not is beside the point of this blog entry.

Bachmann is a favorite target for her opponents, no doubt about that. She is viewed as a very "traditional values" type of woman who has a limited horizon on how people should live their lives. Cultural Conservative is the term. She is also pretty well known to have said some pretty downright goofy things in public. She has a pretty strong support base as well, with other "traditional values" folk, mostly Christian Conservatives and Tea Partiers. Whenever she says something that is oddly phrased, or just plain ding-batty, there is no end of articles and blogs and biased news sources that take her to task for the remark.

And that's the life of someone in the public eye. Every politician faces it, no matter what his or her platform is, left, right, or centrist. It's the nature of the beast. If you go on the campaign trail, someone's not going to like it, and they will jump on every opportunity to tear you down. If you don't know this and aren't willing to face it, you'll have a very short political career. Bachmann knows this, and she's willing to face the opponents. For this, and perhaps this alone, I respect her.

I do not support her as a candidate. I will make no bones about my belief that if you are a public servant, you serve all the people equally. You don't serve just your supporters. She has made some dangerous comments about being gay, especially in light of the recent states which have allowed gay marriages.

On another news clip from Raw Report, Tim Pawlenty was pressed if he considered gay people to be second class citizen at the Iowa State Fair. Pawlenty's stance is that the country has a strong foundation in traditional marriage, and that allowing gay marriage will rock the foundation of our nation. I can go in different directions with this statement in which I find faulty logic, but that will derail what I'm trying to get at with this entry. What I am saying here is that it is truly a fact that there are many Americans who believe this idea that allowing gay marriage would lead the nation to a veritable Sodom and Gemorrah, and eventually the only recourse is to have deus ex machina swoop in and save the righteous by burning the sinners. What I believe will happen if gay marriage is fully legal and supported is that there will be more a productive citizenry, because those who want to wed will be happy and will no longer have to spend their energy and efforts trying to establish that right, and thus frees up more intellectual and emotional resources to tackle tangible problems like the the failing economy and foreign tensions.

Bachmann holds similar values to Pawlenty and others regarding traditional versus gay marriage. A few months ago, it was a late night show joke about her husband Marcus Bachmann having a counseling clinic to reverse the gay tendencies in youth who were troubled by using such tactics as suppression and prayer, known in the business as conversion therapy. If I am to understand the American Psychological Association's stance on this method, I think the word "Bunk" shows up a lot, usually premised with "A load of". Check it here.

The Joke is, lookit him! he's queer as a three dollar bill. Check out his dance moves!.If he ain't gay, neither is John Waters. Etc, etc, etc. That's the joke.

As I mentioned before, if you're gonna go in the limelight, every weakness is exposed and exaggerated. Whether Marcus Bachhmann is a suppressed gay man or not is not the issue. The perception that he is has been the issue, and now it has become a part of his legacy.
On the Bachmann article in Raw Reports, I gleaned the comment section. You can gather a lot of information if you listen to the peanut gallery. Many of the comments were reserved for the actual issue that the clip was getting at, that is that bringing an Evangelical Christian moral value needs some clarification in its wordage. But there were, of course, many comments about her (to use an archaic expression) "wearing the pants in the family" and questioning the manliness of Marcus.

There have been many instances in the past decade or so of a man in the public eye (usually it is a man) who have been caught with their gay pants down. News articles upon news articles can be cited to show how "Anti-gay congressman caught with boy-toy" (or what have you) is rife with the sweet, sweet irony of someone whose actions do not follow his nature. And the public eats it up like candy and says "Now THAT didn't surprise me!"

These types of comments in the Bachmann article, and those similar bother me on a number of levels. First off, I do not know if Marcus is a closeted gay man. To conclude he is gay because of his mannerisms reinforces many stereotypes that need to be weeded in order for the equality that gay activists are trying to achieve and secure. Not all gay men are swishers, that's pretty well-known, I think. By modal logic, not all swishers are gay. He may be straight as an arrow, as he claims. Alternatively, he may be gay and feel guilty about it, and feel that conversion therapy worked for him, it should work for you too.

