Island Monkeys indeed. I love this Veronika! I hear my Grandfather saying if you assume- you make an “ass” out of “u” and an “ass” out of “me” lol. Thanks for the truth in the meanings behind the words. The real story. Yes I read the Four Agreements in my self-help phase of the the 90s and early 2000s. Slowly to see that no amount of self help can replace self love. That cosmic ocean will find us all as it knows when we are ready? Something tells me you have lots to share. Just know I will read every word and live into the questions that arrive. There is no island when we share the spaces around the words. Beyond the barriers of language. Beyond the seas. We are building a boat here. Wherever we are. Thanks for providing the sails. Great poem too Josh! Bless you 🙏❤️
If I'd known, I would have quoted your Grandfather! Wise man.
Lovely sharing this sailing journey with you, Jamie ~ beyond the barriers of language indeed ~ through the sea of words ~ where occasionally "I land" (paraphrasing your Grandpa) ~ it's called "I-land-hopping" 😅
Hi Veronika, I love your explorations of language and culture. I seem to need to read 3 times before I see it all as a whole ... I hover around your work on words 😊 Your threads resonate ... prophetic phrases' ... 'smorgasbord of assumptions' ... 'wrong'. How interesting re your toddler self and the vocabulary. The poem is fabulous. Thank you 💜🙏
Thank you for sticking with it! I know, these wordcasts are excursions through the 'wildwordwoods of Symbiopædia'... not quite coherent essays, where one thought follows another along neat paths...
The research and writing of these are more like picking up a trail somewhere, lifting a rock there, glimpsing behind a bush here... and coming out with surprising unexpected insights.
Thanks Veronika, Your essays are coherent, i think it may be my wee brain and how I process 😉 ... i love the metaphor of the trail. Thank you too for the link to Josh's work. 🙏
I grew up much as you described. As a female, poor, uneducated and not remarkably beautiful, hampered by having a loud voice and my own ideas about what I was taught, not cooperative, rebellious therefore not good marriage potential. So who would take care of me, my parents often asked. I declared I would take care of myself. I rejected the belief system of my parents which was very strict southern Baptist. I was intuitive which was seen suspiciously by my family. I had poor self esteem but much determination and high physical and emotional energy. I didn’t assume I fit in my family and eventually realized I fit no where. I did not assume to understand much of anything except what I knew coming into life. I knew it was up to me to figure out who I was and make my own way.
As I made a mess trying to survive and began to have a few people who shared a bit of my attitude about life I also began to assume many things. I assumed I would always find a way, that was true. I assumed what I learned along the way was true, very incorrect. So as usual dear Veronica you seem to writing just to me. I am not assuming you do only that we seem to be connected to some similar frequency with some similar life experiences. So is this going to make life difficult? I think not because I assume nothing else except I enjoy reading your post and look forward to the new ideas you bring forth for me to ponder. I appreciate your work and assume you write and make it public for that purpose. Are we in trouble yet? I guess I’m saying I agree with the idea assumptions require many questions but occasionally we can make a few that are safe with few questions.
I also assume everything I’ve been taught was at least partially untrue and I began the great unlearning years ago. It’s some challenge I must say. I love the role of learning new ways of thinking and new information better prepared to ask questions along the way and not to assume anything is true until I have the knowing from inside myself. Thank you for writing beautiful words and offering insight. It’s a very positive part of my day.
Welcome to the misfit-soul-tribe, Sammie. I share your assumption that we may be connected at levels of frequency and lived experience. I love your assuming that I might write just to you! 💖🙏
I write (I assume) because it enables me to create beauty, clarity, understanding, and connections in some way within a community of fellow humans vibrating and pondering at resonant frequencies. I write to heal my own inner confusions and incoherence, to 'find my own voice', which helps me know myself and others a little better.
Like you, I love the learning, exploring, and discovering new vistas in the process. Your lovely comment is making my day sparkle like the twinkling lights which appeared today around the porch of our house
(Josh assumed it was about time we kept up with the neighbours, and followed up to make it seem true) 😉✨
"I also assume everything I’ve been taught was at least partially untrue and I began the great unlearning years ago."
I think getting an education is the process of unlearning all the nonsense and half-truths our parents, and schooling, taught us. I've come to the conclusion this is a normal experience for anyone who wants to discover more about life by discovering more about themselves - and that's why we have to clear the decks by unlearning, so we can see more clearly. From what you say Sammie, your journey looks a very courageous and honourable one to me.
Great exploration, again, great poem in the ocean.
