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Jan. 3rd, 2002 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elvendolli haven't spent as much time reading as i had wanted to... when i got home, as i suspected in the morning, the heat had gone off - it does that every week, week and a half... after spud and i turned it on, it still took a long time for the house to heat up, and as my room is currently the coldest room in the house, spending time there wasn't an appealing option. even right now, its cold & breezy - i even switched which way my head is facing to move my head closer to the heater and further from the breeze. really gotta get plastic covers for the rest of my windows : / i have absoultely no clue how we survived last winter without any.
so i am rereading narcissus and goldmund, and am also finding it hard to read for more then a half an hour straight without putting the book down to think. i'm now really curious if it would be affecting me this deeply if i was reading it for the first time...
(this may not make too much sense to those who haven't read the book)
down to how the book pulls me, in a very odd way, i identify with goldmund.
reading it for the second time, after the influence of professor nelson on how much attention i pay to tone and wording and the presence of the narrator (repeat after me: today, we are going to listen to our listening), i found the first 50 pages slightly off-tone. narcissus' character was supposed to come off as preachy, but i also saw it as being overly influencing - like he was steering goldmund to what he had seen of goldmund's future as much, if not more, as steering goldmund to find what is inside him - the book does bring forth that he is cocky about his ability to see into people, but it does not adequately address the steering - we're simply supposed to accept it because goldmund's reactions are extreme enough to say that narcissus was right. and, i think it was slightly out of character for the abbott to not have punished narcissus after goldmund had fainted.
but now i'm at a part thats affecting me much more - goldmund is starting to figure out that his is the "mother-nature", that cloister life is not for him. there's a lot of symbolism in his "dreams" that he's not showing to be getting ((foreshadowing, anyone?)), but he's feeling a pull and doesn't quite know what to do to go with it - he is sitting there, waiting for the pull to get a definite direction.
thats the part thats hardest for me. i've been sitting here, waiting for pulls within me to get direction for years now. and i feel pulls in directions - to travel, my resentment to how settled down i am - but, they scare me shitless. i am scared of going to where i am pulled - i rationalize this as thinking that if(when) the pull is right, it will be stronger then my doubts and my fear, and i will go with it - and in the meantime, i cling closer to the parts of my life i resent.
and whenever i let myself feel, it all drives me insane.
i can't figure out if i am wrong in not abandoning stability, and going on the road for a while - trying to follow those urges and see where they lead me, or if i am wrong in waiting for "the right urge" - if maybe i should force myself onto a path and start seriously making a future. and with the second option comes a second fear - the fear that if i try to force myself into something, i won't be able to do it whole-heartedly, and will fail.
thinking about it, i guess i see too great a risk of failure in either option. so, scared, i sit here, trying to keep my senses on low-volume enough to be able to live with myself, while still resenting how much it dulls my life.
so, already, i've brought fear of failure back up. (now, what if we call my fear of failure a phobia - there are treatment methods for phobias, right?? whats a treatment method for a paralyzing fear of failure?)
another thing that keeps me from taking the first of the options is that my nature is a conservative one - to me, all changes must come from within, and 85% of the time, the changes come very slowly - therefore, i am scared of throwing myself into a fast paced life, scared of a sensory/emotional overload, scared of getting too caught up in whirlwid to keep my head on forwards.
and the worst part about all this is that i can write about all this till i'm blue - i am near tears now, because these thoughts scare me, and pull me, and make me aware of how i have purposefully dulled my life and how i both resent and cling to the dullness - but i am still not moving any closer to either direction! its fear, and its uncertainty and i hate it, and i have to go back to dulling my life to keep this self-hatred down.
*trying to calm down*
another thing that affects me is the talk of goldmund's talents - but for most of the book, goldmund's talent is his shining personality - and it brings up two sore spots - one, is that i have no "talents". at best, i can reach mediocrity in something i enjoy and apply myself to. i'm incapable of doing anything worthwhile with my hands - yes, a lot of it is caused by the fact that i have poor hand-eye coordination/motor skills, but it just feels depper then that. and i really really hate being mediocre - the second sore spot is that i identify with goldmund - and his "talent" is his personality - and there's no way i could ever measure up. i'm beyond awkward around new people and don't make good first impressions, it takes me a long time to be comfortable around someone and actually let people in, i can be judgemental, stubborn and selfish, and i just don't sparkle like goldmund does. and again, that leaves me feeling inadequate.
*deep breaths again*
on a lighter note, the book makes me think of spring. it makes me want constant spring. it makes me want to have a bed constructed that would fit into the bay-window portion of my room, so i could sleep with windows around me, so that i could open a windows, place my pillow on the windowsill and fall asleep looking at the stars (like i did in the house that we had when i was in 7th and 8th grade*) - but, having 3 windows around me would make winters impossible, and summers difficult, as just having a fan isn't enough with the humidity we have here, and the noise of the AC needs to be farther away from me.
but a girl can have her dreams, right?
*or, at least i slept that way until one night i felt watched - and after looking around, noticed hungry raccoon eyes glaring at me from the ground - it really flipped me out.
now, my gut feeling is that i should disable comments to this entry to prevent sympathy/pity comments, but i also would like to know if someone has something interesting to say/suggest/add - therefore, please, no sympathy/pity comments, ok?
so i am rereading narcissus and goldmund, and am also finding it hard to read for more then a half an hour straight without putting the book down to think. i'm now really curious if it would be affecting me this deeply if i was reading it for the first time...
