Feelin' jittery and out of sorts.
Some days you can't ignore the things you normally ignore.
Yet there's no optimism in the recognition
that this could lead to something I need
if only I could find the path or do the math.
Instead just a sense of usual recompense,
this too shall pass without leaving a mark
and there's no "at last I'm out of the dark."
Just descent into the same, again and again.
Life gives us so many chances
if we can only see them.
But sight is meaningless without action.
Just continual, disappointing redactions
of the openings in the veil.
Ignore it and return to blindness
because it's steady and easy, really a kindness.
I can make a choice to jump between the curtains
where nothing is certain,
but I can't envision what's beyond
because it's not there yet.
Without faith in my ability to create,
I'm left with the need to obviate,
not to deviate.
Self-hate is too strong a word,
but it does get referred
to in the thoughts that I hold.
This inability to be bold is infuriating,
had I the passion to be so angry.
Instead left with a dull and vague despair,
hardly deserving of the name.
Ennui is so French and so literary
Angst is too throat curdlingly German
and contains an anger that makes me tired.
Anxiety is just a piece, not really the point.
So search eternally for the words
rather than the means, the usual,
while time continues passing and
stasis remains the rule.
Thinking somehow poetry can unlock
the crock that is nothing profound,
only the immature ramblings
of derivative lambling.
Somehow tortured rhymes can take the joke,
twist the yoke, invoke the Loki that can burst free
and transform the staid and passionless
into new life and not too scary madness.
As if.
We are limited by who we are,
not because genes are concrete,
but because our minds are replete
with fears of self deceit.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Perspective and Tigers and Choices, OMG what?
So it was not the condemned making the choice in The Lady, or the Tiger, it was his beloved. I had completely forgotten that. The choice is not what would you choose for yourself, but what do you think the barbarian princess chose for her lover: Brutal death or life in the arms of another.
I did not in any way remember this part. I really think I only remembered how much I hated not knowing the ending; I'm not sure I ever engaged in the actual question of what did she choose. I'm not sure I care. I came back to this from Life of Pi, where I (sadly true) delighted myself with the comparison of choosing stories with or without tigers. And they do parallel. But where the story is asking the reader to extrapolate what is most likely the course of action taken by the character as written, the movie (and its preceding novel) is asking the viewer to choose which they would prefer. Maybe the two could be the same, but I think there's a huge difference. I guess you could choose your ending to the short story based on what you think will follow and what you'd rather see if you could keep reading, but I think you're constrained by the parameters of the character making the choice. Who is not you.
Or maybe it's the chronology that makes it so different. In Lady, it's about what will happen to this man. In Pi, it's already happened to him and your decision of which story you prefer does not affect him in any large degree. In Pi, it's more about you. So of course I prefer that.
But in first making the connection, I thought it was about the man in the arena. (BTW, this is all tying into Spartacus as well, so my pop culture serendipities continue to multiply). I knew he didn't know what was behind each door. I thought the question was which would he prefer. I thought my answer at the time was probably the lady because duh, but now I might think that was too safe a choice. Following Pi logic, choose the tiger because that's a better story. But it's not his choice.
Reading Jacob's Bates Motel recaps. The latest referencing, as the show did, Blake's The Tyger. Seriously, it's all coming up tigers lately. When it's not the Other. Can the tiger be the Other? Should it? And let's not get into where the tiger stands in societal privilege, the other recurring theme I keep coming across recently. The tiger can stand for so many disparate things. Are pop culture Tigers always male?
Yeesh. In what furnace was my brain? Anyway, it's all a mess in my head, not knowing what connection I really want to make here.
"Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future." -- Sonmi-451, Cloud Atlas
Arena boy sure is bound to his princess, and we can imagine bother crime and kindness coming his way, even if we disagree with which is which. Because we never hear what choice he would make. We wonder if the barbarian princess would choose his death to avoid seeing him with another, but couldn't he conceivably make the same choice?
I guess I'm just thrown by how different the story is than what I thought I remembered. Also weird it was written in 1882, and the person taking control of fate is a woman, and the person without real agency is a man. Isn't that odd? Maybe we're supposed to fear the power of this woman, who is bound to make a choice based on her barbarian emotions. Another example of how women shouldn't be in charge of things.
Why can't I ever think straight, untangle the webs to a readable skein? Time to end this ramble.
"while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger."--Sylvia Plath
I did not in any way remember this part. I really think I only remembered how much I hated not knowing the ending; I'm not sure I ever engaged in the actual question of what did she choose. I'm not sure I care. I came back to this from Life of Pi, where I (sadly true) delighted myself with the comparison of choosing stories with or without tigers. And they do parallel. But where the story is asking the reader to extrapolate what is most likely the course of action taken by the character as written, the movie (and its preceding novel) is asking the viewer to choose which they would prefer. Maybe the two could be the same, but I think there's a huge difference. I guess you could choose your ending to the short story based on what you think will follow and what you'd rather see if you could keep reading, but I think you're constrained by the parameters of the character making the choice. Who is not you.
Or maybe it's the chronology that makes it so different. In Lady, it's about what will happen to this man. In Pi, it's already happened to him and your decision of which story you prefer does not affect him in any large degree. In Pi, it's more about you. So of course I prefer that.
But in first making the connection, I thought it was about the man in the arena. (BTW, this is all tying into Spartacus as well, so my pop culture serendipities continue to multiply). I knew he didn't know what was behind each door. I thought the question was which would he prefer. I thought my answer at the time was probably the lady because duh, but now I might think that was too safe a choice. Following Pi logic, choose the tiger because that's a better story. But it's not his choice.
Reading Jacob's Bates Motel recaps. The latest referencing, as the show did, Blake's The Tyger. Seriously, it's all coming up tigers lately. When it's not the Other. Can the tiger be the Other? Should it? And let's not get into where the tiger stands in societal privilege, the other recurring theme I keep coming across recently. The tiger can stand for so many disparate things. Are pop culture Tigers always male?
Yeesh. In what furnace was my brain? Anyway, it's all a mess in my head, not knowing what connection I really want to make here.
"Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future." -- Sonmi-451, Cloud Atlas
Arena boy sure is bound to his princess, and we can imagine bother crime and kindness coming his way, even if we disagree with which is which. Because we never hear what choice he would make. We wonder if the barbarian princess would choose his death to avoid seeing him with another, but couldn't he conceivably make the same choice?
I guess I'm just thrown by how different the story is than what I thought I remembered. Also weird it was written in 1882, and the person taking control of fate is a woman, and the person without real agency is a man. Isn't that odd? Maybe we're supposed to fear the power of this woman, who is bound to make a choice based on her barbarian emotions. Another example of how women shouldn't be in charge of things.
Why can't I ever think straight, untangle the webs to a readable skein? Time to end this ramble.
"while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger."--Sylvia Plath
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
There was girl: a ramble of thoughts with no solution
Once upon a time there was a girl. She prided herself on not being like the other girls, not realizing that that was just internalizing the misogyny around her. It's a point of pride to not be girly? But you see the predicament. No one likes to be put in a box and told how she is, particularly when she doesn't feel it. It's actually easier to see the box that way, but you're still dealing with the definitions imposed by the people doing the sorting.
So this girl grew up knowing that there was a lot of bullshit in the world. Not only from the usual suspects of entrenched power, but also from those who one would think would know better, would be an ally. Why she always saw things in these extremes is a good question. The world, and people, are always more complicated than you first think.
First hurdle is to understand the problem, which is harder for some than others, but then comes dealing with it. This girl dealt with it by stepping away from the heart of it and trying to stay separate, trying to define herself apart from it while still trying to take what pride she could from the difference, even if it was a facade with a weak foundation. It's all working with what others give you, abstract symbols created by others.
But not too long ago the girl considered whether there was some freedom in the purposeful use of these symbols. So why was that necessarily bad? Maybe because these early usages were not purposeful, but part of a rejection, an act of running away. One escapes the box only by leaving it behind entirely. But that means some of the good things in the box become inaccessible, or at least hard to get to. And if you escape the box with nothing, how do you even get into the other boxes to pick and choose from their contents?
Why does the girl think in terms of cardboard boxes in a white room? That's beyond abstraction to absurd oversimplification.
Once upon a time there was a girl who learned early on to empathize with characters in books, to feel their story with them, but who found it so much harder to understand the real people around her. She wasn't emotionless, she didn't see real people as cardboard, she just didn't really think about them that much because she was concerned with other things. Is that true?
