(no subject)

While waiting for the latest job postings to go up on Craigslist, I've been poking around the Internet and doing some pondering, and while it's about deep stuff, it's not on a real deep level. Which isn't to say it's trivial, just sometimes broad strokes are a lot more effective, and for me, nuance is as much a part of my defenses as sarcasm. Which is, at least partially, what this is about.

Here are some things that I know are true:
I know I want people to like me
I know I want people to support me
I know I see this journal as part of a mechanism to those things, as well as generally representing myself in the world
I know I use this journal to blow off steam, so I can be calm enough to do what I need to.
I know that the sum of these things is messy, and that I spend a lot of mental energy trying to resolve that.

Well, guess what, it can't be resolved. People _are_ messy.

Now, aside from that, I don't know if it's time to stop asking for what I can't handle. Or if it's time to handle better what I'm asking for. Or, if I should ask for things more clearly than I do.

I don't know if it's unreasonable to want support. I know neither if I deserve it for the quality of my endeavors or for the quality of the support I do or do not offer others. Especially in light of the fact that this, and this means, pretty much everything we do while breathing on this planet, isn't really exactly always a merit equation. At all.

Here's what I do know. I undervalue. Both myself, and other people. I presume I'm not worthy, or that I am perceived as not worthy (there's that nuance thing again), or that other people are too narrow minded to see what worth I do have, regardless of how they may feel about any number of aspects of me.

Maybe I just need to stop being so frigging meta about everything, but it's like -- there's this deep impulse in me to hone the legend, instead of just living. Now, granted, I do think I live pretty damn thoroughly, not that it's ever enough, but all this layering on top of it, even if I take pleasure in it, is that useful? is that offensive? Does it matter? I don't know.

What I do know, is that I want a lot of things I can't control, because for whatever reason, that's where my familiarity (if not comfort) zone is. Okay. So on we go.

I'm stressed out about a lot of shit, and my feelings about that stuff can really change in a minute by minute way, but right now, among other things, I want to smile more, and work harder in a lot of ways, including those that are perhaps more pratical than I tend to gravitate towards. I want to be more responsible. I want to dream and do even harder.

As some of you know, the first thing I ever did that I did well was dance, eventhough my body was not always cooperative and I lacked discipline that was ultimately necessary because I coasted on natural ability. It's something I'm ashamed of, eventhough I should ease up on myself about it -- like many things, I was a kid, and didn't know better and do now.

My body is a lot different than when I danced. Not as strong, as not as thin. I look like a fairly healthy genetically lucky 30-year-old woman now. I will probably never be the thinnest person in the room (at least in a showbiz room) again, and I have to confess that it's bothering me a bit, but not because I value that level of thinness, but because I valued that level of superlativeness. It was a simple way to know where I stood.

I don't know where I stand anymore, in any number of ways -- talent, intelligence, looks and drive. What I do know is that there are things I've lost and things I've gained. And things I should probably make peace with, instead of pushing aside because they happened a long time ago.

And things I'm capable of in the wider world that posseses more than ten adjectives and four categories for every woman and every man.

People may not be better than I tend to think, but it's time to start living as if they are.

(no subject)

When I talk about the time I've spent on the Internet, I often talk about how the early days seemed like life conducted with two tin cans and a string for communication. I mean, for heaven's sake I used the utterly defective bitnet to talk to people about Twin Peaks and read missives sent illegally out of China by dissidents. It was cool, it was the edge of the world, and it predated both the web and the journal and blog phenomena. This also predated spam and a lot of similar things, but that is a somewhat seperate story.

I often miss the tin can and a string aspect of the Internet, not in the sense of how clunky it was then, or how badly it still often works now, but the sense of missives from another world, whispered to you through walls of lives you couldn't possibly imagine. We were all so far away from each other, and now, I rarely consider the immense distances between myself and most of the people I communicate with here.

The phenomena of personal accounts on the web, restored a lot of that feeling for me. But here, I talk of early journals, where people coded them themselves and there was no LJ and no Diary.com and so forth. Of course, as more people decided to do this, as there was more demand to do this, these services did spring up, and the mundane details of other people's lives became just that -- mundane, and no longer the mystical whisperings of a life and being that seemed so totally alien.

Of course, those of who who do blog, do so for many reasons, and among those reasons is both the desire to recognize ourselves, and a desire to once again hear the whispered mysteries of things we have not yet even imagined. Mostly, though, we just chat, and forget the wonderment, and the power of what we do here.

In large part, this is because the world has changed. When I was talking in 1992 about how my art was about the common experiences everyone has and no one talks about, that meant something different than it does today. Because here, on the Internet we hear about all manner of heartbreak and injured flesh and dreams let go, justified and pushed away. We are all celebrities and we are all ordinary and there is perhaps very little statement left in what was mine when I was first writing and publishing and disocvering that I had something to say that not only mattered, but that intrigued people, or enraged them, or bored them, sometimes, even vehemently.

Occassionally though, people still tell stories here that... for lack of a better and more meaningful word shock us -- with their content, sincerity or foreigness. Some blogs, sometimes, still seem like those missives from a dark world, that I remember from all-nighters in an underground computer lab when I was seventeen. Today I stumbled upon something like that, that probably wouldn't be like that for particularly very many other people I know, and it leaves me in a curious and thoughtful state. One that, truthfully, I don't know how to write about, not precisely anyway, and so leaves me telling you this story, this assessment instead.

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