Ah... 'Treasure Island'... modern navigation; RLS from solitary-sounding Colinton vicarage childhood to the far Pacific.
Getting to know people can be tricky. I read speculation we meet too many strangers these city days... 'Imagined Communities'... there was a book a while ago figured newspapers in the colonies for the colonised... a fostered life.
Thinking Pacific, somebody figured out the polynesian navigators could locate a point atoll over a thousand or so miles; some extraordinary declension from the star pattern, it seems. It must have been reassuring for the whole family and neighbours on those swift trimaran arks. I wonder what was in their dreams? I'm glad you guys landed!
[I was going to write for us bookish types about a wonderful Ivan Illich thesis on Hugh of St Victor, and the search for authority, authorship, but I'll leave it over for another time. Christmas is coming and the cards are landing from old friends already.]
Thank you Philip! 🙏 💕 🛶 Your comments always take me on such interesting journeys... island hopping through the ocean of collective Consciousness, surfing the waves of shared cultures, and along diverging paths in the wildwordwoods.
I'm not sure my mind can follow yours at the speed of the Polynesian trimaran arks, but I can confirm that we're glad too, to have landed where we did, to be able to ascend Maslow's pyramid from this landing strip! Too many strangers in our local community of 'estrangeiros' have followed their dreams and end up lost at sea.
Oh, authority and authorship has been on my mind as well these days. They may find their way into a wordcast in the new year.
It was Benedict Anderson 1983 'Imagined Communities'had an imaginative go at figuring out 'nationalism', very much an historical phenomenon. I am doubtful we moderns can generalise about humanity; we recapitulate v. fast rather a lot history right from the start of our lives. Sure some of it is shared with our native prelapsarian forebears, but only so much?
David Graeber tells a story in 'Debt' (see 'Materialism') from a Catholic missionary in New Caledonia who asked of a local sculptor his reaction to being introduced to the notion of spirit, and got a dusty answer: 'Bah... you didn't bring us the spirit. We already knew the spirit existed. What you brought us is is the body.'
What I liked about the polynesians is their relationship with the way the sky can talk. It is unlike our 'ratio', the limited calculation?
Am looking forward to 'authorship'. The St Victor folk, (see Hugh in Illich), got into some interesting interpretation of authorship, even as far perhaps as as creation? I picked up on Richard of StV from Pound ( but needed Cookson's glossary / intro to Cantos). Richard wrote in Latin inter alia; '... the human spirit is not love, but love flows from it, and it cannot therefore delight in itself, but only in the love flowing from it'. Big sky stuff to be interested in? Maybe what Iain McGilchrist was trying to talk about the other night at the end of his Q&A when he referred to incorporating the larger than us into our lives? A delight?
After many years of waiting for a rescuer, I realize that no one was coming. So, without any help, I am trying to escape Assumption Island. Seul. This is no easy feat. But then again, Conrad said, "We live as we dream--alone." Or something to that effect.
... and yet as we sail alone, we can meet along the journey. I have friends who have been sailors for many years, now settled in Portugal. They speak to us of having been part of a wonderful community of sailors, which initially surprised me.
Now I understand. While each on our solitary journey, we can always meet in the harbours.
I want to add another thought, somewhat poignant and yet a telling observation. The greater grief comes from an unmet expectation, the realization it was all a mythic lie.
Yes, assumptions and expectations are intimately entwined, along with beliefs and faith in someone or something external beyond ourselves that knows better... ultimately there is no substitute for (self-)discovery
There's a university in Bangkok called Assumption. I giggled when I heard of it, even though I knew the word has Catholic connotations. It simply felt like just another one of those English words used incorrectly in Thailand.
Just the other day, my hubby and I have been wondering why our neighbor downstairs was suddenly playing the jembe drum with such vigor. As you can imagine, we made lots of assumptions. Finally, we had had enough, so I went downstairs to let him know it's been a bit much. I was nice, etc, and as a result we discovered he was breaking in a new skin on his drum.
This does sound funny. And fascinating too! Do students at the AUB (Assumption University of Bangkok) get to choose which assumptions they want to study? Are they trained to become professional assumers?(... I better leave it at that!)
Thanks for sharing this lovely story of interacting with your neighbour, enthusiastically breaking in his new jembe. Having joined a jembe group (briefly) nearly 20 years ago, and dropped out a year or so later, I admire your neighbor's enthusiasm (I assume he's a pro) 😉
He’s a music teacher, which terrified us when we first moved in, imagining the worst. But he’s a nice guy and usually keeps the music at a low level.