Once upon a time there was a girl who developed cynicism early. Was it because the outside world wasn't as neat and tidy as the world of fiction? Was it because she learned through fiction that everyone had an agenda or just that life wasn't fair? Was it something learned from her surroundings? Was she naturally inclined to that? Or is it another function of the distancing? Did she really feel removed from the first person from childhood, or can she just not remember now what it was like?
Once upon a time there was a girl who was tentative, lacking confidence in herself, in the rightness of her actions. She was a girl much loved, appreciated, who never had to question her worth in the eyes of the adults around her as she did her peers. Why should such a girl be so tentative? Was it something that happened or an outgrowth of her natural inclinations? Just like everyone else, the girl became good at some things. She had confidence in her abilities to do some things, but it never translated over to confidence in just being herself. This life-long identity crisis stemming from never feeling certain of an identity to begin with?
But that's too simple. Surely early on she felt like herself. This questioning is a function of adolescence. So maybe the lack of self-confidence came later, and she just doesn't remember it. How did it happen and why does it persist into early middle age?
She had never lived the unexamined life, but what they don't tell you about that idea is that said examination is not the solution to anything, it's just a step. And sometimes it's a misstep because you examine the wrong things or come up with the wrong solution to the perceived problem. Step one is to think it through, but step two gets dicey.
Her common theme seems to be lack of solidity (which is kind of funny for the extreme contrast with her very solid physical existence). Part of it is not knowing what she wants to do with her life, never having had a goal/plan/desire that felt close to all-encompassing. Part of it is the struggle with what is expected, what is assumed, even by those closest. Part of it is a desire to not become static, to always remain open to new things/ideas/possibilities. It's all of a piece assuredly, but how does that help her? Does this mix of traits necessitate this constant dance? Or is the dance a lie she tells herself?
Is it possible she clings to this idea of the lack of solidity as an excuse for her lack of -- not advancement, but -- success maybe? Progress? Maybe her insides really are like her outsides, slow moving, solid as a rock, slow to change, unlikely to let go, unmoved, placid.
This is what lack of commitment feels like, she would say to all the sitcom men who were ultimately amateurs at the process. You want to sleep around and not commit to a relationship? Big fucking deal. I can't even commit to being me. I can't commit to a life plan of any sort. I can't commit to an understanding of what I really want from life. I can't commit to the idea of committing. Go back to school, son.
Do I want a place to stand that doesn't move or do I want eternal change? Do I want to stand in a room and yell, "Hey, I'm here" to whoever will listen or do I want to continue creeping around the edges and seeing how many people I can fool into thinking I'm not even there? How much of all of this is rank cowardice? That's a question that haunts me. The thought that everything I do, everything I am is a reaction to fear of some kind is unacceptable. But maybe it's true. What the hell do I do with that?
Do I keep to myself because that's what I desire, because it's what I need to be happy, or because I'm scared to A, fail, or B, open myself up enough to another person to make a partnership work? I honestly don't know, and it's not like I haven't thought about it. How much of that decision is tied to my second wave ideas of men/women, to my existential feeling that no other person ever actually sees you as as much of a person as he/she is? How much of it is a decision or a choice?
I guess we all start wondering what we're missing at some point, what will be those big regrets at the end of everything, but -- it's all tied up into the idea of giving up and letting them win. Giving up what and letting who win? In attempting to stay back from the fray and define myself for myself, how much is still dependent on some nebulous they and how they view things? And how much of this right here is just posturing and not truth?
Once upon a time there was a girl who couldn't tell when she was lying to herself or when she was telling the truth. There was no nose changes, no helpful twitches or truth-containing dreams. It was all so nebulous. Maybe she knows herself and it's only lack of confidence or neurosis that leads her to question her own hard-won wisdom. It's so easy to discount it if it's coming only from her. Yet what do other people know anyway? They're right when they say bad things about her, wrong when they say good. What about her?
Once upon a time there was a girl who could rarely tell when she was happy, who didn't know the difference between contentment and complacency, who through physical detachment came to be even more emotionally detached. Once there was a girl who worried about being a Vulcan, while also taking pride in her intellectualism overriding her emotions, who never gave in as a point of pride. This girl would look at Hollywood girls as wimps. You ever notice how the smart girl always had to learn to be dumber? All in the name of not locking away her more emotional/passionate self? Aside from the self-serving -- seriously!? -- nature of it, all could agree that those nerds needed to let loose and maybe do stupid stuff -- more likely do stupid boys -- to be a well-rounded person. Never once could one remain as she was. And all would likely agree she was not well-rounded, even if some would argue the need to tie it all in to becoming more conventionally attractive and finding a boyfriend.
Hah! Once there was a girl who wondered if it was just her who was able to withstand hormonal drives while making choices. She felt it then, she did. She had a crush once that was so intense it took almost all of her brain over, yet she didn't give into it because the guy was so not a good choice. You never see that story. It's all about sometimes needing to make those kind of mistakes. The girl wonders sometimes if they have a point beyond the straight male agenda.
Once upon a time there was a girl who failed in one of the only arenas she had ever had pride of self in. The girl fell so hard, when she crawled back up, she was another person. She still doesn't know if this made her stronger or weaker, but maybe long-term, it was stronger. The girl can no longer remember what was so different, whether the fall just brought out things more clearly or whether it was a total shock. There's been almost a decade now to smooth over the bumps.
Once upon a time there was a girl who finally learned something new about being a teen girl -- from a gay man who got it more than she ever did, who seemed to understand what was going all under the surface of all those popular girls, mean girls, let's face it most all other girls that were never who she wanted to be. She started to really understand all that she had disdained. Even if she was really still mostly a Dan Humphrey about it all. She even felt some nostalgia for something she never experienced in the first place.
Once upon a time there was a girl who was proud of not being a man while at the same time gloried in all things that separated her from being a stereotypical woman. Her role models were intellectual men, or any men who at least seemed to accept women as persons. Later they became, and remain somewhat, middle aged women who fought/fight the power. Iconoclasts and eccentrics who didn't follow traditional womanly paths. And she became one of them. So there's that. She got what she wanted there. But she wonders if she focused on the whole picture or just parts of it. She suspects that one needs more integration after the initial separation or you're back to accepting the world of the boxes, the unacceptable.
Yet the girl knows that if only through indifference or insouciance, she has not been so iconoclastic or eccentric. At least, not on the surface. It goes back to perspective. Is being enough, or does one need to express externally? I wouldn't have had those role models if they had been as hidden as I am from the world
Once upon a time there was a girl who would pick and choose what to focus on and what to ignore based on what made her feel best about herself. She knew she was not so different from anyone else that way. She felt most of life was self-serving indulgence. Can one be cynical and proactive?
Once upon a time there was a girl who didn't know how to end a rambling essay. So she gave up and just did it, realizing that it would lack closure to make it coherent, just like fucking life.
So this girl grew up knowing that there was a lot of bullshit in the world. Not only from the usual suspects of entrenched power, but also from those who one would think would know better, would be an ally. Why she always saw things in these extremes is a good question. The world, and people, are always more complicated than you first think.
First hurdle is to understand the problem, which is harder for some than others, but then comes dealing with it. This girl dealt with it by stepping away from the heart of it and trying to stay separate, trying to define herself apart from it while still trying to take what pride she could from the difference, even if it was a facade with a weak foundation. It's all working with what others give you, abstract symbols created by others.
But not too long ago the girl considered whether there was some freedom in the purposeful use of these symbols. So why was that necessarily bad? Maybe because these early usages were not purposeful, but part of a rejection, an act of running away. One escapes the box only by leaving it behind entirely. But that means some of the good things in the box become inaccessible, or at least hard to get to. And if you escape the box with nothing, how do you even get into the other boxes to pick and choose from their contents?
Why does the girl think in terms of cardboard boxes in a white room? That's beyond abstraction to absurd oversimplification.
Once upon a time there was a girl who learned early on to empathize with characters in books, to feel their story with them, but who found it so much harder to understand the real people around her. She wasn't emotionless, she didn't see real people as cardboard, she just didn't really think about them that much because she was concerned with other things. Is that true?
Once upon a time there was a girl who developed cynicism early. Was it because the outside world wasn't as neat and tidy as the world of fiction? Was it because she learned through fiction that everyone had an agenda or just that life wasn't fair? Was it something learned from her surroundings? Was she naturally inclined to that? Or is it another function of the distancing? Did she really feel removed from the first person from childhood, or can she just not remember now what it was like?
