I'm on Twitter, though I don't do a very good job of it. I never have been able to say anything in twenty words or less. So here are some things I've had on my mind lately, inspired by tweets -- mine, or other people's. (I use the same username on Twitter as here, if you're curious).
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vendredi13 had a birthday. I have to confess that I am a bad friend, in that I don't often remember or even acknowledge birthdays, but this is a particularly significant one, in that she marks the quarter-century. Congratulations, darlin', and to answer your implied question, you're still stunningly gorgeous.I remember my twenty-fifth birthday. I was living in Raleigh, near
nytemiste, and we hung out a lot. I had a big crush on her. There was a lunar eclipse on a weekend a couple of weeks after my birthday, and I got a keg and set up a telescope, and it was the first time I ever felt that a birthday party was successful, though I acknowledge that a lot of the people were there for the beer and the telescope, not me.I remember feeling lost. I was a quarter of a century old, I was recently divorced, and I hadn't accomplished anything of note. I wasn't a millionare, hadn't published a novel, made the world a better place, or... anything.
Who would've thought that I'd still feel that way, fifteen years later?
alohomoron went to play crazy golf with some friends. Apparently, they played competitively, and she came in second. I used to love minigolf. I had my first real job at MetroCenter mall in Phoenix, (where, incidentally, I met
dorinda2212, at her job at the game store, which sent my life in new and interesting directions for a couple of years) and there was a minigolf place there. Occasionally, on payday, I'd go out there and play by myself.I grew up in a church that placed a lot of importance on youth groups doing innocent things together, and I remember that ours went to play minigolf a lot. Corbin and Sean and I always had a good time playing together, though I can't for the life of me remember any of the girls who were with us... though Corbin eventually married one of them.
The last time I played was with
lapis_lazuli, on one of her visits out here. I presume we kept score, but I honestly don't recall who won. It just wasn't important.This Dresden Codak is pretty funny. Me go too far! Me am play gods!
Today, some of the folks in the Barony are having a party to celebrate September birthdays, in which category I fall. And I've been invited. And I know and like the hosts, and at least one of the other celebrants.
And yet I'm waffling about actually going. I'm feeling a lot of social anxiety. As alluded earlier, me + birthday parties has not historically been a very good mix.
I think it was that same year, the year of the telescope birthday party, that
nytemiste and I held our black-tie new year's eve party. We'd made a road trip to a large mall a couple of hours down the road, and she'd looked at a formal dress in a shop window, and lamented that she'd have no place to wear it, so I suggested we make an occasion.We printed invitations, invited our friends, and it came out very well. Ladies in evening dresses, gentlemen in tuxedos, cheap champagne, and a good time. I wonder if it was just the place in life that let me do things like that, or if it was
nytemiste's influence.On further reflection, it couldn't have been the same year, as I was living in different places for the two parties. But I still find myself wondering why I could throw successful parties then, and not at other times in my life.
I've always wanted to be the guy that people felt free to drop in on at any time. I never have been, but I've always wanted to.
All the cool kids are doing it... ( the top twenty commenters on my journal )
Something I do find rather interesting is that people who are no longer reading this journal... and haven't been, for years... are still in the top twenty.
pippinsrosy was doing a meme, where someone picked five things that they associated with her, and then she offered to choose five things about other people. And, if you comment, I'll pass it on. In the mean time, I have insomnia, so here are her five things, and what I have to say about them:
- The SCA. The TLA stands for the Society for Creative Anachronism. The Society grew out of Diana Paxson's graduation party from UC Berkley. Boiled down to its base elements, it's about people dressing up in funny clothes and having a good time pretending to live in an idealized version of the middle ages. But the details... ah, the devil is in the details.
I first became aware of, and active in, the Society in Bisbee, Arizona, when I was living there with my biological father. I think I was thirteen the first summer Bisbee had a renaissance fair, and invited SCA folks down from Tucson to do a demo. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I was active with the local organization. I fell madly in love withdorinda2212, who was also an active member, and got myself halfway across the Phoenix metro area on a regular basis to see her, and participate at fighter practice -- a not inconsiderable feat, when you remember that I didn't own a car in those days, and Phoenix mass transit is a bad joke.
