Way down at the bottom of my About is my favorite quote: The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived. ~ Oscar Wilde. I have yet to learn that secret, but I just learned that I have been terribly, terribly deceived for over four years. A woman to whose Facebook page I shared Barkys invitation to the launch of LoPoK not only refused to do so, she publicly commented to the effect that she suspects it may be a scam. We have been friends for over four years. She is a belly dancer and I was her groupie, attending as many of her performances as I could and throwing money at her like confetti. Lest you think I was easily deluded about the depth of our friendship, know that we communed in her personal life as well. I have spun her 4 year-old daughter on a merry-go-round. among other friendly things. There was nothing carnal about our friendship, even in my often appalling thoughts. :-) She has long been happily married and I told her I did not love her. Love wants to possess and be possessed, I said, as if the value of a human being is increased by destroying her or his freedom. Instead of loving you I Adore you. Adoration is ecstatic admiration, without any desire to change, limit, possess, or restrict the one admired. Dogs Adore humans, and that is why humans love dogs. I also gave both of them several gifts of rare Horn-Crafted(tm) jewelry Made with Chaos Magick by The Barking Unicorn. When Mom broke one of them, I paid the postage to return it to Barky for repair and get it back to her, better than new. When she wailed on Facebook about a $15 parking ticket she could not pay (purportedly), I Paypaled $20 to her and told her to have a Starbucks on me. Only later did I learn that she got the ticket and was dead broke because she took too long to spend $40 in a bar. Endless Kindnesses I have done for this woman and her darling daughter. But when I asked her for a tiny Kindness - sharing a Facebook post just ONE time - she not only denied me but raised public doubts about my honesty and good intentions. She is dead to me now - blocked on Facebook and every communication channel that Google has to offer. I will NOT have an unKind person telling the world that I am her friend! Her daughter has Barkys name and image along with her latest Making, and that is all she needs to find him and me. Perhaps someday she will find us, and LoPoK, and be saved from the extinction that her mother and her unKind ilk face. I will not name this miserable, blithely treacherous creature. Reputation revenge is not my object, nor is her education as to what did I do wrong? Yes, she just sent me an email via an old account I forgot and didnt block. It was a solid wall of text two screens tall, unparagraphed and virtually unreadable. I got only as far as that incredibly oblivious question before deleting it permanently, so I cannot entertain you by ripping apart her predictable self-justifications which, undoubtedly, end with this misunderstanding being all my fault. You know the type. I will not tolerate their poisoning and bloodsucking in my world, and I urge you to extinguish them in yours. The block function is the only Facebook feature that does not suck. Curiously, I am now learning Mr. Wildes secret. The corners of my mouth are turned up instead of down; my brow is smooth again and my breathing is tranquil. As I re-read this screed, I find myself amused by my own blindness and by her unskillful folly. She could have milked our relationship for much more had she not tried to appear world-wise and prudently suspicious - even of a stalwart friend of more than four years. But she screwed up, and now she is going extinct like the Neanderthals and the rest of unKind H. Sapiens. Ego... it always gets em. Isnt that hilarious? :-)
Posted on: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 06:07:13 +0000