Once upon a time there was a girl who was tentative, lacking confidence in herself, in the rightness of her actions. She was a girl much loved, appreciated, who never had to question her worth in the eyes of the adults around her as she did her peers. Why should such a girl be so tentative? Was it something that happened or an outgrowth of her natural inclinations? Just like everyone else, the girl became good at some things. She had confidence in her abilities to do some things, but it never translated over to confidence in just being herself. This life-long identity crisis stemming from never feeling certain of an identity to begin with?
But that's too simple. Surely early on she felt like herself. This questioning is a function of adolescence. So maybe the lack of self-confidence came later, and she just doesn't remember it. How did it happen and why does it persist into early middle age?
She had never lived the unexamined life, but what they don't tell you about that idea is that said examination is not the solution to anything, it's just a step. And sometimes it's a misstep because you examine the wrong things or come up with the wrong solution to the perceived problem. Step one is to think it through, but step two gets dicey.
Her common theme seems to be lack of solidity (which is kind of funny for the extreme contrast with her very solid physical existence). Part of it is not knowing what she wants to do with her life, never having had a goal/plan/desire that felt close to all-encompassing. Part of it is the struggle with what is expected, what is assumed, even by those closest. Part of it is a desire to not become static, to always remain open to new things/ideas/possibilities. It's all of a piece assuredly, but how does that help her? Does this mix of traits necessitate this constant dance? Or is the dance a lie she tells herself?
Is it possible she clings to this idea of the lack of solidity as an excuse for her lack of -- not advancement, but -- success maybe? Progress? Maybe her insides really are like her outsides, slow moving, solid as a rock, slow to change, unlikely to let go, unmoved, placid.
This is what lack of commitment feels like, she would say to all the sitcom men who were ultimately amateurs at the process. You want to sleep around and not commit to a relationship? Big fucking deal. I can't even commit to being me. I can't commit to a life plan of any sort. I can't commit to an understanding of what I really want from life. I can't commit to the idea of committing. Go back to school, son.
Do I want a place to stand that doesn't move or do I want eternal change? Do I want to stand in a room and yell, "Hey, I'm here" to whoever will listen or do I want to continue creeping around the edges and seeing how many people I can fool into thinking I'm not even there? How much of all of this is rank cowardice? That's a question that haunts me. The thought that everything I do, everything I am is a reaction to fear of some kind is unacceptable. But maybe it's true. What the hell do I do with that?
Do I keep to myself because that's what I desire, because it's what I need to be happy, or because I'm scared to A, fail, or B, open myself up enough to another person to make a partnership work? I honestly don't know, and it's not like I haven't thought about it. How much of that decision is tied to my second wave ideas of men/women, to my existential feeling that no other person ever actually sees you as as much of a person as he/she is? How much of it is a decision or a choice?
I guess we all start wondering what we're missing at some point, what will be those big regrets at the end of everything, but -- it's all tied up into the idea of giving up and letting them win. Giving up what and letting who win? In attempting to stay back from the fray and define myself for myself, how much is still dependent on some nebulous they and how they view things? And how much of this right here is just posturing and not truth?
Once upon a time there was a girl who couldn't tell when she was lying to herself or when she was telling the truth. There was no nose changes, no helpful twitches or truth-containing dreams. It was all so nebulous. Maybe she knows herself and it's only lack of confidence or neurosis that leads her to question her own hard-won wisdom. It's so easy to discount it if it's coming only from her. Yet what do other people know anyway? They're right when they say bad things about her, wrong when they say good. What about her?
Once upon a time there was a girl who could rarely tell when she was happy, who didn't know the difference between contentment and complacency, who through physical detachment came to be even more emotionally detached. Once there was a girl who worried about being a Vulcan, while also taking pride in her intellectualism overriding her emotions, who never gave in as a point of pride. This girl would look at Hollywood girls as wimps. You ever notice how the smart girl always had to learn to be dumber? All in the name of not locking away her more emotional/passionate self? Aside from the self-serving -- seriously!? -- nature of it, all could agree that those nerds needed to let loose and maybe do stupid stuff -- more likely do stupid boys -- to be a well-rounded person. Never once could one remain as she was. And all would likely agree she was not well-rounded, even if some would argue the need to tie it all in to becoming more conventionally attractive and finding a boyfriend.
Hah! Once there was a girl who wondered if it was just her who was able to withstand hormonal drives while making choices. She felt it then, she did. She had a crush once that was so intense it took almost all of her brain over, yet she didn't give into it because the guy was so not a good choice. You never see that story. It's all about sometimes needing to make those kind of mistakes. The girl wonders sometimes if they have a point beyond the straight male agenda.
Once upon a time there was a girl who failed in one of the only arenas she had ever had pride of self in. The girl fell so hard, when she crawled back up, she was another person. She still doesn't know if this made her stronger or weaker, but maybe long-term, it was stronger. The girl can no longer remember what was so different, whether the fall just brought out things more clearly or whether it was a total shock. There's been almost a decade now to smooth over the bumps.
Once upon a time there was a girl who finally learned something new about being a teen girl -- from a gay man who got it more than she ever did, who seemed to understand what was going all under the surface of all those popular girls, mean girls, let's face it most all other girls that were never who she wanted to be. She started to really understand all that she had disdained. Even if she was really still mostly a Dan Humphrey about it all. She even felt some nostalgia for something she never experienced in the first place.
Once upon a time there was a girl who was proud of not being a man while at the same time gloried in all things that separated her from being a stereotypical woman. Her role models were intellectual men, or any men who at least seemed to accept women as persons. Later they became, and remain somewhat, middle aged women who fought/fight the power. Iconoclasts and eccentrics who didn't follow traditional womanly paths. And she became one of them. So there's that. She got what she wanted there. But she wonders if she focused on the whole picture or just parts of it. She suspects that one needs more integration after the initial separation or you're back to accepting the world of the boxes, the unacceptable.
Yet the girl knows that if only through indifference or insouciance, she has not been so iconoclastic or eccentric. At least, not on the surface. It goes back to perspective. Is being enough, or does one need to express externally? I wouldn't have had those role models if they had been as hidden as I am from the world
Once upon a time there was a girl who would pick and choose what to focus on and what to ignore based on what made her feel best about herself. She knew she was not so different from anyone else that way. She felt most of life was self-serving indulgence. Can one be cynical and proactive?
Once upon a time there was a girl who didn't know how to end a rambling essay. So she gave up and just did it, realizing that it would lack closure to make it coherent, just like fucking life.
useless blather
The spring started out with my voluntarily hanging at coffee shops for the sun and the cabin fever remedy. I'm so ready to be busier next term. Crossed fingers. Now I'm just avoiding roofers/traffic and biding time until the mail comes, hopefully with my check in it!
So comfortably ensconced in a westside Starbucks with a fake fire. Kind of comfy, but since daylight savings is still messing me up, feel like I'll fall asleep despite the caffeine. Thought maybe using the computer would be more conducive to staying awake than reading, though I really want to get going on the next Harry Dresden book.
Don't think I want to go into any of the stuff I've been talking about in my latest entries. Not feeling like I have anything new to add.
Really, I've got nothing. I should do some research on things to do spring break when I visit the folks. Usually it's an opportunity to just be able to chill and not worry about doing anything. But since winter term has been so uneventful, I'm over it already. I'll need something else.
There's computer work I can do of course, but I haven't been very likely to do it thus far. IDK. Don't want to think about all that either.
So yeah, this entry is pretty much worthless, even in context.
So comfortably ensconced in a westside Starbucks with a fake fire. Kind of comfy, but since daylight savings is still messing me up, feel like I'll fall asleep despite the caffeine. Thought maybe using the computer would be more conducive to staying awake than reading, though I really want to get going on the next Harry Dresden book.
Don't think I want to go into any of the stuff I've been talking about in my latest entries. Not feeling like I have anything new to add.
Really, I've got nothing. I should do some research on things to do spring break when I visit the folks. Usually it's an opportunity to just be able to chill and not worry about doing anything. But since winter term has been so uneventful, I'm over it already. I'll need something else.
There's computer work I can do of course, but I haven't been very likely to do it thus far. IDK. Don't want to think about all that either.
So yeah, this entry is pretty much worthless, even in context.
Monday, March 11, 2013
What to write about spy TV.
Only possible self-initiated writing assignment I can come up with for myself is related to spy tv, since that's what has been pulling my attention lately. I don't have any real desire to write, just a feeling that I should. At least it's something I can do that's not passively imbibing. But not sure of the angle. Came up with ideas of compare and contrast episodes of various spy shows with similar plot ideas. Not sure what would come of that. Could lead to some chronology comparisons, which ties in with ideas on changing face of surveillance with new tech, and/or pre and post 9/11 stuff. But not sure where to go. Trying not to worry about it too much. It's just for me right now; doesn't have to rock the world. So that way I don't have to do a ton of research either. Want just some grounding in spy tv tropes that I can then apply to my focus, which is more personal to me.
