Wittering - 7 Topics d
Apr. 29th, 2012 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
f4f3The Topics Meme - if you'd like a licence to witter, ask in comments:
Your perception of self,
Is usually quite strong, and largely independent of what I seen in the mirror. I like to think that I'm kind, that I'm looking for answers, asking questions, rather than giving them.
Being single
Not a lot of experience of this. I guess the important thing is not whether you're in a relationship or not, the important thing is how you relate to yourself. And again, the thing I'm doing mostly there is listening. So I THINK I'm the same person single and in a relationship, but single me is probably a little more introverted, and a little less engaged with the world.
Work
It's a thing I do to get money, and money is a thing I do to get freedom. That's a little inexact, but broadly true. There is some work I want to do, for my country, for my class, for my friends. But for that to work, it also has to be something I want to do for myself. At the root of all that I do, there is writing. I read an interview of Steven King by Neil Gaiman today, and King said, "A day in which I write something is a good day." I knew what he meant.
Life
I like it. Well, consider the alternative. There's something in it about becoming. Not attaining, not heading for a target, but just constantly becoming. Complaining about my life at any given moment it like being a pixel complaining about the picture, like being one of Seurat's blobs of paint complaining about the painting...
Your centre
There was a time when I was able to meditate, locate the centre of my consciousness (which was, funnily enough, in my centre, about three or four inches about my pubic bone) and then expand that out to fill the room I was in, and part of the street outside. It will take me a while to recapture that, I think. Except when I am at the cottage, where my centre expands at least as far as Kilmartin to the north, St Columba's chapel to the south, and, although this sounds ludicrous as I type it, Iona, about 30 miles to the (north) West. For some reason it doesn't go far to the East. I think I'll need to walk those hills on Cowal to establish that connection.
Authors who have shaped you
Stan Lee, who gave me a liberal code before I could have told you what a Liberal looked like. You didn't cheat, you didn't lie, all of us were equal, and if you screwed up you put your mask right back on and sorted it.
Damon Runyon who gave me a voice which was racy and slangy, and streetwise, and brave and wise and funny.
Roger Zelazny, who always wrote from compassion.
Antony Buckeridge, who wrote the Jennings novels, which were kind of P.G. Wodehouse for kids. Very, very funny, and I may go off and try to find them on Kindle now.
Those are my early influences. Later came Marx, and J.S. Mill, and Hobbes, and the real Adam Smith, and David Hume, and John Rawls, and Germaine Greer, and whoever wrote "Our Bodies Our Selves" written by the Boston Women's Health Book Collective. And that takes me up to around 18, when I think books no longer shape you. Though I could be wrong.
Colours.
I like blues. They calm me, I wear a lot of blue, it reminds me, I guess, of the sea. Black features in my wardrobe, but then I see black as a neutral colour. No colour at all :) And it's funny that I posted in that bit of art by Seurat above - I've always been drawn to pointillism, and if I have a theory of colour, it's somewhere in all those dots, not meaning much in isolation, but growing in depth and meaning as you draw back.
Your perception of self,
Is usually quite strong, and largely independent of what I seen in the mirror. I like to think that I'm kind, that I'm looking for answers, asking questions, rather than giving them.
Being single
Not a lot of experience of this. I guess the important thing is not whether you're in a relationship or not, the important thing is how you relate to yourself. And again, the thing I'm doing mostly there is listening. So I THINK I'm the same person single and in a relationship, but single me is probably a little more introverted, and a little less engaged with the world.
Work
It's a thing I do to get money, and money is a thing I do to get freedom. That's a little inexact, but broadly true. There is some work I want to do, for my country, for my class, for my friends. But for that to work, it also has to be something I want to do for myself. At the root of all that I do, there is writing. I read an interview of Steven King by Neil Gaiman today, and King said, "A day in which I write something is a good day." I knew what he meant.
Life
I like it. Well, consider the alternative. There's something in it about becoming. Not attaining, not heading for a target, but just constantly becoming. Complaining about my life at any given moment it like being a pixel complaining about the picture, like being one of Seurat's blobs of paint complaining about the painting...
Your centre
There was a time when I was able to meditate, locate the centre of my consciousness (which was, funnily enough, in my centre, about three or four inches about my pubic bone) and then expand that out to fill the room I was in, and part of the street outside. It will take me a while to recapture that, I think. Except when I am at the cottage, where my centre expands at least as far as Kilmartin to the north, St Columba's chapel to the south, and, although this sounds ludicrous as I type it, Iona, about 30 miles to the (north) West. For some reason it doesn't go far to the East. I think I'll need to walk those hills on Cowal to establish that connection.
Authors who have shaped you
Stan Lee, who gave me a liberal code before I could have told you what a Liberal looked like. You didn't cheat, you didn't lie, all of us were equal, and if you screwed up you put your mask right back on and sorted it.
Damon Runyon who gave me a voice which was racy and slangy, and streetwise, and brave and wise and funny.
Roger Zelazny, who always wrote from compassion.
Antony Buckeridge, who wrote the Jennings novels, which were kind of P.G. Wodehouse for kids. Very, very funny, and I may go off and try to find them on Kindle now.
Those are my early influences. Later came Marx, and J.S. Mill, and Hobbes, and the real Adam Smith, and David Hume, and John Rawls, and Germaine Greer, and whoever wrote "Our Bodies Our Selves" written by the Boston Women's Health Book Collective. And that takes me up to around 18, when I think books no longer shape you. Though I could be wrong.
Colours.
I like blues. They calm me, I wear a lot of blue, it reminds me, I guess, of the sea. Black features in my wardrobe, but then I see black as a neutral colour. No colour at all :) And it's funny that I posted in that bit of art by Seurat above - I've always been drawn to pointillism, and if I have a theory of colour, it's somewhere in all those dots, not meaning much in isolation, but growing in depth and meaning as you draw back.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-04-30 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-30 08:03 pm (UTC)New York
Florida
Cocktails
Feminism in the States
Fashions in the publishing world
NYC bookshops
Being not single.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-05 01:42 am (UTC)Also, I suppose I was rather remiss in failing to point out how much I enjoyed reading your musings. I did!
no subject
Date: 2012-05-07 01:36 pm (UTC)