Matter

Flight of the Ideator: A Prologue

I’m a Leo. I was born in the Year of the Ram. I’m an ENFJ. Despite any suggestions to the contrary, I belong in Ravenclaw (the hat’s opinion may differ at first, but my intent would be taken into consideration, dammit).

There are a lot of fun labels for me and the way I am. I seek them out. I mean, I don’t submit myself to every one of those surveys that get posted on Facebook, but once in a while the results are amusing and can serve as good smalltalk fodder or, honestly, something to post to my timeline as “proof of life”. Flight of the Ideator: A Prologue (cont.)

An old snapshot

I’ve had a lot of time lately to reminisce and contemplate. Think about where I’ve been. Try to decide where I want to go, what I want to do.

I got a new computer near the end of 2016 and, much like moving houses, migrating the contents of a hard drive can result in finding old files, buried in some subfolder or other. In one of those, I found this picture.

It’s been cropped within an inch of its life and I think it was taken with a then-cutting-edge point-and-shoot digital camera. But, by golly, that dude in it had some hopes and dreams.

In it, I’m seated on the brick path around the Ryerson Quad. My best guess is that this was taken in the spring of 2001, or perhaps the previous autumn. I’m as much smirking at the camera as I am at the photographer, the woman I was dating at the time. I can’t help but feel I’m also smirking about the future I envisioned. My last year of theatre school. I was thinking about studying and performing in opera if, y’know, the lifelong contract at Stratford fell through.

I wonder what that naïve son-of-a-gun would think of where he wound up a decade and a half later. Would he appreciate the fact that I’m happy, despite the strange misshapen reality I made of his dreams? Probably not. Idealistic infant. At the very least, I don’t think he expected me smirking back at him today. Let alone everyone else smirking at him with me here and the other places I’ve shared this on social media. #TBT

Regarding the Punching of Nazis

This morning I woke up, opened Twitter on my phone, and landed promptly upon a pretty delightful thread of tweets by @Zestlord, in which they shared a quick, clear, and entertaining history of Marvel’s Nick Fury. My enjoyment of the thread combined with my deep and abiding love for both hashtags and alliteration would not let me retweet the thread without enjoying the fortuitousness of seeing it to start my Friday. So, #FuriousFriday it is.

Now, I do, when prompted, make a point of saying I’m apolitical, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have strong opinions about events set in motion by politicians. And the appropriateness of fury that may arise as a result of those events. So, there were only a couple of short jumps of the hashtag train of thought before it firmly landed on the track of the whole series of conversations being had online covering the spectrum of “Nazis: To Punch or Not To Punch.”

Any reasonable person who falls on either side of that difference of opinion has their pick of professionally written opinion pieces to which they can post a link, but I find myself really curious about the opinions of my friends on that question. What’s the best way to ask and get a thoughtful answer? What if I strongly disagree with the answer or the reasoning behind it? So, yeah… those thoughts led to me returning here to my site and writing on it. That’s a way to kick off a Family Day long weekend, huh?

And, yes, I realize this topic has already had its news cycle, but that doesn’t make me any less curious.

D O E – 7 – Commentary

“Don’t hesitate,”
I have retained
nothing else.
Oh, it feels good.
I can’t really
reestablish my equilibrium.
The feeling startles me but not in a bad way.I’m cerebral. Occasionally to a fault. I can say for certain that it’s been a help as well as a hindrance. Particularly in areas that don’t entirely depend on intellectual processing.

Like some of my theatrical ventures. And some of my past relationships. D O E – 7 – Commentary (cont.)