Do I just want to know why Homeland, Person of Interest, and The Americans have been the latest shows I've really been excited about? Oh, maybe I should go ahead and recap Americans. It's 6 in, I could do it. Even though I have read/listened to some commentary on the eps already, plus have larger than one episode scope. Still, could be fun.
OMG Person of Interest. This show is just so good, and so few people in my sphere talk about it. It's a real shame. I don't know if it's the procedural backbone or just that it's another that was either advertised or anticipated to be trying to recapture Lost. It's so its own thing that that's not close to fair, but whatever. It's one of the only shows lately that I daydream up stories in order to insert myself into its world. That's a rare thing for me of late. I certainly don't go there with Once or Grimm or even Supernatural anymore. Nor Arrow. But this show, oh man, pushes all the right buttons for a world I want to be a part of, even though it's really scary and I in reality would be toast there. Kinda like the Buffyverse that way.
I just realized that. I know I've been Mary Suing myself to the show, but hadn't considered that it's been a couple years since I found a show to do that with. I think since Supernatural was good. It's a different level of enjoyment than just really digging a show being good, like Americans. It's a combo of enjoying an excellent show and having the world/mythology of the show really capture my imagination. That's what it is. A thrilling feeling, especially when I feel so insulated from emotion these days, something to be passionate about.
Anyway. So what to write about? Skimmed some essays on Informational Ethics that could apply. Still interested in idea of omniscience and its relation to prognostication, although that is fading a bit. Still like best I think the idea of surveillance, something about that. I have always had a huge dose of something like double consciousness, and I think that's part of what I'm liking about these shows and their focus on surveillance. Watching Carrie watch Brody on the monitors. The meta parallel of that action with tv viewing, looking into the lives of these characters like an omniscient god, getting to know them via their external actions and communications. And how it is to always be aware of being watched, how that affects your actions. Tying into even the thing in Cloud Atlas I keep coming back to, the idea of seeing yourself in the gaze of the Other. All of that is aswirl in my head and I need to figure out how to see it clearly, what is the through line that I want to tease out.
Something is enticing about the meta parallel. Even though I don't generally enjoy reading about how we watch tv or what being a fan is or any of that stuff, I do wonder about how far that parallel goes. Couldn't you imagine yourself doing the spy surveillance stuff, even if you're not into anything else about it? Isn't that part of reality tv's appeal, looking in on real lives, trying to figure out something about the truth of these lives from watching them? It's not about talking to them, but watching. Which is my modus operandi most of the time anyway, when getting to know people. I don't tend to ask them a lot of questions, to actively seek information about what they're like. I prefer to just sit back and observe their behaviors and analyze their words, forming my impression of who they are from that. Maybe it's just because of the distancing thing I do socially that I can so connect with that idea.
Many of my daydreams have involved being undercover, always being watched, having to pass secret messages, never fully trusting anyone with the truth. That's my play time. So it's no surprise that something like the Americans (also set during my COA, my preteens) would really be of interest to me. Hell, I had a story similar to theirs as a backstory for my Scarecrow & Mrs. King Mary Sue, only we were sleepers in Russia instead. Pushing buttons.
But that's all well and good. What could I write about that would give me practice, be satisfying, and teach myself something new about what I'm seeing or why it's working for me? Maybe it's just because I'm lazy, but it's hard to think of something I would want to commit to writing about. It's easy enough to throw around some ideas, think of further research that could be done, but not so much to come up with a topic sentence and go to it. This is why I worry about being able to go back to school. Writing essays used to be the easiest thing in the world, but now... Of course, it's so much harder to be self-directed anyway.
I liked Alias and Chuck, but they were very different from these types of shows, very actiony or comedic, using surveillance tools, definitely focused on tech -- spy-fi -- but not really going into the bigger ideas associated with that. They weren't supposed to.
Part of it is the whole reality of eternal surveillance coming into being around us too. It's easier and easier to empathize with characters who are always being monitored, isn't it?
Actually, now that I think about it, a lot of the fantasy I liked best had some aspects of this undercover stuff too. The more medieval cloak and dagger espionage, people hiding powers or birthright, secret mages in current society, wizards and witches seeing people from afar... People not who they seem, but special. Common fantasies we all have I suspect. How many of us hope we're secretly more special, skilled, important than we actually are? It's just that we're not recognized as we blend into the crowds around us. But if someone were really looking, they would be able to figure out that we were somehow unique, no matter how much we look indistinguishable from everyone else around. We are all hiding our own secrets, we're all sleeper agents.
Or maybe I shouldn't say all. We are all heroes in our own story, but some are kings and queens, some are warriors, and some are spies who always know more than they say, who always see both the world everyone sees and the other realities happening to the side or underneath that most people ignore or are ignorant of. Some of us like seeing and not being seen. Some of us hide anything real or important to keep those things safe from those who are always trying to see us but never see us truly.
Oy. That's enough of that. At least I didn't start in on the whole female thing. You're welcome.
But what do I want to write about? I really think surveillance is the overarching, big picture part. But it's way too abstract and wide-ranging. But what's interesting is that could reach out of the spy genre and bring in things like Gossip Girl or PLL, both shows which have/had omniscient antagonists that see all the heroes do and use that intel for their own ends. How does that fit in/compare to what some of these spy dramas are doing? And again the meta parallel, do I want to go there given how little I really feel able to comment on all that? I don't know.
Then there's the whole storytelling aspect of that too. That's too real world for this topic for me I think. I always love that kind of investigation, but not in this case.
Of course, there's always the option of not writing anything about them, just enjoying what they give me. Like I do everything. Black hole. Maybe I do need school assignments to actually accomplish anything.
Well, enough rambling here.
Do I just want to know why Homeland, Person of Interest, and The Americans have been the latest shows I've really been excited about? Oh, maybe I should go ahead and recap Americans. It's 6 in, I could do it. Even though I have read/listened to some commentary on the eps already, plus have larger than one episode scope. Still, could be fun.
OMG Person of Interest. This show is just so good, and so few people in my sphere talk about it. It's a real shame. I don't know if it's the procedural backbone or just that it's another that was either advertised or anticipated to be trying to recapture Lost. It's so its own thing that that's not close to fair, but whatever. It's one of the only shows lately that I daydream up stories in order to insert myself into its world. That's a rare thing for me of late. I certainly don't go there with Once or Grimm or even Supernatural anymore. Nor Arrow. But this show, oh man, pushes all the right buttons for a world I want to be a part of, even though it's really scary and I in reality would be toast there. Kinda like the Buffyverse that way.
I just realized that. I know I've been Mary Suing myself to the show, but hadn't considered that it's been a couple years since I found a show to do that with. I think since Supernatural was good. It's a different level of enjoyment than just really digging a show being good, like Americans. It's a combo of enjoying an excellent show and having the world/mythology of the show really capture my imagination. That's what it is. A thrilling feeling, especially when I feel so insulated from emotion these days, something to be passionate about.
Anyway. So what to write about? Skimmed some essays on Informational Ethics that could apply. Still interested in idea of omniscience and its relation to prognostication, although that is fading a bit. Still like best I think the idea of surveillance, something about that. I have always had a huge dose of something like double consciousness, and I think that's part of what I'm liking about these shows and their focus on surveillance. Watching Carrie watch Brody on the monitors. The meta parallel of that action with tv viewing, looking into the lives of these characters like an omniscient god, getting to know them via their external actions and communications. And how it is to always be aware of being watched, how that affects your actions. Tying into even the thing in Cloud Atlas I keep coming back to, the idea of seeing yourself in the gaze of the Other. All of that is aswirl in my head and I need to figure out how to see it clearly, what is the through line that I want to tease out.
Something is enticing about the meta parallel. Even though I don't generally enjoy reading about how we watch tv or what being a fan is or any of that stuff, I do wonder about how far that parallel goes. Couldn't you imagine yourself doing the spy surveillance stuff, even if you're not into anything else about it? Isn't that part of reality tv's appeal, looking in on real lives, trying to figure out something about the truth of these lives from watching them? It's not about talking to them, but watching. Which is my modus operandi most of the time anyway, when getting to know people. I don't tend to ask them a lot of questions, to actively seek information about what they're like. I prefer to just sit back and observe their behaviors and analyze their words, forming my impression of who they are from that. Maybe it's just because of the distancing thing I do socially that I can so connect with that idea.
