Mind Spill, Pay Absolutely No Mind.

It's safe to value and love a historical or literary historical character.

There's safety in it because I've read an idea of where they've come from, what they did to survive in their life and how it all turned out in the end.

It's not hard to simplify how they fit into the struggle of humanities path, its easy to be friends or enemies with them when I don't have to reciprocate by sharing myself, and it there is a strong illusion that they have shared so intimately with me.

Ive found it easy to love people whose great struggles have been condensed and concluded.  Without a doubt romanticized.  No day to day confusion that leads away from the easy, romanticized speculation that I've been guilty to call truth.  Like, I would love to have been friends with Jane Austin because I seem to connect with her.  Elizabeth Darcy would've been surely a fantastic friend and I'm fairly certain that I would've been a fantastic addition as a nun alongside Abbess Hildegaard.

I have grown up observing perspectives of historical and literary characters.  Listened to harsh opinions, positive or negative.  Lenient.  Sympathetic or certain.  I'm a historian's daughter, so thusly I grew up in museums and archaeological digs around many historians and buffs who's love the title, curators and Doctors of study.  I'm the granddaughter of religious sin-discriminants.  In one way or another, thorough conclusiveness is a language I've heard from birth.

Interesting enough, a young girl who grows up hearing differentiating points of view as far as who did what and when and how in an archaeological or historical field, there is a beautiful yet sadly empty void of what if and I wonder that accompanies it no matter how certain any one person thinks they are, such as:

Nobody has conclusively discovered what the now-leathery Lindow Man did to be hanged in the fens.

There's really no evidence who the Vikings were who buried their ships and lords in dirt mounds of Sutton Hoo.

There's no telling who threw away what and why into a ditch full of sheep and oxen bone, bottle and crockery shards dating back to the 16th century.

Who knows who the Saxons were who settled their homestead in Thetford Forest dug their massive rabbit warrens.

The argument is this:  But they were Vikings and we have a rough idea of their culture.  The Lindow man was from such and such a time and we have a rough idea of their culture.  We have many texts from the 16th century and that gives us a very good idea about the people who needed that trash pit.  The Saxons left odd remnants of written work that give us an idea about them.

Its open for speculation. Really though, I have read many essays and books by people who say there's not.  There are many interpretations or perceptions that shout loudly that they are truth.  Like, how the Anglo Saxons looked:
 




Here's the picture they drew of themselves:



I was fortunate to be raised by a historian and artist pair who practiced grace for historical and cultural gaps because we say we are intrigued because past is often silent.  That perspective is sacred to me. 

There are historians who argumentatively, factually seem to know why a certain so-and-so in the such-and-such division of the Allied Forces during World War Two did this and that.  It seemed sad to have such strong opinion of another they never met yet indeterminately knew. 

So, in comparison, there's the other element of the Thoroughly Conclusive, the Certainly Religious, who find safety of assurance in what that certainty seems to be.  People don't seem to necessarily be, there just seems to be an image of self in comparison to all others.  They just seem to know what this standard is, though in my experience there is an hefty dose of fear involved somewhere.  I read books about being, and its quite a different than that.

Historians, Religious. Fears to be wrong.  Unknown, maybe?  To not know where our place is, who we are.  To be lost in a void or could lose our place, kind of like a the time my bookmark fell out of a confusing Dostoyevsky.

I hope you won't judge me as being condemning, I myself am very much in love with my church and have (at least what I can deem to consider) a strong spiritual life. I do find myself quite separate from most people I know there (or anywhere), as I'm becoming more aware of every day that most people feel similarly.

I mostly steer towards a more sympathetic (perhaps sometimes codependent) view of people's lives, and given the early philosophical teachings of patient and accepted ambiguity of people from the long past, people's whose bones look an awful lot like ours, it wasn't hard to pass that grace on to the present persons whose heart's still beat within rib cages.  Like the ones from the past, people intrigue me and people are often silent. So much that I don't really connect with many, and I enjoy their mystique. Those who profess certainty of others can repel me, and when I try to be certain because I feel like I should out of my own insecurities of other's expectancy, I feel quite rotten.

I think its because I view people's minds as ambiguous as the what if's or I wonders of the past.  It's my belief that there's a void between me and you that's as extensive and unknown as that between myself and the past that divides me from Geoffrey Chaucer.  Not because time at all.  It's intriguing how a Neolithic flint chip can say loads about their culture...but nothing about their thoughts or humanity.  It's equally curious that I could know someone for a lifetime and think that they are average in happiness and contentment by our culture's standards, and be devastated by their drug use or suicide.

What do we really know? How can we have opinions of others?  Really, how is it probable.

I feel I know my husband, but then when he's done something outside of my realm of 'knowing' I panic at that unknowingness.  The more I let go of my expectations or knowledge of who I think he is, the more beautiful he is to me.  He's a wonder, a what if.  It's lovely, really, and we have a relationship that both of us feel free in, and we are entirely dedicated to one another out of pure choice.

Freedom in inconclusiveness.  Freedom to marvel.

Thoughts. 

Ta.

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