counting at war (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kerpingtack) wrote2009-08-12 05:22 pm
kerpingtack) wrote2009-08-12 05:22 pm
never the, never the, never the, never the less
I'm in the library right now. The guy sitting across from me is, like, dying of fatigue. He keeps slumping over and sleeping and waking up fitfully every 20 minutes or so to look around, reposition himself, and sleep again. Poor guy. It's hard to nap at these desks. They're a little too low to be comfortable. I've been there, buddy, just hang on.
My defense mechanisms are flawed, but they're familiar and as far as I know, they work to cushion the short-term hurt. This is good, even if it means I'm setting myself for a long and lonely life, since the short-term is already difficult enough. I get crushed when I forget my ID card and can't see the financial aid counselor. Hahahah I'm still kinda bummed. :( Can't do anything right for the year 2009!
I forgot the simple love of finding books on your own, without recommendations or preconceptions. I haven't read books like that in a long time. I found Maile Meloy through one of her short stories and read Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter within a week. :O! This is like the first time in three years that I've read like that. Just books! That I read! For no other purpose! Than the fact! That I wanted to read them!
I remember when I was little and I would trawl the library looking for books. Remember that little teaser page children's books had at the very beginning of the books? I'd use those, the cover, and the back cover to decide whether I wanted to read the book or not. It wasn't a particularly discerning process, since I read a lot of crap. It was more important that I had something to read than whether I had something good to read. I used to read all the time. I brought a book with me everywhere. My dad sometimes got irritated with me for doing that. I read at the table and in the car and the dark, waiting for the car to pass a streetlamp so I could catch another sentence or so. I miss that feeling of knowing what I wanted to do.
It used to be pretty uncomplicated, but gradually I felt pressure to read "smart" things, and then pressure to read things "smartly." What was the point of reading things if I didn't think about them, if I didn't understand them? If I didn't enjoy them? I don't think anyone pressured me, I just thought it was something I should do to be liked or be smarter or be a better person or something. Freshman year of high school was the last year I read a lot of books. I read novels' worth in fics, and I love fic; in a lot of ways I think fic is better than ~real~ writing, but I was surprised by how much I missed just opening a book and not knowing anything or anyone inside and going in anyway, and liking it. There's a discovery to it. I missed that.
Sleepy Dude left and now a trio of annoying chatty friends are sitting across from me. Shut the fuck up, now is not the time for giggling and troubleshooting your stupid laptops together. GO AWAY. *misanthropic*
I am sad sad sad in my heart. How did I fuck this up so badly? GIANT confluence of idiocy. I'm so tired and worn out.
Over the weekend the thought occurred to me that maybe I had divorced myself so much from my wants that I don't know how to reconnect with them again. I wanted so much when I was in middle school. I made endless lists of the things I wanted to buy and get. Plus I was really really lonely then. It was overwhelming. It's why I understand how JJB feels when he like CRIES over not being able to get his Speed Racer track set or whatever. But it was bad to want so much materially, and it hurt to want so constantly. But now I feel like I don't want anything except to go home and to never want anything again, which cant be exactly healthy. And maybe that's also why I'm so idk idk all the time and I don't know what I'm feeling. Maybe I don't let myself feel or want or do anything, for fear of succumbing to my younger, needy, lonely self, the self that was so disgustingly open with want. All immature and burdensome and shit. SIGH!!!
I yam hungry.
My defense mechanisms are flawed, but they're familiar and as far as I know, they work to cushion the short-term hurt. This is good, even if it means I'm setting myself for a long and lonely life, since the short-term is already difficult enough. I get crushed when I forget my ID card and can't see the financial aid counselor. Hahahah I'm still kinda bummed. :( Can't do anything right for the year 2009!
I forgot the simple love of finding books on your own, without recommendations or preconceptions. I haven't read books like that in a long time. I found Maile Meloy through one of her short stories and read Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter within a week. :O! This is like the first time in three years that I've read like that. Just books! That I read! For no other purpose! Than the fact! That I wanted to read them!
I remember when I was little and I would trawl the library looking for books. Remember that little teaser page children's books had at the very beginning of the books? I'd use those, the cover, and the back cover to decide whether I wanted to read the book or not. It wasn't a particularly discerning process, since I read a lot of crap. It was more important that I had something to read than whether I had something good to read. I used to read all the time. I brought a book with me everywhere. My dad sometimes got irritated with me for doing that. I read at the table and in the car and the dark, waiting for the car to pass a streetlamp so I could catch another sentence or so. I miss that feeling of knowing what I wanted to do.
It used to be pretty uncomplicated, but gradually I felt pressure to read "smart" things, and then pressure to read things "smartly." What was the point of reading things if I didn't think about them, if I didn't understand them? If I didn't enjoy them? I don't think anyone pressured me, I just thought it was something I should do to be liked or be smarter or be a better person or something. Freshman year of high school was the last year I read a lot of books. I read novels' worth in fics, and I love fic; in a lot of ways I think fic is better than ~real~ writing, but I was surprised by how much I missed just opening a book and not knowing anything or anyone inside and going in anyway, and liking it. There's a discovery to it. I missed that.