If he is gay, can you imagine what an emotional and logistical torment he is going through? I understand what it's like to feel that one's sexuality is socially or spiritually the wrong "type." And he's in a political pickle as well if this is the case. If he opens up with a public announcement stating "yes, I am gay", well that pretty much does it in for Michelle having a chance at the presidency. Michelle explained the word "submissive" equaling "supportive" or "respectful" in the news clip, and that being submissive was retrocessive between the spouses. Her house of cards would collapse, because it is basically based on suppressing the rights of gays, and she would be shown as a hypocrite, if those tenets did not also apply to her husband.

So it's strange that those who support NOH8 and wish to provide comfort to those struggling with closet issues would want to abase, humiliate and make a laughing-stock of such a man like Marcus. In fact, that to me seems a bit Pharisaical itself. The "it gets better" campaign ought to apply to him as well as anyone else. The cruelty of those anonymous comments reflects the mindset of the people who are vocal anti-teabaggers. And that to me is a little disturbing, because aren't the using the exact same tactics as those the are against.

Note that I said disturbing, not surprising. Politics is a nasty mud-slinging game, and it brings out the lowest common denominator of people, whichever side they are on. It's a long drawn out "yo mamma" ballet, in which the best zinger-flinger winds up on top in the end, except that there is no end.

If the man is in fact straight, well, I cannot condone his tactics as a counselor. Conversion Therapy does as much to help a struggling gay man or woman as a paper bag over the head covers ugly. It just adds another layer of guilt and self-hatred that needs to be addressed later down the line. And to think that someone who believes such a thing being an effective tool would be in proxy to public policy doesn't sit too well with me. Additionally, if he is straight, these are the slings and arrows that he must bear to be in the public eye, I suppose.

Moving right along.

Alright, we'll just skip June.

It was a busy month. From Late May to just very recently, I have been very busy with a big move of about 1250 miles. We closed on our Oklahoma house on May 25th, and previous to that was nearly every day spent on repairs per the agreement. Once the house sold, we moved in with my in=;aws until my son could finish up Boyscout camp in mid-late June. My wife had already moved to PA, so it was just me and the kids. The furniture was in PA on May 5th or so. When the three of us finally made it to PA, I saw there were many things needed to be done on the new house, including mostly, organizing our stuff into the new place.

There were some horrendous details that I won't get into here, but it wasn't an easy move.

Now, we are here, and I'm slowly catching up. Biggest thing on my to-do list is to get a freakin job, because we need income. Like stat.

This is the part that I hate. Job searching. And now I'm in an entirely different part of the country where I don't know anything about anything, or anyone. It'll happen, though. I just hope it happens sooner than later.

Short blog. Here's an unrelated picture of a highly decorated pig (by Wim Delvoye, on exhibit in Paris at the Galerie Guy Pieters)

Coming soon

It's May Day, and many friends call it Beltane, which is Gaelic or British and so forth. I'm not particularly an Anglophile, though I'm not a hater either. I just happen to have many friends who are fascinated with British customs and so forth, who regularly attend Renaissance Fairs, complete with (some horribly) affected accents and a nod to the world of bondage, so I get a lot of knowledge second hand. True Beltane is the halfway point between the spring equinox and the summer sotstice, and doesn't always fall on May 1st, this year it appears to be May 5th, but whatever. The festival seems to be traditionally on May 1st and that is traditionally May Day. Its passing commemorates the beginning of the pastoral summer season. It is also the root of the modern Labor Day.