(this may not make too much sense to those who haven't read the book)
down to how the book pulls me, in a very odd way, i identify with goldmund.
reading it for the second time, after the influence of professor nelson on how much attention i pay to tone and wording and the presence of the narrator (repeat after me: today, we are going to listen to our listening), i found the first 50 pages slightly off-tone. narcissus' character was supposed to come off as preachy, but i also saw it as being overly influencing - like he was steering goldmund to what he had seen of goldmund's future as much, if not more, as steering goldmund to find what is inside him - the book does bring forth that he is cocky about his ability to see into people, but it does not adequately address the steering - we're simply supposed to accept it because goldmund's reactions are extreme enough to say that narcissus was right. and, i think it was slightly out of character for the abbott to not have punished narcissus after goldmund had fainted.
but now i'm at a part thats affecting me much more - goldmund is starting to figure out that his is the "mother-nature", that cloister life is not for him. there's a lot of symbolism in his "dreams" that he's not showing to be getting ((foreshadowing, anyone?)), but he's feeling a pull and doesn't quite know what to do to go with it - he is sitting there, waiting for the pull to get a definite direction.
thats the part thats hardest for me. i've been sitting here, waiting for pulls within me to get direction for years now. and i feel pulls in directions - to travel, my resentment to how settled down i am - but, they scare me shitless. i am scared of going to where i am pulled - i rationalize this as thinking that if(when) the pull is right, it will be stronger then my doubts and my fear, and i will go with it - and in the meantime, i cling closer to the parts of my life i resent.
and whenever i let myself feel, it all drives me insane.
i can't figure out if i am wrong in not abandoning stability, and going on the road for a while - trying to follow those urges and see where they lead me, or if i am wrong in waiting for "the right urge" - if maybe i should force myself onto a path and start seriously making a future. and with the second option comes a second fear - the fear that if i try to force myself into something, i won't be able to do it whole-heartedly, and will fail.
thinking about it, i guess i see too great a risk of failure in either option. so, scared, i sit here, trying to keep my senses on low-volume enough to be able to live with myself, while still resenting how much it dulls my life.
so, already, i've brought fear of failure back up. (now, what if we call my fear of failure a phobia - there are treatment methods for phobias, right?? whats a treatment method for a paralyzing fear of failure?)
another thing that keeps me from taking the first of the options is that my nature is a conservative one - to me, all changes must come from within, and 85% of the time, the changes come very slowly - therefore, i am scared of throwing myself into a fast paced life, scared of a sensory/emotional overload, scared of getting too caught up in whirlwid to keep my head on forwards.
and the worst part about all this is that i can write about all this till i'm blue - i am near tears now, because these thoughts scare me, and pull me, and make me aware of how i have purposefully dulled my life and how i both resent and cling to the dullness - but i am still not moving any closer to either direction! its fear, and its uncertainty and i hate it, and i have to go back to dulling my life to keep this self-hatred down.
*trying to calm down*
another thing that affects me is the talk of goldmund's talents - but for most of the book, goldmund's talent is his shining personality - and it brings up two sore spots - one, is that i have no "talents". at best, i can reach mediocrity in something i enjoy and apply myself to. i'm incapable of doing anything worthwhile with my hands - yes, a lot of it is caused by the fact that i have poor hand-eye coordination/motor skills, but it just feels depper then that. and i really really hate being mediocre - the second sore spot is that i identify with goldmund - and his "talent" is his personality - and there's no way i could ever measure up. i'm beyond awkward around new people and don't make good first impressions, it takes me a long time to be comfortable around someone and actually let people in, i can be judgemental, stubborn and selfish, and i just don't sparkle like goldmund does. and again, that leaves me feeling inadequate.
*deep breaths again*
on a lighter note, the book makes me think of spring. it makes me want constant spring. it makes me want to have a bed constructed that would fit into the bay-window portion of my room, so i could sleep with windows around me, so that i could open a windows, place my pillow on the windowsill and fall asleep looking at the stars (like i did in the house that we had when i was in 7th and 8th grade*) - but, having 3 windows around me would make winters impossible, and summers difficult, as just having a fan isn't enough with the humidity we have here, and the noise of the AC needs to be farther away from me.
but a girl can have her dreams, right?
*or, at least i slept that way until one night i felt watched - and after looking around, noticed hungry raccoon eyes glaring at me from the ground - it really flipped me out.
now, my gut feeling is that i should disable comments to this entry to prevent sympathy/pity comments, but i also would like to know if someone has something interesting to say/suggest/add - therefore, please, no sympathy/pity comments, ok?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-01-02 09:45 pm (UTC)>at best, i can reach mediocrity in something i enjoy and apply myself to.
I think you do have talents. Maybe they are not (yet) artistic enough talents for you, but you have the talent to learn software with little direction, the talent to empathize with people calling you for help, the talent to write well and clearly communicate, the talent to be able to troubleshoot and solve other people's problems. Every day at work you make a lot of people's lives easier by being there for them. Mediocre? Nonsense -- you are excellent at what you do.
Now if like me you yearn to have a more creative talent (how I wish I could be a singer-songwriter!), then try to constructively examine your work talents and see how they could be artfully applied. Perhaps you should write nonfiction, for example; you probably have the knack for making complex stories clear and understandable, for helping people learn.
I find art in a well written algorithm, an elegant user interface, a passionate user manual. These are not enduring works of art, alas, but they might be steps towards developing an ability to create greater art in the future. Art is where you find it.
Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons--'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
"We make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker." (On Fairy-Stories," p. 54-55)
http://james.jlcarroll.net/Tolkien/