Volatility

I mentioned in my last post that I've started to work seriously (once again) on this book I hope to publish professionally. Of course we'll have to see how far I get. But in some ways the exercise of working with a professional editor has already been very educational.

A couple of days ago, I wrote you that my δαίμων appears to be alive and well and still in business, even though it has been so many decades since I was in school.

And today I came face to face with my old, familiar volatility.

I should explain.

Back when I was a child—or a teenager, or an undergraduate—my emotions were often volatile. It was one of the things that I understood to be distinctively true of me. When I learned the word mercurial, I latched onto it as a self-identifier. As a little child I had played at being Mercury, in and around playing at Batman or Superman. And then I learned that the word which best described my emotional life was derived from this same Power! How delightful. How apt.

The process of growing up was, for me, one long, long process of suppressing that mercurial volatility, of learning to distrust myself, of learning to slow down and wait. And of course in many ways that was a good thing. Certainly I learned over the long years of marriage to Wife that I couldn't just say the first thing that popped into my head! Nor could I with D, for much the same reason. By the time I was involved with Debbie, I had learned enough about my own dynamics to ask for—and get!—"the right to say it wrong." I described that years ago as "the assurance that, if I said something which upset her, I could take it back and try again and she would stop being upset." All of this was valuable progress in growing up, in becoming a mature adult instead of an immature prat. All of it was valuable progress in slowing down.

Except of course that all of you—anyone who reads this blog—knows that it's all an act. I never really slowed down my emotions. All I did was to slow down my external affect. I don't react as fast as I used to. But my emotions still bounce around. You know that, because you have to listen to me. So you are perfectly well aware that I will rage and whine and pout over developments that I end up accepting with (so far as anyone can tell externally) calm and grace. As I say, you know it's an act.

Sometimes I pretend to myself that I've made a kind of progress. And maybe I have. Maybe control over one's external affect really is a kind of progress, whatever is going on inside. But, as I said at the beginning, working with this professional editor has brought me face to face with my old, familiar volatility.

As I described in my last post, she sent me a development edit of the whole manuscript. And there were some changes that just sent me around the twist. Instead of marking up the same manuscript document, I funneled all my feedback into a separate document where I could write, "No! You're wrong, WRONG, WRONG!" Fortunately my painfully-learned habits of maturity kicked in last night, so that I didn't send her anything until this morning. Then this morning I wrote a cover email saying, "By the way, I think you're wrong about a few things but you are also write about some others." I attached the document and clicked Send.

Observing myself this morning, I noticed several things.

• Part of me wanted to stop and not send her all that feedback, in order to avoid the conflict that might ensue. Of course that would have meant that I had wasted the entire weekend, and where would we go from here if I couldn't send her my feedback?
• Another part of me chastised the first part, saying, "This is how you always get in trouble in relationships too, by failing to make a stand early when you should. Better to say something now and have done."
• A third part of me wondered, "Can we treat this email as an experiment? How does she handle criticism? If she handles it well, then you can keep working with her. If she handles it badly, that's an early sign of future trouble."

I thought it a remarkably interesting internal conversation.  

Fortunately the outcome was an anticlimax. Her response was very measured and reasonable. I answered her in a similar vein, thanking her for her answer and focusing on plans for the next step. And all the drama blew over, just like that.

But my renewed awareness of my own emotional volatility—and the interesting three-sided dialogue I held with myself this morning—those things have stayed with me.

           

My daimon

Decades ago—back when I was an undergraduate, in the Carter and Reagan Administrations (or call it the Late Pleistocene, for simplicity)—I used to talk about having a daimon (δαίμων). I'm not sure I meant it literally ... though, to be clear, I'm not exactly sure I meant it figuratively either ... but I used it as a shorthand to describe the inner experience of my approach to my studies that led me to have such a ridiculous academic record. I even had a little story that I would tell along with the claim, as a kind of set piece to explain how scholarship felt to me. It went like this.

Whenever I come back to school after summer vacation, there's a period of time when I really can't study. There's just too much else going on that's more interesting! There are friends to visit with, and there are trees to walk under. There are bright colors outside, there are concerts to attend, and there are pints of Häagen-Dazs at the local 7-11. Why would I want to study? Of course I realize that I have to, and the longer this goes on the more worried I get. What if I can't make myself sit down and study ever again?

And then one day, it's as if I can feel a switch go click inside me. Suddenly all the bright colors wash out till they look like the reflection cast by fluorescent lights. Suddenly everything I eat or drink tastes like coffee. Suddenly I'm just not that interested in going out and exploring the city any more. And suddenly studying is the easiest thing in the world.  

Of course I never meant this literally. My food didn't literally taste like coffee, and I didn't literally lose interest in visiting with my friends. But at a certain level of abstraction, it served as a useful "as-if." And there was indeed something interesting going on when that "switch" went click. There was something that happened that clearly separated the time when I could not focus on my studies, and the time when I could (so it seemed) do nothing else.

