I never told anyone this. At first because I would never have thought I needed to tell anyone since I assumed it was common knowledge, later because I was embarrassed, and for the last ten years or so because I wasn't sure I'd be able to explain it in words. But let's try.
When I was young I believed that the world made sense. I believed in authority. I believed it earnestly, based on nothing more than my reasonable assumptions of how stuff should work. I believed there was organization. That the grown-ups, who had been doing this job for longer than I could easily imagine, had figured it out.
I'm being vague. To be specific, I imagined when I graduated school and walked into the employment office the people there would know everything. They'd know what I wanted to do, what I liked to do, what I was good at, what I should do. They'd know what work needed to be done and who would be best for it, and they'd put me to work according to my ability and reward me according to my need, just like every other adult in the world.
It's hard to understand just how I came to believe this. I guess it was the same way most people come to believe in God. Not having the slightest idea how much stuff there was I didn't know, I just made crap up that would soothe my sheltered sensibilities and decided I was right, and sought evidence to support my theory and ignored evidence that didn't.
And let me tell you, walking into the employment office with these preconceptions was very confusing for everyone.
Showing posts with label story time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label story time. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Friday, March 1, 2019
Here's how magic works
It's a kind of magic. The kind that involves places of power. Related to druids, as I understand them. (Which is my favorite D&D class.)
I've lived in my apartment since 2004. I know it, every creak and crook and cranny of it. The microwave oven that can be opened at the exact instant in between the timer running out and the alarm sounding. The flaking chrome on the kitchen tap that can cut your hands if you're careless. The balcony door that was installed only last year but that no one but me can get open. The deepest, darkest corner in the hallway that's still bright enough to read a book in summer.
You get a feeling for your surroundings that goes deeper than any conscious, verbal level. If I hear a sound from something falling over down the street outside on the opposite side of the building from my open window, I turn directly toward that sound without thinking and look into the wall between me and it - I literally hear the sound coming from the exact location of its source.
And, here's what got me thinking about this. My fridge door has an oddly placed center of balance. Nothing I've ever thought about in words. I just know in my bones where that balance is, so I can push it closed with just enough force that it will gently fall closed. It takes like three or four seconds, if it's fully opened. But I can just give it that tiny push and leave it and get on with my life and trust that it closes. Sometimes I look back and see it balanced perfectly still, open about 25 centimeters, and I give it a theatrical nod and it closes the rest of the way.
To anyone looking, it would seem like magic.
Actually, it brings to mind a little story. Bear with me as this post turns from an observation to a rambling collection of anecdotes. You're the only one I can talk to for more than 240 characters, dear reader.
I used to live in a house in the country with my mom, stepdad, stepbrother and (after 1992) my half brother. It was a nice place. Such enormous spaces. The house had two floors, a crawl-space attic, a basement with a dirt floor, a shack for firewood for the furnace and various garden furniture, a tiny building without doors or windows for storing oil (also for the furnace), a small greenhouse, a large two-car garage with a basement, a couple of potato fields, rose bushes, ancient birches, alders and rowans, and even a dense old forest in the back yard filled with the most random old junk ranging from red steel dinner plates to a moss-covered tractor skeleton. Three thousand square meters of fun, which we rented for approximately 400 dollars American per month.
Good times. But to get to the point, the phones. (It was the mid-1990s, our house had a phone line. We usually had three or four phones connected to it. We honestly had a rotary dial phone, though it was an embarrassing relic and I got to destroy it one day when we replaced it with a wireless.) The phone in the living room for some reason made a loud clicking noise when someone called, several seconds before anything started ringing. Well, I always thought it was loud, but.
This one time I for some reason was playing host to my friend M. and several of his friends who I only vaguely knew. I think we might have been having a sleepover and had converged on using my house as my enormous room could fit us all. Four or five teenage boys (I mean, we all thought I was a boy at the time) having some good clean fun. We were sitting in the living room, nominally watching a movie or something, when the phone clicked. I got up from my spot on the couch in the corner and walked across the room to the big desk at an even pace, getting some very odd looks, though I wasn't being strange enough to interrupt the conversation. When I slowly reached my hand out and picked up the phone the moment it rang, however, the room went dead quiet.
