The only true revenge is forgiveness.
From Saga volume four (ISBN 9781632150776, chapters nineteen to twenty-four) we find along with Hazel's narration this passage in my title today from one of D. Oswald Heist's books. Several people not so fond of a "horn" (Marko's race) and a "wing" (Alana's race) marrying and having a child (Hazel) together found them on Quietus and Heist was shot dead. This book opens with Marko, Alana, and Hazel trying to start a new life on the planet Gardenia and another family -- a royal family of robots, no less -- is threatened with extermination. So a common enemy is developing for freelancers, robots, and our main characters alike. And even within families, things get ... testy.
The whole point of having enemies abroad is getting to ignore the ones back home.
Are you seeing this in how we're relating to the world lately, or is it just me? It may be why I do so much more reading and less rallying, not because I don't care (in Professor Faber's words from Fahrenheit 451, I care so much I'm sick) but because I'm seeing the forest for the trees and it feels like no one else is. What's the big picture? I missed our Lenten worship service last night not because I didn't care but because I was just getting off work and I couldn't leave early. I suppose I could if I asked, but being in church every time the doors are open is just not as important to me as it used to be. I got into a fight a few weeks ago about that.
I told you to be aware of the fourth wall, not punch a glory hole through it.
And I'm getting the point there are some things it's just ... not ... worth arguing about. Because if I win I lose and I lose I lose. SO I brought the kids home with me and we picked up pizzas to cook for dinner (Sarah and Jeffrey chose Totino's pepperoni pizzas and I chose a Roma one, both specially priced -- I miss the texture of Roma), and while we waited for the pizzas to get done in the oven the kids got some reading done. I just don't want it to become dull and bombastic for them, and not yet it isn't; Sarah read the recipe book Jeffrey's class made and the North Dakota poetry book her third grade class made last year while Jeffrey read in a FoxTrot anthology I keep on the shelf.
We're commoners. And our castles are made of air.
It's not as though I've been reading nothing else -- besides the many I have in the pipeline, I've finished Grant Morrison's The Multiversity: The Deluxe Edition (ISBN 9781401256821) where "The "New 52" Earths of DC Comics have their heroes meet against a common threat and are brought together by the last of the Monitors ... damn, I thought the mid-eighties Crisis of Infinite Earths settled all this. (Of course, it's all redone every three or four years.) Got through Aimee Freeman and Christine Norrie's Breaking Up (ISBN 9780439748674) just yesterday, and I can imagine Sarah and some friends like this in seven years' time, the good and the bad of junior high.
Yeah, life is complicated. But it's also very fucking short. If you find someone who can forgive all your bullshit ... the least you can do is try to forgive them.
This morning ... a plastic sai ... and sneakers that are slipped off instead of untied (would untying them not be easier?) just about shorted my circuits for the day. Or maybe the use of them by Sarah and Jeffrey on each other did and I'm just now realizing my reboot, heck. So the kids got to school with the raffle tickets they've each sold -- it was supposed to be ten per family, but the kids each got a book so they've sold twenty -- and I find myself after enjoying some Coffee With The Boys at church and some time wandering the used book stacks (and this month celebrating the tenth year of Main Street Books, a free proof copy with any purchase) enjoying some quiet yet on duty. Forgiving.
We'll get into geek parenting next week, David
The whole point of having enemies abroad is getting to ignore the ones back home.
Are you seeing this in how we're relating to the world lately, or is it just me? It may be why I do so much more reading and less rallying, not because I don't care (in Professor Faber's words from Fahrenheit 451, I care so much I'm sick) but because I'm seeing the forest for the trees and it feels like no one else is. What's the big picture? I missed our Lenten worship service last night not because I didn't care but because I was just getting off work and I couldn't leave early. I suppose I could if I asked, but being in church every time the doors are open is just not as important to me as it used to be. I got into a fight a few weeks ago about that.
I told you to be aware of the fourth wall, not punch a glory hole through it.
And I'm getting the point there are some things it's just ... not ... worth arguing about. Because if I win I lose and I lose I lose. SO I brought the kids home with me and we picked up pizzas to cook for dinner (Sarah and Jeffrey chose Totino's pepperoni pizzas and I chose a Roma one, both specially priced -- I miss the texture of Roma), and while we waited for the pizzas to get done in the oven the kids got some reading done. I just don't want it to become dull and bombastic for them, and not yet it isn't; Sarah read the recipe book Jeffrey's class made and the North Dakota poetry book her third grade class made last year while Jeffrey read in a FoxTrot anthology I keep on the shelf.
We're commoners. And our castles are made of air.
It's not as though I've been reading nothing else -- besides the many I have in the pipeline, I've finished Grant Morrison's The Multiversity: The Deluxe Edition (ISBN 9781401256821) where "The "New 52" Earths of DC Comics have their heroes meet against a common threat and are brought together by the last of the Monitors ... damn, I thought the mid-eighties Crisis of Infinite Earths settled all this. (Of course, it's all redone every three or four years.) Got through Aimee Freeman and Christine Norrie's Breaking Up (ISBN 9780439748674) just yesterday, and I can imagine Sarah and some friends like this in seven years' time, the good and the bad of junior high.
Yeah, life is complicated. But it's also very fucking short. If you find someone who can forgive all your bullshit ... the least you can do is try to forgive them.
This morning ... a plastic sai ... and sneakers that are slipped off instead of untied (would untying them not be easier?) just about shorted my circuits for the day. Or maybe the use of them by Sarah and Jeffrey on each other did and I'm just now realizing my reboot, heck. So the kids got to school with the raffle tickets they've each sold -- it was supposed to be ten per family, but the kids each got a book so they've sold twenty -- and I find myself after enjoying some Coffee With The Boys at church and some time wandering the used book stacks (and this month celebrating the tenth year of Main Street Books, a free proof copy with any purchase) enjoying some quiet yet on duty. Forgiving.
We'll get into geek parenting next week, David
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