Pieces

I am in love with pieces. A stunningly blue pair of eyes, a swirl of hair as they turn, the jaunty set of sunglasses on their head.

Calling it love is a bit much, I suppose, but I love and hate easily. Too easily. There are advantages to thinking with one's heart instead of one's mind, but there are just as many problems. I can see why some choose logic and science over intuition and magic, but I don't see the why of it.

It's not just sight that I'm in love with - it's the cool feel of someone's hand as I brush them accidentally, the clean scent of a person, the way they say a word.

It goes beyond physical attributes, though - it's a maternal arm stretched out to a lost child, a passion about a subject, a clever word, a quirk of personality. It's a feeling I get walking by them, a good vibe.

But no one person.

Just pieces, patched together.

Gods, what's wrong with me?

Easy

Sometimes, when the drama increases to new heights, when I'm terrified about leaving home, when my parents think I've giving them a lot of attitude, my dad will invoke the 'easy' reminder. I have it so easy, I'm so lucky. I was born in America. I'm getting an education. I'm going to college, and we'll figure out a way to pay for me and both of my brothers to go. I can drive, I wasn't born in a country that does not allow women to drive or be educated. I can walk down the street in whatever I want to (and my parents let me) wear. There's the option of birth control readily available and widespread. (And the whisper in the back of my mind says that there's always the option of abortion at the worst.) I wasn't married off at the age of thirteen. I'll be able to vote and have a say in our country. I'm intelligent and healthy, and I can keep that up. I was taken around the world to see people and understand that they are all intrinsically the same, all intrinsically good, kind, intelligent people, more than the majority of my peers have ever seen. In short, I was born in one of the most privileged places in the world to a family that will aid in my success. He doesn't say most of this, but I know. That's what he means, after all, when he says I was born here.

Then comes the comparisons. "When they were your age," he says, then launches into descriptions of how I have it so easy. My mother was in college, trying to figure out how to pay for it all herself, had twice as many classes as required for a full-time student, and worked a job pretty much full time. My dad was caring for his father, who was slowly dying, and had already lost his mother over a decade before. My maternal grandfather was in college for engineering, gearing up for World War Two. My maternal grandmother was emigrating to a land where she knew no-one but an uncle, lost, and had to get married in order to make sure she could support herself. My paternal grandfather was in the Navy or nearly so, having run away from home to join the Navy in time for World War Two. (I'm still not sure if he knew how to swim, but he joined anyways and ended up on a submarine.) My paternal grandmother survived the London Blitz, biking past the river and nearly getting hit. I have it easy.

Looking back, I feel like a wimp. I have it so easy, grew up so soft. My grandfather and his father were farmers, working the land themselves. I've never known labor like that. I have to live up to these examples - and there's more than that, there's their friends, more ancestors, stories we hear in the news. People who find adversity, trample it, and laugh in its face. People who can be proud of themselves, their accomplishments. Why can't I have it hard?

snis/seutriv

Sins and Virtues. Why does the Catholic Church have a monopoly on them in our society? And why seven? There's a bit too much to remember them all, and they're all old-fashioned, out-dated words, even ideas. I mean, chastity? Temperence? Wrath? Pride? Those sins have been deemed 'fine' by our modern day culture, and the meanings of those virtues seems - lost.

So I've set up my own ethics. This is still an evolving process, and open to suggestions (though that doesn't mean I'll take them). My rules: the list must be short, it must reflect modern culture, and as it is very personal, it must reflect me and my values.

So it seems to me there are two basic forces at work in the universe, spiritually speaking: creation and destruction. Extremes of either are to be avoided at all costs. Imagine being stuck in a world of constant destruction: nothing is ever accomplished but blind hate. Now the world of constant creation: overpopulation, no room to breathe. Between the two of them is balance.

The sins and virtues are divided into two fairly obvious groups: destructive forces are sins, and creative forces are virtues. There are currently five in each group. In the virtues are beauty, love, tenacity, intelligence, and vengeance. Sins are murder, rape, waste, stupidity, and betrayal.

Allow me to explain.

Virtues

Beauty does not necessarily exclude ugliness, this is a beauty of the soul, of the mind. It is a beauty of balance and symmetry, one achieved through hard work for that hard-to-grasp aesthetic quality.

Love is passion, a pure desire for something, to care for it, nurture it. It is wanting to do something not for oneself and personal gain, but because someone else will benefit.

Tenacity is stubbornness, a 'stick-to-it' quality that ensures something will be created. It makes sure that ideas become things.

Intelligence is the ability to learn - not knowledge, not wisdom, just a thirst for knowledge and education. It is wanting to know how to make your ideas into things.

Vengeance - this one people will probably look askance at. It is, above all, righteous, not petty. It is only undertaken for serious matters, and never pre-emptively. It is exactly equal to the insult dealt.

Sins

Murder. Quite self-explanatory, but it must be clarified that murder, senseless killing, is the sin here. Not manslaughter, not killing to avenge. Pure killing for the sake of killing.

Rape: also self-explanatory, as such an intimate violation is nothing but killing a soul.

Waste is killing without reverence. To slaughter an animal, then toss out the majority of it is irreverent. One must kill only in need, and be careful in determining need at that.

Stupidity is wilfull lack of knowledge. It is not wanting to learn, for pure orneryness. Which is of course a word.

Betrayal is a violation of trust. It is one thing to lie, but to betray is to say that the person betrayed never was as important to you as you were to them.

So there it is - sins and virtues, according to me. Constructive / creative criticism and opposing views are most welcome.

Chapter Seventeen, In Which I Try My Hand At Poetry (Again)

Changing purses today

I found a paper

in my careless, hurried scrawl

detailing how you like your sandwich

from the place down the street

that I'd walk to with a friend

while you were in class with yours.

(Seven lines 'til the end

of my thought. Seven is magic.)

It was folded and ripped

just a paper, careless,

but from the time

I thought we loved each other.

(Four lines 'til the end

of my thought. Four is death.)

Those days are gone -

I still love you, but

just as much as I hate you,

and I don't know if you

ever really loved me.

(Five lines 'til the end

of my thought. Five is spiritual balance.)

I saved it.

(One line - alone.)

(SEVENTEEN IS AN ARC NUMBER)