Many of my daydreams have involved being undercover, always being watched, having to pass secret messages, never fully trusting anyone with the truth. That's my play time. So it's no surprise that something like the Americans (also set during my COA, my preteens) would really be of interest to me. Hell, I had a story similar to theirs as a backstory for my Scarecrow & Mrs. King Mary Sue, only we were sleepers in Russia instead. Pushing buttons.
But that's all well and good. What could I write about that would give me practice, be satisfying, and teach myself something new about what I'm seeing or why it's working for me? Maybe it's just because I'm lazy, but it's hard to think of something I would want to commit to writing about. It's easy enough to throw around some ideas, think of further research that could be done, but not so much to come up with a topic sentence and go to it. This is why I worry about being able to go back to school. Writing essays used to be the easiest thing in the world, but now... Of course, it's so much harder to be self-directed anyway.
I liked Alias and Chuck, but they were very different from these types of shows, very actiony or comedic, using surveillance tools, definitely focused on tech -- spy-fi -- but not really going into the bigger ideas associated with that. They weren't supposed to.
Part of it is the whole reality of eternal surveillance coming into being around us too. It's easier and easier to empathize with characters who are always being monitored, isn't it?
Actually, now that I think about it, a lot of the fantasy I liked best had some aspects of this undercover stuff too. The more medieval cloak and dagger espionage, people hiding powers or birthright, secret mages in current society, wizards and witches seeing people from afar... People not who they seem, but special. Common fantasies we all have I suspect. How many of us hope we're secretly more special, skilled, important than we actually are? It's just that we're not recognized as we blend into the crowds around us. But if someone were really looking, they would be able to figure out that we were somehow unique, no matter how much we look indistinguishable from everyone else around. We are all hiding our own secrets, we're all sleeper agents.
Or maybe I shouldn't say all. We are all heroes in our own story, but some are kings and queens, some are warriors, and some are spies who always know more than they say, who always see both the world everyone sees and the other realities happening to the side or underneath that most people ignore or are ignorant of. Some of us like seeing and not being seen. Some of us hide anything real or important to keep those things safe from those who are always trying to see us but never see us truly.
Oy. That's enough of that. At least I didn't start in on the whole female thing. You're welcome.
But what do I want to write about? I really think surveillance is the overarching, big picture part. But it's way too abstract and wide-ranging. But what's interesting is that could reach out of the spy genre and bring in things like Gossip Girl or PLL, both shows which have/had omniscient antagonists that see all the heroes do and use that intel for their own ends. How does that fit in/compare to what some of these spy dramas are doing? And again the meta parallel, do I want to go there given how little I really feel able to comment on all that? I don't know.
Then there's the whole storytelling aspect of that too. That's too real world for this topic for me I think. I always love that kind of investigation, but not in this case.
Of course, there's always the option of not writing anything about them, just enjoying what they give me. Like I do everything. Black hole. Maybe I do need school assignments to actually accomplish anything.
Well, enough rambling here.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Rambling thoughts that only make sense to me
So here it is, February of 2013, and I'm in a holding pattern of some sort. I'm annoyed by it, but not despairing because I think the next month or so will bring changes. We've got more spring coming this way, the time of change, and we've got spring break, followed by a new term, new schedule. Things will change one way or another, and that's a good thing. So if all I seem to be able to do these days is lounge around watching TV, doing kakuro, and listening to podcasts, not eating well, not exercising, not doing anything proactive, that's okay. It will pass.
Thing is, right now I can't think what I want to do. I just want to do something that's less passive. I always worry about how much stimulation I take in in an attempt to not have time to deeply reflect on "important" things, but I don't know that it's something I always do to avoid deep thought. I think it's just an inertia thing. But I've found lately that I downplay most of those kind of thoughts, either because I've entered into a deeper level of repression, or just because it feels unnecessarily histrionic to ascribe a more portentous meaning to these things.
It's that worry about complacency again, but it doesn't go anywhere. Maybe it's part of self-acceptance to not be as hard on myself as I used to be. It's probably a good thing. Of course, it could be lowered expectations. Although how they could be even lower...
Anyway.
What does it mean to waste your life? We're back to POV, something I've considered before. Wasted according to who? There's this set of things you do, this set of things you could do, this set of things you'd never do, and those set of things you don't know that you might do. I think it's important to not just do the things you do, to consider the possibilities, even to reevaluate the things you'd never do or leave yourself open to discover those things you didn't know about before. But you have to follow your own path to find the other things; I don't think you can force it. I'm into widening my environment to let other things filter in around the edges of my established world, but I'm not sure the best way to do it.
But see, that's still relatively passive. I've spent a great deal of my life as an observer, acting mostly to position myself in such a way as to see what I need to see without being seen by others looking back. Back to that idea in Cloud Atlas that you only know yourself in the gaze of the Other. If that's true, I'll never know myself because I refuse to legitimize wholly the gaze of the Other upon me. I doubt I could change that, but maybe I can still use the idea somehow. Especially now that things seem less urgent and dangerous. I'm less self-conscious, less worried about being seen now than I probably ever have been. Surely I can use that to my advantage?
If there's a way to -- not objectively, not dispassionately, but calmly? maybe -- consider the assumptions others make about me in a way that allows me to come to a new understanding of myself, that could be a good thing. I just still don't see why -- I'm a bit stubborn about that still. I don't know if I'm insisting on my perspective or running from the truth though. Probably both.
It sounds defensive, which is one thing I remember infuriating me from my youth, when I was told in an argument not to get defensive. And I remember very little from my youth, but that burning injustice still stings. How to tell the (very legitimate) difference between being overly defensive, meaning reacting without thinking to a presumed attack, and defending your view or your actions from a real attack meant to shut YOU down without having to think about the point you're making? It goes to something Jacob (and others) have said about telling girls to be polite or nice means denying them their own voice, being polite or nice is a self-abnegation, losing your voice and ceding the ground to the others around you. The Others who only see you as an adjunct to their story where they're the hero. The ultimate idea of being defined by the Other as seen in and ultimately rejected by Dollhouse.
That's part of the issue I have with that idea. Still, consensus can be a more complete picture. There are things some of those Others who are closest to you see and understand that are of value. I just -- it also goes to the idea of needing validation from another, something too many women my age and older seemed to too often succumb to in the form of their relationships with men. Not only just the idea of getting validation from the men themselves, but legitimization from society for doing the thing you're supposed to do, pairing up with a man and all that follows. It's a security thing, an on the surface easy way. Follow the track that so many do, take on the labels "everyone" does in the right order, and you always know who you are. As opposed to forging your own path and having no ready definitions to apply, no easy, well-defined personas to take on. Of course, I understand now that no path is easy, even if you do what's expected. There's always problems. But often those problems arise from the dissonance between the label you bought into and what you want and need for yourself as a labelless, real person.
So I no longer know if it's harder to be adamantly nebulous and rejecting labels or to take on labels that only fit uneasily. At least if the former, you're playing dolls with yourself, trying out different specific Barbie outfits to see which feels better and which you need to burn. Whereas if you try so hard not to allow any of the premade outfits, you've got nothing to wear and nowhere to go except a nude beach of nonidentity. Probably the best thing, and what I think the younger generations excel at, is mixing and matching. Not tossing out the wardrobe entirely, but just picking a hat here, a skirt there, whatever you want. And it's about using the labels as they're understood, but showing that you get the artificiality of them. Using that artifice to create a self-made synergy. So not rejecting the labels, not accepting them, but recognizing they're artificial constructs, and using bits and pieces as -- not fetishes, but -- symbols of deeper meaning, that meaning needing to be taken in context of all the other symbols to be understood or to be occasionally subverted or radicalized.
On one hand it feels extremely derivative, or even somethings adolescents have always done, but it's at a new level now, it's viral. And it's active, not passive, for males and females. I think it's in the knowingness of it now. Well, I can't go down that rabbit hole because all I know about kids at this remove is what I see on TV or in the movies or read. And artists have always been more knowing.
Anyway.
Not sure how I got to trying to understand -- whatever. I liked the Barbie analogy.
