thoughts on the road
Jun. 30th, 2004 11:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threeplusfirePoor LJ, the armies of monekys had a vicious battle this morning. Cripes people, can't you pick a better website to attack? That's so lame. As much as I love the internet and my scifi future, I am more and more disgusted that just about any illiterate slobbering moron can creep onto a keyboard. But then, we always knew I had a nasty elitest streak.
One of the conversations Cate and I had on the long drive down was about the differences we see in people that have something to do with geography. No wonder there are so many neurotic, repressed and rude northeastern suburbanites. The shape of the trees, the overwhelming sense of being hemmed in by land and buildings, the very claustrophobia of the region must have some effect. That, and the legacy of tightly laced and pinched Puritanism certainly. It is very beautiful in places up there, such as certain parts of Pennsylvania. But I think the confining air of the hills and trees would drive me up the wall. I remain convinced driving in tunnels under mountains is a very unnatural thing to do.
As we drove south, the land opened up and the people became friendlier. Just something so simple as saying "Pardon me" or Excuse me" if I brushed into someone in New Jersey elicited blank stares and odd looks. In Kentucky, a white haired old woman called me Sugar when I paid for the gasoline. The reactions of cashiers in gas stations between Newark and Canyon Lake were fascinating. It was such a relief to be back in lands where people smile and excuse themselves, I have to say.
I suppose it must seem very normal if you grow up around it.
One of the most important ways to judge a person is how they handle adversity. I look at Cate, and she has suffered much in her life. She uprooted her life and moved 2000 miles for love, only to realize the life she thought she wanted wasn't true. Did she grieve and hurt? Well of course. Did she fall over, lay down and die? Did she allow herself to live for less, to give up things dear to her, to accept a pittance of what she deserved? Hell no. What has always impressed me about Cate is unwillingness to be trampled. Someone once described her as Patricia Arquette's character Alabama from True Romance, and it's quite apt. She's someone who keeps going, no matter how painful or how hard.
The women I admire most in my life are those women. Women like Hana Pichova, who ran an underground magazine in defiance of a Communist regime and crawled across a border fence to find her life across an ocean. Women like Cate, who refuse to allow anyone else to dictate the circumstances of her life, or how she raises her children. Women like Heda Margolius Kovaly, who walked away from a Nazi concentration camp, who survived unendurable horrors under the Communist goverment of Czechoslovakia and spit in the faces of the men who executed her husband.
All of these women went through bleak periods, suffered depression and crushing misery in one form or another. But none of them allowed their sadness to take away their will to live, their will to go onwards. Each of them has achieved great things, in very different ways.
Move or die. In each story, that is what they did though it may go under different names and different philosophies. At the core though, it is all the same. We can choose to give up, to accept whatever crumbs are handed to us and to curl up in a ball out of fear. Or we can choose to get up and keep moving, to keep looking for what we want for ourselves and our loved ones.
There was a point in my life where I felt like the suffering had left some indelible mark on my face and my soul. That somehow it had warped me, made me unfit for the life I wanted. But I don't see that anymore. As horrific as it sounds in my own ears, the things that happened to me just happened. They just do, because evil is a blind thing. But what happened to me did not make me any less of what I was, or what I am. In the end all it really did was show me that I can survive far more than I expected.
Maybe I'm wrong in expecting the same from others. Maybe not all people can do it. But I expect people to try.
Move or die. Words to live by.
One of the conversations Cate and I had on the long drive down was about the differences we see in people that have something to do with geography. No wonder there are so many neurotic, repressed and rude northeastern suburbanites. The shape of the trees, the overwhelming sense of being hemmed in by land and buildings, the very claustrophobia of the region must have some effect. That, and the legacy of tightly laced and pinched Puritanism certainly. It is very beautiful in places up there, such as certain parts of Pennsylvania. But I think the confining air of the hills and trees would drive me up the wall. I remain convinced driving in tunnels under mountains is a very unnatural thing to do.
As we drove south, the land opened up and the people became friendlier. Just something so simple as saying "Pardon me" or Excuse me" if I brushed into someone in New Jersey elicited blank stares and odd looks. In Kentucky, a white haired old woman called me Sugar when I paid for the gasoline. The reactions of cashiers in gas stations between Newark and Canyon Lake were fascinating. It was such a relief to be back in lands where people smile and excuse themselves, I have to say.
I suppose it must seem very normal if you grow up around it.
One of the most important ways to judge a person is how they handle adversity. I look at Cate, and she has suffered much in her life. She uprooted her life and moved 2000 miles for love, only to realize the life she thought she wanted wasn't true. Did she grieve and hurt? Well of course. Did she fall over, lay down and die? Did she allow herself to live for less, to give up things dear to her, to accept a pittance of what she deserved? Hell no. What has always impressed me about Cate is unwillingness to be trampled. Someone once described her as Patricia Arquette's character Alabama from True Romance, and it's quite apt. She's someone who keeps going, no matter how painful or how hard.
The women I admire most in my life are those women. Women like Hana Pichova, who ran an underground magazine in defiance of a Communist regime and crawled across a border fence to find her life across an ocean. Women like Cate, who refuse to allow anyone else to dictate the circumstances of her life, or how she raises her children. Women like Heda Margolius Kovaly, who walked away from a Nazi concentration camp, who survived unendurable horrors under the Communist goverment of Czechoslovakia and spit in the faces of the men who executed her husband.
All of these women went through bleak periods, suffered depression and crushing misery in one form or another. But none of them allowed their sadness to take away their will to live, their will to go onwards. Each of them has achieved great things, in very different ways.
Move or die. In each story, that is what they did though it may go under different names and different philosophies. At the core though, it is all the same. We can choose to give up, to accept whatever crumbs are handed to us and to curl up in a ball out of fear. Or we can choose to get up and keep moving, to keep looking for what we want for ourselves and our loved ones.
There was a point in my life where I felt like the suffering had left some indelible mark on my face and my soul. That somehow it had warped me, made me unfit for the life I wanted. But I don't see that anymore. As horrific as it sounds in my own ears, the things that happened to me just happened. They just do, because evil is a blind thing. But what happened to me did not make me any less of what I was, or what I am. In the end all it really did was show me that I can survive far more than I expected.
Maybe I'm wrong in expecting the same from others. Maybe not all people can do it. But I expect people to try.
Move or die. Words to live by.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-30 09:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-30 09:45 am (UTC)This is exactly , to the letter, what I feel, how I think, and what I need to learn.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-30 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-01 06:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-01 06:29 am (UTC)Move or die. The truest thing that I know.