Along the way, though, I discovered kind of the negative face of the SCA... there are pockets of people involved who forget they are playing a game. At a certain point in my life, that really alienated me, and I wandered off, and developed a bit of an attitude about the majority of SCA folks.
However... after coming home from New York City, a large number of the friends I made, or reconnected with, were active members of the SCA. And I kept having cognitive dissonance between my image of the society, and the kinds of people I knew who were involved. So, on my birthday this year, with no one in Flagstaff who knew (or cared) that it was my 40th birthday, I found myself drawn out to Crown Tourney (there's one held every six months), and I had a good time. Not in a dramatic way, but in a quiet way. And I talked with some people who made me feel welcome, which is something I haven't felt much of in a while. People whose eyes didn't glaze over when I started talking about the history of tartan.
So I rejoined that day. And since then, I've become an officer in the local branch, the College of Sankt Vladimir. And while I still face some isolation issues, and I'm still twice as old as virtually everyone I know in Flagstaff, at least I have people I can call and say, "Hey, I'm lonely and feeling isolated, and think you should come with me and eat too much chocolate."
And really, what else does one want from a social organization? - Love. Um. This is some kind of sick joke, right? I haven't been in a serious romantic relationship in over a decade. The last thing she said to me as she was leaving was, "you know nothing of any importance, and on topics I consider important, you're woefully ignorant." Oh, and just before that, she said, "You're good at romance... it's all the other stuff you suck at." Love? Really? You associate me with love? Huh.
- Nursing. Well, okay, yes. I am a nurse, like my father before me. (Should I dramatically throw my stethoscope aside?) I was working as The Computer Guy, and one day I realized how much it sucked. How I woke up every morning wondering if I could call in sick. So I looked for something that would make me happier. And, when I'm doing the work, and being a nurse, I usually am happy. It's just this damn Nursing School that has me ripping my teeth out.
- Anime. I like anime. I particularly like silly anime. It's such a stress reliever... they live in a much simpler world than I do. They have friends, and even when they're going through tough times, there's a feeling of camaraderie and optimism that, all too often, seems lacking in my own world. They make me smile, and forget about the real world for a little while. And did I mention that the sillier, the better?
- Literature. I read a lot, it's true. It's not that I'm indiscriminate, as anyone who's ever heard me rip into Stephen King or James Fenimore Cooper can attest. It's that there's a lot of pretty good writing out there. My mother tells me that I initially had a hard time learning to read, because of my agraphia (you should see me write without a spell checker, some time) but I don't remember that. I remember always having been enthusiastic about books. If I hadn't let my 50 books list go by the wayside, you'd see that the stuff I read is pretty eclectic, though with a strong bent towards SciFi.
- Music:Wicked Game-Wicked Game-Chris Isaak
One of my favorite authors is Melissa Scott. In her book, Burning Brightly, she takes the idea of online role-playing about as far as it can go, and makes me want to live in a world with that technology.
In her more recent book, The Jazz, she introduces an idea I find fascinating... the idea of covnanted communities. The idea is that there are communities where everyone agrees to a basic set of rules, a covenant, and tries to live as if some situation were realistic.
The one which I remember strongly from the book (which I read a couple of years ago) was an Americana community... think Pleasantville, or the town from Leave it to Beaver. 1940's America, not necisarily as it was, but as the inhabitants would like to imagine it as being.
Wholesome. Safe. Fathers in suits and fedoras, mothers in dresses and aprons.
Another was a pseudo-mideval community. Vikings, or at least, migration era europeans, living in a castle.
It strikes me that a person with a lot of money could set up such a community. The structure would come first, of course, because it would have a lot of bearing on what you were doing. A castle, for instance, wouldn't suit an Americana group.
In several of his novels set in Ottowa (misspelled, I'm sure), Charles deLint has talked about a house that looks like a block of town houses from the outside. It's an apealing image... a block of town houses that's really one huge dwelling, with a park / garden in the middle.
If you had a lot of money, you could build a house like that. You could buy land in the middle of nowhere, and build a castle. You could build Hobbiton.
