Here is the next one.
It hasn't been my experience as a creator ("condenser" feels closer) of things that there are any wasted experiences. There's almost nothing I won't drink, eat, or do just to file it away for future use. I, uh, used to steal things. Not big things! I didn't steal people's bikes. But let's be very clear on this point: things went missing, before they got lost.
Something like ten years ago, Brenna told me about a book she was reading which delineated in clear terms the kinds of men it's good to have around. I don't remember what kinds of stuff these men were supposed to be able to do, I just remember that I wasn't especially good at most of it, so I wasn't sure what I was being told exactly. But it still got filed, along with the inexplicable arrangements people sometimes come up with and the very specific turquoise some lichen can be.
One of the challenges I contend with doing projects by myself is that I'm uncomfortable putting the people I invent through hardship. But that's what happens when you are alive; we do not order our lives from a menu, and we can't send them back. Well, to maintain the metaphor, you can send it back. But you don't get to order again once you've left the restaurant. Again, to maintain the metaphor. Depending on your cosmology, I suppose you could come back. As a meal, presumably.
But what she said in the Precambrian era stuck with me, and I wanted to invert it. Which men don't you need. There are three of them in the project, two of which you see today.
You've got the Abstract Thinker, whose worship of effervescent concepts and unyielding strictures make them poor choices for practical applications. This is my phenotype, if you were wondering. I think it's vastly more important to coin terms and rhyme things than it is to do absolutely anything else. My experience of "creativity" is essentially that of a disorder; I have strong compulsions that I'm not entirely at the tiller of. But because my compulsions don't involve me eating gravel or hoarding cats, it's "okay."
There's another type of Man, the Man who "totally gets what a woman is, like, going through" who is just as annoying if not more so, as a person who is just a straight up jerk. Jamie and I have discussed this breed at length. The Greenheart here is doing his best, and he does, in fact, know more than most. I like him. But can he help? What will he undertake? Nothing.
There is another Man you don't want, but we're giving this thing all the panels it wants to have. I'll see you Friday.
(CW)TB out.