Sleepy Dude left and now a trio of annoying chatty friends are sitting across from me. Shut the fuck up, now is not the time for giggling and troubleshooting your stupid laptops together. GO AWAY. *misanthropic*
I am sad sad sad in my heart. How did I fuck this up so badly? GIANT confluence of idiocy. I'm so tired and worn out.
Over the weekend the thought occurred to me that maybe I had divorced myself so much from my wants that I don't know how to reconnect with them again. I wanted so much when I was in middle school. I made endless lists of the things I wanted to buy and get. Plus I was really really lonely then. It was overwhelming. It's why I understand how JJB feels when he like CRIES over not being able to get his Speed Racer track set or whatever. But it was bad to want so much materially, and it hurt to want so constantly. But now I feel like I don't want anything except to go home and to never want anything again, which cant be exactly healthy. And maybe that's also why I'm so idk idk all the time and I don't know what I'm feeling. Maybe I don't let myself feel or want or do anything, for fear of succumbing to my younger, needy, lonely self, the self that was so disgustingly open with want. All immature and burdensome and shit. SIGH!!!
I yam hungry.
must stop writing you essays
With the books - I started feeling kind of guilty about reading quite early on, so I didn't get that time of reading lots and lots, I've always mostly had to force myself a bit and I pick books that I feel will improve my brain in some way, telling myself it'll be tough to begin with but I'll thank myself by then end, which is usually true, but doesn't ever make me excited and giddy to open a new book. Which seems a shame. I think fanfic was always my escape from that, something that, to begin with, I devoured ravenously and completely without thinking.
I read novels' worth in fics, and I love fic; in a lot of ways I think fic is better than ~real~ writing
I understand this, particularly in the context of how relationships and sex are handled in 'real' books - and in film & TV come to that. What's with all this fade to black shit? We're missing the best part! I like and I'm interested in sex written by women for women (hopefully not horribly sexist saying that) - oh wait, DH Lawrence. I take it back. But I do like fanfic for its unrepentant revelling in every nuance of a relationship, the care and attention (at least sometimes) with the build up and the sex. But do you like fanfic for the fact that it's in such opposition to 'serious' writing? And that on a very basic level it refuses to take itself too seriously or impose any literary snobbishness? I do think there's good things about this, but I guess I partly wish that we, readers writers of fanfic, thought more of it, had higher standards and recognised the smartness and 'potential' of fanfic. But then I think that's what's essential to the nature of fanfic and fanculture generally - anything goes. No 'it SHOULD be this', or 'it's WRONG to write that'. It's full of contradictions and there's good alongside bad - but that's fanfic. That's our brains.
Re: must stop writing you essays
Lord, yeah, it was still summer break when I wrote this but I voluntarily took summer school in a vain attempt to graduate within four years. HAHAHA IT WAS A TERRIBLE MISTAKE D:
Libraries are TRAPS! I work at the main research library at UCLA and it's like built to frustrate people. UC Berkeley's main library is even worse. It's a giant catacomb, and you can't use their printers without a copy card and the staff is bored and unhelpful because no one wants to work at the library during the summer.
I forced myself to read Literature when I was younger too, but it never stuck and I went back to the Baby-Sitters' Club and Sweet Valley High. I remember plowing doggedly through Jane Eyre when I was 10, not understanding a thing. I thought the wife-in-the-attic thing was a fantasy sequence for, like, 100 pages. This dream is SO LONG When does it go back to real life?
I have a whole mess of thoughts on why Fic > Real Books! I discovered fic when I was young and not quite aware of how male-dominated, um, EVERYTHING is. What a fucking amazing thing it is for fandom to be a female-majority space. If it weren't for fic, where else would you read sex that actually appealed to you? You would have to put up with SO many heaving breasts and swollen manhoods. Not that you don't get that in fic, but you have a lot more options, I think, because anyone can post and write what they want. And for the most part, that writing is undiluted by excessive editing/~censorship and marketing considerations. What you see in fandom is not the product of publishing politics and who has connections and who is making money off of what kind of writing. I'm not explaining this well. FIC = GOOD FOR PORNY ID STROKING.
I wouldn't say that I like fic BECAUSE it rejects the stricter conventions of 'Real Books,' but in effect, that's kind of how it turns out. There's so much less heartache and risk and ~struggle involved with fic in terms of getting your writing out there (the publishing business sounds like a nightmare to me omg), and like zero pressure to write in a certain way. At the same time, I don't think that the easiness of fic lessens the affection and drive most fic writers feel toward writing itself. I think fic is stranger, funnier, more personal, and much more imaginative than a lot of Real Books. (Not even getting into how direct comments from the community of readers and ~peers help define fic as the best evar.) I understand what you're saying about how much BETTER fic could be -- there could ALWAYS be moar good!fic-- but I'm hella complacent, I'm happy to accept the bad with the good. Actually I really like that fic runs the gamut, since I figure everyone's getting something out of it. (Though god, there should REALLY be more good long fics that don't get all 'law of diminishing returns.' MOAR LONG FIC FOREVERRRR.)
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