My Copy Editing Disclaimer: While I CAN Copy-edit for stylistic consistency, I DON’T herein: Let’s Get Honest, this blog just ain’t about to be copyedited

Excuse #1:  PTSD (what’s YOUR excuse?)

         re:  The PTSD – There’s no Excuse for Abuse!

Like my approach to this Blog, it’s a choice.  (see photo to right)

Almost every excuse I’ve heard, mostly from family members, calls it something else, like “helping.”    The real struggle affecting the wider public in this arena (Family Court) is naming.  Name-calling.  It’s a language issue. Language controls SO much.  It controls children and money, which are unfortunately closely related here, and my sense of the courts is that the system has become closer to an auction block than a process dispensing justice, or fair decisions based on facts.  We are the state where it’s not only profitable to work in and around the courts, it is ALSO profitable to work for nonprofits dedicated, so they claim, to advising and changing the courts.  

The amount of help I would’ve needed at specific dates in time, to be TOTALLY and COMPLETELY solvent and free from abuse in short order after leaving it, almost never, once I had my income set up, exceeded a single child support payment, which at this point in time was set at lower than cash-aid for a family of two, which we’d been on briefly and which generated the initial support order tos tart with.  Alternately, I could’ve, with only a half more year of non-intervention policy from my family, omitted the child support entirely, and gone on our merry way, with two great children regularly seeing both parents, while living with one.

Instead, someone coached someone how to stop this, and the answer, the salvation, was the family law arena.  In the middle of recovery, and almost to safety or to “shore” (financially speaking, and this counts!) I was kicked back into self-defense mode, as a single mother and the nonbattering parent who’d finally worked up courage to file a restraining order.   

By the time I got myself up to speed on domestic violence literature, the laws, the rules of court, and the fact that any and all of the above are, in essence and in practice, “moot points,” my income, safety, boundaries, and stability were gone.  It took a very short few years to get this household BACK into trauma and poverty, and from there, snatch my kids.  

This did not just affect one family, or three generations, and relatives in one family, though it has.  It affected the wider community and burdened the social services, as I called crisis lines, again started attending DV support systems.  I hemorrhaged jobs and professional connections, and had a traumatic bonding relationship with law enforcement in two counties (and more cities).  MORE police reports were generated from my attempts to get kids back on a weekend exchange (after restraining order was removed) and then retaliatory frivolous calls by my ex (for example, if I was supposedly 1 minute late, when I wasn’t even that), than even happened during the years of physical violence and assaults upon me, my property, and animals in the home.  Some severe (physical) threats to me were generated from protesting animal abuse.  Still gullible, I continued to hope that law enforcement would help enforce laws.  Even when they allowed my children to be removed illegally from my custody based on clear perjury and after a judge’s order had directly forbidden this — less than 24 hours earlier — these peace officers failed to enforce when asked to.  The same office knew of the former domestic violence restraining order, and in fact, I think this exchange was beginning to get a bit of a reputation there (though I can’t say for sure).   

I did not understand HOW necessary it was for me to understand the ENTIRE system in these matters.  And it is appropriate to respond according to the truth of a situation, not to our myths about the truth of our situation.  IF I had made it through this website:  NAFCJ.net — BEFORE my kids were stolen, I might have acted differently.

No one goes through all that without seeking answers.  While few hours go into copyediting, MANY have gone into researching what I blog about, and that’s what underlies the confidence, as unpleasant as what I found was.  Namely, if I could summarize it, organized crime in high places.  Not exactly breaking news, but still we like to think, protectively, it’s not going to affect us, somehow.

Certain professions attract certain personality types.  It’s unfortunate but true, and public service is simply not always the prime motivation.

Old myths die fast.

Life and death truly are in the power of the tongue.  When any group seeks to pre-empt language, and re-write history, we had best be VERY cautious.

