I Like To Think I'm Broadminded

I've eaten dinner and am listening to Stu Levitan. I feel incredibly lazy. Work was pretty blah. I spent the first 2 hours of my day wiping a user's PC and loading it back up only to have the problem recur. There's just gotta be something fucked up with her profile. Then I spent a lengthy time working on an Acrobat issue but I managed to get it resolved. I didn't see The Fickle One, which was a bit of a downer. I just remembered that I left the big hoolie of cookie dough that I bought from a co-worker's kid in the frig at work. Son of a bitch! No white chocolate-macadamia nut cookies for me this weekend.

My plan for the night is to watch NOW with Bill Moyers. Oooh! Oooh! I went over to the Frontline page and see that the recent Wal-Mart episode is available online. Since I missed the last half, I'll have to check it out. I was going to write that I planned on getting some reading done tonight but I may pass.

Stu uses "For What It's Worth" as bumper music and it occurs to me that there are precious few anti-war songs nowadays. At least very few in the Top 40. Why is that? Another random musical thought: The Louvin Brothers song, "Broadminded", serves as a good summary of the red vs. blue division:

Some people say they gamble now and then for pleasure
And drink a little whiskey just to please a friend
They say it's really nothing, you've got to be broadminded
That word in my Bible is spelled "s-i-n"

It does seem more than a tad hypocritical considering Charlie was a drinker and married four (4) times.

I have a sorry statement to make: I turned down a chance at sex last night. I know, I know - you see a chance, take it. But I violated that cardinal rule. What was I to do? I just felt like being alone. Maybe I just had too much on my mind. Not super-mega important things or important decisions that needed to be made quickly. While they weren't really mundane thoughts, they did occupy my mind. I guess I lapsed into an intellectual frame. I needed to be pensive. I needed to consider what I've been reading and take stock of my immediate position. There was a section in A Deeper Freedom concerning love & relationships that really affected me. It wasn't this big revelation but rather like anamnesis. The ideas weren't new nor ideas with which I disagree. Instead they were views & understandings that I hold but have been ignoring.

Naturally, in a true relationship we discover unknown things about ourselves. In this sense, knowing each other is unlike knowing a stable object in the world. I develop through the relationship; my meaning changes, as does yours. We haev to keep changing our theories of one another, and of our common bond, as we go along. What we discover is indeed alikeness, identity. Aristotle was right: Friendship requires a shared interest in some good. But the differences deepen the relationship and extend its mystery. Do we really seek someone who agrees with us on every point, who is just like us? The odd angles, the distinct point of view, the thoughts we think bright or funny because they are not ours, sheer quirkiness and whimsicality - these interest us. We are looking for yin and yang, a harmony of differences, or, best of all, complementarity.

To find a good relationship, whether of friendship or love, colleagueship or collaboration, you have to accept the fact, humbly and with gratitude, that somebody else is better than you are at many things that you have always tried to do by yourself alone. Complementarity enlarges the competence of both of you. It enlarges the range of meanings, the significance of your lives. YOu are now better at map reading, appreciating Bach, supervising, seeing the ridiculous in certain kinds of solemnity. But how the other person knows all the things that you do not remains a mystery. Again, the odd fact is that you know just about as much about the meaning of the person closest to you as you do about the meaning of the universe.

In a certain sense, I spent part of my time last night wondering why I had stopped seeking complementarity, why I had chosen to stopped seeking to extend the mystery.

The Dulcinea is a wonderful person. But she is primarily a sex partner and secondarily an activity partner. But she's not really a complement, at least not in most ways. For whatever reason, I'm beginning to feel like I need to find a true complement. Am I up for a "real" relationship?

As the robin craves the summer
to hide his smock of red,
I need the pillow of your hair
in which to hide my head.

I'm simple in my sadness,
resourceful in remorse.
Then I'm down straining at the lead
holding on a windward course.

Can I handle one? It's been over two years since I've found myself in one. During that time, I've felt like the narrator above. I need a pillow of hair in which to hide my head but I always find myself straining at the lead going off somewhere else. There's that angel on my shoulder telling me to find my Complement but I still wear those horns and think that there must be tons of womyn my age who are still single, divorced, or otherwise lonely and would put out.

My ambivalence aside, here's some nerdy music news. The local progressive rock cover band, Prog, has landed a regular gig at The Klinic. Every first Wednesday of the month. I might have to take a trek down the the Chicago 'burbs as another prog cover band, Grand Parade will be doing a gig on December 4th.

What else is going on culturally? Ollie Stone's Alexander opens next week. The restored version of The Big Red One is playing in Chicago. Gotta see that. And they'll be showing Dr. Strangelove next week! I may have to trek down to Chitown to see that again.

Either I will now prepare to watch that hoolie on PBS about womyn in Afghanistan or hit the sack. I've got a caffeine buzz yet am dead tired.