Oh, man. Something funny happened this evening. I swapped the day with Exene, because she was going to be super-late with work, so I took the boys tonight. Anyway, I was minding the boys, wearing my TAB cola t-shirt and some boxer shorts, when there was a knock on the door, and the boys started raising a ruckus, and I thought it was going to be Exene with some unexpected issue, but it turned out to be a candidate for Ward Alderman and one of his supporters, doing a door-to-door thing with prospective voters!
So, I'm standing there in my doorway, in my boxers, talking about education reform with a would-be alderman. He was asking me what issues mattered to me, and I pointed out how the TIF system was a wreck and needed to be fixed, and so he shpieled on that a bit. Then one of my neighbors came home from work, down the hall, and saw me talking to these guys. I felt like saying "Hey, we're talking about education reform! Just leave your pants and join in the debate!" When they left, the supporter said "Btw, love the t-shirt." Bahah!
I'm happy to report that I can smoothly debate city politics with complete strangers while in my boxers.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
The Call of the Mild
A visual representation of the dichotomy between the romantic's conception of love, and the realist's, below...
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| The Romantic. |
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| The Realist. |
Heart-Shaped Box
My creation of valentines for the boys for school went well; B1's classmates loved them, and B2 talked about the "millions" of valentines he got (really, more like a couple of dozen, but for him, everything good is in the millions).
Valentine's Day has come and gone. No doubt the cards are sold, the candies bought. I cashed a check at the bank and the teller asked me "Oooh, something for Valentine's Day?" and I scoffed: "Yeah, right."
I figure I won't blather about love for the rest of the month; leading up to Valentine's Day is more than enough. Suffice to say that romantics understand love; realists and pragmatists never truly will -- it's like trying to compare wildlife with livestock, and finding equivalency -- romantics love wildlife; realists love livestock. Romantics get the wild nature of love; realists run from it, are haunted and frightened by it. Realists try to tame and train love, to harness its power and put it to work for them, which might reap dividends for them at some point, but at the cost of passion and other pleasures of true romance. Romantics never presume to try to tame love, but let it roam freely through their worlds. Which is well and good, except when love upends their worlds, or when it breaks their hearts. But true romantics accept that as a price to be paid for knowing the full joys and agonies of love -- to feel deeply is to feel both pain and pleasure keenly; it is integral to the artistic temperament. The pain can be staggering, but the pleasures of it can be no less intense, if truly felt. To the realist, the logic is apparent: why go through all of that trouble, why travel through the wilderness when there's a perfectly good, paved road right there? Avoid pain and uncertainty, reap rewards, turn the heart into a metronome, counting out the beats until inevitable death. To them, "the road less traveled" is less-traveled for a reason. I understand why a realist might do that; it's their choice, and it may, in fact, be a logical and even rational choice -- not terribly exciting or interesting, but it's safe, if unimaginative. I'm just not a realist, myself. If I were a realist, I wouldn't be a very good writer, though, now would I?
Anyway, onward and upward. Spring is teasing its way into the weather, here. I refuse to accept Spring in Chicago until, I dunno, May. ;)
Truly, we get warm spells sometimes like this, and then when you think it's time to pack away the Winter gear, a freak storm comes in and wallops you. So, I'm not holding my breath over this warm trend of the moment.
Valentine's Day has come and gone. No doubt the cards are sold, the candies bought. I cashed a check at the bank and the teller asked me "Oooh, something for Valentine's Day?" and I scoffed: "Yeah, right."
I figure I won't blather about love for the rest of the month; leading up to Valentine's Day is more than enough. Suffice to say that romantics understand love; realists and pragmatists never truly will -- it's like trying to compare wildlife with livestock, and finding equivalency -- romantics love wildlife; realists love livestock. Romantics get the wild nature of love; realists run from it, are haunted and frightened by it. Realists try to tame and train love, to harness its power and put it to work for them, which might reap dividends for them at some point, but at the cost of passion and other pleasures of true romance. Romantics never presume to try to tame love, but let it roam freely through their worlds. Which is well and good, except when love upends their worlds, or when it breaks their hearts. But true romantics accept that as a price to be paid for knowing the full joys and agonies of love -- to feel deeply is to feel both pain and pleasure keenly; it is integral to the artistic temperament. The pain can be staggering, but the pleasures of it can be no less intense, if truly felt. To the realist, the logic is apparent: why go through all of that trouble, why travel through the wilderness when there's a perfectly good, paved road right there? Avoid pain and uncertainty, reap rewards, turn the heart into a metronome, counting out the beats until inevitable death. To them, "the road less traveled" is less-traveled for a reason. I understand why a realist might do that; it's their choice, and it may, in fact, be a logical and even rational choice -- not terribly exciting or interesting, but it's safe, if unimaginative. I'm just not a realist, myself. If I were a realist, I wouldn't be a very good writer, though, now would I?
Anyway, onward and upward. Spring is teasing its way into the weather, here. I refuse to accept Spring in Chicago until, I dunno, May. ;)
Truly, we get warm spells sometimes like this, and then when you think it's time to pack away the Winter gear, a freak storm comes in and wallops you. So, I'm not holding my breath over this warm trend of the moment.
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