Name-calling is a basic human trait defining social groups, and always has been.  However, when a larger conglomerate of social groups is to function somehow, they have to have a “language” to describe the interactions, and some sort of regulation of those to minimize fighting.  As one age gives way to another, language is a real clue.   The largest clue is where the greatest silence is.  In this arena of family law, there has been an intentional, and arising from a single set of sources (date, places, and times have been identified on their own websites) to CHANGE TERMINOLOGIES, and make excuse for abuse.  I speak about this, as well as refer to (hopefully not in totally identifying detail; this is always an internal struggle, how much to say) some of the major areas of silence in this venue.  

HOW MANY blogs are you going to find which post grants data from BOTH the fatherhood/marriage and the Violence Against Women (i’m going to, today, some more) groups and ask pointed questions about how many lives are those funds saving — and according to whom?  I have limited time, limited brain capacity and when focused on content, cannot also focus on polishing content. 

The fallout from failing to SEE and ACT on the truth in this venue is sometimes death, poverty, homelessness, and intergenerational transmission of trauma, to those involved, or sometimes those associated with those involved.  What we as a society fail to see is where loss to ONE set of people (in these venues) is gain to another — the profit from prolonging the distress.

No one likes to talk about that, but we must, and  I DO — and the fact that  I do, in the history of who I’ve been personally dealing with, and now, seeing the wider scope of the problem (which isn’t any prettier), there is an element of fear associated with breaking cultural tabus, speaking up.  Families with histories of violence or incest have kept it going through silence, as mine did for 10 years while it happened to me in front of God and a lot of other on-lookers.  

But I do because of what’s in me that loves and wants to speak truth, not suppress it (I know ALL about that) and because of what’s left in my heart (which is a lot!) regarding my daughters, who have been lied to, lied about, and induced to lie in some of these matters.  

Therefore, getting it “up and out” is an act of some courage for me, and when I focus too much on editing, the courage fails.  It’s a totally different process and mode.   (This “serious” section was added after the more lighthearted stuff below).  In my marriage, when I spoke, he sometimes hit – doing so was ALWAYS trauma, sometimes caused serious injury, and always was intended that I should not speak.  This is why I believe some abusers target the neck and mouth area.  They don’t want  us to speak, or breathe.  When it comes to economic abuse, there is difficulty with communication and transportation infrastructures — isolate and intimidate is the name of the game.  And then, once this is in place, interrogate and degrade.

 Why do they go for the neck?  (I learned at a conference in 2007 that this is a lethality indicator, in a publication addressed to dentists!  I went to a dentist with teeth knocked loose years before, it didn’t raise any eyebrows even, that I could tell!  The story I gave them (at that point) was ridiculous.  It wasn’t questioned.  That was a serious missed opportunity, and followed up on, might have produced a criminal report and a night in jail; it might have changed things.  It SHOULD have.  But by this time in the marriage, I’d been through the round of reporting, and reaching out, and speaking up.   I was beginning to take a stand against abuse IN my marriage, and things were heating up as a direct consequence.  

Though I have lost a tooth, income, children, and thousands of dollars (as have others who then  attempted to support me but took not action to confront the abuse or violence), not one cent of “Victim Compensation” funding came this way.  Not one identifiable “help” other than naming the abuse that was happening, came from one of the best-funded groups in this area.  I believe we deserve answers, and I blog about this while I’m still here, still have housing, still have some health left.  The women I link to  also do this.

Again, as to abuse — What’s your Excuse for (your SILENCE about) Abuse?

I have and will continue to  post some unpleasant $$ figures as to the nationwide economic cost of not understanding “the name of the game” in these fields, and attributing pure motives to every one who has a smooth speech.  Which, I don’t think I do, but I try to get facts out, and assemble them in reasonable fashion, if not always in grammatically complete sentences.

Excuse #2:  I’ll let Wikipedia (so to speak) speak to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_editing

OVERVIEW

 

The “Five Cs” ^[1] summarize the copy editor’s job: make the copy (i) clear, (ii) correct, (iii) concise, (iv) comprehensible, and (v) consistent; that is: make it say what it means, and mean what it says. Typically, copy editing involves correcting spelling, punctuation, grammar,mathematics,^[2] terminology/jargon and semantics; ensuring that the typescript adheres to the publisher’s house style; and addingheadlines and standardized headers, footers, etc.^[2]

The copy editor is expected to ensure that the text flows, that it is sensible, fair, and accurate, and that it will provoke no legal problems for the publisher.^[2] Newspaper copy editors are sometimes responsible for selecting which news agency‘s wire copy the newspaper will use and for rewriting it in accordance with house style. Often, the copy editor is the only person, other than the author , to read an entire text before publication. Newspaper managing editors regard copy editors as the newspaper’s last line of accurate defense.