It is also marking a special, personal day for me. We are moving across the country soon, and the past week I've been working like a dog packing and stowing things away, loading a 53' trailer with most of my earthly belongings. The goal was to have the truck roll away at 12:00 midnight on Friday, but we missed that by a couple hours. Friday I started as soon as I dropped the kids off at school and worked continuously until 2:00 am Saturday morning. Sixteen hours of mostly uninterrupted packing and loading, with the notable exception of my son's band teacher calling at 2 in the afternoon saying my son was complaining of "not being able to breath". The band class was practicing for a concert for the next day. My son was very excited to go on this band trip, which was a statewide contest two hours away, and part of the trip was to go to Frontier City, an amusement park in Oklahoma City. The combination of stage fright, excitement of the band trip, the pressures of the contest, the amusement park, the sadness of moving away from his home and friends, the deadline of the move, the exertion from working on packing, missing his mother, (who had already moved), his natural claustrophobia (sitting so close together on stage) and the general dirtyness of kicking up so much old dust in the house had taken it's toll on him. So I talked with him a bit in the school office of what he wanted to do. He wanted to continue with practice, and so I let him off the hook for working the rest of the night. I'd take him to his grandparent's home where the air was clean and open and let him relax there for the night with his sister, while I worked. I was a little worried about them, as the grandparent's had driven to Minnesota a day previous to attend a funeral for my son's great great grand-aunt. I was worried about them staying alone, unsupervised, but they are old enough to do it, he's 12 and his sister is 9. At that age I was babysitting, so I felt they could be alone for the night. I gave them explicit instructions and sent them dinner and made sure my cell phone number was available to them in case there was a problem, and I'd call them every so often to check up. They were fine, except my daughter had a hard time getting herself to bed. She had a routine that she had since she was a baby, and theis was the very first time that mommy or daddy didn't tuck her in. A little reassurance call calmed her down and she was able to do it.
At 2 am we finished loading the truck, and I was beat tired. I still had to take my son to the school at 5:30, three and a half hours away, so I knew I couldn't completely collapse. I went to Grandma's house and took a power nap, woke up groggy but able to drive him there. I discovered I still couldn't rest. Too much adrenaline and caffeine running through my system. I played a little facebook game, looked around the destructo-house, at all the styrofoam bits and unused boxes, piles of shredded checks and loose tools laying about and groaned. More to do, but I wasn't doing any more at that time. I had to stop and recuperate. I went to grandma's and watched some stupid tv program until I finally fell asleep on the couch. I was tired, I stunk from sweat and grime, my back hurt, and I was worried about the welfare of the kids, plus a hundred little loose ends I had forgotten. I woke, took a quick shower and hit the bed.
I'm rested now, for the most part. I'm taking it easy, but still doing the work. There are still those hundreds of loose ends, but I thought I'd take a moment to blog some before I complete them all.

It's finally happening. We're moving, and starting a new chapter. And I'm scared and excited, nostalgic and hopeful. Confused yet assured. It's still hard to describe. I'll probably write more in the next week or so about it.

(the picture is from the website that will buff out of failblog. That is NOT my truck)

You are now a member of this group.

There was a time when there was a distinct limit to how many groups you can join (25), but now it seems you can join up to 40. I received a notice about that from one of mine, but as there are ONE MILLION things that needs be done when I log in, I shelved that note and still haven't read it. Silly me, I should refer to it while writing this. But this entry isn't about how to do remove the limit, so the technicalities of it shall have to wait until I do read that note.

There are many reasons why one would join a group. Off the top of my head, I can think of three.
1.) You want to be notified of special events or upcoming sales. I think this is the most common reason. Why else would a shop or club have a group except to notify these events?
2.) To support a friend who is trying to establish him/herself or his/her group. I've done this several times. I am a member of the Fellowship of the Fourth Age, not because I spend a lot of time on the sim Alqualonde or because I'm a fan of JR Tolkien, (honestly, the saga bores the hell out of me) but because I was first a friend to AelKennyr Rhiano, one of the founding members. So now I receive scads of notices about the online story of what's going on there, and I have little reference to it.
3.) You want to be part of something. This is the game I play most often. The first group I ever joined was October Country, because one of the first places I hung out on regularly was Martian Wei's halloween-themed campfire. He streamed old time suspense radio programs like "The Shadow," and I adored this. I wanted to be closer to this kind of creativity. Later, as my Second Life character evolved, I joined several groups to reflect the changes Leigh was going through.

