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I am tired and crampy and so will not put anything cute in the subject line tonight.
The coolest tattoo I have ever seen has both all intrinsic meaning and none: it was an ad wherein one of the bison from the french Lascaux (?) cave was on the woman's left shoulderblade. Absolutely amazing and beautiful. I would get it, except, well, I can't for long and complicated philosophical reasons that have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with culture.
This evening I have successfully applied for one job in Cambridge and looked at lots of apartment listings.
Wayman, you like designing games. Would you help me design a card game with body parts?
Rush-that-Speaks, I didn't know you were going to publish your journal.
I kept forgetting to write this thought, but Rush-that-Speaks' and Syona Keleste's journal entries about the Alien Contact panel at Worldcon have made me think about it again, so I am posting it here:
I think the easiest way to explain the mindset of someone who is Otherkin is the fact that you are constantly getting culture shock from an alien culture. However, everyone else assumes you're a native so you can't act like a tourist, who has the perogative of ignorance or immunity and is therefore able to laugh in wonder--or speak out in dismay--at the differences. Sometimes you forget, even, that you're a tourist in that culture, but then something jogs your memory. And, like visiting a foriegn land where the people have a different mindset, it's very tiring but you get to see a lot that the people who live there all the time might not notice.
That's it.
And the fact that you sometimes get very frustrated because you lost your passport on your way here and can't get home.
The coolest tattoo I have ever seen has both all intrinsic meaning and none: it was an ad wherein one of the bison from the french Lascaux (?) cave was on the woman's left shoulderblade. Absolutely amazing and beautiful. I would get it, except, well, I can't for long and complicated philosophical reasons that have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with culture.
This evening I have successfully applied for one job in Cambridge and looked at lots of apartment listings.
Wayman, you like designing games. Would you help me design a card game with body parts?
Rush-that-Speaks, I didn't know you were going to publish your journal.
I kept forgetting to write this thought, but Rush-that-Speaks' and Syona Keleste's journal entries about the Alien Contact panel at Worldcon have made me think about it again, so I am posting it here:
I think the easiest way to explain the mindset of someone who is Otherkin is the fact that you are constantly getting culture shock from an alien culture. However, everyone else assumes you're a native so you can't act like a tourist, who has the perogative of ignorance or immunity and is therefore able to laugh in wonder--or speak out in dismay--at the differences. Sometimes you forget, even, that you're a tourist in that culture, but then something jogs your memory. And, like visiting a foriegn land where the people have a different mindset, it's very tiring but you get to see a lot that the people who live there all the time might not notice.
That's it.
And the fact that you sometimes get very frustrated because you lost your passport on your way here and can't get home.
no subject
I've been thinking about this kind of thing lately in conjunction with political parties. It's so easy for people to get caught up in "Democrats are good and Republicans are evil" or "Democrats are evil and Republicans are good" even if they themselves hold some political positions from each of those groups and other positions that neither group believes. Even when your political views evolve away from one of the parties, you can still feel an intense loyalty, a comfortableness around the party you're used to and a wariness towards the party who has been the opposition. (See exhibit A: Democratic Senator Zell Miller giving the most anti-Democratic speech at the Republican convention, but saying "I will die a Democrat.")
I'm also beginning to think that my "outsiderness" has very different roots from yours, Eredien and Gallian, and the rest of our college friends. You mostly describe being confused and left out. I think that I removed myself from the mainstream high school group purposely, because (a) I really didn't have much in common with other people and didn't care to associate with them, (b) I thought it was weird and creepy for everyone to be the same, and (b.5) I was and still am uncomfortable with the feeling of being wholly part of a group in a kind of Neitzschean "Apollo and Dionysos" way.
But the really interesting part is that I recently decided that I'd chucked the whole "mainstream" thing without fully examining it, and that I should go back and check it out. I'm still not very good at integrating, but it involves less acting than I expected and parts of it are actually fun. I haven't decided whether it's true yet, but it's very odd to consider the idea that maybe I'm not really different from "most people", I've just removed myself from them by choice.