Hence, EXCUSE #2:  I’m the author, not “other than the author.”

At least, I’m an “author” in a loose sense of the word.  

I assemble, react (in print), cut and paste, and think about it.  Aloud.  This is NOT  “copy editing.”  They are entirely different processes, and for a good reason.

A copy editor may abridge a text, by “cutting” and “trimming” it, to reduce its length to fit publishing or broadcasting limits or to improve its meaning.^[1]   

There is no universal form for the job or job title; it is often written as one word (copyedit)^[1] or with a hyphen (copy-edit); the hyphenated form is especially common in the UK. Similarly, the term copy editor may be spelled either as one word, two words, or as a hyphenated compound term.  (And if you’re paying attention, I intentionally used all three forms in my title to make this point).

Copy editing is done prior to the work of proofreaders, who handle documents before final publication.^[1]

 

(NOR DO I PROOFREAD, ENOUGH):

Under Wikipedia “Author”:

“According to the studies of James Curran, the system of shared values among editors in Britain has generated a pressure among authors to write to fit the editors’ expectations, removing the focus from the reader-audience and putting a strain on the relationship between authors and editors and on writing as a social act. 

I am writing as a social act, and there is a very strained relationship between the author and editor parts; they are not happy yet.  However I have made a deliberate decision to go with the first, and relegate the “editor” to a back seat.  This may seem backwards, but relates to how I deal with post-traumatic stress issues on some of these topics, and the “fear of speaking” issue.  (OR, it may be my way of rebelling against the “perfectionism” tendency).  Sometimes it has to come out nonstop, and there isn’t enough time or emotional energy left to go back and revise.  

When I do, instead, more reflection and more writing gets in there.  Perhaps hearing about the process may help people who haven’t been through certain kinds of trauma understand a bit about some who have.

In my case, i am still mastering “bloggery,” and I am alleviating (by this disclaimer) with the copy editing training I have, and trained, and fairly accurate eye I have when I’m NOT cutting, pasting (or trying to) and trying to figure out which font or margin changes will actually stick.  

The “accuracy” and with to avoid public embarrassment  thing crawls up my back especially when I, for example as I just noticed today  (8-29-09), I caught someone else’s Freudian slip/typo (“simulate conversation” where clearly “sTimulate” conversation was meant.  IN these fields, “simulating” conversation, dialogue and openness, mediation, negotiation, and conciliation is blatantly rampant.  Never get caught SIMULATING dialogue when you wish to be seen as STIMULATING it!  

But further down, regarding a missing foster child case which has now become a homicide INVESTIGATION, in, from my own fingers and brain, in slipped the word “visitation” (topic of today’s post, in part).  These word-switches (“hear” for here, or “know” for “no”, etc.) were much more common after the event of the child-stealing than beforehand.  I am a crack typist (over 100wpm) and used to be known for a sharp eye for grammar; I have worked in accounting and legal fields also, where accuracy counts.  There are definitely different parts of the brain in operation now, to do the same tasks.  Sometimes they jump tracks temporarily, I guess.  Never used to do that so much.

 

So, while no author in the general sense, I am in this sense:

 

Wages

There are no normal wages for authors. The pay for authors is normally based on provisions after standard contracts with companies.

 

[edit]    

> – > – > –  >

 

 

I have some ideas, but am not interested in fully analyzing why I write, any more than I formerly questioned why I played piano and sang, or why I ate and slept.  

There are pros(e) and con (artists) to the habit.  

Maybe I’m half hunter by nature, and like to bring home what I caught, like a cat brings home half-alive, half-in-shock mouse.  The point isn’t the trophy, but what a great hunter the cat was.  

