{"id":1025,"date":"2006-01-02T20:44:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-03T01:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=1025"},"modified":"2006-01-02T20:44:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-03T01:44:00","slug":"so-come-lose-your-life-for-a-carpenters-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=1025","title":{"rendered":"so come lose your life for a carpenter&#8217;s son"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Driving through downtown Winston-Salem earlier on my way home, the car got me.  It had been raining the entire way and I had the music turned up, so the ambient noise was considerable, but over all that, just under the Broad Street overpass, I heard a metallic rattling.  I switched off the music and listened.  The noise seemed to come from the right side of the car.  I immediately suspected the right axle shaft, whose outer CV joint boot I had repacked and replaced not three months ago.  I let up off the gas&#8211;the car definitely seemed to be making the noise under deceleration, a low-frequency, faint mechanical tapping.  I wondered about the oil level in the engine since I have yet to replace the leaky front main seal and oil pump gasket (this coming weekend) and have to top off the oil periodically, but no, I had added a quart before I left.  The noise persisted and I was getting a little concerned when I looked down at the passenger seat.  My mom had packed me two tins of cookies to bring back to the house, and stacked on top of one another, their position had shifted when I had gone over an expansion joint or something such that they would tap together when I let up off the gas pedal.  I unstacked them and the noise ceased, to my relief.  Here&#8217;s to easy fixes.<\/li>\n<li>I turn 27 in three weeks.  27.  Not a prime number (ideal), but divisible by 1, 3, 9, and 27.  Not too bad.<\/li>\n<li>Leslie and I hung out for a bit last night over at her place.  She had been scrapbooking alone most of the day so I provided some actual human interaction.  We ended up watching her copy of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0335119\"><i>Girl with a Pearl Earring<\/i><\/a>.  It was a quiet film, but good, and beautifully shot.  One of the main themes from the movie, that we&#8217;re all ultimately searching for innate understanding from those we care about, has been done many times in print and in film, but for some reason last night&#8217;s variation on the theme really hit home.  Maybe it was the referent of the theme in the movie, artistic perception.  Whatever the case, after the movie was finished I felt a very keen longing for that kind of understanding in someone else.  Leslie and I talked about it some and came to the conclusion that in the context of a romantic relationship, even the overwhelming <i>desire<\/i> to understand isn&#8217;t enough; the existence, the <i>state<\/i> of understanding is what we&#8217;re after.  And of course that&#8217;s too much to expect on every level of our personality, and certainly there can&#8217;t be an understanding on those parts of us unique to our status as male and female, but on a certain plane, in a certain deep, fundamental part of us, we need to be understood.  Whether that understanding in a mate requires an identical set of circumstances to yours depends on the nature of things in you, but in most cases I&#8217;d venture to say that&#8217;s not necessary.  Let&#8217;s say you came from a difficult family background and decide you need understanding in those elements of your personality shaped by that situation.  I don&#8217;t think it follows that your mate will necessarily have to have had that exact same set of circumstances duplicated in his or her own life in order to understand what you&#8217;ve been through.  So that makes the prospect of finding someone who <i>knows what it&#8217;s like<\/i> a more tenable affair.  As for me, I know the corners of who I am that need that innate understanding, and after the film last night, I&#8217;m ready to find the person who understands.  Really.  I&#8217;m ready.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s so nice to have a washing machine and a dryer <i>in<\/i> the house.  I will never take that for granted again.<\/li>\n<li>Heather&#8217;s going to Paris for a week tomorrow.  She&#8217;s never been to Europe before, and I&#8217;m ridiculously excited for her (coupled with a fair amount of healthy jealousy of course :)<\/li>\n<li>I <i>think<\/i> I&#8217;m ready for the week ahead, work, resuming flight training and all of that.  Checkbook is balanced, house is clean, dishes are done, laundry is in process, going for a run in a few minutes.  We&#8217;re set.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Driving through downtown Winston-Salem earlier on my way home, the car got me. It had been raining the entire way and I had the music turned up, so the ambient noise was considerable, but over all that, just under the Broad Street overpass, I heard a metallic rattling. I switched off the music and listened. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}