"philosophy is the talk on a cereal box"

[thanate]

The men in yon forest they are asking me
How many wild strawberries grow in the sea
I answered them back with a tear in my eye
How many ships sail in the forest?

--from "the false bride"


For those of you who believe that a question cannot be random if you can figure out why I'm asking it... the following things are all related in my head:

It is fall, and so there are falling leaves, and the superstition is that if you catch a falling leaf, it means a happy day. (Which, because everything in the world seems to be related to everything else, I got out of Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, which is partly based on Tam Lin, and kittymaru should read it if she has not already done so, though not because it's likely in any way to help her with her doll project, but because it's a good book. Other people should read it too.) It occurred to me recently that this is silly; if you're going to believe in falling leaves granting you happiness, why not ask expect a month, or a year? I can manage happy days on my own from time to time. Whole months are a little harder to come by.

Of course, there was also the horrifying realization that some of the falling leaves were off the poison ivy vines, not the trees. I didn't catch any of them.

Things seem to come in cycles-- in the last month or so I have met two Kristens (one of whom fed us a peanut-butter and pickle sandwich at lunch today, a concept that she's been trying to sell the rest of the crew on for some time... it is not as odd as it sounds. But still quite odd. We think, however, that she is not in fact pregnant.) and one Kirsten, and in the last week I have met three people from the cast of the VA faire, and discovered one person I already knew to be a long-time patron there. Once, may years ago, fishy1 and I determined all our troubles (or perhaps just boy troubles) involved people beginning with the letters "S" and "J." Life is threatening to get sufficiently confusing that I might have to start collections on a new set of letters.

I have been thinking about context; how everyone brings their own set of preconceived views to everything they do, even when they don't intend to-- even, in fact, when they intend not to. (Did anyone else hear about the studies about unconscious racial & gender bias?) How sometimes you can change those, or get around them... but they may trip you up if you're not paying attention to the fact that some else's might be totally different. Two people can listen to the same conversation and take different things away from it. Or one may hear something one expects to be described in glowing terms talked of casually or without enthusiasm and parse that as being horrible. Which might well not be true, or even apparent to anyone else.

Giving up is not the same as getting over. And the first can be hard-to-impossible enough.

My thought processes are notoriously very much different from most people's. And I got pseudo-lectured recently (by someone who apparently thought when I said "...because I'm a freak and don't, you know, call people and ask them awkward questions... or is that tactful?" I meant it was something I would actually consider doing instead of mocking myself. I never call people, although that is probably overcompensating for the idiocy of being 15, and a thing I should really get over. I should, for goodness sake, call Barrett, who I have no other way of contacting, because he never will believe me that I'm not just trying to tactfully lose track of him when I say things like this. I hate when people-- who have told me I think differently from everyone else-- decide to hold me to the standards of other people they've known.) about bringing around a conversation tactfully to segue into the subject I want to ask awkward questions about. And... I'm not at all sure I'd be capable of doing that. The idea of having so much notion what other people are going to say that I can guide a conversation in the right direction is totally beyond me.

And besides, I'm a freak, and I prefer just to be asked what people want to know. If I don't want to answer a question, I reserve the right not to, although I generally will. And I don't lie, so if you get an answer, it's at least some of the truth as I know it. Not necessarily all, but hey. I expect other people to be able to deal with this-- perhaps unreasonable; I don't know.

I had a conversation with SB some while back where he asked me why I came to rock climbing. And, wondering why he wanted to know anyway, I made a somewhat badly managed attempt to deconstruct the "well, it's the sort of thing I'd do." Turns out what he really wanted to know was did I come out just to flirt with Troy. Which, rude or not, I'd prefer just to have been asked, since that's actually easy to answer. (no of course not-- I'm not about to pay for a gym membership & everything for an activity I didn't like. actually getting to see Troy (not to mention anyone else worthy who happens to show up) is just an added bonus.)

With very rare exceptions (two, maybe three of all the people I know right now?) it takes me about three days of paying attention to form a trustworthy first impression of someone. Although then it is pretty firmly trustworthy, though I need to pay more attention to listening to my instincts rather than ignoring them. It also takes a similar period of time to work through certain things in my head, although this is more mutable, depending on how much distraction there is, or how many new aspects I come up with while turning things over in my head. The timestamps on the things most present in my head right now are from friday morning and monday evening. With a little tuesday thrown in for extra bonus. You might hear more from me. Or the end of my thought process may not get recorded.

The word "timestamp" was in my head to describe this, and I realized afterwards that this was because of someone else having used it.


---Ok, maybe the peanut butter and pickle sandwich wasn't actually related after all---

Comments

[skittblink.livejournal.com]

"I prefer just to be asked what people want to know."

Seriously, I don't know why people find straightforwardness so alarming. I'm much better at being honest than being tactful.

And I like your freakishness.

And I like the song you took the title of this entry from. Unless it originally came from somewhere else.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Nope... it's a song I haven't listened to since... sophmore year of college, I think? Leo had a brief fling with it, which I was privy to. And then it turned up in my head yesterday afternoon because the phonetic and melodic similarities made it merge with cruxshadows "pornography" which had decided to resurface after a couple days, being one of a long set of cruxshadows stuff I just got from Troy.