Reflections on a Quarter-life Crisis

Not much makes me feel better these days, ma cherie... I'm like 2 weeks in the dirt.

I've posted a racy poem or three, but you've truly raised the bar,Tara. That's very well-written-downright compelling!
Welcome Back!

If it makes you feel any better, his name wasn't really Peyton.

Holy Sh*t... Tara's cute! S'up, girlfriend?

Unless his last name is "Manning" and you're after his money... never let a man named "Peyton" get beyond asking for your phone number, girls. Frolly a pag.

Wow Tara, That's some scholarly stuff! very interesting/alarming subject. Kudos on your methods of analysis and sociological angles.

Hi!-

You've posted these as self-help
techniques to fight apathy
and I am fully agreeing in abundance:

cleaning, designing, sketching, auctions, touring, strolling,
scrap-booking,watching theater, opera, singing,poetry, baking,pottery,knitting,etc.

Baking and pottery are especially fine in the morning, when it's very cool.

I am however afflicted with a TERRIBLE PHOBIA
in regards to knitting.
Something to do with bunnie slippers when I was certainly younger than now.

So many exciting concepts: knitting, crochet,macrame,ect. are easily to be
found within reach of grasp, yet I can't do it. I just --can't-- meet the challenge.

When I worked for the Ironworkers Union Local #109, some of my fellow
ironworkers would be knitting during lunch and
they would laugh at me because I could not knit.

I have also discovered that after tulip-picking in the morning,
a few hours of chainsaw work would decrease my apathy
as the chainsaw is uncouth for safety regards.

Hence the jealously... you Pecker.

And a LOT older too.

Stacey is jealous.

This is the next best thing to going there. Thanks for sharing, Tara!

Tara, if you can get Netflix or such aboard, be sure to watch "A Room with a View" , the 1986 Merchant Ivory feature film, with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The film was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant.

The film is based upon the novel A Room with a View by E.M. Forster and stars Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham Carter, Denholm Elliott, Judi Dench and Daniel Day-Lewis. It is the most romantic film ever about this city which is my favorite after visiting over 200 countries.

Where are you now, Tara?
Tell us more about your adventures abroad.

Call it as I see it

possee

What did Archie used to say to Edith? poss needs a little poke now and then when he gets into whiny-mode.
maverick [Member] writes:
The democratic attempt to stifle all dissent has begun at Cape Cod Today with Ned leading the charge.

Ekzept,

I have so much to say about the article you posted and the way you've supported/countered it... but, I won't. My point in posting articles like this is not to see how many people I can get to agree with me; my goal is to provide an impetus for deeper, more intricte thinking. (For my own sake, I like to hear other's thoughts on the topic.) I'm glad to see I have succeeded.

Thank You for Thinking.

The democratic attempt to stifle all dissent has begun at Cape Cod Today with Ned leading the charge.

Nice to see snakedog post a Comment without snarling! Chivalry shown to Tara; the one charming aspect of the wingnut worldview. possee, however is back on his proverbial veranda watching Rome burn. Fresh content,sir please.

Politicians love to wrap themselves in the moral collective, as 'moral' itself is a buzz word initiating each individuals belief of what is moral..
thus the collective belief that what their respective party is legislating, or proposing, is the moral thing to do for society...
Which is the right moral, is the individuals perception..
not the collectives..

Funny how the pols, throughout history, are the most immoral of us all!

possee

Such courage and sensibilities as described come from the INDIVIDUAL, and NOT from the institutions of which they choose or don't choose to associate. I underscore this, contrasting this essay with the recently lauded piece by David Brooks in The Times, per:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/opinion/27brooks.html?em

My challenge to Brooks and to you is that to go along with whatever everyone else is doing is fine, as long as it is morally right. But, in that case, how much credit can be claimed by the individual. In contrast, when the group is wrong, and the individual goes contrary to the group pursuing the moral, using moral ends, then the individual claims all credit.

