... sitting here, re-established sedentary position in the leather glider from my parents, at the end of a long walk with m'gal and the dog, discussing transgender issues (which, really neither of us is very well suited to talk about from a deeply informed place). We hit an impasse; there is defensiveness and frustration, and feeling unheard—and whoa, there I go, kinda tappin' out because I have an Pavlovian aversion to impasses—and I look up and finally, after all these years, see the design on her kitchen noren. I know I've walked through that split curtain a thousand times. I've seen the white, batik details, peripheral, brushing by my hand or a plate as I make my way through them. I've assumed the pattern is like the cranes on the noren going into my bedroom.
Tonight, from ten feet away, I finally look at it. It's so completely different than I... thought, believed, perceived... it was.
It is an almost abstract and somewhat random swirl of leaf and floral shapes, or snowflakes and frozen leaves in a pond....
I am astounded at the order and the universal, beloved, natural, smallness of the vision.
How could I have not seen the design for the details?
Go on... tell me about my life.
