(no subject)
She comes from a long line of quiet intellectual types, wary and anxious on the way to visit the outer-family regions, and never quite able to see the merit in engaging at the lower levels.
I don't care about: football, 'true crime' stories, anything that you saw on A Current Affair, the latest beauty treatment or recipe involving some brandnamed cereal, reality television, fad diets. You don't care about: philosophy, politics, books that don't make the bestsellers lists, films with no one attractive in them, vegetarianism, intellectual curiousity, or an independent media, but you might have canned beliefs about them - "the media, the media is biased" - like it's a revelation.
It means, though, not learning to relate to anyone. Time spent learning to smile politely and suppress the questions she wanted to ask while she feigns an interest in the latest scandal, story, celebrity secret was time spent suppressing that which was lively. It means now she walks into a room quite confident her views are boring, elitist, intellectual wank that it is impolite to subject people to. Arrogant, most definitely, but the kind of arrogance which breeds humility and shyness. She never really learned how to walk in your world.
The sniff with which it was said, "Oh, an academic" as though there's something inherently dishonest about earning a living removed from manual labour and dealing with people. As though facts, science, methodology, debate - these things are somehow unclean. As though drawing a wage for it is cheating someone, somewhere, who does 'real work'.
She went to university and learned about class politics, worked urban proletariat jobs and felt the disconnect everytime she used a word with more than three syllables in it. She let strange men in navy bomber jackets who reeked of Winnie Blues breathe smoke in her face and call her 'doll', in penance for her pretensions to a world outside this sphere. When the revolution comes she's not first against the wall, but somewhere in the middle with her compatriots - pale and weedy from hours in the library, with their deeply suspicious knowledge and middle-class guilt.
I don't care about: football, 'true crime' stories, anything that you saw on A Current Affair, the latest beauty treatment or recipe involving some brandnamed cereal, reality television, fad diets. You don't care about: philosophy, politics, books that don't make the bestsellers lists, films with no one attractive in them, vegetarianism, intellectual curiousity, or an independent media, but you might have canned beliefs about them - "the media, the media is biased" - like it's a revelation.
It means, though, not learning to relate to anyone. Time spent learning to smile politely and suppress the questions she wanted to ask while she feigns an interest in the latest scandal, story, celebrity secret was time spent suppressing that which was lively. It means now she walks into a room quite confident her views are boring, elitist, intellectual wank that it is impolite to subject people to. Arrogant, most definitely, but the kind of arrogance which breeds humility and shyness. She never really learned how to walk in your world.
The sniff with which it was said, "Oh, an academic" as though there's something inherently dishonest about earning a living removed from manual labour and dealing with people. As though facts, science, methodology, debate - these things are somehow unclean. As though drawing a wage for it is cheating someone, somewhere, who does 'real work'.
She went to university and learned about class politics, worked urban proletariat jobs and felt the disconnect everytime she used a word with more than three syllables in it. She let strange men in navy bomber jackets who reeked of Winnie Blues breathe smoke in her face and call her 'doll', in penance for her pretensions to a world outside this sphere. When the revolution comes she's not first against the wall, but somewhere in the middle with her compatriots - pale and weedy from hours in the library, with their deeply suspicious knowledge and middle-class guilt.