Little kid miss-ive
The other night I got back home from a family vacation/wedding, and one of the first things I did was get on the computer and catch up on everything I'd missed in the internet-world. So I read all my daily webcomics and checked my email and checked a couple of computer-game-related forums. Then, something felt like it was missing, so I did it all again.
After I realized what I'd done, I remembered that I used to have blogs like Anthropik and Ran Prieur and Tom Campbell and Dan Bartlett and Village Blog and so on bookmarked, but not anymore, so I decided to check in on the "anti-civ" blog community. And after reading through posts on the latest argument between Jason and John Michael Greer, and catching up on Ran's latest, and posting a few times at Village Blog, I stopped for a bit. I remembered why I had to remove these blogs from my bookmarks in the first place. I remembered why I don't read books by authors like Alice Miller or Derrick Jensen anymore, why I don't read any non-fiction anymore. I remembered why I don't watch the news and why I don't talk to people. I remembered why all I ever do (when I can't play with kids at least) is sit in my room, listen to music, and play computer games.
I. HATE. EVERYTHING. ELSE.
When I was younger you couldn't PAY me to engage in so-called "adult" conversations. I *hated* non-fiction books. I *hated* any long and overly-descriptive works of fiction. I loved stories, though, particularly short stories, unless it was a novel where I liked the characters. And what I'm realizing is that my interest in stories and people is the only thing that interests me about anyone else. Everything else is bullshit.
I don't want to hear your theories. I don't want to hear your intellectual arguments. I don't want to hear logic, I don't want to talk to you about what I'm going to do with my life, I don't want to talk to you about who I'm going to be when I grow up, I don't want to hear about the "Real World", I'm TIRED of this bullshit. All I really want to do is play with other kids. At the family vacation/wedding, any time I wasn't reading (I read The Giver by Lois Lowry and Bluebeard by Vonnegut) or playing with the kids I was utterly bored.
It seems that at some point a few years ago, I developed a tolerance for the quote unquote "adult" world. I would proudly point out my report card and SAT and my accomplishments in my extracurricular activities, impress people with my worldly knowledge and perspective. I was eager to make a contribution, to change (save!) the world, to be a hero! And while I'm in nowhere near the same "life situation" (whatever the fuck that means) that I was then, I find that this drive still remains.
but FUCK that. Fuck trying to impress people. Fuck trying to become an "adult" in someone else's eyes. Fuck comments about how big I've gotten, how articulate I am, how proud I must make my parents. HA.
And FUCK huge ideologies. When I was younger I never wanted a job -- why the fuck did I spend two years rationalizing this with a huge ideology? I wanted money (for toys and games!) but I rarely wanted to work for it. I would always skip out on the church service (adult and boring!) to go to RE to be with the other kids, but I often wanted to skip out on RE (often very suffocating, when the "teachers" had an agenda) with the other kids and just go play outside.
And fuck self-improvement and puritanism. The paleo diet?! PAH. I don't want to talk or think about dieting, ... ugh. As a kid I enjoyed eating all kinds of sugary nonsense. I still do. I'm now conscious of how a lot of it is so-called fake (artificial) food made to look/taste like food made with quality ingredients, but I still like the real foods! I don't care if it has butter or milk in it. I don't care if it has X # of calories! I don't care if it has cholesterol or zomgsaturatedfat or Red Dye #5 or MSG or anything. I don't want to "Be Healthy". I don't want to "Get Better". I don't want to improve!
There is NOTHING wrong with me! There is nothing WRONG with me! There is nothing wrong with ME! THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME!
...
I joined an Ultimate league as something fun to do this summer. Ultimate is a team game, sort of but not really like a mixture between soccer/football, except played with a disc/Frisbee. It's a very competitive league though, and I'm not very skilled at Ultimate and I'm pretty "out of shape" because of resigning from life a while back. And so last night I skipped out on a match. I just didn't want to go. I was feeling a lot of pressure to go out and run and make myself better and practice and improve and impress people on my team and make good runs and play good defense and win the game and be the best! But I don't enjoy any of this. The only thing I enjoy about that scenario is imagining it happening! But I balk at actually doing any of this, and it's no surprise either. It's the same bullshit that I hate from earlier.
I had to quit soccer for the same reason. I hated performing, especially high pressure performance. I would go to practices and would play "much better" than I would in a counting match because of the difference in pressure. And even in practice I could only play when I didn't have coaches and other players watching me and criticizing. For this reason I enjoyed myself the most ("did the best") in small-sided games where there was no goal except possession of the ball.
