Variety: Emotions, Food.

I've been thinking a lot about the way we perceive ourselves--often looking back, for instance, on our lives as if they are somehow whole, or somehow still and placid, waiting to be retrieved for a point of reference or conjecture.  When we interact with others, though, they know only our actions and our words, nothing more. Without actions or words, others will not know what you intended, what you feel, think.  That provides me some incentive to actually be explicit about what I desire, at least when I think that being explicit will help me attain the object of my fancy.

Conversely, I've tracked a large percentage of my previous outrage to the fact that I was not explicit in dealings with others when I should have been that way, leaving them to guess whether we were on the same page, or whether I understood their intentions in the first place.  Communication is so multi-varied; often times, a simple sentence can be seen in many different ways, even from similarly situated people.

Of course it is a fallacy to think there's some fundamental emotional truth to our lives.  We're good at  making up stories based on the way we feel now.  At the same time, what provides comfort in this world, if not an emotional truth about one's own life?  Looking back over the wrinkled sheets to know that you lived according to something, that you did the best you could do in tough situations--all wishy washy concepts that serve more to comfort than to face what actually was, particularly because scratching the itch of "what actually was" at least emotionally, and often times, factually, is exceedingly difficult, and can consume anyone who wants to linger there for too long.  At some point, we've got to let go.  Let go and move forward, even if the spatial-temporal link isn't really 1:1.

 There's a saying, I said to myself--I used to drink a lot because I was emotionally bound up with it, the conflict, the drama, the seething immediacy.  It is the point wherein we "really" live, that fresh clarity.  What I've been finding, lately, anyway, is that I have bouts of the same cold water fresh clarity, and they are highly related not to drama, or conflict, or anything so esoteric, but instead, to food.  Lots of times alcohol fuels people who have poor diets, myself included.  Food is really key to mental constancy.  It doesn't have to be taken to religious extremes, but it does have to be planned for, and thought through.  For us--you know who you are.