the only thing i know is i don't know
student worker. staff. the difference is changing from part and full time to be terms of authority. imaginably, without 40 hours a week to devote, i am unhappy. and why, when i did put in 40 hours a week all through the summer, is my studenthood also a sacrifice of status at work? alas, i wouldn't turn to sacrifice my studenthood for anything.
in a potentially dissimiliar vein, i developed an interest in identity politics before i developed an identity. or perhaps it was politics of identity, which i've found to be not only a construction but a constant reconstruction. the life i want is surrounded by books and i don't know what else, and in the process of finding out i negotiate some regularly strange circumstances. i start by ahistoricizing myself, because my brother told me in middle skool not to say anything for a week. real skool has obviously altered that but the bent is there to act slow as if to create deliberation. then when the history creeps back in it does it sideways, like an turn in the road you didn't know to take or expect.
but my identity isn't really all that determined or deliberate. and as i negotiate new places and new people, with terror, usually, which may mercifully disappear, i encounter their idea of me and their idea of my identity and engage with it somehow. they are like boundaries i bump against and must consider what to do with. and in the blank spaces i seem content to let somebody else draw before i decide if i like it. is that good?
is it permanent? reconstruction is not about wiping clean and starting over. it's always about using what's left behind and rendering something new. what is everyone else leaving behind? interpretations of my family, my friends, my sociability, my something intimidating, which i bank on, of my discipline, my way of thinking, and my behavior. am i really protecting any of it or are there just blank spaces, and does everyone else's lines ever get rubbed out, or just reinforced?
there's a separate story for how i became a gay activist and how i became a "gay activist" (although i guess both involve dr. crowley). although the identity and the action are related, they're not the same. and i'm always leading with action and following with these pieced-together, tentatively explored identities. it seems that after awhile i'd get some identity traction, and identity could overtake those other runners. i guess it does--first there's the persuasion, then the naming, then being persuaded of the name. perhaps it's more of a proximal development, like crawling across a really big cargo net.
in a potentially dissimiliar vein, i developed an interest in identity politics before i developed an identity. or perhaps it was politics of identity, which i've found to be not only a construction but a constant reconstruction. the life i want is surrounded by books and i don't know what else, and in the process of finding out i negotiate some regularly strange circumstances. i start by ahistoricizing myself, because my brother told me in middle skool not to say anything for a week. real skool has obviously altered that but the bent is there to act slow as if to create deliberation. then when the history creeps back in it does it sideways, like an turn in the road you didn't know to take or expect.
but my identity isn't really all that determined or deliberate. and as i negotiate new places and new people, with terror, usually, which may mercifully disappear, i encounter their idea of me and their idea of my identity and engage with it somehow. they are like boundaries i bump against and must consider what to do with. and in the blank spaces i seem content to let somebody else draw before i decide if i like it. is that good?
is it permanent? reconstruction is not about wiping clean and starting over. it's always about using what's left behind and rendering something new. what is everyone else leaving behind? interpretations of my family, my friends, my sociability, my something intimidating, which i bank on, of my discipline, my way of thinking, and my behavior. am i really protecting any of it or are there just blank spaces, and does everyone else's lines ever get rubbed out, or just reinforced?
there's a separate story for how i became a gay activist and how i became a "gay activist" (although i guess both involve dr. crowley). although the identity and the action are related, they're not the same. and i'm always leading with action and following with these pieced-together, tentatively explored identities. it seems that after awhile i'd get some identity traction, and identity could overtake those other runners. i guess it does--first there's the persuasion, then the naming, then being persuaded of the name. perhaps it's more of a proximal development, like crawling across a really big cargo net.