From: mbr2@quads.uchicago.edu (Curious Of All Natures)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: All mind and no heart: update and THANKS
Date: 13 Apr 92 18:32:49 GMT
Reply-To: mbr2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

Newsgroup(s): alt.callahans

A fresh and happy breeze blows the door to the Place open a crack,
which is a good thing else Curious Of All Natures would have plowed
right into it as he careened toward Callahan's.  This is perhaps not
so good after all, as so much momentum comes in with him that his soft
paws slip and swipe on the hardwood floor as he scrabble(tm)s to avoid
hamstringing patrons standing at the bar.  All that anyone actually
sees is an off-grey curvelike afterimage catching up with a very
excited cat who is leaping onto table I1 [hereby decreed as the table
for expounding on victories and successes], only to slide right off
into Kateri's arms, who always seems to hug people at just the right
times.  

Returned to the table with greatly reduced velocity and a tingling
ear-scritch to boot, COAN yowls and claws the air for attention.
Standing up into his more oratorical form, he completely screws up his
elbows in his rush (If you think about it, you can imagine how
problematic elbows can be).  He's too excited to care for the moment.
He sways a little, but fails to realize how fortunate it is that the
table is rock-steady under his feet.

Thank you everyone, for your incredibly helpful contributions over the
last few days.  They have been food for my head and fuel for my heart.
I owe you all an update now.

[a breath.  COAN brushes back his hair and unthinkingly morphs his
elbows back the right way.]

Judie and I decided to take some time off from the relationship for
awhile.  I to pull my attention back into myself (I have a great deal
of trouble doing this in a romance), in order to try to rediscover my
emotional experience of life.  Also to search myself for a way to
accept and respect Judie's own contentment to not confront or deal
with those scary parts of her soul that I see causing her so much
pain.  Also for Judie to begin, independantly of my influence, to
confront these scary parts of herself, or not.

For 24 hours she understood and accepted my need to be by myself,
romantically speaking, for awhile, still intending to maintain and
even strengthen our friendship.  Then the next day she came back to me
distraught, objecting that it was a big mistake to "throw it all
away".  We had a talk on the couch that started with her sobbing on my
shoulder and evolved smoothly to me sobbing on her shoulder, which I
eventually soaked through.  Something broke in me, and I told her how
I didn't like having to be skilled at specifying all the
interpretations I didn't mean of important things I said, what a
life-contradiction I was in between wanting to be a positive effect on
her emotional growth on the one hand and to not drive her beyond her
own pace of self-discovery on the other, more such stuff, how hard it
was to say these at all knowing they'd be hurtful, and finally how it
hurt that people around me had gotten used to hearing the enlightening
kinds of things I try to say all the time that it wasn't having a good
effect anymore.  It all hurt more than I thought.  I'm glad it came
out.

Fortunately Judie, in this exchange, realized that she really did want
to open the book again on the unresolved parts of her soul, because
she saw how they could be affecting all of her relationships, not just
this one.  And I of course realized that I need to spend more time
WITH important friends of mine and less time driving them off the path
of least resistance.  

So we're back together again, having resolved BOTH needs to spend time
apart in one conversation.  We're going to try to listen very
carefully to each other's important input in the future, and try to
make clear what stuff is open for investigation now and what is just
not worth confronting yet.  She has some input for me now, too, now
that she's seen some of my own pains.  We're going to try to
de-intensify a bit.  Spend a little more time with these friends
with whom we've begun to lose touch.  Catch up on work.  Be happy with
loving together as well as growing together.  All sorts of warm fuzzy
happiness type stuff.

"I wish you could see the two cats drowsing side by side in a
 Victorian nursing chair, their paws, their ears, their tails
 complementally adjusted, their blue eyes blinking open on a single
 thought of when I shall remember it's their suppertime.  They might
 have been composed by Bach for two flutes."  -Sylvia Townsend Warner

Regarding the thinking-only mind, I still have something of a dilemma-
the pain I uncovered today hasn't opened up the flood-gate that
professional emotion-bottlers around the world describe, but at least
I have some more material to work with now.  We shall see what we
shall see, 'round that fair bend.

Without your input, good friends, I wouldn't have reached the crisis
that brought us through this.  I really needed my confidence shaken.
Thanks be to Bear, Galadrin, Lamplighter, Kateri, Speaker-to-Minerals,
sjane, CD, Skeeve, Kitten, John D. Palmer, Didi, DM, Randolph Fritz,
Aaron Lav, and Poet Man, for sharing your experiences and cautioning
me about the importance of just being there for someone over
advice-giving. <COAN more or less jumps off the table and walks over
to place on the bar a stack of green pieces of paper that would be
much more happy in the till than in COAN's often non-existent pocket.>
I'm sure you were keeping track, Mike.  Drink of choice for all of
them.  And a Ginger Beer for me.  Thanks.

Sipping his way over to the line, COAN is careful to retain the
continuity of his body parts against the scratch and bite of that most
feline of drinks.  He raises the glass:

To caring people, may they enlighten the world in spite of itself!

CRASH tinkle tinkle

Curious Of All Natures relaxes into felinity once again, the better to
rub the most ankles as quickly as possible.

Matt Ryan, mb-ryan@uchicago.edu      Curious Of All Natures
===================================  ====================================
If I am dreaming, never let me wake. You'll never see the end of the road
If I'm awake, never let me sleep.    when you're traveling with me.
                -old Chinese fellow                        -Crowded House
===================================  ====================================
Newsgroups: alt.callahans