Most of the time now, the group notices I receive all get one quick scan and are tossed in the trash file. It's true, and I don't think this is an uncommon practice for may SL players. Only once in a while do I find a notice that I think is valuable enough to hang onto (an example being the note about groups limit above). Some of the groups I've joined are dead in the water from the get-go. Every once in a while, I'll post something in a seemingly dead group, trying to breath some life into it, and usually that effort is for the most part wasted. Usually someone will answer, but not so very much. Here's a sample (I made this up, it's not an actual conversation, but it is a typical one)

Leigh Eel pokes his head in the room. Helloooooo?
Friendly Person: hi
Another Member: wat's up
Leigh Eel: want to wish everyone a lovely hello
Friendly Person: ty. u2
Leigh Eel: thx. anything going on?
Friendly Person: not really. bored
(long pause here)
Leigh Eel: how bout a joke?
Another Member:
Leigh Eel: why does a gorilla have such big nostrils?
(*this is a standard ice-breaker joke. not terribly funny, but most people will laugh politely)
(another long pause. sometimes someone will ask "why?" but usually I just supply the answer if no one does)
Leigh Eel: becuz he's got big fingers

and it's about here that the conversation fizzles.

Maybe my jokes aren't that funny, that's ok. But really, can't someone make an effort? Granted there are times when there's a little spark and someone brings up something that someone else responds to, and a little life is brought into the group, but am I the only one who wants activity in the group? If so, why am I bothering? How many times does one try before giving up the ghost?

I'm noticing this in other social networks as well. Facebook, for example. I have two accounts, one for my real self, and one for Leigh. Most of the time, I've got fecebook set to my real self's account, because that's where my priorities lie. Every once in a while, once a month or so, I'll log into Leigh's account to see the activity, and guess what? nothing new. So why bother? Why do I keep the account? I dunno. Perennial hope, I guess. The last time I logged in I was seriously considering closing that account, because it seems the only thing it does for me is cause me despair in knowing that Leigh doesn't have that many friend, even though fb says he has 98. But to what end? Only a few have I actually met inworld, most sent me requests just because I have an account. Some I've met through blogger and reached out to facebook.

That gets into a whole nother topic: blogger. I'm not a terribly prolific blogger. Once a month, perhaps, and I keep saying I'll do it more often, but really? Who knows. I follow several blogs, and perhaps people stalking me look at what I follow and make judgements about me based on that, but so what? I'm not looking for statistics in friends, I'm looking for substance. I'm not going to drop someone whom I'm following unless I find that person to be mean or undesirable. Same goes for facebook. I've made the mistake of dropping people because I was in a snit or because some other very temporary emotion, and usually it winds up that the bridge is burnt. I'll drop someone who is unredeemingly racist or cruel, or beyond redemption or whatever, but I won't just because they have a difference of politics or worldview (That is, unless they are cruel etc). The world is made up of many differences, and so what if I disagree with the differences. Doesn't mean I'm right about all things, lol.

Ok, this is starting to ramble again, and I think I've made my point. Or maybe I haven't, and it was all just ramblings. Thoughts welcome.

Relationship Status: It's Complicated.