That was a long time ago. It has been a long time since I had to study like that—at any rate, since I had to study for months on end—and so the experience kind of faded away. I remembered the story, because I tend to remember stories well. But I wouldn't have identified it as part of my current experience.

But lately I've been trying to make some progress on the book I've told you about. The book that, as late as April, I said I hadn't touched in almost a year. Back in May I contacted someone who gave me a quote on development editing. At the beginning of June, not long before I left for the Ecosophian convention, I sent her a complete manuscript to work on. She sent it back, fully edited, a couple weeks ago—and asked for my feedback.

And what with one thing and another, I have been unable to look at it for more than a few minutes at a time.

Of course there are lots of Good Reasons. I have a regular schedule of blogging to maintain. I went to visit my mother for the Fourth of July. (Son1 and Dorcas visited as well, plus Brother and SIL. It was quite the event.) I had to do my laundry, and to buy groceries. Lots and lots of Good Reasons.

Yesterday, I wasted most of the day on Twitter. So today I told myself for sure that I had to work on reviewing my editor's changes. I sat down and forced myself. And even so, I kept getting distracted by the damnedest stuff. It must have been two hours after I made myself focus on the work, before I'd gotten more than a page or two into it. 

And then after a while—"suddenly," as they say—I was deep inside the work and couldn't think about anything else. I got all the way to the end of it (using one review protocol), and then started over using a second. I got about a third of the way through before I decided to break for dinner. At this rate, I should finish (using the second review protocol) some time tomorrow.  

When I first noticed that my distractability had evaporated, I was simply grateful. 

Then I remembered the story I used to tell.

And I thought—maybe, just maybe, my daimon hasn't left me. Maybe he has just been resting. Maybe he is still there when I need him.

It makes for an exciting story.

           

Apparently "Tanatu" refers to pedantic extremists!

So there I was, minding my own business and wasting time on the Internet, and I decided to google the name that I post under. And I discovered something remarkable. Apparently there is a Muslim hadith explaining that the "Tanatus" shall be ruined!

Wait, really? Who are these doomed Tanatus, anyway?

Well, it turns out that the Fatwa Department of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has a website which very helpfully answers exactly this question. Allow me to quote the question and a selection from the answer.

QUESTION: What is meant by the term ”Tanatu`” and what is meant by the Hadith: “Ruined are those who insist on hardship in matters of the Faith.”

ANSWER: All perfect praise be to Allah. Blessings and peace be upon Prophet Mohammad.

In principle, the term ”Tanatu`” means probing into a matter.”Motanatioon” refers to those who probe into matters unnecessarily.... Ibn Atheer stated: “ (Motanatioon) in the above Hadith are those who probe into matters and insist on hardship in what they say.” [An-nihayah Fi Ghreeb Al-Hadith Wa Al-Atharr]. The term “ Tanatu` “ was used by the Arabs to describe those who show off in their speech and employ awkward words when addressing people so as to win their hearts, and this is forbidden in Islam. [In other words, pedants.]

Later, it was used to describe whoever insisted on hardship in matters, whether by words, or deeds, and so they become far from moderation and balance, which are the spirit of Islam. Some instances of “ Tanatu` “ are: inquiring about non-existent juristic issues, and details of the unseen which none knows but Allah, such as the Spirit and The Day of Resurrection." More meaning go under the term Tanatu' as follow: proclaiming the legal illegal, innovations in religious matters, and insisting on hardship in religious practices, doctrines and thoughts.... [In other words, extremists.] 

Moreover, Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) said (What means): "The religion (of Islam) is easy, and whoever makes the religion a rigour, it will overpower him. So, follow a middle course (in worship); if you can't do this, do something near to it and give glad tidings and seek help (of Allah) at morn and at dusk and some part of night". {Bukhari}....

There's more, but that should give you the gist. "Tanatu" refers to niggling detail when it comes to religious doctrine, to agonizing over every jot and tittle, and to making the compliance with doctrine a matter of pain and anguish for everyone else. Just the word for people like me whose compulsions for pedantic exactitude are so obvious. Now if only we weren't all coming to a bad end!

In the spirit of ... umm, ... scholarly exactitude, the exact reference for this hadith is: Sahih Muslim, Book 34, Number 6450. You can find similar explanations of the text here or here. They all agree that Tanatu is a bad thing.

Oh well. Maybe there is still time for repentance.

           

You can just do things!

A long-expected party

The Ecosophian community is an informal collection of people who follow the books and blogs of John Michael Greer. There is no formal organization; nobody collects dues, or organizes formal events, or publishes meeting minutes. But if you check out either of his blogs—Ecosophia, or Toward Ecosophy—you'll find many of the same people commenting over and over. And of course there are plenty of people (I'm one of them) who rarely comment or post, but who read the materials regularly.

