Preach.

ABOVE: Me looking like me, 30 years apart
(Left—62 y.o., last summer at the thrift store;
right—32, writing a paper (about the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste))
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"This is why I liked being here--I ran my own domain."

I dreamt I walked into the thrift store as if I still worked there, and that's what I thought, in the dream--that I'd liked running my own domain.
For all the trouble around it, BOOK's was my own peaceful kingdom.

I probably should go back soon, to re-vise, to re-see (re-spect) my relationship to the store from the outside.
I don't want resentment to cement; I don't want never to return, just because I more or less hate Big Boss.

Some coworkers left and never came back. Others--including Ass't Man & Em, who also had bad relationships with BB--shop and visit all the time.
Maybe I'll bike over this morning, and see what's what with me 'n' them.

Conflict happens everywhere. Or, in the positive, as it's now called,  "courageous conversation"--for which, we prepare to feel uncomfortable and expect to leave with things unresolved.

Yesterday I had a long(ish) talk with a coworker about the one class where I'm having troubles.
The relationship between the teacher and the students is not good, and I don't know how to position myself, how to help.
Weirdly (or, not?), I've kind of aligned myself with the students.
It's my job to advocate for the students, though, not to "take their side" in sullen resentment against the teacher.

The coworker suggested some things I could try, to help. All involve challenging the teacher. I mean, if the teacher were receptive, it wouldn't be a challenge, but they are "territorial", as my coworker said.

I'm also in class with the exact opposite type of teacher.
I asked them why their class is so chill---everyone works away at their chosen task. (Yeah, right there--"chosen" is key).
They laughed, "Not all my classes are this relaxed. But I guess it's just . . . respecting the students."

EVERYONE IS THEIR OWN DOMAIN

Over and over--that's exactly what I see everywhere.
Respect people as individuals--including all their inconvenient traits-- and whatever brilliance is in them will come forth too.
You gotta take the weeds with the wheat.

Disrespect them, and in their weakness they will show you the power of their resentment. It can be mighty.
And that's what's happening in this class.

Here in the last quarter of the year, I don't know what would be effective... I'm nervous--the teacher has not made me an ally--but I will try.

I am my own domain.
____________________

Speaking of allies, I wasn't sure of a student's pronouns--different coworkers refer to them with different pronouns––so I finally asked them.
Like, what's your domain name? 😊

They told me; it was a friendly exchange; and the conversation closed.
THEN I thought, Oh! I should say mine.

"I'm she/her", I said.

"Preach," they said.
[Translation, from my era: "Tell it like it is, sister!"]

Got that right.

This can get thorny. I do have some concerns about Large Picture politics and the medicalization of gender.
And I've been in places ("spaces", now) where I felt pressured to say my pronouns, as if it were a test of my acceptability that I perform this ritual.
Not to conform would have been to declare myself an enemy.

Now, I recognize that the enemy of freedom is a clear and present danger.
But CLEARLY we were all on the same page (or we wouldn't have been in the space).
It was not a courageous conversation, it was pressure to perform political theater.

But this was not that!
This was the equivalent of asking someone their name.
They say their name, and then you tell them yours.
Easy.

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Blogger was not loading images earlier this morning, which reminded me of the early days of blogging. I'd posted no images at all in my first blog (flightless parrots, 2003–2005).

So, instead of the photo up top, I was just going to post a quote from C. S. Lewis. I don't love the guy--he's such a prig––but here he's saying something I came to too, working in a non-reading, tiny-world workplace:

 (Of course now there are many other ways of enlarging our world through media besides books – –)

"Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors.
We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated.

"The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison.
My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented."

––C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (1961), via The Marginalian

And this, below, reminds me of Auntie Vi on the importance of taking your dog for a walk--not just letting it out in the backyard:
"Scents are like a dog's e-mail", she said.

Lewis goes on to say,
"I regret that the brutes cannot write books. ... Gladly would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog."

Thinking of Auntie Vi gives me courage.
She never doubted herself––not that I could see, anyway.
I mean, I wouldn't mark her high in self-awareness, but a little over-confidence can serve a person well.

I'm going to borrow some of hers because I realize I'm a little afraid, a little lacking in confidence, about going back to the store.
I don't need to be--I'd left on friendly terms, outwardly, even with Big Boss. I hadn't been happy with our last meeting, but I hadn't told him because I was thinking, "I'm going to be outta here soon".
Four days later I interviewed for my new job.

I'm sure people would be happy to see me. But I feel uncertain within myself.
How will I feel, visiting a place I hate and I love?

Odi et Amo! The famous Catullus couplet:

Odi et amo. Quare id faciam fortasse requiris.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask.
I know not, but I feel it happening and I am tortured.

And this reminds me, now I have time, I've thought I might brush up on my never-good Latin... It's been thirty years---I was studying it at the time the top, right photo was taken.

I actually earned a minor in Latin (with my BA in Religious Studies), but that's a joke--I never could read anything without a dictionary, even the simplest church Latin.

I don't know.
I don't know what I'll do with my renewed energy, and with all this free time coming up. I might just have to weather the discomfort of not-knowing, like in a courageous conversation.

Speaking of weather, it's so weird this year--I sometimes think, why are we bickering about This and That?
Maybe we should live as if we were near the end. (Some of us are quite near our own ends, for sure.)
Not in a gloomy way, but in a FREEing way.
Your domain, free rein.