I have never fought so hard to keep a straight face, though I think the caller was still pretty confused by the laughter in my voice.
M. was the only one who knew what was going on, but even he thought I was a wizard, I think. It was understood between us that he was the one who knew people and I was the one who knew everything else. He once said of me, to a large group of kids, "He doesn't say much, but when he does, you listen. And he did. He listened to me when I told him what videogames to buy, when I told him Harry Potter was a ripoff of The Books of Magic (which I believed until I read it), when I told him masonry was a good career where you'd always find work (seriously, this guy changed schools because of what I said), when I told him to suck my dick. He listened to me when I told him to not go out and beat up immigrants on the street, though if he had also listened to me when I told him immigrants were not, as a group, bad people we might still be friends.
I mean, probably not. He thought friends should not discuss topics they disagreed on (like immigrants). He thought my Asperger diagnosis was a scam, a hustle to get me disability money; I don't think he could have accepted being friends with someone different from the tiny boxes he needed people to fit into. I would be scared for my safety if I told him I was transgender when in the same room as him.
I've been trying to think of a way to wrap up this post since before the phone thing. Maybe we'll just stop here.
I've lived in my apartment since 2004. I know it, every creak and crook and cranny of it. The microwave oven that can be opened at the exact instant in between the timer running out and the alarm sounding. The flaking chrome on the kitchen tap that can cut your hands if you're careless. The balcony door that was installed only last year but that no one but me can get open. The deepest, darkest corner in the hallway that's still bright enough to read a book in summer.
You get a feeling for your surroundings that goes deeper than any conscious, verbal level. If I hear a sound from something falling over down the street outside on the opposite side of the building from my open window, I turn directly toward that sound without thinking and look into the wall between me and it - I literally hear the sound coming from the exact location of its source.
And, here's what got me thinking about this. My fridge door has an oddly placed center of balance. Nothing I've ever thought about in words. I just know in my bones where that balance is, so I can push it closed with just enough force that it will gently fall closed. It takes like three or four seconds, if it's fully opened. But I can just give it that tiny push and leave it and get on with my life and trust that it closes. Sometimes I look back and see it balanced perfectly still, open about 25 centimeters, and I give it a theatrical nod and it closes the rest of the way.
To anyone looking, it would seem like magic.
Actually, it brings to mind a little story. Bear with me as this post turns from an observation to a rambling collection of anecdotes. You're the only one I can talk to for more than 240 characters, dear reader.
I used to live in a house in the country with my mom, stepdad, stepbrother and (after 1992) my half brother. It was a nice place. Such enormous spaces. The house had two floors, a crawl-space attic, a basement with a dirt floor, a shack for firewood for the furnace and various garden furniture, a tiny building without doors or windows for storing oil (also for the furnace), a small greenhouse, a large two-car garage with a basement, a couple of potato fields, rose bushes, ancient birches, alders and rowans, and even a dense old forest in the back yard filled with the most random old junk ranging from red steel dinner plates to a moss-covered tractor skeleton. Three thousand square meters of fun, which we rented for approximately 400 dollars American per month.
Good times. But to get to the point, the phones. (It was the mid-1990s, our house had a phone line. We usually had three or four phones connected to it. We honestly had a rotary dial phone, though it was an embarrassing relic and I got to destroy it one day when we replaced it with a wireless.) The phone in the living room for some reason made a loud clicking noise when someone called, several seconds before anything started ringing. Well, I always thought it was loud, but.
This one time I for some reason was playing host to my friend M. and several of his friends who I only vaguely knew. I think we might have been having a sleepover and had converged on using my house as my enormous room could fit us all. Four or five teenage boys (I mean, we all thought I was a boy at the time) having some good clean fun. We were sitting in the living room, nominally watching a movie or something, when the phone clicked. I got up from my spot on the couch in the corner and walked across the room to the big desk at an even pace, getting some very odd looks, though I wasn't being strange enough to interrupt the conversation. When I slowly reached my hand out and picked up the phone the moment it rang, however, the room went dead quiet.
