Agapē (ἀγάπη agápē) means "love" in modern day Greek. In Ancient Greek it often refers to a general affection or concern, rather than the physical attraction suggested by "eros"; agape is used in ancient texts to denote feelings for a good meal, one's children, and the feelings for a spouse. . . . The word "agape" is not always used in the New Testament in a positive sense. The Apostle Paul writes,"For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world...." The word "loved" here is a form of the root word "agape".

Agape is differentiated from Eros, but I don’t see how Eros is differentiated from the feeling you’d have towards children, music, meals, (closest friends, sunlight, the pleasure of breathing, running). Then I read this and I thought, that’s it: Eros is not differentiatable from “loving this present world” and I am guilty of loving the present world.

Poke-a-Roo is here whenever OJ isn’t with me, seems like – very busy “penetrating and destabilizing social spaces” [oy Mr Gradschool - eyeroll]. I ran the latest installment by FPH (Poke had sex with the roommate of the woman he’s currently trying to sleep with, like cz she was the one who answered the door typa deal) and I ask, “Who’d fuck the roommate ya don’t even like?” and he says “You had babies with someone you didn’t like.”

Ouch. Sigh, true enough. In fact, earlier in the afternoon that day when we’d been out on the porch w/ Oj and Dan, and I was deeply enjoying the smell of us all in the hot sun (the present world!), my boys got off the school bus on the corner and I watched their little feet scamper around Opa’s car and watched Ears yammer away at him “um um um and then um um there was this guy/toy/whatever um um um” like he does and I felt perfectly utterly happy. I love looking at people that I care for. I was sitting with 3 and looking at 3 others and I was happy. So yes, certainly I have no defense especially in TJ’s case, whom I practically stole into existence because I’d grown to distrust X by that time so I figured “might was well get what I can out of this”, the way you’d steal copper pipes out of a condemned building. And I’m not even sorry besides. I don’t feel remotely downtrodden by the burden of so many offspring–they have been my opportunities for what I’d call “erogape”. I would have never gotten to the point of being able to care for adults if I hadn’t have gone through children to that ability. I could have never figured out how to even TRY to do a decent job of it (agape) nor felt the deep pleasure in it for its own sake (eros). Adults are dangerous, about which I just knew too much.

So I try to have patience bc I’ve been an asshole too, is what I’m saying.

Most of the time, I find OJ totally charming. I grew up in WI also, so I know she’s telling the truth that there she was not exactly ugly but definitely fell into the terminally tit-impaired category, and compensated by doing stuff like wearing a pound of make-up. It wasn’t until she got to NY that she realized she was good looking, and since that’s new it’s kind of all she can think about bc it’s a continual delightful shock to her. So she “fights consumerism” by putting on 3 or 4 different flattering/minimalist thrift store get-ups per day. I hear her down there (this is so cute), changing her outfits and I know she’s doing it bc she always changes the shoes too - it goes from clumpclumpclump to taptaptap as she tries them out, performing a task per (like reading a book in one outfit, then changing before she makes phone calls, etc. – that’s how she wound up married, I swear to God, for the DRESS). As soon as FPH rings the doorbell and starts playing with the dogs, she's sprouted a new outfit, a 70’s warp-around theme – I’m still in my work clothes and have to catch up hahahahah. If she had time, she'd change for the UPS delivery guy. It’s similar to watching TJ practice with his bokken, like - Hey Dude, watch it with the throwing twat around or you’ll break a lamp. lol

But Poke’s whole “destabilizing social spaces” bullshit comes down to this: marriage often inspires people to act like real assholes, so ignoring the rules of it is “revolutionary”. I know full well that marriage often sanctions people acting like total assholes. All Too Well. But that is a problem, not an opportunity to be an asshole, which would certainly defeat the purpose of the fucking revolution now wouldn’t it?

I have to find something about him that reminds me of a kindergartener . . .

Hey Poketard GradSchool, ever hear of homosociality?

update: I know it's f'd up that I'm following this story, but Adolf Burbman can get 15 yrs for the crime and she was in the cellar for 24 years. Only Austria could make Texas look good in the sickos-are-nice-neighbors department. Plus, speaking of neighbors, Poke just let SnotDog out again and the sound of his voice doing Dan's chores is bugging the shit outa me, and yes that's f'd up on my part to be even noticing, but if the rationale for his being here is to "throw off the chains of domesticity" then the Zoro character should cut chains not walk the dog, no?

