The People-Bomb Defuser

The short version of this post for those who want to read this, but this is way too long: I had a dream… and it made me realise that I have spent my entire life experiencing other people as ticking explosive devices which I somehow had to figure out how to defuse or they would explode and kill me. That’s it.

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Something I said in my post…

I write posts for myself.

I write them the way that I do, in a stream of consciousness style, letting my thoughts and feelings flow and go where they want to go to hear myself express myself.

Sometimes I say something in a post which stays with me long after I’ve published the post.

It may be an irrelevant something which would get deleted if I wrote or edited my posts for others to read… and then I’d forget it, not notice it, not get the information I need from it because my focus would be on others and not on me -which is where it needs to be.

My posts have helped me to have better relationships with the people in my life.

That’s one of the reasons I write the way that I do – to find those somethings I said which stick to me.

Yesterday, something I said in a post stuck to me. I didn’t think about it afterwards, instead it inspired a dream which woke me up early this morning so that I would recall it and think about it.

It was an ordinary dream. A dream about living an ordinary life. My ordinary life.

I left my house to take a short trip on a local bus to get from where I live to one of the towns in the area. I went into a clothing shop. Browsed the clothes on display. The shopkeeper approached to encourage me to buy something.

She decided to discuss what I was wearing – One of my favourite sweaters (it’s one I bought in a charity shop at least a decade ago which I adore even though it’s old and scruffy).

She pointed out the holes in the sleeves of my sweater (that particular sweater is one of the few I have which doesn’t have holes in the sleeves).

She assumed I’d bought it that way and that it was a high fashion sweater. She told me she had one just like it for sale in the shop and did I want to see it, try it on, buy it. I cleared up her misunderstanding and told her the holes were natural not engineered in a clothing factory.

There was another customer there who was eavesdropping – this made me suddenly very aware of the sound of my voice.

In the dream my RL accent was exaggerated and the volume on it was turned up to the max.

I became very self-conscious because my accent is rather strange, it’s one of those which inspires people to play – Guess where she’s from!

The very first words my partner spoke to me when we met was – Are you English?

A good friend in high school in Paris said she thought I was Swedish when she first heard my accent.

I’ve been asked if I’m American, Australian, and once people get tired of playing the – Guess where she’s from – game they finally get annoyed with me and demand that I explain myself to them!

I’m from planet Earth, but none of the places on planet Earth are my point of origin.

I pick up the sounds around me, the ones I hear regularly on TV, in songs, from people talking in RL, absorb them, and they swirl around in my head, get jumbled together, remixed, then come out of my mouth when I talk.

I’m fairly fluent in English, French and Italian, can understand Spanish, and love listening to Korean.

I don’t always pronounce words correctly. For instance the word “misled” – I used to pronounce that as “mizzled” until I heard someone else say “miss-led”. I prefer “mizzled” because that’s how I feel when I am “misled”.

“Me, pron. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Each is all three.”

definition of me by Ambrose Bierce from The Enlarged Devil’s Dictionary

Why am I telling you (me) all of that?

Because my accent is one of many things about me which makes me stand out as a – not one of us – when I’m with other people.

And that particular experience – of not belonging ever to any group of people, of standing out and being seen as something odd, unknown, alien, foreign, perhaps to be rejected, feared as a threat… ties in with the thoughts I had when I woke up from the dream after that scene in the shop when I became overly self-conscious of my voice.

I love that moment just after I’ve woken up from a dream when there’s this space for thoughts which are somewhere between conscious and subconscious to gather and chat with each other, like a symposium, with me as a listener.

One of the thoughts spoke about a feeling I had throughout the dream – physical tension brought on by being with other people. A bracing of body.

There was more to the dream story than I’ve shared, all of it ordinary, but the more is in bits and pieces – at one point I was in bed and realised I was sharing the bed with other people, they were moving around in their sleep, I was awake and focused on keeping myself as still as possible, lying straight and stiff like a cadaver, on the very edge of my side of the bed.

On edge – don’t breathe.

That flashed across my mind connecting with other thoughts – that thing I said in my post!

On edge – don’t breathe – or you’ll disturb people – they’ll explode – all over you – maybe kill you in the explosion – of them all over you – all over for you.

Then this thought – I experience other people subconsciously as potential suicide bombers, emotional-mental-explosive devices and my job is to defuse them before they explode and kill me.