 

However, this blog is NOT just for the act of blogging or the act of seeking.  I have indeed been on a personal hunt to explain WHAT’S UP? with this venue?  After i read the literature on “what’s up with the venue” I began looking at the organizations PUBLISHING the literature and pronouncing what’s up with this venue.  They are better funded than almost any family court litigant ever will be.  

 

That’s where the real story is.  The real story is in what is NOT being talked about it.  I talk about it, and I request public action on the information, in the form of taking this information, following up, and being highly motivated to know that this is affecting YOUR life, this particular kind of government waste  and lack of accountability as to HOW its funds are being spent.

 

Regarding the PTSD factor – – these are difficult topics and truths to put out there.  They are also, many, personal.  Putting together a narrative can be healing, but done wrong, it can also re-traumatize.  Hence, I fear that what you see hear is what you GOT.  Get it?

One more thing about perfectionism:  This also runs in my family line, and I do know (at least so is the family lore) my father watched HIS mother being beat by HIS father; it appears to be what they did back when in many cultures.  He was if nothing perfectionist (in his field) and a researcher, creative thinker.  I am beginning to understand why, and I happen to know that THIS applies to at least one of my two offspring.  

Quote is cited on today’s post.  (Note the 1980s dates of the cites)

 

In my opinion, it would be better, in most cases, for the children of homes where there has been domestic violence not to be in the custody of the abusive parent at all. In many cases it is even advisable that visitation be limited to controlled situations, such as under a therapist’s supervision during a therapy session, unless the batterer has been in batterer’s treatment and demonstrated that he has changed significantly in specific ways.

Caveat.  Batterers can often “perform” well for an hour or two, and have been documented doing well in class, but outside class, and sometimes shortly AFTER, murdering.  On this basis, I challenge that assertion, it begs the question of demonstrating what, how, for how long, and to whom.  Like religious “repentance” it can be very much faked.  My personal measure was compliance with court orders:  the ability to TAKE an order rather than, when it came to me, the ex-wife, only ISSUING one.  What the courts saw as my obstinancy, possibly, I (accurately, I assert) saw as my VERY healthy need for boundaries, and asserting them.  One thing family law tends to do (for the uninitiated, if there are still some of these around) is break down personal boundaries, and then judge the person with the broken fences harshly.  In a given case, this will be one parent OR the other, not both, and typically it is the female one.

 “Merely” observing ones father abuse ones mother is in itself damaging to children. My clinical experience is consistent with the research literature which shows that children who witness their father beat their mother exhibit significantly greater psychological and psychosomatic problems than children from homes without violence (Roy, 1988). Witnessing abuse is more damaging in many ways than actually being abused, and having both happen is very damaging (Goodman and Rosenberg, 1987).

For the past few years — actually several years — I have had to witness from afar things that I knew to be damaging to my daughters, and was unable to do anything about this.  I REMEMBER being physically assaulted, traumatized, and a lot more, and I will concur, although I’d surely not want to repeat the experience, this DOES feel horrible.  It’s an internal wound hard to get at except by amputating something natural and innate, which is to care how one’s kids are doing, and do something to make sure they are thriving, and most specifically (in my case) headed in a good direction in life, and among people with decent values, and I’m not talking conservative or progressive, I’m talking, respectful of women and respecting the law, and not participating in “dissing” or hurting another parent. Forcing (minors in particular) to do this is part of a gang initiation, it’s like a ritual hazing, to prove membership.  I’ve seen the lower middle class version of this, enabled by people who ought to know better, based on the self-assertions.  yes, in short, it hurts, adults and children alike, but children moreso in the long run, I feel, because they have more lifespan ahead of them.

Studies show that a high percentage (as high as 55%) of fathers who abuse their wives also abuse their children (Walker and Edwall, 1987). In my experience, if one includes emotional abuses such as being hypercritical, yelling and being cruelly sarcastic, the percentage is much higher.