So back to me. :) Boring subject. How does that all help me understand life, the universe and everything? I spent my life trying to ignore the labels. I tried on some identities, but I never took them seriously. My dark observer undercut my posturings at every turn. Oh, I'm a film nerd, I'm alternative, I'm into punk, I'm a leftie, I'm an underground zine maker, I'm a city person, I'm a writer; all things I have thought about myself at different times, but I never really allowed myself to try and externally express any of it. Or to talk to others from those positions. They were just what I thought of myself, but I felt that showing those things on the outside was pretentious and was posturing. In my twenties I had more disdain for people who needed to shove their personas in other people's faces than practically anyone else. It all felt desperate and a lie and I wouldn't allow myself to do it and hated when others did.
I don't know why that was such a big deal. Why was self-expression perceived with such cynicism? Maybe because I never felt my external truth and my internal truth ever matched? Maybe I just was always afraid to be challenged to prove myself worthy of the persona I was adopting. If I ever felt any of the labels that applied to me were true, rather than me trying to be something I wasn't, maybe really getting into it would have been easy. Maybe would have been fun.
I don't know when I decided everything was a lie.
I see others as I see myself, therefore everyone else is a liar? It just seems like I had a view that everything was so cliched or something. All the stuff you go through in high school and college, I had read about it, I had seen it somewhere, so the fact that I was going through it was nothing special, I was nothing special. I rebelled as a teenager, but only internally, because that's where it mattered. It ties back to the gaze of the Other. The external self is what others see, and not what you see. Anything you do for yourself is internal. If you have to wear a mohawk and a leather jacket with safety pins to be a punk, that's just to show others that you think you're a punk. That has nothing to do with what you actually are. It's all about show.
That's what's so hard about all of that. This weird distinction I make between what's for real and what's for show and thinking they don't ever match. Or thinking it's somehow a statement about someone's character that they make everything a show. While at the same time, honestly, being envious of those who do it. I see others as I see myself, therefore I view them with both admiration and contempt? I envied the arty kids in high school, but I never once thought of emulating them or trying to be one of them. Even today I get a thrill when I see anyone, of any age, with a intricately constructed external persona (hello hipsters). I'm so happy that someone can do it, when I just can't. I've learned to accept the admiration part and ignore the contemptuous part that wants to scoff at the artificiality of it. Maybe by the time I'm 80 (god forbid) I'll be a crazy lady with a purple mohawk.
I think I've always been concerned with what is real and fake, probably too concerned. Probably thinking that there's some sure way to tell the difference. Every time I tried out a persona, in my mind, it always felt like a costume. So even today my "fashion" sense is almost nonexistent. I've never really tried to decorate myself or transform myself from the outside in, even though I think that's something that could be done, carefully. Humorless, practical, utilitarian, puritanical -- those are huge forces in me. Yet I'm not actually humorless or puritanical at least, so that's something. But I do think those conservative tendencies are what lead to the cynicism, and recognizing that they're conservative and therefore less optimal, I try and reject them.
I have terrific parents who have always supported me and wanted the best for me, who have never tried to push me in a predetermined direction, but let me make my own choices. Yet I seem to still have picked up this -- not self-hate, but -- self-doubt maybe. I always fall on the side of distrusting myself or thinking the worst of myself, even as I have a strong sense of self and stand firmly in the world, not swaying with the winds of others. It's a weird thing. It's also why the comment in Conversations With Dead People between Buffy and Holden really hit home. You do have a superiority complex, and you have an inferiority complex about it. This motherfucker of a Janus-headed coin, where I in one way only really trust myself to define myself, yet I always distrust the conclusions I make about that topic because it's all a self-promoting, self-aggrandizing lie to make myself seem cooler than I am. But other people, they don't know shit about me. (Partly because I try to tell them as little as possible.)
I reframed my whatever the fuck it is not being able to express myself thing as purposeful mystery. Other people always judge me by what I look like or how I seem to act, and I look nondescript and my movements are small and quiet and smooth, so I'm giving them nothing. Therefore anything they think about me is wrong, based on incorrect assumptions. Ha! What a joke. I'm bland on the outside, but if they only knew what I was inside, but they never will. It's got to be all about fear, right? I'm afraid to be myself on the outside? Or is there nothing to translate? Maybe I'm bland on the outside because I'm essentially bland on the inside. Or maybe I just don't know what the fuck I am and lack the ability to figure it out. Kevin.
And again, anyway.
What does this backwards looking self-reflection do for me? Am I learning anything I didn't know? Am I figuring out how to mitigate the bad and accentuate the good? I really don't know. I honestly don't think that how I express myself externally is all that important, but I leave open the possibility that I'm wrong about that. Maybe that is a key to something. I'm sure some of it is the fat thing. I think of myself as ugly and that might feed into anything having to do with externalities. Not like grotesque ugly, just not at all attractive in the context of my culture. I suppose I lack confidence in my ability to present myself in any way that would make anyone overlook the basic fact of my appearance. Maybe all the rest of the self-definition springs from that. Maybe the dichotomy I mentioned above is all about it. Maybe that's the whole reason I privilege inside to outside, intellect to physicality. I've allowed that my brain is beautiful, but my body is not; therefore I ignore the external as much as possible and make the internal all important. Maybe that's the one thing that if I could get over it somehow would revolutionize my life. I don't know. On the one hand it seems too simple, but on the other hand, in all my life I've never managed to do that one thing, so maybe it's not.
And it feels so ridiculous, I know all the arguments for how stupid that whole idea is, yet it's there. I think I even know intellectually that it's not true, but I can't believe it. I'm evening feeling like crying right now, which means this is important because I just don't cry. Weird.
Maybe I should work on that more directly, privilege that as something important to change and not ignore. I don't know how. Affirmations are a lie. A cheat to try and trick yourself into believing something that's not true. That's unfortunately how I feel. Again feel, not think. You would think that if I truly put intellect ahead of everything, I could get past the unreasoning feelings like that.
Love yourself. I mean, it's not like I don't, it's just that it's not absolute. Like I feel I have to overlook my faults to love myself or something. Well, we all do that when it comes to love, right? I'm continuing to understand why I've never loved anyone enough to want to spend a significant portion of my time/life with them.
A few years ago, when I had yet another friendship blow up due to a combination of issues on both sides, after a few weeks of misery and a concatenation of self-loathing and self-pity and anger, I came to a very intellectual decision that I think ultimately made my life better. I was stuck with myself for life. I could hate myself and doubt my every move and blame myself for not being able to be a proper human or I could accept myself, faults and all. Up until then, it might have felt like a defeat, giving up on the possibility of changing myself for the better, but at that point, it was what I had to do to survive, and it made sense and made me feel a bit cleansed, made the experience at least closer to cathartic.
I made peace with myself. But I still have doubts, and I refuse to give them up because I think it is important to evaluate yourself and try to make yourself be better if you can. But accepting myself as I was at that instant was important. Maybe it and not just age has helped me reach a less histrionic view of my issues, made the abyss seem less like painful fear and more like common anxiety. But that self-acceptance was also a very internally directed handshake. It was not about accepting how I look or anything like that, it was about accepting my personality quirks. It was a step. Maybe I can work backwards.
If the core issue is that unquestioning acceptance of external -- ranges from ugly to unappealing to unremarkable -- looks as a negative, and that basic assumption leads to equal assumptions about what is really me and what is me pretending to be something I'm not, and that leads to disdain for my need to pretend to be better than I am, and that leads to disparagement of what I am that I would need to rise above it, etc., then can I work back from accepting some parts of what I am as okay to accepting that I don't need to worry about pretense versus reality -- no, it's breaking down. I don't know how to follow that thread. Does not compute.
But what does work is that my agreement with myself that day did lead to less self-hatred and more self-acceptance. It didn't lead to determining the "truth" of what was real or what was wished for or anything, it left that out of the equation. Which I think is good. The search for self-knowledge is always important and will never stop, but the need to arbitrarily say this is really what I'm like and this is a sham, this is something other people think I am and this is something I want to be is diminished. Maybe true self-knowledge is all of those things collapsed together in 4d space. Maybe there's no real way to separate them anyway. Maybe it's more important to realize that you are who you wish to be.
I guess that's all I've got for now. As usual, more questions than answers. But the hope is to get ever closer to the right questions, and this was useful. For me anyway.
Thing is, right now I can't think what I want to do. I just want to do something that's less passive. I always worry about how much stimulation I take in in an attempt to not have time to deeply reflect on "important" things, but I don't know that it's something I always do to avoid deep thought. I think it's just an inertia thing. But I've found lately that I downplay most of those kind of thoughts, either because I've entered into a deeper level of repression, or just because it feels unnecessarily histrionic to ascribe a more portentous meaning to these things.