Do you experience all people like that? – a thought asked – Not all people are that, most people aren’t?

Yes. No. Yes. No… YES! OMG! YES YES YES! By George I’ve got it!

Just You Wait from My Fair Lady was my mother’s favourite song to sing, and she loved to tell me that when she sung it she saw herself singing it to my father. In other words, she wanted him dead… tra la la… and one day she would explode and all those she wanted dead would die… tra la la.

As a child I was conscious of experiencing my mother and father, particularly my mother since I spent more time in her company and relied on her for my survival, as ticking time-bombs.

Tik tok tik tok tik tok tik tok – don’t tick her off or she’ll go BOOM!

But anything and everything set her off, she was a very unstable explosive device – one of those you mustn’t touch, the slightest touch, the slightest vibration, triggered the explosion.

How do you defuse a bomb like that?

Don’t move a muscle. On edge. Don’t breathe. Don’t be.

As I grew up, my entire focus was taken up with trying to figure out the perfect formula to defuse her explosions – preferably before she’d reached bomb mode.

But she was always in bomb mode.

And my father was often the trigger – he could do it remotely from another country with one phone call, without even that sometimes, sometimes all she had to do was think of him and BOOM! but she wouldn’t go BOOM until she’d sought me ought – she needed me to be the witness. If there wasn’t a collateral damage witness what would be the point of exploding?

If you explode and no one hears you, sees you, do it… she needed to be seen and heard. Each and every time she exploded, again and again and again.

As a child the only recurring sleep-nightmare I had was of a pink wall with cogs turning, it was a very tense dream, the teeth of the cogs had to slot into the dips of other cogs perfectly, if they didn’t… I would hold my breath while watching them, feeling them move inside me, in my head… and then one tooth would miss the dip, there’d be a grinding of metal, screeching, shuddering – I’d wake up in panic and pain.

I’ve had bruxism – grinding and clenching of teeth, especially while asleep – since I’ve had teeth. I know that because of the complaints I got about the corners of the blankets being torn to shreds by my teeth when I slept. Sucking my thumb eased the bruxism until I stopped sucking my thumb. During the day I’d munch pencils until they were almost flattened. I considered a career as one of those acrobats who hangs from their teeth.

“Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane.”

definition of mad by Ambrose Bierce from The Enlarged Devil’s Dictionary

As an adult I continued to view both of my parents as explosive devices – to be defused by me if possible. It was exhausting for mind body soul to be and live that way all the time, but… that was my job.

In the past, when people would ask me why I was interested in Astrology, Psychology, Metaphysics, Theosophy, New Age, Self Help, Philosophy, etc, and why I seemed to be genuinely interested in other people, I would say – I want to know what makes people tick.

Now I realise exactly what I meant by that back then… but I didn’t realise it then. I was trying to figure out how to make them stop ticking… to stop the explosions.

Sometimes I’d throw myself onto my parents just before they exploded to save others from the blast – others didn’t know I’d done that.

Others only saw our family, the way they wanted to see our family, which was often how my parents wanted our family to appear to others – a symbol to be admired and envied, especially envied because envy was the highest form of flattery.

I was a seen by others as a spoiled brat who didn’t know how lucky she was to have such wonderful parents and live such a privileged life – if people didn’t see me that way, my parents would make sure that they saw the error of their ways and get with the narcissist parents’ narrative.

I should never complain, never look sad or mad, never do anything other than be a happy smiley face whom others could hate because I was a happy smiley face, I didn’t know suffering, pain, misery, I was lucky, I had nothing to complain about or be sad, mad about.

When people with anxiety share their anxiety stories with me and I reply with an – I can relate because I also suffer from anxiety.

They look at me with “the look” – the one which sees the me who spent years being a people-bomb defuser. I look calm, confident, self-assured, self-contained. That isn’t how people with anxiety are supposed to look.

How they see me and how they see themselves… compared to them… No, apparently I don’t, never have, couldn’t possibly have any personal experience of anxiety. I am mistaken – how dare I!

And BOOM! Their anxiety takes offense, wants to invalidate my claim… lay waste to me, let me have it, show me what real suffering is, what real anxiety is, and who a real anxiety sufferer is and what they feel – their feelings explode all over me.

