Khan's Castle

A couple old silent movies were on tap lately: City Lights with Charlie Chaplin, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Both were a lot of fun and, particularly in the case of City Lights, it was a joy to widen my younger—10 and 7—children's horizons. They nearly laughed their heads off at Chaplin. I had never seen either one and am delighted I did. These two along with Fritz Lang's Metropolis make three silent movies I've watched in recent months, all great stuff.

As a parent, I find this story one of the most senselessly heartbreaking ones I've read in a while. Not to say there aren't plenty of others, but good grief!

At lunch today, I finished Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume. I just loved it, possibly my favorite of Robbins' works, of which I've read most. His writing carries a sense of humor—Christopher Moore's is similar—and a certain way with words to convey it.

An odd little bonus from the last couple days: blogger.com's spellchecker works right with em dashes, now. An em dash is a dash the same width at the letter "M"—like that one. The key sequence for it on a PC is Alt-0151 (use the number keys on the keypad, not across the top of the main keyboard). They're actually pretty common in books—usually more than one a page, but are unfortunately left off of modern keyboards.

One of life's little happinesses. . .

Introspection seems the be the thing this weekend. . .

What am I?

I have a friend that is a priest (not to mention one of the funniest people I've ever met), one that is a circuit breaker designer (another really funny guy), one that is a software designer, one that ran heavy construction equipment until his health began to fail him (sometimes just plain hilarious, but I'm not sure it's on purpose even if he revels in the laughter). There are more, but not necessary to list. They all—at least from the outside looking in—seem to have found their life's work to some extent more than me and made peace with it. Of those three, I would certainly say when speaking of them that this on is a priest, or that one is an engineer, and so on. But for me, what would I say that I am?

Currently, I'm paid to manage a group of IT people. I've worked as a software designer, system manager, database administrator and test engineer—a very long time ago. To an extent, I think of myself as an engineer, but I've met real engineers and I feel like an amateur by comparison.

I've done a very little writing and gotten kind comments from people on it, but I'm no writer. I've read writers and they leave me in awe.

I've played a bit of music over the last three decades and sometimes been paid for it, but I've met and even played with real musicians and I don't really qualify.

I've sold mobiles over the years that look something like Alexander Calder's work, but I'm no sculptor; I'm just not good enough.

The people I think of as something, are people who truly have given their lives to some work in a way that I never have. I'm too distracted. I like to many things. When I work on something, it's a rare occasion that I don't feel a pull from something to go do something else.

Only two things I think of myself as unequivocally being: husband and father.

As I wrote that, as it often happens, I felt at more peace with it than when I started. Funny thing, that.

Today, then, they're enough.

I was talking with a good friend this afternoon and asked this question: Is an opinion really an opinion when it changes almost daily? The context involves my feelings about people—sometimes I think I just hate them in general. Then I meet people I really like and additionally note that I have friends I'm very fond of, so what is the provenance of that? As I dig into it, I realize that I hate myself on those bad days and that fear and mistrust color many relationships. Not all, but enough. I'm not sure of the source of the mistrust, but it seems to beget the fear, that in turn makes things like generosity difficult. For example, to simply give things away—particularly money—requires clearing a significant mental hurdle and until that's done, I react to the idea with a tightfisted Scrooge persona.

It occurs to me that fear of not having enough—of whatever—plays into the situation as well and has nothing to do with the other person. That fear simply doesn't match up with material reality. Its roots I know not.

Fears and more fears: of abandonment, of failure. Other will emerge if I sit and write enough, but that's enough for today.

What to do about them? How to relieve their hold on my life? It's not as if I've been completely shackled by them; I haven't, but I, like countless millions—my ancestors and my temporal peers as well—would like to be free of fear, especially the self-induced kind.

Let's see, time to catch up on a few things...

I took a little break from working out over Christmas and New Year's. I also tweaked a muscle in my side fooling around playing touch football with some family members over New Year's, which caught me by surprise. So when I went to do some lever training today I was pleasantly surprised to be able to hold the first one-legged one for a good 8 seconds and the next two for around 5. That's the best yet. Working out tenderized the muscle that got tweaked, but it will heal, I'm sure. I've also injured my left ring finger bouldering in the gym and so I it to recover. It's marked different when I'm warmed up as opposed to cold, but I need to be careful with it as I continue.

Flute has been back burnered for the last few weeks, too, but it can simmer until I get back to it.

I got to see The 400 Blows and Wizards over the last few days. Blows is a classic, but it was viewed disjointedly which didn't help it any. Wizards fell to the same fate and left me indifferent. Like several movies I saw literally decades ago that I've reviewed lately, the memory was better than the film. I've always enjoyed animation, and I certainly enjoy the artwork in Wizards, but the story didn't work very well for me.