You’re so witty! Maybe AUB students DO get to chose their own assumptions. Hey, at least their honest! Most disciplines assume their field is the God given truth!
So beautifully explained with curiosity and lack of judgement keys to living a more humane life. I simply love what you did here, Veronika, with your own personal story added to make your case so thoroughly.
Thank you so much Mary! When it comes to writing and storytelling, I am learning a lot from reading your work. Unbeknown to you, with the inspiring pieces you share on substack, you are encouraging me not to be afraid of telling my own story... 💗🙏
The Island of Monkeys with monkey minds. So true. Your exploration today reminded me of a conversation I had with E.T. Allen this morning around “asking the questions” and even more, recognizing the questions we are always asking, but may not even know we are doing so. Makes me wonder if these “unconscious questions” are hidden beneath assumption. Maybe the best question we can ever ask ourselves to get to the unconscious voices is “Is this really true?”
I'm treading dangerously here: "For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. For the present we see things as if in a mirror, and are puzzled; but then we shall see them face to face." (1 Cor 13.12).
I'm guessing there is always an element of assumption, even if we are convinced we "know" (know-it-alls being my bette noir); our knowledge is incomplete at one level, but can be sufficiently complete to have a good and worthy life.
'Perfection' is the killer, but 'good enough' offers true hope and an authentic way onward. Discovering and undoing (transforming) false assumptions seems to be the main work. In that respect, Ruiz's "Don't Make Assumptions" is a sensible direction to move in, rather than an absolute 'command' to achieve 100% (or failed) - as your 4 questions at the beginning show; neat.
Interesting that 'consumer' originally meant "a person who squanders or wastes". Perhaps that was what was behind the song "Guilty Consumer".
I find it can be hard to sort out one's assumptions in the moment. I like to remind myself of this breakdown: to assume makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me"
Island Monkeys indeed. I love this Veronika! I hear my Grandfather saying if you assume- you make an “ass” out of “u” and an “ass” out of “me” lol. Thanks for the truth in the meanings behind the words. The real story. Yes I read the Four Agreements in my self-help phase of the the 90s and early 2000s. Slowly to see that no amount of self help can replace self love. That cosmic ocean will find us all as it knows when we are ready? Something tells me you have lots to share. Just know I will read every word and live into the questions that arrive. There is no island when we share the spaces around the words. Beyond the barriers of language. Beyond the seas. We are building a boat here. Wherever we are. Thanks for providing the sails. Great poem too Josh! Bless you 🙏❤️
If I'd known, I would have quoted your Grandfather! Wise man.
Lovely sharing this sailing journey with you, Jamie ~ beyond the barriers of language indeed ~ through the sea of words ~ where occasionally "I land" (paraphrasing your Grandpa) ~ it's called "I-land-hopping" 😅
I - land hopping! Indeed. Well said! Let’s see where the wind takes us. 🙏❤️
My first boss, I straight out of engineering school, taught me your grandfather's phrase. It has some merit.
I’m sure we can trace it back to Socrates lol
"...no amount of self help can replace self love". Today's truism, thank you.
Hi Veronika, I love your explorations of language and culture. I seem to need to read 3 times before I see it all as a whole ... I hover around your work on words 😊 Your threads resonate ... prophetic phrases' ... 'smorgasbord of assumptions' ... 'wrong'. How interesting re your toddler self and the vocabulary. The poem is fabulous. Thank you 💜🙏
Thank you for sticking with it! I know, these wordcasts are excursions through the 'wildwordwoods of Symbiopædia'... not quite coherent essays, where one thought follows another along neat paths...
The research and writing of these are more like picking up a trail somewhere, lifting a rock there, glimpsing behind a bush here... and coming out with surprising unexpected insights.
The poem was written by Josh some years ago. One of my favourite poems by my favourite poet 😅 here the link to his original posting https://joshuabondpoetry.substack.com/p/island-monkeys
Thanks Veronika, Your essays are coherent, i think it may be my wee brain and how I process 😉 ... i love the metaphor of the trail. Thank you too for the link to Josh's work. 🙏
I grew up much as you described. As a female, poor, uneducated and not remarkably beautiful, hampered by having a loud voice and my own ideas about what I was taught, not cooperative, rebellious therefore not good marriage potential. So who would take care of me, my parents often asked. I declared I would take care of myself. I rejected the belief system of my parents which was very strict southern Baptist. I was intuitive which was seen suspiciously by my family. I had poor self esteem but much determination and high physical and emotional energy. I didn’t assume I fit in my family and eventually realized I fit no where. I did not assume to understand much of anything except what I knew coming into life. I knew it was up to me to figure out who I was and make my own way.