hey
it's 'going' fine, stop with that dumb joke
hahah ok ok
what's up?
big week - first of all, my poor sister w the mothercare is exhausted, so can you watch over my brother-in-law cz he's taking it in the teeth
noted
and to round out the family news: my dad has cataracts and is wanting surgery even though, of course, that could kill him, so can you watch over everyone he talks to since he's nearly assaulting doctors who thwart his wishes-? he still sees my old family doc, and I fear for his life sometimes
noted
and the house gets auctioned Wednesday and Feist is Thursday
[um, why is there a young woman standing behind you with her arms crossed staring at the back of your head when she's not scowling at me?]
that's my tenant
?
her husband, also my friend, is out of town and I'm cockblocking bc it's raining and she's afraid of thunder . . . it's hard to explain
okeeee then - sooo [that's distracting, her hrrmphing right behind you, just sayin'] if you don't get the house, will you cry?
nope
if you don't get to see Feist, will you cry?
yup
noted

I got the bank to lower its asking price by 10k total and wrapping all outstanding liens into that price, of 130k (the house last sold in 2005 for 163k), but I still can't buy it bc of the rule that you can't get a conventional mortgage on an auctioned property - all these new rules are to keep people like the current owner from buying houses, closing that barn door after the cows have moved to burbs. at this point, bedroom communities empty out and I watch the show from a frontrow seat, basically

meanwhile, I'm noting the burbs aren't perfect (as if that needs noting, eh? Wilson is the town over from Whiteyton, fyi) bc Ears got into the city's Gifted&Talented program, about which I'm also ambivalent. of course, I'm clucking w/ motherpride, as the city placement office calls about Ears in the same week that TJ clocks in with a 9th grade reading level in his last assessment, blabla - but I know full well that the "Olmstead Gifteds" are mostly just the middle-class kids whose families the city wants to keep in their tax base. I understand that that is the very kind of program that cities have to implement to stem the white-flight, which in turn helps the planet w the ex-urb sprawl problems, and all of that. but in practice, Ears will be bussed to the deep east side, herded into the Gifted building, and back again every day, still living in this hood of elderly city residents and upscale grad student rentals. all over the city, the residential hoods are like this, populated by people who pre-date the city's demise or by people whose children are not yet of school-age if they have kids at all. the childhood in which a kid can self-direct his social life by opening the door and walking a couple blocks over is still beyond my boys here - I have to arrange playdates with the other scattered families (and you can imagine how eager I am to do that) so in effect their only friends are each other (and me)

I know that in Whiteyton, the problem would be that they COULD do that, and then I'd be watching their friends for signs of Columbine a'Coming. but the boy-posse that FPH still enjoys as a life-long source of sociality is enviable, and I envy it. since I started in with this Whiteyton idea, I've let my envy bloom clearly in my mind: I'm a hermit, say la vee, it's not the end of the world, but it's not the beginning of the world either. it's not just that I want to move in FPH's direction literally, it's that I have increasingly wanted the boys to move in the direction of what FPH had/has - it makes him a happier balanced man, and Dan also reports similar benefits and good friends he still has and he's another happy/balanced male in contrast to, say, Poke-a-Roo and X, both isolated except for the women in their lives (whom they treat badly). I've been carefully noting these differences and how they seem to play out into male adulthood . . .

welp, I guess the upside of this situation is that it's been (and obviously will continue to be) a thorough questioning: how do I want to live [now that I can move forward without running from anything]? and at this rate I'll have a dowry to bestow upon myself when the answers become clearer, since I've been working like a lunatic squirrel for "whatever comes next" as "next" keeps being the-merely-now

"Guaranteed," Eddie Vedder

Five Iron Frenzy - O Canada
see voo play la la la

tweetshoptalk 'round the birdbell playlist:

Thievery Corporation - Halfway Around The World
Amon Tobin - Mighty Micro People
Amon Tobin - The Nasty
Tosca - Honey
Tosca - Natural High
Toshinori Kondo and DJ Krush - Sun is Shining


image: karin rosenthal - as one; two

I want to have had a happy childhood. I keep trying to get a do-over in children, whose everyday happiness is delicious to me. So I drag ass out to Whiteyton again. I drive up over the hill into the village and it’s sunset and I can see Toronto. I go poking around my impossibly entangled house again, this time with the agent's contractor-husband in tow, and the neighbor comes out. They've seen me poking around. He tells me every weakness that he’s seen every owner deal with for a decade, since he moved next door with his wife and triplets, two girls and a boy. The hood [pause] would like me to move in, so he tells me what to offer, what to do. He’s a cop, bossy and huge and helpful – not my type, in the sense that the whole place is not my type, in the sense that I want to have grown up in a place like this but I very much did not


did I mention that they flood their yard to make a hockey rink ? every year Ani DiFranco - As Is [repost - I love this one]

