What's in a name?

Optus is still fucking with my email. Not everything is getting to me, not everything is getting out from me. Trying to work around that.

I was attempting to set up sirtessa as a gmail account, but due to having that username and blogger being bought by google, I ended up with wonky accounts, and in an effort to set everything up in the one google account, deleted sirtessa as a gmail address.

After which I read the bit about the username never being available again.

Fuckberries.

I've bitten the bullet and just gone with my name. If you know it, you know it, if you don't, it isn't hard to find. I avoid using my surname because a) I'm the only person with my name in the world, b) I'm not sure if, on the path to being a Rockstar Superhero Mad Ninja God Author, it's a surname I'll be retaining, and c) it makes this blog pop up on porn searches in google. For Serious.

I've set up all three addresses to reply from the gmail one, so if you're too lazy to update your address books, don't sweat it.

(Actually, I'm not sure if the aunix one is set up properly either...I've sent, but has anyone received?)

In the process of sorting out that gmail account, I discovered I'd already registered it, and had mail in it from 2004. Ummm, sorry about that, you know who you are.

Tangent!

This post triggered a chewy discussion on "the mechanics of forgiveness", to steal the phrase from Kirsten Bishop.

I particularly like the last comment left by Deborah Biancotti;

'I forgive you', for me, does not translate into 'what you did was OK' or even 'we are OK' -- it is 'I am OK'.

And maybe it's 'you are freed from my previous need for you to address the hurt you caused me'. To be complicated about it.

Which I think is the purest ideal of forgiveness, and something worth cultivating in yourself.

That said, I will not, at the present, be using that definition of forgiveness on myself. If applied to me it reveals that I've never forgiven anyone in my life. BECAUSE I'M A MEAN BITTER SHRIVELED UP LITTLE HAGFISH. AND I EAT DESSICATED BABIES FOR BREAKFAST.

If anyone else has any thoughts to add, I'd love to hear them. I think I've said all I have to say, but given forgiveness is an intensely personal process, I'm sure there are approach vectors we've missed.

Actually, fuck forgiveness. If anyone has any tales of RAW AND STEAMING VENGEANCE, goddamn, share them.

Running While Standing Still

I’ve been thinking about vengeance. There’s a word that has it’s own sort of onamotapea. Venge has the same grunt of strain and force and motion as lunge, it’s the thrust of the blade, which comes up to smack hard on ge, as the hilt smacks on skin and bone, a moment of stillness before eance, a sibilant exhalation that comes after that act, that comes from either side of the knife.

It’s an idea that occasionally looks like justice, but from here the two don’t appear to have much in common. Vengeance sinks its roots in a reaction that can only be described as “how dare you.” A certain level of self-importance is required for such a reaction to occur, which enables anyone to take anything as a personal affront, and then seek to learn the offender of their mistakes, and learn them real good. It demands that the world respect or fear them, regardless of what the initial affront and its magnitude or triviality may have been. That self-importance is all that is needed to justify actions that are not always warranted, on either a personal, moral or social scale.

Suffice it to say, I don’t possess the required degree of self-importance.

I was thinking about forgiveness, a word that sounds nothing like what it is. Given my predilection for latching onto and holding long, entirely pointless and totally eventless grudges, it’s a habit I’ve been trying to cultivate. At first it seemed forgiveness should be indiscriminate, which is just what happens when you’re trying to find balance on new ground – you go too far in the wrong direction.

Forgiveness is no small thing (especially when you’re a grumpy old man), and is not doled out freely. I’ve found I don’t want to deal it out willy-nilly; forgiveness is like respect, it needs to be earned, not expected. Forgiveness means nothing when it isn’t met with an oncoming apology or acknowledgement of things past. If I’m not worth apologising to, then you’re not worth forgiving.

I was thinking about forgetting.

Which isn’t possible.

Finally, I was thinking about what was left for me to do.

The only course of action left is to run. It’s a familiar tactic. I have more practice at it than is strictly necessary and it's a dirty habit, but right now it’s the sensible thing to do. Saying nothing and doing nothing, I’ll flee through time, and every day without earthquakes and every day I see the end of is another day I’ve won, and I’ll put each of these days here, between then and now, until the distance is so great and old hurts are scarred over with new hurts and all history is no longer of any concern to me.

I know these are all just amusing stories in the making. Look at the past through the lens of so many days and nothing means anything anymore.