I was the target of this (as well as blows and choke-holds, throws, kicks, slaps, etc.) during marriage.  I NEVER saw physical violence by my father towards my mother (and have in recent years asked, and was said, no it did not happen), and although he was highly critical of me, he was not cruelly sarcastic.  I saw it as part of his professional mind (scientific).  However, he WAS cruelly sarcastic and critical of my mother, which I believe did affect my sense of integrity as a young woman.  I woke up to them arguing.  We became a family that didn’t talk about important things, and as the youngest (in such families, everyone has an assigned role), and when siblings left home and before it, I became the “peacekeeper” too often.  I disappeared into my own world, happily enough, until I became hungry for something approaching true and relationships/friendships, as I matured.  I found these in music and writing, books, etc. 

This cruel sarcasm, in the family realm, has been directed at me in my late middle age by this family of origin.  I think it is possibly in order to preserve a sense of “family” in that our father is gone, suddenly, and decades ago.  I do not think they are as comfortable with their worldviews, and a challenge to them seems a challenge to the core, somehow.

OR, it could just be about money and basic human passions, unrestrained by empathy or concern for the long-range impact.  I don’t know, I know it apparently “works” for them and not for me to punish outsiders, namely, those who challenge their authority to usurp authority, which happens to be MY definition of family violence, or abuse, to start with!

I became a teacher professionally, and know that one must KNOW who one is teaching, and that the sarcasm doesn’t motivate for long, the put-down, the cruelty.  Does it?  Did this work, as a whole and entire person, would you say for, for example, Michael Jackson?  He did amazing things.  Was it a good life?  Well, he didn’t see his kids grow up…  He was on medication to survive. . ..    Amazing music or no amazing music, and it was.

The damage that children suffer is highly variable, with symptoms ranging from aggressive acting out to extreme shyness and withdrawal, or from total school failure to compulsive school performance. The best way to summarize all the symptoms despite their variety is to say that they resemble what children who suffer other trauma exhibit, and could be seen as a version of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Walker and Edwall, 1987).

As I reflect on my own childhood, and recall some diary entries I had as to my daughters’ (plural) behavior immediately post-incident, I noticed both aspects.  They witnessed some horrible stuff, and when they are of age (and if interested), I will show them the entries, of how these little girls, after an incident would try to “distract” their Dad, by doing some super-feat for their age, or planning something to reconcile us.  I am talking, under 5 years old, BOTH of them.  

I suspect that my father realized (being without a man in the home) he had to grow up and perform REAL fast, and he sure did.  He also drank heavily, tried to handle it later in his work life, a work life that was full of awards and financial rewards too, well-decorated, well-acknowledged.  What’s more, he married a number of times (although only to our mother til I was out of the home), and died suddenly shortly after retirement, the circumstances of which I still (quite honestly) have significant questions about.  

Both of my daughters are supremely smart and intelligent (I know this), but one was chosen as super-performer, and the other one, after a period (early on) of trying to differentiate herself, even saying as of Kindergarten, “I hate reading” (but became a very competent, and observant reader close to this time), and another time blowing things off, apparently.  I tried to accommodate this through the public schools and was soundly punished for NOT having them both in the same format of school, even though I neither respected it (for either girl) nor did it work for them, or our family unit, nor did the idea for it even originate from either Dad or Mom at the time.  it was one of those outside “interventions” by “helpers” whose motives are not what they claimed to be.  At all.  

Then when I finally put them BOTH in the same school, was truly a compromise between my ex’s position (or, his ostensible position, i should say), which might have made someone happy, they were abducted out of it and put, at the time into a strange school system in a new city, each girl in a different school.  So “go figure” the rationale behind that.

And so, since this was a post about “copy editing,” about FORM not CONTENT, I will say this content is still relevant.  And this is as good an introduction to why I’m blogging here as any:

 

Equally serious is the long term effect of domestic violence – intergenerational transmission. 

 

I rest my case and my disclaimer.