How would you find the people you needed, to make it work, though? How would you get them to come and live there? A black smith, a ferrier, a nurse, a vet, stablemen... how could you find people with the right skills who would want to make it more than just a job, who would want to make it part of their lives?
Who would want to build a community?
For those just tuning in, there are some things about Cowboy R you should know.
He's bitter, sarcastic, cynical.
He's angry, lonely, depressed.
He's also essentially kind, occasionally displays flashes of wit, and is generally not as bad as all that.
If he snaps at you, he usually feels bad about it within moments.
Just in case you were wondering.
- Music:Montezuma Was A Man Of Faith-Andy Prieboy-... Upon My Wicked Son
Okay, so the bathroom's clean. I scrubbed everything, and even went to the unusual (for me) and drastic (for me) measure of spraying things with environmentally unfriendly chemicals to make it cleaner and shinier. Shiney-er? More shiny.
Yeah.
Anyway, it's really mostly when I clean that I realize the down side of having long hair. I must've removed a ferret-weight of long, brown hair from the bathtub drain. Which is kind of gross, but I imagine the tub will drain better, now.
I'm waiting for the floor to dry from its moping, then I have to put the towel rack back, and I'll be done with one of the four rooms I have to clean today. Rah.
I don't have any quarters, so I'll probably collect my laundry into baskets, and take it to the laundrimat, along with my homework. I don't know when I'll find to do the homework, otherwise.
I was thinking about community, while I was in the bathroom, cleaning. I spend a lot of time thinking, while I'm doing mindless tasks, which tends to lead to the bathroom being the site of a lot of thoughts.
I was thinking about how I often say that one of the problems with Our Modern WorldTM is that there's a lack of communities.
These days, we don't know our neighbors. Many of us don't go to church, we don't go to hay-rides, barn-raisings, or stomp dances.
I realized that I'm only partly right. We do have communities, we just don't get the same kind of fulfilment from them as people used to. See, the problem is, our communities are filled with imaginary friends.
I'm talking, of course, about the television. Star's Hollow, for instance, is pretty real to me. I can imagine going and having lunch at Luke's, and bantering with him. I can imagine waving to Ms. Patty, or shaking my head at Taylor.
I am madly in love with Lorelei Gilmore, and I think Rory's a damn cool kid.
The problem is that none of these people really exist. I can't go to Luke's, I can't ask Lorelei to go out with me, I can't recommend good books to Rory, or take a tai-chi class at Ms. Patty's.
I need to figure out how to integrate myself into a community of real, live, breathing, present people.
Because Star's Hollow is awefully damn attractive.
- Music:Robinson Crusoe - Art Of Noise - The Best of the Art Of Noise
community -- n. pl. communities
1.
a.A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government.
b.The district or locality in which such a group lives.
2.
a.A group of people having common interests: the scientific community; the international business community.
b.A group viewed as forming a distinct segment of society: the gay community; the community of color.
American Heritage Dictionary
Virtually everyone is a member of a community, under the first definition given above. We all have a locality where we live; most of us have other people who live there, as well.
In my case, I have perhaps two hundred people living within an arrow's flight of me. By the mathmatics of probability, I am aware that roughly half of them are women.
And yet, I don't know any of them. I don't go to dinner at their houses, don't invite them over for tea and biscuits, don't socialize with them.
In part, that's because it's just "not done" to simply meet someone. I can't just walk up to people on the street and say, "Hi, I'm Cowboy R; I was wondering if you'd care to share a cup of tea?"
Well, I could, but it wouldn't get me anywhere.
My point is that I'm not a member of a true community. Very few of us in Modern America are. People used to belong to churches, to neighborhoods. You knew who your neighbors were, because you'd played stickball with them when you were a kid.
I'm living in the same neighborhood I grew up in, but the kids I grew up with are all moved away... I can't blame them, I did the same thing; I grew up, went away to college, did a stint in the military, and came home... to find the old neighborhood still looked the same, but all the people had changed.
Which leaves me with the problem of how to meet people. I don't want to seem genderist, but the truth is, it's easier for me, as a guy, to meet guys... and I don't really like most guys. Most of my friends, my entire life, have been women, and I like that.
Perhaps I'll take some classes at the University next semester.
