Connections

[squirmelia]

My vision keeps being consumed by a gaze of longing towards nothing in particular, or sometimes the clouds seen out of the office window. I saw Before Sunset, and now it's as if a fresh twist of lust is twirling me towards it, and I feel like I did as a child watching Anne and Gilbert trying to ignore each other. Butterflies in the stomach, but not specific towards a person butterflies, more like caterpillars really, the edges of the leaves rustling. That connection between the characters, that's what's affecting me. I keep trying to remember if I ever truly connected with anyone, in any kind of meaningful way, and well, maybe. I could pretend that I have a force-field around me, or that I'm a paid up member of the cult of aloneness, but, actually, I admit fragmented moments, faded a little now, in not such a bad way, even though the pages are torn and mangled. Whether those connections were real or just a momentary lapse from reality that made me look into the distance and not care about anything closer for a while, doesn't really matter now.

Comments

[tygerbc.livejournal.com]

Like I said, not like everyone =)

me and...?

[criesbella.livejournal.com]

>>I feel like I did as a child
watching Anne and Gilbert
trying to ignore each other<<

connection...star-crossings..."the one"...

i grew up w/jo & laurie (became amy)
and anne & gilbert and graduated to
mulder & scully and...

enough already. it's just ME here.
me and YOU and you and you and you and you
::pointing around the camp meetup table::

xoxo, a
THANKS, J.

[gentio.livejournal.com]

I used to get really scared and depressed about how dis-connected, separated and just different i felt from the rest of the world. I guess in my teenage years it led to rebellion in some ways, i expect that's why i was drawn to the 'alternative' crowd, I found beer and although it sounds weak( dont get me wrong, i've never been an alchoholic or anything, and i definately don't advocate drinking), that really did help me deal with living in the world that we do, and at least temporarily let me feel part of it again. I guess it gives you the temporary blindness that you feel everyone around you has, and it lets you feel more comfortable in yourself, thus feeling more happy being where you are at the time. The last year i've moved on from that, and like I found beer, i've now kinda found myself and the confidence to be me regardless of the people around or the place i'm at.
I think everyone needs to find themselves, their personality, their life and place in the world. Otherwise we just carry on walking through life alone and affraid, and we never get anywhere near to reaching our fullest potential, as we're too scared to stand out from the rest, even tho deep down we can feel it urging to escape.

Hope that made some kind of sense or was related to what you wrote, just, as always, your writings inspired me and compelled me to reply.

[solitarywalker.livejournal.com]

i have had connections with people. Most recently, a few months ago... it was beautiful, and fleeting, and utterly hopeless.

Re: me and...?

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

I picked up Generation X a few minutes after I wrote that entry, and flicked to a random page, and started crying at how bittersweet it all seemed. So, yes, the camp meet-up table. :)

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Have you ever eaten a caterpillar?

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

To start with, when I was writing that entry, I was so tempted to write "oh, I'm so alone and disconnected," like I probably would have done in my earlier teen years, but I too have moved on at least a little from that. I still get scared, but not quite as much, and that's the way forward.

Yesterday, my company sent me to a "credibility, composure, and confidence" seminar (for women), which wasn't nearly as bad as it sounds. They talked about having the confidence to be yourself, and touched upon a few interesting issues (and gave me half the afternoon off, which is always good :) ).

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

I start to wonder if such connections can ever be anything other than fleeting, but at least they're beautiful, that's something.

[gentio.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a good seminar. I think that pretty much everyone that lives in todays society feels insecure and lacks confidence, it's a product of everything we see and hear around us each day. It's one of the reasons i don't watch tv anymore, i just one day came to the realisation that I no longer want anyone to try and influence my image of how i should look, feel or be, especially not for their own personal greed, and to be honest, i've never looked back.

Once you step away from it for a while and see it from the outside, it makes you sick to the core, and i feel so sorry for all the people caught up in it. It is hard though and does take a long time, but such an amazingly worthwhile goal in the end.
I guess good steps to make are to first realise who you really are, and then start letting parts of that show on the outside, so that people can generally begin to accept it without too much change.
It feels so incredable not having to live under a facade anymore, it's the happiest thing i've ever experienced.

On another note, i watched a video interview with all the members from tool last night, i think it's the only one that's ever been done. Their philosphies and ideas about why they stayed away from having any sort of public image, and let the music do the talking etc, are really interesting, as are the rest of their ideas and beliefs about a whole load of things. I think you'd find it interesting, as i know you're a fan of the band yourself, probably for the same reasons i am, which were confirmed ten fold last night when I actually got to hear them say the things that i've known they stood for all along. And for once they weren't being mysterious and crypic, just honest. Let me know if you wanna see it or something, it's downloadable or I can chuck it on a cd, it was pretty cool.