I didn’t say that I was a successful people-bomb defuser…

Although there was that one time… this guy had been wound up to exploding point by my mother (her doing her narcissist thing as usual) and I was left to deal with him (a typical situation – I’ve broken this toy, fix it for me/get rid of it) because she thought he was rude and impossible – he thought the same of her. He was so impressed by how I defused his imminent explosion because he didn’t want to go boom but didn’t know how to stop himself, that he wanted to introduce me to his son as a potential bride. I defused that people-bomb too, the son was relieved.

Then again sometimes setting the bomb off is the way to defuse it.

Once people-bombs have exploded they may feel better for a while, the timer resets itself.

It tik toks but quietly. Humming away. It will build up again, but for now… the person can go around, like my mother and father did after they’d exploded, being a positive experience for others, who love them, aren’t they great, they’re always so positive, they make you feel so good about yourself, so special, when you’re with them… pity about their child, such a scowling face and bad attitude – what a spoiled brat!

Get into the car. Let’s go for a ride. It’s on a track. Slowly up Crash Mountain we go… tik tok tik tok… no, you can’t get off the ride… tik tok tik tok… manic levels of positivity are rising… tik tok tik tok… we’re almost there… tik tok tik tok… and thar she blows! BOOM! and down we all go tumbling into the dark gaping maw of the hungry pit of despair.

“Misfortune, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.”

definition of misfortune by Ambrose Bierce from The Enlarged Devil’s Dictionary

A similar thing happens if I mention to someone who suffers from depression that I have too – No, apparently no I don’t, look at me! I don’t appear to be scarred by depression at all!

And BOOM!

My looking depressed used to set my parents off – mustn’t look that way, control the face, neutralise the expression, don’t move a muscle, don’t breathe, don’t be… or else!

I was aware that my experience of my parents coloured… splattered my relationship with others with debris from all of the explosions, but what I hadn’t seen until this morning was that I experience all people as I experienced my parents – as people-bombs.

I know they’re not my parents – thank fuck for that!

Intellectually, I know they’re not. Consciously, I know that they’re nothing like my parents. Even emotionally, I can feel that they’re not.

It doesn’t matter how much my logical mind and fairly rational heart knows that the people I am with are not people-bombs – they could be… they’re alive and ticking.

I do have an idea of how that sounds… or it could be heard by others, especially considering I’m basically saying you look like a people-bomb to me.

My parents didn’t look like people-bombs either. My parents were adept at appearing like the last person who would ever be a people-bomb.

I know that because whenever I made the error of trying to tell people about my real experience of my parents – Ugh! What a spoiled brat! Those poor parents!

Every now and again someone would come to me and complain to me about my parents – they exploded all over me, why didn’t you warn me about your mother/father being a people-bomb!?! I blame you!!!

And boom!

Once in a while someone would surprise me by warning me about my parents – Did you know your mother/father is a people-bomb!!! You should be careful… you should do something about it. It’s your responsibility to defuse them so that they don’t harm others.

And boom!

Small booms or big BOOMS… all people are people-bombs to me.

I don’t want to view people that way… which is why it took me so darn long to realise that I view people that way.

And I have to wear my people-bomb defuser gear at all times… except when I’m alone, which is why I’m an Introvert level: Hermit.

And it does explain my social anxiety, why I was painfully shy as a child, hated parties and gatherings of people, crowds as an adult… far better than I’ve ever explained it to myself before.

Am I exaggerating?

Possibly – sometimes that helps to see things more clearly.

And transiting Mars is right on top of my natal Jupiter at the moment – Jupiter expands, exaggerates.

I’m bringing astrology into this because before I went to sleep last night I read up on the upcoming Aries (god of war, ruled by Mars) Full Moon on several astrology blogs.

I’ll share the links to them here because what is written about it is very pertinent to everything in this post:

Aries Full Moon: Rights, Grievances, and Relating by April Elliott Kent of Big Sky Astrology

This Aries Full Moon is a powerhouse of planetary energies! by Lynn Hayes of Astrological Musings/Astrodynamics

Full Moon in Aries, October 13, 2019 by Diane L. of Libra Seeking Balance

Full Moon in Aries by Nadia Gilchrist of Ruby Slipper Astrology

The Aries Full Moon and Friends by Amanda Painter of Planet Waves

If you read all of the above astrological articles about the Aries Full Moon (I’m going to hazard a guess that you won’t, so…) you might notice a thread which runs through all of them – about “honouring” self and other simultaneously. I noticed that because of something I said in my post yesterday which I wrote before I read the astro articles so it hit me with a WOW.