Snakedog,

I much appreciate your feedback as you can see that most of my exploratory posts are more of a train of thought than anything else.
I like that you bring up societies who hold values that many of us view as ridiculously immoral (ie Nazi Germany, Military stalemates in the DRC)as it shines light on the pure fact that how we perceive morals is solely an equation of our societal constructs and individual experiences. Really, there's no definite way to know what we believe is 'right', or so is how I perceive it. (Sidenote: I see the Killing Fields as a way of suppressing a people and maintain power as opposed to a communist believe that the farming life was the 'right' way.)

Your point of the Rwandan genocide embodies my idea; the survival of an individual may depend on actions we might consider immoral (theft, murder, lies). So, yes, an individuals morals can only be understood in a contextual sense of society, religion, language, geography, values, etc.

My Tara:

Your plunge into a "cognitive adventure" (internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language) is noble but can be applied by those good or evil and applies to each individual differently. Morals by developed societys such as Hitler's & the National Socialist German Workers' Party thought the "Final Solution", meant to clense society of the Lebensunwertes Leben, that is "life unworthy of living". For the Naizs a "moral duty", Pol Pot's "Killing Fields" was a Communist attempt to form a peasant farming society and punish those who have reached the luxury of morals. Islamic terrorists following Osama bin Laden's 1996 Fatwa saw it as their avenue to the "luxury of Morals" & heavenly duty to kill the infidels. The Rwandan Genocide (no luxury) in a poor and underdeveloped country between Hutu militias and the Tutsi rebel group killed 800,000 to 1,000,000. There are so many influences that people react to life it is so unpredictable to examine the path of morality that people take. Each person will answer to a higher power in this world or the next.

Interesting... The way I break it down in my life is that basically there are two worlds, there is the material world and the spiritual world. The reality of either is of course up for individual's interpretation.

http://www.philemonfoundation.org/junghistory/volume2-issue2/sources-of-systema.html This is it! A cursory examination doesn't turn up the lens-of-the-eye thing, though... maybe that's a conclusion I drew... But I love Phanes the Winged Egg giving birth to the Winged Snake and its nemesis the Winged Mouse... very dreamy and archetypal...

http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=1722 This isn't the precise page: I'll keep looking- there's an analogy by the young Jung between the way that we take a jumble of constant fresh sensory input and construct a world out of it... and the way God might've created the universe... VERY trippy...

There's an article about identity and the 'mechanics' of the brain in the June HARPER'S(the piece isn't online but at the library) that I enjoyed, and then there's an early essay-with-mandala-painting by Karl Jung that has an 'insight' about the lens of the eye as The Looking Glass interface between Inner and Outer Worlds ...I'll look for the link...

Are we ever going to hear from her again?

The thought of a lovely young woman fasting puts me in mind of a farmer during a drought watching his crops dwindling in the field. There's too much anorexia already.

Welcome, Tara!
Thanks for the interesting article!

I'm as supportive of you as someone who sent her husband off to work with half a lamb in his lunchpail can be.

Your fasting will focus your attention, it is possible to fast in other ways , other than the food way Make up your mind to forego consumer goods that you may desire and crave, but really don't need. I am in that stage of fasting.

The best advice I can give you is to A) just order in English, B) Get angrier by the second, and C) keep at it til they bring someone over who speaks English.

We all speak English, actually. We just don't like to let on that we do, for reasons of our own.

The men? Well, they are just not what I expected. Everyone joked how I would be swept off my feet by the charm of the European men but that definitely hasn't happened. I would say the main difference between American men and Western European men would simply be the accent. I've also found, women and men included, that staring is not considered all that rude. When I first came it really bothered me but now I realized it's just one of those culture differences.

This is not actually, my first experience outside the US. My mother is from India so I have visited many times and would go back in a heartbeat if my wallet could bear it. I also traveled to Spain for a couple weeks in high school where I stayed with a host family and attended a Spanish school in Ponferrada. Incidentally, I am trying to find a way to travel to either India or a Spanish-speaking country for m 1 month break in May before I start my grad classes in the summer.

Nice debut. Is this your first experience in a foreign country?

Tara, I think I remember you from HS here. Which class were you in. It must be kewl living in Switzerland - how are the men over there compared with the Cape?