Caritas

For the next week, if you find yourself in a position to make someone's day better...do it. Whether this means giving up your seat on the bus to a cranky person, smiling at a stranger, helping someone to hir car with groceries...do it. If you can afford to buy someone lunch when sie's a bit short on cash, or know how to help a stranded stranger change hir tire...do it.

I'll be doing it myself.

Not long ago, I picked up a book at the library...looked a bit young for me, but sounded like a fun read. Seems vaguely familiar...I thought maybe I'd read it in middle school or such.

When I got around to opening it, the dedication is to about a dozen individuals...including one who shares my last name, with the same spelling (and let me assure you, my name, while not one-of-a-kind, is not common, and the few who share it, usually spell it differently). Well, that's odd...but even more disconcerting...around the middle of the book, we meet a tertiary character who has that name. Now here I find myself reading a book with my (rare) last name written everywhere. It's more than a little disconcerting, I have to admit. Also, I've confirmed that I've never read this before--I certainly would have remembered this oddity. Makes me wonder about the deja vu feeling I had, though...seems a bit serendipitous that I'd pick that book up, find it so familiar...and it would be riddled with my surname.


I've been having some rare and fascinating things happen at work lately. Namely, blue beads. When I digest the gold beads, it's always the same thing...I add the nitric, I heat it, I add the hydrochloric, I heat it. Sometimes it turns a little cloudy, and the HCl makes it turn orange...but twice now, both times on a unique kind of job we normally wouldn't handle (the gold mine's lab has gone down and we're taking over their work), the nitric has turned green, began foaming, and letting off gold vapors the moment I add it...turned a clear cobalt blue after the gold parted and the vapors stopped...I've never seen the nitric react before being put on the heat, and I've certainly never seen the bead parting (letting off the vapors) so instantly...my bosses are clueless, despite having done this for years, and one of them has a master's in chem...very intriguing.


I got bored a couple nights ago...so I started dreadlocks. I like changing my hair. I've done about everything my hair type is capable of. I had longish hair, was feeling restless, and was thinking of shaving it...but I've done that so many times before. So, when the idea for dreads popped into my head, I ran with it. The day after it occurred to me, I bought flea combs (the strong metal tines are great for dreading, plastic combs break), and the next day, I put a couple dozen dreads in my hair. I'm loving how it's looking so far, but they're still babies, we'll see how I like them as they mature. :)

The more I question social norms that we generally take for granted, the more difficult I find it is to function normally. Even if all I do is notice a social norm that I can't make sense of, I suddenly can't be normal about that...it feels awkward.

Every time I realize that the only reason I'm doing something is because countless people did it before me, it makes me stumble in my tracks. Why *should* I strive for normalcy?

Perhaps the biggest moment like this that's on my mind relates to relationships and monogamy. When I began to question monogamy, question why I should feel guilty for having lustful or affectionate feelings for anyone other than my partner...I found myself suddenly faltering about relationships. I wonder if I've ever recovered...and noticing this odd social norm, I've become obsessed in learning more about it, and experiencing something else.

I found myself single for just about a year, as of last spring. In that time, I dated a man who was married and had two girlfriends (all consenting, all knew of each other, most had other boyfriends/husbands). We didn't date long, and parted on less-than-friendly terms, but it had nothing to do with the polyamorous situation he lived in. That experience, even though it was hardly extraordinary and less than happy, has been in the forefront of my mind ever since. They all functioned very happily. That they all had failures in relationships is a given, regardless of their polyamory (I dare you to show me a monogamous person who hasn't had failed relationships, dated people who ended up not being interested, etc). They were all just as happy and comfortable with their lives as any happy monogamous couples I've ever known. To them, polyamory was their own personal norm, despite living in a society that perpetuates monogamy, utterly oblivious to any alternative.

Ever since this experience, I've found myself...resistant to the idea of a monogamous relationship. I don't necessarily think polyamory is the best for me, but the fact is that the only way I have ever known...suddenly isn't the only way I can choose. This makes me unsure, and confused. I don't know what's best for me because I never knew there was something else, and in a way I resent the norm for keeping me so completely ignorant to alternatives. Another alternative I've realized is solitude...not a norm at all in this society. When my mother told me about my aunt, who was in her forties and had never had a serious relationship, my reaction was pity, that she must be so sad, must be so lonely. Why? Because she chose something other than the norm and therefore can't be as happy as anyone else? As I began to question monogamy, I began to question the entirety of relationships.

Slowly, I'm forming a realization...it's still foggy, could change in a heartbeat, but I currently place no value on relationships...I would value them for the stability they provide for any sort of family setting, but I find myself not caring about them for myself--I don't want a family in the foreseeable future. I can get human contact and even sex from my friends, which are the two aspects I find most important in a relationship.

And it's odd, because even in typing that out, I feel myself floundering, wanting to go back and reword, wondering if I'm right...

See? Having my norm shattered by the knowledge of an alternative shakes me to the core, and destroys my convictions, so they may be (often slowly) rebuilt around the new knowledge, adapting to new possibilities so I can make the best decisions for myself. I find it very disconcerting.