Whoa boy. What a pickle. Which is to say I am in a pickle. And indeed, this is one of the toughest challenges I've come across. I think what I need for someone to say to me is, "it's not as bad as you think it is", but then again, I would probably dismiss such a statement.
Again, I'm using my SL blog to discuss my RL issues. If this somehow annoys you, well, here's the warning. Also the reasoning. I know I have a difficult time facing my RL issues in a RL theatre. I don't talk about it on facebook, and my RL journal (LiveJournal) has only one entry from way back a year ago or so, I haven't even logged in to that. One attraction of SL is its anonymity. I can express myself fully without having to explain to personal close friends what's going on.
Which, after writing that sentence down, seems kind of cowardly. (sad face) But it's where I am, and it's in the hand that I've been dealt, and so deal with it I must.
Anyone following my blog might know some of the background. So some of this might be redundant, but I believe in a tight, self-referential journal, so I'll probably repeat some information.
I am married. I am gay. When I got married, I told my self that having my feelings was a phase, and that it would pass, and I could have "a normal life". Those feelings did not pass. The woman I am married to is truly a wonderful person. Any straight guy should be so lucky. We have kids. Beautiful, intelligent, bright, funny kids. I held in my orientation for eight strong years, during which we as a family prospered. I personally, however, was not prospering, and towards the end of the lie, I was having great emotional and spiritual problems, because I was lying. I thought that finally saying something out loud would fix that. It proves again how much I was naive. Some personal, internal problems did fix themselves, yes. Complications arose, though, and complications grew like fractals. It was very confusing at times, and I found I was forced to make decisions within these confusing times. And now, here I am, in this pickle.
Rather than try to roadmap the turns I have made, with backtracking and trying alternate routes, I think the best way for me to approach this is by concentrating on the present, and to try to clear some of the psychological obstacles that hinder good decision-making.
Fact: While on SL I explored what it was like to be fully out of the closet. I attended virtual gay clubs, and had virtual relationships. I had been partnered twice, both to beautiful, good men. Both were dissolved. I am in another relationship now which has bridged the SL/RL separation, (we've grown to know each other better on facebook and via phone calls before SL). I want to proceed with our relationship and continue it.
Fact: My wife was devastated. We were good friends before we even started dating, and I truly want her to find happiness and fulfillment in her life. But because of this shock, she went through some terrible anguish, and still to this day is trying to cope. This is not a good place for her.
Fact: I love her and I want her to be happy, wherever it may take her. I also adore my children and want to play an active role in their growth and lives.
Fact: We, my wife and I, moved to another part of the country soon after our daughter was born for financial reasons. It was part of the country neither of us ever intended to settle down, but in hard times sometimes one must choose from what is available rather than what is ideal. It had always been our intention that Oklahoma was a steppingstone to our ideal settlement, and we made the best of it. It has proven to be a good place to live and to raise our kids, for the most part, and I discovered how judgmental I could be on a place that I knew very little about. Still, it was always intended to be a steppingstone home, and that's how we looked at it.
Fact: I am getting older. She is getting older. Our kids are getting older. My son turned 12 last month, he's almost a teenager. My sweet baby girl is now 9. They are fully legitimate people now. I feel like I'm running out of time.
Fact: I am mule-headed. When I get an idea in my head that I feel is the right thing to do, by gum, that's what I am going to do. I've done it in the past, and my family tapestry is rich with stubborn threads. In this case, I pushed a quantum leap, and that may have been a terrible mistake. And now I have to deal with the consequences.
To elaborate: Both my wife and I wanted to move on with our lives. I quit my job and spent a good month fixing up the house to ready it for sale. We put it on the market, and I moved to where we thought we would be moving, to Minnesota, our home state. The intention was that when the house sold, my wife and kids would come. I would have secured a job and built a foundation for that move. Neither has the house sold or I gotten a job. These are not good indications of things to come. I am in Minnesota, they are still in Oklahoma, and it's been 5 months. I worry that this long an absence will have devastating effect on our kids, and in my phone calls with them, I sense it is.
New Fact: My wife has an job opportunity that would take her to Pennsylvania and she is pretty much a shoe-in for the job. This one is new, I just found out about it over the weekend. We've talked about it. It would be a good opportunity for her. If it was just her, that'd be fine. but it's not just her, it would be the kids as well. And if they are in PA and I'm in MN, that's like 17 hours drive away, and that's too far for me to have that close active role in the kids' lives. I've already gone through this one in my head, before she got the opportunity. The guy that I'm interested in lives in Oregon. Both he and I want to pursue the relationship, but both of us are tied to our respective locations. I had entertained the possibility of moving out there before, but had always balked at it, because it was too far from where the kids would be. If my kids were in PA and I in MN, it wouldn't be any different if they were in OK or MN and I in OR.
Honestly, I have no objections to moving to PA, except minor, kinda whiny sounding ones. One being, "I just moved to Minnesota, I haven't even given this place a chance". Another being "I don't know anyone in PA, and I'll have to start life from scratch again." Yet the biggest concern I have is this: I feel that this will come between me and Steve (the guy in OR) and that we might not make it work because of the distance. I want to be with him, and a move to PA it seems would make it even more difficult for that to happen.
My resources are drying up. I'm not having success finding the happiness that I sought. I have a tangle of emotional problems including separation anxiety, self-depreciation (part of why I can't get a job), motivational problems, and on top of it all, I can't seem to convince my higher self that being gay is ok, no matter how accepting society is becoming towards it. I feel pressure from all sides to act now ("Strike while the iron's hot"), and unlike video games, I only have one life. There is no do-over.
So there you have it. That's my blog entry. These are the things that I'm thinking about and dealing with. I'm hoping that getting these things written down helps me figure some of it out. I'm travelling today to Oklahoma for a long weekend, and I hope to talk with my wife about how to make everything work out so that she can be happy, and that I can be happy, and that we can provide emotional and financial support for our children.

