I do not like about myself

Once, I wrote a list of things I liked about myself.

I liked it about myself

that I liked these things about myself.

But I have also written

about how I like about myself

that I liked these things about myself, which

is not a thing about myself that I like.

Neither is this.

I like about myself that I like about myself

the things that I do.

Once,

I wrote a list of the things I liked about myself.

They were not obvious, or consistent,

but it was true that I liked them about myself.

I like that about myself,

that I did that.

I like about myself

that I tread very lightly, so lightly you cannot hear my footsteps,

I do not disturb dust

beneath my feet;

that I am ready to laugh, I am even now

waiting for you to make me laugh;

that when I am alone, I sing

and do not think of myself

and am happy;

that I will stare for a long time

at things I find beautiful, moving,

but not when anyone can see, lest they think

I am doing it for their benefit, as an affectation;

that sometimes my hair curls, and sometimes

I even like that it curls;

that I like things about myself.

Ful[l]

Thank-

ful;

Eat --

FULL!

Lob

Roll:

Big

LOL.

Big

Lull;

Loll;

Go.

Very often

Very often, I don't know what to do. In almost all circumstances, I don't know what the best course of action is, or even what courses of action are available to me. If I knew what options I had, I have thought, it would not be as difficult for me to decide what to do. Though, I have also thought, that even if I did know exactly what options I had in a given circumstance, I still would not know which option was the best. Because of this, I take a special comfort from doing one of the few things I am confident I know how to do.

I stand over my sink and wash a spoon very carefully. I have cleaned the handle, and am polishing and polishing the bowl. I clean the spoon so thoroughly because I know how to clean a spoon, and because cleaning a spoon gives me time to consider one of the many things I don't know how to do. I don't know what to say to a friend who has said something harsh to me, for instance. It's obvious that she has only done so because she is angry at someone else, some third person, and wants me to know that she is, so I may comfort her. It's probably also because she wants me to think she doesn't want my comfort, even though she has made it clear that she needs it.

I can't decide what to say to her, or whether to say anything to her at all, what would be best, what would comfort her, what would let her know that I know she needs comforting, and that I do not like the way she has asked me for it, but that I will give it to her anyway. I don't know how to communicate any of these things, or whether I should. I scrub and scrub at the bowl of the spoon until it's no longer a tablespoon, it's a teaspoon, and still I don't know what to say to her, or whether to say anything to her. I keep scrubbing until it is a snail fork, and then a toothpick. I wash the spoon so hard and so meticulously that it is cleaned clean out of existence. I have done the thing I knew how to do until it has disappeared entirely. I still don't know what to do about anything else. I stand over the sink for a long time with empty hands, wishing I had another dirty spoon.

Anecdote #4

I went to a room to hear a man speak. The room was over-full, overflowing, because the man was somewhat famous and the topic somewhat interesting. I hesitated to stay, since the room was very full, and I was only moderately interested in the somewhat interesting talk. In my mind, this talk justified a full room, but not a very full room, a room filled to capacity.

Before it began, an audience member addressed a remark to him. It was a slightly forward remark, and could have been read as rude. It could also have been seen as a vocal but pertinent concern. The speaker, who was evidently very engaging, responded to this remark with another, one that made the listener the butt of a joke. Everyone laughed for a long time; perhaps for longer than the joke warranted.

It was a moderately clever joke, but it disgusted me. The man was a good speaker, and a calculated one, and rather than be corrected by an over-earnest audience member, he turned her comment into a joke on her. She had no response, was probably not clever enough to have one, and was not given opportunity.

I left immediately after, because I was less and less interested in what this man, whom I now saw as arrogant, had to say, because I disapproved of what little I had seen of him, of his joke.

But maybe I should have stayed, to take up a place, so one less person could fit in the room, and one less person could laugh at his jokes.

The world is almost only made

The world is almost only made

of sad and of beautiful things.

Some things are even

both. Both

the sad and the beautiful things

inevitably

break our hearts:

Only humor surprises.

But even humor

is often sad, and even more often

beautiful.