FYI, the longwinded style, and associative, full-thinking (one hopes) that is natural to me, may be unnatural to others.  If you (reader) do not understand how or why this happens, please read up on some writings regarding trauma.  The constant interruption of thought is a means of control and setting off balance.  I’m completely aware of it.  I have had music, which really worked for me, unnaturally deleted from my life along with the children.  At a gut level, and through behavioral conditioning (NOT accidental in either marriage or divorce, I assert — unless it was simply generalized narcissism, but based on things I’ve heard and read from my ex, No, it wasn’t.  It was intentional to target music.  I KNOW that what I got from it threatened this man.  Not just the income, but the personal validation and emotional support.  It’s hard to dominate someone who is having fun in music!  Regularly!  (and getting paid for it, and connecting with people through it).  For one the existence of those relationships counters the character-smashing that is necessary to “win” in family court and necessary to “win” in abuse, which is in part about winning, anyhow.  Period.

So part of what a mind does is healing by speaking, and by connecting thoughts together.  I call it “hyper-focus” — although as a musician at the piano, I could most certainly practice and focus for hours (why not?), this is different.  It’s like a going “under water” until the thought is complete, and a sense of rising to the surface as it approaches what MY sensibility calls completion.  I suppose that’s somewhat meditative.  I know that it helped me during the most traumatic months (years) leading up to the abduction, and part of this was having AN audience, not just writing “myself.”  Hence, a longwinded (but hopefully informative, and sometimes at least entertaining or interesting)

B L O G.  It is my ‘attuned” relationship with myself, and for now, will do. I also wish to leave a bit of a track record (if you read more, you’ll realizing stalking has been an ongoing concern, and I have not reconciled myself either to lifelong economic or emotional abuse by family members, or never seeing a daughter while courts and truth both exist!  if not in the same place, at least separately.  I call this “hyperfocus,” and while there are drawbacks, in some senses also, it works for me.

So, remind me to hire a copyeditor, once I myself get some income. . . . While the best of art has a SENSE of artlessness about it, THIS stuff is indeed, for the most part “thrown up” (an awkward term, I admit!) on wordpress, not for its art, and I’ll just try to pick up a little artifice along the way, but it makes me very uncomfortable.

Note.  I do not know my ex’s mother too well (like our family, by “lore” more than actual face time or communications.  Some, but not much since we split, which I do out of respect for her).  She had a rough marriage, and one thing I noted in the few letters that got through was that the first person singular was absent.  Although narrating what she did, she began with the verb, and omitted the “I.”  Maybe she was another “amazing, disappearing, virtually invisible mother” like the noun I blog about sometimes; mothers have become “WOMEN” (There is an office of Violence against WOMEN, but when it comes to MEN, there is a major web section on “FATHERHOOD.”  On “marriage” on “children” and on “families” (as to vocabulary).  As mothers, we are possibly becoming a vestigial function in society, only kept around (for now) for the biological production of infants, for scapegoats (every religion needs a scapegoat, right?) and to give social status to some man:  He is a FATHER, he has a FAMILY, and he is head of the HOUSEHOLD (religious version). If not much else in life.

SPEAKING of “FLOW” (I was, really!), along with hunting and gathering, or should I say (web) surfing, how does this name FLOW off your tongue?

 

“Csikszentmihalyi“

Mine either, and I found this following a craigslist ad, to which my reaction was, Is there NO area of life which is not a market niche?

And I found, probably not.  I hope we have SOME private lives left within the next three decades, but I am skeptical how many of us in the middle ranges of society will be able.  Anyhow Wikipedia to the rescue (if for phonetic pronunciation here): 

 

 

Personal background

He received his B.A. in 1960 and his Ph.D. in 1965, both from the University of Chicago.

He is the father of MIT Media Lab associate professor Christopher Csikszentmihalyi and University of California – Berkeley^[4] professor of philosophical and religious traditions ofChina and East Asia, Mark Csikszentmihalyi.

 

{{His son is one REALLY smart dude too, so perhaps we should listen up!

