(no subject)
10/9/04 01:04![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eredienI 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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
10/9/04 07:14 (UTC)It's lonely, yes. And often, you feel like you might just fit in somewhere, only to have someone say or do something (whether consciously or subconsciously) to show you're still an 'interloper' or 'outsider' and thus not really a part of that group.
In all honesty, I see so many who are like that, or just don't hold to the norms of a given culture or society, and they seem so... ~lost~ and abandoned. (That's the only way I can really explain it, though that's not really right either.) They want to belong, but have no real culture, and lack the ability to found one on their own, so they seek out groups to try to fit into. Most find the more deviant vestiges of international society's groupings... the ones that are more apathetic, or sordid, or even reserved. And they might feel comfortable with one or another for a while, but like all groups, these all go through the states of forming, norming, storming, conforming and adjourning. Ever-shifting and changing, eventually to the point that one doesn't feel comfortable there, at one of these stages, and moves on to some other group. An endless cycle.
Categorizing someone as Otherkin might work for a few, for others it doesn't. It's all a matter of what one is comfortable with. But in the end, we do find a few who hold ties that bind... interests that hold enough similarity that form a bond and hold a connection. These are the ones who we sometimes take as mates, or other times consider our dearest friends or surrogate family.
Given time, we all come to the conclusion that there are many groups, but we are only truly a part of the group we each form ourselves.
This is what I've learned just through living life and studying relationships. I thought I should share it with you.