"Sadly, in search of, and one step in back of..."

I'm the oldest of three siblings. My sister is almost six years younger than me, and my brother is seven and one half years younger than her. Since my sister was little, it's been espoused in my family that she's much like my mom and I am like my dad. Some nod to the Law of Averages --or maybe an unstated rural Plains belief in an Everything-Comes-Out-In-The-Wash sort of fairness-- has dressed my brother in a mixture of the two.

Never having been much interested in the divination of the qualitative or quantitative "greater" influence --Nature or Nurture?-- on a person's development, I relaxed into these assessments over time as just another thread of family narrative. I find place in the storytelling, the marking of the intersections of experiences as a way to give context to perspective and depth to personal history; so, the existence of these assessments has become the meaning.

Lately, though, I am returning to this book again and again - envisioning some almost irritatingly layered Venn diagram of family players building to an intersection of my mom and dad that is barely readable. In the small white space contained by the intersecting lines, I search for my brother, my sister, myself. At thirty times magnification, the space balloons, making it easier to see the complexities possible within it but overwhelming to attempt an investigation of the layers that created it, the history that built it.

Given the limits of linear time and the ability to identify or embrace potential, I find this...frustrating. I notice I waffle between a search for the essentialized --purpose, right (vs. wrong), etc.-- and a siren call into the depths of design via chaos. Then again, sometimes I am just depressed and return to a third reading of poorly written fantasy literature for adolescents.

More to come...