"Ugly Love [lalala] (Live on The Current)," Eels

horizon

Bob (who is also M.'s X) accepted a new job today, bigger better and elsewhere -
and Baldy Bitch Bucket has gone off too, to North Dakota of all places . . . . .
leaving M. and Me and that's It
we're all that's left
a 2-super(neurotic)girl department
I say, "we hardly add up to 100 pounds between us for god's sake"
we laugh hysterically
we look at each other with great conspiratorial relief
we sit in silence for a few moments, letting it sink in
wow:
an altogether X'n'fraught-free little world for us to live and read and breathe in

jeesh, I better be more careful what I ask for from that Mary - thank goodness she didn't rain shepherdesses down like frogs from the sky

"Hey Baby Hey," Greg Brown [for the oldtime religion line]
"What a Man," Linda Lyndell [for my good luck charm]

Mom is back in the hospital after a one-day stay in a rehabilitation nursing facility (ie a nursing home), where she contracted an infection instantly and had to be ambulanced outa there. My sister goes over to the hospital this morning to meet her, and mom’s all wacked out sleeping. She wakes up and starts relating the story as my sister is dialing me . . .

Mom: and they didn’t even have a walker I had to use the roommates walker and she was pissed and she says right off “I’m just going to warn you: I wake up at 6 a.m. and go bowling” and I said well god bless ya, you must really like bowling and she just hrrmpmed . .
Sister (sotto voce): I just flew in from L.A. and boy are my arms tired . . .
me: [giggle]
Mom: and then o my god the food what was that even? Mcnuggets??!
Sister: I got a job at a explosives factory but the assholes fired me ha ha
[gigglegigglegiggle]
Mom: Then the nurse comes in and takes the lady’s walker even though she’s in a wheelchair now so I don’t know why she was so upset but I guess she paid for the damn thing so it’s hers even if she can’t move then again how does she bowl from a wheelchair come to think of it
Sister: a nurse and a cranky old cripple walk into a bar . . .
[lol]
Mom: Stop! It was hell! hahaha
Sister: tap tap , is this thing on?
[LOL]

reading my monthly horoscope via angrylamb's link, it kinda made the hair on the back of my neck stand up:

No matter what you become involved with during the first three weeks of April, the real topic underlying everything else will be money. Your eighth house will be a huge focal point, ruling "other people's money." . . This eighth house money rules money that you send out, in terms of obligations you have to pay others, but usually relates to the big commitment . . . It may represent payments for a mortgage . . .

The problem is, this month Mars will challenge this new moon from your eleventh house of hopes and wishes. You may feel blocked or stymied in some way, but if so, keep plugging. As a temporary measure, you may have to trim down the scale of the budget for a venture you wanted to launch, or delay a purchase of something you wanted to buy . .

Don't be blue. You may get a chance later to buy the item you want. This month's aspects simply indicate a need to be resourceful and determination to overcome a few roadblocks that might come up, that is all . . at the full moon April 20 you'll be able to settle the matter. This full moon will send a terrific beam to both Saturn and Pluto, so let's see how this may work out for your benefit.

Talked to mom - very rough couple of days, mostly bc pain killers make us barf, she and I both, big time. Eek morphine, yuuuuuuck. But she's bouncing back now, walking! One of the things about mothers is they have ideas about you that pre-date your awareness of yourself. (TJ asks me constantly about what a screaming nightmare he was when he was a baby, and he forms it into a mythology of himself: his new nickname is "Stubby Samurai".) My mom looooooves Whiteytons. That both her daughters should be ensconced behind picket fences pleases her to no end. So she asks about the house thing and I tell her about how it all went, and she says immediately "I always say, if Gina wants something then that something will be so!" and I think YEAH! I can do ANYTHING! Glad that's settled, hahahahahlol

iron & wine w/ calexico - dark eyes

The agent found out that the owner was busted for dealing cocain along w 40 others in 2003 (a CARTELL ha who knew they were real!?), ie why he doesn't want to produce any financial records, making it impossible for the bank to sell his house. The upshot: O WELL. I just cannot be unhappy about it cz I'm just not unhappy. I'm deciding that that was the personal-growth purpose of this house episode: "I'd be happier in a ditch with a tarp thrown over me, etc etc etc . . . "

My sister is a mogul, and I am hip-deep in house-lust, going squirrel. I’ve been going to town halls and being very nice and if possible bringing a really cute kid with buck teeth and glasses along and gushing about how happy I’ll be to move to their town. Whiteys love to have their stuff ogled. For that I get lawyers’ names and names on deeds and outstanding liens and the auction date and the amount of the judgment against the owner(s) and blabla. My sis coaches me, says “a nice person is just a regular person (or worse) who has figured out that being nice works.”

