Looking at Wrong Planet's narrative and numbers, and King_Oni's recent posts, I wonder if the ability to define myself not by issues and others, but by interests and loves, is what would make the difference between repelling and attracting positive things in life.
How do I turn my engine into a self-supportive drive without alienating social people, when even work can't give enough structure to enable it?
to be continued
Now Being Continued in the Library
I really thought that was going somewhere yesterday (yesterday?), and now I just think it's profound in the way that circles and zeroes are profound.
I have always felt I was pursuing interests and loves, and they consistently lead me into issues and others, or issues with others. My loves are not common loves, my interests are so intellectual as to be alienating.
It took a visit to the library for me to notice how this was affecting me now.
I've been reeling all day from the initial visit to this new counselor, who for a counselor is a pretty good interrogator. Her questions start on the very second of my last answer, for so long that I found myself short of breath, feeling pressured to perform, perform: I flung my hands up and managed a strangled "I'm starting to feel like this is an interview" and gasped a little, and she backed off, saying "I'm sorry, I'm just trying to get some data."
Oh God. Do I do that? Is the shoe on the other foot?
Back home, I crawled into bed to recover, and then back out to the library, because where else does something like me run when there is no work or school?
At the library, interesting books may be fugitive or frequent: either I see nothing interesting, or I see no end of interesting things. Today, however...
As usual, I lugged an improbable stack back to my seat at the long table among the stacks. My haul includes three books on the art and history of the ancient Inca, a light novel featuring the Scottish working class by a probably-famous novelist, a couple of police procedurals that I'll consume like candy, and which will be just as memorable.
Why do I choose what I choose?
What's Checked Out of the Library
I must come to the library to check out myself. The books are incidental, or coincidental, with who I am that day and how self-aware I am that day. My selections are for the person I was, or the time when I was clear on who I was or liked who I was, a dashboard of controls to get me back into the wormhole and out to resurrect someone who may no longer exist: a memory of myself that is still a possibility for myself. It's not until I get home, the insistent representative of present as well as past, that I look at my books and think: what was I thinking?
It's as if reading at home could be as restrictive as writing at home.
Lately, I've been having a great deal of difficulty reading what I bring home. It's as if my components can't quite agree about suspending disbelief long enough to enjoy fiction, or sustaining interest long enough to enjoy fact.
I do like fiction. It's the cheapest way to explore the givens of the unwritten social rules and why they shouldn't be broken. Fiction is about conflict, decision, resolution: the greatest of it outlasts the author and encompasses the consistent human concerns and problems for any life in every age. Fiction isn't fact, but it is a form of truth.
I also like fact. It's reusable and accumulates into a decisive model for a specific part of the world at a specific point in time. It's rarely Truth, but it's often timely.
Historical fiction, and geography, can bridge these gaps for me, if the author can avoid errors that shake the fragile suspension bridge, where I've left the house and my problems, and gone to another time and place. My body ceases to suffer the afflictions of my thoughts while I eavesdrop on lives that never existed, or might never have existed, in lands that went by another name before the white man roared out of the north like a Biblical fury, to rewrite the creation myths and replace the original stories.
Ubuntu, Again
And here I step out of myself and into an identity no more comfortable than the one I left. The white man even replaced his own stories: today these hairless and colorless great apes increasingly strive to obliterate their own self-awareness in alcohol, drugs, autism, and psychoses of every stripe and kind, seeking to escape the abyss they opened and have stared so long into, the abyss that has become a mouth devouring so many cultures.
Ubuntu. It's back. If a person is a person through other people, if a culture is a culture by recognition of other cultures, where does that actually leave me? Where does it leave you? If you and I are not careful, it leaves us in a Procrustean Bed.
How do I turn my engine into a self-supportive drive without alienating social people, when even work can't give enough structure to enable it?
to be continued
Now Being Continued in the Library
I really thought that was going somewhere yesterday (yesterday?), and now I just think it's profound in the way that circles and zeroes are profound.
I have always felt I was pursuing interests and loves, and they consistently lead me into issues and others, or issues with others. My loves are not common loves, my interests are so intellectual as to be alienating.
It took a visit to the library for me to notice how this was affecting me now.
I've been reeling all day from the initial visit to this new counselor, who for a counselor is a pretty good interrogator. Her questions start on the very second of my last answer, for so long that I found myself short of breath, feeling pressured to perform, perform: I flung my hands up and managed a strangled "I'm starting to feel like this is an interview" and gasped a little, and she backed off, saying "I'm sorry, I'm just trying to get some data."
Oh God. Do I do that? Is the shoe on the other foot?
Back home, I crawled into bed to recover, and then back out to the library, because where else does something like me run when there is no work or school?
At the library, interesting books may be fugitive or frequent: either I see nothing interesting, or I see no end of interesting things. Today, however...
As usual, I lugged an improbable stack back to my seat at the long table among the stacks. My haul includes three books on the art and history of the ancient Inca, a light novel featuring the Scottish working class by a probably-famous novelist, a couple of police procedurals that I'll consume like candy, and which will be just as memorable.
Why do I choose what I choose?
What's Checked Out of the Library
I must come to the library to check out myself. The books are incidental, or coincidental, with who I am that day and how self-aware I am that day. My selections are for the person I was, or the time when I was clear on who I was or liked who I was, a dashboard of controls to get me back into the wormhole and out to resurrect someone who may no longer exist: a memory of myself that is still a possibility for myself. It's not until I get home, the insistent representative of present as well as past, that I look at my books and think: what was I thinking?
It's as if reading at home could be as restrictive as writing at home.
Lately, I've been having a great deal of difficulty reading what I bring home. It's as if my components can't quite agree about suspending disbelief long enough to enjoy fiction, or sustaining interest long enough to enjoy fact.
I do like fiction. It's the cheapest way to explore the givens of the unwritten social rules and why they shouldn't be broken. Fiction is about conflict, decision, resolution: the greatest of it outlasts the author and encompasses the consistent human concerns and problems for any life in every age. Fiction isn't fact, but it is a form of truth.
I also like fact. It's reusable and accumulates into a decisive model for a specific part of the world at a specific point in time. It's rarely Truth, but it's often timely.
Historical fiction, and geography, can bridge these gaps for me, if the author can avoid errors that shake the fragile suspension bridge, where I've left the house and my problems, and gone to another time and place. My body ceases to suffer the afflictions of my thoughts while I eavesdrop on lives that never existed, or might never have existed, in lands that went by another name before the white man roared out of the north like a Biblical fury, to rewrite the creation myths and replace the original stories.
Ubuntu, Again
And here I step out of myself and into an identity no more comfortable than the one I left. The white man even replaced his own stories: today these hairless and colorless great apes increasingly strive to obliterate their own self-awareness in alcohol, drugs, autism, and psychoses of every stripe and kind, seeking to escape the abyss they opened and have stared so long into, the abyss that has become a mouth devouring so many cultures.
Ubuntu. It's back. If a person is a person through other people, if a culture is a culture by recognition of other cultures, where does that actually leave me? Where does it leave you? If you and I are not careful, it leaves us in a Procrustean Bed.
