Order from chaos.

As I walked into the room, I became aware that my appearance was unwelcome.

The hostility was palpable.

There was no suspicion of a smile.

I was greeted with hatred.

While over the months the outright hostility seemed to lessen, my presence was never accepted.

I simply had to accept the fact that as a man, I was the enemy.

We become blind to all possibilities of reconciliation.

At each turn we look for patterns of aggression. 

We become in our turn defensive.
We become in our turn aggressors.

Forbidden fruit?
I see an apple; this is food.
I see an apple; this is temptation.
I see an apple; this is love.
I see an apple; this is poison.

Flailing around in our darkness, we look for security, we look for patterns.

The Red Lion, was just along the road, each time we drove past it was presented as a den of iniquity.

This was something to do with alcohol.  I didn't understand that word.  I wasn't at all sure what it was.

I do remember that I didn't like the smell of beer on my grandfather's breath.  I didn't like beer-smell.

I do remember that his trips down the road to the pub were greeted with scorn.

I had no means of understanding the emotional subplot.

We forget or we are unaware of the reasons for the patterns chosen for us.

We are told stories, we are given histories, which bring some sort of order to our chaos.

 "History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the imperfections of documentation."
Julien Barnes

I have just realised that the multitude of constraints with which I was educated increased the opportunities for me in my life to have adventures.

Going to a pub, normal for many people, for me became a heroic adventure. I was going into a  beast's lair, a mythogical creature's den.

The Red Lion might just have well been Hades.

When we are educated with what for us are an absurd multitude of meaningless constaints it is at times easier to start again from scratch.

Chaos for my parents for me seemed like freedom.

Meaning for me was to go beyond their fearful framing to imagine a new culture...my own remix.

I was fortunate, my parents were forgiving, their hope, their love never lessened.

They had faith.

I was able to spare them the gory details of my quest for meaning.

They wouldn't have understood.

It was not their fault.

Veils of freedom, veils of tears.

I am struck with how a veil might be seen by some women as submission but to others a declaration of freedom.  I am struck with how a veil might be seen by some as a weapon.

I met a friend of mine at a conference.

She seemed distracted, like me she was frustrated by the conference.

We agreed we didn't fit in.

We went out to talk.

How can one be scientific when one is confronted by impossible choices?

Her parents had prepared a homecoming for her - an arranged marriage.

Her parents were unaware that she already had a home, a love, a hybrid culture of her own.

She was presented with an impossible dilemna, she was torn apart by love.

An inflexible frame is a corpse.

A religion for some might be seen as a means of self-determination for others as a prison.

I have been thinking about 'objectivity' in 'human sciences', and I am struck at how a 'scientific lens' may be be used as a tool for repression or used as a tool of liberation.   

Seen from afar, people are objectified, they have no means to evidence complexity of their interaction of their behaviour of their belief.

The scientific perspective of the world has risen us, some of us, up onto a/our/their pedestal of 'progress'.

'Progress' is our  apple.

We see a 'truth' we are blind to 'our lies'.