And, sit at his feet to be taught, too!**}}

 

[edit]Flow

Main article: Flow (psychology)

Mental state in terms of challenge level and skill level. Clickable.^[5]

In his seminal work, ‘Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience’, Csíkszentmihályi outlines his theory that people are most happy when they are in a state of flow— a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. The idea of flow is identical to the feeling of being in the zone or in the groove. The flow state is an optimal state of intrinsic motivation, where the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing. This is a feeling everyone has at times, characterized by a feeling of great absorption, engagement, fulfillment, and skill—and during which temporal concerns (time, food, ego-self, etc.) are typically ignored.^[6]

 

{{This includes during sex, where applicable….}}

 

In an interview with Wired magazine, Csíkszentmihályi described flow as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”^[7]

To achieve a flow state, a balance must be struck between the challenge of the task and the skill of the performer. If the task is too easy or too difficult, flow cannot occur. Both skill level and challenge level must be matched and high; if skill and challenge are low and matched, then apathy results.^[5]

The flow state also implies a kind of focused attention, and indeed, it has been noted that mindfulness meditation, yoga, and martial arts seem to improve a person’s capacity for flow. Among other benefits, all of these activities train and improve attention.

In short, flow could be described as a state where attention, motivation, and the situation meet, resulting in a kind of productive harmony or feedback.

 

 

Sorry to inject this (hey, not really — it’s my blog), but to a mother this might be nature (we give birth, remember?), or a musician, but to a scientist, it’s a field of expertise.  These are very elementary (and true) observations!

Did I say, teacher?

 

QUESTION:  Am I the only person here that thinks an article on “FLOW” with a Square Graphic with uniform, segmented, labeled dissections of it seems a little, well, Rigid?

Should it be called “Flow, Dissected”?  

What can’t the same people that can discuss, with engaging intelligence, the difference between particle and wave theory, not figure out that trying to dissect and label humanity is going to INTERFERE with the same humanity!  For one, the thumb is on the scale, and even a child in “supervised visitation” knows that SOMETHING is up, like, a performance.  And perform, they are likely to. The only thing that apparently truly FLOWS in such scenarios, is cash, in the form of grants, to analyze, dissect and (another endless stream) report on it.  To observe anything in some depth, one needs at LEAST two points of view, and one I recommend is “IMMERSION” (INside) and another “SPECTATOR” (outside).   I do this in music.  There’s theory, and then “applied” studies.  Moreover, there’s some differences between rehearsal and performance, as any musician knows.  And the performance IS affected, to a degree, by (a) venue (resonance of the room) and (b) resonacne is sometimes dulled by a full room of bodies.  Physically, it changes the resonance for the room.  Walls can be hard, and sound waves bounce off it (as I would characterize My interaction with the mediator) or they can be soft, warm, and fuzzily receptive, as too many custody evaluators are with one parent but not the other.  

If we can figure this out in music, why cannot a family law system figure it out?

I believe the system was well-designed to do what it is, at this moment in fact doing, and that is interrupt lives, divert cash (FLOW) and create an artificial, and at this point, society-wide source of trauma, which then will generate and justify ever more intrusive monitoring, measuring, calculating and declaring behaviors on the part of the social scientist and utopia-mongers.  And I predict that what’s left of individuality in human beings aware of their humanity, and perhaps seeking to be HEARD, erupt in whatever manner it may be.   I believe that at some level of policy making, surely (I believe, surely) someone realizes what direction its heading, and is quite OK with that direction, so long as they — and their progeny and cronies — are riding the wave.

In looking at more ancient literature, the analogy of people as water, and final Armageddon, etc., (jihad, etc.) is expected and predicted.  I do not believe the Bible calls it honorable, however, but it does predict this.  I would say that’s possibly an accurate reading of human nature, given past and future.  Ethnic cleansing is not exactly a new concept, but what I’m concerned about is the commmunal cleansing of ETHICS, not ETHNICITIES so much.  Although we can see that trend, too.

(I never DO know when to quit, sometimes. . .. . )

AS to Institutions that Specialize in Uncertainty and Flow-Disruptions, I could (but won’t, here) name three signficant institutions in the U.S.A. (home of the largest per-capita incarceration rate in the W-O-R-L-D.  This is after the fall of the Berlin wall, too!) who teach authority by interrupting flow.  That is the primary characteristic.  OK, I’ll tell you one, because I’ve experienced it:

Law Enforcement.

