i know it's just the war

[rm]

I'm walking home with a sack of groceries, and as I pass down a block I pass down several times a day every day a man from a group of people hanging out there takes a handful of change out of his pocket, shakes it like dice and then pours it out on the ground. $1.37, but reading the results he informs me, "The signs say you will always have that ugly, retarded face and there is nothing you can do about it." The people he is with, of mixed gender and race, and all between the ages of about 20 and 35, laugh. I ignore it, and try tell myself it's just the war, not the one in Iraq, but the one that happens every day in New York about gentrification, race and money. I know half my neighborhood hates the other half and vice versa, but mostly, we all keep it to ourselves, except when things get out of hand like in the blackout or when the buildings come down.

It's hard for me to be surprised by these things. It's a rare day when someone doesn't call me ugly. Isn't that strange? It may be a rare day when someone doesn't call you ugly too, you just might not be as tuned in on the streets. Or maybe I'm just lucky.

Sometimes, I think it's because I don't have a modern face. It's such a throwback, the issue isn't that I'm not an MTV hottie, but that I look like someone who should have died decades or centuries ago. Maybe people see me and recognize the dead, and in their fear of mortality declare my features sin.

I wonder about things like that all the time. Strange mystical reimaginings of the casually cruel world. I also wonder sometimes if we hate the Arab world because they gave us the zero. Perhaps we do not see a revolution in math, an efficiency in accounting but an entire people that innovated the language of numbers solely so that we would at long last be able to name our worthlessness.

All of this though just underlines the reasons I don't do so well in the world. I think there's some sort of sublime artfulness under all the random hate and it makes me oblivious, both to the sheer bludgeoning stupidity of it all and of course the fact that I may indeed be ugly.

Comments

[delchi.livejournal.com]

I get a similar look on a daily basis - the ' You dont look like the beefcake guy on tv therefore you are ugly '.

Sometimes I believe it.

Hard to understand.

[adriang.livejournal.com]

It's a rare day when someone doesn't call me ugly.

That's hard to understand, both because no image of you that I've seen suggests any justification for the claim and because I can't understand what benefit anyone could expect to get from flinging this sort of excrement at you, even if there were any truth to it. It is as though some people are so desperate to be better than other people that they can only think to try to push other people beneath them.

Adrian

[splix.livejournal.com]

I look like someone who should have died decades or centuries ago. Maybe people see me and recognize the dead, and in their fear of mortality declare my features sin.

That's a poetic way of putting it, but I suspect the truth is that some people are just brutal, stupid assholes.

I happen to think you're lovely.

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

*blink*
*blink*

Um.
I've had my fair share of being called ugly/a dog/fat, but I don't hear it every day, and I'm shocked that you do.

I don't think you've a typical face, no - you have shared so many different visions of your look over the years, but ugly? Not in the least.

I wish I understood the world.

[aynatonal.livejournal.com]

Some days I'm glad I live in Chicago. I think that you and I have a rather similar look, actually, but I've never attracted the sort of negative attention you describe here. When I was a young actor, it did trip me up a bit to look the way I do, but with 30 right around the corner, I anticipate that won't be a problem much longer. I can finally play the roles that my looks suit--roles that no one would have cast me in when I was in my teens and twenties.

I think you're splendid looking, anyhow.

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

and of course the fact that I may indeed be ugly.

Bah! Bah! I say!

So many of the people I see on TV - these MTV and tabloid caricatures, these icons born out of some porn flick pastiche - are horrendously, commonly ugly. Or, perhaps merely brazenly unattractive.

What does a face suggest? I look at the goddesses of celebrity held aloft, and most of the time, their faces suggest nothing more to me than an upscale porn star. Most of the time, they suggest nothing more than merely sex - and bad cliched trashy sex at that. Their faces are perfectly suited to suggesting nothing more than what any one could contemplate.

I liked the poetry, as it were, in your words above, though, and I think in some ways you're close to what the problem is for these people. Your face suggests more than merely a body. Your face suggests stories and ideas and places and feelings that they'd actually have to think about and become a part of to understand in any real way. The random MTV visage doesn't stir that in them: they're just pretty empty faces or trigger some snarled thought that amounts to "I'd hit it." They don't have to engage these other faces on anything more than a hormonal or reptilian level.

But, anyway, bah! I'd rather, if you'll pardon my sentiment here, gaze upon your features and ponder the meanings and potential narratives and histories and the rare beauty found within than to spend half a minute trying to figure out why Britney Spears' face makes me worry something may crawl out of it and attack me.

[darkdevotchka.livejournal.com]

I think most of those "MTV hotties" are absolutely foul!
Which neighborhood is this, by the way? Only because as you probably know, I've been to NYC 4 times and I am in love with the city, and feel I am "coming home" every time I visit. You probably understand considering you feel that same love for Sydney.

But yes, I saw things in NYC that I would never see in Sydney, and it both shocked and intrigued me. No wonder people become so goddamn hard there -- as we Aussies imagine anyway. I did come back to Sydney feeling slightly empowered, but also very bored because the city wasn't fast and aloof enough for me. Though, sometimes those Aussie yobs can be just as harsh too.

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

I'm told that one of the reasons the contemporary standard of beauty is "pretty=thin" is that as women have become more empowered, there's a competing pressure to make us tiny, tiny as in "physically frail and helpless."

From your pictures you seem to carry yourself outside that dichotomy-you're a slender woman who is absolutely unapologetic about taking up space in the world. Perhaps some attack that because they are unable or afraid to process it.

Panache rules!

[amberite.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it's because you're interesting. I haven't yet met you, but you radiate 'player character'. The NPCs get jealous . . .

[iterum.livejournal.com]

Weirdly unpleasant, such behavior.

I just don't see it.

[tinywarrior.livejournal.com]

This is a really beautiful piece of writing on all sorts of levels.

[lolliejean.livejournal.com]

Random cruelty like this makes me want to head out and do vigilante justice on the people who perpetuate it. I'm amazed that your skin is tough enough to throw it off as you appear to be able to do.

When I was thinking about cities, places I want to visit, I discovered that although I'd love to come to NY deep down I'm afraid of going there. I'm afraid I'm somehow too soft to even be there. This is kind of strange since I've done lots of traveling to many different places and I generally don't feel anxious or uncomfortable.The idea of being in NYC makes me feel like a dumb, unsophisticated turnip and no other place I've contemplated seems to do that.