inconsequentialities

I was just on hold with a food vendor who had a salsa remix of Coldplay's Clocks on their hold music. Wow, that was fast. I feel old. I still adore that song, no matter how overplayed it got.

Today I'm listening to Imogen Heap's Myspace page again. There's a line in Just For Now that goes "secretly on your side." The way she says it, the music, plus the words themselves, often get me to have to blink very quickly to get the moisture out of my eyes. That is some good songmaking. My envy of her isn't as sharp as it is of Leonard C, maybe because her works seem more approachable. If I could devote big gobs of energy and time and resources to musical craft I could approach her level, I think, if in a different musical style. Leonard on the other hand is a person with Meg's juice and my people-paranoia. Almost impossible to replicate.

But I'm back to reading the adventures of Fey's literary doppelganger, Elizabeth. There IS a book between This Scepter'd Isle and By Slanderous Tongues! It's called Ill Met By Moonlight, and I dipped into my scanty PayPal funds to buy myself access to the ebook. First time I've done that; congrats to Mercedes Lackey and Roberta Gellis for wearing away my resolve. And what a fiendish clever trick, too, making alternate books free so I was dying of curiosity to read exactly what happened when a later book only gave me a teasing synopsis. Of course the great likelihood is that Fey already has the hardcopy and just didn't know I hadn't read it yet or some such thing. I still don't regret my decision because with the webscription thing I can read this book while at my desk. Which will give me greater comfort and enjoyment than a physical book I would have to go outside to read.

Of course it's snowing, it's the first day of spring. Clever equinox. I thought we had our last snow, what, three weeks ago; I figured it'd cap off that unnaturally warm period at the end of February and that would be the end of it.

A couple days ago my little rune deck (I still can't find my Rider! Don't get it!) told me repeatedly that I needed to adjust my attitudes, especially about work. Things are changing around here, seemingly for the better, and I as usual am dragging my heels. Not because I don't want things to improve, but I am always distrustful of seeming change. Homeostasis in groups of beings is very difficult to break, and the easy transformations are all to a lower overall energy level, in other words, more chaos. But if the restaurant in general gets better organized I will have to slack off slightly less. Reduction in slackage being something I won't readily do, I can see me needing a good head-smacking to become aware of it.

Le sigh. Sometimes I think I need divination to even notice things that would be blindingly obvious to others more grounded in external events. More hip to their times you might say. And I know for a fact my obsession with personality has been a sort of bridge for me to move from where I was to the place where I can learn to form interpersonal bonds of intermediate strength.

I actually had a conversation with Dad last night where I talked about Mom and some of my views on what happened when I was little. He kept trying to do his salesman thing (oh, call it by the name I prefer; sorcery!) to turn the conversation to other matters, but I persisted until I felt no more could be done without seriously disrupting his mental state over a period of time greater than a few hours. Dogmannit, I want him to understand. Part of this is my own feelings of guilt, and one cannot, I think, be truly forgiven unless one's actions are comprehended truly. Part of it is that Mom never can and never will be able to be made to understand, so if Dad doesn't, I'm s.o.l. in the parental blessing department.

He understood, understands, at least partially, what happened to Meg and Fey. They did what he would have done, what he likely did do in comparable circumstances. He had no frame of reference for me. Amber resisted and fought and became hard and sharp and brought out Mom's hardness and sharpness. Pearl was not given a chance to react, yet no matter how she was bruised and twisted and tossed about, her deep inner desire to love and be loved never altered. It just had nasty things put in there because Mom's, ah, companion I think had a very "experimental proving ground" attitude towards Pearl.

So to recap. Amber sensed that her self-mastery was to be violated and resisted, with degrees of success at the time that I can't know, because she hasn't told me. Pearl remained herself while absorbing indescribable amounts of psychic (and some physical) damage. I grasped immediately that I was to be broken, and broke. Dad didn't push me away, but he didn't invite me either. And Amber and Pearl were sure enough of his love that they took up his attention, which excluded me pretty effectively from the circle of trust. I concluded therefore that I was not wanted there, which confirmed what I already knew about myself: that there was something horribly, incurably wrong with me which was obvious to everyone but me. Which feeling Mom's companion knows like the back of its eyelid, and who knows, may have put there in the first place. I am sure that Amber and Pearl had the same feelings but am equally sure that such were not the primary rulers of their lives, the engine that drove them through every hour. It was a selfish and nasty and petty thing around which to center one's personality, but even creatures like Mom's are driven to reproduce themselves. And Amber wouldn't allow it for herself; Pearl simply could not, could not by the very structure of her power, be bent into that shape, not for want of trying. So it was me by default. And casting me in the role of protege or pet or whatever, subtle as it was, further drove a wedge between me and my sisters and made me even more her creature. That the role was played by an automaton made not a mote of difference, and it's not as if she noticed.

Maybe I spent a little too much time thinking about it yesterday, I don't know. But I have to think about it sometime. Resolving my feelings about that time and leveling my own judgment at my past self for my actions within the time is the only way to get past the tangle that keeps me from access to my memories. And if I cannot access my memories I cannot bring order to them, and if I cannot bring order to my memories I will always be vulnerable. I suppose it is inconsequential whether Dad ever understands or not. But I can't afford not to. It's what I'm made of.