I’m not always in sync with what astrologers say about the energies of the now and how we’ll experience them. I get excited when I am. Not that bothered when I’m not especially when it’s a doom and gloom prediction and I ain’t feeling it.

Besides being out of sync with the world according to others is a theme in my life and in my natal chart.

I put my favourite interpretation of it first as I resonated with what was said in that article the most.

The others are good, interesting.

The way I read astrological interpretations is – I view how astrologers write about astrology as their experience of a planet or placement, etc, based on their own natal chart. Just as I view a psychologist’s view of psychology as reflecting their own psyche. This also works for when people are talking about me – it’s their experience of me, which may differ from my experience of me. They’re right for themselves, but they right for themselves may not be right for me.

I don’t experience Pluto the way Diane L. experiences it – “Pluto is an expert at identifying and using our fears and desires to control us” – possibly because my natal Pluto is retrograde in the 1st house of self and trines my Sun.

I experience Pluto more how Lynn Hayes experiences it – “Pluto, planet of power and transformation which applies a great deal of pressure for growth and evolution” – which is more along the lines of how Jeff Green experienced it, his book – Pluto: The Evolutionary Journey of the Soul – is one I still own, helped me a lot to understand myself, my experience of myself, and my experience of other people, how other people appeared to experience me.

Here’s an excerpt from the chapter on Pluto in the 1st house or Aries (I was born during Pluto in Virgo – Virgo softens Pluto in the house of Aries, brings humility, intense shyness, self-consciousness… it also makes it more analytical – the devil is in the detail):

“Once these evolutionary lessons have been learned by these First House Pluto people, then their ability to balance their own legitimate needs with those around them is unsurpassed. Their evolved ability to listen to another will allow them to give to another exactly what they need. In so doing they will attract to themselves others who will have the capacity to give them that which they need. They have intrinsic courage and capacity to break new ground in whatever aspect of life that they apply themselves to, and can give courage to others to do the same thing. Furthermore, these individuals can become aware of the basis and nature of their desires, and why and how those desires determine their reality. They can apply this knowledge to others as well, and help others become aware of the basis and nature of their own desires. This knowledge can be used to help themselves and others make right choices as to what desires should be actualized, and which ones should not.

Common characteristics of the First House Pluto types are: Intense individualists, can be very strong willed, intense, magnetic, bull-headed, defiant against arbitrary authority, courageous, possess inherent leadership abilities, are not given to meaningless conversations, have a penetrating gaze, and can be hard to get to know deeply. They have very strong physical bodies.

excerpt from Jeff Green’s Pluto: The Evolutionary Journey of the Soul – Pluto in the First House or Aries

Am I there yet? Have I learned the evolutionary lessons? Well, I don’t answer those sort of questions anymore with the ego-thinky brain, I let my actions and behaviour do that for me.

Most of the transiting planets discussed in those posts on the Aries Full Moon are aspecting natal placements in my chart.

The AFM will be holding hands with my natal Saturn in Aries (a while back I did a series of photographs trying to express my experience of placements in my natal chart – I did one for Saturn in Aries which an astrology blog used or maybe they used the other one which is similar – usually astrologers ignore me because I’m an amateur dabbling and making a mess of their system).

my take on Saturn in Aries (I used to be moonvoodoo)

Transiting Uranus is particularly busy with my natal – which is why I’m more zip zap in the pink membrane, writing more posts, jibber-jabbering away to myself using tonnes of words, jumping around from dot to dot in an impossible to follow manner, and prone to OMG AHA moments at this time.

I have natal Uranus trine natal Mercury – this aspect offers radical mental insight when it’s working well, and transiting Uranus is also aspecting natal Mercury so if my writing is white noise to you – you can blame the astro.

There’s a bit in the last article linked to:

“Self-sabotage is unconscious, but can have significant impact on a person’s ability to direct their life toward what they truly want, including (perhaps especially) in relationships and processes of individuation. Often this unconscious self-sabotage arrives via baggage, emotional triggers and repressed energy (anger, sexual energy, etc.) getting provoked.

Perceived threats to safety — such as the need to make changes, or to stand up to someone with power — tend to stir the pot of this material. Yet positive, focused, conscious self-expression, driven by the need to evolve in response to internal and environmental changes, can win out. If you want to continue growing, it must.”

excerpt from The Aries Full Moon and Friends by Amanda Painter of Planet Waves

which reminded me of…

Something I said in my previous post…

A different something I said from the one which stuck with me…

And how someone else interpreted my words, and how I interpreted how they interpreted it – they used what I said to hurt themselves, and go boom!