But it isn't going well. The house will go up for auction on April 30th. They will require the judgment amount plus fees blabla, which wouldn’t be sooo bad except you need it all in cash, which is obviously impossible. Here’s how this works: the mortgager buys it back from itself for what they are owed, then the house sits there empty. The reason why they do that is because one part of the bank can buy it from the other part of the bank that holds the debt, and that way it never shows up on the bank’s books as a loss. I say to the bank’s lawyer – “That’s crazy. Is it legal?” Yes, that’s why everyone is so upset and congress is blathering on about it blablablabla. But wouldn’t they rather sell it than buy it? They really don’t care, she says, as galling as that is. Eventually, when the mortgager gets around to it, they’ll put it on the market, and then I could buy it. But they have so many hundreds of thousands of properties in this situation that nobody knows when that’d happen. I call their lawyer, his lawyer, his bank, my bank - I've even tracked down the owner himself and left messages on his machine, "I've dodged bill-collectors before too, I understand, but I want your house" - all I get is no no no (which I hate hate hate).

The United States is a deeply fucked up place, so much so that really you can’t do ANYTHING here without promptly running into something that’s shitty and retarded. The best thing you can do (for your mental health) is not-function here. FPH always makes fun of me for being a freak, but here the choices are: freak, pissed-freak, upstanding-freak, upstanding-asshole, asshole – on a sliding scale towards the Right. Pissed-freak w upstanding tendencies, I’m going to sit on my nest-egg and stalk an empty house. (?) That is about as much fun as watching porn rather than fucking, frankly.

Welp, it's a house, not a person. There are other fireplaces in the sea. Meanwhile, today is Friday, the sun is out and nearly hot, and in just a few hours I'll have a reason to be wearing this pretty dress.

zooey Deschanel & M ward - Bring it on Home to Me
Colin Meloy - bring it on home to me

jacko pulled through, but "recovering" is not her favorite thing ever :/

long day

"If your'e not on the edge, you're taking up too much room" - bikram choudhury

My plans for the night were foiled - sigh say la vee - So I went to the latest nightyoga, which is its own kind of pleasure, the room very full and verrrry hot. I blew another gasket; that's quite annoying cosmetically but also an odd kind of happiness that is hard to explain. Then a looooong bath, rewater rewater rewater, sipping lite beer. And I ordered a pizza with spinach on it cz no boys are here to bitch about the green. I'm watching this. I sort of have to watch it cz I work with history professors whatever blabla. I'm trying to like it, buuuuuut ummmm guys in wigs just don't do it for me. And either this guy is an obnoxious dickhead or John Adams was. Or both. Probably both. The amputations . . . oy, worse than crappin' babies . . . the upshot seems to be that life could totally be grosser, such as back when dudes wore stupid looking wigs as if the unwashed factor + the pompous weren't bad enough. To bring that point home, the dialogue is devoid of contractions. The entire continental congress sounds like Data from Star Trek. But (second historical lesson) they're better than the French bc the Americans at least take their wigs off to have sex. fyi




My mother has her hip replaced tomorrow.







bonus, Willie Nelson - Nothing I Can Do About It Now
Johnny Cash - Get Rhythemz (Paparazzi Edit)
the last shadow puppets - my mistakes were made for u (video)

from fph - richard cheese - longview

monday

Anxiety always involves inner conflict . . Anxiety occurs at the point where some emerging potentiality or possibility faces the individual, some possibility of fulfilling his existence, but this very possibility involves the destroying of present security, which thereupon gives rise to the tendency to deny the new possibility. Here lies the truth of the symbol of the birth trauma as the prototype for all anxiety – an interpretation suggested by the etymological source of the word ANXIETY as “pain the narrows.”

---Rolo Max, The Discovery Of Being

friday chicken

The Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want (Soulwax Remix)

acoustic alchemy - daybreak

the bigger the stack of ungraded papers, the longer I linger over the morning news, meaning mostly the purient and low-brow news (of course)

this is so kinky . . . after the Cheers 'where are they now' slideshow, I moved on to this (it's not just me!?, all women get 'I love you' when it means 'I'm as asshole'/'shut up'/'fuck you'/etc., that's sad) . . . I wonder if Halle Barry's baby pics are out yet . . . nope, but if anybody can pull of bald it's her . . . woops . . .

this

Talk about happiness requiring bravery, this takes guts.

"If I could, I’d run away with water and have waterbabies
and go wordless."