The Fool Jumps Blindly

Here's a letter I wrote to a friend of mine. I'm still waiting on the response. While writing it, it came to me that I hadn't updated this blog for a while, and the content of the message pretty much summed up some of the things going on with me.

"I'm sorry for the dead-end conversation this weekend. I seem to be in a phase of pushing people away right now, it seems I have been doing it to many people. It's not a great thing I want to admit, because it makes people feel dejected, and really, that's not what I'm about. Or am I? Maybe it's my function to go around getting people's hopes up and then dashing them to disappointment. I seem to be pretty good at that. Mmm, I wonder if there's a way to incorporate that into my career? Promises Unfulfilled, Inc. is the business plan I seek.

"I have long had a problem with commitment. Not just in relationships, but in other areas as well. Solve a problem? well, let's take it apart bit by bit, and see if we can diagnose what the issue is.. thing is, one is supposed to learn things by how they are dismantled, of how it goes together, of how the parts interact with each other, etc; and once one figures out how is comes apart, one can presumably restore and put it back together again. Pretty standard tinkerer's thinking, there. But what if you're not learning anything by taking it apart? What if you disassemble for the sake of disassembly? What if one misjudges the resources available, and perhaps doesn't have time to put the pieces back together? What if someone just loses focus and interest in keeping it all together? Downward spiral. The value of the project is reduced to "just another thing I'm doing"

"Things change when one is relied upon, though, in a dramatic and spectacular way. When one has children to care for, one would put aside his/her own level of contentment to embrace the children's. I found that o be true, while raising my kids. I did things I would never in a million million years do on my own volition, and I loved doing it. Still hate Chuck E Cheese, but I'm glad I took my kids there, because they loved it. In your message, you mentioned your daughter needing care from you for the rest of her life. That's a hell of a greater commitment then taking the girls to a pizzeria. I hesitate to say anything, because in comparison, my problems are a breeze. I think. I don't know. my problems seem pretty heavy to me but I do think that they are temporary. How temporary? I don't know. I know you love her and that love will give you the strength to achieve greatness with her. I really respect that.

"I use communication in a marginly biased way. I only want to report the good news. I want to crow about how great things are going and to share my happiness. I don't want to talk about (perceived) failures, or depressions or funks, or how much I might hurt because of something I did, or how much I think I've hurt someone... I would rather tell you about a cool technology or sculpture, or something hilariously funny or whatever. I know that's unfair to me, but it is a habit I've picked up somewhere, and habits... you know... they're hard to break. They're easier to alter, I've found. and so changing one aspect of a habit can keep the habit, but bring about positive outcomes. On paper that looks good.

"I spend most of my time in shock, though, really. Shocked that I'm here, and not where i feel I should be, though to be honest, I didn't have a very good strategy to begin with. I'm shocked that I'm not near my kids. I'm shocked that I destroyed a woman's perception of reality (my wife's, which I'm hoping you got without me saying so). I'm shocked that my own concepts of happiness and bliss were WAY more in the realm of unicorns and bubbly streams than I previously thought. (I'm discovering that my naivete knows no bounds) And the most discouraging thing of all, maybe, is that I can't seem to work anything to my advantage. I can't seem to "get it together" long enough to produce satisfying results. That on top of I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, as well as my inability to learn from my own mistakes, I can look forward to a lifetime of taking blind leaps of faith.

"...Yeah...

"That garbage above, that's the stuff I don't want to communicate. And there's way more eating at my heart, and I don't want to burden anyone with my own problems. and This is the reason I didn't feel comfortable talking the other night. Because I know that talking out my problems will brand me a "loser" (which is admittedly a perception held by others and shouldn't affect me in the slighest, Mr. Rugged Individualist.) But I also have very little faith in my own abilities to see me out of this one. Poor poor me. Another pity party for me.