As I made a mess trying to survive and began to have a few people who shared a bit of my attitude about life I also began to assume many things. I assumed I would always find a way, that was true. I assumed what I learned along the way was true, very incorrect. So as usual dear Veronica you seem to writing just to me. I am not assuming you do only that we seem to be connected to some similar frequency with some similar life experiences. So is this going to make life difficult? I think not because I assume nothing else except I enjoy reading your post and look forward to the new ideas you bring forth for me to ponder. I appreciate your work and assume you write and make it public for that purpose. Are we in trouble yet? I guess I’m saying I agree with the idea assumptions require many questions but occasionally we can make a few that are safe with few questions.
I also assume everything I’ve been taught was at least partially untrue and I began the great unlearning years ago. It’s some challenge I must say. I love the role of learning new ways of thinking and new information better prepared to ask questions along the way and not to assume anything is true until I have the knowing from inside myself. Thank you for writing beautiful words and offering insight. It’s a very positive part of my day.
Welcome to the misfit-soul-tribe, Sammie. I share your assumption that we may be connected at levels of frequency and lived experience. I love your assuming that I might write just to you! 💖🙏
I write (I assume) because it enables me to create beauty, clarity, understanding, and connections in some way within a community of fellow humans vibrating and pondering at resonant frequencies. I write to heal my own inner confusions and incoherence, to 'find my own voice', which helps me know myself and others a little better.
Like you, I love the learning, exploring, and discovering new vistas in the process. Your lovely comment is making my day sparkle like the twinkling lights which appeared today around the porch of our house
(Josh assumed it was about time we kept up with the neighbours, and followed up to make it seem true) 😉✨
I my response gave your day a little sparkle that’s wonderful to know. Thank you for being you and sharing her with us.
"I also assume everything I’ve been taught was at least partially untrue and I began the great unlearning years ago."
I think getting an education is the process of unlearning all the nonsense and half-truths our parents, and schooling, taught us. I've come to the conclusion this is a normal experience for anyone who wants to discover more about life by discovering more about themselves - and that's why we have to clear the decks by unlearning, so we can see more clearly. From what you say Sammie, your journey looks a very courageous and honourable one to me.
Great exploration, again, great poem in the ocean.
Ah... 'Treasure Island'... modern navigation; RLS from solitary-sounding Colinton vicarage childhood to the far Pacific.
Getting to know people can be tricky. I read speculation we meet too many strangers these city days... 'Imagined Communities'... there was a book a while ago figured newspapers in the colonies for the colonised... a fostered life.
Thinking Pacific, somebody figured out the polynesian navigators could locate a point atoll over a thousand or so miles; some extraordinary declension from the star pattern, it seems. It must have been reassuring for the whole family and neighbours on those swift trimaran arks. I wonder what was in their dreams? I'm glad you guys landed!
[I was going to write for us bookish types about a wonderful Ivan Illich thesis on Hugh of St Victor, and the search for authority, authorship, but I'll leave it over for another time. Christmas is coming and the cards are landing from old friends already.]
Thank you Philip! 🙏 💕 🛶 Your comments always take me on such interesting journeys... island hopping through the ocean of collective Consciousness, surfing the waves of shared cultures, and along diverging paths in the wildwordwoods.
I'm not sure my mind can follow yours at the speed of the Polynesian trimaran arks, but I can confirm that we're glad too, to have landed where we did, to be able to ascend Maslow's pyramid from this landing strip! Too many strangers in our local community of 'estrangeiros' have followed their dreams and end up lost at sea.
Oh, authority and authorship has been on my mind as well these days. They may find their way into a wordcast in the new year.
It was Benedict Anderson 1983 'Imagined Communities'had an imaginative go at figuring out 'nationalism', very much an historical phenomenon. I am doubtful we moderns can generalise about humanity; we recapitulate v. fast rather a lot history right from the start of our lives. Sure some of it is shared with our native prelapsarian forebears, but only so much?
David Graeber tells a story in 'Debt' (see 'Materialism') from a Catholic missionary in New Caledonia who asked of a local sculptor his reaction to being introduced to the notion of spirit, and got a dusty answer: 'Bah... you didn't bring us the spirit. We already knew the spirit existed. What you brought us is is the body.'
What I liked about the polynesians is their relationship with the way the sky can talk. It is unlike our 'ratio', the limited calculation?
