jeudi, juillet 14, 2005

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Tern was deeply in control of his life. He controlled and was consequently accountable for each and every moment of his time. Tern dealt in quantities. Time, according to Tern, was absolute and quantifiable. Accordingly, he figured, money corresponded to each bit of time. From his childhood onwards, the result had generally been positive, according to Tern’s calculations. Few times in his life could he report to have had negative net earnings, or debt. From time to time Tern dwelled on those few overall fiscal losses.

Tern spent time according to his dictates, with his predicted results, allowing Tern to conclude positive net earnings from his time and efforts. Tern viewed events or sequences in time that went against his expectations as a problem. Tern would identify the problem and then attempt to identify the responsible party, such as one would do in a traffic accident between to two or more parties. Tern viewed those involved in disrupting his time schedule and expected sequence of events as responsible for his problem. “Problems need to be quickly moved away from the table,” was a common phrased used by Term to sing his own praises of efficiency.

Tern was not in control of his temper. Loris had long since ceased arguing with Tern once he lost his temper, as he became sorely unreasonable. Loosing his temper further disrupts Tern’s planned sequence of events, and therefore someone must be held accountable. Certainly, Tern often demanded that Loris play the one to blame, never accepting it, only yielding to Tern’s shards of sarcasm and anger. Tern’s temper always left with Tern’s ability to reason, rendering him further agitated.

Agitated, Tern calculates aloud, the exact amount of money lost- per interval of time and effort spent when a sequence of events in time goes against his expectations. Naturally, Tern was often agitated. Loris had often retreated in silence to consider possibilities and discern plausible options, when faced with obstacles, all of which had solutions. In fact, his silence was his shield blocking Tern’s shards. Loris’ silence was also a means of leaving Tern’s unreasonable loss of temper and privileged class temper tantrums. Before knowing Tern, Loris believed that focusing on problems rather than solutions was a waste of time. Now, Loris was convinced focusing on solutions rather than dwelling in blame was vital to existence.

Tern could make such calculations for just about anyone on earth. Back in Tern’s Fatherland, the central government published expenditures per citizen for each and every endeavor; with this information Tern established the net worth (read investment) of each citizen. In Tern’s Fatherland, a university educated, proven physically and mental healthy, male of original Fatherland stock was quite valuable to the central government. Accordingly, each governmental arm, legislative, administrative and judicial, generally catered to people like Tern. Heterosexuals were slightly more valuable due to their increased opportunities (read likelihood) of parenting. The beggars in India were financially worth very little to the government and therefore had no voice.

Loris knew how to emotionally divest himself from the circumstances that went against Tern’s expected sequence of events, and Tern’s ensuing shards. In fact, it was his shield from Tern’s negative emotional profusion. Tern viewed such divestment as abandonment, like the time when his parents left him on the side of the road after throwing a tantrum. The family was on a road trip, and somehow little Tern became impatient and dissatisfied. He threw a long tantrum, and apparently too many intolerable verbal shards. Tern’s father stopped the car and made him get out. Then his father drove away, still within close eyeshot of the boy. After a few minutes of cooling down, his parents came to collect young Tern. Still now, Tern throws shards, and at the same time feels victimized when denied the opportunity to aggress the individual(s) deemed responsible for disrupting his plans. Loris detested Tern’s tantrums. Loris had learned to turn inwards as a means to protect himself from compromises of his time and space such as the hostility that was directed towards him as a child by other children. He had faced so much adversity as a child that he became extremely selective in choosing his battles. Where there was little at stake, Loris avoided confrontations, preferring mutually satisfying solutions, which are generally easily generated with patience and simple communication (which necessitates further patience). Like a cornered cobra, however, Loris could strike hard and fast. Though ultimately lauded and esteemed by his peers, Loris never felt true acceptance, for most folks in his environment refused to positively acknowledge his sexuality. This taught Loris to recognize the discordance between fiscal achievement and one’s true value or ability; significantly greater forces are always at work and privilege was a blindfold, like those given business and first class air passengers. Using money to assess an individual’s value to society denies humanity- in much the same way that humanity avidly denies itself by placing value on certain sets of attributes over others. Comprehension of this fact is difficult in modern times, for all rhetoric would indicate otherwise, defending the interests of few, at the expense of many.