I could go on and tell hundreds of stories about how pressure has led to painful experiences and insecurity. But I'm writing this for myself and I already know those stories.
What I want to do instead is help to create and be a part of an environment of play and creativity where pressure doesn't interfere. An environment like that on Whose Line is it Anyway? and within an old-cat jazz band or with a dance partner you're not trying to impress or just any time with little kids. I don't know many stories like this, from my past or from anyone else, so I'll write (enact!) them myself. I get to invent a whole new world. Fun!
After I realized what I'd done, I remembered that I used to have blogs like Anthropik and Ran Prieur and Tom Campbell and Dan Bartlett and Village Blog and so on bookmarked, but not anymore, so I decided to check in on the "anti-civ" blog community. And after reading through posts on the latest argument between Jason and John Michael Greer, and catching up on Ran's latest, and posting a few times at Village Blog, I stopped for a bit. I remembered why I had to remove these blogs from my bookmarks in the first place. I remembered why I don't read books by authors like Alice Miller or Derrick Jensen anymore, why I don't read any non-fiction anymore. I remembered why I don't watch the news and why I don't talk to people. I remembered why all I ever do (when I can't play with kids at least) is sit in my room, listen to music, and play computer games.
I. HATE. EVERYTHING. ELSE.
When I was younger you couldn't PAY me to engage in so-called "adult" conversations. I *hated* non-fiction books. I *hated* any long and overly-descriptive works of fiction. I loved stories, though, particularly short stories, unless it was a novel where I liked the characters. And what I'm realizing is that my interest in stories and people is the only thing that interests me about anyone else. Everything else is bullshit.
I don't want to hear your theories. I don't want to hear your intellectual arguments. I don't want to hear logic, I don't want to talk to you about what I'm going to do with my life, I don't want to talk to you about who I'm going to be when I grow up, I don't want to hear about the "Real World", I'm TIRED of this bullshit. All I really want to do is play with other kids. At the family vacation/wedding, any time I wasn't reading (I read The Giver by Lois Lowry and Bluebeard by Vonnegut) or playing with the kids I was utterly bored.
It seems that at some point a few years ago, I developed a tolerance for the quote unquote "adult" world. I would proudly point out my report card and SAT and my accomplishments in my extracurricular activities, impress people with my worldly knowledge and perspective. I was eager to make a contribution, to change (save!) the world, to be a hero! And while I'm in nowhere near the same "life situation" (whatever the fuck that means) that I was then, I find that this drive still remains.
but FUCK that. Fuck trying to impress people. Fuck trying to become an "adult" in someone else's eyes. Fuck comments about how big I've gotten, how articulate I am, how proud I must make my parents. HA.
And FUCK huge ideologies. When I was younger I never wanted a job -- why the fuck did I spend two years rationalizing this with a huge ideology? I wanted money (for toys and games!) but I rarely wanted to work for it. I would always skip out on the church service (adult and boring!) to go to RE to be with the other kids, but I often wanted to skip out on RE (often very suffocating, when the "teachers" had an agenda) with the other kids and just go play outside.
And fuck self-improvement and puritanism. The paleo diet?! PAH. I don't want to talk or think about dieting, ... ugh. As a kid I enjoyed eating all kinds of sugary nonsense. I still do. I'm now conscious of how a lot of it is so-called fake (artificial) food made to look/taste like food made with quality ingredients, but I still like the real foods! I don't care if it has butter or milk in it. I don't care if it has X # of calories! I don't care if it has cholesterol or zomgsaturatedfat or Red Dye #5 or MSG or anything. I don't want to "Be Healthy". I don't want to "Get Better". I don't want to improve!
There is NOTHING wrong with me! There is nothing WRONG with me! There is nothing wrong with ME! THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME!
...
I joined an Ultimate league as something fun to do this summer. Ultimate is a team game, sort of but not really like a mixture between soccer/football, except played with a disc/Frisbee. It's a very competitive league though, and I'm not very skilled at Ultimate and I'm pretty "out of shape" because of resigning from life a while back. And so last night I skipped out on a match. I just didn't want to go. I was feeling a lot of pressure to go out and run and make myself better and practice and improve and impress people on my team and make good runs and play good defense and win the game and be the best! But I don't enjoy any of this. The only thing I enjoy about that scenario is imagining it happening! But I balk at actually doing any of this, and it's no surprise either. It's the same bullshit that I hate from earlier.
I had to quit soccer for the same reason. I hated performing, especially high pressure performance. I would go to practices and would play "much better" than I would in a counting match because of the difference in pressure. And even in practice I could only play when I didn't have coaches and other players watching me and criticizing. For this reason I enjoyed myself the most ("did the best") in small-sided games where there was no goal except possession of the ball.