Here’s another:

Public School (bells, periods, whistles, lockdowns, fire drills, etc.)  It’s training, folks!!

Basically, any dominator institution will use some of this.  The question is, how much?

When people reach a certain level of adulthood, they should have a level of discipline to at least ONE thing (trade, profession, pasion) or another, and be able to transfer discipline in it to discipline in something else.  Perhaps we should talk about the “infantilizing of America,” I don’t know.  Another topic, hey?

 

The fact is, biochemistry is related to emotions is related to one’s sense of place in this world.  We DO difffer, and resonate to different frequencies.  You want total unity and uniformity?  Nationwide?  There IS a way to get it. . . .  at a cost, a human cost, and we are I am afraid headed into either this direction, or a real protest against heading in this direction:

 

 

 

 

(Found through Google Images search on “GooseStep”, and 3 times I’ve tried to paste the link.  However, I’ll still close with notes from the source of this photo, apparently a narrative from a man’s 1969 visit to the Berlin Wall.  You will probably find it again:  

(Entry was Aug 1 2006)

A 1969 STROLL INTO COMMUNIST EAST BERLIN

October 7, 1969. I had just finished a photo assignment in Austria and visited a friend near Frankfurt. Now I wanted to see what Berlin, isolated well behind the Iron Curtain, was like. 

People from all the Communist nations, including China, were doing their thing there. Folk dancing, music, demonstrations of solidarity, and just plain admiring this brave new world of the workers. Several stands in the side streets sold sausages and beer, both of which were pretty good and quite cheap.

As the day wore on I got hungry, and waited in line at the Café Moscau, which featured Russian food. Being alone, I was paired up with what might have been a general in the Russian army, or a doorman, in any case a guy in uniform covered with gold braid and medals. I ordered Beef Stroganoff, which was delicious.

There was a changing-of-the-guard ceremony at the Neue Wache, an old Prussian guardhouse now rich in propaganda value with its eternal flame for the victims of fascism. The soldiers there did a great goosestep.

 

 

 

 

Let’s all seek a better way, eh?  

Anyhow, I ain’t copyediting, I’m thinking aloud, on-line.

Have a nice day.  Don’t forget the blogroll.

The difference between my on-line monologues and what I experienced in abuse, and what my kids watched growing up, and what I suspect may or may not have “driven” my ex to expose us to (hours-long manic personal talks, and I DO mean, hours at a time, and afterwards he’d be relieved, and I’d be totally drained and sometimes emotionally dysfunctional, as though his “burden” had been deposited, by direct, face to face injection, into my brain.  I would lose all desire to do whatever it was I had just then been doing, typically housework, or getting ready to work, or paperwork.  This is NOT what a spouse is for!  However, my spouse didn’t write, and apparently this was what I was for, an “ear.”  Up to a point it’s OK, beyond that point, it’s using the other person.  We were beyond this point shortly after the children were born, when I truly did have other things I needed to do, and they needed from me.  We had, hence, a real roller-coaster relationship, the entire household.

 

Oh yes — the rest of that sentence,  at least as to a main verb and object:

 . . . . .  The difference between an on-line monologue and an (in your face lecture) is that listening is optional.

 

Now, as to family law venue — there are points at which fighting that battle is not really optional, or will come to any closure before either the energy is totally expended (or funds — my current situation, and still not “resolution” or closure) – – or, it will explode in some manner.  Neither is acceptable.  

Anyhow, I suggest you exercise the website-exit option if you got this far, and perhaps have your head examined as to why you did!

(Just kidding!)

Unsure how? Look for the closest interactive (e)X, typically lurking in a top right corner, slightly off-the screen, like a spider in a room with high ceilings.  (Just kidding).

Click on it and see what happens.

Or don’t.  After all, it’s OPTIONal!

(Like so-called “mediation” should be, but that’s another topic)

There are obviously downsides of not having a live audience, with gongs, or tomatoes.  I miss singing! . . . . . . 

(Not that performances ever ended in that manner!  Sometimes people stood afterwards, but it wasn’t too throw tomatoes!)