I can understand why and how that happened.

Because I’ve done that too – taken something someone has said and used it to hurt myself. I go boom too… but I implode rather than explode (except for on my blog).

In relationships that often takes the external form of… suddenly I’m not there anymore.

It may take the other person a while to notice that I’m not physically there since I just tend to vanish and don’t make a noise about it, but at some point they do and maybe they don’t care, are relieved.

If I can’t leave physically, then mentally and emotionally I’m no longer in that relationship.

I’m there but not there.

The other person may not notice anything has changed – unless my not being there in mind and heart improves the relationship. It’s actually interesting how often it does improve it – I’ve learned a lot from that.

What happened reminded me of what Bill Burr said in (his stand up shows but also in…) this episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee – the conversation about it starts at the 7:45 mark:

He was talking about not being responsible for what happens to his words once they enter someone’s head and get mixed up with their own thoughts.

I used to feel responsible for how people reacted to me, to what I said or did. Responsible for what they did with my words in their minds, how they used them.

If they got hurt, upset, offended, angry… if they exploded – that was my fault and responsibility.

Even if they took something I said or did and twisted it up in their mind until it was not at all what I’d said or done. I’d still done or said something which had caused them to do that – I was the reason they went boom!

I hadn’t been in tense mode enough. I had moved a muscle. I had breathed. I had been. And that’s why the people-bomb went boom!

Their going boom would make me feel mortified… and then I’d want to go boom too – implode, delete myself off the face of the Earth. If I didn’t exist they wouldn’t go boom – problem solved, bomb defused forever.

When the person reacted with a mini-boom to what I said in my previous post – I noticed that I didn’t feel mortified like I would have done no so long ago, I also didn’t immediately have a sudden urge to implode my blog, but I did have a bit of the chain reaction of wanting to go boom myself…

Which then made me think of something I’d said in a previous previous post about another blogger – a blogger whose post and what they had said in it had made that person who reacted to my words go boom recently even though that other post-writer also wasn’t writing about them.

I could see how the other blogger’s post had inspired a boom in the person who also went boom with me, since after reading it myself I wanted to go boom too and I sort of did in my post.

Their style of self-expression in writing reminded me of my mother’s speech style – the one which wound people up and made them go boom, like the guy whose explosion I defused.

Chain-reactions…

Bill Burr also mentions those in his episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee at the 7:34 mark, but it’s worth listening to the bit before too. He mentions people learning to – get something off them and getting it onto the next person.

Something upsets you, makes you go boom – the blogger whose style reminds me of my mother was upset about something and their post was them going boom.

The other person read it, felt the reverberations of the writer’s boom and it made them go boom too – they wrote about it in a post which is where I saw it, I also read the post which made them go boom, and I felt the tremors of both their booms – And I expressed my own boom in a post – thus far no one else seems to have boomed because of that post…

However since I tend to flow from one post to another, still thinking and feeling my way through whatever is on my mind – I boomed a bit more in my previous post and that one caused a boom in someone else.

This bit made them go boom:

So I wasn’t going to accept the tag, but I do appreciate being asked to play.

….

I wanted to find a way to decline participating which was respectful, appreciative and gracious… which honoured both sides, both people.

I didn’t want to do that thing which annoys me when I do it and when other people do it too – where you accept a gift because you don’t want to be rude and be seen as rude, but you don’t want to accept it because you don’t want it.

So you accept the gift, then put the gift on a shelf and ignore it.

And maybe the person who gave you the gift, gives you another gift like that because they think you genuinely liked it due to you pretending that you did, and would appreciate more gifts like that because you accepted that one with fake smiles and thank you so muches.

While you can sometimes get away with that… there are times when you can’t.

Sometimes doing the rude thing is more polite than doing the polite thing which ends up being far ruder in the long term.

If and when the person who gave you the gift finds out that not only did you not want the gift but you didn’t want any of the other similar gifts they gave you with such pleasure – it made them feel so good to do that and now they feel so bad about it.

They’ll view what you did to be polite and not be seen as rude as something deeply hurtful.

You’ve been lying to them = treating them like a fool.