I could go on and tell hundreds of stories about how pressure has led to painful experiences and insecurity. But I'm writing this for myself and I already know those stories.
What I want to do instead is help to create and be a part of an environment of play and creativity where pressure doesn't interfere. An environment like that on Whose Line is it Anyway? and within an old-cat jazz band or with a dance partner you're not trying to impress or just any time with little kids. I don't know many stories like this, from my past or from anyone else, so I'll write (enact!) them myself. I get to invent a whole new world. Fun!
posted by Devin at
11:00 AM
6 Comments:
My favorite Aldous Huxley quote is, "we're all geniuses until the age of ten."
The more I try to understand why we do the things we do, why our culture conducts itself the way it does, and how members of this culture do anything they can..indeed think anything they can..to justify a psychopathological lifestyle, the more I realize how right I was about everything when I was a kid. I think a lot of us, through school, pop culture, science, technology..etc, learn to ignore our own intuition and common sense.
Arggh, just had a my comment lost to the crap NZ internet service.
The best time of my life was when I had to move into a house with a couple of other guys about 10 years ago. It was a case of needing somewhere in a hurry but the other two became really good freinds - and still are. It was a very relaxed place and mostly we just fooled around doing nothing serious. The other two were musicians and used to jam a lot. I stil think it was the best music I've ever heard because they were just doing it for fun.
I miss those days and ever since I've spent my life trying to figure out how to recreate a similar environment.
BTW I love your posts, the raw honesty is a relief after the creful veneers I usually encounter - and it's a relief after the careful veneer I wore at at your age. (hope the 'at your age' comment doesn't sound patronising - I'm envious really
I found your blog because I was looking up a Tom Robbins musing entitled, "In Defiance of Gravity," from the book Wild Ducks Flying Backward.
Is that where you got your blog title from?
If not, I think this was extremely serendipitous.
It's a really good true story about the author and his sentiments, at that time, on life, which seem close enough to call similar to yours.
I am going through a similar conflict of perspective and/or focus (whatever than means).
At times I am consumed with thoughts about poverty, and starvation and war, because I feel , I guess like an accomplice by ignoring these very real and raw realities. Not that know a problem exists solves it, though it is the first step.
So I am caught, between acting on these thoughts, getting involved in "social justice" matters. But I know if I do, its all or nothing for me, and I'd be giving up the energy in my self I use to play, to work. I'd be relinquishing, or at least subordinating what Joseph Campbell called "the rapture of being alive."
I guess you made your decision.
But for me, right now, my only decision, is indecision.
Seems I am wedged between being playful with the burden of guilt that comes with ignoring the "real world," or guiltless without play for addressing my conscience while leaving my imagination in the dark.
I understand from what you said that you were writing this posting just for yourself, to get out your considerations, but if you have a minute, I'd appreciate a response.
The following is a quote by author and poet Charles Bukowski I liked:
"Unless it comes out
of your soul like a rocket,
unless being still
would drive you to madness or
suicide or murder, don't do it.
Unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut, don't do it.
When it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by itself
and it will keep on doing it
until you die
or it dies in you.
There is no other way.
And there never was."
Yeah, it was the first post on this blog forever ago before I deleted all the shit I didn't write or didn't still have meaning for me at the time I was deleting stuff. I found it very refreshing and very similar to my current philosophy and I too did a google search upon reading it -- and, disappointed that I only found one copy online, decided on a whim to "publish it" on a blog. So there's that story.
Anyway, that whole conscience stuff is bullshit. The voice in your head that you're hearing is not yours or you would not feel guilty. My approach is to exorcise those demons and listen to my own heart, to what makes me feel alive. Like that poem, actually, except I have no fear of madness or murder or suicide.
Nothing else really to respond to, I've kind of moved on from self-discovery as my primary interest/focus.
What I love about this blog is that there are only 5 posts. I like to think you posted as and when it felt good and stopped in mid-2007 when other stuff started to be more fun.
My blog runs along similar principles, or at least it will do if I ever feel like making it.
P.S: Yes! Ultimate frisbee sucks! Why ruin the world's only truly cooperative game by introducing a spurious element of competition and dividing the participants into rival teams? It makes aabout as much sense as splitting up musicians into separate teams and getting them to compete against each other... on national television... for the public vote... oh.
Yo, steve. I'd written a few more but I deleted most of the irrelevant posts I'd made. I don't like broadcasting, I much prefer dialogue on forums and commenting on other people's posts to writing my own. So yeah, this blog is mostly dead.
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