p.s. i feel kind of guilty about not buying glenn now. he's such a merry little beast. ok no sorry i meant to say: look at the inscription! "for jane, who wouldn't have written it /quite/ the same way".
can i be your jane? :D
anyway being on here is a little treat i promised myself last night (as in finish clt and then you can blog). i had a lot of little promised treats that er didn't quite get fulfilled because i did them BEFORE i finished clt, but oh wells.
i really do my best introspective-ish thinking in the shower. yesterday, showering at 3am so i could kick myself awake and wade through maximo langer and friends, i found myself thinking: if i ever did run out of things to blog about, all i would have to do would be to open the newspapers.
or, perhaps, do a clt paper, in the course of which i would start msn-ing (the website, not the messenger) and blogsurfing and generally getting up to date with the world.
the white tiger incident: brings a whole new dimension to zoophagy. ok, bad pun. and seeing as i was thinking about this during clt i couldn't help but think hoo boy, puts another spin on the buddhist who upon meeting a starving lion lay himself down. but-- i had to wonder. how desperate did you have to be, to wade right into the midst of danger, stare into its piercing sapphire-blue eyes even as you waved an inglorious mop-and-bucket in the face of their majesty, breathing in the retch-inducing reek of raw meat-feed; knowing, knowing, what they would do? did you quail, did you regret, when they pounced? did the final roar quake your knees, steal the foolhardiness from your bones, leave you supine as you curled in a foetal position? what about the pain, of fangs, of claws, of a cleaved-in skull?
and we are all gory, gory gore-seekers. we triumph in the fall of people, we don't see their pain till they splash it out before us in lurid splashes of crimson and heart'sblood. we are bulls blind to all until the grim-reaper-toreador waves his red-flagged scythe, and takes. then we regret, or we exclaim, or we wonder, but too late.
do we care, we humans? as the killers ask (rather controversially-- no one seems able to get over the purported grammar issue): "are we human, or are we dancer?"
(i don't actually fully agree with that implicit derogation of dancers, but i have to admit i see the poetry of what Thompson was describing. put simply Thompson was a reporter who wrote in a seminal comment: are we raising a nation of dancers, who only care about flashing lights and the glory of the stage without really caring for others? footnote: Thompson eventually committed suicide by shooting himself)
and so we measure step by step our paces through this world, following our own music, looking for the flashing lights, wanting to be rich, famous, a star, be in movies. so many of us can't be bothered to care-- and when we do it seems all we do is lash out. why do i hold this view? ah ha, clt steps in-- sort of, for a little rond de jambe before skipping out again. in an escape from clt i surfed blogs and wound up at steven lim's site. oh dear gods the abuse. and then you think about all the hate generated about dawn yang and fellow friends/frenemies...
we laugh at people who step out, who do not conform, who split from the dance and the stage and walk amongst the audience trying to connect. they don't all do this in the smartest of ways-- stripping, accosting people on the street, making hyperbolic claims about themselves, youtubing-- but they're trying. and what do we do in return? we laugh. we call them whore and fuckface, we curse them for being self-serving bitches, we snidely comment "she's got enough metal in that mouth to build a bridge", or "that girl was always crazy since elementary school" (this comment REALLY got to me). and are we happy only when they crash and burn-- jumping into white tiger enclosures, leaping into the paths of mrt trains, downing barbiturates and dying lonely deaths in unsympathetic cars? or when they crash and explode, taking out the world with them-- shooting a classmate, shooting a father and a friend?
koyaanisqatsi
and i thought-- this isn't the way i want my world to be.
so i'm going to live my life by a new-ish sort of mantra that came to me as the cold water sluiced over me (a symbolic baptism, mmm?):
face the world with sunshine in your heart, no matter the shadows in your mind.
that carried me through today. i was surprised at the number of times i had to think it, consciously. :)
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on another note! guess who's back, back again,
xf's back, tell your friends!
:D whee. and oh er ning managed to sprain her back by sneezing. HAHA. almost as much of a joke as abby. but i hope the two of you are better now!! sleep well and heaaaalll.
and maybe don't order toffee nut blended creme lattes in venti size. heehee.
(but i still want to try the dark cherry mocha or whatever it was)
jinglin! if you're reading this i want to tell you: STARBUCKS CUSTOMER LOYALTY works. haha. cos i headed for starbucks instead of coffee bean today even though it was much much further and didn't have squishy seats. they're friendly and i've gotten sooo used to them :)
the old man and the sea
maybe i can run tomorrow :)