For a few years now, there has been a social gathering of ecosophians in Providence, Rhode Island, on or around the summer solstice.In the past, this gathering generally took the form of a big potluck. I remember seeing the announcements and thinking, "Gosh, wouldn't that be fun!" Of course I never went, because I don't live anywhere near to Providence. There was no simple or easy way to pop over and bring a contribution to the feast, so I didn't think about it beyond that.

You can just do things.

Last year, Greer traveled to Glastonbury, England, in early June. He announced his plans the previous November, and in the end his visit turned into a kind of impromptu convention. People gave talks and workshops. There were (by all accounts) good food, good beer, and good conversation. Of course it sounded like a delightful time in the run-up before it happened; and it sounded even better afterwards. But I'm an American, after all. Glastonbury is a long ways away. I toyed with the idea of going there, but I didn't take it very seriously. So in the end I stayed home, and read about it after the fact.

You can just do things.

Then after the 2025 potluck, the man who regularly organizes the events in Providence proposed that "next year" (meaning 2026) he wanted to change it up a bit. Why not hold a convention in Providence, just like the one in Glastonbury? Surely we have people on this continent who would like to give talks on some ecosophian-related topic? Or workshops? It can't be that hard. So he put out an announcement in July of 2025, for the following year, to get people's attention and start them thinking.

You can just do things.

Wife's view of her move

This evening after dinner, I was sitting at my computer browsing through some old posts and trying to get up the energy to write you about my trip last weekend. In the process, I realized that I used to inject a lot more drama into my posts than I do today, by the simple expedient of quoting Wife's perspective on whatever was going on.

Of course, mostly I don't interact with her any more. I drive to visit her at Son1's apartment a couple of times a year (see, for example, here and here). And even when I find something funny to email her, she very rarely responds.

But back in late May I sent her some information about a Japanese cat, who was made station master of a local train station, and who (after dying) was enshrined as a Shinto goddess. You can find her story here. This email triggered a response (though very little of it had to do with the cat). Writing to me the same day that I got this phone call from Son2, Wife told me all about her thoughts on Son2's upcoming marriage to Beryl, and about her fears related to moving. Here is what she said about the move.

Dream with Father

This will be short, because the dream happened in the middle of the night. I woke up to pee and repeated the core bit to myself but didn't write it down. Now, in the morning, that core bit is all I remember.

Anyway, somewhere in the middle of a dream about something else I saw Father. He was at a moderate weight, which means he was thinner than he had been for most of the time I was alive. He saw me and moved to get closer, which I interpreted as wanting a hug.

I gestured to stop him, and then told him that if he hugged me, I'd have to kill him. He backed off without complaint, though he looked very disappointed. 

At the time, I thought of it in terms of setting and enforcing clear boundaries between us ... which I suppose you could say it was.

Without context, that sounds like an incredibly harsh way to set boundaries. But I realize I have talked about my relationship with my father in posts before now, and in context—also considering that this was a dream—I don't feel like it was so crazy. You can find some of those posts at the following links: from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2023.  

           

Fearing for your children's future

Tonight in the UU Sangha I attend, we started reading a new book for our dharma study, a book by Thich Nhat Hanh about Fear. So during the discussion period, people began discussing their fears. And I heard several of them express fear for their children or grandchildren.

Debbie, for example, is afraid for her grandchildren because her daughter Mattie, and her son-in-law (Mattie's husband), are such martinets, and always yell at their sons (Debbie's grandchildren). Debbie said she's not afraid of dying for her own sake, but she's afraid of the consequences for her grandsons if one day suddenly she's no longer there for them. (To be clear, there's no imminent threat. Debbie's in her early seventies, and she has various ailments that are consistent with her age, including periodic bouts of long COVID and atrial fibrillation. She also has celiac disease, that seems to be slowly morphing into a more generalized autoimmune sensitivity. But she's not on a timeline, with "X years to live"!)

But then another member is worried about his children, too. (I'm pretty sure I haven't given him a name yet.) His kids—a son and a daughter—are legal adults but just barely. They were both adopted out of a dreadful situation, spent their whole childhood being oppositional, and regularly make terrible decisions. So their lives aren't going well, to nobody's surprise. And he's deeply troubled by this.

I think there was someone else too, but I forget the details.

Of course this is common. At some level, everyone who has kids wants those kids to have a wonderful life, free of the spectres that so routinely blight the lives of Other People. That's why I was so upset at the idea that Wife was going to live with Son 1: I wanted him to be able to have adventures in his life (if he wanted them, of course) and I figured there would be no adventures if he were looking after her. As a secondary concern, I feared that living with Wife would ruin his relationship with Wife, although I figured that he was honorable enough he would never throw her out on the street. (Turns out that I called that secondary concern exactly.)