[my abs were good but my hair looked like a pineapple]

it's cold and rainy now
but I can feel it coming
and I wake up and think:
it's still true
I'm free
and it's summer again

Rat Within The Grain - Damien Rice

Spring 05:

If Jesus were on one side and a hideous floral overstuffed sofa loveseat combo on the other, I'd rather be in hell than in the suburbs. [hahahahaomg]

. . always bracing myself for a blow, then that feeling begins to subside, like turning down the volume. But not off. That’s the thing. It’s never off. I am never not bracing myself for a blow. So it’s not that anything changes, but rather the opposite. It’s exactly the same as everything, only louder.

Ever notice that trying to keep someone from getting pissed at you is sorta zen? You can see the blows coming a mile away once you're into it, and know which way to faint and spin and come out in back of him smiling like "what?", and then do it again. After awhile, there really is a total effacement of the person. [which one?]

It's my only salvation, that working hard and being utterly despairing can look exactly alike in my life.

I am thinking mostly of what’s wrong with me, or if there is something wrong with everyone and everything else. I managed soccer practice, but not without nearly drowning in the ambient sexual pathos inherent in all mixed-adult groups, around which I can hardly breathe but nobody else seems to be noticing. I have prayed on my knees, twice in the last year, for that to stop. After the second time, without hearing anything back so to speak, I thought about joining a church in order to seduce a cleric . . strangely, that might be the only way I’ll experience redemption.

[and hers] Angel Snow, Meet Me in the Morning (Dylan cover)

"The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (Postal Service cover)," Jonna Lee

the heart of a collector
[I love little kid hands]

upshot epilogue

experience suggests that with very few exceptions
which are greatly appreciated
adults suck

I understand this is not everyone's experience
I wish it were not mine
but it is

They go at it wow at the smallest provocation, nutty as fuck. She emails him that they think maybe he should come down earlier on Saturday morning. He is annoyed, he doesn’t want to come down. He writes back that perhaps since her sister had Picks disease that her mind is compromised, and besides she’s not his real mother. Who does that? She’s appalled. Of course, God knows, they can be a couple of real assholes too. Now with no buffer, no other targets, now they go at each other directly. I stand there dumbstruck. I think, ya know, at any moment those shootings by very nice normal people of their entire family could occur here, except that of course it won’t. Which is even kinda spookier, like a dream that might become a nightmare but you wake up. Again and again. The nightmare haunting the dream.

Why I feel vaguely guilty, I dunno. Survivor guilt whatever(again)(something). I walk around the park with her, upbeat and managerial. This is the short-range, the longer range, the immediate future; just do what I want, all will be well. Yes, yes yes, whatever you say that sounds great, they all say. I’m dumbstruck a little again, but not as much as at the shooting. He comes down at this hour, they see the children on that day, no more need to talk to each other at all (great!, they all agree); they hate each other, it’s settled. And so we three wave goodbye at them three and fall in again together, boy smells and cake.

Somewhere in my bones-to-skin, I lean against a warm furry wall. I get handed a helmet. And then I thinkwhisper at K., Are you seeing this? It was true. They are nutty as fuck.

Welp, the weather was fabulous today.

Colin Meloy - We Both Go Down Together

Helmet
To see a helmet in your dream, signifies that you need to keep your thoughts and ideas closely guarded.
panther - totally sexy church

When the snow melts enough for me to smell mud, I feel like stripping and rolling into it as if I could sprout out as nearly anything.

"It's a Motherfucker," Eels (repost)
"Grace Kelly Blues," Eels

armscrossy

mortgage: the other M word

I wonder if Waycross is a suburb . . .

Update: I put in an offer on the little Whiteyton house, the stone cape cod. Desire won, in other words. (Big Surprise, eh?) They probably won't accept it as it was a very low offer. But I listened to another podcast about how to buy a house in this market blabla and they said "if you're not embarrassed by your offer, it's too high" so . . . well there ya go. Ya never know. I'll keep you updated - In case any of you bitches ever want to visit, HA HA.

hope gives me the gitters kinda

I got up this morning w/ a bug up my ass - in the night, my laptop half-croaked with a terrible blue screen that said infinite loop, dumping physical memory and I thought 'hmm good thing I didn't buy that house' and then all of a sudden I was pissed off (again), chafing at having to think small/scared - so I got up, stuck a plaid skirt on, and headed out to Whiteyton to drop in unannounced on the classrooms the boys'd be in if I moved.

Every kid should have a small class size and the right to play an instrument in band (the same way that they should all have healthcare), and they don't, not here.

Reproach and Desire clash in my chest like waves against a breaker
playlist:

"How Can I Be Sure," Shelby Lynne
jack johnson - gone
"My Love Is," Holly Golightly
bonus track: Rockapella, Gangsta's Paradise (Coolio)