It's that worry about complacency again, but it doesn't go anywhere. Maybe it's part of self-acceptance to not be as hard on myself as I used to be. It's probably a good thing. Of course, it could be lowered expectations. Although how they could be even lower...
Anyway.
What does it mean to waste your life? We're back to POV, something I've considered before. Wasted according to who? There's this set of things you do, this set of things you could do, this set of things you'd never do, and those set of things you don't know that you might do. I think it's important to not just do the things you do, to consider the possibilities, even to reevaluate the things you'd never do or leave yourself open to discover those things you didn't know about before. But you have to follow your own path to find the other things; I don't think you can force it. I'm into widening my environment to let other things filter in around the edges of my established world, but I'm not sure the best way to do it.
But see, that's still relatively passive. I've spent a great deal of my life as an observer, acting mostly to position myself in such a way as to see what I need to see without being seen by others looking back. Back to that idea in Cloud Atlas that you only know yourself in the gaze of the Other. If that's true, I'll never know myself because I refuse to legitimize wholly the gaze of the Other upon me. I doubt I could change that, but maybe I can still use the idea somehow. Especially now that things seem less urgent and dangerous. I'm less self-conscious, less worried about being seen now than I probably ever have been. Surely I can use that to my advantage?
If there's a way to -- not objectively, not dispassionately, but calmly? maybe -- consider the assumptions others make about me in a way that allows me to come to a new understanding of myself, that could be a good thing. I just still don't see why -- I'm a bit stubborn about that still. I don't know if I'm insisting on my perspective or running from the truth though. Probably both.
It sounds defensive, which is one thing I remember infuriating me from my youth, when I was told in an argument not to get defensive. And I remember very little from my youth, but that burning injustice still stings. How to tell the (very legitimate) difference between being overly defensive, meaning reacting without thinking to a presumed attack, and defending your view or your actions from a real attack meant to shut YOU down without having to think about the point you're making? It goes to something Jacob (and others) have said about telling girls to be polite or nice means denying them their own voice, being polite or nice is a self-abnegation, losing your voice and ceding the ground to the others around you. The Others who only see you as an adjunct to their story where they're the hero. The ultimate idea of being defined by the Other as seen in and ultimately rejected by Dollhouse.
That's part of the issue I have with that idea. Still, consensus can be a more complete picture. There are things some of those Others who are closest to you see and understand that are of value. I just -- it also goes to the idea of needing validation from another, something too many women my age and older seemed to too often succumb to in the form of their relationships with men. Not only just the idea of getting validation from the men themselves, but legitimization from society for doing the thing you're supposed to do, pairing up with a man and all that follows. It's a security thing, an on the surface easy way. Follow the track that so many do, take on the labels "everyone" does in the right order, and you always know who you are. As opposed to forging your own path and having no ready definitions to apply, no easy, well-defined personas to take on. Of course, I understand now that no path is easy, even if you do what's expected. There's always problems. But often those problems arise from the dissonance between the label you bought into and what you want and need for yourself as a labelless, real person.
So I no longer know if it's harder to be adamantly nebulous and rejecting labels or to take on labels that only fit uneasily. At least if the former, you're playing dolls with yourself, trying out different specific Barbie outfits to see which feels better and which you need to burn. Whereas if you try so hard not to allow any of the premade outfits, you've got nothing to wear and nowhere to go except a nude beach of nonidentity. Probably the best thing, and what I think the younger generations excel at, is mixing and matching. Not tossing out the wardrobe entirely, but just picking a hat here, a skirt there, whatever you want. And it's about using the labels as they're understood, but showing that you get the artificiality of them. Using that artifice to create a self-made synergy. So not rejecting the labels, not accepting them, but recognizing they're artificial constructs, and using bits and pieces as -- not fetishes, but -- symbols of deeper meaning, that meaning needing to be taken in context of all the other symbols to be understood or to be occasionally subverted or radicalized.
On one hand it feels extremely derivative, or even somethings adolescents have always done, but it's at a new level now, it's viral. And it's active, not passive, for males and females. I think it's in the knowingness of it now. Well, I can't go down that rabbit hole because all I know about kids at this remove is what I see on TV or in the movies or read. And artists have always been more knowing.
Anyway.
Not sure how I got to trying to understand -- whatever. I liked the Barbie analogy.
So back to me. :) Boring subject. How does that all help me understand life, the universe and everything? I spent my life trying to ignore the labels. I tried on some identities, but I never took them seriously. My dark observer undercut my posturings at every turn. Oh, I'm a film nerd, I'm alternative, I'm into punk, I'm a leftie, I'm an underground zine maker, I'm a city person, I'm a writer; all things I have thought about myself at different times, but I never really allowed myself to try and externally express any of it. Or to talk to others from those positions. They were just what I thought of myself, but I felt that showing those things on the outside was pretentious and was posturing. In my twenties I had more disdain for people who needed to shove their personas in other people's faces than practically anyone else. It all felt desperate and a lie and I wouldn't allow myself to do it and hated when others did.
I don't know why that was such a big deal. Why was self-expression perceived with such cynicism? Maybe because I never felt my external truth and my internal truth ever matched? Maybe I just was always afraid to be challenged to prove myself worthy of the persona I was adopting. If I ever felt any of the labels that applied to me were true, rather than me trying to be something I wasn't, maybe really getting into it would have been easy. Maybe would have been fun.
I don't know when I decided everything was a lie.
I see others as I see myself, therefore everyone else is a liar? It just seems like I had a view that everything was so cliched or something. All the stuff you go through in high school and college, I had read about it, I had seen it somewhere, so the fact that I was going through it was nothing special, I was nothing special. I rebelled as a teenager, but only internally, because that's where it mattered. It ties back to the gaze of the Other. The external self is what others see, and not what you see. Anything you do for yourself is internal. If you have to wear a mohawk and a leather jacket with safety pins to be a punk, that's just to show others that you think you're a punk. That has nothing to do with what you actually are. It's all about show.
That's what's so hard about all of that. This weird distinction I make between what's for real and what's for show and thinking they don't ever match. Or thinking it's somehow a statement about someone's character that they make everything a show. While at the same time, honestly, being envious of those who do it. I see others as I see myself, therefore I view them with both admiration and contempt? I envied the arty kids in high school, but I never once thought of emulating them or trying to be one of them. Even today I get a thrill when I see anyone, of any age, with a intricately constructed external persona (hello hipsters). I'm so happy that someone can do it, when I just can't. I've learned to accept the admiration part and ignore the contemptuous part that wants to scoff at the artificiality of it. Maybe by the time I'm 80 (god forbid) I'll be a crazy lady with a purple mohawk.
I think I've always been concerned with what is real and fake, probably too concerned. Probably thinking that there's some sure way to tell the difference. Every time I tried out a persona, in my mind, it always felt like a costume. So even today my "fashion" sense is almost nonexistent. I've never really tried to decorate myself or transform myself from the outside in, even though I think that's something that could be done, carefully. Humorless, practical, utilitarian, puritanical -- those are huge forces in me. Yet I'm not actually humorless or puritanical at least, so that's something. But I do think those conservative tendencies are what lead to the cynicism, and recognizing that they're conservative and therefore less optimal, I try and reject them.
I have terrific parents who have always supported me and wanted the best for me, who have never tried to push me in a predetermined direction, but let me make my own choices. Yet I seem to still have picked up this -- not self-hate, but -- self-doubt maybe. I always fall on the side of distrusting myself or thinking the worst of myself, even as I have a strong sense of self and stand firmly in the world, not swaying with the winds of others. It's a weird thing. It's also why the comment in Conversations With Dead People between Buffy and Holden really hit home. You do have a superiority complex, and you have an inferiority complex about it. This motherfucker of a Janus-headed coin, where I in one way only really trust myself to define myself, yet I always distrust the conclusions I make about that topic because it's all a self-promoting, self-aggrandizing lie to make myself seem cooler than I am. But other people, they don't know shit about me. (Partly because I try to tell them as little as possible.)
I reframed my whatever the fuck it is not being able to express myself thing as purposeful mystery. Other people always judge me by what I look like or how I seem to act, and I look nondescript and my movements are small and quiet and smooth, so I'm giving them nothing. Therefore anything they think about me is wrong, based on incorrect assumptions. Ha! What a joke. I'm bland on the outside, but if they only knew what I was inside, but they never will. It's got to be all about fear, right? I'm afraid to be myself on the outside? Or is there nothing to translate? Maybe I'm bland on the outside because I'm essentially bland on the inside. Or maybe I just don't know what the fuck I am and lack the ability to figure it out. Kevin.
And again, anyway.