"Not many specifics in this message. I've moved. Living with a friend. He likes you. You'd dig him, too. you guys should go on a date, it'd be a natural. heh. Ok, that's my thought on that, and I said it, so there you go. I still have no idea what the next few months will bring, the last four weren't so great. Though they were significant, I'll admit that. Working hard on honing myself, I think, maybe. The tinkerer's habit. "

So, what can I say here to validate this entry as something more than a correspondence? Well, the first thing that I thought of is a Tarot card, The Fool. And I think in this case, reversed. New pathways opening up, the Fool epitomizes blind faith in allowing "the universe" to take care of him. And such is that. But how many times can the Fool jump? infinitesimal numbers, it would seem. and the purpose of the jump? Enlightenment and fulfillment. That is the purpose behind the lifestyle purported by the Tarot. To grow, and to thrive. Knowing this is not enough though. Knowing it leads to the moral of the Frog Doctor "Physician, Heal thyself".

I've had a problem with that fable, since I was little. It's one of Aesop's Fables, about a frog who claimed he could heal all the animals if only they would listen to his prescription. One fable critter (a fow, maybe? for sake of clarity, let's just say a fox) who was tired of hearing Frog boast of his prowess, snapped back, "oh ugly frog, why should we listen to you when you yourself have ugly, warty skin? Heal thyself, ugly frog, before tending to others." I don't have an issue with the idea of health being mirrored by perfect skin, mind you. I can place myself in the universe where the frog doctor actually needs medical attention for his skin condition. Fine. What i have a problem with is the presumption the fox bears that the frog IS ABLE to heal himself. The barber doesn't cut his own hair, now does he? The frog offers his wisdom to help and is quite Hippocratic about it, as I see, and he gets trounced by the fox, who, as I see it, is only undermining the frog's efforts and philanthropy.

At any rate. I am the Fool on this adventure, and I have already made my leap. I just worry that my faith is a strong enough parachute.

Settling in Minn.

I'm on SL hiatus for the TG holidays. Won't return until probably next Mon or Tues. (maybe Sunday night, we'll see how the itinery works out.

If you have been following my misadventures, you already know that I'm not where I was a year ago, or even 3 months ago, in a very big way. Now, it seems I'm not where I was a month ago, either. If things keep going at this pace, every day will be radically different from the previous.
Currently, I am living in St. Paul, Minnesota, which is sorta "home turf" for me. I grew up in the middle of Minnesota, went to college in MN, and hovered around the border of Wisconsin/Minnesota for several years before we moved to Oklahoma. I have moved back to establish myself here and make a home for my wife and kids here. When our OK home is sold, they will move up here, and I should hope there's a place for them to live. My wife and I are still planning on divorce, due to my coming out of the closet, but there so far hasn't been a major push from either of us to make this a reality yet. We have a pretty good business arrangement set up, sorta. That makes it sound kind of cold and emotionless, but it's not. I still care for her well-being and I still love her and she to me as well. This gets into some deep things that I haven't even yet fully explored.
In SL, I have news to report that Opacus and I broke up. This was also due to some practicalities seeped with emotion. This past summer he had an opportunity in RL to advance his studies, which would take him away from SL for a couple months, and he let me know and we were both good with it. While he was gone, I was faithful, but I was also wooed. My thought when he returned was that things would go back to the way they were, but I was in the midst of my changing world, and he in his, and neither of us could fulfill our responsibilties and commitments to each other. I'm the one that suggested we go our separate ways, and he conceded. It was sad for both of us, but I'm hoping that it will also be beneficial to both of us. It's hard to say. From what I understand, Rico is still having a hard time getting in touch with me inworld, even though it's been about a year since our breakup. I've never claimed to understand the "ways of the heart" and it seems that I know even less about it now.
So I've been seeing this new person in SL. But we haven't committed ourselves to each other. He's the one for me though. Maybe committing to a relationship in a way jinxes it. I don't know. That's my feeling right now. Our SL relationship has spilled over into RL, and in a style and pace that is different than in SL. I'm willing to push forward with it in RL. I want to wait in SL, though.
Thing is, he's in Oregon, and I'm in Minnesota, and we're both unemployed, so neither of us can really afford the trip we both want to meet in person. We keep in touch though, through texts, and phone calls, and facebook messages. And keeping the faith, we'll meet, I'm sure. We're cultivating, yeah, that's what we're doing, cultivating.
Sigh. More to come.