(Untitled)

[apiphile]

Poetry

flaws in the human condition

Blog Posts

100 Works of Art: The Dying SlaveThink how many people look unreal when you look at them. Like background material. Not the normal-looking people, who are just other people going through their lives like you. Normal people have bags under their eyes and probably by their feet. They sit next to you

Comments

[chess]

I've never really understood the heroes thing, and I am generally surprised when people express that they are proud of me. Currently I am hoping that anyone worth listening to would give me the advice 'go back to bed and stop worrying' because my health is shit and my stupid headvoices keep telling me that I'm just malingering and that real people just suck it up and get on with life.

[apiphile]

Your headvoices are demonstrably lying, though. Lots of real people take sick days, sick weeks, sick months. You will no doubt have encountered them.

[chess]

Yeah, but, y'know, they're _really_ ill. Or something...

[apiphile]

They *think* they're ill. If you *think* you're ill, stay in bed.

[wolfy_writing]

People tend to be proud of me for weird, superficial reasons that show they don't know me. (There are people who need real courage and determination to go to work in the morning, to walk to the end of the block, to wander up and down the supermarket shelves buying food, to get out of bed at all, but that's not something you can tell about a person by looking.) So even when people say they're proud of me, or admire me, my first habit is to wonder if it's that pity-tinged "Oh, you poor brave cripple" admiration which I'm apparently supposed to feel good about having.

[apiphile]

It sucks considering you actually DO things worth being proud of (pulling an entire language from a completely different linguistic family out of your butt in a comparatively short space of time. Consistently producing art and writing while travelling around the world & talking to new people which from my PoV is like: hahaha I would go into a meltdown).

[wolfy_writing]

That's funny about the language thing, because I was learning it with a group of people, and all but one of them were significantly better at it than I was, so I tend to default to thinking "Nearly anyone could have done better", unless I remind myself that it wasn't exactly a randomly-selected group, and many of them already knew Chinese. (They'd say "Well, you haven't learned any Asian languages, so it's harder", which would frustrate me, because I had, but the Austronesian family is one of the easier language families to work with, and almost entirely unlike Vietnamese.)

[apiphile]

Exactly, you were learning a completely new language family and from a different starting point than everyone else. :) I think you kind of look up at people who have advantages you don't and say I SHOULD BE DOING AS WELL AS THEM instead of looking sideways at who is in your field and saying SHIT I'M DOING REALLY WELL.

[ruthi]

Heroes? ... I can't think of heroes I have.

The lines that come to mind are 'work. the most important thing is work' from Songs for Drella... and 'Make good art /make glorious mistakes' which is N. Gaiman . And they both mean the same thing.

I don't think it's true, that some people are unreal. I think each person has a world inside them, and they edit what they show outside so that people would love them. Or not hate them. Or not notice them hard enough to attack them.
I mean I wonder through the world and act like some people are background and sometimes I try to be quiet and not get in people's way and be background.
But if I stop and think about it nobody is background.

I don't think anybody would be proud of me.

I am sometimes proud of my friends - when they do a thing or make a thing - but it feels so awkward to tell them. It feels so condescending: who am I to tell them I am proud of them? Where is the high mountain I can stand on?

[apiphile]

People who hold themselves up as moral arbiters and are obsessed with making other people pure are not real people. If I let them be real people they will prevent me from being a real person. They are welcome to continue their grim, freakish lives, but not to hold court and determine that other people are unclean and unworthy and must be heckled, harried, and harmed for the sake of someone's sense of purity.

Who says you have to be above someone to feel pride in their achievements?

[ruthi]

Oh, I see what you mean. Okay, yes: there are people who *want* unrealness -- ''morality'', ''purity'' -- as though it were a good thing.

I don't have to be above someone, it just - in my head, 'I'm proud of you' is something a teacher says to a student, or a parent to a child. Someone who lead or contributed to the person getting there. So I feel a bit weird saying it to a friend, especially when I am aware I had no part in their achievement.

[apiphile]

Ah but then the pride becomes a selfish thing because it's the end result of something you contributed to, I find it's a lot easier to be proud of people if they have achieved something you know has been difficult for them, and done it mostly by themselves or entirely by themselves or just without you DOING anything.

[coniferous_you]

The hero question is tough. I have lots of mentors, which I guess would be like heroes to me, and I like to think I've pleased them with the direction my life has taken. But if we're talking about mentors who can't give advice anymore, on account of being dead, I'd say my grandmother would at least be happy that I'm writing (which she gave up to raise a family) and running (which she quit for the same reason).

Sometimes I feel unreal. I talk a lot and I grin a little too sincerely and all of that, but sometimes I just feel like I don't speak the language or any language and I'm getting left behind, although it's not really fear or perfectionism or anything. But I guess I kind of make my way, so who knows.

Ah, the incendiary posts lately!

[apiphile]

I meant more in the sense of idols and heroes, people who don't necessarily know you but who you look up to, but then I remembered for most people those are family members and influential elders...

[coniferous_you]

Yeah, I think you are right.

But to answer your question the way it was intended, I look up to all kinds of writers, academic and non-academic. I try not to think about what they might think about my work, because then I get really intimidated and find it hard to write or research after reading their writing.