I have never fought so hard to keep a straight face, though I think the caller was still pretty confused by the laughter in my voice.
M. was the only one who knew what was going on, but even he thought I was a wizard, I think. It was understood between us that he was the one who knew people and I was the one who knew everything else. He once said of me, to a large group of kids, "He doesn't say much, but when he does, you listen. And he did. He listened to me when I told him what videogames to buy, when I told him Harry Potter was a ripoff of The Books of Magic (which I believed until I read it), when I told him masonry was a good career where you'd always find work (seriously, this guy changed schools because of what I said), when I told him to suck my dick. He listened to me when I told him to not go out and beat up immigrants on the street, though if he had also listened to me when I told him immigrants were not, as a group, bad people we might still be friends.
I mean, probably not. He thought friends should not discuss topics they disagreed on (like immigrants). He thought my Asperger diagnosis was a scam, a hustle to get me disability money; I don't think he could have accepted being friends with someone different from the tiny boxes he needed people to fit into. I would be scared for my safety if I told him I was transgender when in the same room as him.
I've been trying to think of a way to wrap up this post since before the phone thing. Maybe we'll just stop here.
Sunday, August 6, 2017
If you could make your hair do that you would too
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Yes, the comic is one week late this week. I probably need to push myself harder.
I have a story about that, actually. How I hurt my back rediscovering the thrill of life:
I've been walking the forest trail next to my house at night for a while. Trying to make it a regular thing, for the exercise. It's two kilometers of twisting dirt path, covered in pine needles. No sign of human life if you go there at 2 AM. I find it pleasant. This night, some ten days ago, I decided to take my exercise to the next level: Light jogging. After ten minutes of breathing hard I saw the first sunlight hit the crowns of the trees and felt fine, except my legs were burning with the effort of holding my speed back to the minimum I judged I could handle to keep it up through the whole trail. So I went faster.
Before I really thought about what I was doing, I was running as fast as I physically could, desperately mindful of the ground right in front of me to place my bare feet away from roots and pinecones. I was keenly aware of how easily I could seriously hurt myself - one time I have found broken glass on the path, and since I went over 110 kilos I have felt I could as easily break my ankles as twist them. And I was able to find some kind of steel under all this fat. Steel that once upon a time let me walk a slack rope five meters over the ground, let me sit down and untangle my foot when caught under water and out of breath, let me make decisions faster than I could think at times when I had to save life and limb.
I had almost forgotten how easy it is to be in this state of genuine fear. Everything's so clear, everything fits together. The faster I move, the better. You can see how one could get addicted to it. I now have to weigh my motivation to get in shape against my fear of addiction.
But anyway, then I couldn't sit straight for the rest of the week.
So, notes on the comic:
*Anna Regn's hair has probably grown more than can be justified by moving the air around it to give it volume. I just like drawing it.
*The twins tend to stand in this order: Leon left, Anna Regn right. They started doing it just to keep people from mixing them up, but there's probably some symbolic significance in the particular order they choose.
*The existential conflict between the lasting and the ephemeral is probably not going to cause as much drama as it could, despite the twins's fundamental difference in artistic doctrine.
*Anna Regn clearly can't help herself from pointing fingers at the camera at the slightest provocation. Stop it. Nobody likes a foreshorteninger.
*I still don't have a real model for how these characters should look. In fact I don't even know how their noses work. But at least I have a vague system for word balloon shapes to convey voice. And those faces in panel 8 are p. great. If I may say so myself.
*Leon's on like four or five levels of irony when she quotes Monica Geller's catchphrase "I know!" Kids watch old TV shows in different ways than we did. But I mention this just so you can hear it in that voice.
PS. It's come to my attention the comic may appear shrunk on some monitors. This raises several questions, and having done everything I can to answer them my conclusion is: I miss having websites that would only put code in your pages if you wrote that code, and if you're not seeing 1000 pixels wide comics try clicking on the image. (This should take you to imgur, where you have to click the image again to see it in full size.) (Sigh.)
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