In the OP I asked where am I.
Since it was a Mudcat thread, obviously,
the question where am I was relevant to
where am I at Mudcat.

It has taken me several years
and lots of hard feelings on the part of
those Mudcat members who took offense at my posts.
They knew where I was, from the beginning, I guess.
I only just got to it now.

And the answer, as regards Mudcat, is simple:
I am outside the circle, that is where I am.
That is how I understand circles, anyhow.
They form a boundary which includes and excludes;
Included Mudcat members are inside the circle,
and the other Mudcat members are outside the circle.
Circles, for some people, are ingrained in their perspectives and attitudes, in their cultures,
and are diligently practiced in their routine life.
These people find it second nature
to include some and exclude the rest.

Well, I am a number of things,
but I am not one of the circle people,
as my perspective and experience are different.
Not better, not nobler, not more proper, nor the inverse --
simply different.

Maybe it is because I was raised in a house next to
two pairs of railroad tracks, with freight trains routinely going past,
that I personally favor parallel lines.
I especially favor parallel tracks, for some reason.
I tend to look for parallels, observe parallels, think in parallels,
build case arguments in parallels.
And whenever I encounter people who are committed to circles,
I have options whether or not to say what I honestly believe
or to hold my tongue so as not to give offense,
but the one thing I am not constituted to do, I find,
is to respect the boundary of the circle.
I just act like the freight train, I confess,
and I steam-roll right in and out of the circle
as though the circle, the boundary, did not even exist.

I could spend, and have spent, no small amount of time
considering questions like
"but keberoxu must be well aware that the circle is there,
and that this is a boundary that one does not cross without giving offense to somebody..."
the questions are valid, after all.
Through repeated trial and error, at the expense of others,
I do indeed begin to sense how others perceive themselves,
how others perceive their world and existence,
how others perceive me, the outsider.

It still leaves me outside the circle.
More to the point, I would do well never again
to approach the darned circle
because someone would take my very approach personally.
So I had better leave well enough alone.