She told me!

In this post, some months ago, I shared a more literate passage from a person I own a chunk of worthless land with. We hold onto this land purely for sentimental reasons. Unless of course it's because we all love to have pointless arguments over email. My sentimental reasons for continuing to own this land with my 42 or 52 or 62 cousins (right, I have no idea how many owners there are in the land. Nor do I know how many actual cousins I have. Which only makes this funnier, if you want my opinion. Which you seem to or you wouldn't still be reading this very long parenthetical statement.) are quickly being worn away by the amount of concentration and reading and rereading and rereading it takes to understand most of what is posted by this particular cousin.

After a particularly illiterate string of email in March, I replied with: Although honestly,I have a very hard time understanding most of what J_____ says in her emails, so I'm not sure what her real opposition to a _____________________ might be.

Well, I want you to know that a month later, I have been set straight. Just as I was logging off to go to bed, a new email came in from her that says (and I am sharing this with you because it actually makes sense. I just wanted to prove it happens now and then):

The value of reading and re-reading very slowly before posting is very desirable and is not to be underestimated in helping to clear up one's own lack of understanding of another.

There is a saying: The goal is not to get through a book as fast as you can, but to get the book through you (Meaning: to absorb or soak up, to really learn from it, to truly strive to understand the book)

Except, what about when you strive for that and there still are not enough verbs and nouns in correct use to get anything through anyone? So, I chuckled to myself a little because there's really no more effort I can put into understanding some of these emails, at least not without a translator, and if I ask for clarification, often the response is farther from the topic than when we started. And then, as I started to shut the browser window, I noticed several more email coming through from her. So far, she's sent through 23 separate email. And she honestly expects me to "absorb or soak up" every single one of them. Which nearly has me in tears both from the audacity of it all- as if anyone who owns the land has time for 23 convoluted emails- and the futility of it all. For both her and me.

She has finally overwhelmed me with sheer volume. Just like the Russians in WWII. I can no longer justify sending my brain cells into battle, to fight a war they are destined to lose. Not because she has outwitted me, but because just like the Russians, she has totally out manned me. I have no more heavy artillery. I have no more brilliant battle plans. She has won a battle I never realized I was fighting, because I have the nerve to wonder why the land can't just sit there doing nothing as it has done for the last 20 million years. Then again, we all know how I am about pipe dreams.