What does this backwards looking self-reflection do for me? Am I learning anything I didn't know? Am I figuring out how to mitigate the bad and accentuate the good? I really don't know. I honestly don't think that how I express myself externally is all that important, but I leave open the possibility that I'm wrong about that. Maybe that is a key to something. I'm sure some of it is the fat thing. I think of myself as ugly and that might feed into anything having to do with externalities. Not like grotesque ugly, just not at all attractive in the context of my culture. I suppose I lack confidence in my ability to present myself in any way that would make anyone overlook the basic fact of my appearance. Maybe all the rest of the self-definition springs from that. Maybe the dichotomy I mentioned above is all about it. Maybe that's the whole reason I privilege inside to outside, intellect to physicality. I've allowed that my brain is beautiful, but my body is not; therefore I ignore the external as much as possible and make the internal all important. Maybe that's the one thing that if I could get over it somehow would revolutionize my life. I don't know. On the one hand it seems too simple, but on the other hand, in all my life I've never managed to do that one thing, so maybe it's not.
And it feels so ridiculous, I know all the arguments for how stupid that whole idea is, yet it's there. I think I even know intellectually that it's not true, but I can't believe it. I'm evening feeling like crying right now, which means this is important because I just don't cry. Weird.
Maybe I should work on that more directly, privilege that as something important to change and not ignore. I don't know how. Affirmations are a lie. A cheat to try and trick yourself into believing something that's not true. That's unfortunately how I feel. Again feel, not think. You would think that if I truly put intellect ahead of everything, I could get past the unreasoning feelings like that.
Love yourself. I mean, it's not like I don't, it's just that it's not absolute. Like I feel I have to overlook my faults to love myself or something. Well, we all do that when it comes to love, right? I'm continuing to understand why I've never loved anyone enough to want to spend a significant portion of my time/life with them.
A few years ago, when I had yet another friendship blow up due to a combination of issues on both sides, after a few weeks of misery and a concatenation of self-loathing and self-pity and anger, I came to a very intellectual decision that I think ultimately made my life better. I was stuck with myself for life. I could hate myself and doubt my every move and blame myself for not being able to be a proper human or I could accept myself, faults and all. Up until then, it might have felt like a defeat, giving up on the possibility of changing myself for the better, but at that point, it was what I had to do to survive, and it made sense and made me feel a bit cleansed, made the experience at least closer to cathartic.
I made peace with myself. But I still have doubts, and I refuse to give them up because I think it is important to evaluate yourself and try to make yourself be better if you can. But accepting myself as I was at that instant was important. Maybe it and not just age has helped me reach a less histrionic view of my issues, made the abyss seem less like painful fear and more like common anxiety. But that self-acceptance was also a very internally directed handshake. It was not about accepting how I look or anything like that, it was about accepting my personality quirks. It was a step. Maybe I can work backwards.
If the core issue is that unquestioning acceptance of external -- ranges from ugly to unappealing to unremarkable -- looks as a negative, and that basic assumption leads to equal assumptions about what is really me and what is me pretending to be something I'm not, and that leads to disdain for my need to pretend to be better than I am, and that leads to disparagement of what I am that I would need to rise above it, etc., then can I work back from accepting some parts of what I am as okay to accepting that I don't need to worry about pretense versus reality -- no, it's breaking down. I don't know how to follow that thread. Does not compute.
But what does work is that my agreement with myself that day did lead to less self-hatred and more self-acceptance. It didn't lead to determining the "truth" of what was real or what was wished for or anything, it left that out of the equation. Which I think is good. The search for self-knowledge is always important and will never stop, but the need to arbitrarily say this is really what I'm like and this is a sham, this is something other people think I am and this is something I want to be is diminished. Maybe true self-knowledge is all of those things collapsed together in 4d space. Maybe there's no real way to separate them anyway. Maybe it's more important to realize that you are who you wish to be.
I guess that's all I've got for now. As usual, more questions than answers. But the hope is to get ever closer to the right questions, and this was useful. For me anyway.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Connections to other people
So the world is trying to tell me something I don't want to hear. The idea of life being less meaningful or less fun or less "insert positive thing here" without connections to other people. It's not that I disagree so much as it feels like a pointed statement to me right now. Yeah, I know the obvious downsides to choosing to exist as a oner instead of as part of a couple or larger family. And I accept them. But I am also recognizing lately that there are less obvious downsides that I haven't considered for a while. Even little things like thinking over movies I've seen or music I've listened to, I remember that I wouldn't have seen or listened to this or that particular thing were it not recommended to me by the people I was hanging out with at a certain time in my life. Somehow that seems more significant to me than the knowledge that I don't have anyone to freakin' cuddle with at night, which is what seems to drive a lot of people into relationships. How many cultural experiences do I miss from that lack of input?
Of course, there's the internet, which provides reference services all the time. But it's almost ephemeral, surface level; it's not the shared physical experience of watching a David Lynch film and discussing it for hours and feeling on fire with ideas, or going to a Brazilian Girls concert with a friend when you'd never even heard of them before and feeling that emotional specificity that music provides.
I have friends, and I see them fairly often, so it's not a dire situation, just something that has come up recently. A reminder to not let them fall by the wayside out of lethargy or hermitage.
______________________________________SEGUE?________________________________
To my mind, Cloud Atlas was all about how our connections to other people are pretty much the only good thing in a world full of horrors, about how interacting with other people changes us, and how magical that can be. There's even one point where a character says the only way we truly know ourselves is through the eyes of the Other. Which struck me because I've spent my whole life attempting to reject definition from the outside. If that's a true statement, what does that say about my inherent abhorrence of the whole idea? I'm just not sure what to do with that. The right to self-definition is one that I consider to be of pretty primary importance. Why would we seek to have another define us?
But I get it. There is the nausea of looking into yourself and finding a lack of purchase. Maybe the eyes of the Other give you something to stand on, a reference point? I've always found the idea of myself in Others' eyes to be inevitably wrong. But maybe that's more about what I can and cannot accept about myself than it is about what is a truth about who I am.
I don't know. Through my life I've found that women especially, when they define themselves by the Other, it's almost always by the male Other, and that's problematic because historically men have viewed us as less human than men. Why would I want to be defined that way? That's not shelter from the storm; that's a lie that demeans us both. That's worse than existential pain and loss. That's the worst thing I can think of (relative to this discussion).
So is it possible for the Other's gaze to be helpful? To be less about objectification or broad generalization based on the Other's own understanding of the world rather than my specific self and more about telling me a truth that helps my self-understanding? Can I be made less abstract without being frozen in a shape of someone else's choosing?
I find it doubtful, but I can't help but be intrigued by the thought.
Of course, there's the internet, which provides reference services all the time. But it's almost ephemeral, surface level; it's not the shared physical experience of watching a David Lynch film and discussing it for hours and feeling on fire with ideas, or going to a Brazilian Girls concert with a friend when you'd never even heard of them before and feeling that emotional specificity that music provides.
I have friends, and I see them fairly often, so it's not a dire situation, just something that has come up recently. A reminder to not let them fall by the wayside out of lethargy or hermitage.
______________________________________SEGUE?________________________________
To my mind, Cloud Atlas was all about how our connections to other people are pretty much the only good thing in a world full of horrors, about how interacting with other people changes us, and how magical that can be. There's even one point where a character says the only way we truly know ourselves is through the eyes of the Other. Which struck me because I've spent my whole life attempting to reject definition from the outside. If that's a true statement, what does that say about my inherent abhorrence of the whole idea? I'm just not sure what to do with that. The right to self-definition is one that I consider to be of pretty primary importance. Why would we seek to have another define us?
But I get it. There is the nausea of looking into yourself and finding a lack of purchase. Maybe the eyes of the Other give you something to stand on, a reference point? I've always found the idea of myself in Others' eyes to be inevitably wrong. But maybe that's more about what I can and cannot accept about myself than it is about what is a truth about who I am.
I don't know. Through my life I've found that women especially, when they define themselves by the Other, it's almost always by the male Other, and that's problematic because historically men have viewed us as less human than men. Why would I want to be defined that way? That's not shelter from the storm; that's a lie that demeans us both. That's worse than existential pain and loss. That's the worst thing I can think of (relative to this discussion).
So is it possible for the Other's gaze to be helpful? To be less about objectification or broad generalization based on the Other's own understanding of the world rather than my specific self and more about telling me a truth that helps my self-understanding? Can I be made less abstract without being frozen in a shape of someone else's choosing?
I find it doubtful, but I can't help but be intrigued by the thought.
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