The Hazel Project

WHAT I HEAR.
One day last week my colleagues and I were in the lounge checking the DVR for new shows.

That’s when I realized, walls like relationships, are thin and vulnerable.
Above the TV volume, I hear a woman moaning as if having an orgasm in the next office.
I hear some piece of furniture moving across the floor in quarter notes.

Then I hear them talking loudly. I guess they’re unaware of their raised voices because of the ringing in their ears.
What I really hear is that someone has just been burned;
most probably the lady who has the 2 small dogs and drives the white sports car.

I’m 98% sure she’s married to the man making the furniture move across the floor.

Out of curiosity I check the parking lot for the white sports car. She’s gone for the day.

WHAT I’VE READ.
I received a spam email about relationship ‘red flags;’ essentially, about how terrible men are. As someone on a quest to better himself, and his future relationships, I’m interested to read about this topic.
I sift through 3 pages of the 217 responses and then I have to stop.

I read response after response of how hopeful these women were to be in a relationship;

After time the hope turned into broken sadness. I’d say they even seemed surprised about the situation they found themselves in.

THE CUCKHOLD NEVER WRITE THE BOOK.

My friend Stacey Coulter (she has a new last name) asked me one time, “Steve why is it that, in America a woman can write a book about her husband’s affairs and make a lot of money, but the cuckhold never write books? Yet it happens all the time.”

I found this a brilliant question. I’m unsure why. Maybe American culture is built on too much masculine force (instead of fierceness; a big difference) for such a book to be written or taken seriously.

PROP 8:

California has been having a big debate on same sex marriage, and there is a proposition to vote for on Tuesday.

Last Thursday, on my run, both sides of this prop were out in the streets, asking for honks. It reminded me of that great Dr. Suess story, “The Sneetches.” Honk if you’re against same sex marriage - Honk if you’re for same sex marriage.

It all became a barrage of German and Japanese horn noise.

I wondered what musical interval had been built into car horns.

Then I thought, the economy can melt down, CEO’s can have their severance packages, gasoline can be upwards of $4 per gallon. We can also have a 51% divorce rate in America - all topics result in ZERO honking. But Prop 8 gets people out in the streets?

My question is this even the right question to be asking? Or are we just honking a lot because the horn is there? I was glad to be running instead of in my car.

TOO MUCH INFORMATION

Last week I turned off the tv and radio news. I only watched work related things and listened to jazz and ambient music; instead of listening to lifestyle, economic, or political analysis of either side. An endless list of duality- Male:Female - Republican:Democrat - Investor:Consumer - on and on came to surface. It is exhausting.

The real question I have is, what happened? What was the cultural shift to make so many people so desperate, so lonely, so trapped by fear?
When did the King and Queen role models of how to get along with one another get traded for the Jester and Princess role models?

This breaks my heart. More than you could possibly know.
So do men have affairs because they’re there for having? Do women cuckhold because the men they’re with lack some forceful masculine trait? Do women mistake perceiving forcefulness for fierceness?

Does real dialog about these things matter or is the ability to make noise better? It’s definitely easier.
My encouragement is that I’m happier and clearer when I stop giving energy to the old dialog and consider something sustainable and new. A reinstatement of the King and Queen archetype.
Then again maybe the old saying is truer than these high ideals; to believe none of what I hear and only half of what I read.

Thanks for checking in.

Vote on Tuesday.
Stephen

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 1st, 2008 at 2:53 pm and is filed under on the path, posts & stories . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.