Am looking forward to 'authorship'. The St Victor folk, (see Hugh in Illich), got into some interesting interpretation of authorship, even as far perhaps as as creation? I picked up on Richard of StV from Pound ( but needed Cookson's glossary / intro to Cantos). Richard wrote in Latin inter alia; '... the human spirit is not love, but love flows from it, and it cannot therefore delight in itself, but only in the love flowing from it'. Big sky stuff to be interested in? Maybe what Iain McGilchrist was trying to talk about the other night at the end of his Q&A when he referred to incorporating the larger than us into our lives? A delight?
Anything on, or by, Ivan Illich gets my vote
After many years of waiting for a rescuer, I realize that no one was coming. So, without any help, I am trying to escape Assumption Island. Seul. This is no easy feat. But then again, Conrad said, "We live as we dream--alone." Or something to that effect.
... and yet as we sail alone, we can meet along the journey. I have friends who have been sailors for many years, now settled in Portugal. They speak to us of having been part of a wonderful community of sailors, which initially surprised me.
Now I understand. While each on our solitary journey, we can always meet in the harbours.
I want to add another thought, somewhat poignant and yet a telling observation. The greater grief comes from an unmet expectation, the realization it was all a mythic lie.
Yes, assumptions and expectations are intimately entwined, along with beliefs and faith in someone or something external beyond ourselves that knows better... ultimately there is no substitute for (self-)discovery
There's a university in Bangkok called Assumption. I giggled when I heard of it, even though I knew the word has Catholic connotations. It simply felt like just another one of those English words used incorrectly in Thailand.
Just the other day, my hubby and I have been wondering why our neighbor downstairs was suddenly playing the jembe drum with such vigor. As you can imagine, we made lots of assumptions. Finally, we had had enough, so I went downstairs to let him know it's been a bit much. I was nice, etc, and as a result we discovered he was breaking in a new skin on his drum.
This does sound funny. And fascinating too! Do students at the AUB (Assumption University of Bangkok) get to choose which assumptions they want to study? Are they trained to become professional assumers?(... I better leave it at that!)
Thanks for sharing this lovely story of interacting with your neighbour, enthusiastically breaking in his new jembe. Having joined a jembe group (briefly) nearly 20 years ago, and dropped out a year or so later, I admire your neighbor's enthusiasm (I assume he's a pro) 😉
He’s a music teacher, which terrified us when we first moved in, imagining the worst. But he’s a nice guy and usually keeps the music at a low level.
You’re so witty! Maybe AUB students DO get to chose their own assumptions. Hey, at least their honest! Most disciplines assume their field is the God given truth!
that's lucky, being a nice guy makes up for a multitude of noises... 😉
So beautifully explained with curiosity and lack of judgement keys to living a more humane life. I simply love what you did here, Veronika, with your own personal story added to make your case so thoroughly.
Thank you so much Mary! When it comes to writing and storytelling, I am learning a lot from reading your work. Unbeknown to you, with the inspiring pieces you share on substack, you are encouraging me not to be afraid of telling my own story... 💗🙏
The Island of Monkeys with monkey minds. So true. Your exploration today reminded me of a conversation I had with E.T. Allen this morning around “asking the questions” and even more, recognizing the questions we are always asking, but may not even know we are doing so. Makes me wonder if these “unconscious questions” are hidden beneath assumption. Maybe the best question we can ever ask ourselves to get to the unconscious voices is “Is this really true?”
Is this really true?
Who is the one who gets to answer this question?
What if, before it can be answered, another question squeezes itself between Q&A: what is truth?
I'm treading dangerously here: "For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. For the present we see things as if in a mirror, and are puzzled; but then we shall see them face to face." (1 Cor 13.12).
I'm guessing there is always an element of assumption, even if we are convinced we "know" (know-it-alls being my bette noir); our knowledge is incomplete at one level, but can be sufficiently complete to have a good and worthy life.
'Perfection' is the killer, but 'good enough' offers true hope and an authentic way onward. Discovering and undoing (transforming) false assumptions seems to be the main work. In that respect, Ruiz's "Don't Make Assumptions" is a sensible direction to move in, rather than an absolute 'command' to achieve 100% (or failed) - as your 4 questions at the beginning show; neat.
Interesting that 'consumer' originally meant "a person who squanders or wastes". Perhaps that was what was behind the song "Guilty Consumer".
I find it can be hard to sort out one's assumptions in the moment. I like to remind myself of this breakdown: to assume makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me"
Good point! Assumptions often rise to awareness when they clash (= a whole herd of asses being let loose).
Thank you for joining the conversation, Robin! 💜 🙏,