Well, I kind of hate to say it, but I've never felt kinship or similarity with anyone I've ever met. I've always been a very solitary person, and I've never expected to be understood. That said, the friends that I do have are an extraordinary and eclectic group of people, and not a one of us is very similar to another. We don't really seek to understand each other, even though we love and respect one another. Oddly enough, though, I think it is because we don't try to understand each other that we are so open and easy with each other. When people seek to understand another person, there's an odd kind of social pressure to categorize and label every tic and twitch. Without it, we have the freedom to be who we really are, and a person's weirdness is just another accepted personality trait.

Tiger Balm. Oh, how I love the sweet, sweet relief of Tiger Balm. Nothing else loosens up stiff, sore muscles quite as well.

I think that, while I enjoy the new, I'm more fascinated by the old. When I handle antique books left to me by my grandmother, I'm always struck by the sensation of age the thing has, as if it carried with it the imprint of everything that went on around it. The sensation is somehow weighty and reassuring. It tells me that even if my body fades to dust, my mind and my words, my essence of self, never has to fade.  Old things also serve as a wonderfully pointed reminder that we don't always know as much as we think we do, and may have even forgotten more, as a species, than we ever knew.
 At the same time, though, I enjoy playing with old, broken things and making them new again. I like shamelessly reinvented fashions like steampunk and loli clothing, I adore retro ads and signs reworked and restored, and very much love Roaring Twenties decor and architecture done with modern materials.
 Also, I believe life follows cycles, and that there is nothing under the sun that has never been seen or thought before- it just may not have been thought or seen by us. For me, looking back is just another way to look forward. With this perspective, old and new are the same thing expressed from different points in linear time. The old just has more documentation...lol.

To me, a "real" question is a question asked with intent to deepen one's pool of knowledge. Rhetorical questions can be entertaining, but to call them questions is like sticking a candle in a Little Debbie and calling it a birthday cake. A question seeks answers. A question fathers knowledge and  furthers wisdom. Sure, rhetorical questions can do all that to a brief extent, but they only emphasize what a person already knows. But they're hardly a celebration of gained lore.

The consequences of what I say and do. No more, but certainly no less. Minor words and actions can have far-reaching and unpredictable effects. I can't take responsibility for another person's actions- to me, that dehumanizes the other person. But I can acknowledge the influence my words and deeds may have had on that person's decision. For better or for worse.

By example. I learn best by doing, and by observing others. It gives me a better grasp of consequences than just hearing about what happened to so-and-so. It sticks in my mind better. Also, it's easier to talk the talk than walk the walk. I'm more likely to trust information from people who use it day in and day out than I am from somebody who, as far as I can tell, just read the lesson in a book somewhere. So, I try to teach in the most effective way I know- by giving the student every thing she needs to find the solution herself, then only providing guidence when she's stuck.

I'd like to learn either the violin or the alto recorder. I'm very fond of the sounds of both instruments. They are clear, sweet, mellow sounds that range in expressiveness from joyous to melancholy.
Also, I could take either one into the woods with me. I like to play music in the woods, but since I lack any formal music training beyond voice, I usually just sing. But violins and recorders sound better than my voice any day!

Grey. The dull, uninteresting grey of the same old thing, day in and day out. The depressing grey of enforced ennui. The annoying grey of dim bedroom ceilings and cabin fever. The cloying, suffocating grey  of "Now, don't exert yourself, you're still not well..."
Stupid grey. Go away, and let me have my sunshine.

I asked my lover to tell me a bedtime story tonight. My lover replied:
 "Once upon a time there was a little tuxedo kitten named Brady, and he was the mightiest kitten who ever lived (with the possible exception of Patchwork, but that's another story and another cat). One day, Brady looked up at the sky and realized there was no blue left in it. He yowled and hollered and ran into the butcher, yelling 'The blue is gone! the blue is gone!'
  And the butcher said ' Get out of here, you cat!' Brady had forgotten the butcher didn't speak Kitten.
 So Brady raaaan down the street and into the fish shop, yelling 'The blue is gone! The blue is gone!'
  And the fish shop man said 'Oh, I'm not falling for that again! Get out of here, you cat!' The fish shop man had learned Kitten during a seminar on loss prevention in seafood stores.
 'D'oh!' thought Brady. 'I should never have pulled that trick!'
And Brady raaaan down the street into the yarn lady's shop, yelling 'The blue is gone! The blue is gone!'
And the yarn lady, who had learned Kitten to speak with her most loyal customers, said 'Oh, I know that, Brady. I'm the one that took it.'
'Whaaat?!' Brady yowled. 'But why?!'
'Well,'said the yarn lady, 'I ran out of blue dye for my best blue yarn. So I borrowed the blue for a bit to bang up a batch. But I didn't use it all. Here's the rest, Brady. Why don't you go and put it back in the sky?'
So Brady took the little bucket of blue and carried it on the crook of his little kitten tail, and he raaaan up the stairs, and he raaan out on the roof, and he raaaan towards the side and just at the very last moment he stopped short and twitched his little kitten tail. The little bucket of blue dye flew higher and higher into the sky, so high that it disappeared!
 Poor little Brady! He'd done his best, but the bucket was gone! But suddenly, he noticed a blue splotch in the sky where the bucket disappeared! And the splotch of color was spreading! Soon, the whole sky was a beautiful shade of blue. Well, except for one corner, but that just looked like a little bitty cloud.
 Brady was very proud of himself. He puffed up his mighty kitten chest and swaggered alllllll the way home."
My lover is an awesome impromtu storyteller!

I am a tool-using monkey. If I don't have the tool I need, I make it. Then I use it. Then I hone the idea behind the tool, make another, and use that one. I do this in almost every part of my life... it's almost silly how often I pull out some new gadget or use something in a way it probably was never meant to be used. But I come from a long line of inventors and scientists (someday I'll write about Grampa and the chickens), so I guess it makes sense that I have an inherent curiosity about the capabilities of every object around me and enough idiocy to try out my new idea...lol. I've gotten more scars that way!