And yeah, half the afternoon off is always welcome, it's one of the reasons i give blood a few times a year ;)

[gentio.livejournal.com]

I've had one with someone in america for the last 6 years, and i've had one with someone around here for the last few months as well. I think it's just a case of 2 people being able to be purely open and honest and 100% exactly who they want to be. They have to be similar people as well though i guess.

[solitarywalker.livejournal.com]

i'd like to think that the one i have in mind was fleeting only because we live far apart. But of course there is no way to know if that is so.

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

I think we have to let ourselves by influenced by others at least a little, because otherwise we may never interact with anything new, especially if you agree with Descartes in that even our dreams do not invent anything new and are based upon experiences. It's probably the way in which we use that influence that matters.

I'm not a fan of TV, but the debate about TV is always an interesting one - I have to watch TV at work, which makes it a bit difficult when it comes to TV Turn-off Week (http://www.adbusters.org/metas/psycho/tvturnoff/), but I read a fairly interesting thread (http://http://www.barbelith.com/topic/17635) on Barbelith (http://www.barbelith.com), which made me wonder why exactly it is that watching TV is looked down upon so much compared to other forms of media.

>It feels so incredible not having to live under a facade anymore

What was the facade that you were living under, if you don't mind me asking?

>On another note, i watched a video interview with all the members from tool

I remember reading some sort of interview some years ago now, but have not really heard much of them since, I guess. A video interview does indeed sound interesting.

>it's downloadable

Sounds good. I don't have ADSL at the moment, but when I have it again, I shall search for it. :)

[gentio.livejournal.com]

hmm, I don't really get with Descartes, I think his scepticism held him back alot, as did the time he lived in..
He might have felt that dreams do not invent anything new, but dreams also led him to cast doubt and turn against all of his senses, which in my eyes goes agaisnt the continental rationalism that he is claimed for pioneering..

Being influenced by others is a great thing, but it's the separation from being influenced by others and consciously choosing the parts of that influence you want to take on board, and sucoming to the influence of that person and un-consciously incorportating parts of them into yourself ( for whatever reason, political, social etc..) that most people aren't aware of..

The decision of what influences you want to allow and what to block can only come if you have a ideal image of yourself and what you wish to become, chances are that you've drawn yourself to those influences anyway, because you can recognise their merit.

I think i look down on TV compared to other media (mainly)because it's become almost purley a revenue stream for the greed orientated global companies, where as other forms have managed to stay away from revolving themselves around their sponsors. At least partially anyway.

"What was the facade that you were living under, if you don't mind me asking?"

It was a case of trying to be a certain person depending on social surroundings at the time. I was having some really hard times in a failing relationship I was in, and i realise now that I was trying really hard to hide and change the person i was inside so that it would match what I thought my girlfriend at the time wanted me to be, inorder to save the relationship. It was mainly that, and also that i was spending alot of time with some people that i've known since I was 16, and found it really hard to let the changes that have happened to me and my personal development since we all moved on show, for fear of them not being able to associate with me in the way that we used to. The relationship finished and I moved in with a guy I hardly knew for 3 months, and over that time I completely shed the "skin" that the above things led me to aquire. And I feel great for it.

Yeah i've read a couple with maynard, but never the whole band, and never on video. Hope you get to check it out :)

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

>The decision of what influences you want to allow and what to block

It would be great to be able to choose exactly what we will let influence us, but getting to that point could indeed be very hard, since being aware of all the millions of things we experience every day and then choosing whether to allow them through or not could be extremely time-consuming, even if you were really that aware of everything, and could control it. I guess the default option could be to try to block everything, and then let only certain things through, but a problem could be losing touch with everyday life, I guess.

[gentio.livejournal.com]

well yeah, blocking yourself off to that extent would just make the alientation worse..

I think to do it on a pro-active level would be really hard, and totally time consuming. A post-event reactive approach is better and alot easier, " hrm, it was nice to spend time with that person but i felt myself echoing their x,y,z personality trates, of which y and z i'd much rather not."

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

I shall try not to hide underneath my desk, screaming, "Oh no, I am being influenced by the yellow colouring of the nearby post-it note, and this must not happen!" :)

[tygerbc.livejournal.com]

My memory is kind of hazy about this but I have it on good authority I did, along with various other garden-dwellers. Need you ask? =)