You’ll lose their trust – that’s a beautiful gift they gave you, and a terrible gift given to lose all because you wanted to be polite and not appear rude.

slightly edited excerpt from A Goodness Gracious Me Meeting

Because I spoke of blog tagging as gifts and then said all of that about accepting gifts which you don’t want… and they’d tagged me in the past which I’d accepted… they read it as me throwing their gift back in their face all of this time later, which hurt them.

I had moved on from blog tagging to something else when I was writing about the whole gift giving and accepting bit because thinking about blog tagging reminded me of a different kind of human to human tagging.

Maybe I made that association because… one of the more popular posts on my blog is called – Narcissism is the Game, and You’re It

I was actually thinking about my parents, and narcissistic abuse, when I wrote that and how with narcissists because you accept the shitty treatment they give to you – they think you like that shitty gift so they give you more of it because to them you’re saying: “Please, Sir, I want some more“.

While I wrote about gift giving I was recalling all the times I’d smiled politely and accepted being treated like shit by others just so that they would… wouldn’t go BOOM!

The most common reason why you’re accepting the shitty treatment which a narcissist is giving to you is because if you don’t they’ll go BOOM! and the BOOM! is far worse than the shitty treatment.

It takes a while to realise that they’re going to go BOOM! anyway, and in fact they’re more likely to go BOOM! with you because you’ve accepted their constant gifting of shitty treatment.

You’ve been giving them the green light of – please keep piling your abuse gifts on me, I can take it, I love this kind of gift, please give me more.

This isn’t victim-blaming. I accepted my parents’ abuse because they blamed the victim and the victim accepted the blame, and blamed themselves which is why I kept accepting more and more of their gifts of abuse and politely thanking them for it – I obviously deserved it.

No this is about taking back your personal power form all those people to whom you’ve gifted a portion of it, giving them power over you, power which they use and abuse to make you feel awful about yourself, powerless to do anything about it.

This is about seeing my part in what happened so that I won’t keep repeating the pattern.

Repeating the pattern not just with my parents – I vanished from their lives a long time ago. It improved my relationship with my father. My mother only noticed my absence when she needed someone to go BOOM! at and I wasn’t there – but with everyone.

Most people do not want to be abusive, but if they’re under pressure – don’t move a muscle, don’t breathe – they may go boom to relieve and release the intense pressure within them before they go BOOM!

If you’ve been trained a certain way by, let’s say your parents as I was to take the booms and BOOMS and smile politely, ask for more, accept it as your daily bread… you may be chosen by those who need to release and relieve stress as their haven of stress release.

They may pass onto you what someone else passed onto them – a stressful, emotional and mental, game of pass the parcel which is making a tik tok tik tok sound while making the rounds and no one wants to be holding that parcel when the music stops.

Garbage – The World Is Not Enough (Official Video)… the anthem of narcissists.

If you don’t understand the inner dynamics, they keep repeating until you do understand them.

They’ll keep repeating when you do understand them to deepen the understanding and show you if you’ve progressed, evolved, shifted and advanced the narrative… or not.

That’s where I’m at at this moment in time – noticing where I have progressed and evolved enough to shift and perhaps advance the narrative, and my role in it, my self-narrative.

This is not about anyone else’s story.

My posts are all about me even when I write about others – it’s not them, but the me in them and the them in me that I see when looking at them and listening to their own personal narrative…. that’s what I’m writing about.

Don’t take it personally… but if you do, pause and ask yourself why you’re doing that. Wait. Don’t rush to answer… leave a space and see what fills that space, conscious and subconscious thoughts, feelings, rising up, joining together, perhaps able to commune and have symposium where what makes you tick is seen, heard, and perhaps figured out a bit so that you are in charge of the tik tok tik tok of you, and not someone else to whom you have inadvertently given and gifted with power over you so that when they pull the trigger you go boom BOOM!

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Aren’t you glad that you read the short version and then moved on to someone else’s post or to your own if you’re a blogger?

The comments are there for you to express yourself and go boom and/or BOOM! if you want to – that’s up to you, I’m not defusing people-bombs anymore… I was never good at it anyway.

Over to you!

“Youth, n. The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honour of endowing a living Homer.

Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the golden Age on Earth again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with whistles and wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and cows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice never is heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and, howling, is cast into Baltimost! – Polydore Smith”

definition of youth (there was no entry for “you”) by Ambrose Bierce from The Enlarged Devil’s Dictionary