Connecting Dots

MeToo Blog

CREDIT

Tomur Atagök Facebook Page

Tomur Atagök generously granted permission for the display of a photo of her work “”Cerçevelenmis Doga” at the top of my blog. I see a living graph, nodes and edges, something that connects itself to itself. A subset of Nature brought inside, like this blog’s author. Thank you Tomur ❤

A recurring theme in or the theme of this blog is “how not to hurt people with words” though it may not be possible at all.

Sticks and stones may break my bones

But words will never hurt me

where the Sticks can be Edges and the Stones can be Nodes or Vertices or Dots.

Update 21/5/2020

SECOND EPIPHANY is two years old now. Graphomania pushed me out of university, a fledgling fell from its nest. I couldn’t keep up with my racing thoughts in a #METOO notebook and pay attention to lectures at the same time (I can only write with one hand). A false start. I wasn’t ready. The second in a series of “Now I know exactly what to do!” epiphanies. Full of manic energy. This is the third one. The third false start. I’m not ready.

THIRD EPIPHANY

Brought on by The Confinement, which has released me to do what I want. Drop the bands, look at my hands, think, drink, write, be polite, play Bach, kick back. Withdraw.

Like my cat, I often simply do what I want to do.

—Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons

FIRST EPIPHANY

The first one was during a month I spent house- and son- and 2 dogs- and 2 cats-sitting in Cairo. It was just me and my son (in terms of human co-habitants) and we get along fine, don’t bug each other, make excessive demands on attention. I like that. I got into the rhythm of the villa and the animals, opened the windows and sliding door to let the more adventuresome cat get out to live a little, disconnected from TV and the news, trained the dogs adhering to the guidance of Cesar Milan. Installed dog-filtering hooks and eyelets on doors so the more timid cat could have some sanctuaries and built her a sort of Jackson Galaxy cat balcony for fresh air. Repaired some stuff.

Thought a lot about Egypt and Islam and a musician/preacher I had accompanied on the bass as he preached to the down-and-out. Experienced an epiphany that led me to believe I could become the person to reconcile Islam and American Evangelicals, that I could do this while interpreting religion idiosyncratically as an atheist believer in nothing but matter and energy all the way down. Karen Armstrong suggests that Judaism and Islam are concerned with external acts not what a person believes in their own mind, so, good to go.

This didn’t last long after the month ended and I returned to the US. The glow of certainty faded and I became interested in music again.

SECOND EPIPHANY

This blog is for following threads from my recent #metoo #collateraldamage post. I ended that post with “this discussion is just getting started.” For me, that applies in spades. Among the immediate effects of the post, and the interactions that followed, was the removal of a lifetime of dampening baggage. This occurred over the course of two days, and I don’t recommend having that sort of thing happen that quickly, if you have a choice. All I could do was try to keep up with the dot-connecting my brain insisted on doing, it’s been a long time coming. Evidently, functioning with that much baggage cost a lot of psychic energy, which now needs a new function. Evidently, also, it likes to write. A lot. So that’s what we’re going to do. So far I think I have notes for 20–30 spin-off posts, most based on follow-on conversations I’ve had with family, local friends, and my rapidly expanding online family of friends. I’ll get one posted after I finish this. Then I’ll take (then I’ll be allowed to take!) another nap (mental work is still very much physical work, uses up your sugar, neurotransmitter, and hormone reserves). The site itself is still bare-bones, I’m sure I will have a lot of fun taking time off from dismantling the patriarchy and getting to know Real Mark to play with the graphics and layout.

Technical details

  1. Will find the Creative Commons license later, but everything is “freely redistribute with attribution” and a link back would be nice.
  2. It will be personal and general by turns. Usually the personal observations lead to something general and vice versa.
  3. It will welcome thoughtful comments of pretty much any variety, though anything I deem non-respectful, non-serious, or just plain offensively stupid will get removed as soon as I see it or by the helpful automatic abuse filter.
  4. I have no problem with obscene words describing obscene things. When I created the blog two years ago I pre-declared it as possibly containing adult material.
  5. I will avoid “marksplaining” to the extent I am aware of it. Someone tell me when I’m not aware of it. Marksplaining is a subset of mansplaining which is a subset of peoplesplaining).

OK that’s all I can think of now.